by Jack Vance
Pharesm indulgently shook his head. “Caution, like any other virtue, can be carried to an extreme. The divination must proceed at once.”
Cugel attempted to argue further but Pharesm was adamant, and presently glided off down the trail.
Cugel disconsolately went to the side, considering first this stratagem, then that. The sun neared the zenith, and the workmen began to speculate as to the nature of the viands to be served for their mid-day meal. At last the Chief Chade signaled; all put down their tools and gathered about the cart which contained the repast.
Cugel jocularly called out that he might be persuaded to share the meal, but the Chief Chade would not hear of it. “As in all of Pharesm’s activities, an exactitude of consequence must prevail. It is an unthinkable discrepancy that fifty-four men should consume the food intended for fifty-three.”
Cugel could contrive no apposite reply, and sat in silence while the rock-hewers munched at meat pies, cheeses and salt fish. All ignored him save for one, a quarter-ell man whose generosity far exceeded his stature, and who undertook to reserve for Cugel a certain portion of his food. Cugel replied that he was not at all hungry, and rising to his feet wandered off through the project, hoping to discover some forgotten cache of food. He prowled here and there, but the rubble-gatherers had removed every trace of substance extraneous to the pattern. With appetite unassuaged Cugel arrived at the center of the work where, sprawled on a carved disk, he spied a most peculiar creature: essentially a gelatinous globe swimming with luminous particles from which a number of transparent tubes or tentacles dwindled away to nothing. Cugel bent to examine the creature, which pulsed with a slow internal rhythm. He prodded it with his finger, and bright little flickers rippled away from the point of contact. Interesting: a creature of unique capabilities!
Removing a pin from his garments, he prodded a tentacle, which emitted a peevish pulse of light, while the golden flecks in its substance surged back and forth. More intrigued than ever, Cugel hitched himself close, and gave himself to experimentation, probing here and there, watching the angry flickers and sparkles with great amusement.
A new thought occurred to Cugel. The creature displayed qualities reminiscent of both coelenterate and echinoderm. A terrene nudibranch? A mollusc deprived of its shell? More importantly, was the creature edible?
Cugel brought forth his amulet, applied it to the central globe and to each of the tentacles. He heard neither chime nor buzz: the creature was non-poisonous. He unsheathed his knife, sought to excise one of the tentacles, but found the substance too resilient and tough to be cut. There was a brazier nearby, kept aglow for forging and sharpening the workers’ tools. He lifted the creature by two of its tentacles, carried it to the brazier and arranged it over the fire. He toasted it carefully and when he deemed it sufficiently cooked, sought to eat it. Finally, after various undignified efforts, he crammed the entire creature down his throat, finding it without taste or sensible nutritive volume.
The stone-carvers were returning to their work. With a significant glance for the foreman Cugel set off down the trail.
Not far distant was the dwelling of Pharesm the Sorcerer: a long low building of melted rock surmounted by eight oddly shaped domes of copper, mica, and bright blue glass. Pharesm himself sat at leisure before the dwelling, surveying the valley with a serene and all-inclusive magnanimity. He held up a hand in calm salute. “I wish you pleasant travels and success in all future endeavors.”
“The sentiment is naturally valued,” said Cugel with some bitterness. “You might however have rendered a more meaningful service by extending a share of your noon meal.”
Pharesm’s placid benevolence was as before. “This would have been an act of mistaken altruism. Too fulsome a generosity corrupts the recipient and stultifies his resource.”
Cugel gave a bitter laugh. “I am a man of iron principle, and I will not complain, even though, lacking any better fare, I was forced to devour a great transparent insect which I found at the heart of your rock-carving.”
Pharesm swung about with a suddenly intent expression. “A great transparent insect, you say?”
“Insect, epiphyte, mollusc—who knows? It resembled no creature I have yet seen, and its flavor, even after carefully grilling at the brazier, was not distinctive.”
Pharesm floated seven feet into the air, to turn the full power of his gaze down at Cugel. He spoke in a low harsh voice: “Describe this creature in detail!”
Wondering at Pharesm’s severity, Cugel obeyed. “It was thus and thus as to dimension.” He indicated with his hands. “In color it was a gelatinous transparency shot with numberless golden specks. These flickered and pulsed when the creature was disturbed. The tentacles seemed to grow flimsy and disappear rather than terminate. The creature evinced a certain sullen determination, and ingestion proved difficult.”
Pharesm clutched at his head, hooking his fingers into the yellow down of his hair. He rolled his eyes upward and uttered a tragic cry. “Ah! Five hundred years I have toiled to entice this creature, despairing, doubting, brooding by night, yet never abandoning hope that my calculations were accurate and my great talisman cogent. Then, when finally it appears, you fall upon it for no other reason than to sate your repulsive gluttony!”
Cugel, somewhat daunted by Pharesm’s wrath, asserted his absence of malicious intent. Pharesm would not be mollified. He pointed out that Cugel had committed trespass and hence had forfeited the option of pleading innocence. “Your very existence is a mischief, compounded by bringing the unpleasant fact to my notice. Benevolence prompted me to forbearance, which now I perceive for a grave mistake.”
“In this case,” stated Cugel with dignity, “I will depart your presence at once. I wish you good fortune for the balance of the day, and now, farewell.”
“Not so fast,” said Pharesm in the coldest of voices. “Exactitude has been disturbed; the wrong which has been committed demands a counter-act to validate the Law of Equipoise. I can define the gravity of your act in this manner: should I explode you on this instant into the most minute of your parts the atonement would measure one ten-millionth of your offense. A more stringent retribution becomes necessary.”
Cugel spoke in great distress. “I understand that an act of consequence was performed, but remember! my participation was basically casual. I categorically declare first my absolute innocence, second my lack of criminal intent, and third my effusive apologies. And now, since I have many leagues to travel, I will—”
Pharesm made a peremptory gesture. Cugel fell silent. Pharesm drew a deep breath. “You fail to understand the calamity you have visited upon me. I will explain, so that you may not be astounded by the rigors which await you. As I have adumbrated, the arrival of the creature was the culmination of my great effort. I determined its nature through a perusal of forty-two thousand librams, all written in cryptic language: a task requiring a hundred years. During a second hundred years I evolved a pattern to draw it in upon itself and prepared exact specification. Next I assembled stone-cutters, and across a period of three hundred years gave solid form to my pattern. Since like subsumes like, the variates and intercongeles create a suprapullulation of all areas, qualities and intervals into a crystorrhoid whorl, eventually exciting the ponentiation of a pro-ubietal chute. Today occurred the concatenation; the ‘creature’, as you call it, pervolved upon itself; in your idiotic malice you devoured it.”
Cugel, with a trace of haughtiness, pointed out that the “idiotic malice” to which the distraught sorcerer referred was in actuality simple hunger. “In any event, what is so extraordinary about the ‘creature’? Others equally ugly may be found in the net of any fisherman.”
Pharesm drew himself to his full height, glared down at Cugel. “The ‘creature’,” he said in a grating voice, “is TOTALITY. The central globe is all of space, viewed from the inverse. The tubes are vortices into various eras, and what terrible acts you have accomplished with your prodding and poking, your boiling and
chewing, are impossible to imagine!”
“What of the effects of digestion?” inquired Cugel delicately. “Will the various components of space, time and existence retain their identity after passing the length of my inner tract?”
“Bah. The concept is jejune. Enough to say that you have wreaked damage and created a serious tension in the ontological fabric. Inexorably you are required to restore equilibrium.”
Cugel held out his hands. “Is it not possible a mistake has been made? That the ‘creature’ was no more than pseudo-TOTALITY? Or is it conceivable that the ‘creature’ may by some means be lured forth once more?”
“The first two theories are untenable. As to the last, I must confess that certain frantic expedients have been forming in my mind.” Pharesm made a sign, and Cugel’s feet became attached to the soil. “I must go to my divinatory and learn the full significance of the distressing events. In due course I will return.”
“At which time I will be feeble with hunger,” said Cugel fretfully. “Indeed, a crust of bread and a bite of cheese would have averted all the events for which I am now reproached.”
“Silence!” thundered Pharesm. “Do not forget that your penalty remains to be fixed; it is the height of impudent recklessness to hector a person already struggling to maintain his judicious calm!”
“Allow me to say this much,” replied Cugel. “If you return from your divining to find me dead and desiccated here on the path, you will have wasted much time fixing upon a penalty.”
“The restoration of vitality is a small task,” said Pharesm. “A variety of deaths by contrasting processes may well enter into your judgment.” He started toward his divinatory, then turned back and made an impatient gesture. “Come, it is easier to feed you than return to the road.”
Cugel’s feet were once more free and he followed Pharesm through a wide arch into the divinatory. In a broad room with splayed gray walls, illuminated by three-colored polyhedra, Cugel devoured the food Pharesm caused to appear. Meanwhile Pharesm secluded himself in his workroom, where he occupied himself with his divinations. As time passed Cugel grew restless, and on three occasions approached the arched entrance. On each occasion a Presentment came to deter him, first in the shape of a leaping ghoul, next as a zig-zag blaze of energy, and finally as a score of glittering purple wasps.
Discouraged, Cugel went to a bench, and sat waiting with elbows on long legs, hands under his chin.
Pharesm at last reappeared, his robe wrinkled, the fine yellow down of his hair disordered into a multitude of small spikes. Cugel slowly rose to his feet.
“I have learned the whereabouts of TOTALITY,” said Pharesm, in a voice like the strokes of a great gong. “In indignation, removing itself from your stomach, it has recoiled a million years into the past.”
Cugel gave his head a solemn shake. “Allow me to offer my sympathy, and my counsel, which is: never despair! Perhaps the ‘creature’ will choose to pass this way again.”
“An end to your chatter! TOTALITY must be recovered. Come.”
Cugel reluctantly followed Pharesm into a small room walled with blue tile, roofed with a tall cupola of blue and orange glass. Pharesm pointed to a black disk at the center of the floor. “Stand there.”
Cugel glumly obeyed. “In a certain sense, I feel that—”
“Silence!” Pharesm came forward. “Notice this object!” He displayed an ivory sphere the size of two fists, carved in exceedingly fine detail. “Here you see the pattern from which my great work is derived. It expresses the symbolic significance of NULLITY to which TOTALITY must necessarily attach itself, by Kratinjae’s Second Law of Cryptorrhoid Affinities, with which you are possibly familiar.”
“Not in every aspect,” said Cugel. “But may I ask your intentions?”
Pharesm’s mouth moved in a cool smile. “I am about to attempt one of the most cogent spells ever evolved: a spell so fractious, harsh, and coactive, that Phandaal, Ranking Sorcerer of Grand Motholam, barred its use. If I am able to control it, you will be propelled one million years into the past. There you will reside until you have accomplished your mission, when you may return.”
Cugel stepped quickly from the black disk. “I am not the man for this mission, whatever it may be. I fervently urge the use of someone else!”
Pharesm ignored the expostulation. “The mission, of course, is to bring the symbol into contact with TOTALITY.” He brought forth a wad of tangled gray tissue. “In order to facilitate your search, I endow you with this instrument which relates all possible vocables to every conceivable system of meaning.” He thrust the net into Cugel’s ear, where it swiftly engaged itself with the nerve of consonant expression. “Now,” said Pharesm, “you need listen to a strange language for but three minutes when you become proficient in its use. And now, another article to enhance the prospect of success: this ring. Notice the jewel: should you approach to within a league of TOTALITY, darting lights within the gem will guide you. Is all clear?”
Cugel gave a reluctant nod. “There is another matter to be considered. Assume that your calculations are incorrect and that TOTALITY has returned only nine hundred thousand years into the past: what then? Must I dwell out my life in this possibly barbarous era?”
Pharesm frowned in displeasure. “Such a situation involves an error of ten percent. My system of reckoning seldom admits of deviation greater than one per cent.”
Cugel began to make calculations, but now Pharesm signaled to the black disk. “Back! And do not again move hence, or you will be the worse for it!”
Sweat oozing from his glands, knees quivering and sagging, Cugel returned to the place designated.
Pharesm retreated to the far end of the room, where he stepped into a coil of gold tubing, which sprang spiraling up to clasp his body. From a desk he took four black disks, which he began to shuffle and juggle with such fantastic dexterity that they blurred in Cugel’s sight. Pharesm at last flung the disks away; spinning and wheeling they hung in the air, gradually drifting toward Cugel.
Pharesm next took up a white tube, pressed it tight against his lips and spoke an incantation. The tube swelled and bulged into a great globe. Pharesm twisted the end shut and shouting a thunderous spell, hurled the globe at the spinning disks, and all exploded. Cugel was surrounded, seized, jerked in all directions outward, compressed with equal vehemence: the net result, a thrust in a direction contrary to all, with an impetus equivalent to the tide of a million years. Among dazzling lights and distorted visions Cugel was transported beyond his consciousness.
Cugel awoke in a glare of orange-gold sunlight, of a radiance he had never known before. He lay on his back looking up into a sky of warm blue, of lighter tone and softer texture than the indigo sky of his own time.
He tested arms and legs and finding no damage, sat upright, then slowly rose to his feet, blinking in the unfamiliar radiance.
The topography had changed only slightly. The mountains to the north were taller and of harsher texture, and Cugel could not identify the way he had come—or, more properly—the way he would come. The site of Pharesm’s project was now a low forest of feather-light green trees, on which hung clusters of red berries. The valley was as before, though the rivers flowed by different courses and three great cities were visible at varying distances. The air drifting up from the valley carried a strange tart fragrance mingled with an antique exhalation of moulder and must, and it seemed to Cugel that a peculiar melancholy hung in the air; in fact, he thought to hear music: a slow plaintive melody, so sad as to bring tears to his eyes. He searched for the source of the music, but it faded and disappeared even as he sought it, and only when he ceased to listen did it return.
For the first time Cugel looked toward the cliffs which rose to the west, and now the sense of déjà-vu was stronger than ever. Cugel pulled at his chin in puzzlement. The time was a million years previous to that other occasion on which he had seen the cliffs, and hence, by definition, must be the first. But it was also the seco
nd time, for he well remembered his initial experience of the cliffs. On the other hand, the logic of time could not be contravened, and by such reckoning this view preceded the other. A paradox, thought Cugel: a puzzle indeed! Which experience had provided the background to the poignant sense of familiarity he had felt on both occasions?…Cugel dismissed the subject as unprofitable and started to turn away when movement caught his eye. He looked back up the face of the cliffs, and the air was suddenly full and rich with the music he had heard before, music of anguish and exalted despair. Cugel stared in wonder. A great winged creature wearing white robes flapped on high along the face of the cliff. The wings were long, ribbed with black chitin, sheathed with gray membrane. Cugel watched in awe as it swooped into a cave high up in the face of the cliff.
A gong tolled, from a direction Cugel could not determine. Overtones shuddered across the air, and when they died, the unheard music became almost audible. From far over the valley came one of the Winged Beings, carrying a human form, of what age and sex Cugel could not determine. It hovered beside the cliff and dropped its burden. Cugel thought to hear a faint cry and the music was sad, stately, sonorous. The body seemed to fall slowly down the great height and struck at last at the base of the cliff. The Winged Being, after dropping the body, glided to a high ledge, where it folded its wings and stood like a man, staring over the valley. Cugel shrank back behind a rock. Had he been seen? He could not be sure. He heaved a deep sigh. This sad golden world of the past was not to his liking; the sooner he could leave the better. He examined the ring which Pharesm had furnished, but the gem shone like dull glass, with none of the darting glitters which would point the direction to TOTALITY. It was as Cugel feared. Pharesm had erred in his calculations and Cugel could never return to his own time.