Hard-Luck Diggings: The Early Jack Vance, Volume One Page 5

  The Antagonist’s secret thought came to Kelly: “Seize the jewel at the back of the neck.”

  Kelly scanned the slowly advancing figure. It was exactly his height and heft, naked, but radiating an inhuman confidence. The face was blurred, fuzzy, and Kelly could never afterward describe the countenance. He tore his gaze away.

  “How do we fight?” he demanded, beads of sweat dripping from his body. “Do we set any rules—or no holds barred?”

  “Tooth and nail,” came the calm thoughts of the Leader. “Han now has organic sensibilities like yours. If you kill this body, or render it unconscious, you win. If you lose this trial, then we shall decide.”

  “Suppose he kills me?” objected Kelly, but no one seemed to heed his protest.

  Han came glaring-eyed at him. Kelly took a step backward, jabbed tentatively with his left fist. Han rushed forward. Kelly punched furiously, kneed the onrushing body, heard it grunt and fall, to leap erect instantly. A tingle of joy ran down Kelly’s spine, and more confidently he stepped forward, lashing out with rights and lefts. Han leapt close and clinched his arms around Kelly’s body. Now he began to squeeze, and Kelly felt a power greater than any man’s in those green-glowing arms.

  “The jewel,” came a sly thought. Sparks were exploding in Kelly’s eyes; his ribs creaked. He swung a frenzied hand, clawing at Han’s neck. He felt a hard protuberance, he dug his nails under, tore the jewel free.

  A shrill cry of utmost pain and horror—and the god-man puffed away into black smoke which babbled in a frenzy back and forth through the darkness. It surged around Kelly, and little tendrils of the smoke seemed to pluck at the jewel clenched in his hand. But they had no great force, and Kelly found he could repel the wisps with the power of his own brain.

  He suddenly understood the function of the jewel. It was the focus for the god. It centralized the myriad forces. The jewel gone, the god was a welter of conflicting volitions, vagrant impulses, insubstantial.

  Kelly felt the Antagonist’s triumphant thoughts. And he himself felt an elation he had never known before. The Leader’s cool comment brought him back to himself:

  “You seem to have won the contest.” There was a pause. “In the absence of opposition we will render any requests you may make.” There was no concern in his thoughts for the decentralized Han. The black smoke was dissipating, Han was no more than a memory. “Already you have delayed us long. We have the problem of”—the now familiar confusion of ideas, but this time Kelly understood vaguely. It seemed that there was a vortex of universes which possessed consciousness, as mighty or mightier than these gods, which was driving on a course that would be incommoding. There were qualifications, a host of contributory factors.

  “Well,” said Kelly, “I’d like you to move the planet I just came from back to its old orbit around Magra Taratempos. If you know what planet and what star I’m talking about.”

  “Yes.” The Leader made a small exertion. “The world you mention moves in its previous orbit.”

  “Suppose the Han priests come through the portal and want it moved again?”

  “The portal no longer exists. It was held open by Han; when Han dissolved, the portal closed…Is that the total of your desires?”

  Kelly’s mind raced, became a turmoil. This was his chance. Wealth, longevity, power, knowledge…Somehow thoughts would not form themselves—and there were curses attached to unnatural gifts—

  “I’d like to get back to Bucktown safely…”

  Kelly found himself in the glare of the outer world. He stood on the hill above Bucktown, and he breathed the salt air of the marshes. Above hung a hot white sun—Magra Taratempos.

  He became aware of an object clenched in his hand. It was the jewel he had torn out of Han’s neck. There were two others in his pocket.

  Across the city he saw the light-blue and stainless-steel box of the station. What should he tell Herli and Mapes? Would they believe the truth? He looked at the three jewels. Two he could sell for a fortune on Earth. But one shone brilliantly in the bright sunlight and that was for Lynette Mason’s tan and graceful neck.

  Afterword to “The Temple of Han”

  Talking shop has never appealed much to me, and I have spent most of my career trying to avoid it…

  Early in my career I established a set of rather rigid rules as to how fiction should be written, but I find these rules difficult to formalize, or explain, or put into some sort of pattern which might instruct someone else. If I adhere to any fundamental axiom or principle in my writing, perhaps it is my belief that the function of fiction is essentially to amuse or entertain the reader. The mark of good writing, in my opinion, is that the reader is not aware that the story has been written; as he reads, the ideas and images flow into his mind as if he were living them. The utmost accolade a writer can receive is that the reader is incognizant of his presence.

  In order to achieve this, the writer must put no obstacles in the reader’s way. Therefore I try avoid words that he must puzzle over, or that he cannot gloss from context; and when I make up names, I shun the use of diacritical marks that he must sound out, thus halting the flow; and in general, I try to keep the sentences metrically pleasing, so that they do not obtrude upon the reader’s mind. The sentences must swing…

  Before my first sale: “The World-Thinker”…I wrote an epic novel in the style of E.E. Smith’s cosmic chronicles. My own epic was rejected everywhere. I finally broke it into pieces and salvaged a few episodes for short stories. I think that “The Temple of Han” (originally “The God and Temple Robber”) was one of these altered episodes.

  —Jack Vance

  The Masquerade on Dicantropus

  Two puzzles dominated the life of Jim Root. The first, the pyramid out in the desert, tickled and prodded his curiosity, while the second, the problem of getting along with his wife, kept him keyed to a high pitch of anxiety and apprehension. At the moment the problem had crowded the mystery of the pyramid into a lost alley of his brain.

  Eyeing his wife uneasily, Root decided that she was in for another of her fits. The symptoms were familiar—a jerking over of the pages of an old magazine, her tense back and bolt-upright posture, her pointed silence, the compression at the corners of her mouth.

  With no preliminary motion she threw the magazine across the room, jumped to her feet. She walked to the doorway, stood looking out across the plain, fingers tapping on the sill. Root heard her voice, low, as if not meant for him to hear.

  “Another day of this and I’ll lose what little’s left of my mind.”

  Root approached warily. If he could be compared to a Labrador retriever, then his wife was a black panther—a woman tall and well-covered with sumptuous flesh. She had black flowing hair and black flashing eyes. She lacquered her fingernails and wore black lounge pajamas even on desiccated deserted inhospitable Dicantropus.

  “Now, dear,” said Root, “take it easy. Certainly it’s not as bad as all that.”

  She whirled and Root was surprised by the intensity in her eyes. “It’s not bad, you say? Very well for you to talk—you don’t care for anything human to begin with. I’m sick of it. Do you hear? I want to go back to Earth! I never want to see another planet in my whole life. I never want to hear the word archaeology, I never want to see a rock or a bone or a microscope—”

  She flung a wild gesture around the room that included a number of rocks, bones, microscopes, as well as books, specimens in bottles, photographic equipment, a number of native artifacts.

  Root tried to soothe her with logic. “Very few people are privileged to live on an outside planet, dear.”

  “They’re not in their right minds. If I’d known what it was like, I’d never have come out here.” Her voice dropped once more. “Same old dirt every day, same stinking natives, same vile canned food, nobody to talk to—”

  Root uncertainly picked up and laid down his pipe. “Lie down, dear,” he said with unconvincing confidence. “Take a nap! Things will look differe
nt when you wake up.”

  Stabbing him with a look, she turned and strode out into the blue-white glare of the sun. Root followed more slowly, bringing Barbara’s sun-helmet and adjusting his own. Automatically he cocked an eye up the antenna, the reason for the station and his own presence, Dicantropus being a relay point for ULR messages between Clave II and Polaris. The antenna stood as usual, polished metal tubing four hundred feet high.

  Barbara halted by the shore of the lake, a brackish pond in the neck of an old volcano, one of the few natural bodies of water on the planet. Root silently joined her, handed her her sun-helmet. She jammed it on her head, walked away.

  Root shrugged, watched her as she circled the pond to a clump of feather-fronded cycads. She flung herself down, relaxed into a sulky lassitude, her back to a big gray-green trunk, and seemed intent on the antics of the natives—owlish leather-gray little creatures popping back and forth into holes in their mound.

  This was a hillock a quarter-mile long, covered with spine-scrub and a rusty black creeper. With one exception it was the only eminence as far as the eye could reach, horizon to horizon, across the baked helpless expanse of the desert.

  The exception was the stepped pyramid, the mystery of which irked Root. It was built of massive granite blocks, set without mortar but cut so carefully that hardly a crack could be seen. Early on his arrival Root had climbed all over the pyramid, unsuccessfully seeking entrance.

  When finally he brought out his atomite torch to melt a hole in the granite a sudden swarm of natives pushed him back and in the pidgin of Dicantropus gave him to understand that entrance was forbidden. Root desisted with reluctance, and had been consumed by curiosity ever since…

  Who had built the pyramid? In style it resembled the ziggurats of ancient Assyria. The granite had been set with a skill unknown, so far as Root could see, to the natives. But if not the natives—who? A thousand times Root had chased the question through his brain. Were the natives debased relics of a once-civilized race? If so, why were there no other ruins? And what was the purpose of the pyramid? A temple? A mausoleum? A treasure-house? Perhaps it was entered from below by a tunnel.

  As Root stood on the shore of the lake, looking across the desert, the questions flicked automatically through his mind though without their usual pungency. At the moment the problem of soothing his wife lay heavy on his mind. He debated a few moments whether or not to join her; perhaps she had cooled off and might like some company. He circled the pond and stood looking down at her glossy black hair.

  “I came over here to be alone,” she said without accent and the indifference chilled him more than an insult.

  “I thought—that maybe you might like to talk,” said Root. “I’m very sorry, Barbara, that you’re unhappy.”

  Still she said nothing, sitting with her head pressed back against the tree trunk.

  “We’ll go home on the next supply ship,” Root said. “Let’s see, there should be one—”

  “Three months and three days,” said Barbara flatly.

  Root shifted his weight, watched her from the corner of his eye. This was a new manifestation. Tears, recriminations, anger—there had been plenty of these before.

  “We’ll try to keep amused till then,” he said desperately. “Let’s think up some games to play. Maybe badminton—or we could do more swimming.”

  Barbara snorted in sharp sarcastic laughter. “With things like that popping up around you?” She gestured to one of the Dicantrops who had lazily paddled close. She narrowed her eyes, leaned forward. “What’s that he’s got around his neck?”

  Root peered. “Looks like a diamond necklace more than anything else.”

  “My Lord!” whispered Barbara.

  Root walked down to the water’s edge. “Hey, boy!” The Dicantrop turned his great velvety eyes in their sockets. “Come here!”

  Barbara joined him as the native paddled close.

  “Let’s see what you’ve got there,” said Root, leaning close to the necklace.

  “Why, those are beautiful!” breathed his wife.

  Root chewed his lip thoughtfully. “They certainly look like diamonds. The setting might be platinum or iridium. Hey, boy, where did you get these?”

  The Dicantrop paddled backward. “We find.”

  “Where?”

  The Dicantrop blew froth from his breath-holes but it seemed to Root as if his eyes had glanced momentarily toward the pyramid.

  “You find in big pile of rock?”

  “No,” said the native and sank below the surface.

  Barbara returned to her seat by the tree, frowned at the water. Root joined her. For a moment there was silence. Then Barbara said, “That pyramid must be full of things like that!”

  Root made a deprecatory noise in his throat. “Oh—I suppose it’s possible.”

  “Why don’t you go out and see?”

  “I’d like to—but you know it would make trouble.”

  “You could go out at night.”

  “No,” said Root uncomfortably. “It’s really not right. If they want to keep the thing closed up and secret it’s their business. After all it belongs to them.”

  “How do you know it does?” his wife insisted, with a hard and sharp directness. “They didn’t build it and probably never put those diamonds there.” Scorn crept into her voice. “Are you afraid?”

  “Yes,” said Root. “I’m afraid. There’s an awful lot of them and only two of us. That’s one objection. But the other, most important—”

  Barbara let herself slump back against the trunk. “I don’t want to hear it.”

  Root, now angry himself, said nothing for a minute. Then, thinking of the three months and three days till the arrival of the supply ship, he said, “It’s no use our being disagreeable. It just makes it harder on both of us. I made a mistake bringing you out here and I’m sorry. I thought you’d enjoy the experience, just the two of us alone on a strange planet—”

  Barbara was not listening to him. Her mind was elsewhere.

  “Barbara!”

  “Shh!” she snapped. “Be still! Listen!”

  He jerked his head up. The air vibrated with a far thrum-m-m-m. Root sprang out into the sunlight, scanned the sky. The sound grew louder. There was no question about it, a ship was dropping down from space.

  Root ran into the station, flipped open the communicator—but there were no signals coming in. He returned to the door and watched as the ship sank down to a bumpy rough landing two hundred yards from the station.

  It was a small ship, the type rich men sometimes used as private yachts, but old and battered. It sat in a quiver of hot air, its tubes creaking and hissing as they cooled. Root approached.

  The dogs on the port began to turn, the port swung open. A man stood in the opening. For a moment he teetered on loose legs, then fell headlong.

  Root, springing forward, caught him before he struck ground. “Barbara!” Root called. His wife approached. “Take his feet. We’ll carry him inside. He’s sick.”

  They laid him on the couch and his eyes opened halfway.

  “What’s the trouble?” asked Root. “Where do you feel sick?”

  “My legs are like ice,” husked the man. “My shoulders ache. I can’t breathe.”

  “Wait till I look in the book,” muttered Root. He pulled out the Official Spaceman’s Self-Help Guide, traced down the symptoms. He looked across to the sick man. “You been anywhere near Alphard?”

  “Just came from there,” panted the man.

  “Looks like you got a dose of Lyma’s Virus. A shot of mycosetin should fix you up, according to the book.”

  He inserted an ampoule into the hypospray, pressed the tip to his patient’s arm, pushed the plunger home. “That should do it—according to the Guide.”

  “Thanks,” said his patient. “I feel better already.” He closed his eyes. Root stood up, glanced at Barbara. She was scrutinizing the man with a peculiar calculation. Root looked down again, seeing the ma
n for the first time. He was young, perhaps thirty, thin but strong with a tight nervous muscularity. His face was lean, almost gaunt, his skin very bronzed. He had short black hair, heavy black eyebrows, a long jaw, a thin high nose.

  Root turned away. Glancing at his wife he foresaw the future with a sick certainty.

  He washed out the hypospray, returned the Guide to the rack, all with a sudden self-conscious awkwardness. When he turned around, Barbara was staring at him with wide thoughtful eyes. Root slowly left the room.

  A day later Marville Landry was on his feet and when he had shaved and changed his clothes there was no sign of the illness. He was by profession a mining engineer, so he revealed to Root, en route to a contract on Thuban XIV.

  The virus had struck swiftly and only by luck had he noticed the proximity of Dicantropus on his charts. Rapidly weakening, he had been forced to decelerate so swiftly and land so uncertainly that he feared his fuel was low. And indeed, when they went out to check, they found only enough fuel to throw the ship a hundred feet into the air.

  Landry shook his head ruefully. “And there’s a ten-million-munit contract waiting for me on Thuban Fourteen.”

  Said Root dismally, “The supply packet’s due in three months.”

  Landry winced. “Three months—in this hell-hole? That’s murder.” They returned to the station. “How do you stand it here?”

  Barbara heard him. “We don’t. I’ve been on the verge of hysterics every minute the last six months. Jim—” she made a wry grimace toward her husband “—he’s got his bones and rocks and the antenna. He’s not too much company.”

  “Maybe I can help out,” Landry offered airily.

  “Maybe,” she said with a cool blank glance at Root. Presently she left the room, walking more gracefully now, with an air of mysterious gaiety.

  Dinner that evening was a gala event. As soon as the sun took its blue glare past the horizon Barbara and Landry carried a table down to the lake and there they set it with all the splendor the station could afford. With no word to Root she pulled the cork on the gallon of brandy he had been nursing for a year and served generous highballs with canned lime-juice, Maraschino cherries and ice.