Jack Vance - Gaean Reach 01 (3 page)

“We’d rather just wander,” said Kelse.

“Just as you like. Have Alger fix you drinks. Kelse, please don’t draw a gun and shoot my erjins; their names are Sim and Slim and they’re extremely expensive. We’ll have a good chat later on this evening.” Valtrina moved off to welcome a new group of guests; Kelse took Schaine’s arm and led her to the buffet where Alger the steward dispensed refreshment, using formulas older than memory. Kelse and Schaine accepted goblets of punch, and paused to take their bearings. Schaine saw no one she knew among the guests. Half a dozen Uldras were present: tall, thin, long-nosed bravos, their slate-gray skin dyed ultramarine, their wads of pale russet hair confined within the tall spikes of a fillet.

Kelse muttered to Schaine: “Trust Aunt Val to be fashionable; in Olanje no party is complete without an Uldra or two.”

Schaine retorted: “Why shouldn’t Uldras be invited to parties? They’re human.”

“Approximately human. Their weldewiste
*
is alien to ours. They’ve drifted quite a distance on the evolutionary floe.”

Schaine sighed and turned to inspect the Uldras. “Is one of them the Gray Prince?”

“No.”

Valtrina approached with a handsome man in his middle maturity: a person of obvious distinction, wearing a dark gray suit embroidered with pale gray arabesques. She brought her companion to a halt. “Erris, my niece and nephew Schaine and Kelse Madduc. Schaine is just home from Tanquil, where she’s been at school. Schaine, Kelse, this is Erris Sammatzen, who sits on the Mull: a man of great importance.” She added with perhaps a hint of malice: “Schaine and Kelse live on Morningswake Domain in the Alouan, which they claim to be the single habitable area of Koryphon.”

“Perhaps they know more than we do.”

Schaine asked, “Are you native to Olanje, Dm.
*
Sammatzen?”

“No, I’m an Outker like almost everyone else. I came here twelve years ago to rest, but who can rest when Valtrina and a dozen like her insist on keeping me alert? This is the most intellectually alive community I’ve ever known. Really, it’s most exhausting.”

Valtrina beckoned to a tall woman with long blonde ringlets. Her over-large features were exaggerated by cosmetics into a clown’s mask; Schaine wondered if she mocked the world or herself. Valtrina spoke in her hoarsest contralto: “This is Glinth Isbane, one of our celebrities: she taught three morphotes to play desisto and won all kinds of strange booty. She’s secretary of SFS and far more profound than she likes to appear.”

“What’s SFS?” asked Schaine. “Excuse me, I’m just back on Koryphon.”

“SFS means ‘Society for a Free Szintarre’.”

Schaine laughed incredulously. “Isn’t Szintarre free now?”

“Not altogether,” said Glinth Isbane in a cool voice. “No one wants—I should say, no one admits that he wants—to exploit toil or discomfort for gain, but everyone knows that this is often the case. Workers therefore have banded into guilds to protect themselves. And now, who wields more raw power than the Director of the Associated Guilds? I need not remind you of the abuses from this direction. The SFS has therefore organized a force which we hope will exactly counter-balance the excesses of the guilds.”

Another person had joined the group: a tall young man with guileless gray eyes, soft blond hair, pleasant half-humorous features which instantly appealed to Schaine. He remarked: “Both groups—the SFS and the Associated Guilds—support my particular organization. Hence, both must be sound, and your conflicts are pettifoggery.”

Glinth Isbane laughed. “Both groups endorse SEE, but for quite different reasons. Our reasons are the decent ones.”

Schaine said to Valtrina, “I’m confused by all these organizations. What is SEE?”

Valtrina, rather than explaining, brought forward the blond young man. “Elvo, meet my charming niece, just arrived from Tanquil.”

“With great pleasure.”

“Schaine Madduc; Elvo Glissam. Now Elvo, explain the meaning of SEE, but don’t mention me or my expensive footmen or I’ll have them fling you out into the street.”

“SEE is Society for Emancipation of the Erjins,” said Elvo Glissam. “Please don’t think us maudlin; we’re truly attacking a serious injustice: the enslavement of intelligent beings. Valtrina, with her erjin servants, is one of our prime targets, and we’ll have her behind bars yet. Unless she displays remorse and frees her slaves.”

“Ha! First demonstrate two things—no, three. Prove to me that Sim and Slim are intelligent beings rather than domestic animals. Then prove that they would prefer to be emancipated. Then find me two other domestics with as much docility, style and dependability as my black-and-mustard beauties. In fact, I intend to buy three or four more and train them as gardeners.”

One of the erjin footmen had just entered the chamber, rolling a service wagon. Looking over her shoulder Schaine cringed away. “Don’t they frighten you? The buck that chewed up Kelse wasn’t much bigger, if at all.”

“If I were running things,” said Kelse, “I’d shoot them all.”

Glinth Isbane’s voice took on an edge. “If they’re intelligent, it’s murder. If they’re not, it’s brutality.”

Kelse shrugged and turned aside. A few minutes previously Gerd Jemasze had appeared on the scene; now he said: “We fear our erjins; you don’t. Incidentally, I don’t notice any societies which advocate taking erjin mounts away from the Uldras.”

“Why don’t you form one?” snapped Glinth Isbane.

Erris Sammatzen chuckled. “As for the erjins and Vv. Glissam’s SEE, the labor guilds are understandably anxious: the erjins represent cheap labor. Vv. Glissam is presumably motivated by other concerns.”

“Naturally. The Gaean Charter prohibits slavery, and the erjins are enslaved: benignly here at Olanje, not so benignly in Uaia. And the Wind-runners, whose role everyone ignores, are slavers, pure and simple.”

“Or domesticators—if they conceive the erjins to be no more than clever beasts.”

Schaine said: “I can’t understand how erjins can be tamed; in fact, I can’t believe it! An erjin is ferocious; it hates men!”

“Sim and Slim are quite docile,” said Valtrina. “As to how and why: I can’t even guess.”

Sim the erjin footman once again passed by, splendid in its livery. Meeting the opaque orange gaze from among the black optical tufts, Schaine received the uncomfortable impression that it understood all which transpired. “Perhaps it would prefer not being gelded or altered or brainwashed—whatever the Wind-runners do to it.”

“Ask it,” Valtrina suggested agreeably.

“I don’t know how.”

Valtrina’s contralto voice became lofty and careless. “So why worry? They’re free to leave whenever they like. I don’t keep them in chains. Do you know why they work here? Because they prefer Villa Mirasol to the deserts of Uaia. No one complains except the Association of Labor Guilds which feels a threat to its absurdly high wage structure.” Valtrina gave her head a lordly jerk and stalked across the room to where a pair of Uldras formed the nucleus of another group.

Gerd Jemasze spoke to no one in particular: “I won’t say that all this talk is a waste of time, because people seem to enjoy it.”

In a frigid voice Glinth Isbane said: “Words are the vehicle of ideas. Ideas are the components of intellectualization, which distinguished men from animals. If you object to the exchange of ideas, then—in essence—you reject civilization.”

Jemasze grinned. “Not such a bad idea as you might think.”

Glinth Isbane turned away and went off to join Valtrina. Jemasze and Kelse sauntered to the buffet where Alger supplied them refreshment. Schaine went to inspect a pair of Uldra lamps, carved from blocks of red chert in the distinctive Uldra style of reckless asymmetry. Elvo Glissam came to join her. “Do you like these lamps?”

“They’re interesting to look at,” said Schaine. “Personally, I wouldn’t care to own them.”

“Oh? They seem very dashing and adventurous.”

Schaine gave a grudging nod. “I suppose it’s a prejudice left over from my childhood, when everything Uldra was supposed to be erratic and uneven and wild. I realize now that the Uldras consider uniformity a kind of slavishness; they express their individualism in irregularity.”

“Perhaps they try to suggest regularity by presenting something else: a very sophisticated technique.”

Schaine pursed her lips. “I doubt if the Uldras would reason so methodically. They’re extremely proud and truculent, especially the Retent Uldras, and I suspect that their art-work reflects as much. It’s just as if the lamp-maker were saying: ‘This is how I choose to make this lamp; this is my caprice; if you don’t like it, seek elsewhere for light.’”

“That’s the effect produced, certainly. At best: magnificence. At worst: a kind of strident peevishness.”

“Which, in fact, expresses the Uldra temperament.”

Elvo Glissam looked across the room toward the two Uldras. Schaine studied him from the corner of her eye. She liked him, so she decided; he seemed gentle and humorous and subtle in his perceptions. Additionally, he was nice to look at, with his soft blond hair and pleasantly regular features. He stood perhaps an inch taller than the average; he appeared athletic, in an easy loose-limbed fashion… He turned to find her eyes on him and responded with a self-conscious smile. Schaine said rather hurriedly: “You’re not a native to Szintarre?”

“I’m from Jennet on Diamantha. A dreary city on an unexciting world. My father publishes a pharmaceutical journal; right now I’d probably be writing an article on the latest foot powders if my grandfather hadn’t given me a lottery ticket for my birthday.”

“The ticket paid off?”

“A hundred thousand SLU
*
.”

“What did you do with it?”

Elvo Glissam made a casual, or perhaps modest, gesture. “Nothing remarkable. I paid off the family debts, bought my sister a Cloud-hopper and put the rest out at interest. So here I am, living on a modest but adequate income.”

“And what do you do besides just live?”

“Well, I’ve got two or three things going on. I work for SEE, as you know, and I’m putting together a collection of Uldra war songs. They’re natural musicians and produce the most wonderful songs which don’t get half the attention they deserve.”

“I grew up with those songs,” said Schaine. “In fact, I could sing a few blood-curdlers right now, if I were in the right mood.”

“Some other time.”

Schaine laughed. “I’m seldom anxious to burn my enemies, one by one, ‘with six thousand fires and six thousand pangs’.”

“The Gray Prince, incidentally, is supposed to be here tonight.”

“The Gray Prince—isn’t he the Uldra messiah, or rabble-rouser, or some such special agent?”

“So I’m told. He advocates what he calls ‘Pan-Uldra’—an association of the Retent tribes, which then will absorb the Treaty tribes and ultimately eject the land-barons from Uaia. Over here he’s sponsored by the Redemptionists, which means almost everyone in Szintarre.”

“Including yourself?”

“Well—I don’t like to admit it to the daughter of a land-baron.”

Schaine sighed. “I don’t really mind. I’m going back to live at Morningswake, and I’ve determined not to quarrel with my father.”

“Aren’t you putting yourself in a very awkward position? I feel in you a certain awareness of justice and fair play—”

“In other words, am I a Redemptionist? I hardly know what to say. Morningswake is my home, so I’ve been brought up to believe. But what if I really didn’t have any right to be there, would I still want to keep it? To be candid, I’m glad that my opinion carries absolutely no weight, so that I can enjoy going home without suffering pangs of conscience.”

Elvo Glissam laughed. “At least you’re honest. If I were you I might feel the same way. Kelse is your brother? Who is the grim dark-haired fellow with the stomach-ache?”

“That’s Gerd Jemasze of Suaniset, the domain next east to ours. He’s always been lofty and saturnine, ever since I can remember.”

“I think someone said—probably Valtrina—that an erjin attacked Kelse.”

“Yes, it was absolutely horrible, and erjins terrify me to this day. I can’t believe those great beasts are tame.”

“There are many different kinds of human beings; maybe there are different kinds of erjins.”

“Perhaps…When I see those great maws and awful arms, I think of poor little Kelse, all chewed and ripped.”

“It’s a miracle he’s alive.”

“He’d be dead except for an Uldra boy we called Muffin, who came with a gun and blew the erjin’s head off. Poor Kelse. Poor Muffin, for that matter.”

“What happened to Muffin?”

“It’s a long sordid story. I don’t want to talk about it.”

For a moment the two stood in silence. Elvo Glissam said: “Let’s go out on the terrace and look over the sea—where you’ll be flying tomorrow.”

Schaine thought this was a pleasant idea, and they walked out into the warm night. Through the campander fronds the lights of Olanje were scattered in a long irregular crescent; overhead hung the stars of the Gaean Reach, many seeming to shimmer with an extra significance for the populated worlds surrounding.
*

Elvo Glissam said: “An hour ago you were not even a name, and now Schaine Madduc is you, and I’ll be sorry to see you leave. Are you sure you prefer Uaia to Olanje?”

“I can hardly wait to get home.”

“Isn’t it bleak and drab and depressing?”

“Of course not! Where have you heard such nonsense? Uaia is magnificent! The sky is so wide, the horizons are so far, that mountains, valleys, forests and lakes are lost in the landscape. Everything swims in light and air; I can’t describe the effect except to say that Uaia does something to your soul. I’ve missed Morningswake terribly these last five years.”

“You make Uaia sound interesting.”

“Oh, it’s interesting, but it’s not a soft place. Uaia is often cruel—more often than not. If you saw the wild erjins destroying our cattle, you might not be so pro-erjin.”

“See? You completely misunderstand me! I’m not pro-erjin! I’m anti-slavery, and erjins are slaves.”

“Not the wild erjins! Better if they were.”

Elvo Glissam gave an indifferent shrug. “I’ve never seen a wild erjin, and I’m not likely to have the opportunity. They’re quite extinct in Szintarre.”