Hard-Luck Diggings: The Early Jack Vance, Volume One (13 page)

Mrs. Blaiskell nodded. “He’s never been down to Earth. Says it’s a place of crazy people, and the Lord knows, he’s more than half right.”

“Who are Hugo and Lionel?”

“They’re the two oldest. Hugo is dead, Lord rest him, and Lionel is off on his travels. Then under Earl there’s Harper and Dauphin and Millicent and Clarice. That’s all Mrs. Clara’s children, all very proud and portly. Earl is the skinny lad of the lot, and very lucky too, because when Hugo died, Lionel was off gadding and so Earl inherited…Now here’s his suite, and what a mess.”

As they worked Mrs. Blaiskell commented on various aspects of the room. “That bed now! Earl wasn’t satisfied with sleeping under a saddleband like the rest of us, no! He wears pajamas of magnetized cloth, and that weights him against the cushion almost as if he lived on Earth…And this reading and studying, my word, there’s nothing the lad won’t think of! And his telescope! He’ll sit in the cupola and focus on Earth by the hour.”

“Maybe he’d like to visit Earth?”

Mrs. Blaiskell nodded. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you was close on it there. The place has a horrid fascination for him. But he can’t leave Abercrombie, you know.”

“That’s strange. Why not?”

Mrs. Blaiskell darted her a wise look. “Because then he forfeits his inheritance; that’s in the original charter, that the owner must remain on the premises.” She pointed to a gray door. “That there’s his study. And now I’m going to give you a peep in, so you won’t be tormented by curiosity and perhaps make trouble for yourself when I’m not around to keep an eye open…Now don’t be excited by what you see; there’s nothing to hurt you.”

With the air of a priestess unveiling mystery, Mrs. Blaiskell fumbled a moment with the door-slide, manipulating it in a manner which Jean was not able to observe.

The door swung aside. Mrs. Blaiskell smirked as Jean jumped back in alarm.

“Now, now, now, don’t be alarmed; I told you there was nothing to harm you. That’s one of Master Earl’s zoological specimens and rare trouble and expense he’s gone to—”

Jean sighed deeply, and gave closer inspection to the horned black creature which stood on two legs just inside the door, poised and leaning as if ready to embrace the intruder in leathery black arms.

“That’s the most scary part,” said Mrs. Blaiskell in quiet satisfaction. “He’s got his insects and bugs there—” she pointed “—his gems there, his old music disks there, his stamps there, his books along that cabinet. Nasty things, I’m ashamed of him. Don’t let me know of you peeking in them nasty books that Mr. Earl gloats over.”

“No, Mrs. Blaiskell,” said Jean meekly. “I’m not interested in that kind of thing. If it’s what I think it is.”

Mrs. Blaiskell nodded emphatically. “It’s what you think it is, and worse.” She did not expand on the background of her familiarity with the library, and Jean thought it inappropriate to inquire.

Earl stood behind them. “Well?” he asked in a heavy sarcastic voice. “Getting an eyeful?” He kicked himself across the room, slammed shut the door.

Mrs. Blaiskell said in a conciliatory voice, “Now Mr. Earl, I was just showing the new girl what to avoid, what not to look at, and I didn’t want her swounding of heart stoppage if innocent-like she happened to peek inside.”

Earl grunted. “If she peeps inside while I’m there, she’ll be ‘swounding’ from something more than heart stoppage.”

“I’m a good cook too,” said Jean. She turned away. “Come, Mrs. Blaiskell, let’s leave until Mr. Earl has recovered his temper. I won’t have him hurting your feelings.”

Mrs. Blaiskell stammered, “Now then! Surely there’s no harm…” She stopped. Earl had gone into his study and slammed the door.

Mrs. Blaiskell’s eyes glistened with thick tears. “Ah, my dear, I do so dislike harsh words…”

They worked in silence and finished the bedroom. At the door Mrs. Blaiskell said confidentially into Jean’s ear, “Why do you think Earl is so gruff and grumpy?”

“I’ve no idea,” breathed Jean. “None whatever.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Blaiskell warily, “it all boils down to this—his appearance. He’s so self-conscious of his thinness that he’s all eaten up inside. He can’t bear to have anyone see him; he thinks they’re sneering. I’ve heard him tell Mrs. Clara so. Of course they’re not; they’re just sorry. He eats like a horse, he takes gland-pellets, but still he’s that spindly and all hard tense muscle.” She inspected Jean thoughtfully. “I think we’ll put you on the same kind of regimen, and see if we can’t make a prettier woman out of you.” Then she shook her head doubtfully, clicked her tongue. “It might not be in your blood, as Mrs. Clara says. I hardly can see that it’s in your blood…”

V

There were tiny red ribbons on Jean’s slippers, a red ribbon in her hair, a coquettish black beauty spot on her cheek. She had altered her rompers so that they clung unobtrusively to her waist and hips.

Before she left the room she examined herself in the mirror.
Maybe it’s me that’s out of step! How would I look with a couple hundred more pounds of grade? No. I suppose not. I’m the gamin type. I’ll look like a wolverine when I’m sixty, but for the next forty years—watch out.

She took herself along the corridor, past the Pleasaunce, the music rooms, the formal parlor, the refectory, up into the bedrooms. She stopped by Earl’s door, flung it open, entered, pushing the electrostatic duster ahead of her.

The room was dark; the transpar walls were opaque under the action of the scrambling field.

Jean found the dial, turned up the light.

Earl was awake. He lay on his side, his yellow magnetic pajamas pressing him into the mattress. A pale blue quilt was pulled up to his shoulders, his arm lay across his face. Under the shadow of his arm his eye smouldered out at Jean.

He lay motionless, too outraged to move.

Jean put her hands on her hips, said in her clear young voice, “Get up, you sluggard! You’ll get as fat as the rest of them lounging around till all hours…”

The silence was choked and ominous. Jean bent to peer under Earl’s arm. “Are you alive?”

Without moving Earl said in a harsh low voice, “Exactly what do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m about my regular duties. I’ve finished the Pleasaunce. Next comes your room.”

His eyes went to a clock. “At seven o’clock in the morning?”

“Why not? The sooner I get done, the sooner I can get to my own business.”

“Your own business be damned. Get out of here, before you get hurt.”

“No, sir. I’m a self-determined individual. Once my work is done, there’s nothing more important than self-expression.”

“Get out!”

“I’m an artist, a painter. Or maybe I’ll be a poet this year. Or a dancer. I’d make a wonderful ballerina. Watch.” She essayed a pirouette, but the impulse took her up to the ceiling—not ungracefully, this she made sure.

She pushed herself back. “If I had magnetic slippers I could twirl an hour and a half. Grand jetés are easy…”

He raised himself on his elbow, blinking and glaring, as if on the verge of launching himself at her.

“You’re either crazy—or so utterly impertinent as to amount to the same thing.”

“Not at all,” said Jean. “I’m very courteous. There might be a difference of opinion, but still it doesn’t make you automatically right.”

He slumped back on the bed. “Argue with old Webbard,” he said thickly. “Now—for the last time—get out!”

“I’ll go,” said Jean, “but you’ll be sorry.”

“Sorry?” His voice had risen nearly an octave. “Why should I be sorry?”

“Suppose I took offense at your rudeness and told Mr. Webbard I wanted to quit?”

Earl said through tight lips, “I’m going to talk to Mr. Webbard today and maybe you’ll be asked to quit…Miraculous!” he told himself bitterly. “Scarecrow maids breaking in at sunup…”

Jean stared in surprise. “Scarecrow! Me? On Earth I’m considered a very pretty girl. I can get away with things like this, disturbing people, because I’m pretty.”

“This is Abercrombie Station,” said Earl in a dry voice. “Thank God!”

“You’re rather handsome yourself,” said Jean tentatively.

Earl sat up, his face tinged with angry blood. “Get out of here!” he shouted. “You’re discharged!”

“Pish,” said Jean. “You wouldn’t dare fire me.”

“I wouldn’t dare?” asked Earl in a dangerous voice. “Why wouldn’t I dare?”

“Because I’m smarter than you are.”

Earl made a husky sound in his throat. “And just what makes you think so?”

Jean laughed. “You’d be very nice, Earl, if you weren’t so touchy.”

“All right, we’ll take that up first. Why am I so touchy?”

Jean shrugged. “I said you were nice-looking and you blew a skull-fuse.” She blew an imaginary fluff from the back of her hand. “I call that touchiness.”

Earl wore a grim smile that made Jean think of Fotheringay. Earl might be tough if pushed far enough. But not as tough as—well, say Ansel Clellan. Or Fiorenzo. Or Party MacClure. Or Fotheringay. Or herself, for that matter.

He was staring at her, as if he were seeing her for the first time. This is what she wanted. “Why do you think you’re smarter, then?”

“Oh, I don’t know…Are you smart?”

His glance darted off to the doors leading to his study; a momentary quiver of satisfaction crossed his face. “Yes, I’m smart.”

“Can you play chess?”

“Of course I play chess,” he said belligerently. “I’m one of the best chess players alive.”

“I could beat you with one hand.” Jean had played chess four times in her life.

“I wish you had something I wanted,” he said slowly. “I’d take it away from you.”

Jean gave him an arch look. “Let’s play for forfeits.”

“No!”

“Ha!” She laughed, eyes sparkling.

He flushed. “Very well.”

Jean picked up her duster. “Not now, though.” She had accomplished more than she had hoped for. She looked ostentatiously over her shoulder. “I’ve got to work. If Mrs. Blaiskell finds me here she’ll accuse you of seducing me.”

He snorted with twisted lips. He looked like an angry blond boar, thought Jean. But two million dollars was two million dollars. And it wasn’t as bad as if he’d been fat. The idea had been planted in his mind. “You be thinking of the forfeit,” said Jean. “I’ve got to work.”

She left the room, turning him a final glance over her shoulder which she hoped was cryptic.

The servants’ quarters were in the main cylinder, the Abercrombie Station proper. Jean sat quietly in a corner of the mess-hall, watching and listening while the other servants had their elevenses: cocoa gobbed heavy with whipped cream, pastries, ice cream. The talk was high-pitched, edgy. Jean wondered at the myth that fat people were languid and easygoing.

From the corner of her eye she saw Mr. Webbard float into the room, his face tight and gray with anger.

She lowered her head over her cocoa, watching him from under her lashes.

Webbard looked directly at her; his lips sucked in and his bulbous cheeks quivered. For a moment it seemed that he would drift at her, attracted by the force of his anger alone; somehow he restrained himself. He looked around the room until he spied Mrs. Blaiskell. A flick of his fingers sent him to where she sat at the end table, held by magnets appropriately fastened to her rompers.

He bent over her, muttered in her ear. Jean could not hear his words, but she saw Mrs. Blaiskell’s face change and her eyes go seeking around the room.

Mr. Webbard completed his dramatization and felt better. He wiped the palms of his hands along the ample area of his dark blue corduroy trousers, twisted with a quick wriggle of his shoulders, and sent himself to the door with a flick of his toe.

Marvellous, thought Jean, the majesty, the orbital massiveness of Webbard’s passage through the air. The full moon-face, heavy-lidded, placid; the rosy cheeks, the chins and jowls puffed round and tumescent, glazed and oily, without blemish, mar or wrinkle; the hemisphere of the chest, then the bifurcate lower half, in the rich dark blue corduroy: the whole marvel coasting along with the inexorable momentum of an ore barge…

Jean became aware that Mrs. Blaiskell was motioning to her from the doorway, making cryptic little signals with her fat fingers.

Mrs. Blaiskell was waiting in the little vestibule she called her office, her face scene to shifting emotions. “Mr. Webbard has given me some serious information,” she said in a voice intended to be stern.

Jean displayed alarm. “About me?”

Mrs. Blaiskell nodded decisively. “Mr. Earl complained of some very strange behavior this morning. At seven o’clock or earlier…”

Jean gasped. “Is it possible, that Earl has had the audacity to—”

“
Mr.
Earl,” Mrs. Blaiskell corrected primly.

“Why, Mrs. Blaiskell, it was as much as my life was worth to get away from him!”

Mrs. Blaiskell blinked uneasily. “That’s not precisely the way Mr. Webbard put it. He said you—”

“Does that sound reasonable? Is that likely, Mrs. B?”

“Well—no,” Mrs. Blaiskell admitted, putting her hand to her chin, and tapping her teeth with a fingernail. “Certainly it seems odd, come to consider a little more closely.” She looked at Jean. “But how is it that—”