The World-Thinker and Other Stories Read online

  THE WORLD-THINKER AND OTHER STORIES

  Jack Vance

  www.sfgateway.com

  Enter the SF Gateway …

  In the last years of the twentieth century (as Wells might have put it), Gollancz, Britain’s oldest and most distinguished science fiction imprint, created the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series. Dedicated to re-publishing the English language’s finest works of SF and Fantasy, most of which were languishing out of print at the time, they were – and remain – landmark lists, consummately fulfilling the original mission statement:

  ‘SF MASTERWORKS is a library of the greatest SF ever written, chosen with the help of today’s leading SF writers and editors. These books show that genuinely innovative SF is as exciting today as when it was first written.’

  Now, as we move inexorably into the twenty-first century, we are delighted to be widening our remit even more. The realities of commercial publishing are such that vast troves of classic SF & Fantasy are almost certainly destined never again to see print. Until very recently, this meant that anyone interested in reading any of these books would have been confined to scouring second-hand bookshops. The advent of digital publishing has changed that paradigm for ever.

  The technology now exists to enable us to make available, for the first time, the entire backlists of an incredibly wide range of classic and modern SF and fantasy authors. Our plan is, at its simplest, to use this technology to build on the success of the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series and to go even further.

  Welcome to the new home of Science Fiction & Fantasy. Welcome to the most comprehensive electronic library of classic SFF titles ever assembled.

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Gateway Introduction

  Contents

  The World-Thinker

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  I’ll Build Your Dream Castle

  Seven Exits from Bocz

  The God and the Temple Robber

  Telek

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  The Ten Books

  DP!

  Noise

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  The Absent Minded Professor

  The Devil on Salvation Bluff

  Where Hesperus Falls

  The Phantom Milkman

  A Practical Man’s Guide

  The House Lords

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  The Secret

  Website

  Also By Jack Vance

  Author Bio

  Copyright

  The World-Thinker

  I

  Through the open window came sounds of the city—the swish of passing air-traffic, the clank of the pedestrian-belt on the ramp below, hoarse undertones from the lower levels. Cardale sat by the window studying a sheet of paper which displayed a photograph and a few lines of type:

  FUGITIVE!

  Isabel May—Age 21; height 5 feet 5 inches; medium physique.

  Hair: black (could be dyed).

  Eyes: blue.

  Distinguishing characteristics: none.

  Cardale shifted his eyes to the photograph and studied the pretty face with incongruously angry eyes. A placard across her chest read: 94E-627. Cardale returned to the printed words.

  Sentenced to serve three years at the Nevada Women’s Camp, in the first six months of incarceration Isabel May accumulated 22 months additional punitive confinement. Caution is urged in her apprehension.

  The face, Cardale reflected, was defiant, reckless, outraged, but neither coarse nor stupid—a face, in fact, illuminated by intelligence and sensitivity. Not the face of a criminal, thought Cardale.

  He pressed a button. The telescreen plumbed into sharp life. “Lunar Observatory,” said Cardale.

  The screen twitched to a view across an austere office, with moonscape outside the window. A man in a rose-pink smock looked into the screen. “Hello, Cardale.”

  “What’s the word on May?”

  “We’ve got a line on her. Quite a nuisance, which you won’t want to hear about. One matter: please, in the future, keep freighters in another sector when you want a fugitive tracked. We had six red herrings to cope with.”

  “But you picked up May?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Keep her in your sights. I’ll send someone out to take over.” Cardale clicked off the screen.

  He ruminated a moment, then summoned the image of his secretary. “Get me Detering at Central Intelligence.”

  The polychrome whirl of color rose and fell to reveal Detering’s ruddy face.

  “Cardale, if it’s service you want—”

  “I want a mixed squad, men and women, in a fast ship to pick up a fugitive. Her name is Isabel May. She’s fractious, unruly, incorrigible—but I don’t want her hurt.”

  “Allow me to continue what I started to say. Cardale, if you want service, you are out of luck. There’s literally no one in the office but me.”

  “Then come yourself.”

  “To pick up a reckless woman, and get my hair pulled and my face slapped? No thanks…One moment. There’s a man waiting outside my office on a disciplinary charge. I can either have him court-martialed or I can send him over to you.”

  “What’s his offense?”

  “Insubordination. Arrogance. Disregard of orders. He’s a loner. He does as he pleases and to hell with the rule-book.”

  “What about results?”

  “He gets results—of a sort. His own kind of results.”

  “He may be the man to bring back Isabel May. What’s his name?”

  “Lanarck. He won’t use his rank, which is captain.”

  “He seems something of a free spirit…Well, send him over.”

  Lanarck arrived almost immediately. The secretary ushered him into Cardale’s office.

  “Sit down, please. My name is Cardale. You’re Lanarck, right?”

  “Quite right.”

  Cardale inspected his visitor with open curiosity. Lanarck’s reputation, thought Cardale, was belied by his appearance. He was neither tall nor heavy, and carried himself unobtrusively. His features, deeply darkened by the hard waves of space, were regular and dominated by a cold directness of the gray eyes and a bold jutting nose. Lanarck’s voice was pleasant and soft.

  “Major Detering assigned me to you for orders, sir.”

  “He recommended you highly,” said Cardale. “I have a ticklish job on hand. Look at this.” He passed over the sheet with the photograph of Isabel May. Lanarck scrutinized it without comment and handed it back.

  “This girl was imprisoned six months ago for assault with a deadly weapon. She escaped the day before yesterday into space—which is more or less trivial in itself. But she carries with her a quantity of important information, which must be retrieved for the economic well-being of Earth. This may seem to you an extravagant statement, but accept it from me as a fact.”

  Lanarck said in a patient voice: “Mr. Cardale, I find that I work most efficiently when I am equipped with facts. Give me details of the case. If you feel that the matter is too sensitive for my handling, I will retire and you may bring in operatives better qualified.”

  Cardale said crossly: “The girl’s father is a high-level mathematician,
at work for the Exchequer. By his instruction an elaborate method of security to regulate transfer of funds was evolved. As an emergency precaution he devised an over-ride system, consisting of several words in a specific sequence. A criminal could go to the telephone, call the Exchequer, use these words and direct by voice alone the transfer of a billion dollars to his personal account. Or a hundred billion.”

  “Why not cancel the over-ride and install another?”

  “Because of Arthur May’s devilish subtlety. The over-ride is hidden in the computer; it is buried, totally inaccessible, that it might be protected from someone ordering the computer to reveal the over-ride. The only way the over-ride can be voided is to use the over-ride first and issue appropriate orders.”

  “Go on.”

  “Arthur May knew the over-ride. He agreed to transfer the knowledge to the Chancellor and then submit to a hypnotic process which would remove the knowledge from his brain. Now occurred a rather sordid matter in regard to May’s remuneration, and in my mind he was absolutely in the right.”

  “I know the feeling,” said Lanarck. “I’ve had my own troubles with the scoundrels. The only good bursar is a dead bursar.”

  “In any event there follows an incredible tale of wrangling, proposals, estimates, schemes, counter-proposals, counter-schemes and conniving, all of which caused Arthur May a mental breakdown and he forgot the over-ride. But he had anticipated something of the sort and he left a memorandum with his daughter: Isabel May. When the authorities came for her father, she refused to let them in; she performed violent acts; she was confined in a penal institution, from which she escaped. Regardless of rights and wrongs she must be captured, more or less gently, and brought back—with the over-ride. You will surely understand the implications of the situation.”

  “It is a complicated business,” said Lanarck. “But I will go after the girl, and with luck I will bring her back.”

  Six hours later Lanarck arrived at Lunar Observatory. The in-iris expanded; the boat lurched through.

  Inside the dome Lanarck unclamped the port, stepped out. The master astronomer approached. Behind came the mechanics, one of whom bore an instrument which they welded to the hull of Lanarck’s spaceboat.

  “It’s a detector cell,” the astronomer explained. “Right now it’s holding a line on the ship you’re to follow. When the indicator holds to the neutral zone, you’re on her track.”

  “And where does this ship seem to be headed?”

  The astronomer shrugged. “Nowhere in Tellurian space. She’s way past Fomalhaut and lining straight out.”

  Lanarck stood silent. This was hostile space Isabel May was entering. In another day or so she would be slicing the fringe of the Clantlalan System, where the space patrol of that dark and inimical empire without warning destroyed all approaching vessels. Further on opened a region of black stars, inhabited by nondescript peoples little better than pirates. Still farther beyond lay unexplored and consequently dangerous regions.

  The mechanics were finished. Lanarck climbed back into the boat. The out-iris opened; he drove his craft through, down the runway, and off into space.

  A slow week followed, in which distance was annihilated. Earth empire fell far astern: a small cluster of stars. To one side the Clantlalan System grew ever brighter, and as Lanarck passed by the Clantlalan space-spheres tried to close with him. He threw in the emergency bank of generators and whisked the warboat far ahead. Someday, Lanarck knew, he would slip down past the guard ships to the home planet by the twin red suns, to discover what secret was held so dear. But now he kept the detector centered in the dial, and day by day the incoming signals from his quarry grew stronger.

  They passed through the outlaw-ridden belt of dark stars, and into a region of space unknown but for tales let slip by drunken Clantlalan renegades—reports of planets covered with mighty ruins, legends of an asteroid littered with a thousand wrecked spaceships. Other tales were even more incredible. A dragon who tore spaceships open in its jaws purportedly wandered through this region, and it was said that alone on a desolate planet a godlike being created worlds at his pleasure.

  The signals in the detector cell presently grew so strong that Lanarck slackened speed for fear that, overshooting his quarry, the cell would lose its thread of radiation. Now Isabel May began to swing out toward the star-systems which drifted past like fireflies, as if she sought a landmark. Always the signals in the detector cell grew stronger.

  A yellow star waxed bright ahead. Lanarck knew that the ship of Isabel May was close at hand. Into that yellow star’s system he followed her, and lined out the trail toward the single planet. Presently, as the planet globed out before him, the signals ceased entirely.

  The high clear atmosphere braked the motion of Lanarck’s spaceboat. He found below a dun, sun-baked landscape. Through the telescope the surface appeared to be uniformly stony and flat. Clouds of dust indicated the presence of high winds.

  He had no trouble finding Isabel May’s ship. In the field of his telescope lay a cubical white building: the only landmark visible from horizon to horizon. Beside the building sat Isabel May’s silver spaceboat. Lanarck swooped to a landing, half-expecting a bolt from her needle-beam. The port of the spaceboat hung open, but she did not show herself as he came down on his crash-keel close by.

  The air, he found, was breathable. Buckling on his needle-beam, he stepped out on the stony ground. The hot gale tore at him, buffeting his face, whipping tears from his eyes. Wind-flung pebbles bounding along the ground stung his legs. Light from the sun burned his shoulders.

  Lanarck inspected the terrain, to discover no sign of life, either from the white building or from Isabel May’s spaceboat. The ground stretched away, bare and sundrenched, far into the dusty distances. Lanarck looked to the lonely white structure. She must be within. Here was the end of the chase which had brought him across the galaxy.

  II

  Lanarck circled the building. On the leeward side, he found a low dark archway. From within came the heavy smell of life: an odor half-animal, half-reptile. He approached the entrance with his needle-beam ready.

  He called out: “Isabel May!” He listened. The wind whistled by the corner of the building; little stones clicked past, blowing down the endless sun-dazzled waste. There was no other sound.

  A sonorous voice entered his brain.

  “The one you seek is gone.”

  Lanarck stood stock-still.

  “You may come within, Earthman. We are not enemies.”

  The archway loomed dark before him. Step by step he entered. After the glare of the white sun the dimness of the room was like a moonless night. Lanarck blinked.

  Slowly objects about him assumed form. Two enormous eyes peered through the gloom; behind appeared a tremendous domelike bulk. Thought surged into Lanarck’s brain. “You are unnecessarily truculent. Here will be no occasion for violence.”

  Lanarck relaxed, feeling slightly at a loss. Telepathy was not often practised upon Earth. The creature’s messages came like a paradoxically silent voice, but he had no knowledge how to transmit his own messages. He hazarded the experiment.

  “Where is Isabel May?”

  “In a place inaccessible to you.”

  “How did she go? Her spaceboat is outside, and she landed but a half-hour ago.”

  “I sent her away.”

  Keeping his needle-beam ready, Lanarck searched the building. The girl was nowhere to be found. Seized by a sudden fearful thought, he ran to the entrance and looked out. The two spaceboats were as he had left them. He shoved the needle-beam back into the holster and turned to the leviathan, in whom he sensed benign amusement.

  “Well, then—who are you and where is Isabel May?”

  “I am Laoome,” came the reply. “Laoome, the one-time Third of Narfilhet—Laoome the World-Thinker, the Final Sage of the Fifth Universe…As for the girl, I have placed her, at her own request, upon a pleasant but inaccessible world of my own creation.”

/>   Lanarck stood perplexed.

  “Look!” Laoome said.

  Space quivered in front of Lanarck’s eyes. A dark aperture appeared in midair. Looking through, Lanarck saw hanging apparently but a yard before his eyes a lambent sphere—a miniature world. As he watched, it expanded like a toy balloon.

  Its horizons vanished past the confines of the opening. Continents and oceans assumed shape, flecked with cloud-wisps. Polar ice-caps glinted blue-white in the light of an unseen sun. Yet all the time the world seemed to be but a yard distant. A plain appeared, rimmed by black, flinty mountains. The color of the plain, a ruddy ocher he saw presently, was due to a forest-carpet of rust-colored foliage. The expansion ceased.

  The World-Thinker spoke: “That which you see before you is matter as real and tangible as yourself. I have indeed created it through my mind. Until I dissolve it in the same manner, it exists. Reach out and touch it.”

  Lanarck did so. It was actually only a yard from his face, and the red forest crushed like dry moss under his fingertips.

  “You destroyed a village,” commented Laoome, and caused the world to expand once more at a breathtaking rate, until the perspectives were as if Lanarck hung a hundred feet above the surface. He was looking into the devastation which his touch had wrought a moment before. The trees, far larger than he had supposed, with boles thirty or forty feet through, lay tossed and shattered. Visible were the ruins of rude huts, from which issued calls and screams of pain, thinly audible to Lanarck. Bodies of men and women lay crushed. Others tore frantically at the wreckage.

  Lanarck stared in disbelief. “There’s life! Men!”

  “Without life, a world is uninteresting, a lump of rock. Men, like yourself, I often use. They have a large capacity for emotion and initiative, a flexibility to the varied environments which I introduce.”

  Lanarck gazed at the tips of his fingers, then back to the shattered village. “Are they really alive?”