by Jack Vance
Up the blue swells, down into the long troughs, the wake gurgling, the bow rising and falling. The long afternoon waned and became golden; sunset burned and ebbed and became a halcyon dusk. The stars appeared, and Inga, sitting silently by his rudder, held the sail full to the wind. At midnight he lowered the sail and slept, the boat drifting quietly.
In the morning he was completely alone, the horizons blank. He raised the sail and scudded west, and so passed the day, and the next, and others. And Inga became thankful that he had provisioned the boat with generosity. On the sixth day he seemed to notice that a chill had come into the wind; on the eighth day he sailed under a high overcast, the like of which he had never seen before. The ocean changed from blue to grey and presently took on a green tinge. Now the water was cold. The wind blew with great force, bellying his bast sail, and Inga huddled in the shelter to avoid the harsh spray. On the morning of the ninth day he thought to see a dim dark shape loom ahead, which at noon became a line of tall cliffs with surf beating against jagged rocks, roaring back and forth across coarse shingle. In mid-afternoon he ran his boat up on one of the shingle beaches, jumped gingerly ashore. Shivering in the whooping gusts, he took stock of the situation. There was no living thing to be seen along the foreshore but three or four grey gulls. A hundred yards to his right lay a battered hulk of another boat, and beyond was a tangle of wood and fibre which might have been still another.
Inga carried ashore what provisions remained, bundled them together, and by a faint trail climbed the cliffs. He came out on an expanse of rolling grey-green downs. Two or three miles inland rose a line of low hills, toward which the trail seemed to lead.
Inga looked right and left; again there was no living creature in sight other than gulls. Shouldering his bundle he set forth along the trail.
Nearing the hills he came upon a hut of turf and stone, beside a patch of cultivated soil. A man and a woman worked in the field. Inga peered closer. What manner of creatures were these? They resembled human beings; they had arms and legs and faces—but how seamed and seared and grey they were! How shrunken were their hands, how they bent and hobbled as they worked! He walked quickly by, and they did not appear to notice him.
Now Inga hastened, as the end of the day was drawing on and the hills loomed before him. The trail led along a valley grown with gnarled oak and low purple-green shrubs, then slanted up the hillside through a stony gap, where the wind generated whistling musical sounds. From the gap Inga looked out over a flat valley. He saw copses of low trees, plots of tilled land, a group of huts. Slowly he walked down the trail. In a nearby field a man raised his head. Inga paused, thinking to recognize him. Was this not Oma ta Akara who had sailed west ten or twelve seasons back? It seemed impossible. This man was fat, the hair had almost departed his head, his cheeks hung loose at the jawline. No, this could not be lithe Oma ta Akara! Hurriedly Inga turned away, and presently entered the village. Before a nearby hut stood one whom he recognized with joy. “Takti Tai!”
Takti Tai nodded. “Rona ta Inga. I knew you’d be coming soon.”
“I’m delighted to see you! But let us leave this terrible place; let us return to the island!”
Takti Tai smiled a little, shook his head.
Inga protested heatedly, “Don’t tell me you prefer this dismal land? Come! My boat is still seaworthy. If somehow we can back it off the beach, gain the open sea…”
The wind sang down over the mountains, strummed through the trees. Inga’s words died in his throat. It was clearly impossible to work the boat off the foreshore.
“Not only the wind,” said Takti Tai. “We could not go back now. We know the secret.”
Inga stared in wonderment. “The secret? Not I.”
“Come. Now you will learn.”
Takti Tai took him through the village to a structure of stone, with a high-gabled roof shingled with slate. “Enter, and you will know the secret.”
Hesitantly Rona ta Inga entered the stone structure. On a stone table lay a still figure surrounded by six tall candles. Inga stared at the shrunken white face, at the white sheet which lay motionless over the narrow chest. “Who is this? A man? How thin he is. Does he sleep? Why do you show me such a thing?”
“This is the secret,” said Takti Tai. “It is called ‘death’.”
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Also By Jack Vance
The Dying Earth
1. The Dying Earth (1950) (aka Mazirian the Magician)
2. Cugel the Clever (1966) (aka The Eyes of the Overworld)
3. Cugel’s Saga (1966) (aka Cugel: The Skybreak Spatterlight)
4. Rhialto the Marvellous (1984)
Big Planet
1. Big Planet (1952)
2. The Magnificent Showboats (1975) (aka The Magnificent Showboats of the Lower Vissel River, Lune XXII South, Big Planet) (aka Showboat World))
Demon Princes
1. The Star King (1964)
2. The Killing Machine (1964)
3. The Palace of Love (1967)
4. The Face (1979)
5. The Book of Dreams (1981)
Planet of Adventure
1. The Chasch (19648 (City of the Chasch))
2. The Wannek (1969) (Servants of the Wankh)
3. The Dirdir (1969)
4. The Pnume (1970)
Durdane
1. The Anome (1973)
2. The Brave Free Men (1973)
3. The Asutra (1974)
Alastor Cluster
1. Trullion: Alastor 2262 (1973)
2. Marune: Alastor 933 (1975)
3. Wyst: Alastor 1716 (1978)
Lyonesse
1. Suldrun’s Garden (1983) (aka Lyonesse)
2. The Green Pearl (1985)
3. Madouc (1990)
Cadwal Chronicles
1. Araminta Station (1988)
2. Ecce and Old Earth (1991)
3. Throy (1992)
Gaean Reach
1. The Domains of Koryphon (1974) (aka The Gray Prince)
2. Maske: Thaery (1976)
Other Novels
Vandals of the Void (1953)
The Rapparee (The Five Gold Bands/The Space Pirate) (1953)
Clarges (To Live Forever) (1956)
The Languages of Pao (1958)
Gold and Iron (Slaves of the Klau/Planet of the Damned) (1958)
Space Opera (1965)
The Blue World (1966)
Emphyrio (1969)
The Dogtown Tourist Agency (aka Galactic Effectuator) (1980)
Collections
The World-Thinker and Other Stories
The Potter of Firsk and Other Stories (aka Gadget Stories)
Son of the Tree and Other Stories
Golden Girl and Other Stories
The Houses of Iszm and Other Stories
The Dragon Masters and Other
The Moon Moth and Other Stories
Autobiography
This is Me, Jack Vance (2009)
Jack Vance (1916 – )
Jack Vance was born in 1916 and studied mining, engineering and journalism at the University of California. During the Second World War he served in the merchant navy and was torpedoed twice. He started contributing stories to the pulp magazines in the mid 1940s and published his first book, The Dying Earth, in 1950. Among his many books are The Dragon Masters, for which he won his first Hugo Award, Big Planet, The Anome, and the Lyonesse sequence. He has won the Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Awards, amongst others, and in 1997 was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America.
Copyright
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Jack Vance 20
05
All rights reserved.
The right of Jack Vance to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2011 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 10987 2
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real
persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
www.orionbooks.co.uk
Table of Contents
Title Page
Gateway Introduction
Contents
The World-Thinker
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
I’ll Build Your Dream Castle
Seven Exits from Bocz
The God and the Temple Robber
Telek
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
The Ten Books
DP!
Noise
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
The Absent Minded Professor
The Devil on Salvation Bluff
Where Hesperus Falls
The Phantom Milkman
A Practical Man’s Guide
The House Lords
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
The Secret
Website
Also By Jack Vance
Author Bio
Copyright