Hard-Luck Diggings: The Early Jack Vance, Volume One (5 page)

Not now. Kelly wrapped it in paper, tucked it into an empty pint jar. Behind the cabin, an old shag-bark slanted up out of the black humus and overhung the roof like a gray and tattered beach-umbrella. Kelly dug a hole under one of the arched roots, buried the jewel.

Returning to the cabin, he walked to the visiphone, reached out to call the station. While his hand was yet a foot from the buttons, the
buzzer sounded…Kelly drew his hand back.

Better not to answer.

The buzzer sounded again—again. Kelly stood holding his breath, looking at the blank face
of the screen.

Silence.

He washed the last of the grease-paint from his face, changed his clothes, ran outside, jumped into his air-boat
and took off for Bucktown.

He
landed on the roof of the station, noting that Herli’s car was parked in its wonted slot. Suddenly he felt less puzzled and forlorn. The station with
its machinery and solid Earth-style regulations projected
reassurance, a sense of normality. Somehow the ingenuity and aggressive attack which had taken men to the stars would solve the present enigma.

Or would it? Ingenuity could take men through space, but ingenuity would find itself strained locating a speck of a planet a hundred thousand light-years in an unknown direction. And Kelly still had his own problem: the jewel. Into his mind’s-eye came a picture: the cabin by the lake, the dilapidated gray parasol of the shag-bark, and glowing under the root, the green eye of the sacred jewel. In the vision he saw the black-robed figure of a Han priest moving across the open space before the cabin, and he saw the flash of the dough-white face…

Kelly turned a troubled glance up at the big red sun, entered the station.

The administration section was vacant; Kelly climbed the stair to the operations
department.

He stopped in the doorway, surveyed the room. It covered the entire square of the upper floor. Work-benches made a circuit of the room, with windows above. A polished cylinder, the cosmoscope, came
down through the ceiling, and below was the screen to catch the projection.

Four men stood by the star-index, running a tape. Herli glanced up briefly, turned back to the clicking mechanism.

Strange. Herli should have been interested, should at least have said hello.

Kelly self-consciously crossed the room. He cleared his throat. “Well—I made it. I’m back.”

“So I see,” said Herli.

Kelly fell silent. He glanced up through the window at the red sun. “What do you make of it?”

“Not the least idea. We’re running the star-tapes
on the off chance it’s been registered—a last-gasp kind of hope.”

There was more silence. They had been talking before he had entered the room; Kelly sensed this from their posture.

At last Mapes said with a forced casualness, “Seen the news?”

“No,” said Kelly. “No, I haven’t.” There was more in Mapes’ voice, something more personal than the shift of the planet. After a moment’s hesitation he went to the visiphone, pushed
the code for news.

The screen lit, showed a view of the swamp. Kelly leaned forward. Buried up to their necks were a dozen boys and girls from the Bucktown High-school. Crawling eagerly over them were the small three-legged salt-crabs; others popped up out of the slime, or tunnelled under toward the squirming bodies.

Kelly could not stand the screams. He reached forward—

Herli said sharply, “Leave it on!”—harder than Kelly had ever heard him speak. “The announcement is due pretty soon.”

The announcement came, in the rasping toneless pidgin of the Han priests.

“Among the outsiders is a wicked thief. He has despoiled us of the Seven-year
Eye. Let him come forward for his due. Until the thief has brought the Seven-year Eye in his own hand to the sacred temple of Han, every hour one of the outsiders will be buried in the crab-warren. If the thief hangs back, all will be so dealt with, and there will be an end to the Earth-things.”

Mapes said in a tight voice, “Did you take their Seven-year Eye?”

Kelly nodded numbly. “Yes.”

Herli made a sharp sound in his throat, turned away.

Kelly said miserably, “I don’t know what came over me. There it was—glowing like a little green moon…I took it.”

Herli said gutturally, “Don’t just stand there.”

Kelly reached out to the visiphone, pushed
buttons. The screen changed,
a Han priest stared forth into Kelly’s face.

Kelly said, “I stole your jewel…Don’t kill any more people. I’ll bring it back to you.”

The priest
said, “Every hour until you arrive one of the Earth-things dies a wicked death.”

Kelly leaned forward, slammed off the screen with a sudden furious sweep of his hand. He turned in anger.

“Don’t stand there glaring at me! You, Herli, you told me I wouldn’t even make it into the temple! And if any of you guys had been where I was and saw that jewel like I saw it, you’d have taken it too.”

Mapes growled under his breath. Herli’s shoulders seemed to sag; he looked away. “Maybe you’re right, Briar.”

Kelly said, “Are we helpless? Why didn’t we fight when they took those twelve kids? There’s maybe a million Han, but there’s fifty thousand of us—and they have no weapons that I know of.”

“They’ve seized the power station,” said Herli. “Without power we can’t distill water, we can’t radiate our hydroponics. We’re in a cleft stick.”

Kelly turned away. “So long, fellows.”

No one answered him. He walked down the stairs, across the parking strip to his air-car
. He was conscious of their eyes looking down from
the window.

In, up, away. First to his cabin by the lake, under the shag-bark for the Seven-year Eye, then the arc over
the planet, south to north. Then
the gray fortress of North Settlement, and the dark temple in the center.

Kelly
dropped the air-car directly in front of the temple. No reason now for stealth.

He climbed to the ground, looked about through the strange purple twilight which had come to the ramshackle city. A few Han moved
past, and Kelly saw the flash of their faces.

He walked slowly up the steps to the temple, paused indecisively in the doorway. There was no point in adding further provocation to his offenses. No doubt they planned to kill him; he might as well make it as easy as possible.

“Hello,” he called into the dark interior, in a voice he tried to keep firm. “Any priests in there? I’ve
brought back the jewel…”

There was no response. Listening intently, he could hear a distant murmur. He took a few steps into the temple, peered up the nave. The muffled red and green illumination confused rather than aided his vision. He noticed a curious irregularity to the floor. He took a step forward—another—another—he stepped on something soft. There was the flash of white below him. The floor was covered by the black-robed priests, lying flat on their faces.

The priest he had trod on made no sound. Kelly hesitated. Time was passing…He crammed all his doubts, fears, vacillations into a corner of his mind, strode forward, careless of where he stepped.

Down the center of the nave he walked, holding the green jewel in his hand. Ahead he saw the sheen of the tall black mirror, and there on the black cushion was a second jewel identical to the one he carried. A Han priest stood like a ghost in a black robe; he
watched Kelly approach without movement. Kelly laid the jewel on the cushion beside its twin.

“There it is. I’ve brought it back. I’m sorry I took it. I—well, I acted on a wild impulse.”

The priest picked up the jewel, held it under his chin as if feeling the warmth from the green fire.

“Your impulse has cost fifteen Earth lives.”

“Fifteen?” faltered Kelly. “There were but twelve—”

“Two hours delay has sent two to the crab warren,” said the Han. “And yourself. Fifteen.”

Kelly said with a shaky bravado, “You’re taking a lot on yourself—these murders—”

“I am not acquainted with your idiom,” said the priest, “but it seems as if you convey a foolish note of menace. What can you few Earth-things do against Great God Han, who has just now taken our planet across the galaxy?”

Kelly said stupidly, “Your god Han—moved the planet?”

“Certainly. He has taken us far and forever distant from Earth to this mellow sun; such is his gratitude for our prayers and for the tribute of the Eye.”

Kelly said with studied carelessness, “You have your jewel back; I don’t see why you’re so indignant—”

The priest said, “Look here.” Kelly followed his gesture, saw a square black hole edged with a coping of polished stone. “This shaft is eighteen miles deep. Every priest of Han descends to the coomb once
a week and carries back to the surface a basket of crystallized stellite. On rare occasions the matrix of the Eye is found, and then there is gratification in the city…Such a jewel did you steal.”

Kelly took his eyes away from the shaft. Eighteen miles…“I naturally wasn’t aware of the—”

“No matter; the deed is done. And now the planet has been moved, and Earth power is unable to prevent such punishments as we wish to visit upon you.”

Kelly tried to keep his voice firm. “Punish? What do you mean?”

Behind him he heard a rustling, the shuffle of movement. He looked over his shoulder. The black cloaks merged with the drapes of the temple, and the Han faces floated in mid-air.

“You will be killed,” said the priest. Kelly stared into the white face. “If the manner of your going is of any interest to you—” The priest conveyed details which froze Kelly’s flesh, clabbered the moisture in his mouth. “Your death will thereby deter other Earth-things from like crimes.”

Kelly protested in spite of himself. “You have your jewel; there it is…If you insist on killing me—kill me, but—”

“Strange,” said the Han priest. “You Earth-things fear pain more than anything else you can conceive. This fear is your deadliest enemy. We Han now, we fear nothing—” he looked up at the tall black mirror, bowed slightly “—nothing but our Great God Han.”

Kelly stared at the shimmering black surface. “What’s that mirror to do with your god Han?”

“That is no mirror; that is the portal to the place of the gods, and every seven years a priest goes through to convey the consecrated Eye
to Han.”

Kelly tried to plumb the dark depths of the mirror. “What lies beyond? What kind of land?”

The priest made no answer.

Kelly laughed in a shrill voice he did not recognize. He lurched forward, threw up his fist in a blow which carried every ounce of his strength and weight. He struck the priest at a point where a man’s jaw would be, felt a brittle crunch. The priest spun around, fell in the tangle of his cloak.

Kelly turned on the priests in the nave, and they sighed in
fury. Kelly was desperate, fearless now. He laughed again, reached down, scooped both jewels from the cushion. “Great God Han lives behind the mirror, and moves planets for jewels. I have two jewels; maybe Han will move a planet for me…”

He jumped close to the black mirror. He put out his hand and felt a soft surface like a curtain of air. He paused in sudden trepidation. Beyond was the unknown…

Pushing at him came the first rank of the Han priests. Here was the known.

Kelly could not delay. Death was death. If
he died passing through the black curtain, if he suffocated in airless space—it was clean fast death.

He leaned forward, closed his eyes, held his breath, stepped through the curtain.

Kelly
had come a tremendous distance. It was a distance not to be reckoned in miles or hours, but in quantities like abstract, irrational ideas.

He opened his eyes. They functioned; he could see. He
was not dead…Or was he?…He took a step forward, sensed solidity under his feet. He looked down, saw a glassy black floor where small sparks burst, flickered, died. Constellations? Universes? Or merely—sparks?

He took another step. It might have been a yard, a mile, a light-year; he moved with the floating ease of a man walking in a dream.

He stood on the lip of an amphitheater, a bowl like a lunar crater. He took another step; he stood in the center of the bowl. He halted, fought to convince himself of his consciousness. Blood made a rushing sound as it flowed through his veins. He swayed, might have fallen if gravity had existed to pull him down. But there was no gravity. His feet clung to the surface by some mysterious adhesion beyond his experience. The blood-sound rose and fell in his ears. Blood meant life. He
was alive.