Nopalgarth

by Jack Vance

  “Highway Patrol,” said one of the troopers. “Who are you?”

  Tarbert told them. After a moment the patrolmen turned back toward the highway. One of the flashlight beams played into the shadow of the cypress trees. The light hesitated, steadied. The patrolmen gasped. Their revolvers jerked out into their hands. “Come out of there—whoever you are!”

  For answer there were two puffs of pink flame, two twinkling pink lines. The patrolmen flared, tumbled back, collapsed like empty sacks.

  Burke cried out, stumbled forward, stopped short. Pttdu Apiptix looked at him briefly, then turned to the door. “Let us go in,” said the voice-box.

  “But these men!” croaked Burke. “You’ve murdered them!”

  “Calm yourself. The corpses will be removed; the automobile also.”

  Burke looked toward the patrol car, now sounding to the metallic sound of the dispatcher’s voice.

  “You don’t seem to understand what you’ve done! We can all be arrested, executed …” His voice died as he realized the nonsense he was talking. Apiptix, ignoring him, walked into the building with two of his fellows at his heels. The remaining two turned back toward the corpses. Burke shrank back with a crawling skin; Tarbert and Margaret retreated before the stalking gray shapes.

  The Xaxans halted at the edge of the pool of light; Burke spoke to Tarbert and Margaret in a bitter voice. “If you harbored any lurking doubts—”

  Tarbert nodded shortly. “I’ve discarded them.”

  Apiptix approached the denopalizer, examined it without comment. He turned to Burke, “This man”—he indicated Tarbert—“is the single Tauptu on Earth. In the time available you might have organized an entire squadron.”

  “I’ve been locked up,” said Burke in a surly tone. The hate he felt for Pttdu Apiptix—could it be completely nopal-inspired? “Also, I’m not sure that denopalizing a large number of persons is the best thing to do.”

  “What else do you propose?”

  Tarbert spoke soothingly. “We feel that we must learn more about the nopal. Perhaps there are easier ways to denopalize.” He scrutinized the Xaxans with bright interest. “Have you yourselves tried other means?”

  Apiptix’s mud-colored eyes felt impassively over Tarbert. “We are warriors, not savants. The nopal of Nopalgarth come to Ixax; once a month we burn them away from our minds. They are your pests. You must take immediate steps against them.”

  Tarbert nodded—with rather too easy an acquiescence, thought Burke resentfully. “We agree that you have cause for impatience.”

  “We need time!” Burke exclaimed. “Surely you can spare us a month or two!”

  “Why do you need time? The denopalizer is ready! Now you must use it!”

  “There is such an enormous amount to be learned!” cried Burke. “What are the nopal? No one knows. They seem repulsive, but who knows? Perhaps they even exert a beneficial effect!”

  “An amusing speculation.” Apiptix appeared anything but amused. “I assure you that the nopal are harmful; they have harmed Ixax by causing a war of a hundred years.”

  “Are the nopal intelligent?” Burke continued. “Can they communicate with men? These are things we want to know.”

  Apiptix regarded him with what seemed to be amazement. “From where do you derive these ideas?”

  “Sometimes I think the nopal is trying to tell me something.”

  “To what effect?”

  “I’m not sure. When I come close to a Tauptu there’s an odd sound in my mind: something like gher, gher, gher.”

  Apiptix slowly turned his head, as if not trusting himself to look at Burke.

  Tarbert said, “It’s true that we know very little. Remember, our tradition is to learn first, then act.”

  “What is nopal-cloth?” asked Burke. “Can it be made from anything beside the nopal? And something else which puzzles me—where did the first piece of nopal-cloth come from? If a single man were accidentally denopalized, it’s hard to see how he could have personally fabricated the cloth.”

  “These are irrelevances,” said the Xaxan voice-box.

  “Perhaps, perhaps not,” said Burke. “They indicate an area of ignorance, which may exist for both of us. For instance, do you know how the first piece of nopal-cloth came into existence, and how?”

  The Xaxan stared at him a moment, his beer-colored eyes blank. Burke was unable to read his emotions. Finally the Xaxan said, “The knowledge, if it exists, can not help you destroy the nopal. Proceed then in accordance with your directions.”

  The voice, though flat and mechanical, still managed to convey sinister overtones. But Burke, summoning all his courage, persisted: “We just can’t act blindly. There’s too much we don’t know. This machine destroys the nopal, but it can’t be the best method, or even the best approach to the problem! Look at your own planet: in ruins; your people: almost wiped out! Would you want to inflict the same disaster on Earth? Give us a little time to learn, to experiment, to get a grip on the subject!”

  For a moment the Xaxan held to silence. Then the voice-box said, “You Earthmen are over-ripe with subtlety. For us the destruction of nopal is the basic and single issue. Remember, we do not need your help; we can destroy the nopal of Nopalgarth at any time: tonight, tomorrow. Do you wish to know how we will do this, if necessary?” Without waiting for answer he stalked to the table, lifted the scrap of nopal-cloth. “You have used this material, you know its peculiar qualities. You know that it is without mass and inertia, that it responds to telekinesis, that it is almost infinitely extensible, that it is impenetrable to the nopal.”

  “So we understand.”

  “If necessary, we are prepared to envelope Earth in a swath of nopal-cloth. We can do this. The nopal will be trapped and as Earth moves they will be pulled away from the brains of their hosts. The brains will hemorrhage and people of Earth will die.”

  No one spoke. Apiptix continued. “This is a drastic recourse—but we will be tormented no longer. I have explained what must be done. Exterminate your nopal, or we will do so ourselves.” He turned away, and with his two comrades, crossed the workshop.

  Burke followed, burning with indignation. Trying to keep his voice calm, he said to the tall black-cloaked backs: “You can’t expect us to perform miracles! We need time!”

  Apiptix did not slow his pace. “You have one week”. He and his fellows passed out into the night. Burke and Tarbert followed. The two who had remained outside appeared from the shadow of the cypress trees, but the corpses and the patrol car were nowhere to be seen. Burke tried to speak, but his throat tightened and the words refused to come. As he and Tarbert watched, the Xaxans stood stiffly, then rose into the night, accelerating, blurring, disappearing into the spaces between the stars.

  “How in the world do they do that?” Tarbert asked in wonder.

  “I don’t know.” Nauseated and limp Burke sank down upon a step.

  “Marvelous!” Tarbert said. “A dynamic people—they make us seem like clams.”

  Burke gazed at him with suspicion. “Dynamic and murderous,” he said sourly. “They’ve mixed us a pot of trouble. This place will be swarming with police.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Tarbert. “The bodies, the car, are gone. It’s an unfortunate affair—”

  “Especially for the cops.”

  “You’ve got nopal trouble,” Tarbert remarked, and Burke forced himself to believe that Tarbert was right. He rose to his feet; they returned inside.

  Margaret waited in the outer office. “Are they gone?”

  Burke nodded curtly. “They’re gone.”

  Margaret shuddered. “I’ve never been so afraid in my life. It’s like swimming and seeing a shark come toward you.”

  “Your nopal is twisting things,” said Burke hollowly. “I can’t think straight either.” He looked at the denopalizer. “I suppose I should take the treatment.” His head suddenly began to throb with pain. “The nopal doesn’t think so.” He sat down, closed his e
yes. The ache slowly diminished.

  “I’m not so sure it’s a good idea,” said Tarbert. “You’d better keep your nopal for awhile. One of us has to enlist recruits for the squadron—as the Xaxan puts it.”

  “Then what?” asked Burke in a muffled voice. “Tommy-guns? Molotov cocktails? Bombs? Who do we fight first?”

  “It’s so brutal and senseless!” Margaret protested fiercely.

  Burke agreed. “It’s a brutal situation —and we can’t do much about it. They allow us no freedom of action.”

  “They’ve spent a century fighting these things,” Tarbert argued. “They probably know all there is to know about the nopal.”

  Burke sat up in outrage. “Good heavens no! They admit they know nothing! They’re pushing us, trying to keep us off-balance. Why? A few days more or less—what’s the difference? There’s something peculiar going on!”

  “Nopal-talk. The Xaxans are harsh, but they seem honest. Apparently they aren’t as ruthless as the nopal would have you think. Otherwise they’d denopalize Earth at once without giving us the chance to do it ourselves.”

  Burke tried to order his thoughts.

  “Either that,” he said presently, “or they have another reason for wanting Earth denopalized but populated.”

  “What reason could they have?” asked Margaret.

  Tarbert shook his head skeptically. “We’re becoming overripe again, as the Xaxans would say.”

  “They allow us no time whatever for research,” said Burke. “Personally I don’t want to embark on a project as big as this without studying it. It’s only reasonable that they give us a few months.”

  “We’ve got a week,” said Tarbert.

  “A week!” snarled Burke. He kicked the denopalizer. “If they’d allow us to work up something different, something easy and painless, we’d all be better off.” He poured a cup of coffee, tasted it, spat in disgust. “It’s been boiling.”

  “I’ll make fresh,” Margaret said hurriedly.

  “We’ve got a week,” said Tarbert, pacing with hands behind his back. “A week to conceive, explore and develop a new science.”

  “Nothing to it,” said Burke. “It’s only necessary to fix on a method of approach, invent tools and research techniques, work up nomenclatures. Then it’s duck soup. We merely concentrate on the specific application: the swift denopalization of Nopalgarth. After sorting through and testing our ideas, we can take the rest of the week off.”

  “Well, to work,” Tarbert said dryly. “Our starting point is the fact that the nopal exist. I’m watching your private nopal, and I can see that it doesn’t like me.”

  Burke squirmed fretfully, aware—or at least imagining himself aware—of the entity on his neck.

  “Don’t remind us,” said Margaret, returning with the percolator. “It’s bad enough simply knowing.”

  “Sorry,” said Tarbert. “So we start with the nopal, creatures completely outside our old scheme of things. The simple fact of their existence is meaningful. What are they? Ghosts? Spirits? Demons?”

  “What difference does it make?” growled Burke. “Classifying them doesn’t explain them.”

  Tarbert paid him no heed. “Whatever they are, they’re built of stuff foreign to us: a new kind of matter, only semi-visible, impalpable, without mass or inertia. They seem to draw nourishment from the mind, from the process of thought, and their dead bodies respond to telekinesis, a most suggestive situation.”

  “It suggests that thought is a process rather more substantial than we’ve heretofore believed,” said Burke. “Or perhaps I should say that there seem to be substantial processes going on, which relate to thought in some manner we can’t yet define.”

  “Telepathy, clairvoyance, and the like—the so-called psionic phenomena —indicate the same, of course,” mused Tarbert. “It’s possible that nopal-stuff is the operative material. When something—a thought or a vivid impression—passes from one mind to another, the minds are physically linked —somehow, in some degree. Action at a distance can’t be allowed. In order to know the nopal, we might well concern ourselves with thought.”

  Burke wearily shook his head. “We know no more about thought than we do about the nopal. Even less. Encephalographs record a by-product of thought. Surgeons report that certain parts of the brain are associated with certain kinds of thought. We suspect that telepathy occurs instantaneously, if no faster—”

  “How could anything be faster than instantaneous?” Margaret inquired.

  “It could arrive before it started. In which case it’s called precognition.”

  “Oh.”

  “In any event it seems that thought is a different stuff from our usual matter, that it obeys different laws, acts through a different medium, in a different dimension-set, in short, works through a different space—implying a different universe.”

  Tarbert frowned. “You’re getting a little carried away; you’re using the word ‘thought’ rather too easily. After all, what is ‘thought? So far as we know, it’s a word to describe a complex of electrical and chemical processes in our brains, these more elaborate, but intrinsically no more mysterious, than the operation of a computer. With all the good will and predisposition in the world, I can’t see how ‘thought’ can work metaphysical miracles.”

  “In this case,” said Burke, somewhat tartly, “what do you suggest?”

  “Just for a starter, some recent speculations in the field of nuclear physics. You’re naturally aware how the neutrino was discovered: more energy went into a reaction then came out of it, suggesting that an undiscovered particle was at work.

  “Well, new, rather more subtle, discrepancies have shown themselves: Parities and indexes of strangeness don’t come out quite right, and it seems that there’s a new and unsuspected ‘weak’ force at work.”

  “Where does all this take us?” demanded Burke, then forced himself to erase his exasperated frown and replace it with a somewhat pallid smile. “Sorry.”

  Tarbert made an unworried gesture. “I’m watching your nopal… . Where does all this take us? We know of two strong forces: nuclear-binding energy, electro-magnetic fields; and—if we ignore the beta decay force—one weak force: gravity. The fourth force is far weaker than gravity, even less perceptible than the neutrino. The implications seem to be—or at least, may be—that the universe has a shadow counterpart, completely congruent, based upon this fourth force. It’s still all one universe naturally and there’s no question of new dimensions or anything bizarre. Just that the material universe has at least another aspect composed of a substance, or field, or structure—whatever you want to call it—invisible to our senses and sensor mechanisms.”

  “I’ve read something of this in one of the journals,” said Burke. “At the time I didn’t pay too much attention… . I’m sure you’re on the right track. This weak-force universe, or para-cosmos, must be the environment of the nopal, as well as the domain of psionic phenomena.”

  Margaret was moved to exclaim. “But you insisted that this fourth-force ‘para-cosmos’ is undetectable! If telepathy isn’t detectable, how do we know it exists?”

  Tarbert laughed. “A lot of people say it doesn’t exist. They haven’t seen the nopal.” He turned a wry glance at the space over Burke’s and Margaret’s heads. “The fact is that the para-cosmos is not quite undetectable. If it were, the discrepancies by which the fourth force has been discovered would never have been noticed.”

  “Assuming all this,” said Burke, “and of course we’ve got to assume something, it appears that the fourth force, if sufficiently concentrated, can influence matter. More accurately, the fourth force influences matter, but only when the force is intensely concentrated do we notice the effect.”

  Margaret was puzzled. “Telepathy is a projection or a beam of this ‘fourth force’?”

  “No,” said Tarbert. “I wouldn’t think so. Remember, our brains can’t generate the ‘fourth force.’ I don’t think we need to stray too far from co
nventional physics to explain psionic events—once we assume the existence of an analogue universe, congruent to our own.”

  “I still don’t see it,” said Margaret. “And isn’t telepathy supposed to be instantaneous? If the analogue world is exactly congruent to our own, why shouldn’t events take place at the same speed?”

  “Well—” Tarbert considered a few minutes. “Here’s some more hypothesis —or I’ll even call it ‘induction.’ What we know of telepathy and the nopal suggests that the analogue particles enjoy considerably greater freedom than our own —balloons compared to bricks. They’re constructed of very weak fields, and also, much more importantly, aren’t constrained to rigidity by the strong fields. In other words, the analogue world is topologically congruent to our own but not dimensionally. In fact, dimensions have no real meaning.”

  “If so, ‘velocity’ is also a meaningless word, and ‘time’ as well,” said Burke. “This may give us a hint as to the theory of the Xaxan space-ships. Do you think it’s possible that somehow they enter the analogue universe?” He held up his hand as Tarbert started to speak. “I know —they’re already in the analogue universe. We mustn’t confuse ourselves with fourth-dimensional concepts.”

  “Correct,” said Tarbert. “But back to the linkage between the universes. I like the balloon-brick image. Each balloon is tied to a brick. The bricks can disturb the balloons, but vice-versa, not so easily. Let’s consider how it works in the case of telepathy. Currents in my mind generate a corresponding flow in the para-cosmos analogue of my mind— my shadow-mind, so to speak. This is a case of the bricks jerking the balloons. By some unknown mechanism, maybe by my analogue self creating analogue vibrations which are interpreted by another analogue personality, the balloons jerk the bricks; the neural currents are transferred back to the receiving brain. If conditions are right.”

  “These ‘conditions,’ ” said Burke sourly, “may very well be the nopal.”