The Jack Vance Treasury

by Jack Vance

  I crawled blinking out of the lifeboat into an electric world. I listened. Surely that was music—faint whispers drifting in on the wind like a fragrance.

  I went down to the lake, as blue as a ball of that cobalt dye so aptly known as bluing.

  The music came louder; I could catch snatches of melody—sprightly quick-step phrases carried like colored tinsel on a flow of cream.

  I put my hands to my ears; if I were experiencing hallucinations, the music would continue. The sound diminished, but did not fade entirely; my test was not definitive. But I felt sure it was real. And where music was there must be musicians…I ran forward, shouted, “Hello!”

  “Hello!” came the echo from across the lake.

  The music faded a moment, as a cricket chorus quiets when disturbed, then gradually I could hear it again—distant music, ‘horns of elf-land faintly blowing’.

  It went completely out of perception. I was left standing haggard in the blue light, alone on my meadow.

  I washed my face, returned to the lifeboat, sent out another set of SOS signals.

  Possibly the blue day is shorter than the red day; with no clock I can’t be sure. But with my new fascination, the music and its source, the blue day seems to pass swifter.

  Never have I caught sight of the musicians. Is the sound generated by the trees, by diaphanous insects crouching out of my vision?

  One day I glanced across the lake, and wonder of wonders! a gay town spread along the opposite shore. After a first dumbfounded gaze, I ran down to the water’s edge, stared as if it were the most precious sight of my life.

  Pale silk swayed and rippled: pavilions, tents, fantastic edifices…Who inhabited these places? I waded knee-deep into the lake, the breath catching and creaking in my throat, and thought to see flitting shapes.

  I ran like a madman around the shore. Plants with pale blue blossoms succumbed to my feet; I left the trail of an elephant through a patch of delicate reeds.

  And when I came panting and exhausted to the shore opposite my meadow, what was there? Nothing.

  The city had vanished like a dream, like spectres blown on a wind. I sat down on a rock. Music came clear for an instant, as if a door had momentarily opened.

  I jumped to my feet. Nothing to be seen. I looked back across the lake. There—on my meadow—a host of gauzy shapes moved like May-flies over a still pond.

  When I returned, my meadow was vacant. The shore across the lake was bare.

  So goes the blue day; and now there is amazement to my life. Whence comes the music? Who and what are these flitting shapes, never quite real but never entirely out of mind? Four times an hour I press a hand to my forehead, fearing the symptoms of a mind turning in on itself…If music actually exists on this world, actually vibrates the air, why should it come to my ears as Earth music? These chords I hear might be struck on familiar instruments; the harmonies are not at all alien…And these pale plasmic wisps that I forever seem to catch from the corner of my eye: the style is that of gay and playful humanity. The tempo of their movement is the tempo of the music: tarantella, sarabande, farandole…

  So goes the blue day. Blue air, blue-black turf, ultramarine water, and the bright blue star bent to the west…How long have I lived on this planet? I have broadcast the SOS sequence until now the batteries hiss with exhaustion; soon there will be an end to power. Food, water are no problem to me, but what use is a lifetime of exile on a world of blue and red?

  The blue day is at its close. I would like to mount the slope and watch the blue sun’s passing—but the remembrance of the red sunset still provokes a queasiness in my stomach. So I will watch from my meadow, and then, if there is darkness, I will crawl into the lifeboat like a bear into a cave, and wait the coming of light.

  The blue day goes. The sapphire sun wanders into the western forest, the sky glooms to blue-black, the stars show like unfamiliar home-places.

  For some time now I have heard no music; perhaps it has been so all-present that I neglect it.

  The blue star is gone, the air chills. I think that deep night is on me indeed…I hear a throb of sound, plangent, plaintive; I turn my head. The east glows pale pearl. A silver globe floats up into the night like a lotus drifting on a lake: a great ball like six of Earth’s full moons. Is this a sun, a satellite, a burnt-out star? What a freak of cosmology I have chanced upon!

  The silver sun—I must call it a sun, although it casts a cool satin light—moves in an aureole like oyster-shell. Once again the color of the planet changes. The lake glistens like quicksilver, the trees are hammered metal…The silver star passes over a high wrack of clouds, and the music seems to burst forth as if somewhere someone flung wide curtains: the music of moonlight, medieval marble, piazzas with slim fluted colonnades, soft sighing strains…

  I wander down to the lake. Across on the opposite shore once more I see the town. It seems clearer, more substantial; I note details that shimmered away to vagueness before—a wide terrace beside the lake, spiral columns, a row of urns. The silhouette is, I think, the same as when I saw it under the blue sun: great silken tents; shimmering, reflecting cusps of light; pillars of carved stone, lucent as milk-glass; fantastic fixtures of no obvious purpose…Barges drift along the dark quicksilver lake like moths, great sails bellying idly, the rigging a mesh of cobweb. Nodules of light, like fairy lanterns, hang on the stays, along the masts…On sudden thought, I turn, look up to my own meadow. I see a row of booths as at an old-time fair, a circle of pale stone set in the turf, a host of filmy shapes.

  Step by step I edge toward my lifeboat. The music waxes, chords and structures of wonderful sweetness. I peer at one of the shapes, but the outlines waver. It moves to the emotion of the music—or does the motion of the shape generate the music?

  I run forward, shouting hoarsely. One of the shapes slips past me, and I look into a blur where a face might be. I come to a halt, panting hard; I stand on the marble circle. I stamp; it rings solid. I walk toward the booths, they seem to display complex things of pale cloth and dim metal—but as I look my eyes mist over as with tears. The music goes far far away, my meadow lies bare and quiet. My feet press into silver-black turf; in the sky hangs the silver-black star.

  I am sitting with my back to the lifeboat, staring across the lake, which is still as a mirror. I have arrived at a set of theories.

  My primary proposition is that I am sane—a necessary article of faith; why bother even to speculate otherwise? So—events occurring outside my own mind cause everything I have seen and heard. But—note this!—these sights and sounds do not obey the laws of classical science; in many respects they seem particularly subjective.

  It must be, I tell myself, that both objectivity and subjectivity enter into the situation. I receive impressions which my brain finds unfamiliar, and so translates to the concept most closely related. By this theory the inhabitants of this world are constantly close; I move unknowingly through their palaces and arcades; they dance incessantly around me. As my mind gains sensitivity, I verge upon rapport with their way of life and I see them. More exactly, I sense something which creates an image in the visual region of my brain. Their emotions, the pattern of their life sets up a kind of vibration which sounds in my brain as music…The reality of these creatures I am sure I will never know. They are diaphane, I am flesh; they live in a world of spirit, I plod the turf with my heavy feet.

  These last days I have neglected to broadcast the SOS. Small lack; the batteries are about done.

  The silver sun is at the zenith, and leans westward. What comes next? Back to the red sun? Or darkness? Certainly this is no ordinary planetary system; the course of this world along its orbit must resemble one of the pre-Copernican epicycles.

  I believe that my brain is gradually tuning into phase with this world, reaching a new high level of sensitivity. If my theory is correct, the élan vital of the native beings expresses itself in my brain as music. On Earth we would perhaps use the word ‘telepathy’…So I am practici
ng, concentrating, opening my consciousness wide to these new perceptions. Ocean mariners know a trick of never looking directly at a far light lest it strike the eyes’ blind spot. I am using a similar device of never staring directly at one of the gauzy beings. I allow the image to establish itself, build itself up, and by this technique they appear quite definitely human. I sometimes think I can glimpse the features. The women are like sylphs, achingly beautiful; the men—I have not seen one in detail, but their carriage, their form is hauntingly familiar.

  The music is always part of the background, just as rustling of leaves is part of a forest. The mood of these creatures seems to change with their sun, so I hear music to suit. The red sun gave them passionate melancholy, the blue sun merriment. Under the silver star they are delicate, imaginative, wistful, and in my mind sounds Debussy’s La Mer and Les Sirènes.

  The silver day is on the wane. Today I sat beside the lake with the trees a screen of silver filigree, watching the moth-barges drift back and forth. What is their function? Can life such as this be translated in terms of economies, ecology, sociology? I doubt it. The word intelligence may not even enter the picture; is not our brain a peculiarly anthropoid characteristic, and is not intelligence a function of our peculiarly anthropoid brain?…A portly barge sways near, with swamp-globes of orange and blue in the rigging, and I forget my hypotheses. I can never know the truth, and it is perfectly possible that these creatures are no more aware of me than I originally was aware of them.

  Time goes by; I return to the lifeboat. A young woman-shape whirls past. I pause, peer into her face; she tilts her head, her eyes burn into mine as she passes, mocking topaz, not unkindly…I try an SOS—listlessly, because I suspect the batteries to be dank and dead.

  And indeed they are.

  The silver star is like an enormous Christmas tree bauble, round and glistening. It floats low, and once more I stand irresolute, half-expecting night.

  The star falls; the forest receives it. The sky dulls, and night has come.

  I face the east, my back pressed to the pragmatic hull of my lifeboat. Nothing.

  I have no conception of the passage of time. Darkness, timelessness. Somewhere clocks turn minute hands, second hands, hour hands—I stand staring into the night, perhaps as slow as a sandstone statue, perhaps as feverish as a salamander.

  In the darkness there is a peculiar cessation of sound. The music has dwindled; down through a series of wistful chords, a forlorn last cry…

  A glow in the east, a green glow, spreading. Up rises a magnificent green sphere, the essence of all green, the tincture of emeralds, glowing as grass, fresh as mint, deep as the sea.

  A throb of sound: rhythmical strong music, swinging and veering.

  The green light floods the planet, and I prepare for the green day.

  I am almost one with the native things. I wander among their pavilions, I pause by their booths to ponder their stuffs and wares: silken medallions, spangles and circlets of woven metal, cups of fluff and iridescent puff, puddles of color and wafts of light-shot gauze. There are chains of green glass; captive butterflies; spheres which seem to hold all the heavens, all the clouds, all the stars.

  And to all sides of me go the flicker and flit of the dream-people. The men are all vague, but familiar; the women turn me smiles of ineffable provocation. But I will drive myself mad with temptations; what I see is no more than the formulation of my own brain, an interpretation…And this is tragedy, for there is one creature so unutterably lovely that whenever I see the shape that is she, my throat aches and I run forward, to peer into her eyes that are not eyes…

  Today I clasped my arms around her, expecting yielding wisp. Surprisingly there was the feel of supple flesh. I kissed her, cheek, chin, mouth. Such a look of perplexity on the sweet face as I have never seen; Heaven knows what strange act the creature thought me to be performing.

  She went her way, but the music is strong and triumphant: the voice of cornets, the shoulder of resonant bass below.

  A man comes past; something in his stride, his posture, plucks at my memory. I step forward; I will gaze into his face, I will plumb the vagueness.

  He whirls past like a figure on a carousel; he wears flapping ribbons of silk and pompoms of spangled satin. I pound after him, I plant myself in his path. He strides past with a side-glance, and I stare into the rigid mask-like face.

  It is my own face.

  He wears my face, he walks with my stride. He is I.

  Already is the green day gone?

  The green sun goes, and the music takes on depth. No cessation now; there is preparation, imminence…What is that other sound? A far spasm of something growling and clashing like a broken gear-box.

  It fades out.

  The green sun goes down in a sky like a peacock’s tail. The music is slow, exalted.

  The west fades, the east glows. The music goes toward the east, to the great bands of rose, yellow, orange, lavender. Cloud-flecks burst into flame. A golden glow consumes the sky, north and south.

  The music takes on volume, a liturgical chanting.

  Up rises the new sun—a gorgeous golden ball. The music swells into a paean of light, fulfillment, regeneration…Hark! A second time the harsh sound grates across the music.

  Into the sky, across the sun, drifts the shape of a spaceship. It hovers over my meadow, the landing jets come down like plumes.

  The ship lands.

  I hear the mutter of voices—men’s voices.

  The music is vanished; the marble carvings, the tinsel booths, the wonderful silken cities are gone.

  III

  Galispell looked up, rubbed his chin.

  Captain Hess asked anxiously, “What do you think of it?”

  For a moment Galispell made no reply; then he said, “It’s a strange document…” He looked for a long moment out the window. “What happened after you picked him up? Did you see any of these phenomena he talks about?”

  “Not a thing.” Captain Hess solemnly shook his big round head. “Sure, the system was a fantastic gaggle of dark stars and fluorescent planets and burnt-out old suns; maybe all these things played hob with his mind. He didn’t seem too overjoyed to see us, that’s a fact—just stood there, staring at us as if we were trespassers. ‘We got your SOS,’ I told him. ‘Jump aboard, wrap yourself around a good meal!’ He came walking forward as if his feet were dead.

  “Well, to make a long story short, he finally came aboard. We loaded on his lifeboat and took off.

  “During the voyage back he had nothing to do with anybody—just kept to himself, walking up and down the promenade.

  “He had a habit of putting his hands to his head; one time I asked him if he was sick, if he wanted the medic to look him over. He said no, there was nothing wrong with him. That’s about all I know of the man.

  “We made Sun, and came down toward Earth. Personally, I didn’t see what happened because I was on the bridge, but this is what they tell me:

  “As Earth got bigger and bigger Evans began to act more restless than usual, wincing and turning his head back and forth. When we were about a thousand miles out, he gave a kind of furious jump.

  “‘The noise!’ he yelled. ‘The horrible noise!’ And with that he ran astern, jumped into his lifeboat, cast off, and they tell me disappeared back the way we came.

  “And that’s all I got to tell you, Mr. Galispell. It’s too bad, after our taking all that trouble to get him, Evans decided to pull up stakes—but that’s the way it goes.”

  “He took off back along your course?”

  “That’s right. If you’re wanting to ask, could he have made the planet where we found him, the answer is, not likely.”

  “But there’s a chance?” persisted Galispell.

  “Oh, sure,” said Captain Hess. “There’s a chance.”

  Afterword to “Noise”

  Today is a wonderful time to be alive—the most exciting and colorful age in the whole tremendous history of man. We are
in a period of change-over, from a civilization based of European ideas that has lost its momentum and grown tired, to a new civilization on whose basic patterns we are still working. No one could call this an era of calm; quite the reverse. Events come at us with a rapidity that bewilders most people and alarms not a few. Science fiction provides a primary education for this new age exactly as history and geography books have educated us for the present. Science fiction gives us a head start at fitting ourselves to the new conditions, and we have an enormous advantage over people who ignore the future.

  —Jack Vance 1953

  The Kokod Warriors

  I

  Magnus Ridolph sat on the Glass Jetty at Providencia, fingering a quarti-quartino of Blue Ruin. At his back rose Granatee Head; before him spread Mille-Iles Ocean and the myriad little islands, each with its trees and neo-classic villa. A magnificent blue sky extended overhead; and beneath his feet, under the glass floor of the jetty, lay Coral Canyon, with schools of sea-moths flashing and flickering like metal snowflakes. Magnus Ridolph sipped his liqueur and considered a memorandum from his bank describing a condition barely distinguishable from poverty.

  He had been perhaps too trusting with his money. A few months previously, the Outer Empire Investment and Realty Society, to which he had entrusted a considerable sum, was found to be bankrupt. The Chairman of the Board and the General Manager, a Mr. See and a Mr. Holpers, had been paying each other unexpectedly large salaries, most of which had been derived from Magnus Ridolph’s capital investment.

  Magnus Ridolph sighed, glanced at his liqueur. This would be the last of these; hereafter he must drink vin ordinaire, a fluid rather like tarragon vinegar, prepared from the fermented rind of a local cactus.

  A waiter approached. “A lady wishes to speak to you, sir.”

  Magnus Ridolph preened his neat white beard. “Show her over, by all means.”