by Jack Vance
Skirl broke the connection before Jaro could suggest a picnic in the country or a visit to Blue Mountain Lodge, or some other such outing. Jaro leaned back in his chair, and sat drinking beer from Hilyer’s favorite mug, which Althea never allowed him to use, on grounds of lese majeste. He considered his own plans for the summer. They could be divided into three categories. First, he would work at the space terminal as many hours as convenient. Second, he would continue his training in the ever more complicated study of hand-to-hand combat. Thirdly, he would take advantage of the Faths’ absence to search for records which would help him discover his origins.
Eleven
1
The Faths arrived at the Ushant spaceport early in the day. Entry formalities were minimal and by mid-morning they were on their way to Dimplewater, twenty miles north, aboard a train of open-sided observation cars which took them at a leisurely pace through the flamboyant jungle known as the Gages of Lyrhidion. Clusters of pink, black and orange featherferns shuddered in the breeze, emitting puffs of sweet-scented spores which, when collected and compressed, yielded a confection much enjoyed by local folk. At intervals maddercap spines rose two-hundred feet, to stand stiff and rigid as poles. Each spine terminated in a ten-foot knob, from which spurted a corona of orange flames, regular as flower petals. The flames burned perpetually, and by night, from an altitude, the Gages of Lyrhidion seemed a field of flameflowers.
For much of the distance, the train followed the course of a slow river, in and out of the shade of green weeping willows and lantern jasmines. Wooded islands appeared at intervals, each with a rustic cottage, its porch overlooking the water.
Arriving in Dimplewater, the Faths went to their hotel and were shown into quarters of more than adequate comfort. Wide windows opened on a typical scene: a bridge of carved age-darkened wood, the waterway below, a strip of ebony trees with salmon-pink heart-shaped leaves; then beyond, at a distance of two hundred yards, the rotunda of the Hotel Tia-Taio, the venue of the conclave; and a marvel of architecture in its own right. The hemisphere of the rotunda, blocks of colored glass six inches thick fused into an integral shell, rose two hundred feet above ground level. Sunlight, refracting through the glass, illuminated the interior with a coruscation of color. By night, light of a similar quality issued from a massive globe suspended on an iron chain. Construction of this globe was simple but elegant. To a matrix of iron web, faceted jewels had been fixed: rubies, emeralds, sapphires, topazes, jacynths, a dozen others. Light from an internal source, passing through the jewels, illuminated the chamber with colored light richer and deeper than the light from the daytime rotunda.
The Faths presently left their hotel, crossed the bridge and walked under the ebony trees to the rotunda adjoining the Hotel Tia-Taio. In the lobby they chanced upon Laurz Mur, the chairman of the arrangements committee. Laurz Mur was quietly handsome, if somewhat stately and impersonal. Althea found him both fascinating and amusing; Hilyer was not at all amused, and considered Mur little more than an elegant dilettante.
Mur invited them to lunch, where he exerted himself to be a pleasant companion, so that even Hilyer’s suspicions were lulled. Mur was much interested in the Faths’ special field: artistic symbolism, with an emphasis upon musical forms.
“I myself take a rather more perceptive view of the subject than does the ordinary amateur; indeed, I confess to a few trifles of original research, and a document or two relevant to my conclusions. No, no!” he demurred as Althea asked to look over his papers. “First I must put them into their final form.”
Mur refused to speak further of his work. He addressed Hilyer, “Have you seen the schedule?”
“Not yet.”
Mur produced a pair of pamphlets which he gave to Hilyer and Althea. “You will find that you are to take the podium tomorrow morning. I hope that this is convenient?”
“Very much so! I’ll be happy to give my talk, then relax for the rest of the conclave.”
“As I recall,” mused Laurz Mur, “there’s another speaker from Thanet scheduled for tomorrow afternoon.”
Althea glanced at her copy of the schedule. “That will be Dean Hutsenreiter. His paper deals with the permutations of language and is said to be very profound.”
Mur consulted his notes. “I’ll miss him, since I have a meeting I must attend.” He gave his head a sad shake. “But then—I will never undertake such a task again.”
Althea inquired, “I’ve been looking down the list, and I don’t see any local names save your own. Are there no scholars on Ushant?”
“Not many. For one reason or another our most notable savants go off-world to study, where they take their honors and seldom return. Again, we are not particularly apt at abstract research. We have many outstanding musicians, but few musicologists.”
“Interesting,” said Hilyer. “May I ask a personal question?”
Laurz Mur smiled politely. “Of course.”
“You are wearing on the epaulet of your jacket a set of small devices, which look like recording equipment. What is their purpose?”
Laurz Mur’s smile became a trifle thin. “The explanation is rather complex; with me, the devices are no more than a habit, since I do not take their purpose seriously.”
“And as for that purpose?”
Laurz Mur shrugged. “Folk since time immemorial have kept journals and diaries for themselves. These devices assist in that purpose. They record the events of one’s life, and for a fact become an excellent reference should someone forget an important fact or an appointment.”
“How do you deal with such a volume of information?”
“We set aside a few moments of each day to organize the material. What is important, we save. The rest we discard. It is an obsessive habit, but for some reason we cannot break it. Now you must excuse me. I have enjoyed our meeting and will certainly cherish it among my mementos.”
The Faths looked after his retreating back. “Amazing folk,” said Hilyer. “Do you know what I think?”
“Probably,” said Althea. “Tell me anyway.”
“These folk live in near-ideal circumstances; still, they are morose. Why? Because the wheel of time is grinding away at their lives, and they have no place to go. They collect pretty trinkets and write in their diaries. Every day it’s the same. The moments of their lives fleet past, along with their hopes for a glorious tamsour. I may or may not be using the word correctly.”
“Hmf,” sniffed Althea. “No one cares whether I have a nice tamsour or not.”
“You won’t get much sympathy on Ushant. They are worried about themselves only.”
“You may be right.”
“Laurz Mur wasted very little time with us. He finished his lunch, then took off like a flushed grouse,” noted Hilyer.
“We did not exhilarate him,” said Althea. “Hilyer, tell me the truth: do I exhilarate you?”
“No,” said Hilyer. “But you’re comfortable.”
2
On the following day Laurz Mur called the conclave of xenologists to order. Standing on the speaker’s podium, he swept the audience with an appraising eye. Five hundred xenologists came under his purview: every sort of philosopher, explorer, biologist, anthropologist, historian, cultural psychologist, linguist, analytical aesthetician, philologer, dendrologist, lexicographer, cartologist, and a dozen other more recondite professions. Some were scheduled speakers; others would listen and engage in the important work of intellectual cross-fertilization. Still others had brought papers they intended to read, if the opportunity offered, or even if not: somehow, by hook or by crook, the precious paper with its carefully honed phrases and engaging new ideas must be heard!
Laurz Mur completed his survey and, apparently satisfied, raised a satinwood baton and with a graceful gesture struck a small bronze gong. The audience quieted. Laurz Mur spoke. “Ladies and gentlemen! Needless to say, it is an honor of the highest degree to address so many famous savants. It shall be a notable passage in my mementos! But there is no time to
indulge in mutual benedictions. We run on a strictly regulated schedule and will adjourn this morning’s session promptly at noon. Without further ado, I introduce to you the first speaker: the distinguished Sir Wilfred Voskovy.”
Sir Wilfred stepped forward, a sturdy gentleman with a high brush of coarse black hair and rather surly features. His flamboyant garments offered a host of sartorial decorative niceties distinctly at odds with his melancholy countenance. In a burst of insight, Althea told Hilyer that Sir Wilfred had been forced to wear the overly striking garments at the behest of his wife, which also explained his dour expression.
Sir Wilfred’s message was also cheerless. “The societies of the Gaean Reach are now so complex, disparate, and scattered so far, deep, and wide that we can no longer think in terms of comprehensive scholarship, sublime though that notion might have seemed to our forebears. To express my thesis more broadly, the volume of knowledge has grown ten times faster than our ability to classify, much less understand it.
“This is a bleak prospect for the future, as well everyone in this august audience recognizes. The basic purport is that our careers are demonstrably exercises in futility, and the conscientious among us will henceforth accept our salaries with a pang of guilt. The time has come for us to alter our perspectives and to become realists, rather than academic fossils, dreaming of a past age of innocence.
“So—what now? Is all lost? Not necessarily. Our field of expertise, as redefined, becomes simply taxonomic. No longer will we collate, analyze, synthesize, and search for felicitous correspondences. Our cherished and delightful laws of social dynamics must be relegated to the same box as the theory of phlogiston. Now we are realists! Even so, we will be hard-put even to keep abreast of new information, much less analyze it. Why delude ourselves?”
A florid man in the front row jumped to his feet. In a sneering pugnacious voice he called out a reply to what Sir Wilfred had intended as a purely rhetorical question. “Obviously, to keep our jobs!”
Sir Wilfred turned a haughty glance down at the man and continued.
“There are at least two routes past the seeming impasse. First, we can arbitrarily nominate a number of settled worlds—let us say, thirty or forty, or even fifty—and declare these worlds the only suitable arena for serious study. In so doing, we ignore all other human activity, no matter how astounding. What if these new inklings are tragic, or sensational? Or rife with human drama? We care nothing; we elbow the unwelcome information to the side! After all, we are the authorities, so we tell our students, and we know best. The so-called ‘control group’ of worlds, with their readily accessible cultures, will provide a manageable range of data, and each of us may vote for the inclusion of his favorite world. By this means, we maintain the dignity and repute of the profession. Our studies are as profound as we like and we are all eminently comfortable. Meanwhile, our students learn the rudiments of cultural anthropology, which they can apply as they see fit. If mavericks or mad geniuses among our group choose to study other societies, let them do so; it is all one to us. We simply laugh them to the side, and as we control the grants, tenures and salaries, they will quickly come to heel.”
“Preposterous!” called the florid man in the front row. “What an imbecilic notion!”
As before. Sir Wilfred paid the gentleman no heed. “The second concept is more complicated. We assemble a gigantic information bank—a data-processing apparatus of unprecedented scope. Our task then alters; we merely collect information and feed it into this mechanism without piddling or doodling with the details, as if we knew what we were doing. The machine accepts the information in a raw state, unclassified, undigested, unanalyzed. That is all there is to it. The machine has been programmed to collate and rationalize. Our lives have become tranquil. As we sit chatting in our clubs, drinking beverages of choice, a subject might arise in which we take a casual interest, or perhaps we wish to settle a bet. In the bad old times—by that, I mean now—we would be forced to exert ourselves. By the new system, we merely reach out a hand, touch a button, and the relevant information is provided on the instant. We are no longer paltry underpaid low 77 status academics; we have started to live the good life. We no longer distinguish ourselves by our former constricted field; now we are Doctors of Erudition! It is, I am assured, a glorious prospect.
“Now then: a final word. Certain smug boffins whose names I will not mention, though I can see their hangdog grins from where I stand, would boom and huffaw to their tenure committees as slavishly as ever. But, aha! Here is the great joke! We are the committee!”
“Bah!” sneered the florid gentleman in the front row. “If your idiotic scheme were in force, what else would we be good for?”
“You can sell your corpse for pet food,” said Sir Wilfred. “Also, that of your wife should she predecease you, and she need never learn of your intentions. Guard her well and cherish her; she is like money in the bank.”
Laurz Mur said, “Thank you. Sir Wilfred, for your provocative concepts; I am sure that they will linger with us. Next is the eminent Professor Sonotra Soukhail, a Grand Tantricist of the Antimates, and a Ninth Degree Putra. She will offer us excerpts from her paper on the mountain villages of Ladaque-Royale. I believe that she has something interesting to tell us regarding the human kites and the wind wizards of the Pittispasian Cliffs, which as we all know limit the Central Massif of the Second Continent, where it abuts on the Groaning Ocean.”
The florid man rose ponderously to his feet. “You are evidently referring to the planet Ladaque-Royale, Sagittarius FFC 32-DE-2930?”
Laurz Mur said, “I do not have immediate access to the Final Functional Catalog, but I suspect that you have supplied the proper nomenclature, for which we owe you our gratitude.”
“And Professor Soukhail is a Putra?”
“Exactly so; to the Ninth Degree.”
“In that case I am more than gratified. We may listen to this lady with confidence.”
Laurz Mur nodded politely. “Now then, here is Professor Soukhail. Madame, you may proceed with your address.”
The Putra, a squat broad-faced woman with a shock of stiff auburn hair, spoke to the man in the front row. “You are correct in your designation, sir. Are you familiar with Ladaque-Royale?”
“I have studied the White Wizards in depth! In fact, I can perform the Floncing River Miracle, and I have gained access to the Tantric of the Pellucid Way.”
“Aha!” said Sonotra Soukhail. “I see that I cannot take liberties with the truth! But no matter; I will bridle my imagination and make do with a recitation of fact.”
Sonotra Soukhail need not have concerned herself; her unadorned facts were fascinating and she embellished them with photographs of her swooping gliding subjects, and she declared the abilities of the white wizards to be explained only in terms of thought transference. She looked down to the florid man in the front row. “Am I right in this belief, sir?”
“You are correct, in every respect,” said the man solemnly. “I would endorse your remarks even were I not your husband.”
Laurz Mur stepped to the podium. “There will be a few moments delay while Professor Soukhail removes her exhibits.”
For a period Hilyer and Althea sat in silence. Then Althea whispered to Hilyer: “When she spoke of thought-transference and such things, I could not help but think of Jaro and his early troubles—which I hope are at an end.”
Hilyer considered the matter. “She takes the subject rather far afield. The ‘Tantrickers’ seem almost abnormal in their attributes, and the ‘White magicians’ are remarkable, to say the least. But I don’t connect any of this with Jaro.”
Althea said dubiously, “Jaro’s experiences have certainly been unusual. There might be connections which we haven’t noticed.”
“Nonsense!” said Hilyer gruffly. “Jaro has never communed with these streams of trans-temporal rays, nor does he do the seven Devoirs of Daily Duty.”
Althea was not totally convinced. “Jaro is certainly
a special case. He knows it as well as we do, and it must gnaw at his mind. No wonder he wants to learn about his origins.”
“And so he shall, in due course, but his education comes first, and I am afraid that he is not cooperating to the fullest.”
“However so?” cried Althea. “I feel that he has really been quite amiable.”
“Amiable, perhaps; cooperative, partly. For instance, he is dropping courses in ‘Non-semantic Poetry’ and ‘Symbology of Color’ in order to find more time for his work at the spaceport.”
Althea thought to change the subject. “Look yonder, just past the man in the blue cape. It’s Dean Hutsenreiter in a most unsuitable hat!”
Hilyer turned to look. He exclaimed: “Never bother the hat! Who is the unsuitable woman?”
Althea studied Dean Hutsenreiter’s escort, who stood a foot taller than Hutsenreiter himself. Her legs and arms were long and limber; her buttocks were sleek; her bosom was splendid, and her face was a mask of marmoreal disdain for the stares which were focused upon her. She wore a striking skin-tight gown of purple and green, along with a tall conical cloth-of-gold turban. “Could that be his wife, the Princess of the Dawn, from Marmone?”
“I don’t think so,” said Althea, “but I can’t be sure. Whoever she is, how can he afford her? I thought he was in deep financial trouble.”
“It’s a mystery to me. At any rate, I don’t think she’s a Clam Muffin.”
Laurz Mur appeared on the platform once again. “Time presses and we are running just an iota late. Without further ado I will introduce our next speaker: a scholar of impeccable credentials, the Honorable Kyril Hape.”
Up to the podium stepped a tall man with a beak of a nose, fierce black eyes, a shock of white hair. Laurz Mur spoke further, describing Hape as a man whom he himself had revered almost since childhood; he was a linguist preeminent in the field, originally from Old Earth, now resident at the site of certain intriguing ruins, whose location he was not yet ready to reveal.