Jack Vance - Gaean Reach 01 Read online

  Kelse gave his head a sad shake. “You just don’t understand him. You never have.”

  “I understand him as well as you do.”

  “That may well be true. He’s a hard man to know. Kurgech provides him exactly the right kind of companionship.”

  Schaine snorted again. “He’s undemanding, loyal and knows his place—like a dog.”

  “Absolutely wrong. Kurgech is an Uldra, Father is an Outker. Neither wants it any different.”

  With an extravagant flourish Schaine drained the goblet. “I certainly don’t intend to debate anything whatever with either you or Father.” She rose to her feet. “Let’s walk over to the river. Is the morphote fence still up?”

  “So far as I know. I haven’t been here since you left for Tanquil.”

  “A melancholy occasion which I’d just as soon forget. Let’s go find a twelve-spine devil-chaser with triple fans and a purple lattice.”*

  A hundred yards along the beach a path led inland to the swamp at the mouth of the Viridian River and ended beside a tall fence of steel mesh. A sign read:

  CAUTION

  MORPHOTES ARE DANGEROUS AND CUNNING! CONSIDER NONE OF THEIR PROFFERS; ACCEPT NONE OF THEIR GIFTS! MORPHOTES COME TO THIS FENCE WITH A SINGLE PURPOSE IN MIND: TO MUTILATE, INSULT, OR FRIGHTEN THOSE GAEANS WHO COME TO VIEW THEM.

  TAKE WARNING!

  MORPHOTES HAVE INJURED MANY PERSONS; THEY MAY KILL

  YOU.

  NEVERTHELESS, WANTON MOLESTATION OF THE MORPHOTES IS ABSOLUTELY FORBIDDEN.

  Kelse said, “A month ago some tourists from Alcide came to view morphotes. While the mother and father joked with a beautiful red-ringed bottle-face at the fence, another tied a butterfly on a string and lured away the three-year-old child. When Mama and Daddy looked around, Baby was gone.”

  “Disgusting beasts. There should be controls on morphote viewing.”

  “I think the Mull is considering along those lines.”

  Ten minutes passed and no morphotes came up from the swamp to make horrifying proposals. Schaine and Kelse returned to the hotel, descended to the submarine restaurant and lunched on a ragout of crayfish, pepper-pods and wild onion, a salad of chilled cress and flat-bread baked from the flour of wild brown ferris. Luminous blue-green space surrounded them; at their very elbows swam, grew or drifted the flora and fauna of the Persimmon Sea: white eels and electric blue scissor-fish darting through the thickets of water-weed; schools of blood-red spark-fish, green serpents, yellow twitters, twinkling and darting, the myriads occasionally sifting through each other in a pointillistic confusion, finally to emerge as before. On three occasions purple and silver spangs, ten feet of prongs, barbs, hooks and fangs, came to grind against the crystal in an attempt to seize one of the folk who lunched in the half-light; once the dire bulk of a black matador slid past; once off in the distance appeared the jerking form of a swimming morphote.

  A man two or three years older than Kelse approached the table. “Hello, Schaine.”

  “Hello, Gerd.” Schaine’s greeting was cool; all her life she had disliked Gerd Jemasze, for reasons she could never quite define to herself. His conduct was reserved, his manner polite, his features undistinguished: blunt at the cheekbones, flat in the cheeks, with short thick black hair above a low broad forehead. His clothes—a dark gray blouse and blue trousers—seemed, in the context of Olanje where everyone wore gay colors and exaggerated fashions, almost ostentatiously severe. Schaine suddenly understood why he repelled her: he totally lacked the idiosyncrasies and easy little vices which endowed all her other acquaintances with charm. Gerd Jemasze’s physique was not noticeably large or heavy, but when he moved, the clothes tightened to the twist of his muscles; in just such a fashion, thought Schaine, did his quiet appearance mask an innate arrogance. She knew why her father and Kelse liked Gerd Jemasze; he outdid them both in rigidity and resistance to change; his opinions, once formed, became impervious as stone.

  Gerd Jemasze took a seat at their table. Schaine asked politely, “And how goes life at Suaniset?”

  “Very quietly.”

  “Nothing ever happens out in the domains,” said Kelse.

  Schaine looked from one to the other. “You two are teasing me.”

  Gerd Jemasze displayed a twitch of a smile. “Not altogether. Whatever happens usually goes on out of sight.”

  “What’s happening out of sight, then?”

  “Well—wittols*out of the Retent have been skulking through the domains talking coalition of all Uldras under the Gray Prince, presumably to chase us into the sea. There’s been a lot of sky-shark*attacks on air traffic—just last week Ariel Farlock of Carmione was shot down.”

  “For a fact there’s a strange mood over Uaia,” said Kelse somberly. “Everybody feels it.”

  “Even Father,” said Schaine, “rejoicing over his wonderful joke. Have you any idea what he finds so funny?”

  “I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” said Gerd Jemasze.

  “I had a letter from Father,” Kelse explained. “I told you that he’d gone up on the Palga. Well, the trip seems to have exceeded his expectations.” Kelse brought forth the letter and read: “‘I’ve had some remarkable adventures and I have a wonderful story to tell you, a most wonderful joke, a most prodigious and extraordinary joke, which has put ten years on my life.’” Kelse skipped down across a line or two. “Then he says: ‘I’ll meet you at Galigong. I don’t dare come to Olanje, which would mean suffering through one of Valtrina’s awful parties, complete with all the pussy-footers, logic-choppers, aesthetes, four-flushers, sybarites and sycophants in Szintarre. Make sure Gerd comes back to Morningswake with us; he, no less than you, will appreciate this situation, and express to Schaine my great pleasure at having her home once again…’

  There’s more along this line but that’s the gist of it.”

  “Very mysterious,” said Gerd Jemasze.

  “Yes, that’s how I feel. What is there up on the Palga to cause Father such merriment? He’s not famous for his humor.”

  “Well—tomorrow we’ll know.” Gerd rose to his feet. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a few errands to do.” He bowed with rather cursory politeness to Schaine.

  Kelse asked: “You’re coming to the party at Aunt Valtrina’s?”

  Gerd Jemasze shook his head. “It’s not really my kind of affair.”

  “Oh come along,” said Kelse. “You might have a chance to meet the Gray Prince—among other local notables.”

  Gerd Jemasze reflected a moment or two as if Kelse had scored a point in a profound and complicated argument. “Very well. I’ll come. What time and where?”

  “Four o’clock at Villa Mirasol.”

  Chapter 2

  The road to Villa Mirasol, departing Kharanotis Avenue, wound back and forth up the side of Panorama Mountain under stands of gonaive, native teak, langtang and mace. Passing under an arch, the road circled a wide lawn and ended at the villa: an elegant construction of glass, fluted posts, white walls, a roof of many angles and levels, designed in a light and easy spirit of rococo decadence.

  Valtrina Darabesq, maternal great-aunt to Schaine and Kelse, welcomed both with an enthusiasm none the less real for its impersonal facility. Schaine had always marveled at her energy and her remarkable gregariousness; Kelse considered her a bit over-stylish, though he could not help but approve her expansive generosity. Both were prepared for her insistence that they transfer from the Seascape to Villa Mirasol and stay a week, two weeks, a month. “I’ve seen neither of you for so long. Schaine, it’s been at least—how many years?”

  “Five.”

  “So long? How time goes! I never really understood why you went flouncing off to Tanquil. Your father is a dinosaur, of course, but he’s a dear for all that, even if he refuses to come across to Olanje. What can he find to amuse him in Uaia? A wilderness, a dreadful emptiness!”

  “Come now, Aunt Val, it’s not that bad! In fact Uaia is full of magnificent scenery.”

>   “Perhaps so, but why Uther and the others insist on living out where they’re not wanted, I’ll never understand. Morningswake is like a border fortress.”

  “Someday you should come pay us a visit,” said Kelse.

  Valtrina gave her head a decisive shake. “I haven’t been to Morningswake since I was a girl. Your grandfather Norius was a gentleman of style for all of being a land-baron. He hosted several parties—rather stuffy occasions, to be absolutely candid, and took us for a picnic to an enormous pillar of red rock; what’s it called?”

  “The Skaw.”

  “The Skaw, of course. And when the tribesmen came past and looked at us, the aliens who had taken their land, I felt frightened and oppressed, for all the space. It was as if we were besieged!”

  “Our Aos have never given us trouble,” said Kelse patiently. “We help them and they help us. Neither resents the other.”

  Valtrina gave her head a smiling shake. “My dear boy, you can’t possibly divine what goes on in an Uldra mind. Of course they resent your presence, even though they show you blank faces. I know, because I have Uldra friends! But I shouldn’t remonstrate with you; you’re just a boy. Come along then, I’ll introduce you to my friends. Or perhaps you’d prefer just to wander about?”

  “We’d rather just wander,” said Kelse.

  “Just as you like. Have Alger fix you drinks. Kelse, please don’t draw a gun and shoot my erjins; their names are Sim and Slim and they’re extremely expensive. We’ll have a good chat later on this evening.” Valtrina moved off to welcome a new group of guests; Kelse took Schaine’s arm and led her to the buffet where Alger the steward dispensed refreshment, using formulas older than memory. Kelse and Schaine accepted goblets of punch, and paused to take their bearings. Schaine saw no one she knew among the guests. Half a dozen Uldras were present: tall, thin, long-nosed bravos, their slate-gray skin dyed ultramarine, their wads of pale russet hair confined within the tall spikes of a fillet.

  Kelse muttered to Schaine: “Trust Aunt Val to be fashionable; in Olanje no party is complete without an Uldra or two.”

  Schaine retorted: “Why shouldn’t Uldras be invited to parties? They’re human.”

  “Approximately human. Their weldewiste*is alien to ours. They’ve drifted quite a distance on the evolutionary floe.”

  Schaine sighed and turned to inspect the Uldras. “Is one of them the Gray Prince?”

  “No.”

  Valtrina approached with a handsome man in his middle maturity: a person of obvious distinction, wearing a dark gray suit embroidered with pale gray arabesques. She brought her companion to a halt. “Erris, my niece and nephew Schaine and Kelse Madduc. Schaine is just home from Tanquil, where she’s been at school. Schaine, Kelse, this is Erris Sammatzen, who sits on the Mull: a man of great importance.” She added with perhaps a hint of malice: “Schaine and Kelse live on Morningswake Domain in the Alouan, which they claim to be the single habitable area of Koryphon.”

  “Perhaps they know more than we do.”

  Schaine asked, “Are you native to Olanje, Dm.*Sammatzen?”

  “No, I’m an Outker like almost everyone else. I came here twelve years ago to rest, but who can rest when Valtrina and a dozen like her insist on keeping me alert? This is the most intellectually alive community I’ve ever known. Really, it’s most exhausting.”

  Valtrina beckoned to a tall woman with long blonde ringlets. Her over-large features were exaggerated by cosmetics into a clown’s mask; Schaine wondered if she mocked the world or herself. Valtrina spoke in her hoarsest contralto: “This is Glinth Isbane, one of our celebrities: she taught three morphotes to play desisto and won all kinds of strange booty. She’s secretary of SFS and far more profound than she likes to appear.”

  “What’s SFS?” asked Schaine. “Excuse me, I’m just back on Koryphon.”

  “SFS means ‘Society for a Free Szintarre’.”

  Schaine laughed incredulously. “Isn’t Szintarre free now?”

  “Not altogether,” said Glinth Isbane in a cool voice. “No one wants—I should say, no one admits that he wants—to exploit toil or discomfort for gain, but everyone knows that this is often the case. Workers therefore have banded into guilds to protect themselves. And now, who wields more raw power than the Director of the Associated Guilds? I need not remind you of the abuses from this direction. The SFS has therefore organized a force which we hope will exactly counter-balance the excesses of the guilds.”

  Another person had joined the group: a tall young man with guileless gray eyes, soft blond hair, pleasant half-humorous features which instantly appealed to Schaine. He remarked: “Both groups—the SFS and the Associated Guilds—support my particular organization. Hence, both must be sound, and your conflicts are pettifoggery.”

  Glinth Isbane laughed. “Both groups endorse SEE, but for quite different reasons. Our reasons are the decent ones.”

  Schaine said to Valtrina, “I’m confused by all these organizations. What is SEE?”

  Valtrina, rather than explaining, brought forward the blond young man. “Elvo, meet my charming niece, just arrived from Tanquil.”

  “With great pleasure.”

  “Schaine Madduc; Elvo Glissam. Now Elvo, explain the meaning of SEE, but don’t mention me or my expensive footmen or I’ll have them fling you out into the street.”

  “SEE is Society for Emancipation of the Erjins,” said Elvo Glissam. “Please don’t think us maudlin; we’re truly attacking a serious injustice: the enslavement of intelligent beings. Valtrina, with her erjin servants, is one of our prime targets, and we’ll have her behind bars yet. Unless she displays remorse and frees her slaves.”

  “Ha! First demonstrate two things—no, three. Prove to me that Sim and Slim are intelligent beings rather than domestic animals. Then prove that they would prefer to be emancipated. Then find me two other domestics with as much docility, style and dependability as my black-and-mustard beauties. In fact, I intend to buy three or four more and train them as gardeners.”

  One of the erjin footmen had just entered the chamber, rolling a service wagon. Looking over her shoulder Schaine cringed away. “Don’t they frighten you? The buck that chewed up Kelse wasn’t much bigger, if at all.”

  “If I were running things,” said Kelse, “I’d shoot them all.”

  Glinth Isbane’s voice took on an edge. “If they’re intelligent, it’s murder. If they’re not, it’s brutality.”

  Kelse shrugged and turned aside. A few minutes previously Gerd Jemasze had appeared on the scene; now he said: “We fear our erjins; you don’t. Incidentally, I don’t notice any societies which advocate taking erjin mounts away from the Uldras.”

  “Why don’t you form one?” snapped Glinth Isbane.

  Erris Sammatzen chuckled. “As for the erjins and Vv. Glissam’s SEE, the labor guilds are understandably anxious: the erjins represent cheap labor. Vv. Glissam is presumably motivated by other concerns.”

  “Naturally. The Gaean Charter prohibits slavery, and the erjins are enslaved: benignly here at Olanje, not so benignly in Uaia. And the Wind-runners, whose role everyone ignores, are slavers, pure and simple.”

  “Or domesticators—if they conceive the erjins to be no more than clever beasts.”

  Schaine said: “I can’t understand how erjins can be tamed; in fact, I can’t believe it! An erjin is ferocious; it hates men!”

  “Sim and Slim are quite docile,” said Valtrina. “As to how and why: I can’t even guess.”

  Sim the erjin footman once again passed by, splendid in its livery. Meeting the opaque orange gaze from among the black optical tufts, Schaine received the uncomfortable impression that it understood all which transpired. “Perhaps it would prefer not being gelded or altered or brainwashed—whatever the Wind-runners do to it.”

  “Ask it,” Valtrina suggested agreeably.

  “I don’t know how.”

  Valtrina’s contralto voice became lofty and careless. “So why worry? They’re free to
leave whenever they like. I don’t keep them in chains. Do you know why they work here? Because they prefer Villa Mirasol to the deserts of Uaia. No one complains except the Association of Labor Guilds which feels a threat to its absurdly high wage structure.” Valtrina gave her head a lordly jerk and stalked across the room to where a pair of Uldras formed the nucleus of another group.

  Gerd Jemasze spoke to no one in particular: “I won’t say that all this talk is a waste of time, because people seem to enjoy it.”

  In a frigid voice Glinth Isbane said: “Words are the vehicle of ideas. Ideas are the components of intellectualization, which distinguished men from animals. If you object to the exchange of ideas, then—in essence—you reject civilization.”

  Jemasze grinned. “Not such a bad idea as you might think.”

  Glinth Isbane turned away and went off to join Valtrina. Jemasze and Kelse sauntered to the buffet where Alger supplied them refreshment. Schaine went to inspect a pair of Uldra lamps, carved from blocks of red chert in the distinctive Uldra style of reckless asymmetry. Elvo Glissam came to join her. “Do you like these lamps?”

  “They’re interesting to look at,” said Schaine. “Personally, I wouldn’t care to own them.”

  “Oh? They seem very dashing and adventurous.”

  Schaine gave a grudging nod. “I suppose it’s a prejudice left over from my childhood, when everything Uldra was supposed to be erratic and uneven and wild. I realize now that the Uldras consider uniformity a kind of slavishness; they express their individualism in irregularity.”

  “Perhaps they try to suggest regularity by presenting something else: a very sophisticated technique.”

  Schaine pursed her lips. “I doubt if the Uldras would reason so methodically. They’re extremely proud and truculent, especially the Retent Uldras, and I suspect that their art-work reflects as much. It’s just as if the lamp-maker were saying: ‘This is how I choose to make this lamp; this is my caprice; if you don’t like it, seek elsewhere for light.’”