Jack Vance - Gaean Reach 01 (2 page)

Kelse and Schaine walked out into the soft Szintarre morning. The air smelled as Schaine remembered: fragrant with the essence of leaves and flowers. Down from the dark green juba trees hung strands of scarlet blossoms; sunlight seeped through the foliage to spatter patterns of pink and black on Kharanotis Avenue.

“We’re staying at the Seascape,” Kelse told her. “There’s a party at Aunt Val’s this afternoon, ostensibly to welcome you home. We could have stayed at Mirasol, of course, but…” His voice trailed off. Schaine recalled that Kelse had never been overfond of their Aunt Val. He asked: “Shall I call a cab?”

“Let’s walk. Everything looks so beautiful. I’ve been cooped up aboard the
Niamatic
for a week.” She drew a deep breath. “It’s wonderful to be back. I feel like I’m home already.”

Kelse gave a sour grunt. “Why did you wait so long?”

“Oh—various reasons.” Schaine made a flippant gesture. “Obstinacy. Willfulness. Father.”

“You’re still obstinate and willful—so I presume. Father is still Father. If you think he’s changed, you’re in for a shock.”

“I’m under no illusions. Someone has to give in, and I can do it as easily as anyone. Tell me about Father. What has he been doing?”

Kelse considered before answering: a trait Schaine could not recall from five years ago. Kelse’s youth had passed all too swiftly, she thought. “Father is by and large the same. Since you’ve been gone there’s been a lot of new pressure, and—well, you’ve heard of the Redemptionist Alliance.”

“I suppose so. I don’t remember much about it.”

“It’s a society based here in Olanje. They want us to tear up the Submission Treaties and leave Uaia. Nothing new, of course; but now it’s a fashionable cause, and in the ‘Gray Prince’, as he calls himself, they have a fashionable figurehead.”

“‘Gray Prince’? Who is he?”

Kelse’s mouth twitched in a crooked grin. “Well—he’s a young Uldra, a Garganche, with some education; he’s voluble, quaint and vivacious—in fact, he’s the darling of all Olanje. No doubt he’ll be at Aunt Val’s party this evening.”

They passed an expanse of blue-green sward, extending from the avenue up the slope to a tall mansion with five gables, towers to right and left, a façade of mustard-yellow tiles relieved by slabs of glossy black skeel: a structure conceived in eclectic caprice, yet impressive by virtue of sheer size and a certain careless magnificence. This was Holrude House, seat of the Mull. Kelse gave his head a gloomy shake. “The Redemptionists are up there now, trying to indoctrinate the Mull…I speak figuratively of course. I don’t know that they’re in Holrude at this specific instant. Father is pessimistic; he thinks the Mull will eventually issue an edict against us. I got a letter from him this morning.” He reached into his pocket. “No, I left it at the hotel. He’s planning to meet us at Galigong.”

Schaine asked in perplexity: “Why Galigong? He could as easily meet us here.”

“He won’t come to Olanje. I don’t think he wants to see Aunt Valtrina; she might make him come to a party. That’s what she did last year.”

“It wouldn’t hurt him. Aunt Val’s parties were always fun. At least I liked them.”

“Gerd Jemasze is coming with us; in fact we flew here in his Apex, and he’ll take us across to Galigong.”

Schaine made a sour face; she had never liked Gerd Jemasze, whom she considered surly.

A pair of columns marked the entrance to the Seascape. Schaine and Kelse rode a slideway down the vestibule. Kelse arranged for the transfer of Schaine’s luggage from the space port, then they sauntered out upon the terrace close beside the Persimmon Sea and refreshed themselves with goblets of pale green cloudberry juice, glinting with ice crystals. Schaine said: “Tell me what’s been happening at Morningswake.”

“Ordinary routine for the most part. We stocked Fairy Lake with a new mix of fish. I went prospecting south of the Burrens and found an ancient kachemba.
*
”

“Did you go in?”

Kelse shook his head. “Those places give me cold chills. I told Kurgech about it; he said it was probably Jirwantian.”

“Jirwantian?”

“They occupied South Morningswake for five hundred years, before the Hunge annihilated them. Then the Aos drove out the Hunge.”

“How are all the Aos? Is Zamina still matriarch?”

“Yes, she’s still alive. Last week they shifted camp into Dead Rat Gulch. Kurgech dropped by the manor and I told him you were coming home. He said you’d get in less trouble on Tanquil.”

“Wretched old creature! What did he mean by that?”

“I don’t believe he meant anything. He was merely ‘tasting the future’.”

Schaine sipped the fruit juice and looked out over the sea. “Kurgech is a mountebank. He can’t foresee or draw fates or cold-eye or transmit thoughts any better than I can.”

“Not true. Kurgech has some amazing skills…Ao or not, he’s Father’s closest friend.”

Schaine snorted. “Father is too much of a tyrant to be good friends with anyone—most especially an Ao.”

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.”

T
he 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?”