The Houses of Iszm

by Jack Vance

  Farr put his beer gently to the table. “I’m trying to pick a horse.”

  “Out of the air?” Pushing a cigarette in her mouth, she archly moved her lips toward him. “Give me a light.”

  Farr lit the cigarette, studying her from behind his eyelids, weighing her, probing for the false note, the nontypical reaction. He had not noticed her come in; he had seen her promoting drinks nowhere else around the bar.

  “I could be talked into taking a drink,” she said carelessly.

  “After I buy you a drink—then what?”

  She looked away, refusing to meet his eyes. “I guess— I guess that’s up to you.”

  Farr asked her how much, in rather blunt terms. She blushed, still looking across the bar, suddenly flustered. “I guess you made a mistake… I guess I made a mistake… I thought you’d be good for a drink.”

  Farr asked in an easy voice, “You work for the bar, on commission?”

  “Sure,” she said, half-defiantly. “What about it? It’s a nice way to pass the evening. Sometimes you meet a nice guy. Whatcha do to your head?” She leaned forward, looked. “Somebody hit you?”

  “If I told you how I got that scab,” said Farr, “you’d call me a liar.”

  “Go ahead, try me.”

  “Some people were mad at me. They took me to a tree, pushed me inside. I fell down into a root, two or three hundred feet. On the way down I hit my head.”

  The girl looked at him sidelong. Her mouth twisted into a wry grimace. “And at the bottom you saw little pink men carrying green lanterns. And a big white fluffy rabbit.”

  “I told you,” said Farr.

  She reached up toward his temple. “You’ve got a funny long gray hair.”

  Farr moved his head back. “I’m going to keep it.”

  “Suit yourself.” She eyed him coldly. “Are you gonna spring, or do I gotta tell you the story of my life?”

  “Just a minute,” said Farr. He rose to his feet and crossed the room to the bar. He motioned to the bartender. “That blonde at my table, see her?”

  The bartender looked. “What about her?”

  “She usually hang out here?”

  “Never saw her before in my life.”

  “She doesn’t work for you on commission?”

  “Brother, I just told you. I never seen her before in my life.”

  “Thanks.”

  Farr returned to the table. The girl was sullenly rapping her fingers on the table. Farr looked at her a long moment.

  “Well?” she growled.

  “Who are you working for?”

  “I told you.”

  “Who sent you in here after me?”

  “Don’t be silly.” She started to rise. Farr caught her wrist.

  “Let go! I’ll yell.”

  “That’s what I’m hoping,” said Farr. “I’d like to see some police. Sit down—or I’ll call them myself.”

  She sank slowly back into the chair, then turned and flung herself against him, putting her face up and her arms around his neck. “I’m so lonesome. Really, I mean it. I got in from Seattle yesterday. I don’t know a soul— now don’t be so hard to get alone with. We can be nice to each other… can’t we?”

  Farr grinned. “First we talk, then we can be nice.”

  Something was hurting him, something at the back of his neck, where her hand touched. He blinked and grabbed her arm. She jumped up, tore herself loose, her eyes shining with glee. “Now what, now what’ll you do?”

  Farr made a lurch for her; she danced back, her face mischievous. Farr’s eyes were watering, his joints felt weak. He tottered to his feet, the table fell over. The bartender roared and vaulted the bar. Farr took two staggering steps for the girl, who was composedly walking away. The bartender confronted her.

  “Just a minute.”

  Farr’s ears were roaring. He heard the girl say primly, “You get out of my way. He’s a drunk. He insulted me… said all kinds of nasty things.”

  The bartender glared indecisively. “There’s something fishy going on here.”

  “Well—don’t mix me up in it.”

  Farr’s knees unhinged; a dreadful lump came up his throat, into his mouth. He sank to the floor. He could sense motion, he felt rough hands, and heard the bartender’s voice very loud, “What’s the trouble, Jack? Cantcha hold it?”

  Farr’s mind was off somewhere, tangled in a hedge of glass branches. A voice gurgled up his throat. “Call Penche… Call K. Penche!”

  “K. Penche,” someone voiced softly. “The guy’s nuts.”

  “K. Penche,” Farr mumbled. “He’ll pay you… Call him, tell him—Farr…”

  XI

  Aile Farr was dying. He was sinking into a red and yellow chaos of shapes that reeled and pounded. When the movement stilled, when the shapes straightened and drew back, when the scarlets and golds blurred and deepened to black—Aile Farr would be dead.

  He saw death coming, drifting like twilight across the sundown of his dying… He felt a sudden sharpness, a discord. A bright green blot exploded across the sad reds and roses and golds…

  Aile Farr was alive once more.

  The doctor leaned back and put aside his hypodermic. “Pretty close shave,” he told the patrolman.

  Farr’s convulsions quieted, mercifully he lost consciousness.

  “Who is the guy?” asked the patrolman.

  The bartender looked skeptically down at Farr. “He said to call Penche.”

  “Penche! K. Penche?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “Well—call him. All he can do is swear at you.”

  The bartender went to the screen. The patrolman looked down at the doctor, still kneeling beside Farr.

  “What went wrong with the guy?”

  The doctor shrugged. “Hard to say. Some kind of female trouble. So many things you can slip into a man nowadays.”

  “That raw place on his head…”

  The doctor glanced at Farr’s scalp. “No. That’s an old wound. He got it in the neck. This mark here.”

  “Looks like she hit him with a slap-sack.”

  The bartender returned. “Penche says he’s on his way out.”

  They all looked down at Farr with new respect.

  Two orderlies placed stretcher poles one on each side of Farr; metal ribbons were thrust beneath him, clamping over the opposing pole. They lifted him and carried him across the floor. The bartender trotted alongside. “Where you guys taking him? I got to tell Penche something.”

  “He’ll be at the Long Beach Emergency Hospital.”

  Penche arrived three minutes after the ambulance had gone. He strode in and looked right and left. “Where is he?”

  “Are you Mr. Penche?” the bartender asked respectfully.

  “Sure he’s Penche,” said the patrolman.

  “Well, your friend was taken to the Long Beach Emergency Hospital.”

  Penche turned to one of the men who had marched in behind him. “Find out what happened here,” he said and left the bar.

  The orderlies arranged Farr on a table and cut off his shoes. In puzzlement they examined the band of metal wrapped around his right shoulder.

  “What’s this thing?”

  “Whatever it is—it’s got to come off.”

  They unwound the woven metal, washed Farr with antiseptic gas, gave him several different injections, and moved him into a quiet room.

  Penche called the main office. “When can Mr. Farr be moved?”

  “Just a minute, Mr. Penche.”

  Penche waited; the clerk made inquiries. “Well, he’s out of danger now.”

  “Can he be moved?”

  “He’s still unconscious, but the doctor says he’s okay.”

  “Have the ambulance bring him to my house, please.”

  “Very well, Mr. Penche. Er—are you assuming responsibility for Mr. Farr’s care?”

  “Yes,” said Penche. “Bill me.”

  Penche’s house on Signal Hill w
as a Class AA Type 4 luxury model, a dwelling equivalent to an average custom-built Earth house of 30,000 dollars value. Penche sold Class AA houses in four varieties for 10,000 dollars—as many as he could obtain—as well as Class A, Class BB and Class B houses. The Iszic, of course, grew houses infinitely more elaborate for their own use—rich ancient growths with complex banks of interconnecting pods, walls shining with fluorescent colors, tubules emitting nectar and oil and brine, atmospheres charged with oxygen and complex beneficiants, phototropic and photophobic pods, pods holding carefully filtered and circulated bathing pools, pods exuding nuts and sugar crystals and succulent wafers. The Iszic exported none of these, and none of the three- and four-pod laborer’s houses. They required as much handling and shipping space, but brought only a small fraction of the return.

  A billion Earthers still lived in sub-standard conditions. North Chinese still cut caves into the loess, Dravidians built mud huts, Americans and Europeans occupied decaying apartment-tenements. Penche thought the situation deplorable; a massive market lay untapped. Penche wanted to tap it.

  A practical difficulty intervened. These people could pay no thousands of dollars for Class AA, A, BB and B houses, even if Penche had them to sell. He needed three-, four-, and five-pod laborer’s houses—which the Iszic refused to export.

  The problem had a classical solution: a raid on Iszm for a female tree. Properly fertilized, the female tree would yield a million seeds a year. About half these seeds would grow into female trees. In a few years Penche’s income would expand from ten million a year to a hundred million, a thousand million, five thousand million.

  To most people the difference between ten million a year and a thousand million seems inconsequential. Penche, however, thought in units of a million. Money represented not that which could be bought, but energy, dynamic thrust, the stuff of persuasion and efficacy. He spent little money on himself, his personal life was rather austere. He lived in his Class AA demonstrator on Signal Hill when he might have owned a sky-island, drifting in orbit around Earth. He might have loaded his table with rare meats and fowl, precious conserves, the valued wines, curious liquors and fruits from the outer worlds. He could have staffed a harem with the houris of a Sultan’s dream. But Penche ate steak and drank coffee and beer. He remained a bachelor, indulging himself socially only when the press of business allowed. Like certain gifted men who have no ear for music, Penche had only small taste for the accouterments of civilization.

  He recognized his own lack, and sometimes he felt a fleeting melancholy, like the brush of a dark feather; sometimes he sat slumped, savage as a boar, the furnaces glaring behind the smoked glass of his eyes. But for the most part K. Penche was sour and sardonic. Other men could be softened, distracted, controlled by easy words, pretty things, pleasure; Penche knew this well and used the knowledge as a carpenter uses a hammer, incurious about the intrinsic nature of the tool. Without illusion or prejudice he watched and acted; here perhaps was Penche’s greatest strength, the inner brooding eye that gauged himself and the world in the same frame of callous objectivity.

  He was waiting in his study when the ambulance sank to the lawn. He went out on the balcony and watched as the orderlies floated out the stretcher. He spoke in the heavy harsh voice that penetrated like another man’s shout. “Is he conscious?”

  “He’s coming around, sir.”

  “Bring him up here.”

  XII

  Aile Farr awoke in a pod with dust-yellow walls, a dark brown ceiling vaulted with slender ribs. He raised his head and blinked around the pod. He saw square, dark, heavy furniture: chairs, a settee, a table scattered with papers, a model house or two, and an antique Spanish buffet.

  A wispy man with a large head and earnest eyes bent over him. He wore a white cloth jacket, he smelled of antiseptic: a doctor.

  Behind the doctor stood Penche. He was a large man but not as large as Farr had pictured him. He crossed the room slowly and looked down at Farr.

  Something stirred in Farr’s brain. Air rose in his throat, his vocal chords vibrated; his mouth, tongue, teeth, palate shaped words. Farr heard them in amazement.

  “I have the tree.”

  Penche nodded. “Where?”

  Farr looked at him stupidly.

  Penche asked, “How did you get the tree off Iszm?”

  “I don’t know,” said Farr. He rose up on his elbow, rubbed his chin, blinked. “I don’t know what I’m saying. I don’t have any tree.”

  Penche frowned. “Either you have it or you don’t.”

  “I don’t have any tree.” Farr struggled to sit up. The doctor put an arm under his shoulders and helped him up. Farr felt very weak. “What am I doing here? Somebody poisoned me. A girl. A blonde girl in the tavern.” He looked at Penche with growing anger. “She was working for you.”

  Penche nodded. “That’s true.”

  Farr rubbed his face. “How did you find me?”

  “You called the Imperador on the stereo. I had a man in the exchange waiting for the call.”

  “Well,” said Farr wearily. “It’s all a mistake. How or why or what—I don’t know. Except that I’m taking a beating. And I don’t like it.”

  Penche looked at the doctor. “How is he?”

  “He’s all right now. He’ll get his strength back pretty soon.”

  “Good. You can go.”

  The doctor left the pod. Penche signaled a chair up behind him and sat down. “Anna worked too hard,” said Penche. “She never should have used her sticker.” He hitched his chair closer. “Tell me about yourself.”

  “First,” said Farr, “where am I?”

  “You’re in my house. I’ve been looking for you.”

  “Why?”

  Penche rocked his head back and forth, a sign of inward amusement. “You were asked to deliver a tree to me. Or a seed. Or a seedling. Whatever it is, I want it.”

  Farr spoke in a level voice. “I don’t have it. I don’t know anything about it. I was on Tjiere atoll during the raid—that’s the closest I came to your tree.”

  Penche asked in a quiet voice that seemed to hold no suspicion, “You called me when you arrived in town. Why?”

  Farr shook his head. “I don’t know. It was something I had to do. I did it. I told you just now I had a tree. I don’t know why…”

  Penche nodded. “I believe you. We’ve got to find out where this tree is. It may take a while, but—”

  “I don’t have your tree. I’m not interested.” He rose to his feet. He looked around and started for the door. “Now—I’m going home.”

  Penche looked after him in quiet amusement. “The doors are cinched, Farr.”

  Farr paused, looking at the hard rosette of the door. Cinched—twisted shut. The relax-nerve would be somewhere in the wall. He pressed at the dusty yellow surface, almost like parchment.

  “Not that way,” said Penche. “Come back here, Farr…”

  The door unwrapped itself. Omon Bozhd stood in the gap. He wore a skin-tight garment striped blue and white, a white cloche flaring rakishly back on itself, up over his ears. His face was austere, placid, full of the strength that was human but not Earth-human.

  He came into the room. Behind came two more Iszic, these in yellow and green stripes: Szecr. Farr backed away to let them enter.

  “Hello,” said Penche. “I thought I had the door cinched. You fellows probably know all the tricks.”

  Omon Bozhd nodded politely to Farr. “We lost you for a certain period today; I am glad to see you.” He looked at Penche, then back at Farr. “Your destination seems to have been K. Penche’s house.”

  “That’s the way it looks,” said Farr.

  Omon Bozhd explained politely. “When you were in the cell on Tjiere, we anesthetized you with a hypnotic gas. The Thord heard it. His race holds their breath for six minutes. When you became dazed he leaped on you, to effect a mind transfer and fixed his will on yours. A suggestion, a compulsion.” He looked at Penche. “To the last
moment he served his master well.”

  Penche said nothing; Omon Bozhd returned to Farr. “He buried the instructions deep in your brain; then he gave you the trees he had stolen; Six minutes had elapsed. He took a breath and became unconscious. Later we took you to him, hoping this would dislodge the injunction. We met failure; the Thord astounded us with his psychic capabilities.”

  Farr looked at Penche, who was leaning negligently against the table. There was tension here, like a trick jack-in-the-box ready to explode at the slightest shock.

  Omon Bozhd dismissed Farr from his attention. Farr had served his purpose. “I came to Earth,” he told Penche, “on two missions. I must inform you that your consignment of Class AA houses cannot be delivered, because of the raid on Tjiere atoll.”

  “Well, well,” said Penche mildly. “Not so good.”

  “My second mission is to find the man Aile Farr brings his message to.”

  Penche spoke in an interested voice. “You probed Farr’s mind? Why weren’t you able to find out then?”

  Iszic courtesy was automatic, a reflex. Omon Bozhd bowed his head. “The Thord ordered Farr to forget, to remember only when his foot touched the soil of Earth. He had enormous power; Farr Sainh has a brain of considerable tenacity. We could only follow him. His destination is here, the house of K. Penche. I am able therefore to fulfill my second mission.”

  Penche said, “Well? Spit it out!”

  Omon Bozhd bowed. His own voice was calm and formal. “My original message to you is voided, Penche Sainh. You are receiving no more Class AA houses. You are receiving none at all. If ever you set foot on Iszm or in Iszic suzerainty, you will be punished for your crime against us.”

  Penche nodded his head, his sign of inner sardonic mirth. “You discharge me, then. I’m no longer your agent.”

  “Correct.”

  Penche turned to Farr and spoke in a startling sharp voice. “The trees—where are they?”

  Involuntarily Farr put his hand to the sore spot on his scalp.

  Penche said, “Come over here, Farr, sit down. Let me take a look.”