Jack Vance - Gaean Reach 01 (4 page)

“Come out to Morningswake; you’ll see wild erjins, as many as you like.”

Elvo Glissam said rather wistfully: “I’d accept the invitation if I thought you were serious.”

Schaine hesitated barely an instant, although her invitation had been intended in general rather than specific terms. “Yes, I’m serious.”

“What of Kelse? What of your father?”

“Why should they mind? Guests are always welcome at Morningswake.”

Elvo Glissam reflected a moment. “When do you leave?”

“First thing in the morning. We fly with Gerd Jemasze to Galigong, at the edge of the Retent; there my father meets us. Tomorrow at sunset we’ll be at Morningswake.”

“Your brother might consider me forward.”

“Of course not! Why should he?”

“Very well then. I’ll be more than happy to accept. In fact I’m tremendously excited.” Elvo Glissam straightened up from the balustrade. “In which case I’ll now have to leave this party, to pack some clothes and change some arrangements. And I’ll meet you at your hotel early tomorrow morning.”

Schaine held out her hand. “Goodby till then.”

Elvo Glissam bent his head and kissed her fingers. “Good night.” He turned and walked away. Schaine watched him go with a half-smile on her face and a soft warm pressure in her throat.

She followed Elvo inside and wandered from room to room until, in that chamber which Valtrina called the kachemba, after the sacred places of the Uldras, she found Kelse and Gerd Jemasze debating the authenticity of Valtrina’s antique fetishes.

Kelse picked up a blasphemy mask
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and raised it to his face. “I can smell gabbhout smoke, and there’s a smear of what looks like dilf by the nostril holes.”

Schaine chuckled. “I wonder how many masks in how many kachembas look like you two.”

“No doubt several of both,” said Gerd. “Our Faz aren’t as docile as your Aos. Last year on the Kaneel Broads I looked into a kachemba. Sure enough, they built it to represent Suaniset.”

“What about masks?”

“Just two: me and my father. My father’s mask wore a red cap. Mission accomplished.”

Two years before a letter from Kelse had apprised Schaine of the murder of Palo Jemasze, Gerd’s father, through the instrumentality of an Uldra sky-shark.

“The tutelar in this case flying a sky-shark,” Kelse observed.

Jemasze gave a curt nod. “Once or twice a week I take up my Dacy and go hunting. No luck, so far.”

Schaine decided to change the subject. “Kelse, I’ve invited Elvo Glissam to Morningswake.”

“Elvo Glissam? The SEE advocate?”

“Yes. He’s never seen a wild erjin. I told him we’d find one for him. Do you mind?”

“Why should I mind? He seems decent enough.”

The three returned to the main salon. Glancing across the room Schaine noticed a tall young Uldra in the robes of an Alouan chieftain, though the robes, rather than red or rose or pink, were unrelieved gray. He was a man remarkably handsome, with a skin blue as the sea and hair bleached glistening white. Schaine stared in shock and wonder, then turned wide-eyed to Kelse. “What is he doing here?”

“That’s the Gray Prince,” said Kelse. “He’s seen everywhere around Olanje.”

“But how—why—”

“In some fashion,” said Kelse, “he was encouraged to become the savior of his race.”

Gerd Jemasze gave a snort of sardonic amusement, and Schaine became furiously angry with both. Gerd was innately a boor; Kelse had become as crabbed and obstinate as her father…She took command of herself. Kelse, after all, had suffered the loss of a leg and an arm. Her own loss—if ‘loss’ were the appropriate word—was trivial in comparison…The Gray Prince, swinging his gaze around the room, saw Schaine. He tilted his head forward, then jerked it back in a motion of glad surprise. He strode across the room to stand in front of Schaine.

Kelse said in a bored voice, “Hello, Muffin. What brings you here?”

The Gray Prince, throwing up his head, laughed. “‘Muffin’ no more! I must reckon with my public image.” A trace of Uldra accent gave his voice a gay and urgent quality. “To the friends of my childhood I am ‘Jorjol’, or if you insist upon formality: ‘Prince Jorjol’.”

“I hardly think we’ll insist upon formality,” said Kelse. “You probably remember Gerd Jemasze from Suaniset.”

“I remember him most distinctly.” Jorjol took Schaine’s hand, bent his head and kissed it. “You can still call me ‘Muffin’ if you like but—” he looked around the room; his gaze, slipping past Kelse and Gerd, relegated them to the background “—I’d prefer not here. Where have you been? Has it been five years?”

“Quite five years.”

“It seems forever. So much has changed.”

“You seem to have done very well for yourself. You’re the talk of Olanje, so I understand—although I wasn’t aware that the Gray Prince was Muffin.”

“Yes, Muffin has come a vast distance, and I intend to go as far again—even at the risk of inconveniencing my old friends.” His glance now included Kelse and Gerd; then he turned back to Schaine. “And what will you do now?”

“I’m returning to Morningswake tomorrow. We meet Father in Galigong and fly home from there.”

“As an ‘intransigent’?”

“What’s an ‘intransigent’?”

Kelse said in a bored voice: “The opposite of ‘Redemptionist’, or so I suppose.”

Schaine said: “I’m going as myself, nothing more, and I intend to quarrel with no one.”

“You might find it more difficult than you think.”

Schaine smilingly shook her head. “Father and I can accommodate to each other. He’s neither cruel nor unreasonable, as you well know.”

“He’s a force of nature! Storms, lightning, torrents—they’re not cruel or unreasonable either, but they cannot be defeated by kindness and rationality.”

Schaine laughed sadly. “And you intend to defeat my poor father?”

“I must. I am a Redemptionist. I intend to win back for my people the lands they lost to the violence of your people.”

Gerd looked up toward the ceiling and turned half away. Kelse said: “Speaking of my father, I had a letter from him today: a most curious letter. He mentions you as well. Listen. ‘You might be seeing that scamp Jorjol. If so, try to bring him to his senses, for his own sake. Perhaps the prospect of a career at Morningswake no longer appeals to him; tell him nevertheless that when his bubble breaks he is always welcome here, for reasons of which we are all aware.

“‘I have just returned from the Volwodes and I can’t wait to see you. I’ve had some remarkable adventures and I have a wonderful story to tell you, a most wonderful joke, a most prodigious and extraordinary joke which has put ten years on my life, and which might well amuse and edify Jorjol…’ That’s about all here to interest you.”

Jorjol raised his bleached white eyebrows. “What kind of joke? I am not interested in jokes.”

“I don’t know what his joke might be; I’m anxious to find out.”

Jorjol pulled at his long nose, which apparently had been surgically cropped of its drooping Uldra tip. “Uther Madduc was never a great humorist, to my recollection.”

“True,” said Kelse. “Still, he’s a more complex person than you might think.”

Jorjol reflected a minute. “I remember your father principally as a man dominated by the strictures of etiquette. Who knows what sort of person he really is?”

“External events have shaped us all,” said Kelse.

Jorjol grinned, showing teeth whiter than his hair, in gleaming contrast to his blue skin. “Never! I am I, because I have willed myself thus!”

Schaine could not restrain a nervous laugh. “Heavens, Muffin—Jorjol—Gray Prince—whatever your name is—your intensity startles us all!”

Jorjol’s grin diminished somewhat. “You know me for an intense person.” From across the room Valtrina called him; he bowed, and with a final quick glance at Schaine took his leave.

Schaine heaved a sigh. “Quite true; he’s always been intense.”

Erris Sammatzen came to join them. “You seem to know the Gray Prince intimately.”

“Yes, that’s Muffin,” said Kelse. “Father found him out at the edge of the Retent when he was little: he’d been abandoned. Father brought him home and put him into the care of an Ao bailiff, and we all grew up together.”

“Father always had a soft spot for Muffin,” mused Schaine. “When we were caught in some really flagrant mischief, Kelse and I would get a whack or two, but Muffin always got off with a lecture.”

“Actually,” said Kelse, “that’s not so much forbearance as the etiquette we just heard about. One never strikes a Blue.”

Sammatzen glanced across the room to the group of Uldras. “They look pretty formidable. I don’t think I’d want to strike one.”

“He’d kill you with a knife, but he wouldn’t strike back. Among the Uldras only women fight barehanded; woman-fights are a popular spectacle.”

Sammatzen looked curiously at Kelse. “You don’t like the Uldras very much.”

“I like some of them. Our Aos are well-behaved. Kurgech the shaman is one of Father’s cronies. We’ve put a stop to the woman-fights and a few other unpleasant customs. They still work sorcery which we can’t stop.”

“It would seem that Jorjol wasn’t brought up as an Uldra.”

“He wasn’t brought up as anything. He lived with the Ao bailiff, but he took lessons with us and played with us and wore Gaean clothes. We really never thought of him as a Blue.”

“I used to adore him,” said Schaine, “especially after he saved Kelse from the erjin.”

“Indeed! This was the erjin that took your arm and leg?”

Kelse gave a curt nod and would have changed the subject but Schaine said: “It happened only two miles south of the house. An erjin came around the Skaw and proceeded to tear Kelse to bits. Jorjol ran up to the beast and blew its head off with a gun, and just in time or Kelse wouldn’t be here now. Father wanted to do something wonderful for Jorjol…” Schaine paused, thinking back across scenes five years old. “But there were emotional problems. Jorjol went
aurau
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. He ran away and we never saw him again, although we learned from Kurgech that he’d crossed into the Retent and joined the Garganche. He was originally Garganche—we knew that from his birth tattoo—so there was no question about their ‘land-scouring’ him.”

“‘Land-scouring’ is what the Blues do to enemy tribesmen,” remarked Kelse. “One of the things, I should say.”

Schaine glanced across the room toward Jorjol. “And tonight we find him here at Villa Mirasol. We expected him to make a career for himself, but nothing like this.”

Kelse said dryly, “Father had in mind head stockman, or bailiff.”

“You’ll have to agree,” Sammatzen observed, “that for an ambitious Uldra very little opportunity exists to better himself.”

Gerd Jemasze snorted in sour amusement. “The ambitious Blue wants to raid or ransom or steal enough money to buy a sky-shark. He doesn’t want to be a teacher or an engineer—any more than you want to ride an erjin.”

“That’s a yearning I’m able to control.”

“Reflect a moment,” Kelse told him. “The Blues can come to Szintarre whenever they want; they can attend school at Olanje and learn a profession. How many do so? Few, if any. All the Blues in Olanje are agitators and Redemptionist house pets; they exist only to get the land-barons out of the Treaty Lands.”

“They seem to feel that the land is theirs,” remarked Sammatzen.

“It’s theirs if they can force us off it,” said Kelse. “If they can’t, it’s ours.”

Sammatzen shrugged and turned away. Kelse said to Schaine, “We’d better be leaving; we’ve got a long day tomorrow.”

Schaine made no protest. With Gerd Jemasze they bade farewell to Valtrina and departed Villa Mirasol.

The hour was late. Schaine was restless. She stepped out on her balcony and stood under the stars. The sea was quiet; the town had gone to sleep; a few lights twinkled up and down the shore and through the foliage of the hillside. No sound could be heard but the sigh of the surf…An eventful day. Kelse, Gerd Jemasze, Aunt Val, Muffin (the Gray Prince!)—all components of her childhood, all now with their elemental natures refined and intensified. The tranquility she had come home to find seemed forever lost and gone. She brought faces into her mind. Kelse: more terse and cynical than she could have expected. Kelse had aged very quickly; all his boyish grace had departed…Gerd Jemasze: a hard harsh man with a soul of stone…Muffin, or Jorjol as now he must be called: as gallant and clever as ever. How fateful that the agency which had given him sustenance, education, even life itself—namely Morningswake—should now be the target of Redemptionist attack!…Elvo Glissam! Schaine felt a warm flush, a pulse of eagerness. She hoped that he would stay weeks, months, at Morningswake. She would take him up to the Opal Pits, to the Lake of the Veils, to Sanhredin Glade, to the Magic Forest and the lodge on Mount May; she would ask Kurgech to organize a Grand Karoo
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. Elvo Glissam would bring fun to Morningswake where none had existed for five years: five bitter, wasted years.

A
cross the Persimmon Sea flew the Suaniset utility vehicle, an ungainly Apex A-15, lacking all style or flair and Schaine suspected that Gerd Jemasze intended nothing less than a demonstration of contempt for the fads of Olanje. She remarked: “All this is very luxurious, but where’s the Hybro Saloon?”

Gerd Jemasze fixed the auto-pilot upon Galigong and swung around in his seat. “The Hybro is in the shop. I’m waiting for new dexodes.”

Schaine remembered the Suaniset Hybro from her childhood. She asked Kelse: “I suppose Father is still flying our dilapidated Sturdevant with the broken window?”

“Yes, it’s ageless. I fixed the window last year.”

Schaine informed Elvo Glissam: “Out on the domains life flows at a serene pace. Our ancestors were wise and industrious; what’s good enough for them is good enough for us.”

“We’re not altogether torpid,” said Kelse. “Twelve years ago we planted two hundred acres to vines and next year we’ll start producing wine.”

“That sounds interesting,” said Schaine. “We should be able to undersell the imports; we might end up as tycoons of the wine trade.”