Hard-Luck Diggings: The Early Jack Vance, Volume One (7 page)

With no preliminary motion she threw the magazine across the room, jumped to her feet. She walked to the doorway, stood looking out across the plain, fingers tapping on the sill. Root heard her voice, low, as if not meant for him to hear.

“Another day of this and I’ll lose what little’s left of my mind.”

Root approached warily. If he could be compared to a Labrador retriever, then his wife was a black panther—a woman tall and well-covered with sumptuous flesh. She had black flowing hair and black flashing eyes. She lacquered her fingernails and wore black lounge pajamas even on desiccated deserted inhospitable Dicantropus.

“Now, dear,” said Root, “take it easy. Certainly it’s not as bad as all that.”

She whirled and Root was surprised by the intensity in her eyes. “It’s not bad, you say? Very well for you to talk—
you
don’t care for anything human to begin with. I’m sick of it. Do you hear? I want to go back to Earth! I never want to see another planet in my whole life. I never want to hear the word archaeology, I never want to see a rock or a bone or a microscope—”

She flung a wild gesture around the room that included a number of rocks, bones, microscopes, as well as books, specimens in bottles, photographic equipment, a number of native artifacts.

Root tried to soothe her with logic. “Very few people are privileged to live on an outside planet, dear.”

“They’re not in their right minds. If I’d known what it was like, I’d never have come out here.” Her voice dropped once more. “Same old dirt every day, same stinking natives, same vile canned food, nobody to talk to—”

Root uncertainly picked up and laid down his pipe. “Lie down, dear,” he said with unconvincing confidence. “Take a nap! Things will look different when you wake up.”

Stabbing him with a look, she turned and strode out into the blue-white glare of the sun. Root followed more slowly, bringing Barbara’s sun-helmet and adjusting his own. Automatically he cocked an eye up the antenna, the reason for the station and his own presence, Dicantropus being a relay point for ULR messages between Clave II and Polaris. The antenna stood as usual, polished metal tubing four hundred feet high.

Barbara halted by the shore of the lake, a brackish pond in the neck of an old volcano, one of the few natural bodies of water on the planet. Root silently joined her, handed her her sun-helmet. She jammed it on her head, walked away.

Root shrugged, watched her as she circled the pond to a clump of feather-fronded cycads. She flung herself down, relaxed into a sulky lassitude, her back to a big gray-green trunk, and seemed intent on the antics of the natives—owlish leather-gray little creatures popping back and forth into holes in their mound.

This was a hillock a quarter-mile long, covered with spine-scrub and a rusty black creeper. With one exception it was the only eminence as far as the eye could reach, horizon to horizon, across the baked helpless expanse of the desert.

The exception was the stepped pyramid, the mystery of which irked Root. It was built of massive granite blocks, set without mortar but cut so carefully that hardly a crack could be seen. Early on his arrival Root had climbed all over the pyramid, unsuccessfully seeking entrance.

When finally he brought out his atomite torch to melt a hole in the granite a sudden swarm of natives pushed him back and in the pidgin of Dicantropus gave him to understand that entrance was forbidden. Root desisted with reluctance, and had been consumed by curiosity ever since…

Who had built the pyramid? In style it resembled the
ziggurats
of ancient Assyria. The granite had been set with a skill unknown, so far as Root could see, to the natives. But if not the natives—who? A thousand times Root had chased the question through his brain. Were the natives debased relics of a once-civilized race? If so, why were there no other ruins? And what was the purpose of the pyramid? A temple? A mausoleum? A treasure-house? Perhaps it was entered from below by a tunnel.

As Root stood on the shore of the lake, looking across the desert, the questions flicked automatically through his mind though without their usual pungency. At the moment the problem of soothing his wife lay heavy on his mind. He debated a few moments whether or not to join her; perhaps she had cooled off and might like some company. He circled the pond and stood looking down at her glossy black hair.

“I came over here to be alone,” she said without accent and the indifference chilled him more than an insult.

“I thought—that maybe you might like to talk,” said Root. “I’m very sorry, Barbara, that you’re unhappy.”

Still she said nothing, sitting with her head pressed back against the tree trunk.

“We’ll go home on the next supply ship,” Root said. “Let’s see, there should be one—”

“Three months and three days,” said Barbara flatly.

Root shifted his weight, watched her from the corner of his eye. This was a new manifestation. Tears, recriminations, anger—there had been plenty of these before.

“We’ll try to keep amused till then,” he said desperately. “Let’s think up some games to play. Maybe badminton—or we could do more swimming.”

Barbara snorted in sharp sarcastic laughter. “With things like that popping up around you?” She gestured to one of the Dicantrops who had lazily paddled close. She narrowed her eyes, leaned forward. “What’s that he’s got around his neck?”

Root peered. “Looks like a diamond necklace more than anything else.”

“My Lord!” whispered Barbara.

Root walked down to the water’s edge. “Hey, boy!” The Dicantrop turned his great velvety eyes in their sockets. “Come here!”

Barbara joined him as the native paddled close.

“Let’s see what you’ve got there,” said Root, leaning close to the necklace.

“Why, those are beautiful!” breathed his wife.

Root chewed his lip thoughtfully. “They certainly look like diamonds. The setting might be platinum or iridium. Hey, boy, where did you get these?”

The Dicantrop paddled backward. “We find.”

“Where?”

The Dicantrop blew froth from his breath-holes but it seemed to Root as if his eyes had glanced momentarily toward the pyramid.

“You find in big pile of rock?”

“No,” said the native and sank below the surface.

Barbara returned to her seat by the tree, frowned at the water. Root joined her. For a moment there was silence. Then Barbara said, “That pyramid must be full of things like that!”

Root made a deprecatory noise in his throat. “Oh—I suppose it’s possible.”

“Why don’t you go out and see?”

“I’d like to—but you know it would make trouble.”

“You could go out at night.”

“No,” said Root uncomfortably. “It’s really not right. If they want to keep the thing closed up and secret it’s their business. After all it belongs to them.”

“How do you know it does?” his wife insisted, with a hard and sharp directness. “They didn’t build it and probably never put those diamonds there.” Scorn crept into her voice. “Are you afraid?”

“Yes,” said Root. “I’m afraid. There’s an awful lot of them and only two of us. That’s one objection. But the other, most important—”

Barbara let herself slump back against the trunk. “I don’t want to hear it.”

Root, now angry himself, said nothing for a minute. Then, thinking of the three months and three days till the arrival of the supply ship, he said, “It’s no use our being disagreeable. It just makes it harder on both of us. I made a mistake bringing you out here and I’m sorry. I thought you’d enjoy the experience, just the two of us alone on a strange planet—”

Barbara was not listening to him. Her mind was elsewhere.

“Barbara!”

“
Shh!
” she snapped. “Be still! Listen!”

He jerked his head up. The air vibrated with a far
thrum-m-m-m
.
Root sprang out into the sunlight, scanned the sky. The sound grew louder. There was no question about it, a ship was dropping down from space.

Root ran into the station, flipped open the communicator—but there were no signals coming in. He returned to the door and watched as the ship sank down to a bumpy rough landing two hundred yards from the station.

It was a small ship, the type rich men sometimes used as private yachts, but old and battered. It sat in a quiver of hot air, its tubes creaking and hissing as they cooled. Root approached.

The dogs on the port began to turn, the port swung open. A man stood in the opening. For a moment he teetered on loose legs, then fell headlong.

Root, springing forward, caught him before he struck ground. “Barbara!” Root called. His wife approached. “Take his feet. We’ll carry him inside. He’s sick.”

They laid him on the couch and his eyes opened halfway.

“What’s the trouble?” asked Root. “Where do you feel sick?”

“My legs are like ice,” husked the man. “My shoulders ache. I can’t breathe.”

“Wait till I look in the book,” muttered Root. He pulled out the
Official Spaceman’s Self-Help Guide
, traced down the symptoms. He looked across to the sick man. “You been anywhere near Alphard?”

“Just came from there,” panted the man.

“Looks like you got a dose of Lyma’s Virus. A shot of mycosetin should fix you up, according to the book.”

He inserted an ampoule into the hypospray, pressed the tip to his patient’s arm, pushed the plunger home. “That should do it—according to the Guide.”

“Thanks,” said his patient. “I feel better already.” He closed his eyes. Root stood up, glanced at Barbara. She was scrutinizing the man with a peculiar calculation. Root looked down again, seeing the man for the first time. He was young, perhaps thirty, thin but strong with a tight nervous muscularity. His face was lean, almost gaunt, his skin very bronzed. He had short black hair, heavy black eyebrows, a long jaw, a thin high nose.

Root turned away. Glancing at his wife he foresaw the future with a sick certainty.

He washed out the hypospray, returned the Guide to the rack, all with a sudden self-conscious awkwardness. When he turned around, Barbara was staring at him with wide thoughtful eyes. Root slowly left the room.

A day later Marville Landry was on his feet and when he had shaved and changed his clothes there was no sign of the illness. He was by profession a mining engineer, so he revealed to Root, en route to a contract on Thuban XIV.

The virus had struck swiftly and only by luck had he noticed the proximity of Dicantropus on his charts. Rapidly weakening, he had been forced to decelerate so swiftly and land so uncertainly that he feared his fuel was low. And indeed, when they went out to check, they found only enough fuel to throw the ship a hundred feet into the air.

Landry shook his head ruefully. “And there’s a ten-million-munit contract waiting for me on Thuban Fourteen.”

Said Root dismally, “The supply packet’s due in three months.”

Landry winced. “Three months—in this hell-hole? That’s murder.” They returned to the station. “How do you stand it here?”

Barbara heard him. “We don’t. I’ve been on the verge of hysterics every minute the last six months. Jim—” she made a wry grimace toward her husband “—he’s got his bones and rocks and the antenna. He’s not too much company.”

“Maybe I can help out,” Landry offered airily.

“Maybe,” she said with a cool blank glance at Root. Presently she left the room, walking more gracefully now, with an air of mysterious gaiety.

Dinner that evening was a gala event. As soon as the sun took its blue glare past the horizon Barbara and Landry carried a table down to the lake and there they set it with all the splendor the station could afford. With no word to Root she pulled the cork on the gallon of brandy he had been nursing for a year and served generous highballs with canned lime-juice, Maraschino cherries and ice.

For a space, with the candles glowing and evoking lambent ghosts in the highballs, even Root was gay. The air was wonderfully cool and the sands of the desert spread white and clean as damask out into the dimness. So they feasted on canned fowl and mushrooms and frozen fruit and drank deep of Root’s brandy, and across the pond the natives watched from the dark.

And presently, while Root grew sleepy and dull, Landry became gay, and Barbara sparkled—the complete hostess, charming, witty and the Dicantropus night tinkled and throbbed with her laughter. She and Landry toasted each other and exchanged laughing comments at Root’s expense—who now sat slumping, stupid, half-asleep. Finally he lurched to his feet and stumbled off to the station.

On the table by the lake the candles burnt low. Barbara poured more brandy. Their voices became murmurs and at last the candles guttered.

In spite of any human will to hold time in blessed darkness, morning came and brought a day of silence and averted eyes. Then other days and nights succeeded each other and time proceeded as usual. And there was now little pretense at the station.

Barbara frankly avoided Root and when she had occasion to speak her voice was one of covert amusement. Landry, secure, confident, aquiline, had a trick of sitting back and looking from one to the other as if inwardly chuckling over the whole episode. Root preserved a studied calm and spoke in a subdued tone which conveyed no meaning other than the sense of his words.

There were a few minor clashes. Entering the bathroom one morning Root found Landry shaving with his razor. Without heat Root took the shaver out of Landry’s hand.

For an instant Landry stared blankly, then wrenched his mouth into the beginnings of a snarl.

Root smiled almost sadly. “Don’t get me wrong, Landry. There’s a difference between a razor and a woman. The razor is mine. A human being can’t be owned. Leave my personal property alone.”

Landry’s eyebrows rose. “Man, you’re crazy.” He turned away. “Heat’s got you.”

The days went past and now they were unchanging as before but unchanging with a new leaden tension. Words became even fewer and dislike hung like tattered tinsel. Every motion, every line of the body, became a detestable sight, an evil which the other flaunted deliberately.

Root burrowed almost desperately into his rocks and bones, peered through his microscope, made a thousand measurements, a thousand notes. Landry and Barbara fell into the habit of taking long walks in the evening, usually out to the pyramid, then slowly back across the quiet cool sand.