The Potter of Firsk and Other Stories

by Jack Vance

  He felt life leaving him, like the tide receding from a shallow shore. He felt chilled, then suddenly warm and numb; then for a last transparent interval, freezing cold, through and through. Feeling left him and he died.

  He had no feeling of leaving, no sensation of drawing away from his old frame. That was far away, and everything pertaining to it. Another phase of Donald Berwick existed, and it seemed always to have been. Now it came into its own.

  From a new and strange perspective, Donald Berwick looked around the room. There were other shapes present; after a moment he recognized them. They were diaphanous, and stood swaying like seaweed, their feet anchored in small man-shaped pellets. One small cold pellet lay near his own feet, quiet and detached: the old Donald Berwick.

  The new Donald Berwick felt a pang of pity, then took stock of himself. He had memory; he recalled the whole of his life, including fragments and details forgotten alive. Suddenly he realized there had been a great oversight in his preparations. Building the archetype “Lucky Don Berwick” in the collective unconscious, he had ignored a prime source of power. Who could know Donald Berwick with greater intensity than Donald Berwick himself? He examined his form: the uniform, the gun, the camera. All there. Wrist watch on his wrist. He examined it. His own watch the brand of which had never been publicized. Here was a measure of the difference between the strength conferred upon him by others and the strength derived from himself. He compared watch and camera. The camera was harder, brighter, solider. Twice as hard, thought Berwick. Such was the measure.

  Jean—he picked out the supple waving shape that was Jean. Her eyes were on him. This was Jean: composite of her own unconscious and that of all who knew her. Different in small ways from the Jean he knew, but not greatly…Ivalee Trembath: her ice and silver composure was less noticeable; her mouth was soft and wistful. And the others—but later, later. First a picture to test the dream-camera. He set the aperture, aimed, snapped the shutter. Now—we’ll quickly look over this after-life country—then back…How did time go? Fast or slow? He looked at his watch. The hands waggled, spun back and forth…Well, thought Don, evidently it’s whatever time I think it is…Now, I’ll step out into the street…

  The walls went dim; he moved his feet, he stood in the street. It looked much as he recalled it; cars moved like phantoms, in and out of his vision unless he concentrated…The street was suddenly full of cars.

  Don thought, now—up! If I am a thought, I travel like thought! And he passed through walls and floated in the dark sky. Below was the city; around him in all directions spread the carpet of lights…But this was not the city of reality; this was the composite of a myriad imaginations; the lights glowed softer, like crystal balls; the distance melted into nothingness.

  If I’m a thought—then north! And mountains were below him, clad in dark pines, and ahead was a granite ridge, white and gray; and strangely it was early morning; Berwick stood on a peak and looked to all four directions.

  China! He felt no movement; he was a thought; he was in China. This was not the China of reality, it was the composite China, the stereotype, or rather, the paradoxical set of stereotypes that made up the collective unconscious: the drabness of Communist China, the splendor of the old empire. He remembered his camera; he pulled the tab, looked at his first positive. Fair. Not bad. He tucked it into his pocket.

  He set the aperture, photographed a pagoda, a comic-opera rickshaw. In the background were the hazy mountains and graceful willows of old Chinese paintings. Below he could see other faces and shapes.

  He thought himself to the ground. This was the old Bund, in Shanghai. He willed himself to see it; suddenly it took form and full solidity. He stood on the street. A coolie in flapping blue denim trotting toward him, halted, stepped aside, looked back.

  Hey, thought Don, I have materialized…It seems easy…I’ll return to Orange City and materialize at Madrone Place.

  He thought: up. Drift slowly. Over the Pacific…He spied the moon. Should he dare? But of course, it was now his nature; he was Lucky Donald Berwick, who dared anything!

  He thought: moon. And he was on the moon. Faster than light, as fast as thought. He stood on a silver and black plain; a scene from an imaginative painting.

  He pulled the China photograph from the camera, aimed his camera at the moonscape. It occurred to him to wonder about his organic processes…Was he breathing? He felt pressure in his chest; then suddenly he materialized; he stood on the stony reality of the moon’s surface. His skin pulsed, his eyeballs bulged, cold struck up through the soles of his shoes. He had time for a brief thought: he was already dead; where would he go now when he died?

  He let himself drift back into the unconscious. And the moon became the unconscious stereotype…Don scanned the sky. Mars!

  Quick as thought, faster than light!

  He stood on a dim red desert, the thin wind hissing past his ears. The sea-bottoms of ancient Barsoom? He turned his head; there in the distance was a ruined city—a tumble of white stone, a movement of the weird hordes of green warriors. He looked again; there seemed to be tall nodding vegetables behind, like dark dandelion fluffs…He took a picture, then thought of the canals…He stood beside a wide channel full of gray water. Ah! thought Don. It was proved! The canals of Mars did exist! He laughed at his own foolishness…All in the mind, all the collective unconscious. Was he on Mars at all, or was he merely a thought? He concentrated his attention; he stood on cold dry sands, under a black brilliant sky; and this was Mars indeed. How had he arrived? Were mind and universe one? Was the “real” world only another place of unreality, with mind and matter interacting and co-generating, like a man lifting himself by his boot-straps?

  He glanced at his watch. What time was it? He had stepped into the tank at 9 o’clock. The hands read 9 o’clock. He had surely been dead ten minutes…The hands read 9:10. Or had it only been a single minute? And the time was 9:01. The time was whatever he chose it to be. Very well then. Back to Earth. At this rate there would be ample time for exploration.

  He was in space, diving for Earth—a glorious sensation of freedom! Don sang in exultation. It was fun to be dead! Earth—lovely familiar old Earth. There it was, laden with its two billion souls!

  Was it Earth, or was it a thought?…For the first time it occurred to him to wonder: where were all the other souls? The spirits of all the dead? The angels? Jesus Christ? Mohammed and his houris? And he vibrated up into a fantastic golden land, flowered with white clouds. There indeed walked radiant winged beings, and there indeed, off in the distance, was a shining city of glass and gold; and there indeed was an effulgence, a blinding bright figure with a merciful face…Only an instant. Then an instant of a great garden, with lawns and flowers and marble pavilions, rows of cool cypress and poplar, turbaned shapes sipping sherbets, sublimely beautiful maidens…Don thought, there is no false religion; whatever Man believed, that was; whatever stage of abstraction Man could conceive, he could attain…Religion was, God was. But they were functions of Man; the mind of Man was the Creator.

  Where was Molly Toogood, Ivalee’s control? And the wandering spirits of the dead?…He saw Molly, a pleasant-looking woman: perhaps not as bright or hard as he was. She nodded. He sensed other shapes, flimsier than Molly. Where was Art Marsile? He looked around him, and—wonder of wonders—he stood in front of the old Marsile home under the pepper trees. He walked up to the door. Art looked out. “Hello, Don. I been waiting for you. Got time for a chat?”

  Don looked at the house, half-expecting to see Jean come running out, blonde and fresh and pretty. “No,” said Art. “She’s not here, Don. It’s not her time yet. Maybe you’d better go check. There’s trouble down there. Hugh as usual.”

  A flicker of thought. Don stood on the porch of 26 Madrone Place. In the street were numerous pellets of human beings, with their souls attached like frail balloons. All except one. Don recognized it: Hugh Bronny. Bronny’s soul was tall, broad, and glowed with fiery intensity. The pellet of Hug
h Bronny came up to the house; the soul—call it a soul, for lack of a better word—looked Don in the eye.

  “Go away,” said Don.

  The soul opened its mouth, but the pellet squeezed shut the natural channel of its brain, ignored the message, knocked on the door.

  Don thought himself into the laboratory. He watched while the Hugh Bronny pellet marched into the room; he tried to speak to the lovely wraith anchored in the Jean pellet, but she was too absorbed and upset.

  The pellets moved, like shining quicksilver. He examined his body. Dead—but with the potential for life. He tried to slip his feet back into the cold pellet, but there was no purchase; he slipped away.

  The Hugh Bronny pellet destroyed the Don Berwick pellet. Jean’s wraith shimmered and twisted. Her body pellet seized the gun.

  Don heard the shots as dull clicks, stones tapped under water. Hugh’s soul seemed to bulge, to sparkle, to take on mass. It was a monstrous ominous presence—it looked like Hugh, but it was strong and tough and muscular. The face was Hugh’s face as Hugh must have conceived it: hard, fervent, unyielding.

  The Hugh pellet was dead. The Hugh Bronny soul was free. It came toward Don. They looked eye to eye an instant.

  Hugh reached out his powerful arms; Don knocked them aside. The contact was solid, but elastic, like two pieces of heavy rubber colliding.

  Hugh moved off, and was gone. Don looked back to the house. It was in flames. The men who had worked with him—where were they? Cogswell—“Hello Doctor,” said Don to the pale soul which stood beside him. “I see you’re dead.”

  “Yes,” said the soul of Dr. James Cogswell. “It’s very easy, isn’t it?” The soul looked Don over with a trace of surprise. “My word, you look hard and strong! It’s amazing.”

  “We worked enough for it,” said Don. “Lots of people believe in me.”

  “Not too many believe in me!” said Cogswell in wonder. “Yet here I am!”

  “You believed in yourself, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “That’s the most important.”

  “Interesting,” said Cogswell. “This is a most fascinating place. Well, I must be off to explore.”

  “See you around,” said Don.

  The house was in flames. The wraiths of Jean and Ivalee Trembath shifted, as Jean and Ivalee ran around the house.

  Jean’s wraith looked at Don beseechingly.

  “Of course,” said Don gently. He dropped low, stood inside the room. He concentrated, materialized.

  The women were drooping like flowers at twilight. The fire crackled behind him.

  Jean raised her head, looked into his face with vast surprise. He lifted her—how light she was!—went to the window.

  A problem! He was now a material body, and subject to the material laws of gravity…He could no more descend the thirty feet to the ground than could Jean.

  Don thought himself to the roof. He materialized, tore down the ancient radio aerial, lowered it past the window, let it hang.

  He materialized again inside the room, and now the smoke was thick. He wrapped Jean and Ivalee with drapes from the windows, looped the aerial first around Jean’s body, lowered her to the ground. He thought himself down, released her, repeated the process with Ivalee Trembath. Then he carried the two of them through the back entrance to the alley.

  He motioned to a man driving past in a car. The man ignored him. Don materialized in the seat beside him. The man’s jaw dropped, strangled words came from his throat.

  “Stop the car,” said Don. “There are people hurt back there.”

  The man gasped out his acquiescence. Don put the two women in the back seat.

  “Take them to emergency hospital.”

  “Y-yes, sir.”

  Don relaxed his clutch on reality, expanded away into the after-life.

  XIX

  The police jailed as many Christian Crusaders as they could identify; the next day they were fined $100 apiece, lectured by the judge and released. Tramping out of the court house they defiantly broke into their hymn, Onward Christian Soldiers.

  The Reverend Walter Spedelius attempted to rent Orange City Auditorium, but was turned down. He called a mass-meeting on the farm of one Thomas Hand, at the outskirts of the city. And there in a great square framed by eight bonfires, the Reverend Spedelius took up Hugh Bronny’s torch.

  “Verily, brothers,” he cried in the brassy sing-song monotone of the evangelist, “our brother Hugh lived and died like a Christian saint—like a crusader of old! He gave all his earthly life to show us the way—just as many years ago Jesus Christ, yea, Jesus Christ, did the same—and brothers, I say unto you, Hugh Bronny, Fighting Hugh Bronny, is here with us tonight—and I say unto you, brothers, we won’t let him down—we’ll fight in the name of Jesus and Moses and the Prophet Elijah and the Prophet Hugh Bronny—and we’ll fight till we bring the Kingdom of God to this wonderful land of ours…”

  The Christian Crusaders were news; reporters and photographers were on hand, and the papers and news-magazines throughout the United States announced the new crusade. Segregationists, anti-Semites, America-Firsters thronged to ally themselves with the movement.

  The opposition stirred. A dozen liberal organizations denounced the movement, editorials appeared in the great newspapers, bitterly critical of Fighting Hugh Bronny, Walter Spedelius and the Christian Crusade. In the tumult Lucky Don Berwick was almost forgotten. He was no longer news.

  XX

  In the region beyond time, Donald Berwick lived and moved. He became aware of a tug, a pull; and since he was no more than a thought, dwelling in the massive composite of all the thoughts that ever were, he responded.

  Ivalee Trembath was calling him. She and Jean sat in the living room of the old Marsile house.

  Don looked into the face of the swaying soul that stood with feet anchored in Ivalee’s body-pellet. The soul spoke, “Release me, Donald, and take my place for a while, and I’ll roam; and when you want to leave, I’ll be back…”

  It was strange speaking with Ivalee’s mouth, hearing with her ears. Sight and muscle coordination, at the moment, seemed impossible.

  “Hello, darling Jean,” said Don.

  “Hello, Don. How are you?”

  “I’m very well. Things over here are just as we expected. I’ve got pictures for Kelso.”

  “Don—I miss you terribly.”

  “I miss you too, Jean…”

  “You helped us out of the fire. You materialized.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that hard?”

  “It wasn’t then. I was at the height of my intensity. I’m not so strong now.”

  “I don’t understand, Donald.”

  “I don’t either. The stronger I am, the easier it is for me to materialize.”

  “Are you weaker—because people aren’t thinking about you so much?”

  “Yes. I believe so. More or less.”

  Jean’s voice quavered. “Then Hugh must be very strong.”

  “Yes,” said Don. “I’ve seen him. He glows with strength. You’d never recognize him.”

  “Is he—as wretched as he was on Earth?”

  “He’s different. He’s as evil. But the smallness, the petty detestable part of Hugh has dwindled. Hugh is now something magnificently evil.”

  “What happens when he sees you?”

  Don paused, then said matter-of-factly. “He tries to kill me.”

  “Kill you!”

  “Sounds odd, doesn’t it? I’m already dead. But that’s how it works.”

  “How can he kill you? You’re immaterial—a thought!”

  “A thought can drown another thought out; reduce it to oblivion, make it something furtive and despised.”

  “Hugh is trying to do that—to you?”

  “Yes.”

  Jean was silent a moment. Then: “You know what’s going on down here?”

  “Not altogether. I’ve been—out, away.”

  Jean
explained, and Don was silent for several minutes.

  “Don,” said Jean diffidently, “are you still there?”

  “Yes. I’m thinking.”

  There was another minute of silence. Jean sat tense, watching the limp form of Ivalee, her hands twisting and knotting a ribbon.

  “Jean.”

  “Yes, Don.”

  “The battle is between a pair of ideas. Hugh represents one, I represent another. I must fight Hugh. Kill him. Kill the idea of Hugh.”

  “But Don—are you strong enough?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How can you fight?”

  “Just as on Earth. Tooth and nail.”

  “If you lose—will I ever see you again?”

  The voice was fading, indistinct. “I don’t know, Jean. Wish me luck. I can see Hugh now…He’s coming.”

  Ivalee Trembath twitched, mumbled, then lay quiescent.

  There was a sudden roar in the room, like a train passing through. The roar subsided to a rumble, faded.

  “Iva,” said Jean gently. “Iva.”

  No response. Jean listened. The air was very still, but seemed to be stiff and it crackled like cellophane.

  Jean slowly got to her feet, went to the telephone.

  Hugh Bronny stood over Donald Berwick. They were on a featureless expanse, a plain without end; it might have been the Ukrainian Steppe, or the perspective of a surrealist painting.

  Hugh was wearing his black double-breasted coat. His enormously muscular arms filled out the shoulders. His eyes blazed like electric arcs, his face was the size of a shield; his legs were knotted with strength.

  “Donald Berwick,” said Hugh, “I’ve hated you in life and I hate you here in the after-life.”

  “You could not help but hate me,” said Don, “because you’re the personification of hate—here as you were on Earth.”

  “No,” said Hugh, “I was a great religious leader; now I am a saint.”