The Potter of Firsk and Other Stories

by Jack Vance

  The in-belt was empty and the operator, after letting Allixter through, returned to his magazine.

  Allixter ducked past the dispatcher’s office but Schmitz spotted him, slid back the glass panel. “Hey, Scotty,” he bellowed. “Come back here and turn in your report. You think this is Liberty Hall? Aint’cha read the rules?”

  Allixter paused, then turned back.

  “Here,” said Schmitz, tossing over a yellow form. “Fill ’er out—and after this let’s do it without me riding herd on you. After all, I got my job to handle too. You guys run me ragged, ducking in, ducking out, like a bunch of fillies at a tea-house. Then when they come and ask me who’s been where and who’s done which—”

  “Look here, Sam,” said Allixter, “I want to use your phone.”

  Schmitz looked up in surprise. “Go ahead, use it. I don’t care. Just so long as you treat me right anything goes. Use my phone, anything. Do like you’re supposed to do, I won’t kick. My God, man! Where’s the Linguaid? The Chief will chew us green and blue if—”

  “I left it in the depot.” Allixter thumbed through the directory. He looked up. Schmitz was watching him intently, bright blue eyes gleaming like galvanized washers in the round red face.

  Allixter closed the book. “No, I think I’ll wait. Good day to you, Sam Schmitz.”

  “Hey!” roared Schmitz. “The report!”

  “I’ll be back shortly.”

  “When’s shortly? Don’t forget, I’m responsible for all this. It’s me who gets reamed when you guys foul off…”

  Allixter said in a voice like silk, “Give me fifteen minutes, Sammy old dear. I’ll write you a report you’ll wish you could take home and frame.”

  Fifteen minutes passed. Schmitz fidgeted, growled, looked through his assignment sheet. “That damn Allixter, he’s the worst. Them Scotchmen is all crazy, drink too much of that brown smoke they call whiskey. Thank God for beer…Hey now, I believe he’s back.”

  The four men with Allixter wore gray uniforms and they looked curiously alike. All were tall, spare of form, controlled of motion. Their faces were uniformly blunt, their eyes sharp and probing, their mouths tight.

  “Heaven forbid!” barked Schmitz. “It’s the World Security Intelligence. Now what’s Allixter gone and done?” Automatically he reached for the button to the Chief’s phone.

  “Hold it, Schmitz!” yelled Allixter. “Leave that phone alone!”

  One of the WSI men opened the door into Schmitz’ cubicle, motioned. “I think you’d better come with us.”

  Protesting volubly Schmitz followed, hopping and bounding on his short legs to keep pace. The WSI men stood, two on each side of the big green door with the bronze letters. Allixter pushed the button, the door slid back, he entered. The secretary looked up. Allixter said, “Tell the Chief I’m back.”

  She hesitantly pushed the button. “Scotty Allixter reporting.”

  There was a pause. “Send him in.”

  She keyed back the lock, Allixter went to the inner door. Now the WSI men entered the office. One strode to the desk where the secretary had made a swift movement for the speaker controls, caught her arm.

  Allixter slid back the door. The air, smelling like a laboratory, wafted in his face. He entered with the WSI platoon at his back.

  The Chief, sitting at his desk, his back to the light, stirred a trifle, then sat quiet. “What does this mean?” he asked tonelessly.

  The WSI lieutenant said, “You’re under arrest.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “Grand theft, espionage, illegal entry to begin with. There may be further charges when a complete investigation is made.”

  “Got a warrant?”

  “Sure have.”

  “Let’s see it.”

  The lieutenant stepped forward with a blue-bound folder. The Chief glanced down the printed page, his mouth curled sardonically. Allixter thought—all the years I’ve come into this office, talked with the man, watched him, and only now do I see him as he is, the creature of an outer world with yellow goose-flesh skin and a breath of poisonous gas.

  Allixter suddenly noted that the atmosphere, characteristically sharp and medicinal, had acquired a new harsh bite. He yelled, “Get clear, the devil’s poisoning us!”

  The Chief moved swiftly now, jumped to his feet.

  The Lieutenant came forward. “Stop, or I’ll shoot.”

  Allixter flung the door wide and saved his life. From the edge of the Chief’s desk a plane of smoky yellow fire slashed out, burnt four men in half. Allixter shuddered back from the crackling ions which, deflected by the metal wall, scorched past an inch from his waist.

  Allixter had shed his tools. He was weaponless. He ran to the secretary’s phone. She pressed back against the wall, numb and glass-eyed. Allixter pushed the emergency button, bellowed, “Murder, the tube terminal maintenance office—” He heard stealthy motion inside the Chief’s office, looked desperately toward the outer door. To escape he must cross the line of fire from the inner office.

  Slow footsteps from inside were approaching. The Chief was edging close to the far wall to snap an angling shot through at Allixter. He was on the opposite side of the doorcase from the slide button. Allixter pressed the button, the door slid shut. Allixter dashed for the outer door. As he passed out a JAR rang behind him and the wall across the corridor shattered.

  Allixter ran across the corridor into the still quiet depot. He ducked between fifty-gallon drums of acetone, sprang across the near-vacant clerks’ platform, jumped up into the operator’s box.

  Breathless, fighting to make himself speak slowly and distinctly, he said, “This is an emergency. WSI business…Open the in-contacts as far as they’ll go, set this code—phase eight-point-four-two, frequencies seven-point-five-eight and two-point-five-three.”

  The operator turned him a wondering glance. “What the hell kind of code is that? I never heard—”

  “Shut up!” snarled Allixter. “Set the code! And route whatever you get into depot delivery.”

  The operator shrugged, turned the dials. “Eight-point-four-two—what was those other readings?”

  “Seven-five-eight! Two-five-three! For God’s sake, get moving!”

  The operator pushed home the activation switch. Allixter jumped down, went to stand by the gold-brown curtain at the point where the belt rolled up out of the floor.

  Ten seconds…fifteen seconds. He stared into the brown roil, flickering and shot with gleams of light, until—motion. The Chief appeared, looking over his shoulder. He turned his head, his mouth fell open.

  Allixter jumped, caught him from behind, flung him to the belt. The Chief’s JAR thudded free. Allixter seized it, rose to his feet.

  “Now, old man—take it easy. You’re caught, fair and square. I’d hate to jar you apart.”

  VII

  Allixter was the center of a respectful audience in Buck’s Bar. Beer flowed freely, the finest imports from Germany and the Netherlands, and there was always a ready hand to cover the tab.

  The story had been told several times but among the audience were those to whom some feature of the episode was not completely clear. Of these Sam Schmitz was the most insistent.

  “Allixter, look here,” he said plaintively. “You come barreling into my office and I never say a word. I’m square with you, like always, but you could of got me in a gang of trouble. You was right, now I admit it, but suppose you was wrong? Then we’re both in the stew. Doesn’t seem quite the thing to do somehow.”

  “Schmitz,” said Allixter with lofty good nature, “you’re talking rubbish.”

  “But how could you be so sure it was the Chief? I don’t see how you even figured there had to be somebody here at the Hub. You say you deduced this and figured that—but it still don’t make sense.”

  “Look at it this way, Sam.” Allixter refreshed his throat with a half-pint of Hochstein Lager. “I was sent out on a phony call. For a while after I landed on that planet I thought it was
an honest mistake. But I began thinking. A lot of little peculiarities kept nagging at me. The Chief insisted I take the Linguaid. Why would I need a Linguaid on Rhetus? The answer was the Chief knew I’d be running into natives who spoke from under their arms.

  “Then why did he make sure my air-film was Type X, halogen-proof? Rhetus is carbon dioxide, argon, helium, a little oxygen, and we only wear head bubbles. Why? Because he knew the atmosphere where I’d be going was full of fluorine.

  “And when I saw the dead Plag on the floor I was bothered by a few other angles. He was dressed in clothes with an Earth-style zipper. Not only like Earth-style, but a zipper identical in every respect.”

  “Might have been coincidence,” said Buck, the big red-faced bartender.

  Allixter nodded. “Might have been. But how about the ball-point pen the guy wrote with and the squirt he carried in his tool-kit?”

  “What’s a squirt?” asked Kitty, the blonde square-jawed hostess.

  Barnard, another maintenance mechanic, said quickly, “New tool, brand new. We carry it now instead of wire. When we want to run current between two posts, we squeeze the trigger on the squirt, the goo comes out, seals itself to the first post. We draw it up, down, around, anywhere we want it to go, touch it to the second post, cut off the trigger and we’ve got a permanent bond. The outside oxidizes to a good insulator, it sticks where it touches.”

  Kitty drank Schmitz’ beer as a signal of comprehension.

  “Anyway,” Allixter continued, “when I saw all these items lying around, I thought to myself that sure enough, there’s been some kind of contact with Earth. And it’s been one-way because I knew I’d never seen any of them long-nosed yellow Plags on Earth.

  “And then I thought of the Chief. He looked just like the corpse, maybe a little bit more alive. And I thought awhile. I remembered these other peculiarities. Then when the robot told me his circuits were so jammed that he killed Plags automatically, I figured it all out.”

  “So?” asked Schmitz.

  “The Plags wanted to keep the tube open to the planet—I don’t know what the name of their place is. I wouldn’t be surprised if they operated a number of these subsidiary worlds, all equipped with robots, each milking the planet for all its worth, shipping the produce to Plag—Plagi—cripes, I never did know how to pronounce that word. Plagigonstock—That’s it.

  “Well, the robot was now adjusted to kill Plags as soon as they appeared. So it was necessary to get a mechanic of another race in to fix the computer. I was the lad.”

  “Sounds like a case of last resort,” growled Buck.

  Allixter spread his hands out. “What could they lose? Either I’d fix the robot or I’d be killed. The only other course open was to send a warship to destroy the robot—and there went one of their assets. So they made contact with the Chief, told him to send his best mechanic out to the place with everything he needed to fix the robot.”

  Schmitz thoughtfully lifted his glass to drink, found it empty. He shot a glance at Kitty, who was fluffing out her hair. “Buck—draw me another beer. Seems to me the Chief might have given you some kind of hint as to what you might expect.”

  “And have me coming back with the magoo? Not on your life. This way, if I got back, I’d think the whole affair a remarkable accident.”

  Barnard asked, “How come you knew the code the Chief would try to escape on?”

  Allixter cocked his thick black eyebrows knowingly. “Well—I told you when I saw all the Earth-style equipment lying around I thought I’d make sure. Maybe I’d made a mistake—maybe we did run a tube out to this Plag planet. So I asked the robot what the code was.

  “He gave it to me and I knew it wasn’t on our list—wasn’t even in our units. The Plags evidently had discovered the tube system independently and set up a network of their own. Somehow they discovered we had a tube set-up and they smuggled in a representative, who became the Chief. Maybe there’s more of them around.”

  “There’s one thing I don’t figure,” said Barnard. “How did the Chief breathe? This kind of air should have smothered him.”

  Allixter drained his stein before replying. Buck slid it to the spigot, slid it back brimming with foam. Said Allixter, “Did you ever notice the scar along the Chief’s neck?”

  “Sure. Nasty thing. Must have got in the way of a long sharp Barlow.”

  “That was no scar. That was a breather tube, running under his skin into his throat. It supplied him with fluorine, carried hydrofluoric acid gas back to a filter for absorption. Not that our air would hurt him but it wouldn’t do him any good.”

  Schmitz shook his head. “Should think it would burn out his throat.”

  Barnard laughed. “Remember the time you offered him one of those crooked black toscanis?”

  “Yeah,” gloomed Schmitz. “He said he didn’t see how I could smoke one of those things and live.”

  Allixter said, “He wouldn’t need anything like the volume of oxygen we breath. A few pounds would last him a long time. Of course there was an unavoidable leak up through his mouth and nose—”

  Barnard struck the bar with his fist. “I always claimed the Chief’s office smelled like a hospital!”

  Schmitz said dolefully, “I wonder what’s going to happen now? Is the government going to send a commission out to Plag—Plagi—you know where?”

  “Well,” said Allixter, who now found himself regarded as the font of all knowledge. “I can’t be sure. They’ve been robbing us blind, those Plags. All our ideas, tools, techniques—all going out. That’s not so bad in itself but they made sure we were getting none of their stuff in return.

  “So there was the Chief’s function. Send out merchandise—he could get into the depot when no one else was around, or else he could send it out the private escape hatch in his office—send out merchandise, pay for it through some figurehead corporation in platinum or uranium they mined cheap on some robot planet. Or maybe they printed up counterfeit money. The WSI says they found a case of brand new hundred-frank notes in the Chief’s office.”

  “So that’s who’s been flooding my till!” roared Buck. “I’ve lost a thousand franks in bum bills!” The enormity of the Chief’s crimes now seemed to dawn upon him. He writhed his shoulders, each the heft of a sack of wheat. “Why, the miserable long-nosed lizard, I’d like to—I’d like to tear him apart with my own hands! A thousand franks he’s cost me!”

  “Tough,” said Allixter in a faraway voice. “He cost me five hundred franks too when I had to leave that valuable little jewel behind. But thank goodness I happened to pick up this scarab out there on that gray planet. Prime yellow fluorspar, a lovely piece, and it’s the sacred seal of the indigenes. There’s only one like it. The Curator of the Out-world Museum told me he’d give eight hundred franks for it but I’d have to wait a month till he could put through a purchase order. Buck, I’ll let you have it for six hundred and take the profit yourself.”

  Buck picked up the octahedron. “Sacred seal? Humph! Looks like a lot of chicken-scratches. I’ll give you five franks for it and maybe I can unload it on a drunk for ten.”

  Allixter rescued the fluorspar with an expression of hurt indignation. “Five franks? I’d sell you my right ear off my head first!”

  Dover Spargill’s Ghastly

  Floater

  Dover Spargill, age twenty-one, paced the hearth, slapping his jodhpurs with a riding crop. Hunched in a wingback chair to the side, Attorney James Offbold turned up his eyes as if seeking divine support.

  Dover paused in midstride; Attorney Offbold’s expression at once became attentive: this insufferable young ass represented thirty thousand dollars a year in fees. Otherwise, Mr. Offbold would have sweat in Gehenna before crossing the street at Dover Spargill’s bidding.

  “That’s the whole affair, then?” inquired Dover with a smart slap at his boots.

  “That’s the entire document, Mr. Spargill, and may I offer my heartfelt congratulations?”

  Dover pa
used in his stride, turned his head in inquiry. “Congratulations? What for?”

  “The fact that, now you are of age, you become one of the richest men in the world.”

  “Oh, the money.” Dover flicked his riding crop to the side. Wealth occupied small place in his thoughts, the gesture implied. “Certainly it’s a help; I won’t have to worry about making it myself. Although I sometimes think my father was rather unimaginative; time and time again I’ve pointed out ways of doubling his fortune.”

  Offbold coughed, recalling tiger-eyed old Howard Spargill and his canny manipulations. “Well, I can’t quite agree with you, Mr. Spargill; your father was certainly the smartest business man of his day. He started out a prospector and wound up owning Moon Mines, almost a third of the entire moon.”

  Dover shook his head, pursed his lips. “He also allowed Thornton Bray to organize the other holdings into the Lunar Mineral Cooperative, when he could easily have bought up the claims himself.”

  Offbold remarked rather loftily, “Don’t you think that gaining title to a third of the moon is enough? An area larger than all of Europe?”

  Dover frowned. “‘Enough’ is a word inapplicable in modern commercial context, as I think you should be the first to acknowledge, Mr. Offbold.”

  Offbold made a grumbling noise in his throat, sat staring glumly into the fire while Dover proceeded to develop the argument, emphasizing salient points with motions of the riding crop. He explained that in the upper financial reaches, the accumulation of wealth was a game requiring little more skill than the manipulation of a pin-ball machine. Offbold nodded jerkily, finally snapped the lock on his brief-case and rose to his feet.

  “Now then, Mr. Spargill, I’ll say goodby; you’ll probably have plans for dinner.”

  Dover conducted him to the door. Offbold turned for a last set of reminders.

  “No doubt, Mr. Spargill, you’ll be approached by promoters and confidence men; I scarcely need recommend caution to one of your—” he winced “—acumen.”

  Dover nodded briskly.