by Jack Vance
“Consider him!” spoke Kerlin. “His lineaments, his apparatus. He is nothing else but anthropoid, and such is his origin, together with all the demons, frits and winged glowing-eyed creatures that infest latter-day Earth. Blikdak, like the others, is from the mind of man. The sweaty condensation, the stench and vileness, the cloacal humors, the brutal delights, the rapes and sodomies, the scatophiliac whims, the manifold tittering lubricities that have drained through humanity formed a vast tumor; so Blikdak assumed his being, so now this is he. You have seen how he molds his being, so he performs his enjoyments. But of Blikdak, enough. I die, I die!” He sank into the chair with heaving chest.
“See me! My eyes vary and waver. My breath is shallow as a bird’s, my bones are the pith of an old vine. I have lived beyond knowledge; in my madness I knew no passage of time. Where there is no knowledge there are no somatic consequences. Now I remember the years and centuries, the millennia, the epochs — they are like quick glimpses through a shutter. So, curing my madness, you have killed me.”
Shierl blinked, drew back. “But when you die? What then? Blikdak …”
Guyal asked, “In the Museum of Man is there no knowledge of the exorcisms necessary to dissolve this demon? He is clearly our first antagonist, our immediacy.”
“Blikdak must be eradicated,” said Kerlin. “Then will I die in ease; then must you assume the care of the Museum.” He licked his white lips. “An ancient principle specifies that, in order to destroy a substance, the nature of the substance must be determined. In short, before Blikdak may be dissolved, we must discover his elemental nature.” And his eyes moved glassily to Guyal.
“Your pronouncement is sound beyond argument,” admitted Guyal, “but how may this be accomplished? Blikdak will never allow such an investigation.”
“No; there must be subterfuge, some instrumentality …”
“The ghosts are part of Blikdak’s stuff?”
“Indeed.”
“Can the ghosts be stayed and prevented?”
“Indeed; in a box of light, the which I can effect by a thought. Yes, a ghost we must have.” Kerlin raised his head. “Baton! one ghost; admit a ghost!”
A moment passed; Kerlin held up his hand. There was a faint scratch at the door, and a soft whine could be heard without. “Open,” said a voice, full of sobs and catches and quavers. “Open and let forth the youthful creatures to Blikdak. He finds boredom and lassitude in his vigil; so let the two come forth to negate his unease.”
Kerlin laboriously rose to his feet. “It is done.”
From behind the door came a sad voice, “I am pent, I am snared in scorching brilliance!”
“Now we discover,” said Guyal. “What dissolves the ghost dissolves Blikdak.”
“True indeed,” assented Kerlin.
“Why not light?” inquired Shierl. “Light parts the fabric of the ghosts like a gust of wind tatters the fog.”
“But merely for their fragility; Blikdak is harsh and solid, and can withstand the fiercest radiance safe in his demon-land alcove.” And Kerlin mused. After a moment he gestured to the door. “We go to the image-expander; there we will explode the ghost to macroid dimension; so shall we find his basis. Guyal of Sfere, you must support my frailness; in truth my limbs are weak as wax.”
On Guyal’s arm he tottered forward, and with Shierl close at their heels they gained the gallery. Here the ghost wept in its cage of light, and searched constantly for a dark aperture to seep his essence through.
Paying him no heed Kerlin hobbled and limped across the gallery. In their wake followed the box of light and perforce the ghost.
“Open the great door,” cried Kerlin in a voice beset with cracking and hoarseness. “The great door into the Cognative Repository!”
Shierl ran ahead and thrust her force against the door; it slid aside, and they looked into the great dark hall, and the golden light from the gallery dwindled into the shadows and was lost.
“Call for Lumen,” Kerlin said.
“Lumen!” cried Guyal. “Lumen, attend!”
Light came to the great hall, and it proved so tall that the pilasters along the wall dwindled to threads, and so long and wide that a man might be winded to fatigue in running a dimension. Spaced in equal rows were the black cases with the copper bosses that Guyal and Shierl had noted on their entry. And above each hung five similar cases, precisely fixed, floating without support.
“What are these?” asked Guyal in wonder.
“Would my poor brain encompassed a hundredth part of what these banks know,” panted Kerlin. “They are great brains crammed with all that is known, experienced, achieved, or recorded by man. Here is all the lost lore, early and late, the fabulous imaginings, the history of ten million cities, beginnings of time and the presumed finalities; the reason for human existence and the reason for the reason. Daily I have labored and toiled in these banks; my achievement has been a synopsis of the most superficial sort: a panorama across a wide and multifarious country.”
Said Shierl, “Would not the craft to destroy Blikdak be contained here?”
“Indeed, indeed; our task would be merely to find the information. Under which casing would we search? Consider these categories: Demonlands; Killings and Mortefactions; Expositions and Dissolutions of Evil; History of Granvilunde (where such an entity was repelled); Attractive and Detractive Hyperordnets; Therapy for Hallucinants and Ghost-takers; Constructive Journal, item for regeneration of burst walls, sub-division for invasion by demons; Procedural Suggestions in Time of Risk … Aye, these and a thousand more. Somewhere is knowledge of how to smite Blikdak’s abhorred face back into his quasiplace. But where to look? There is no Index Major; none except the poor synopsis of my compilation. He who seeks specific knowledge must often go on an extended search …” His voice trailed off. Then: “Forward! Forward through the banks to the Mechanismus.”
So through the banks they went, like roaches in a maze, and behind drifted the cage of light with the wailing ghost. At last they entered a chamber smelling of metal; again Kerlin instructed Guyal and Guyal called, “Attend us, Lumen, attend!”
Through intricate devices walked the three, Guyal lost and rapt beyond inquiry, even though his brain ached with the want of knowing.
At a tall booth Kerlin halted the cage of light. A pane of vitrean dropped before the ghost. “Observe now,” Kerlin said, and manipulated the activants.
They saw the ghost, depicted and projected: the flowing robe, the haggard visage. The face grew large, flattened; a segment under the vacant eye became a scabrous white place. It separated into pustules, and a single pustule swelled to fill the pane. The crater of the pustule was an intricate stippled surface, a mesh as of fabric, knit in a lacy pattern.
“Behold!” said Shierl. “He is a thing woven as if by thread.”
Guyal turned eagerly to Kerlin; Kerlin raised a finger for silence. “Indeed, indeed, a goodly thought, especially since here beside us is a rotor of extreme swiftness, used in reeling the cognitive filaments of the cases … Now then observe: I reach to this panel, I select a mesh, I withdraw a thread, and note! The meshes ravel and loosen and part. And now to the bobbin on the rotor, and I wrap the thread, and now with a twist we have the cincture made …”
Shierl said dubiously, “Does not the ghost observe and note your doing?”
“By no means,” asserted Kerlin. “The pane of vitrean shields our actions; he is too exercised to attend. And now I dissolve the cage and he is free.”
The ghost wandered forth, cringing from the light.
“Go!” cried Kerlin. “Back to your genetrix; back, return and go!”
The ghost departed. Kerlin said to Guyal, “Follow; find when Blikdak snuffs him up.”
Guyal at a cautious distance watched the ghost seep up into the black nostril, and returned to where Kerlin waited by the rotor. “The ghost has once more become part of Blikdak.”
“Now then,” said Kerlin, “we cause the rotor to twist, the bobbin
to whirl, and we shall observe.”
The rotor whirled to a blur; the bobbin (as long as Guyal’s arm) became spun with ghost-thread, at first glowing pastel polychrome, then nacre, then fine milk-ivory.
The rotor spun, a million times a minute, and the thread drawn unseen and unknown from Blikdak thickened on the bobbin.
The rotor spun; the bobbin was full — a cylinder shining with glossy silken sheen. Kerlin slowed the rotor; Guyal snapped a new bobbin into place, and the unraveling of Blikdak continued.
Three bobbins — four — five — and Guyal, observing Blikdak from afar, found the giant face quiescent, the mouth working and sucking, creating the clacking sound which had first caused them apprehension.
Eight bobbins. Blikdak opened his eyes, stared in puzzlement around the chamber.
Twelve bobbins: a discolored spot appeared on the sagging cheek, and Blikdak quivered in uneasiness.
Twenty bobbins: the spot spread across Blikdak’s visage, across the slanted fore-dome, and his mouth hung lax; he hissed and fretted.
Thirty bobbins: Blikdak’s head seemed stale and putrid; the gunmetal sheen had become an angry maroon, the eyes bulged, the mouth hung open, the tongue lolled limp.
Fifty bobbins: Blikdak collapsed. His dome lowered against the febrile mouth; his eyes shone like feverish coals.
Sixty bobbins: Blikdak was no more.
And with the dissolution of Blikdak so dissolved Jeldred, the demonland created for the housing of evil. The breach in the wall gave on barren rock, unbroken and rigid.
And in the Mechanismus sixty shining bobbins lay stacked neat; the evil so disorganized glowed with purity and iridescence.
Kerlin fell back against the wall. “I expire; my time has come. I have guarded well the Museum; together we have won it away from Blikdak … Attend me now. Into your hands I pass the curacy; now the Museum is your charge to guard and preserve.”
“For what end?” asked Shierl. “Earth expires, almost as you … Wherefore knowledge?”
“More now than ever,” gasped Kerlin. “Attend: the stars are bright, the stars are fair; the banks know blessed magic to fleet you to youthful climes. Now — I go. I die.”
“Wait!” cried Guyal. “Wait, I beseech!”
“Why wait?” whispered Kerlin. “The way to peace is on me; you call me back?”
“How do I extract from the banks?”
“The key to the index is in my chambers, the index of my life …” And Kerlin died.
Guyal and Shierl climbed to the upper ways and stood outside the portal on the ancient flagged floor. It was night; the marble shone faintly underfoot, the broken columns loomed on the sky.
Across the plain the yellow lights of Saponce shone warm through the trees; above in the sky shone the stars.
Guyal said to Shierl, “There is your home; there is Saponce. Do you wish to return?”
She shook her head. “Together we have looked through the eyes of knowledge. We have seen old Thorsingol, and the Sherrit Empire before it, and Golwan Andra before that and the Forty Kades even before. We have seen the warlike green-men, and the knowledgeable Pharials and the Clambs who departed Earth for the stars, as did the Merioneth before them and the Gray Sorcerers still earlier. We have seen oceans rise and fall, the mountains crust up, peak and melt in the beat of rain; we have looked on the sun when it glowed hot and full and yellow … No, Guyal, there is no place for me at Saponce …”
Guyal, leaning back on the weathered pillar, looked up to the stars. “Knowledge is ours, Shierl — all of knowing to our call. And what shall we do?”
Together they looked up to the white stars.
“What shall we do …”