Hard-Luck Diggings: The Early Jack Vance, Volume One (17 page)

“Shut up!” said Lionel, in a voice like the whetting of a scythe.

The pilot of the supply barge said sullenly, “I don’t know about this.”

The pilot muttered churlishly, but made no further protest. Lionel buckled himself into the seat beside him. Jean, the horse-faced man named Hammond, two elderly men of professional aspect and uneasy manner settled themselves in the cargo hold.

The barge landed on the cargo deck, the handlers tugged it into its socket, the port sighed open.

“Come on,” said Lionel. “Make it fast. Let’s get it over with.” He tapped Jean’s shoulder. “You’re first.”

She led the way up the main core. Fat guests floated down past them, light and round as soap-bubbles, their faces masks of surprise at the sight of so many bone-people.

Up the core, along the vinculum into the Abercrombie private sphere. They passed the Pleasaunce, where Jean caught a glimpse of Mrs. Clara, fat as a blutwurst, with the obsequious Webbard.

They passed Mrs. Blaiskell. “Why, Mr. Lionel!” she gasped. “Well, I never, I never!”

Lionel brushed past. Jean, looking over her shoulder into his face, felt a qualm. Something dark smouldered in his eyes. Triumph, malice, vindication, cruelty. Something not quite human. If nothing else, Jean was extremely human, and was wont to feel uneasy in the presence of out-world life…She felt uneasy now.

“Hurry,” came Lionel’s voice. “Hurry.”

Past Mrs. Clara’s chambers, to the door of Earl’s bedroom. Jean pressed the button; the door slid open.

Earl stood before a mirror, tying a red and blue silk cravat around his bull-neck. He wore a suit of pearl-gray gabardine, cut very full and padded to make his body look round and soft. He saw Jean in the mirror, behind her the hard face of his brother Lionel. He whirled, lost his footing, drifted ineffectually into the air.

Lionel laughed. “Get him, Hammond. Bring him along.”

Earl stormed and raved. He was the master here, everybody get out. He’d have them all jailed, killed. He’d kill them himself…

Hammond searched him for weapons, and the two professional-looking men stood uncomfortably in the background muttering to each other.

“Look here, Mr. Abercrombie,” one of them said at last. “We can’t be a party to violence…”

“Shut up,” said Lionel. “You’re here as witnesses, as medical men. You’re being paid to look, that’s all. If you don’t like what you see, that’s too bad.” He motioned to Jean. “Get going.”

Jean pushed herself to the study door. Earl called out sharply: “Get away from there, get away! That’s private, that’s my private study!”

Jean pushed herself to the furry two-legged creature. Here she waited.

Earl made some difficulty about coming through the door. Hammond manipulated his elbows; Earl belched up a hoarse screech, flung himself forward, panting like a winded chicken.

Lionel said, “Don’t fool with Hammond, Earl. He likes hurting people.”

The two witnesses muttered wrathfully. Lionel quelled them with a look.

Hammond seized Earl by the seat of the pants, raised him over his head, walked with magnetic shoes gripping the deck across the cluttered floor of the study, with Earl flailing and groping helplessly.

Jean fumbled in the fretwork over the panel into the annex. Earl screamed, “Keep your hands out of there! Oh, how you’ll pay, how you’ll pay for this, how you’ll pay!” His voice hoarsened, he broke into sobs.

Hammond shook him, like a terrier shaking a rat.

Earl sobbed louder.

The sound grated on Jean’s ears. She frowned, found the button, pushed. The panel flew open.

They all moved into the bright annex, Earl completely broken, sobbing and pleading.

“There it is,” said Jean.

Lionel swung his gaze along the collection of monstrosities. The out-world things, the dragons, basilisks, griffins, the armored insects, the great-eyed serpents, the tangles of muscle, the coiled creatures of fang, brain, cartilage. And then there were the human creatures, no less grotesque. Lionel’s eyes stopped at the fat man.

He looked at Earl, who had fallen numbly silent.

“Poor old Hugo,” said Lionel. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Earl.”

Earl made a sighing sound.

Lionel said, “But Hugo is dead…He’s as dead as any of the other things. Right, Earl?” He looked at Jean. “Right?”

“I guess that’s right,” said Jean uneasily. She found no pleasure baiting Earl.

“Of course he’s dead,” panted Earl.

Jean went to the little key controlling the magnetic field.

Earl screamed, “You witch! You witch!”

Jean depressed the key. There was a musical hum, a hissing, a smell of ozone. A moment passed. There came a sigh of air. The cubicle opened with a sucking sound. Hugo drifted into the room.

He twitched his arms, gagged and retched, made a thin crying sound in his throat.

Lionel turned to his two witnesses. “Is this man alive?”

Hugo whispered feebly, pressed his elbows to his body, pulled up his atrophied little legs, tried to assume a foetal position.

Lionel asked the two men, “Is this man sane?”

They fidgeted. “That of course is hardly a matter we can determine off-hand.” There was further mumbling about tests, cephalographs, reflexes.

Lionel waited a moment. Hugo was gurgling, crying like a baby. “Well—is he sane?”

The doctors said, “He’s suffering from severe shock. The deep-freeze classically has the effect of disturbing the synapses—”

Lionel asked sardonically, “Is he in his right mind?”

“Well—no.”

Lionel nodded. “In that case—you’re looking at the new master of Abercrombie Station.”

Earl protested, “You can’t get away with that, Lionel! He’s been insane a long time, and you’ve been off the station!”

Lionel grinned wolfishly. “Do you want to take the matter into Admiralty Court at Metropolis?”

Earl fell silent. Lionel looked at the doctors, who were whispering heatedly together.

“Talk to him,” said Lionel. “Satisfy yourself whether he’s in his right mind or not.”

The doctors dutifully addressed Hugo, who made mewing sounds. They came to an uncomfortable but definite decision. “Clearly this man is not able to conduct his own affairs.”

Earl pettishly wrenched himself from Hammond’s grasp. “Let go of me.”

“Better be careful,” said Lionel. “I don’t think Hammond likes you.”

“I don’t like Hammond,” said Earl viciously. “I don’t like anyone.” His voice dropped in pitch. “I don’t even like myself.” He stood staring into the cubicle which Hugo had vacated.

Jean sensed a tide of recklessness rising in him. She opened her mouth to speak. But Earl had already started.

Time stood still. Earl seemed to move with bewildering slowness, but the others stood as if frozen in jelly.

Time turned on for Jean. “I’m getting out of here!” she gasped, knowing what the half-crazed Earl was about to do.

Earl ran down the line of his monsters, magnetic shoes slapping on the deck. As he ran, he flipped switches. When he finished he stood at the far end of the room. Behind him things came to life.

Hammond gathered himself, plunged after Jean. A black arm apparently groping at random caught hold of his leg. There was a dull cracking sound. Hammond bawled out in terror.

Jean started through the door. She jerked back, shrieking. Facing her was the eight-foot gorilla-thing with the French-poodle face. Somewhere along the line Earl had thrown a switch relieving it from magnetic catalepsy. The black eyes shone, the mouth dripped, the hands clenched and unclenched. Jean shrank back.

There was screaming bedlam. Jean pressed herself against the wall. A green flapping creature, coiling and uncoiling, twisted out into the study, smashing racks, screens, displays, sending books, minerals, papers, mechanisms, cases and cabinets floating and crashing. The gorilla-thing came after, one of its arms twisted and loose. A rolling flurry of webbed feet, scales, muscular tail and a human body followed—Hammond and a griffin from a world aptly named ‘Pest-hole’.

Jean darted through the door, thought to hide in the alcove. Outside, on the deck, was Earl’s space-boat. She shoved herself across to the port.

Jean crouched by the port, ready to slam it at any approach of danger…She sighed. All her hopes, plans, future had exploded. Death, debacle, catastrophe were hers instead.

She turned to the doctor. “Where’s your partner?”

“Dead! Oh Lord, oh Lord, what can we do?”

Jean turned her head to look at him, lips curling in disgust. Then she saw him in a new, flattering, light. A disinterested witness. He looked like money. He could testify that for at least thirty seconds Lionel had been master of Abercrombie Station. That thirty seconds was enough to transfer title to her. Whether Hugo were sane or not didn’t matter because Hugo had died thirty seconds before the metal frog with the knife-edged scissor-bill had fixed on Lionel’s throat.

Best to make sure. “Listen,” said Jean. “This may be important. Suppose you were to testify in court. Who died first, Hugo or Lionel?”

The doctor sat quiet a moment. “Why, Hugo! I saw his neck broken while Lionel was still alive.”

“Are you sure?”

“Oh yes.” He tried to pull himself together. “We must do something.”

“Okay,” said Jean. “What shall we do?”

“I don’t know.”

A brown face like a poodle-dog’s, spotted red with blood, peered around the corner at them. Stealthily it pulled itself closer.

Mesmerized, Jean saw that now its arm had been twisted entirely off. It darted forward. Jean fell back, slammed the port. A heavy body thudded against the metal.

They were closed in Earl’s space-boat. The man had fainted. Jean said, “Don’t die on me, fellow. You’re worth money…”

Faintly through the metal came crashing and thumping. Then came the muffled
spatttt
of proton guns.

The guns sounded with monotonous regularity.
Spatttt…spattt…spattt…spattt…spattt
…

Then there was utter silence.

Jean inched open the port. The alcove was empty. Across her vision drifted the broken body of the gorilla-thing.

Jean ventured into the alcove, looked out into the study. Thirty feet distant stood Webbard, planted like a pirate captain on the bridge of his ship. His face was white and wadded; pinched lines ran from his nose around his nearly invisible mouth. He carried two big proton guns; the orifices of both were white-hot.

He saw Jean; his eyes took on a glitter. “You! It’s you that’s caused all this, your sneaking and spying!”

He jerked up his proton guns.

“No!” cried Jean, “Its not my fault!”

Lionel’s voice came weakly. “Put down those guns, Webbard.” Clutching his throat he pushed himself into the study. “That’s the new owner,” he croaked sardonically. “You wouldn’t want to murder your boss, would you?”

Webbard blinked in astonishment. “Mr. Lionel!”

“Yes,” said Lionel. “Home again…And there’s quite a mess to clean up, Webbard…”

Jean looked at the bank book. The figures burnt into the plastic, spread almost all the way across the tape.

“$2,000,000.00”

Mycroft puffed on his pipe, looked out the window. “There’s a matter you should be considering,” he said. “That’s the investment of your money. You won’t be able to do it by yourself; other parties will insist on dealing with a responsible entity—that is to say, a trustee or a guardian.”

“I don’t know much about these things,” said Jean. “I—rather assumed that you’d take care of them.”

Mycroft reached over, tapped the dottle out of his pipe.

“Don’t you want to?” asked Jean.

Mycroft said with a compressed distant smile. “Yes, I want to…I’ll be glad to administer a two million dollar estate. In effect, I’ll become your legal guardian, until you’re of age. We’ll have to get a court order of appointment. The effect of the order will be to take control of the money out of your hands; we can include in the articles, however, a clause guaranteeing you the full income—which I assume is what you want. It should come to—oh, say fifty thousand a year after taxes.”

“That suits me,” said Jean listlessly. “I’m not too interested in anything right now…There seems to be something of a let-down.”