Universe 4 - [Anthology] Read online

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  Universe 04

  Edited by Terry Carr

  Proofed By MadMaxAU

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  CONTENTS

  assault on a city, by Jack Vance

  a sea of faces, by Robert Silverberg

  and read the flesh between the lines, by R. A. Lafferty

  my sweet lady jo, by Howard Waldrop

  stungun slim, by Ron Goulart

  desert places, by Pamela Sargent

  if the stars are gods, by Gordon Eklund and Gregory Benford

  when the vertical world becomes horizontal, by Alexei Panshin

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  ASSAULT ON A CITY

  by Jack Vance

  Jack Vance, winner of two Hugo Awards and a Nebula Award, is one of the most admired writers of modern science fiction; his stories fairly dance with a colorful inventiveness unmatched in this most imaginative of all types of fiction. Here is a long and delightful story of adventures in Earth’s distant future, in which Vance brings to life a wonder-filled city and its hard-pressed inhabitants— and includes a few observations on urbanity, subjectivity and gunk.

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  1

  A CERTAIN Angus Barr, officer’s steward aboard the spaceship Danaan Warrior, had taken his pay and gone forth into that district of the city Hant known as Jillyville in search of entertainment. There, according to information received by the police, he fell into the company of one Bodred Histledine, a well-known bravo of the North River district. The two had entertained themselves briefly at the Epidrome, where Angus Barr won two hundred dollars at a gambling machine. They then sauntered along the Parade to the Black Opal Cafe, where they drank lime beer and tried to pick up a pair of women tourists without success. Continuing north along the Parade, they crossed the River Louthe by the Boncastle Bridge and rode the clanking old escalator up Semaphore Hill to Kongo’s Blue Lamp Tavern, and Angus Barr was seen no more.

  The disappearance of Angus Barr was reported to the police by the chief steward of the Danaan Warrior. Acting on a tip, Detectives Clachey and Delmar located Bo Histledine, whom they knew well, and took him to Central Authority for examination.

  Mind-search produced no clear evidence. According to Bo’s memory, he had spent an innocent evening in front of his term.* Unluckily for Bo, his memory also included fragmentary recollections of the Epidrome, the Parade and the Black Opal Cafe. The female tourists not only described the missing Angus Barr, but also positively identified Bo.

  * From the acronym TERM: Total Experience Reproduction Mechanism.

  Delmar nodded with grim satisfaction and turned to Bo. “What do you say to that?”

  Bo hunched down in the chair, his face a mask of belligerent obstinacy. “I told you already. I know nothing about this case. Those backwads** got me mixed with somebody else. Do you think I’d work on a pair like that? Look at her!” Bo jerked his head toward the closer of the angry women. “Face like a plateful of boiled pig’s feet. She’s not wearing a sweater; that’s the hair on her arms. And her cross-eyed mother—”

  ** Backwad: Slang of the period: an ill-favored or otherwise repulsive woman. Etymology uncertain.

  “I’m not her mother! We’re not related!”

  “—she’s no better; she walks with her legs bent, as if she’s sneaking up on somebody.”

  Delmar chuckled; Clachey nodded gravely. “I see. And how do you know the way she walks? They were sitting down when we brought you in. Your bad mouth has brought you trouble.”

  Delmar said, “That’s all, ladies. Thank you for your help.”

  “It’s been a pleasure. I hope he gets sent out to Windy River.” She referred to a penal colony on the far planet Resurge.

  “It might well be,” said Delmar.

  The tourists departed. Clachey said to Bo, “Well, then, what about it? What did you do to Barr?”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “You had your memory blanked,” said Delmar. “It won’t do you any good. Windy River, get ready.”

  “You haven’t got a thing on me,” said Bo. “Maybe I was drunk and don’t remember too well, but that doesn’t mean I scragged Barr.”

  Clachey and Delmar, who recognized the limitations of their case as well as Bo, vainly sought more direct evidence. In the end Bo was arraigned on the charge of memory-blanking without a permit: not a trivial offense when committed by a person with an active criminal record. The magistrate fined Bo a thousand dollars and placed him upon stringent probation. Bo resented both provisions to the depths of his passionate soul, and he detested the probation officer, Inspector Guy Dalby, on sight.

  For his part, Inspector Dalby, an ex-spacefarer, liked nothing about Bo: neither his dense blond-bronze curls, his sullenly handsome features—marred perhaps by a chin a trifle too heavy and a mouth a trifle too rich and full—nor his exquisitely modish garments, nor the devious style of Bo’s life. Dalby suspected that for every offense upon Bo’s record, a dozen existed which had never come to official attention. As a spaceman he took an objective attitude toward wrongdoing, and held Bo to the letter of his probationary requirements. He subjected Bo’s weekly budget to the most skeptical scrutiny. “What is this figure—one hundred dollars—repayment of an old debt?”

  “Exactly that,” said Bo, sitting rigid on the edge of the chair.

  “Who paid you this money?”

  “A man named Henry Smith: a gambling debt.”

  “Bring him in here. I’ll want to check this.”

  Bo ran a hand through his cap of golden curls. “I don’t know where he is. I happened to meet him on the street. He paid me my money and went his way.”

  “That’s your total income of the week?”

  “That’s it.”

  Guy Dalby smiled grimly and flicked a sheet of paper with his fingertips. “This is a statement from a certain Polinasia Glianthe, occupation: prostitute. ‘Last week I paid Big Bo Histledine one hundred and seventy-five dollars, otherwise he said he would cut my ears.’”

  Bo made a contemptuous sound. “Who are you going to believe? Me or some swayback old she-dog who never made a hundred and seventy-five the best week of her life?”

  Dalby forbore a direct response. “Get yourself a job. You are required to support yourself in an acceptable manner. If you can’t find work, I’ll find it for you. There’s plenty out on Jugurtha.” He referred to that world abhorred by social delinquents for its rehabilitation farms.

  Bo was impressed by Dalby’s chilly succinctness. His last probation officer had been an urbanite whose instinctive tactic was empathy. Bo found it a simple matter to explain his lapses. The probation officer in turn was cheered by Bo’s ability to distinguish between right and wrong, at least verbally. Inspector Dalby, however, obviously cared not a twitch for the pain or travail which afflicted Bo’s psyche. Cursing and seething, Bo took himself to the City Employment Office and was dispatched to the Orion Spaceyards as an apprentice metalworker, at a wage he considered a bad joke. One way or another he’d outwit Dalby! In the meantime he found himself under the authority of a foreman equally unsympathetic: another ex-spaceman named Edmund Sarkane. Sarkane explained to Bo that to gam an hour’s pay he must expend an hour’s exertion, which Bo found a novel concept. Sarkane could not be serious! He attempted to circumvent Sarkane’s precept by a variety of methods, but Sarkane had dealt with a thousand apprentices and Bo had known only a single Sarkane. Whenever Bo thought to relax in the shadows, or ignore a troublesome detail, Sarkane’s voice rasped upon his ears, and Bo began to wonder if after all he must accept the unacceptable. The work, after all, was not in itself irksome; and Sarkane’s contempt was almost a challenge to Bo to prove himself superior in every aspect,
even the craft of metal-working, to Sarkane himself. At times to his own surprise and displeasure he found himself working diligently.

  The spaceyards themselves he found remarkable. His eye, like that of most urbanites, was sensitive; he noted the somber concord of color: black structures, ocher soil, gray concrete, reds, blues and olive-greens of signs and symbols, all animated by electric glitters, fires and steams, the constant motion of stern-faced workmen. The hulls loomed upon the sky, for these Bo felt a curious emotion: half awe, half antipathy; they symbolized the far worlds which Bo, as an urbanite, had not the slightest intention of visiting, not even as a tourist. Why probe these far regions? He knew the look, odor and feel of these worlds through the agency of his term; he had seen nothing which wasn’t done better here in Hant.

  If one had money. Money! A word resonant with magic. From where he worked with his buffing machine he could see south to Cloudhaven, floating serene and golden in the light of afternoon. Here was where he would live, so he promised himself, and muttered slow oaths of longing as he looked. Money was what he needed.

  The rasp of Sarkane’s voice intruded upon his daydreams. “Put a Number Five head on your machine and bring it over to the aerie bays. Look sharp; there’s a hurry-up job we’ve got to get out today.” He made what Bo considered an unnecessarily brusque gesture.

  Bo slung the machine over his shoulder and followed Sarkane, walking perforce with the bent loose-kneed stride of a workman carrying a load. He knew the look of his gait; introversion and constant self-evaluation are integral adjuncts to the urbanites’ mental machinery; he felt humiliation and fury: he, Bo Histledine, Big Bo the Boodlesnatch, hunching along like a common workman! He longed to shout at Sarkane, something like: “Hey! Slow down, you old gutreek; do you think I’m a camel? Here, carry the damn machine yourself, or put it in your ear!” Bo only muttered the remarks, and loped to catch up with Sarkane: through the clangor of the cold-belling shop, across the pulsion-pod storage yard with the great hulls massive overhead; over the gantry ways to a cluster of three platforms at the southern edge of the yard. On one of the platforms rested a glass-domed construction which Bo recognized for an aerie: the honorary residence of a commander in the Order of the Terrestrial Empire, and reserved for the use of such folk alone.

  Sarkane motioned to Bo, and indicated the underside of the peripheral flange. “Polish that metal clean, get all that scurf and oxide off, so the crystallizer can lay on a clean coat. They’ll be arriving at any time and we want it right for them.”

  “Who is ‘them’?”

  “A party from Rampold: an O.T.E. and his family. Get cracking now, we don’t have much time.”

  Sarkane moved away. Bo considered the aerie. Rampold? Bo thought he had heard the place mentioned: a far half-savage world where men strove against an elemental environment and hostile indigenes to create new zones of habitability. Why didn’t they stay out there if they liked it so much? But they always came swanking back to Earth with their titles and prerogatives, and here he was, Bo Histledine, polishing metal for them.

  Bo jumped up to the deck and went to peer into the interior. He saw a pleasant but hardly lavish living room with white walls, a scarlet and blue rug, an open fireplace. In the center of the room a number of cases had been stacked. Bo read the name stenciled on the sides: Commander M. R. Tynnott, S.E.S.—the S.E.S. for Space Exploration Service.

  Sarkane’s voice vibrated against his back. “Hey! Histledine! Get down from there! What do you think you’re up to?”

  “Just looking,” said Bo. “Keep your shirt on.” He jumped to the ground. “Nothing much to see, anyway. They don’t even have a TV, let alone a term. Still, I’d take one if they gave it to me.”

  “There’s no obstacle in your way.” Sarkane’s tone was edged with caustic humor. “Just go work out back of beyond for twenty or thirty years; they’ll give you an aerie.”

  “Bo Histledine isn’t about to start out there.”

  “I expect not. Buff down that flange now, and make a clean job of it.”

  While Bo applied his machine, Sarkane wandered here and there, inspecting the repairs which had been made on the aerie’s under-body, waiting for the crystallizer crew, and keeping an eye on Bo.

  The work was tiresome; Bo was forced to stand in a cramped position, holding the machine above him. His zeal, never too keen, began to flag. Whenever Sarkane was out of sight, Bo straightened up and relaxed. Commander Tynnott and his family could wait another hour or two, or two or three days, so far as Bo was concerned. Star-landers were much too haughty and self-satisfied for Bo’s taste. They acted as if the simple process of flying space made them somehow superior to the folk who chose to stay home in the cities.

  During one of his rest periods he watched a cab glide down to a halt nearby. A girl alighted and walked toward the aerie. Bo stared in fascination. This was a girl of a sort he had never seen before: a girl considerably younger than himself, perfectly formed, slender, but lithe and supple, a creature precious beyond value. She approached with an easy jaunty stride, as if already in her short life she had walked far and wide, across hill and dale, forest trails and mountain ridges: wherever she chose to go. Her polished copper hair hung loose, just past her jaw line; she was either ignorant or heedless of the intricate coiffures currently fashionable in Hant. Her clothes were equally simple: a blue-gray frock, white sandals, no ornaments whatever. She halted beside the aerie, and Bo was able to study her face. Her eyes were dark-blue and deep as lakes; her cheeks were flat; her mouth was wide and through some charming mannerism seemed a trifle wry and crooked. Her skin was a clear pale tan; her features could not have been more exquisitely formed. She spoke to Bo without actually looking at him. “I wonder where I get aboard.”

  Instantly gallant, Bo stepped forward. “Here; let me give you a leg up.” To touch her, to caress (even for an instant) one of those supple young legs would be a fine pleasure indeed. The girl seemed not to hear him; she jumped easily up to the rail and swung herself over.

  Sarkane came forward. He made a brusque gesture toward Bo, then turned to the girl. “I expect you’re one of the owners. Tynnott, I think, is the name?”

  “My father is Commander Tynnott. I thought he’d already be here with my mother. I suppose they’ll be along soon.” The girl’s voice was as easy and light-hearted as her appearance, and she addressed gray old Ed Sarkane as if they had been friends for years. “You’re no urbanite; where did you get your cast?” She referred to the indefinable aspect by which starlanders and spacemen were able to identify their own kind.

  “Here, there and everywhere,” said Sarkane. “Most of my time I worked for Slade out in the Zumberwalts.”

  The girl looked at him with admiration. “Then you must have known Vode Skerry and Ribolt Troil, and all the others.”

  “Yes, miss, well indeed.”

  “And now you’re living in Hant!” The girl spoke in a marveling voice. Bo’s lips twitched. What, he wondered, was so wrong about living in Hant?

  “Not for long,” said Sarkane. “Next year I’m going out to Tinctala. My son farms a station out there.”

  The girl nodded in comprehension. She turned to inspect the aerie. “This is all so exciting; I’ve never lived in such splendor before.”

  Sarkane smiled indulgently. “It’s not all that splendid, miss, or I should say, not compared to the way the rich folk live up there.” He gestured toward Cloudhaven. “Still, they’d trade for aeries anytime, or so I’m told.”

  “There’s not all that many aeries, then?”

  “Two thousand is all there’ll ever be; that’s the law. Otherwise they’d be hanging in the sky thick as jellyfish. Every cheap-jack and politician and plutocrat around the world would want his aerie. No, miss, they’re reserved for the O.T.E. and that’s how it should be. Are you to be here long?”

  “Not too long; my father has business with the Agency, and I’ll undertake a bit of research while I’m here.”

  “A
h, you’ll be a student at the Academy? It’s an interesting place, the last word on everything, or so they say.”

  “I’m sure it is. I plan to visit the Hall of History tomorrow, as a matter of fact.” She pointed toward a descending cab. “Here they are at last.”

  Bo, who had worked to within casual earshot, wielded his machine until Sarkane went off to confer with the Tynnotts. He buffed along the flange to where the girl stood leaning on the rail; raising his eyes he glimpsed a pair of smooth slender brown legs, a glint of thigh. She was only peripherally aware of his existence. Bo straightened up and put on that expression of mesmeric masculinity which had served him so well in the past. But the girl, rather than heeding him, went down the deck a few steps. “I’m already here,” she called, “but I don’t know how to get in.”