Chateau d'If and Other Stories Read online

  Chateau d’If

  and

  Other Stories

  Jack Vance

  Copyright 2012 by Jack Vance

  Published by

  Spatterlight Press

  ISBN 978-1-61947-026-2

  2012-04-15

  Visit jackvance.com for more

  Spatterlight Press Releases

  Phalid’s Fate, 1945. Chateau d’If, 1949. Crusade to Maxus, 1950. Shape-Up, 1952. The Augmented Agent, 1956. Milton Hack from Zodiac, 1957. The Gift of Gab, 1954. Nopalgarth, 1964. The Narrow Land, 1966.

  This title was created from the digital archive of the Vance Integral Edition, a series of 44 books produced under the aegis of the author by a worldwide group of his readers. The VIE project gratefully acknowledges the editorial guidance of Norma Vance, as well as the cooperation of the Department of Special Collections at Boston University, whose John Holbrook Vance collection has been an important source of textual evidence. Special thanks to R.C. Lacovara, Patrick Dusoulier, Koen Vyverman, Paul Rhoads, Chuck King, Gregory Hansen, Suan Yong, and Josh Geller for their invaluable assistance preparing final versions of the source files.

  Source: Cameron Thornley, John Rick, Chris Ryan, Digitize: Mark Adams, Derek W. Benson, Richard Chandler, Herve Goubin, David Hecht, Joel Hedlund, Charles King, Chris Reid, Axel Roschinski, Thomas Rydbeck, Michael Shulver, Gan Uesli Starling, Peter Strickland, Dave Worden, Suan Hsi Yong, Diff: Damien G. Jones, Charles King, David A. Kennedy, R.C. Lacovara, Dave Peters, David Reitsema, Dave Worden, Suan Hsi Yong, Tech Proof: Ron Chernich, Michael Duncan, Peter Ikin, Fred Zoetemeyer, Text Integrity: Richard Chandler, Rob Friefeld, Rob Gerrand, Alun Hughes, David A. Kennedy, Paul Rhoads, Thomas Rydbeck, John A. Schwab, Steve Sherman, Tim Stretton, Suan Hsi Yong, Implement: Donna Adams, Mark Adams, Derek W. Benson, Mike Dennison, Damien G. Jones, David Reitsema, Hans van der Veeke, Security: David A. Kennedy, Paul Rhoads, Compose: Andreas Irle, John A. Schwab, Comp Review: Christian J. Corley, Marcel van Genderen, Brian Gharst, Karl Kellar, Charles King, Bob Luckin, Robin L. Rouch, Billy Webb, Update Verify: Joel Anderson, John A. D. Foley, Rob Friefeld, Marcel van Genderen, Bob Luckin, Paul Rhoads, RTF-Diff: Mark Bradford, Deborah Cohen, Patrick Dusoulier, Charles King, Errico Rescigno, Bill Schaub, Textport: Patrick Dusoulier, Proofread: A.G. Kimlin, Angus Campbell-Cann, Antonio Duarte III, Arjan Bokx, Axel Roschinski, Bill Sherman, Bob Luckin, Bob Moody, Carl Goldman, Charles King, Chris LaHatte, Christian J. Corley, Craig Heartwell, Dave Worden, David A. Kennedy, David Reitsema, Dirk Jan Verlinde, Ed Gooding, Erec Grim, Erik Arendse, Evert Jan de Groot, Frank Dalton, Fred Zoetemeyer, Gabriel Stein, George Logan, Glenn Raye, Greg Delson, Hans van der Veeke, Harry Erwin, Helmut Hlavacs, Jasper Groen, Jeffrey Ruszczyk, Jim Pattison, Joe Bergeron, Joel Hedlund, Joel Riedesel, John Hawes, John McDonough, Jurriaan Kalkman, Kristine Anstrats, Linda Heaphy, Lisa Brown, Lucie Jones, Malcolm Bowers, Marc Herant, Marcel van Genderen, Mark Bradford, Mark J. Straka, Mark Shoulder, Martin Green, Matthew Colbum, Michael Duncan, Michael Mitchell, Michael Nolan, Michel Bazin, Mike Barrett, Neil Anderson, Patrick Dusoulier, Paul Rhoads, Per Kjellberg, Peter Bayley, Peter Ikin, Phil Cohen, Richard Platt, Rob Gerrand, Robert Melson, Robin L. Rouch, Roderick MacBeath, Rudi Staudinger, S.A. Manning, Scott Benenati, Sean Butcher, Simon Read, Steve Sherman, Stuart Hammond, Till Noever, Wiley Mittenberg, Willem Timmer, Yannick Gour

  Ebook Creation: Arjen Broeze, Christopher Wood, Artwork (maps based on original drawings by Jack and Norma Vance): Paul Rhoads, Christopher Wood, Testing: Arjen Broeze, Evert Jan de Groot, Gregory Hansen, Menno van der Leden, Koen Vyverman, Management: John Vance, Koen Vyverman, Web: Menno van der Leden

  THE COMPLETE WORKS

  of

  Jack Vance

  Chateau d’If

  and

  Other Stories

  THE VANCE DIGITAL EDITION

  Oakland

  2012

  Chateau d’If

  Previously published as

  New Bodies for Old

  Crusade to Maxus

  Previously published as

  Overlords of Maxus

  The Augmented Agent

  Previously published as

  I-C-a-BeM

  Milton Hack from Zodiac

  Previously published as

  The Man from Zodiac

  Nopalgarth

  Previously published as

  The Brains of Earth

  Contents

  Phalid’s Fate

  Chateau d’If

  Crusade to Maxus

  Shape-Up

  The Augmented Agent

  Milton Hack from Zodiac

  The Gift of Gab

  Nopalgarth

  The Narrow Land

  Phalid’s Fate

  Phalid’s Fate

  I

  After two months of unconsciousness, Ryan Wratch opened his eyes. Or more accurately, he folded into tight pleats two hundred tiny shutters of dirty purplish-brown tissue and thereupon looked out on a new world.

  For perhaps twenty seconds Wratch stared at delirium made tangible, madness beyond all expression. He heard a staccato shrillness — this somehow he felt he should recognize. Then his brain relaxed, let go. Wratch once more lost consciousness.

  Dr. Plogetz, who was short and stocky, with a smooth pink face and white hair, straightened up from the thing on the table, put down his lensed platoscope.

  He turned to the man in the gray-green uniform who wore just above his elbow the three golden sunbursts of a Sector Commander. The Commander was thin, brown and tough, with a rather harsh and humorless expression.

  “Organically, everything is in excellent shape,” said the doctor. “The nerve junctures are healed, the blood adapters function beautifully —”

  He broke off as the black alien shape on the padded table — a thing with a large insect-seeming head, a long black carapace extending over its back like a cloak, oddly jointed legs — stirred one of its arm-members — these, rubbery tentacles with mottled gray undersides, haphazard grayish finger flaps.

  Dr. Plogetz picked up his platoscope, inspected the organs inside the chitin-plated torso.

  “Reflex,” he murmured. “As I was saying, there’s no doubt it’s a healthy creature organically. Psychologically —” he pursed his lips “— naturally it’s too early to warrant any guesses.”

  Sector Commander Sandion nodded his head.

  “When will it, or he, I should say, regain consciousness?”

  Dr. Plogetz pressed a stud in his wrist band. A voice sounded from the tiny speaker.

  “Yes, doctor?”

  “Bring in a sonfrane hood — let’s see — about a number twenty-six.” Then he said to Sandion: “I’ll give him a stimulant — revive him at once. But first —”

  A nurse entered — a dark-haired, blue-eyed, very beautiful nurse — bringing a hood.

  “Now, Miss Elder,” said Dr. Plogetz, “adjust it completely around the optic slit. Take care not to bind those little gill-flaps at the side of the head.”

  Plogetz took a deep breath before continuing with his explanation.

  “I want to minimize the shock on the brain,” explained the doctor. “The visual images no doubt will be confusing, to say the least. The Phalid’s color spectrum, remember, is twice as long, the field of vision three or four times as wide as that of the average human being. It has two hundred eyes, and the impressions of two hundred separate optic units must be coordinated and merged. A human brain accommodates to two images, but it’s questionable whether it could do the same for two hundred. That’s why we’ve left intact a bit of the creature’s former brain — the nodule coordinating the various images.” Here Plogetz paused long enough to give the complex black head a
n appraising glance.

  “Even with this help, Wratch’s sight will be a new and fantastic thing,” he mused. “All pictures seen through Phalid eyes and merged by that bit of Phalid brain will be something never envisioned by human mind.”

  “No doubt it will be a tremendous strain on his nerves,” observed Sandion.

  The doctor nodded, inspected the blindfold.

  “Two cc. of three percent arthrodine,” he said to the nurse. Then again to Sandion: “We’ve left intact another nodule of the former brain, the speech formation and recognition center, a matter probably as essential as his visual organization. The rest of the brain it was necessary to excise — a pity in some ways. The memories and associations would be invaluable to your young man, and the Phalids undoubtedly have special senses I’d be interested getting a first hand report of.

  “Ah, yes,” said the doctor as the nurse handed him a hypodermic. “Peculiar affair,” he continued, using the hypodermic. “I can graft a human brain into this — this creature; whereas if I transferred a brain into another human body, I’d kill that brain.” He gave the empty hypodermic back to the nurse, wiped his hands. “Strange world we live in, isn’t it, Commander?”

  Commander Sandion gave him a quick sardonic glance and a nod.

  “Strange world indeed, Doctor.”

  Personality, the sense of his own distinctive ego, drifted up from a murky limbo. For the second time Ryan Wratch folded the two hundred little screens in the eye-slit that ran more than halfway around what was now his head. He saw nothing but blackness, felt an oppression before his vision.

  He lay quietly, remembering the crazy welter of light and shape and unknown color he had seen before, and for the moment was content to lie in the dark.

  Gradually he became aware of new sensations in the functioning of his body. He was no longer breathing. Instead, a continuous current of air blew along throbbing conduits, out the gill-flaps at his head. At what point he inhaled he could not determine.

  He became conscious of a peculiar tactile sensitivity, an exact perception of texture. The sensitive areas were on the underside and tips of his arm-members, with the rest of his body less sensitive. In this way he knew the exact quality of the cloth under him, felt the weave, the lay of the threads, the essential, absolute intrinsic nature of the fiber.

  He heard strident harsh sounds. Suddenly, and with a feeling of shock, he realized that these were human voices. They were calling his name.

  “Wratch! Do you understand me? Move your right arm if you do.”

  Wratch moved his right arm-member.

  “I understand you very well,” he said. “Why can’t I see?” He spoke instinctively, without thought, not listening to his voice. Something strange caused him to stop and ponder. The words had coursed smoothly from his brain to the bone at the sounding diaphragm in his chest. When he spoke the voice sounded natural on the hair tendrils under the carapace at his back — his hearing members. But after an instant’s groping Wratch’s brain realized that the voice had not been human. It had been a series of drones and buzzes, very different from the one which had questioned him.

  Now he tried to enunciate the language of men, and found it impossible. His speech organ was ill-adapted to sibilants, nasals, dentals, fricatives, explosives — although vowels he could indicate by pitching the tone of his voice. After a moment’s effort, he realized his own unintelligibility.

  “Are you trying to speak English?” came the question. “Move right arm for yes, left for no.”

  Wratch moved his right tentacle. Then deciding he wished to see, felt at the eye-slit to find what was obstructing his vision. A detaining touch restrained him.

  “You’d better leave the hood as it is for the present, until you become a little more familiar with the Phalid’s body.”

  Wratch, recollecting the dazzle that had first greeted him, dropped the tentacle.

  “I don’t understand how he so quickly masters the use of his members ,” said Sandion.

  “The Phalid nervous system is essentially similar to the human,” said Dr. Plogetz. “Wratch forms a volition in his brain, passes it through adapters to the vertebral cord, and reflexes take care of the rest. Thus, when he tries to walk, if he attempted to direct the motion of each leg, he’d be clumsy and awkward. However if he merely tells the body to walk, it will walk naturally, automatically.”

  Plogetz looked back to the creature on the table.

  “Are you comfortable? Are your senses clear?”

  Wratch jerked his right tentacle.

  “Do you feel any influence of the Phalid’s will? That is, is there any conflict upon your brain from the body?”

  Wratch thought. Apparently there was not. He felt as much Ryan Wratch as he ever had, though there was the sense of being locked up, of an unnatural imprisonment.

  He tried to speak once more. Strange, he thought, how easy the Phalid speech came to him, a tongue he had never heard. As before he failed to arrive at even an approximation to human speech.

  “Here’s a pencil and a writing board,” said the voice. “Writing blindfolded perhaps’ll be difficult, but try it.”

  Wratch grasped the pencil and fighting an impulse to scribble a line of vibrating angles, wrote:

  “Can you read this?”

  “Yes,” said the voice.

  “Who are you? Dr. Plogetz?”

  “Yes.”

  “Operation a success?”

  “Yes.”

  “I seem to know the Phalid language. I speak it automatically. I mean my brain thinks and the voice comes out in Phalid.”

  “That’s nothing to wonder at.” How shrill was Dr. Plogetz’ voice! Wratch remembered how it had sounded before the transfer — a normal, pleasant, rather deep baritone. “We left a segment of the Phalid’s brain in the head-case — the node of language production and comprehension. An ignorance of the Phalid tongue would be very inconvenient for you. We’ve also left the node which coordinates the images of the two hundred eyes — there’d be only a blur otherwise. Even as it is, I imagine you’ll notice considerable distortion.”

  Considerable distortion! thought Wratch. Ha! if Dr. Plogetz could only look at a color photograph of what he’d seen.

  Another voice addressed Wratch, a voice even shriller, with a flat rasp that grated upon Wratch’s new nerves.

  “Hello, Wratch. It’s Sandion — Commander Sandion.”

  Wratch remembered him well enough, a thin brown man, very bitter and intense, who carried much of the responsibility in the campaign against the mysterious Phalids. It was Sandion who had questioned him after the strange little brush out by Kordecker Three-forty-three near Sagittarius, where the Phalids had killed Wratch’s two brothers and left Wratch dying.

  “Hello Commander,” wrote Wratch. “How long have I been unconscious?”

  “Nearly two months.”

  Wratch buzzed surprise.

  “What has been happening?”

  “They’ve attacked fifteen more ships — fifteen at least, all around the sky. Ships burnt out, crews and passengers dead or missing. They waylaid three battle-cruisers, at separate times of course — one in Hercules, one in Andromeda, and another not three light-years beyond Procyon.”

  “Getting bolder!” Wratch wrote.

  “They can afford to,” said Sandion bitterly. “They’ve whittled our battle-fleet down a third already. They’ve got so cursed much mobility. We’re like a blind man trying to whip twenty midgets with long knives. And not knowing the location of their home planet, we’re helpless.”

  “That’s my job,” wrote Wratch. “Don’t forget I owe them something myself. My two brothers.”

  “Um,” Sandion grunted, and said gruffly: “Your job — and your suicide.”

  Wratch nodded his body. His head, mounted on the horny collar which topped the black carapace, could not be nodded.

  “When Plogetz got to me I was dying — ninety-nine percent dead. What do I lose?”

 
Sandion grunted again. “Well, I’ve got to run along. Take it easy and rest.” He grinned sardonically at Miss Elder. “Lucky dog that you are, with a beautiful nurse and all.”

  Lot of good that does me, thought Ryan Wratch.

  Sector Commander Sandion went to the port, whose faintly grayed crystal transmitted a view of a dozen glistening towers set in parks and lakes, meshes of slender skyways, swarming air-traffic. Sandion’s air-car, magnetically gripped to the park-rail, hung outside Dr. Plogetz’ office. He climbed in, and the car darted off toward the Space Control Tower, toward his office and his endless study of space charts.

  Dr. Plogetz turned back to Wratch.

  “Now,” he said, “I’m going to take away the hood. Don’t worry or wonder about the confusion. Just relax and look around.”

  II

  Two weeks later Wratch was able to move around his suite of rooms without falling over the furniture. That is not to say he was seeing things as he saw them before. It was like learning to see all over again, in a world four times as complex. Even so, if Wratch’s future had held the slightest hope for anything other than a desperate friendless struggle, a final dreary death, he might have enjoyed the experience.

  Now, in spite of all, he was constantly amazed and charmed by the colors, the tones and shades — ardent, cool, gloomy, fiery, mystic. These imparted to everything he saw a semblance new and wonderful.

  The human eye sees red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. Wratch had seven more colors — three below red, three above violet. And there was another wave-length to which his two hundred eyes were sensitive — a color far up the spectrum, a glorious misty color. All this he determined with the aid of a small spectroscope Dr. Plogetz gave him.

  He described the single high band of color to Dr. Plogetz, who was very interested in all Wratch’s observations, and who suggested that Wratch call this color ‘kalychrome’, a word, according to Dr. Plogetz, derived from the Greek. Wratch was willing, inasmuch as the Phalid word for the color was phonetically ‘zz-za-mmm’, more or less — a rather awkward term to be writing on the blackboard Dr. Plogetz had brought him. The other colors were called sub-red 1, sub-red 2, sub-red 3, super-violet 1, super-violet 2, super-violet 3.