The Narrow Land

by Jack Vance

"Mr. Roland Mario," said the girl. She added drily, "He's got eight thousand dollars."

  The young man nodded gravely, reached out his hand. "My name is Mervyn Alien." He looked at the girl. "Is that all, Thane?"

  "That's all for tonight." She left

  "Can't keep going on eight thousand a night," grumbled Mervyn Alien. "Sit down, Mr. Mario."

  Mario took a seat. "The adventure business must have tremendous expenses," he observed with a tight grin.

  "Oh, no," said Alien with wide candid eyes. "To the contrary. The operators have a tremendous avarice. We try to average twenty million a day profit. Occasionally we can't make it."

  "Pardon me for annoying you with carfare," said Mario. "If you don't want it, I'll keep it."

  Alien made a magnanimous gesture. "As you please."

  Mario said, "The receptionist told me that ten million buys the dullest of your services, and ten thousand something fairly wild. What do I get for nothing? Vivisection?"

  Alien smiled. "No. You're entirely safe with us. That is to say, you suffer no physical pain, you emerge alive."

  "But you won't give me any particulars? After all, I have a fastidious nature. What you'd consider a good joke might annoy me very much."

  Mervyn Alien shrugged blandly. "You haven't spent any money yet. You can still leave."

  Mario rubbed the arms of his chair with the palms of his hand. "That's rather unfair. I'm interested, but also I'd like to know something of what I'm getting into."

  Alien nodded. "Understandable. You're willing to take a chance, but you're not a complete fool. Is that it?"

  "Exactly."

  Alien straightened a pencil on his desk. "First, I'd like to give you a short psychiatric and medical examination. You understand," and he flashed Mario a bright candid glance, "we don't want any accidents at the Chateau d'lf."

  "Go ahead," said Mario.

  Alien slid open the top of his desk, handed Mario a cap of crinkling plastic in which tiny wires glittered. "Encephalo-graph pick-up. Please fit it snugly."

  Mario grinned. "Call it a lie-detector."

  Alien smiled briefly. "A lie-detector, then."

  Mario muttered, "I'd like to put it on you."

  Alien ignored him, pulled out a pad of printed forms, adjusted a dial in front of him.

  "Name?"

  "Roland Mario."

  "Age?"

  "Twenty-eight."

  Alien stared at the dial, frowned, looked up questioningly.

  "I wanted to see if it worked," said Mario. "I'm twenty-nine."

  "It works," said Alien shortly. "Occupation?"

  "Architect. At least I dabble at it, design dog houses and rabbit hutches for my friends. Although I did the Geraf Fleeter Corporation plant in Hanover a year or so ago, pretty big job."

  "Hm. Where were you born?"

  "Buenos Aires."

  "Ever hold any government jobs? Civil Service? Police? Administrative? ACP?"

  "No."

  "Why not?"

  "Red tape. Disgusting bureaucrats."

  "Nearest relative?"

  "My brother, Arthur Mario. In Callaco. Coffee business."

  "No wife?"

  "No wife."

  "Approximate worth? Wealth, possessions, real estate?"

  "Oh-sixty, seventy thousand. Modestly comfortable. Enough so that I can loaf all I care to."

  "Why did you come to the Chateau d'lf ?"

  "Same reason that everybody else comes. Boredom. Repressed energy. Lack of something to fight against."

  Alien laughed. "So you think you'll work off some of that energy fighting the Chateau d'lf?"

  Mario smiled faintly. "It's a challenge."

  "We've got a good thing here," Alien confided. "A wonder it hasn't been done before. How did you happen to come to the Chateau d'lf?"

  "Five of us rolled dice. A man named Pete Zaer lost, He came, but he wouldn't speak to us afterwards."

  Alien nodded sagely. "We've got to ask that our customers keep our secrets. If there were no mystery, we would have no customers."

  "It had better be good," said Mario, "after all the buildup." And he thought he saw a flicker of humor in Alien's eyes.

  "It's cheap at ten million."

  "And quite dear at ten thousand?" suggested Mario.

  Alien leaned back in his chair, and his beautiful face was cold as a marble mask. Mario suddenly thought of the girl in the front office. The same expression of untouchable distance and height. He said, "I suppose you have the same argument with everyone who comes in."

  "Identical."

  "Well, where do we go from here?"

  "Are you healthy? Any organic defects?"

  "None."

  "Very well. I'll waive the physical."

  Mario reached up, removed the encephalograph pick-up.

  "Now I can lie again."

  Alien drummed a moment on the tabletop, reached forward, tossed the mesh back in the desk, scribbled on a sheet of paper, tossed it to Mario. "A contract relieving us of responsibility."

  Mario read. In consideration of services rendered, Roland Mario agreed that the Chateau d'lf and its principals would not be held responsible for any injuries, physical or psychological, which he might sustain while on the premises, or as a result of his presence on the premises. Furthermore, he waived all rights to prosecute. Any and all transactions, treatments, experiments, events which occurred on, by or to his person were by his permission and express direction.

  Mario chewed doubtfully at his lip. "This sounds pretty tough. About all you can't do is kill me."

  "Correct," said Alien.

  "A very ominous contract"

  "Perhaps just the talk is adventure enough," suggested Alien, faintly contemptuous.

  Mario pursed his lips. "I like pleasant adventures. A nightmare is an adventure, and I don't like nightmares."

  "Who does?"

  In other words, you won't tell me a thing?"

  "Not a thing."

  "If I had any sense," said Mario, "I'd get up and walk out."

  "Suit yourself."

  "What do you do with all the money?"

  Mervyn Alien relaxed in his chair, put his hands behind his blond head.

  "We're building the Empyrean Tower. That's no secret"

  It was news to Mario. The Empyrean Tower-the vastest, grandest, heaviest, tallest, most noble structure created or even conceived by man. A sky-piercing star-aspiring shaft three miles tall.

  "Why, if I may ask, are you building the Empyrean Tower?"

  Alien sighed. "For the same reason you're here, at the Chateau d'lf. Boredom. And don't tell me to take my own treatment."

  "Have you?"

  Alien studied him with narrow eyes. "Yes. I have. You ask lots of questions. Too many. Here's the contract Sign it or tear it up. I can't give you any more time."

  "First," said Mario patiently, "you'll have to give me some idea of what I'm getting into."

  "It's not crime," said Alien. "Let's say-we give you a new outlook on life."

  "Artificial amnesia?" asked Mario, remembering Zaer.

  "No. Your memory is intact. "Here it is," and Alien thrust out the contract "Sign it or tear it up."

  Mario signed. "I realize I'm a fool. Want my eight thousand?"

  "We're in the business for money," said Alien shortly. "If you can spare it"

  Mario counted out the eight thousand-dollar bills. "There you are."

  Alien took the money, tapped it on the table, inspected Mario ruminatively. "Our customers fall pretty uniformly into three groups. Reckless young men just out of adolescence, jaded old men in search of new lands of vice, and police snoopers. You don't seem to fit"

  Mario said with a shrug. "Average the first two. I'm reckless, jaded and twenty-nine."

  Alien smiled briefly, politely, rose to his feet "This way, please."

  A panel opened behind him, revealing a chamber lit with cool straw-colored light Green plants, waist-high, grew in profusion-large-lea
fed exotics, fragile ferns, fantastic spired fungi, nodding spear-blades the color of Aztec jade. Mario noticed Alien drawing a deep breath before entering the room, but thought nothing of it. He followed, gazing right and left in admiration for the small artificial jungles to either side. The air was strong with the mint-gardenia-antiseptic odor-pungent. He blinked. His eyes watered, blurred. He halted, swaying. Alien turned around, watched with a cool half-smile, as if this were a spectacle he knew well but found constantly amusing.

  Vision retreated; hearing hummed, flagged, departed; time swam, spun....

  CHAPTER IV

  A New Life

  Mario awoke.

  It was a sharp clean-cut awakening, not the slow wading through a morass of drug.

  He sat on a bench in Tanagra Square, under the big mimosa, and the copper peacocks were pecking at bread he held out to them.

  He looked at his hand. It was a fat, pudgy hand. The arm was encased in hard gray fiber. No suit he owned was gray. The arm was short. His legs were short. His belly was large. He licked his lips. They were pulpy, thick.

  He was Roland Mario inside the brain, the body was somebody else. He sat quite still.

  The peacocks pecked at the bread. He threw it away. His arm was stiff, strangely heavy. He had flabby muscles. He rose to his feet grunting. His body was soft but not flexible. He rubbed his hand over his face, felt a short lumpy nose, long ears, heavy cheeks like pans full of cold glue. He was bald as the underside of a fish.

  Who was the body? He blinked, felt his mind twisting, tugging at its restraint. Mario fought to steady himself, as a man in a teetering canoe tries to hold it steady, to prevent capsizing into dark water. He leaned against the trunk of the mimosa tree. Steady, steady, focus your eyes! What had been done to him no doubt could be undone. Or it would wear off. Was it a dream, an intensely vivid segment of narcotiana? Adventure-ha! That was a mild word.

  He fumbled into his pockets, found a folded sheet of paper. He opened it, sat down while he read the typescript. First, there was a heavy warning:

  MEMORIZE THE FOLLOWING, AS THIS PAPER WILL DISINTEGRATE IN APPROXIMATELY FIVE MINUTES!

  You are embarking on the life you paid for.

  Your name is Ralston Ebery. Your age is 56. You are married to Florence Ebery, age 50. Your home address is 19 Seafoam Place. You have three children: Luther, age 25, Ralston Jr., age 23, Clydia, age 19.

  You are a wealthy manufacturer of aircraft the Ebery Air-car. Your bank is the African Federal; the pass-book is in your pocket. When you sign your name, do not consciously guide your hand; let the involuntary muscles write the signature Ralston Ebery.

  If you dislike your present form, you may return to the Chateau d'lf. Ten thousand dollars will buy you a body of your choice, ten million dollars will buy you a young healthy body to your own specifications.

  Please do not communicate with the police. In the first place, they will believe you to be insane. In the second place, if they successfully hampered the operation of the Chateau d'lf, you would be marooned in the body of Ralston Ebery, a prospect you may or may not enjoy. In the third place, the body of Roland Mario will insist on his legal identity.

  With your business opportunities, ten million dollars is a sum well within your reach. When you have it return to the Chateau d'lf for a young and healthy body.

  We have fulfilled our bargain with you. We have given you adventure. With skill and ingenuity, you will be able to join the group of men without age, eternally young.

  Mario read the sheet a second time. As he finished, it crumbled into dust in his hands. He leaned back, aware of nausea rising in him like an elevator in a shaft. The most hateful of intimacies, dwelling in another man's body-especially one so gross and untidy. He felt a sensation of hunger, and with perverse malice decided to let Ralston Ebery's body go hungry.

  Ralston Ebery! The name was vaguely familiar. Did Ralston Ebery now possess Mario's own body? Possibly. Not necessarily. Mario had no conception of the principle involved in the transfer. There seemed to be no incision, no brain graft

  Now what?

  He could report to the ACP. But, if he could make them believe him, there still would be no legal recourse. To the best of his knowledge, no one at the Chateau d'lf had performed a criminal act upon him. There was not even a good case of battery, since he had waived his right to prosecute.

  The newspapers, the telescreens? Suppose unpleasant publicity were able to force the Chateau d'lf out of business, what then? Mervyn Alien could set up a similar business elsewhere-and Mario would never be allowed to return to his own body.

  He could follow the suggestion of the now disintegrated paper. No doubt Ralston Ebery had powerful political and financial connections, as well as great wealth in his own right. Or had he? Would it not be more likely that Ebery had liquidated as much of his wealth as possible, both to pay ten million dollars to the Chateau d'lf, and also to provide his new body with financial backing?

  Mario contemplated the use of force. There might be some means to compel the return of his body. Help would be useful. Should he report to Ditmar, Janniver, Breaugh? Indeed, he owed them some sort of explanation.

  He rose to his feet. Mervyn Alien would not conceivably leave vulnerable areas in his defenses. He must realize that violence, revenge, would be the first idea in a mind shanghaied into an old sick body. There would be precautions against obvious violence, of that he was certain.

  The ideas thronged, swirled, frothed, like different-colored paints stirred in a bucket. His head became light, a buzzing sounded in his ears. A dream, when would he awake? He gasped, panted, made feeble struggling motions. A patrolman stopped beside him, tripped his incident-camera automatically.

  "What's wrong, sir? Taken sick?" "No, no," said Mario. "I'm all right. Just dozed off." He rose to his feet, stepped on the Choreops Strip, passed the central fountain flagged with aventurine quartz, stepped off at the Malabar Pavilion, wandered under the great bay trees out onto Kesselyn Avenue. Slowly, heavily, he plodded through the wholesale florist shops, and at Pacific, let the escalator take him to the third level, where he stepped on the fast ped-strip of the Grand Footway to the Concourse.

  His progress had been unconscious, automatic, as if his body made the turns at its' own volition. Now at the foot of the Aetherian Block he stepped off the strip, breathing a little heavily. The body of Ralston Ebery was spongy, in poor condition. And Mario felt an unholy gloating as he thought of Ralston Ebery's body sweating, puffing, panting, fasting-working off its lard.

  A face suddenly thrust into his, a snarling hate-brimmed face. Teeth showed, the pupils of the eyes were like the black-tipped poison darts of the Mazumbwe Backlands. The face was that of a young-old man-unlined, but gray-haired; innocent but wise, distorted by the inner thrash and coil of his hate. Through tight teeth and corded jaw muscles the young-old man snarled:

  "You filthy misbegotten dung-thief, do you hope to live? You venom, you stench. It would soil me to kill you. But I shall!"

  Mario stepped back. The man was a stranger. "I'm sorry. You must be mistaken," he said, before it dawned that Ralston Ebery's deeds were now accountable to him.

  A hand fell on the young-old man's shoulder. "Beat it, Arnold!" said a hard voice. "Be off with you!" The young-old man fell back.

  Marie's rescuer turned around-a dapper young man with an agile fox-face. He nodded respectfully. "Good morning, Mr. Ebery. Sorry that crank bothered you."

  "Good morning," said Mario. "Ah-who was he?"

  The young man eyed nun curiously. "Why, that's Letya Arnold. Used to work for us. You fired him."

  Mario was puzzled. "Why?"

  The young man blinked. "I'm sure I don't know. Inefficiency, I suppose."

  "It's not important," said Mario hurriedly. "Forget it."

  "Sure. Of course. On your way up to the office?"

  "Yes, I-I suppose so." Who was this young man? It was a problem he would be called on to face many times, he thought

 
; They approached the elevators. "After you," said Mario. There was such an infinity of detail to be learned, a thousand personal adjustments, the intricate pattern of Ralston Ebery's business. Was there any business left? Ebery certainly would have plundered it of every cent he could endow his new body with. Ebery Air-car was a large concern; still the extracting of even ten million dollars was bound to make a dent and this young man with the clever face, who was he? Mario decided to try indirectness, a vague question. "Now let's see-how long since you've been promoted?" The young man darted a swift side glance, evidently wondering whether Ebery was off his feed. "Why, I've been assistant office manager for two years."

  Mario nodded. They stepped into the elevator, and the young man was quick to press the button. Obsequious cur! thought Mario. The door snapped shut, and there came the swoop which stomachs of the age had become inured to. The elevator halted, the doors flung back, they stepped out into a busy office, filled with clicking machinery, clerks, banks of telescreens. Clatter, hum-and sudden silence with every eye on the body of Ralston Ebery. Furtive glances, studied attentiveness to work, exaggerated efficiency.

  Mario halted, looked the room over. It was his by default. No one in the world could deny him authority over this concern, unless Ralston Ebery had been too fast, too greedy, raising his ten million plus. If Ralston Ebery had embezzled or swindled, he-Roland Mario in Ebery's body-would be punished. Mario was trapped in Ebery's past. Ebery's shortcomings would be held against him, the hate he had aroused would inflict itself on him, he had inherited Ebery's wife, his family, his mistress, if any.

  A short middle-aged man with wide disillusioned eyes, the bitter clasp of mouth that told of many hopes lost or abandoned, approached.

  "Morning, Mr. Ebery. Glad you're here. Several matters for your personal attention."

  Mario looked sharply at the man. Was that overtone in his voice sarcasm? "In my office," said Mario. The short man turned toward a hallway. Mario followed. "Come along," he said to the assistant office manager.

  Gothic letters wrought from silver spelled out Ralston Ebery's name on a door. Mario put his thumb into the lock; the prints meshed, the door slid aside; Mario slowly entered, frowning in distaste at the fussy decor. Ralston Ebery had been a lover of the rococo. He sat down behind the desk of polished black metal, said to the assistant office manager, "Bring me the personnel file on the office staff-records, photographs."