The Potter of Firsk and Other Stories

by Jack Vance

“No,” said Frayberg impatiently. “Of course not us. Two or three of the staff. They’d sail out there, look over these gray and red monsters, maybe fake a fight or two, but all the time they’re after the legendary white one. How’s it sound?”

  “I don’t think we pay our men enough money.”

  “Wilbur Murphy might do it. He’s willing to look for a man riding a horse up to meet his spaceships.”

  “He might draw the line at a white plesiosaur riding up to meet his catamaran.”

  Frayberg turned away. “Somebody’s got to have ideas around here…”

  “We’d better head back to the space-port,” said Catlin. “We got two hours to make the Sirgamesk shuttle.”

  Wilbur Murphy sat in the Barangipan, watching marionettes performing to xylophone, castanet, gong and gamelan. The drama had its roots in proto-historic Mohenj-Dar. It had filtered down through ancient India, medieval Burma, Malaya, across the Straits of Malacca to Sumatra and Java; from modern Java across space to Cirgamesç, five thousand years of time, two hundred light-years of space. Somewhere along the route it had met and assimilated modern technology. Magnetic beams controlled arms, legs and bodies, guided the poses and posturings. The manipulator’s face, by agency of clip, wire, radio control and minuscule selsyn, projected his scowl, smile, sneer or grimace to the peaked little face he controlled. The language was that of Old Java, which perhaps a third of the spectators understood. This portion did not include Murphy, and when the performance ended he was no wiser than at the start.

  Soek Panjoebang slipped into the seat beside Murphy. She wore musician’s garb: a sarong of brown, blue, and black batik, and a fantastic headdress of tiny silver bells. She greeted him with enthusiasm.

  “Weelbrrr! I saw you watching…”

  “It was very interesting.”

  “Ah, yes.” She sighed. “Weelbrrr, you take me with you back to Earth? You make me a great picturama star, please, Weelbrrr?”

  “Well, I don’t know about that.”

  “I behave very well, Weelbrrr.” She nuzzled his shoulder, looked soulfully up with her shiny yellow-hazel eyes. Murphy nearly forgot the experiment he intended to perform.

  “What did you do today, Weelbrrr? You look at all the pretty girls?”

  “Nope. I ran footage. Got the palace, climbed the ridge up to the condensation vanes. I never knew there was so much water in the air till I saw the stream pouring off those vanes! And hot!”

  “We have much sunlight; it makes the rice grow.”

  “The Sultan ought to put some of that excess light to work. There’s a secret process…Well, I’d better not say.”

  “Oh come, Weelbrrr! Tell me your secrets!”

  “It’s not much of a secret. Just a catalyst that separates clay into aluminum and oxygen when sunlight shines on it.”

  Soek’s eyebrows rose, poised in place like a seagull riding the wind. “Weelbrrr! I did not know you for a man of learning!”

  “Oh, you thought I was just a bum, eh? Good enough to make picturama stars out of gamelan players, but no special genius…”

  “No, no, Weelbrrr.”

  “I know lots of tricks. I can take a flashlight battery, a piece of copper foil, a few transistors and bamboo tube and turn out a paralyzer gun that’ll stop a man cold in his tracks. And you know how much it costs?”

  “No, Weelbrrr. How much?”

  “Ten cents. It wears out after two or three months, but what’s the difference? I make ’em as a hobby—turn out two or three an hour.”

  “Weelbrrr! You’re a man of marvels! Hello! We will drink!”

  And Murphy settled back in the wicker chair, sipping his rice beer.

  “Today,” said Murphy, “I get into a space-suit, and ride out to the ruins in the plain. Ghatamipol, I think they’re called. Like to come?”

  “No, Weelbrrr.” Soek Panjoebang looked off into the garden, her hands busy tucking a flower into her hair. A few minutes later she said, “Why must you waste your time among the rocks? There are better things to do and see. And it might well be—dangerous.” She murmured the last word offhandedly.

  “Danger? From the sjambaks?”

  “Yes, perhaps.”

  “The Sultan’s giving me a guard. Twenty men with crossbows.”

  “The sjambaks carry shields.”

  “Why should they risk their lives attacking me?”

  Soek Panjoebang shrugged. After a moment she rose to her feet. “Goodbye, Weelbrrr.”

  “Goodbye? Isn’t this rather abrupt? Won’t I see you tonight?”

  “If so be Allah’s will.”

  Murphy looked after the lithe swaying figure. She paused, plucked a yellow flower, looked over her shoulder. Her eyes, yellow as the flower, lucent as water-jewels, held his. Her face was utterly expressionless. She turned, tossed away the flower with a jaunty gesture, and continued, her shoulders swinging.

  Murphy breathed deeply. She might have made picturama at that…

  One hour later he met his escort at the valley gate. They were dressed in space-suits for the plains, twenty men with sullen faces. The trip to Ghatamipol clearly was not to their liking. Murphy climbed into his own suit, checked the oxygen pressure gauge, the seal at his collar. “All ready, boys?”

  No one spoke. The silence drew out. The gatekeeper, on hand to let the party out, snickered. “They’re all ready, Tuan.”

  “Well,” said Murphy, “let’s go then.”

  Outside the gate Murphy made a second check of his equipment. No leaks in his suit. Inside pressure: 14.6. Outside pressure: zero. His twenty guards morosely inspected their crossbows and slim swords.

  The white ruins of Ghatamipol lay five miles across Pharasang Plain. The horizon was clear, the sun was high, the sky was black.

  Murphy’s radio hummed. Someone said sharply, “Look! There it goes!” He wheeled around; his guards had halted, and were pointing. He saw a fleet something vanishing into the distance.

  “Let’s go,” said Murphy. “There’s nothing out there.”

  “Sjambak.”

  “Well, there’s only one of them.”

  “Where one walks, others follow.”

  “That’s why the twenty of you are here.”

  “It is madness! Challenging the sjambaks!”

  “What is gained?” another argued.

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” said Murphy, and set off along the plain. The warriors reluctantly followed, muttering to each other over their radio intercoms.

  The eroded city walls rose above them, occupied more and more of the sky. The platoon leader said in an angry voice, “We have gone far enough.”

  “You’re under my orders,” said Murphy. “We’re going through the gate.” He punched the button on his camera and passed under the monstrous portal.

  The city was frailer stuff than the wall, and had succumbed to the thin storms which had raged a million years after the passing of life. Murphy marvelled at the scope of the ruins. Virgin archaeological territory! No telling what a few weeks digging might turn up. Murphy considered his expense account. Shifkin was the obstacle.

  There’d be tremendous prestige and publicity for Know Your Universe! if Murphy uncovered a tomb, a library, works of art. The Sultan would gladly provide diggers. They were a sturdy enough people; they could make quite a showing in a week, if they were able to put aside their superstitions, fears and dreads.

  Murphy sized one of them up from the corner of his eye. He sat on a sunny slab of rock, and if he felt uneasy he concealed it quite successfully. In fact, thought Murphy, he appeared completely relaxed. Maybe the problem of securing diggers was a minor one after all…

  And here was an odd sidelight on the Singhalûsi character. Once clear of the valley the man openly wore his shirt, a fine loose garment of electric blue, in defiance of the Sultan’s edict. Of course out here he might be cold…

  Murphy felt his own skin crawling. How could he be cold? How could he be alive? Where was his space-suit? He
lounged on the rock, grinning sardonically at Murphy. He wore heavy sandals, a black turban, loose breeches, the blue shirt. Nothing more.

  Where were the others?

  Murphy turned a feverish glance over his shoulder. A good three miles distant, bounding and leaping toward Singhalût, were twenty desperate figures. They all wore space-suits. This man here…A sjambak? A wizard? A hallucination?

  The creature rose to his feet, strode springily toward Murphy. He carried a crossbow and a sword, like those of Murphy’s fleet-footed guards. But he wore no space-suit. Could there be breathable traces of an atmosphere? Murphy glanced at his gauge. Outside pressure: zero.

  Two other men appeared, moving with long elastic steps. Their eyes were bright, their faces flushed. They came up to Murphy, took his arm. They were solid, corporeal. They had no invisible force fields around their heads.

  Murphy jerked his arm free. “Let go of me, damn it!” But they certainly couldn’t hear him through the vacuum.

  He glanced over his shoulder. The first man held his naked blade a foot or two behind Murphy’s bulging space-suit. Murphy made no further resistance. He punched the button on his camera to automatic. It would now run for several hours, recording one hundred pictures per second, a thousand to the inch.

  The sjambaks led Murphy two hundred yards to a metal door. They opened it, pushed Murphy inside, banged it shut. Murphy felt the vibration through his shoes, heard a gradually waxing hum. His gauge showed an outside pressure of 5, 10, 12, 14, 14.5. An inner door opened. Hands pulled Murphy in, unclamped his dome.

  “Just what’s going on here?” demanded Murphy angrily.

  Prince Ali-Tomás pointed to a table. Murphy saw a flashlight battery, aluminum foil, wire, a transistor kit, metal tubing, tools, a few other odds and ends.

  “There it is,” said Prince Ali-Tomás. “Get to work. Let’s see one of these paralysis weapons you boast of.”

  “Just like that, eh?”

  “Just like that.”

  “What do you want ’em for?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I’d like to know.” Murphy was conscious of his camera, recording sight, sound, odor.

  “I lead an army,” said Ali-Tomás, “but they march without weapons. Give me weapons! I will carry the word to Hadra, to New Batavia, to Sundaman, to Boeng-Bohôt!”

  “How? Why?”

  “It is enough that I will it. Again, I beg of you…” He indicated the table.

  Murphy laughed. “I’ve got myself in a fine mess. Suppose I don’t make this weapon for you?”

  “You’ll remain until you do, under increasingly difficult conditions.”

  “I’ll be here a long time.”

  “If such is the case,” said Ali-Tomás, “we must make our arrangements for your care on a longterm basis.”

  Ali made a gesture. Hands seized Murphy’s shoulders. A respirator was held to his nostrils. He thought of his camera, and he could have laughed. Mystery! Excitement! Thrills! Dramatic sequence for Know Your Universe! Staff-man murdered by fanatics! The crime recorded on his own camera! See the blood, hear his death-rattle, smell the poison!

  The vapor choked him. What a break! What a sequence!

  “Sirgamesk,” said Howard Frayberg, “bigger and brighter every minute.”

  “It must’ve been just about in here,” said Catlin, “that Wilbur’s horseback rider appeared.”

  “That’s right! Steward!”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “We’re about twenty thousand miles out, aren’t we?”

  “About fifteen thousand, sir.”

  “Sidereal Cavalry! What an idea! I wonder how Wilbur’s making out on his superstition angle?”

  Sam Catlin, watching out the window, said in a tight voice, “Why not ask him yourself?”

  “Eh?”

  “Ask him for yourself! There he is—outside, riding some kind of critter…”

  “It’s a ghost,” whispered Frayberg. “A man without a spacesuit…There’s no such thing!”

  “He sees us…Look…”

  Murphy was staring at them, and his surprise seemed equal to their own. He waved his hand. Catlin gingerly waved back.

  Said Frayberg, “That’s not a horse he’s riding. It’s a combination ram-jet and kiddie car with stirrups!”

  “He’s coming aboard the ship,” said Catlin. “That’s the entrance port down there…”

  Wilbur Murphy sat in the captain’s stateroom, taking careful breaths of air.

  “How are you now?” asked Frayberg.

  “Fine. A little sore in the lungs.”

  “I shouldn’t wonder,” the ship’s doctor growled. “I never saw anything like it.”

  “How does it feel out there, Wilbur?” Catlin asked.

  “It feels awful lonesome and empty. And the breath seeping up out of your lungs, never going in—that’s a funny feeling. And you miss the air blowing on your skin. I never realized it before. Air feels like—like silk, like whipped cream—it’s got texture…”

  “But aren’t you cold? Space is supposed to be absolute zero!”

  “Space is nothing. It’s not hot and it’s not cold. When you’re in the sunlight you get warm. It’s better in the shade. You don’t lose any heat by air convection, but radiation and sweat evaporation keep you comfortably cool.”

  “I still can’t understand it,” said Frayberg. “This Prince Ali, he’s a kind of a rebel, eh?”

  “I don’t blame him in a way. A normal man living under those domes has to let off steam somehow. Prince Ali decided to go out crusading. I think he would have made it too—at least on Cirgamesç.”

  “Certainly there are many more men inside the domes…”

  “When it comes to fighting,” said Murphy, “a sjambak can lick twenty men in spacesuits. A little nick doesn’t hurt him, but a little nick bursts open a spacesuit, and the man inside comes apart.”

  “Well,” said the Captain. “I imagine the Peace Office will send out a team to put things in order now.”

  Catlin asked, “What happened when you woke up from the chloroform?”

  “Well, nothing very much. I felt this attachment on my chest, but didn’t think much about it. Still kinda woozy. I was halfway through decompression. They keep a man there eight hours, drop pressure on him two pounds an hour, nice and slow so he don’t get the bends.”

  “Was this the same place they took you, when you met Ali?”

  “Yeah, that was their decompression chamber. They had to make a sjambak out of me; there wasn’t anywhere else they could keep me. Well, pretty soon my head cleared, and I saw this apparatus stuck to my chest.” He poked at the mechanism on the table. “I saw the oxygen tank, I saw the blood running through the plastic pipes—blue from me to that carburetor arrangement, red on the way back in—and I figured out the whole arrangement. Carbon dioxide still exhales up through your lungs, but the vein back to the left auricle is routed through the carburetor and supercharged with oxygen. A man doesn’t need to breathe. The carburetor flushes his blood with oxygen, the decompression tank adjusts him to the lack of air-pressure. There’s only one thing to look out for; that’s not to touch anything with your naked flesh. If it’s in the sunshine it’s blazing hot; if it’s in the shade it’s cold enough to cut. Otherwise you’re free as a bird.”

  “But—how did you get away?”

  “I saw those little rocket-bikes, and began figuring. I couldn’t go back to Singhalût; I’d be lynched on sight as a sjambak. I couldn’t fly to another planet—the bikes don’t carry enough fuel.

  “I knew when the ship would be coming in, so I figured I’d fly up to meet it. I told the guard I was going outside a minute, and I got on one of the rocket-bikes. There was nothing much to it.”

  “Well,” said Frayberg, “it’s a great feature, Wilbur—a great film! Maybe we can stretch it into two hours.”

  “There’s one thing bothering me,” said Catlin. “Who did the steward see up here the first time?
”

  Murphy shrugged. “It might have been somebody up here skylarking. A little too much oxygen and you start cutting all kinds of capers. Or it might have been someone who decided he had enough crusading.

  “There’s a sjambak in a cage, right in the middle of Singhalût. Prince Ali walks past; they look at each other eye to eye. Ali smiles a little and walks on. Suppose this sjambak tried to escape to the ship. He’s taken aboard, turned over to the Sultan and the Sultan makes an example of him…”

  “What’ll the Sultan do to Ali?”

  Murphy shook his head. “If I were Ali I’d disappear.”

  A loudspeaker turned on. “Attention all passengers. We have just passed through quarantine. Passengers may now disembark. Important: no weapons or explosives allowed on Singhalût!”

  “This is where I came in,” said Murphy.

  Parapsyche

  I

  Jean Marsile, fifteen years old, blonde and pretty, jumped at the chair where her father sat. “Boo!”

  Art Marsile turned his head with provoking calmness. “I thought you were going out on a date.”

  Jean tugged at her blue jeans, smoothed the seams of her pale blue sweater. “I am.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Out on a weenie-roast. We’re going to the haunted house, because it’s Hallowe’en.”

  From across the room came a snort of derision and contempt. Jean ignored the sound.

  Art Marsile, tall, tough as harness-leather, parched and coffee-brown from years of Southern California sunlight, looked Jean up and down with unconvincing sternness. “What haunted house is this?” he asked curiously while Jean finished getting ready.

  “The old Freelock house.”

  “So now it’s haunted.”

  “That’s what everybody says. Ever since Benjamin Freelock killed his wife.”

  “What everybody says, eh? Has anyone seen anything?”

  Jean nodded. “Lots of people. The Mexicans who live down the hill. They say there’s lights and noises.”

  From across the room came a mocking bray of laughter. “Stupid bunch of wetbacks.”

  Art Marsile turned a brief glance toward his son Hugh, the child of his first wife, then looked back to Jean. “You’re not scared?”