Hard-Luck Diggings: The Early Jack Vance, Volume One

by Jack Vance

  Past Mrs. Clara’s chambers, to the door of Earl’s bedroom. Jean pressed the button; the door slid open.

  Earl stood before a mirror, tying a red and blue silk cravat around his bull-neck. He wore a suit of pearl-gray gabardine, cut very full and padded to make his body look round and soft. He saw Jean in the mirror, behind her the hard face of his brother Lionel. He whirled, lost his footing, drifted ineffectually into the air.

  Lionel laughed. “Get him, Hammond. Bring him along.”

  Earl stormed and raved. He was the master here, everybody get out. He’d have them all jailed, killed. He’d kill them himself…

  Hammond searched him for weapons, and the two professional-looking men stood uncomfortably in the background muttering to each other.

  “Look here, Mr. Abercrombie,” one of them said at last. “We can’t be a party to violence…”

  “Shut up,” said Lionel. “You’re here as witnesses, as medical men. You’re being paid to look, that’s all. If you don’t like what you see, that’s too bad.” He motioned to Jean. “Get going.”

  Jean pushed herself to the study door. Earl called out sharply: “Get away from there, get away! That’s private, that’s my private study!”

  Jean pushed herself to the furry two-legged creature. Here she waited.

  Earl made some difficulty about coming through the door. Hammond manipulated his elbows; Earl belched up a hoarse screech, flung himself forward, panting like a winded chicken.

  Lionel said, “Don’t fool with Hammond, Earl. He likes hurting people.”

  The two witnesses muttered wrathfully. Lionel quelled them with a look.

  Hammond seized Earl by the seat of the pants, raised him over his head, walked with magnetic shoes gripping the deck across the cluttered floor of the study, with Earl flailing and groping helplessly.

  Jean fumbled in the fretwork over the panel into the annex. Earl screamed, “Keep your hands out of there! Oh, how you’ll pay, how you’ll pay for this, how you’ll pay!” His voice hoarsened, he broke into sobs.

  Hammond shook him, like a terrier shaking a rat.

  Earl sobbed louder.

  The sound grated on Jean’s ears. She frowned, found the button, pushed. The panel flew open.

  They all moved into the bright annex, Earl completely broken, sobbing and pleading.

  “There it is,” said Jean.

  Lionel swung his gaze along the collection of monstrosities. The out-world things, the dragons, basilisks, griffins, the armored insects, the great-eyed serpents, the tangles of muscle, the coiled creatures of fang, brain, cartilage. And then there were the human creatures, no less grotesque. Lionel’s eyes stopped at the fat man.

  He looked at Earl, who had fallen numbly silent.

  “Poor old Hugo,” said Lionel. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Earl.”

  Earl made a sighing sound.

  Lionel said, “But Hugo is dead…He’s as dead as any of the other things. Right, Earl?” He looked at Jean. “Right?”

  “I guess that’s right,” said Jean uneasily. She found no pleasure baiting Earl.

  “Of course he’s dead,” panted Earl.

  Jean went to the little key controlling the magnetic field.

  Earl screamed, “You witch! You witch!”

  Jean depressed the key. There was a musical hum, a hissing, a smell of ozone. A moment passed. There came a sigh of air. The cubicle opened with a sucking sound. Hugo drifted into the room.

  He twitched his arms, gagged and retched, made a thin crying sound in his throat.

  Lionel turned to his two witnesses. “Is this man alive?”

  Hugo whispered feebly, pressed his elbows to his body, pulled up his atrophied little legs, tried to assume a foetal position.

  Lionel asked the two men, “Is this man sane?”

  They fidgeted. “That of course is hardly a matter we can determine off-hand.” There was further mumbling about tests, cephalographs, reflexes.

  Lionel waited a moment. Hugo was gurgling, crying like a baby. “Well—is he sane?”

  The doctors said, “He’s suffering from severe shock. The deep-freeze classically has the effect of disturbing the synapses—”

  Lionel asked sardonically, “Is he in his right mind?”

  “Well—no.”

  Lionel nodded. “In that case—you’re looking at the new master of Abercrombie Station.”

  Earl protested, “You can’t get away with that, Lionel! He’s been insane a long time, and you’ve been off the station!”

  Lionel grinned wolfishly. “Do you want to take the matter into Admiralty Court at Metropolis?”

  Earl fell silent. Lionel looked at the doctors, who were whispering heatedly together.

  “Talk to him,” said Lionel. “Satisfy yourself whether he’s in his right mind or not.”

  The doctors dutifully addressed Hugo, who made mewing sounds. They came to an uncomfortable but definite decision. “Clearly this man is not able to conduct his own affairs.”

  Earl pettishly wrenched himself from Hammond’s grasp. “Let go of me.”

  “Better be careful,” said Lionel. “I don’t think Hammond likes you.”

  “I don’t like Hammond,” said Earl viciously. “I don’t like anyone.” His voice dropped in pitch. “I don’t even like myself.” He stood staring into the cubicle which Hugo had vacated.

  Jean sensed a tide of recklessness rising in him. She opened her mouth to speak. But Earl had already started.

  Time stood still. Earl seemed to move with bewildering slowness, but the others stood as if frozen in jelly.

  Time turned on for Jean. “I’m getting out of here!” she gasped, knowing what the half-crazed Earl was about to do.

  Earl ran down the line of his monsters, magnetic shoes slapping on the deck. As he ran, he flipped switches. When he finished he stood at the far end of the room. Behind him things came to life.

  Hammond gathered himself, plunged after Jean. A black arm apparently groping at random caught hold of his leg. There was a dull cracking sound. Hammond bawled out in terror.

  Jean started through the door. She jerked back, shrieking. Facing her was the eight-foot gorilla-thing with the French-poodle face. Somewhere along the line Earl had thrown a switch relieving it from magnetic catalepsy. The black eyes shone, the mouth dripped, the hands clenched and unclenched. Jean shrank back.

  There was screaming bedlam. Jean pressed herself against the wall. A green flapping creature, coiling and uncoiling, twisted out into the study, smashing racks, screens, displays, sending books, minerals, papers, mechanisms, cases and cabinets floating and crashing. The gorilla-thing came after, one of its arms twisted and loose. A rolling flurry of webbed feet, scales, muscular tail and a human body followed—Hammond and a griffin from a world aptly named ‘Pest-hole’.

  Jean darted through the door, thought to hide in the alcove. Outside, on the deck, was Earl’s space-boat. She shoved herself across to the port.

  Jean crouched by the port, ready to slam it at any approach of danger…She sighed. All her hopes, plans, future had exploded. Death, debacle, catastrophe were hers instead.

  She turned to the doctor. “Where’s your partner?”

  “Dead! Oh Lord, oh Lord, what can we do?”

  Jean turned her head to look at him, lips curling in disgust. Then she saw him in a new, flattering, light. A disinterested witness. He looked like money. He could testify that for at least thirty seconds Lionel had been master of Abercrombie Station. That thirty seconds was enough to transfer title to her. Whether Hugo were sane or not didn’t matter because Hugo had died thirty seconds before the metal frog with the knife-edged scissor-bill had fixed on Lionel’s throat.

  Best to make sure. “Listen,” said Jean. “This may be important. Suppose you were to testify in court. Who died first, Hugo or Lionel?”

  The doctor sat quiet a moment. “Why, Hugo! I saw his neck broken while Lionel was still alive.”

  “Are you sure?�
��

  “Oh yes.” He tried to pull himself together. “We must do something.”

  “Okay,” said Jean. “What shall we do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  A brown face like a poodle-dog’s, spotted red with blood, peered around the corner at them. Stealthily it pulled itself closer.

  Mesmerized, Jean saw that now its arm had been twisted entirely off. It darted forward. Jean fell back, slammed the port. A heavy body thudded against the metal.

  They were closed in Earl’s space-boat. The man had fainted. Jean said, “Don’t die on me, fellow. You’re worth money…”

  Faintly through the metal came crashing and thumping. Then came the muffled spatttt of proton guns.

  The guns sounded with monotonous regularity. Spatttt…spattt…spattt…spattt…spattt…

  Then there was utter silence.

  Jean inched open the port. The alcove was empty. Across her vision drifted the broken body of the gorilla-thing.

  Jean ventured into the alcove, looked out into the study. Thirty feet distant stood Webbard, planted like a pirate captain on the bridge of his ship. His face was white and wadded; pinched lines ran from his nose around his nearly invisible mouth. He carried two big proton guns; the orifices of both were white-hot.

  He saw Jean; his eyes took on a glitter. “You! It’s you that’s caused all this, your sneaking and spying!”

  He jerked up his proton guns.

  “No!” cried Jean, “Its not my fault!”

  Lionel’s voice came weakly. “Put down those guns, Webbard.” Clutching his throat he pushed himself into the study. “That’s the new owner,” he croaked sardonically. “You wouldn’t want to murder your boss, would you?”

  Webbard blinked in astonishment. “Mr. Lionel!”

  “Yes,” said Lionel. “Home again…And there’s quite a mess to clean up, Webbard…”

  Jean looked at the bank book. The figures burnt into the plastic, spread almost all the way across the tape.

  “$2,000,000.00”

  Mycroft puffed on his pipe, looked out the window. “There’s a matter you should be considering,” he said. “That’s the investment of your money. You won’t be able to do it by yourself; other parties will insist on dealing with a responsible entity—that is to say, a trustee or a guardian.”

  “I don’t know much about these things,” said Jean. “I—rather assumed that you’d take care of them.”

  Mycroft reached over, tapped the dottle out of his pipe.

  “Don’t you want to?” asked Jean.

  Mycroft said with a compressed distant smile. “Yes, I want to…I’ll be glad to administer a two million dollar estate. In effect, I’ll become your legal guardian, until you’re of age. We’ll have to get a court order of appointment. The effect of the order will be to take control of the money out of your hands; we can include in the articles, however, a clause guaranteeing you the full income—which I assume is what you want. It should come to—oh, say fifty thousand a year after taxes.”

  “That suits me,” said Jean listlessly. “I’m not too interested in anything right now…There seems to be something of a let-down.”

  Mycroft nodded. “I can see how that’s possible.”

  Jean said, “I have the money. I’ve always wanted it, now I have it. And now—” she held out her hands, raised her eyebrows. “It’s just a number in a bank book…Tomorrow morning I’ll get up and say to myself, ‘What shall I do today? Shall I buy a house? Shall I order a thousand dollars worth of clothes? Shall I start out on a two year tour of Argo Navis?’ And the answer will come out, ‘No, the hell with it all.’”

  “What you need,” said Mycroft, “are some friends, nice girls your own age.”

  Jean’s mouth moved in rather a sickly smile. “I’m afraid we wouldn’t have much in common…It’s probably a good idea, but—it wouldn’t work out.” She sat passively in the chair, her wide mouth drooping.

  Mycroft noticed that in repose it was a sweet generous mouth.

  She said in a low voice, “I can’t get out of my head the idea that somewhere in the universe I must have a mother and a father…”

  Mycroft rubbed his chin. “People who’d abandon a baby in a saloon aren’t worth thinking about, Jean.”

  “I know,” she said in a dismal voice. “Oh Mr. Mycroft, I’m so damn lonely…” Jean was crying, her head buried in her arms.

  Mycroft irresolutely put his hand on her shoulder, patted awkwardly.

  After a moment she said, “You’ll think I’m an awful fool.”

  “No,” said Mycroft gruffly. “I think nothing of the kind. I wish that I…” He could not put it into words.

  She pulled herself together, rose to her feet. “Enough of this…” She turned his head up, kissed his chin. “You’re really very nice, Mr. Mycroft…But I don’t want sympathy. I hate it. I’m used to looking out for myself.”

  Mycroft returned to his seat, loaded his pipe to keep his fingers busy. Jean picked up her little hand-bag. “Right now I’ve got a date with a couturier named André. He’s going to dress me to an inch of my life. And then I’m going to—” She broke off. “I’d better not tell you. You’d be alarmed and shocked.”

  He cleared his throat. “I expect I would.”

  She nodded brightly. “So long.” Then left his office.

  He said, “I feel like going out and getting drunk…”

  Ten minutes passed. His door opened. Jean looked in.

  “Hello, Mr. Mycroft.”

  “Hello, Jean.”

  “I changed my mind. I thought it would be nicer if I took you out to dinner, and then maybe we could go to a show…Would you like that?”

  “Very much,” said Mycroft.

  Afterword to “Abercrombie Station”

  During these years [from 1937 at the University of California at Berkeley], when I found the time, I wrote science fiction. In my freshman year I wrote a long novelette, which I never submitted for publication, but which I later cannibalized.

  During my sophomore year, since I was still an English major, I took a course in creative writing. The professor was George Hand: a tall, saturnine gentleman, stern and doctrinaire. Each week we were required to submit some item of creative writing, which he would comment upon and sometimes criticize. A fellow student in the class…submitted a pastiche concerning a prize fight. I, on the other hand, turned in a short science fiction story which I thought I would submit somewhere for publication, but which in the meantime I thought would serve as my weekly exercise in creative writing.

  The class convened. George Hand entered the room, marched up to the podium and looked around the class. He gathered his energy, and spoke with almost painful deliberation. “This has been a remarkable week,” he said, “and I have been impressed by the breadth and scope of the submissions. I should note that they range up and down the gamut of excellence. On the one hand, we have a pungent account by Mr. Fabun, which takes us to the front seats of a prize fight. His sentences are terse and alive. We can smell the sweat; we can feel the thud of the blows; we know the thrill of victory and the pathos of defeat. It is a memorable piece of work. On the other hand,”—and here Professor Hand rapped the top of the podium with his knuckles—”we have an almost incomprehensible example of what I believe is known as ‘science fiction’.”

  The professor here allowed himself to show a small smile. “This sort of thing, perhaps unkindly, has been termed a semi-psychotic fugue from reality. I, of course, am not confident to make such a judgment.” After class, I threw away the story, which I did not like very much anyway.

  —Jack Vance

  Three-Legged Joe

  It might be well to make, in passing, a reference to old-time prospectors. Their experience has been gained through vast hardship and peril; no cause for wonder, then, that as a group they are secretive and solitary. It is hard to win their friendship; they are understandably contemptuous of academic training. Much of their lore will die with them and
this is a pity, since locked in their minds is knowledge that might well save a thousand lives.

  —Excerpt from Appendix II, Hade’s Manual of Practical Space Exploration and Mineral Survey.

  John Milke and Oliver Paskell sauntered along Bang-out Row in Merlinville. Recent graduates of Highland Technical Institute, they walked with an assured and casual stride in order to convey an impression of hard-boiled competence. Old-timers on porches along the way stared, then turned and muttered briefly to each other.

  John Milke was rubicund, energetic, positive; when he walked his cheeks and tidy little paunch jiggled. Oliver Paskell, who was dark, spare and slight, affected old-style spectacles and an underslung pipe. Paskell was noticeably less brisk than Milke. Where Milke swaggered, Paskell slouched; where Milke inspected the quiet gray men on the porches with a lordly air, Paskell watched from the corner of his eye.

  Milke pointed. “Number 432, right there.” He opened the gate and approached the porch with Paskell two steps behind.

  A tall bony man sat watching them with eyes pale and hard as marbles.

  Milke asked, “You’re Abel Cooley?”

  “That’s me.”

  “I understand that you’re one of the best outside men on the planet. We’re going out on a prospect trip; we need a good all-around hand, and we’d like to hire you. You’d have to take care of chow, service space-suits, load samples, things like that.”

  Abel Cooley studied Milke briefly, then turned his pale eyes upon Paskell. Paskell looked away, out over the swells of naked granite that rolled six hundred miles west and south of Merlinville.

  Cooley said in a mild voice, “Where you lads thinking to prospect?”

  Milke blinked and frowned. It was his understanding that such questions were more or less taboo, though of course a man had a right to know where his job would take him. “In strict confidence,” said Milke, “we’re going out to Odfars.”

  “Odfars, eh?” Cooley’s expression changed not at all. “What do you expect to find out there?”

  “Well—Pillson’s Almanac indicates a very high density. Which, as you may know, means heavy metal. Then the Deed Office shows neither claims nor workings on Odfars, so we thought we’d survey the territory before someone beat us to it.”