by Jack Vance
Sklar Hast looked down in interest. He was joined by Elmar Pronave. “The creature’s brain, evidently,” said Sklar Hast. “Here the ganglions terminate. Or perhaps they are merely the termini of muscles.”
Elmar Pronave took the mallet and with the handle prodded at a node. The kragen gave a furious jerk.
“Well, well,” said Pronave. “Interesting indeed.” He prodded further, here, there. Every time he touched the exposed ganglions, the kragen jerked. Sklar Hast suddenly put out his hand to halt him. “Notice. On the right, those two long loops; likewise on the left. When you touched this one here, the fore-vane jerked.” He took the mallet, prodded each of the loops in turn, and in turn each of the vanes jerked.
“Aha!” declared Elmar Pronave. “Should we persist, we could teach the kragen to jig.”
“‘Best we should kill the beast,” said Sklar Hast. “Dawn is approaching, and who knows but what … ” From the float sounded a sudden low wail, quickly cut off as by the constriction of breath. The group around the kragen stirred; someone vented a deep sound of dismay. Sklar Hast jumped up on the kragen, looked around. The population on the float were staring out to sea; he looked likewise, to see King Kragen.
King Kragen floated under the surface, only his turret above water. The eyes stared forward, each a foot across: lenses of tough crystal behind which flickered milky films and a pale blue sheen. King Kragen had either drifted close down the trail of Phocan’s Cauldron on the water or had approached subsurface. Fifty feet from the lagoon nets he let his bulk come to the surface: first the whole of his turret, then the black cylinder housing the maw and the digestive process, finally the great flat sub-body: this, five feet thick, thirty feet wide, sixty feet long. To the sides protruded propulsive vanes, thick as the girth of three men. Viewed from dead ahead, King Kragen appeared a deformed ogre swimming the breast-stroke. His forward eyes, in their horn tubes, were turned toward the float of Sklar Hast and seemed fixed upon the hulk of the mutilated kragen. The men stared back, muscles stiff as sea-plant stalk. The kragen which they had. captured, once so huge and formidable, now seemed a miniature, a doll, a toy. Through its after-eyes it saw King Kragen and gave a fluting whistle, a sound completely lost and desolate.
Sklar Hast suddenly found his tongue. He spoke in a husky, urgent tone. “Back. To the back of the float.”
Now rose the voice of Semm Voiderveg the Intercessor. In quavering tones he called out across the water. “Behold; King Kragen, the men of Tranque Float! Now we denounce the presumptuous bravado of these few heretics! Behold, this pleasant lagoon, with its succulent sponges, devoted to the well-being of the magnanimous King Kragen—” The reedy voice faltered as King Kragen twitched his great vanes and eased forward. The great eyes stared without discernible, expression, but behind there seemed to be a leaping and shifting of pale pink and blue lights. The folk on the float drew back as King Kragen breasted close to the net. With a twitch of his vanes, he ripped the net; two more twitches shredded it. From the folk on the float came a moan of dread; King Kragen had not been mollified.
King Kragen eased into the lagoon, approached the helpless kragen. The bound beast thrashed feebly, sounded its fluting whistle. King Kragen reached forth a palp, seized it, lifted it into the air, where it dangled helplessly. King Kragen drew it contemptuously close to his great mandibles, chopped it quickly into slices of gray and black gristle. These he tossed away, out into the ocean. He paused to drift a moment, to consider. Then he surged on Sklar Hast’s pad. One blow of his fore-vane demolished the hut, another cut a great gouge in the pad. The after-vanes thrashed among the arbors; water, debris, broken sponges boiled up from below. King Kragen thrust again, wallowed completely up on the pad., which slowly crumpled and sank beneath his weight.
King Kragen pulled himself back into the lagoon, cruised back and forth destroying arbors, shredding the net, smashing huts of all the pads of the lagoon. Then he turned his attention to the main float, breasting up to the edge. For a moment he eyed the population, which started to set up a terrified keening sound, then thrust himself forward, wallowed up on the float, and the keening became a series of hoarse cries and screams. The folk ran back and forth with jerky, scurrying steps.
King Kragen bulked on the float like a toad on a lily pad. He struck with his vanes; the float split. The hoodwink tower, the great structure so cunningly woven, so carefully contrived, tottered. King Kragen lunged again, the tower toppled, falling into the huts along the north edge of the float.
King Kragen floundered across the float. He destroyed the granary, and bushels of yellow meal laboriously scraped from sea-plant pistils streamed into the water. He crushed the racks where stalk, withe, and fiber were stretched and flexed; he dealt likewise with the rope-walk. Then, as if suddenly in a hurry, he swung about, heaved himself to the southern edge of the float. A number of huts and thirty-two of the folk, mostly aged or very young, were crushed or thrust into the water and drowned.
King Kragen regained the open sea. He floated quietly a moment or two, palps twitching in the expression of some unknowable emotion. Then he moved his vanes and slid off across the calm ocean.
Tranque Float was a devastation, a tangle, a scene of wrath and grief. The lagoon had returned to the ocean, with the arbors reduced to rubbish and the shoals of food-fish scattered. Many huts had been crushed. The hoodwink tower lay toppled. Of a population of four-hundred and eighty, forty-three were dead, with as many more injured The survivors stood blank-eyed and limp, unable to comprehend the full extent of the disaster that had come upon them.
Presently they roused themselves and gathered at the far western edge, where the damage had been the least; Ixon Myrex sought through the faces, eventually spied Sklar Hast sitting on a fragment of the fallen hoodwink tower. He raised his hand slowly, pointed. “Sklar Hast! I denounce you! The evil you have done to Tranque Float cannot be uttered in words. Your arrogance, your callous indifference to our pleas, your cruel and audacious villainy—how can you hope to expiate them?”
Sklar Hast paid no heed. His attention was fixed upon Meril Rohan, where she knelt beside the body of Zander Rohan, his tine brisk mop of white hair dark with blood. Ixon Myrex called in a harsh voice: “In my capacity as Arbiter of Tranque Float, I declare you a criminal of the basest sort, together with all those who served you as accomplices, and most noteworthy Elmar Pronave! Elmar Pronave, show your shameful face! Where do you hide?”
But Elmar Pronave had been drowned and did not answer.
Ixon Myrex returned to Sklar Hast. “The Master Hoodwink is dead and cannot denounce you in his own terms. I will speak for him: you are Assistant Master Hoodwink no longer. You are ejected from your caste and your calling!”
Sklar Hast wearily gave his attention to Ixon Myrex. “Do not bellow nonsense. You can eject me from nothing. I am Master Hoodwink now. I was Master Hoodwink as soon as I bested Zander Rohan; even had I not done so, I became Master Hoodwink upon his death. You outrank me not an iota; you can denounce—but do no more.”
Semm Voiderveg the Intercessor spoke forth. “Denunciations are not enough! Argument in regard to rank is footling! King Kragen, in wreaking his terrible but just, vengeance, intended that the primes of the deed should die. I now declare the will of King Kragen to be death, by either strangulation or bludgeoning, for Sklar Hast and all his accomplices.”
“Not so fast,” said Sklar Hast. “It appears to me that a certain confusion is upon us. Two kragen, a large one and a small one, have injured us. I, Sklar Hast, and my friends, are those who hoped to protect the float from depredation. We failed. We are not criminals; we are simply not as strong or as wicked as King Kragen.”
“Are you aware,” thundered Semm Voiderveg, “that King Kragen reserves to himself the duty of guarding us from the lesser kragen? Are you aware that in assaulting the kragen, you in effect assaulted King Kragen?”
Sklar Hast considered; “I am aware that we will need more powerful tools than ropes and chisels to k
ill King Kragen.”
Semm Voiderveg turned away, speechless. The people looked apathetically toward Sklar Hast. Few seemed to share the indignation of the elders.
Ixon Myrex sensed the general feeling of misery and fatigue. “This is no time for recrimination. There is work to be done.” His voice broke with his own deep and sincere grief. “All our fine structures must be rebuilt, our tower rendered operative, our net rewoven.” He stood quiet for a moment, and something of his rage returned. “Sklar Hast’s crime must not go without appropriate punishment. I ordain a Grand Convocation to take place in three days, on Apprise Float. The fate of Sklar Hast and his gang will he decided by a Council of Elders.”
Sklar Hast walked away. He approached Meril Rohan, who sat with her face in her hands, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“I’m sorry that your father died,” said Sklar Hast awkwardly. “I’m sorry anyone died—but I’m especially sorry that you should be hurt.”
Meril Rohan surveyed him with an expression he was unable to decipher. He spoke in a voice hardly more than a husky mutter. “Someday the sufferings of the Tranque folk must lead to a happier future for all the folk, of all the floats … I see it is my destiny to kill King Kragen. I care for nothing else.”
Meril Rohan spoke in a clear, quiet voice. “I wish my duty were as plain to me. I, too, must do something. I must expunge or help to expunge whatever has caused this evil that today has come upon us. Is it King Kragen? Is it Sklar Hast? Or something else altogether?” She was musing now, her eyes unfocused, almost as if she were unaware of her father’s corpse, of Sklar Hast standing before her. “It is a fact that the evil exists. The evil has a source. So my problem is to locate the source of the evil, to learn its nature. Only when we know our enemy can we defeat it.”
Chapter 4
The ocean had never been plumbed. At two hundred feet the maximum depth attempted by stalk-cutters and pod-gatherers, the sea-plant stems were still a tangle. One Ben Murmen, Sixth, an Advertiserman, half-daredevil, half-maniac, had descended to three hundred feet, and in the indigo gloom noted the stalks merging to disappear into the murk as a single great trunk. But attempts to sound the bottom, by means of a line weighted with a bag of bone chippings, were unsuccessful. How, then, had the seaplants managed to anchor themselves? Some supposed that the plants were of great antiquity and had developed during a time when the water was much lower. Others conjectured a sinking of the ocean bottom; still others were content to ascribe the feat to an innate tendency of the sea-plants.
Of all the floats, Apprise was the largest and one of the first to be settled. The central agglomeration was perhaps nine acres in extent; the lagoon was bounded by thirty or forty smaller pads. Apprise Float was the traditional site of the convocations, which occurred at approximately yearly intervals and which were attended by the active and responsible adults of the system, who seldom otherwise ventured far from home, since it was widely believed that King Kragen disapproved of travel. He ignored the coracles of swindlers, and also the rafts of withe or stalk which occasionally passed between the floats, but on other occasions he had demolished floats or coracles that had no ostensible business or purpose.
Coracles conveying folk to a convocation had never been molested, however, even though King Kragen always seemed aware that a convocation was in progress, and often watched proceedings from a distance of a quarter-mile or so. How King Kragen gained his knowledge was a matter of great mystery; some asserted, that on every float lived a man who was a man in semblance only, who inwardly was a manifestation of King Kragen. It was through this man, according to the superstition, that King Kragen knew what transpired on the floats.
For three days preceding the convocation there was incessant flickering along the line of the hoodwink towers; the destruction of Tranque Float was reported in full detail, together with Ixon Myrex’s denunciation of Sklar Hast and Sklar Hast’s rebuttal. On each of the floats there was intense discussion and a certain degree of debate. Since, in most cases, the arbiter and the intercessor of each float inveighed against Sklar Hast, there was little organized sentiment in his favor.
On the morning of the convocation, early, before the morning sky showed blue, coracles full of folk moved between the floats. The survivors of the Tranque Float disaster, who for the most part had sought refuge on Thrasneck and Bickle, were among the first under way, as were the folk from Almack and Sciona, in the far west.
All morning the coracles shuttled back and forth between the floats; shortly before noon the first groups began to arrive on Apprise. Each group wore the distinctive emblems of its float, and those who felt caste distinction important likewise wore the traditional hair-stylings, forehead plaques, and dorsal ribbons; otherwise all dressed in much the same fashion: shirts and pantalets of coarse linen woven from sea-plant fiber, sandals of rug fish leather, ceremonial gauntlets and epaulettes of sequins cut from the kernels of a certain half-animal, half-vegetable mollusk.
As the folk arrived, they trooped to the famous old Apprise Inn where they refreshed themselves at a table on which was set forth a collation of beer, pod-cakes, pepperfish, and pickled fingerlings, after which the newcomers separated to various quarters of the float, in accordance with traditional caste distinctions. In the center of the float was a rostrum. On surrounding benches the notables took their places: craft-masters, caste-elders, arbiters and intercessors. The rostrum was at all times open to any person who wished to speak, so long as he gained the sponsorship of one of the notables.
The first speakers at the convocations customarily were elders intent on exhorting the younger folk to excellence and virtue; so it was today. An hour after the sun had reached the zenith, the first speaker made his way to the rostrum—a portly old Incendiary from Maudelinda Float who had in just such a fashion opened the speaking at the last five convocations. He sought and was perfunctorily granted sponsorship. By now his speeches were regarded as a necessary evil. He mounted the rostrum and began to speak. His voice was rich, throbbing, voluminous; his periods were long, his sentiments well-used, his illuminations unremarkable.
“We meet again. I am pleased to see so many of the faces which over the years have become familiar and well-beloved, and alas there are certain faces no more to he seen, those who have slipped away to the Bourne, many untimely, as those who suffered punishment only these few days past before the wrath of King Kragen, of whom we all stand in awe. A dreadful circumstance thus to provoke the majesty of this Elemental Reality; it should never have occurred; it would never have occurred if all abided by the ancient disciplines. Why must we scorn the wisdom of our ancestors? Those noble and most heroic of men who dared revolt against the tyranny of the mindless helots, to seize the Ship of Space which was taking them to brutal confinement, and to seek a haven here on this blessed world! Our ancestors knew the benefits of order and rigor; they designated the castes and set them to tasks for which they presumably had received training on the Home World. In such a fashion the Swindlers were assigned the task of swindling fish; the Hoodwinks were set to winking hoods; the Incendiaries, among whom I am proud to number myself, wove ropes; while the Bezzlers gave us many of the intercessors who have procured the favor and benevolent guardianship of King Kragen.
“Like begets like; characteristics persist and distill. Why, then, are the castes crumbling and giving way to helter-skelter disorder? I appeal to the youth of today: read the Analects; study the artifacts in the Museum; renew your dedication to the system formulated by our forefathers. You have no heritage more precious than your caste identity!”
The old Incendiary spoke on in such a vein for several minutes further and was succeeded by another old man, a former Hoodwink of good reputation, who worked until films upon his eyes gave one configuration much the look of another. Like the old Incendiary, he, too, urged a more fervent dedication, to the old-time values.
“I deplore the sloth of today’s youth! We are becoming a race of sluggards! It is sheer good fortune th
at King Kragen protects us from the gluttony of the lesser kragen. And what if the tyrants of out-space discovered our haven and sought once more to enslave us? How would we defend ourselves? By hurling fish-heads? By diving under the floats in the hope that our adversaries would follow and drown themselves? I propose that each float form a militia, well-trained and equipped with darts and spears, fashioned from the hardest and most durable stalk obtainable!”
The old Hoodwink was followed by the Sumber Float Intercessor, who courteously suggested that should the out-space tyrants appear, King Kragen would be sure to visit upon them the most poignant punishments, the most absolute of rebuffs, so that the tyrants would flee in terror, never to return. “King Kragen is mighty, King Kragen is wise and benevolent, unless his dignity is impugned, as in the detestable incident at Tranque Float, where the willfulness of a bigoted freethinker caused agony to many.” Now he modestly turned down his head. “It. is neither my place nor my privilege to propose a punishment suitable to so heinous an offense as the one under discussion. But I would go beyond this particular crime to dwell upon the underlying causes; namely the bravado of certain folk, who ordain themselves equal or superior to the accepted ways of life which have served us so well so long … “
Presently he descended to the float. His place was taken by a somber man of stalwart physique, wearing the plainest of garments. “My name is Sklar Hast,” he said. “I am that so-called bigoted freethinker just referred to. I have much to say, but I hardly know how to say it. I will be blunt. King Kragen is not the wise, beneficent guardian the intercessors like to pretend. King Kragen is a gluttonous beast who every year becomes more enormous and more gluttonous. I sought to kill a lesser