The Dogtown Tourist Agency (25 page)

“Then there seems no further reason for delay,” said Dr. Aartemus. “Except—er, what of Zerpette?”

Zerpette said in a dry voice: “I have learned much which I did not know, including the existence of Perdhra Olruff at Cassander. You may ignore me as well. I am finished. It is now Freitzke’s turn.”

At Dandyl Villa, Hetzel rendered Conwit Clent an accounting of his expenses. “They run somewhat high, but men like Bruno Imhalter do not come cheap, and as you know I have traveled considerably.”

“Not another word!” declared Clent. “I am intensely pleased; furthermore each member of the group has insisted upon sharing the expense, so little enough is coming from my own pocket.”

“In that case,” said Hetzel, “the problem no longer exists. Allow me to wish you and your wife the happiest of marriages, with both loyal sons and dutiful daughters.”

“I hope the same, Miro Hetzel. But what of Faurence Dacre?”

“He is now under the care of Freitzke and Sabin Cru.”

“Will he not eventually work further mischief?”

“The chances would seem scant. Sabin Cru, remember, would be the first to suffer if Dacre ever again required the return of his members. Remember also that the Arsh are a superstitious race; they believe that an incomplete man brings bad luck. We have probably heard the last of Faurence Dacre. Still, the next time I pass Gietersmond, I will visit Masmodo and make a casual enquiry. It is always interesting to look over the scene of a previous case.”

If you’ve enjoyed this book and would like to read more great SF, you’ll find literally thousands of classic Science Fiction & Fantasy titles through the SF Gateway.

For the new home of Science Fiction & Fantasy …

For the most comprehensive collection of classic SF on the internet …

Visit the SF Gateway.

www.sfgateway.com

The Dying Earth

1.
The Dying Earth
(1950) (aka
Mazirian the Magician
)

2.
Cugel the Clever
(1966) (aka
The Eyes of the Overworld
)

3.
Cugel’s Saga
(1966) (aka
Cugel: The Skybreak Spatterlight
)

4.
Rhialto the Marvellous
(1984)

Big Planet

1.
Big Planet
(1952)

2.
The Magnificent Showboats
(1975) (aka
The Magnificent Showboats of the Lower Vissel River, Lune XXII South, Big Planet
) (aka
Showboat World
))

Demon Princes

1.
The Star King
(1964)

2.
The Killing Machine
(1964)

3.
The Palace of Love
(1967)

4.
The Face
(1979)

5.
The Book of Dreams
(1981 )

Planet of Adventure

1.
The Chasch
(19648 (
City of the Chasch
)

2.
The Wannek
(1969) (
Servants of the Wankh
)

3.
The Dirdir
(1969)

4.
The Pnume
(1970)

Durdane

1.
The Anome
(1973)

2.
The Brave Free Men
(1973)

3.
The Asutra
(1974)

Alastor Cluster

1.
Trullion: Alastor 2262
(1973)

2.
Marune: Alastor 933
(1975)

3.
Wyst: Alastor 1716
(1978)

Lyonesse

1.
Suldrun’s Garden
(1983) (aka
Lyonesse
)

2.
The Green Pearl
(1985)

3.
Madouc
(1990)

Cadwal Chronicles

1.
Araminta Station
(1988)

2.
Ecce and Old Earth
(1991)

3.
Throy
(1992)

Gaean Reach

1.
The Domains of Koryphon
(1974) (aka
The Gray Prince
)

2.
Maske: Thaery
(1976)

Other Novels

Vandals of the Void
(1953)

The Rapparee
(
The Five Gold Bands/The Space Pirate
) (1953)

Clarges
(
To Live Forever
) (1956)

The Languages of Pao
(1958)

Gold and Iron
(
Slaves of the Klau/Planet of the Damned
) (1958)

Space Opera
(1965)

The Blue World
(1966)

Emphyrio
(1969)

The Dogtown Tourist Agency
(aka
Galactic Effectuator
) (1980)

Collections

The World-Thinker and Other Stories

The Potter of Firsk and Other Stories
(aka
Gadget Stories
)

Son of the Tree and Other Stories

Golden Girl and Other Stories

The Houses of Iszm and Other Stories

The Dragon Masters and Other

The Moon Moth and Other Stories

Autobiography

This is Me, Jack Vance
(2009)

Jack Vance (1916 – )

Jack Vance was born in 1916 and studied mining, engineering and journalism at the University of California. During the Second World War he served in the merchant navy and was torpedoed twice. He started contributing stories to the pulp magazines in the mid 1940s and published his first book,
The Dying Earth
, in 1950. Among his many books are
The Dragon Masters
, for which he won his first Hugo Award,
Big Planet, The Anome
, and the Lyonesse sequence. He has won the Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Awards, amongst others, and in 1997 was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America.

A Gollancz eBook

Copyright © Jack Vance 1980

All rights reserved.

The right of Jack Vance to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2011 by

Gollancz

The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

Orion House

5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane

London, WC2H 9EA

An Hachette UK Company

A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 575 10979 7

All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real
persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

www.orionbooks.co.uk

*
SLU, Standard Labor-value Unit, the monetary unit of the Gaean Reach, defined as the value of an hour of unskilled labor under standard conditions. The unit supersedes all other monetary bases, in that it derives from the single invariable commodity of the human universe—toil.

*
Vv., an abbreviation for Visfer, originally Vissavar, an Ordinary of the ancient Legion of Truth; now a low-grade honorific used to address a person lacking aristocratic distinction.

*
Zink, a coin representative of a man-minute, the hundredth part of an SLU. Gaean time is based upon the standard day of Earth, subdivided into twenty-four hours, after ancient tradition. A minute is the hundredth part of an hour; a second is the hundredth part of a minute.

*
Crystals occasionally discovered in the slag of dead stars.

*
Xtl (pronounced “kstull”): the polite honorific in use on Cassander, ultimately derived from the word
stletto
or “pirate captain”.

*
SVU: Standard Value Unit; the worth of one standard man’s unskilled labor under standard conditions for a period of one Gaean hour; the single and only commodity of unalterable value.

*
On Skalkemond, the third and outermost of the so-called “Sister Planets”, were situated the great banks, financial institutions, academies of mathematics, cosmology, projective speculation, and esthetics, conservatories of music theory and critical evaluation. In comparison with the architecture of its sister worlds that of Skalkemond seemed spare and severe.

The Skalks, more intensively preoccupied with abstraction than either the Witts or Giets, suffered a wider and deeper range of mental disturbances. They were especially concerned with physical security and had developed an amazing system of area control which reduced crime and violence to a minimum.

*
The legendary starmenter Yane Cargus contracted with the all-male fugitives. He agreed to deliver one hundred young females for a fee of five hundred red sarcenels, the sarcenel being a jewel-like object taken from a Flamboyard’s sensorium. Cargus raided the Convent of the Divine Prism at Blenny, on Lutus, capturing two hundred and thirty novitiates. Upon delivering his cargo, he required a thousand sarcenels or nothing, emphasizing the volume discount. The fugitives in their turn pointed out that sarcenels were rare, that the Flamboyards ferociously resisted attack, that, for eighty-six men, two hundred and thirty females were redundant by more than a factor of two, and, most importantly, that the females were members of that ill-favored and swarthy race known as Gettucks: not at all what the fugitives had in mind. In the ensuing fight, Yane Cargus took thirty-four wounds from the sneezewood lances, but miraculously survived. The fugitives acquired two hundred and thirty females free of charge, and the Arsh race came into existence.

*
Merner: usual polite appellative of the Jingkens’ worlds.