Night Lamp

by Jack Vance

  Silking responded cautiously: “More accurately, it would be Lumilar Vistas.”

  “I see. But since I can’t deal with Lumilar Vistas, it will have to be Gilfong Rute himself. If he will appear at Merriehew tomorrow at noon, I will listen to his offer.”

  Silking’s jaw dropped. “Mr. Maihac, you are issuing preposterous manifestos! I can’t take you seriously!”

  “No matter. Is Gilfong Rute at hand? If so, ask him if he cares to come here tomorrow at noon. It is the only way we will deal with him.”

  “Just a moment.” The screen went silent. Three minutes passed. Silking reappeared on the screen, looking a trifle ruffled. “He says that he will be there at noon.” Silking’s mouth twitched in a small painful grin. “He made some other comments, which would be pointless to transmit. Mr. Rute, I should warn you, is not kind to folk who try to take advantage of his bonhomie.”

  “He needn’t worry; there won’t be much trifling here tomorrow.”

  3

  On the next day, a few minutes short of noon, a large black luxury vehicle turned into the drive and halted near the house. Two men in blue and green uniforms jumped from the front seat, looked around to assure themselves that all was secure and opened the back compartment. Abel Silking alighted, followed by Gilfong Rute. Silking and Rute advanced upon the house; the uniformed men went to stand beside the vehicle.

  Jaro opened the door for them to enter, then ushered the two into the dining room and made introductions. “This is Skirl Hutsenreiter, an effectuator. This is Gaing Neitzbeck, and you have spoken to Tawn Maihac. Please be seated.”

  “Thank you,” said Silking. He and Gilfong Rute seated themselves on one side of the table.

  Silking said smoothly, “Now then, the situation remains the same. You have heard the Lumilar Vistas offer; we have here—”

  Jaro interrupted. “Mr. Silking, you may sit here as a witness, but please do not join the conversation. We will deal directly with Mr. Rute, and your remarks will only delay us. So please be silent or, if you prefer, you may go sit in the parlor and warm yourself by the fire.”

  “I will remain here,” said Silking with a cold smile.

  “As you like.” Jaro turned to Rute. “You want Merriehew, and we are ready to sell. Tawn Maihac has prepared the papers we will need, and if you also are ready, there is nothing to detain us.”

  Rute asked impatiently, “What papers are these?”

  “Just the ordinary certificates of transfer. There are two sets: one for us and one for you.”

  “Nonsense,” declared Rute. “I have the proper forms at hand. Silking, bring them out. They are ready for signature.”

  “Throw them away,” said Maihac. “Our papers are better.”

  “Never mind your papers,” snapped Rute. “You were made an offer of thirty thousand sols. Do you accept or do you not?”

  “Certainly we accept,” said Maihac, “subject to certain conditions.”

  Rute was instantly suspicious. “What conditions?”

  Maihac pushed two sheets of paper across the table. “Read the documents.”

  Rute picked up the papers and read. His eyebrows rose in amazement. “You can’t be serious!”

  “How could we be anything else? You own the Pharsang Glitterway?”

  “Of course I own the Pharsang. Is there some question as to this? I had it built by the Rialco Spaceyards at Murtsey to top specifications.”

  “The point is not at issue. As you have noted, we wish to buy the Pharsang.”

  Rute rapped Maihac’s documents contemptuously with the back of his hand. “That is sheer bullypup, and you are wasting my time. Let us get on with our business.”

  “The Pharsang is our business,” said Maihac. “How much have you offered Jaro for Merriehew?”

  “As you well know, the figure is thirty thousand sols. It is a generous offer and not negotiable; take it or leave it.”

  “We will take it, right enough, so long as the two offers are accepted in tandem.”

  “Come now, sir! Do not talk in riddles! There are no specifics to your offer; it is all a mare’s nest.”

  “Listen then! Here are the specifics. We offer thirty thousand sols for the Pharsang Glitterway as part of a single negotiation.”

  Rute looked at Maihac in stupefaction. “You are mad! The Pharsang would fetch two hundred thousand sols or more any day of the week!”

  “We are flexible,” said Maihac. “If you want two hundred thousand sols for the Pharsang, the price for Merriehew becomes the same. Specify any figure you like. We need only fill out the blanks on the documents, sign them and the transaction is complete—a matter of five minutes.”

  Rute jumped to his feet, face pink with rage. “This is a swindle, bald and outright. You barely make the effort to dissemble! You cannot do this to me; I am a man of high comporture, and I will not allow it!”

  “Be reasonable,” said Maihac. “You have already spent a great deal of money on your Lumilar Vistas project; I have heard as high as half a million sols. This is money thrown away unless you secure title to Merriehew.”

  Gilfong Rute, who had leaned forward with arm raised as if to pound the table, stopped short, fist in mid-air. “Where did you hear this figure? It is highly confidential!”

  “So far as we are concerned, it will remain confidential. Now then: back to business. If you fail to take up Jaro’s offer, he will convert the house into a rustic tavern which should do very well. He will subdivide the back acreage into low-cost residential units, along with an asylum for the criminally insane.”

  Rute only laughed. “You cannot flim-flam me so easily! On the other hand, I admit that I am not able to use the Pharsang as I had planned; still, you must come up with an extra hundred thousand sols.”

  “That is not possible,” said Maihac. “We must make an even exchange, with the Pharsang in full operative condition, fully sound and provisioned, with fresh energy cans and new codes in all the synthesizers.”

  “This is extortion!” declared Gilfong Rute. “Do you think me a fat goose hanging on a tree, ready to be plucked?”

  “Not at all. But we can’t forget your attempts to swindle Jaro when you considered him a nimp and a witling.”

  “That is a mistake I will not repeat,” grumbled Rute. “Well then, my time is valuable. Let us sign the documents and have an end to it. The Glitterway is yours.”

  Rute signed the documents with a graceless flourish, then stood back and spoke in hollow triumph: “I lost my spaceyacht, but with the money I will make from Lumilar Vistas, I can buy twenty more, should the mood come on me. You could have held me up for double what you demanded.”

  “No matter,” said Jaro. “We are not avaricious.”

  4

  Aboard the magnificent Pharsang Glitterway, Maihac could barely restrain his enthusiasm. “This is large enough to move passengers or freight,” he told Jaro. “In short, you have a source of income about like that of a full professor.”

  “The Faths might not approve of the use to which I have put Merriehew,” said Jaro. “In any case, I owe them all my gratitude.”

  Skirl asked, “So now, what are your plans?”

  “First, a voyage to Camberwell, where I’ll try to search out my six lost years. After that, I can’t even speculate. But first things first. That means recruiting a crew.”

  “I volunteer,” said Maihac. “You’re the captain. Gaing should make an excellent chief engineer, if the prospective voyage suits him.”

  “It suits me very well,” said Gaing. “I would be unhappy if you kept me off the ship. I have been grounded far too long.”

  “Gaing will be chief engineer and strategist. I will sign on as cook, roustabout, navigator, general dog’s-body.”

  “We are still lacking a chief officer,” said Jaro. “We’ll want someone of exceptional abilities: resourceful, clever, kindly, with the soul of a vagabond. We’ll want a person of high status—even a Clam Muffin if we could find one. We may or
may not be able to recruit a qualified person.”

  Skirl asked hesitantly, “When are you taking applications?”

  “Immediately.”

  “I wish to apply.”

  Jaro reached out, ruffled Skirl’s short dark curls. She ducked away, smoothed her hair with both hands.

  “You are hired,” said Jaro.

  “And my salary?”

  “Not very much—about what you earn as an effectuator. If we put the Pharsang into commercial transport, we will share the profit.”

  “Gaing and I have had experience in this line of work,” said Maihac. “It was a pleasant life—until we lost our ship on Fader. The episode taught us a lesson, and we will not make the same mistake again. Am I right on this, Gaing?”

  “Those are my own feelings.”

  Jaro turned to Skirl. “Does this arrangement suit you?”

  “I couldn’t be more pleased.”

  5

  Maihac and Gaing remained aboard the Pharsang; Jaro and Skirl returned to Merriehew. They dined on what remained in the larder and drank the last flagon of Hilyer’s prized Estresas Valley wine, then went to stand by the fire. Outside a gentle rain began to fall. They spoke in soft voices, pausing often to reflect upon the extraordinary events, which in the end had brought them together. They stood close to one another. Jaro’s arm was around Skirl’s waist, and presently she reached out her own arm to hold him similarly. The conversation dwindled; each became increasingly conscious of the other’s nearness. Jaro swung about, drew Skirl close and they kissed each other—again and again. Finally they paused to catch their breath. Jaro asked, “Do you remember the first time I kissed you?”

  “Of course! It was after you nipped my ear.”

  “I think I loved you even then. It was a mysterious emotion, which puzzled me.”

  “And I must have loved you, too—although at the time I wasn’t thinking clearly of such things. Still, I always noticed how handsome and clean you looked, as if you had been scrubbed thoroughly.”

  “What strange lives we are leading!”

  “If we go off on the Pharsang, our lives will be stranger yet.”

  Jaro took her hand. “Something strange and wonderful is about to happen in the other room. I’m anxious to find out what.”

  Skirl held back. “Jaro, I feel very odd. I think that I’m frightened.” Jaro bent his head and kissed her. She clung to him. “It isn’t fright after all,” said Skirl. “It’s something I’ve never felt before; I think it’s excitement.”

  Jaro took her hand again and they left the room. The firelight moved among the shadows and set glimmers of orange light moving among the shapes of Althea’s candelabra. The room was silent save for the sound of the rain against the windows.

  Fifteen

  1

  The Pharsang approached the world Camberwell, descended upon the city Tanzig and landed at the spaceport. The four members of the crew sealed the ship, passed through the terminal and stepped out into the cool air of Tanzig. Before them an avenue led into the disheveled old town with its cocked roofs and twisted clapboard siding. In the distance, dominating the city like three colossi, half-obscured by haze, stood the triple monument to the ‘Delineator of Boons and Retributions’—one of the many sobriquets attached to the legendary magistrate.

  Upon leaving the terminal, Jaro slowed his steps, aware of something stirring in his memory—a subconscious resonance, faint and fugitive, dying even as he tried to identify it. What could it be? The dank feel of the atmosphere? The hazy distances? The skyline of crooked roofs, angular and crotchety? The camphorous tang from the warped clapboards which sheathed all the structures of Tanzig? It was, for a fact, an odor hauntingly familiar.

  Jaro noticed Skirl watching him. He liked to think of himself as stoic and impenetrable, but Skirl had become uncannily sensitive to the shift of his moods. Jaro sometimes felt that she knew more about him than he did himself. Skirl now asked, “What are you thinking?”

  “Nothing in particular.”

  “There was something. Your face changed even while I was watching you.”

  Jaro showed a faint smile. “There is an old word: ‘frisson.’ I don’t know if I’m using the word correctly, but I think that’s what I was feeling.”

  “Really? I’ve never heard of it before. What does it feel like?”

  “Something like a quick cold shiver at the back of your neck.”

  “Odd,” Skirl mused. “I felt nothing like that.”

  “Of course not! Why should you?”

  “Because sometimes I feel exactly what you are feeling. We probably have a telepathic link.”

  “I suppose it’s possible.”

  The four rode an open-sided omnibus into the center of town, where an old woman gliding along the sidewalk on slip-boards directed them to the Bureau of Public Records. For two hours they searched musty files and handwritten directories, but discovered no mention of either Jamiel or her child.

  They returned to the Pharsang. Gaing and Maihac unshipped the flitter; all climbed aboard. Taking to the air, the flitter flew off to the east, in the direction of Sronk. They passed across tracts of drab farmland, watermeadows grown over with thickets of tall cane, a village of small clapboard houses under crooked roofs. The Wyching Hills rose ahead: a tumble of tawny slopes, gullies, and smooth round ridges. Out to the horizon and beyond spread Wildenberry Steppe, with a few isolated farms occupying the strip between hills and steppe. A road led south to a small town: Sronk, according to the map.

  The flitter crossed the hills, turned south, followed the road to Sronk and landed on a flat area to the side of the town square. The four passengers alighted and made a survey, discovering little of interest. In answer to Jaro’s question, a passerby pointed out the Municipal Clinic, which unlike other structures of Sronk was built, not of warped clapboard under double—and triple-tiled roofs, but of rock-melt blocks with a flat roof of gray sinter. Jaro studied the building with interest, but nothing surfaced in his memory. On his previous visit, he probably had been more dead than alive.

  Doctor Fexel was still in residence, and immediately recalled dealing with Jaro’s battered body. “I remember thinking—idly, of course—that Jaro would make a splendid specimen for my anatomy classroom, since he demonstrated every trauma known to the textbooks.”

  Skirl patted Jaro’s shoulder with a proprietary air. “He has survived rather nicely, don’t you think?”

  Fexel agreed enthusiastically. “It is a tribute both to modern medicine and to the skill of Doctor Solek and myself. Now that I think of it. Doctor Myrrle Wanish probably did the most to keep you in one piece, since you were determined to destroy yourself with spasms of utter hysteria. They were truly unbelievable—absolute paroxysms of fright and rage! Have you ever discovered the reason for such racking conduct?”

  “No,” said Jaro. “It remains a mystery.”

  “Most extraordinary! Let me see if I can raise Doctor Wanish. He’ll be at his office in Tanzig, and I’m sure he’d like to speak with you. Fexel worked at his communicator. He spoke a few words, and Wanish’s bearded face appeared on the screen. Fexel introduced Jaro, and Wanish instantly became interested. I recall your case distinctly. It was necessary to modify your memory; you were recalling something extremely traumatic and the reaction was killing you.”

  Jaro shuddered. “I’m almost afraid to learn what happened.”

  “You still know nothing of your early life?”

  “Not very much. In fact, that is why we are here.”

  “Your memory shows no sign of seeping back?”

  “Not really. At times I glimpse one or two images; they are always the same. Sometimes I seem to hear my mother’s voice, though I can’t understand the words.”

  “It’s possible that the broken matrices are trying to reform. Don’t be surprised if a few recollections do come back.”

  “Can you do anything to facilitate this?”

  Wanish reflected a moment then sa
id, “I’m afraid not. Here’s another point to consider. If your memory returned, you might not like what you discovered.”

  “Even so, I’d like to know the facts.”

  Doctor Wanish became brisk. “It has been a pleasure speaking with you. I wish you good luck in your ventures.”

  “Thank you.”

  The four returned to the flitter. Once aloft, they followed the road north, moving slowly at an altitude of two hundred feet, with Wildenberry Steppe to the right and the Wyching Hills to the left. Five miles along the road, Jaro became tense. This was where he had known fear and pain. The sensation became ever stronger, as if memory were clotting upon the broken matrices, making it vivid. Almost he could feel the heat of the sun on his bare skin, the gravel abrading his knees, the jubilant shouts of the shapes standing above him, their sticks beating down: thud! thud! thud!

  Jaro pointed to a place on the road. “There. That is where it happened.”

  Maihac landed the flitter; they alighted blinking and squinting against the brightness of the day. Sunlight beat down upon their heads. To the west hills showed the color of dead jointgrass.

  Jaro walked a few paces along the road, then halted. “It was here that the Faths found me. I can feel it! The air seems to vibrate.”

  “And how did you come to be here?”

  Jaro pointed. “From over the hills. There was a river, a thicket of reeds, an old yellow house.” Jaro thought back across the years. “Through the window we could see a man standing against the twilight. His eyes seemed to glint with four-pointed stars. I became frightened. My mother was frightened. There was confusion; something happened; she told me something. I can almost remember.” Jaro squinted toward the hills. “She—I think that she must have put me into a boat.” He stopped short. “No, that’s not what happened. I went down to the boat by myself—alone. She was already dead. Still, I floated away in a boat. And the next thing I knew I was swimming through the dark. After that—nothing.”

  Skirl touched Jaro’s arm. “Look.”