Jack Vance: The Houses of Iszm

“Who am I privileged to address?” asked Farr.

“I call myself Zhde Patasz. I am fortunate enough to cultivate on Tjiere atoll.”

Farr reappraised the blue-striped man. “A planter?”

Zhde Patasz twirled his viewer. “We will have much to discuss… I hope you will be my guest.”

The dock-master came puffing up. Zhde Patasz flourished his viewer and drifted away.

“Farr Sainh,” said the dock-master, “your modesty leads you to evade your entitled escort. It saddens us deeply.”

“You exaggerate.”

“Hardly possible. This way, Sainh.”

He marched down the concrete incline into a wide trench, with Farr sauntering behind so leisurely that the dock-master was forced to halt and wait at hundred-foot intervals. The trench led under the basalt ridge, then became a subterranean passage. Four times the dock-master slid aside plate-glass panels, four times the doors swung shut behind. Farr realized that search-screens, probes, detectors, analyzers were feeling him, testing his radiations, his mass and metallic content. He strolled along indifferently. They would find nothing. All his clothing and personal effects had been impounded; he was still wearing the visitor’s uniform, trousers of white floss, a jacket striped gray and green, and the loose dark green velvet beret.

The dock-master rapped at a door of corrugated metal. It parted in the middle into two interlocking halves, like a medieval portcullis. The passage opened into a bright room. Behind a counter sat a Szecr in the usual yellow and green stripes.

“If the Sainh pleases—his tri-type for our records.”

Farr patiently stood on the disk of gray metal.

“Palms forward, eyes wide.”

Farr stood quietly. Feeler-planes brushed down his body.

“Thank you, Sainh.” Farr stepped up to the counter. “That’s a different type than the one at Jhespiano. Let’s see it.”

The clerk showed him a transparent card with a manlike brownish splotch on its middle. “Not much of a likeness,” said Farr.

The Szecr dropped the card into a slot. On the counter-top appeared a three-dimensional replica of Farr. It could be expanded a hundred times, revealing fingerprints, cheek-pores, ear and retinal configuration.

“I’d like to have this as a souvenir,” said Farr. “It’s dressed. The one at Jhespiano showed my charms to the world.”

The Iszic shrugged. “Take it.”

Farr put the replica in his pouch.

“Now, Farr Sainh, may I ask an impertinent question?”

“One more won’t hurt me.”

Farr knew there was a cephaloscope focused on his brain. Any pulse of excitement, any flush of fear would be recorded on a chart. He brought the image of a hot bath to the brink of his mind.

“Do you plan to steal houses, Farr Sainh?”

Now: the placid cool porcelain, the feel of warm air and water, the scent of soap .

“No.”

“Are you aware of, or party to, any such plan?”

Warm water, lie back, relax.

“No.”

The Szecr sucked in his lips, a grimace of polite skepticism. “Are you aware of the penalties visited upon thieves?”

“Oh yes,” said Farr. “They go to the Mad House.”

“Thank you, Farr Sainh, you may proceed.”

The dock-master relinquished Farr to a pair of under-Szecr in pale yellow and gold bands.

“This way, if you please.”

Climbing a ramp, they stepped out into an arcade with a glassed-in wall.

Farr stopped to survey the plantation; his guides made uneasy motions, anxious to proceed.

“If Farr Sainh desires—”

“Just a minute,” said Farr irritably. “There’s no hurry.”

On his right hand was the town, a forest of intricate shapes and colors. To the back grew the modest three-pod houses of the laborers. They could hardly be seen through the magnificent array along the lagoon—houses of the planters, the Szecr, the house-breeders and housebreakers. Each was different, trained and shaped by secrets the Iszic withheld even from each other.

They were beautiful, thought Farr, but in a weird indecisive way they puzzled him, just as sometimes the palate falters on a new flavor. He decided that environment influenced his judgment. Iszic houses on Earth looked habitable enough. This was Iszm and any attribute of a strange planet shared the basic strangeness.

He turned his attention to the fields. They spread off to his left, various shades of brown, gray, gray-green, green, according to the age and variety of the plant. Each field had its long low shed where mature seedlings were graded, labeled, potted and packed for destinations around the universe.

The two young Szecr began to mutter in the language of their caste and Farr turned away from the window.

“This way, Farr Sainh.”

“Where are we going?”

“You are the guest of Zhde Patasz Sainh.”

Excellent, thought Farr. He had examined the houses exported to Earth, the Class AA houses sold by K. Penche. They would compare poorly with the houses the planters grew for themselves.

He became aware of the two young Szecr. They were standing like statues, staring at the floor of the arcade.

“What’s the matter?” asked Farr.

They began to breathe heavily. Farr looked at the floor. A vibration, a low roar. Earthquake! thought Farr. The sound grew louder, the windows rumbled in resonance. Farr felt a sudden wildness, a sense of emergency. He looked out the window. In a nearby field the ground broke up, took on a crazy hump, and erupted. Tender seedlings crushed under tons of dirt. A metal snout protruded, grinding up ten feet, twenty feet. A door clanged open. Squat heavy-muscled brown men leaped out, ran into the fields, and began to uproot young plants. In the door a man, grinning in the extremity of tension, roared out incomprehensible orders.

Farr watched in fascination; a raid of tremendous scope. Horns rang out from Tjiere town; the vicious fwipp-hiss of shatter-bolts sounded. Two of the brown men became red clots. The man in the doorway bellowed, and the others retreated to the metal snout.

The port clanged shut; but one raider had waited too long. He beat his fists on the hull, but to no avail. He was ignored. Frantically he pounded and the seedlings he had gathered crushed in his grip.

The snout vibrated, then lifted higher from the ground. The shatter-bolts from the Tjiere fort began to chip off flakes of metal. A bull’s eye port in the hull snapped open; a weapon spat blue flame. In Tjiere a great tree shattered and sagged. Farr’s head swam to a tremendous soundless scream. The young Szecr dropped gasping to their knees.

The tree toppled. The great pods, the leaf-terraces, the tendrils, the careful balconies—they whistled through the air and crashed in pitiful tangle. Iszic bodies hurled from the ruins, kicking and twisting.

The metal snout ground up another ten feet. In a moment it would shake loose the soil, then blast up and out into space. The brown man left outside fought for footing on the heaving soil, still pounding on the hull, but now without hope.

Fair looked at the sky. Three monitors were slipping down from the upper air—ugly, awkward craft, looking like metal scorpions.

A shatter-bolt smashed a crater in the soil beside the hull. The brown man was flung a looping sixty feet. He turned three cartwheels and landed on his back.

The metal hull began to churn back down into the soil, settling slowly at first, then faster and faster. Another shatter-bolt rang on the prow like a great hammer. The metal shriveled and fragmented into ribbons. The hull was under the surface; clods of soil caved in on top.

Another shatter-bolt threw up a gout of dust.

The two young Szecr had risen to their feet. They stared out across the devastated field, crying out in a tongue meaningless to Farr. One grasped Farr’s arm.