Jack Vance: The Asutra

Caraz dominated the western horizon. Ifness swung the boat a point or two north and slanted gradually against the shoreline. Late in the afternoon mud flats appeared below, marked by tremulous wisps of surf. Ifness adjusted course and all night the boat drifted at half-speed along the coast, following trails of phosphorescent foam. Predawn murk discovered the hulk of Cape Comranus ahead, and Ifness pronounced Kreposkin's maps worthless. "Essentially he informs us only that a Cape Comranus exists, that it is to be found somewhere along the Caraz shore. We must use these maps with skepticism."

All morning the boat followed the coast, which after Cape Comranus had veered eastward, past a succession of crouching headlands separated by mud flats. At noon they flew over a peninsula of barren stone extending fifty miles north, unidentified on Kreposkin's maps; then the sea returned. Ifness allowed the boat to descend until they drifted only a thousand feet above the beach.

Halfway through the afternoon they crossed the mouth of a vast river: the Gever, draining the Geverman Basin, into which the whole of Shant might have been fitted. A village of a hundred stone cabins occupied the lee of a hill; a dozen boats swung at anchor. This was the first habitation they had seen on Caraz.

Persuaded by Kreposkin's map, Ifness turned the boat westward and inland, across a densely forested wilderness extending north past the reach of vision: the Mirv Peninsula. A hundred miles fell astern. From an almost invisible clearing a wisp of smoke lazed up into the air. Etzwane glimpsed three timber cabins, and for ten minutes he looked astern, wondering what sort of men and women lived lost in this northern forest of Caraz… Another hundred miles passed, and they came to the far shore of the Mirv Peninsula, in this case to validate Kreposkin's map. Once again they flew over water. Ahead the estuary of the Hietze River opened into the land: a cleft twenty miles wide studded with steep-sided islands, each a miniature fairyland of delightful trees and mossy meadows. One of the islands supported a gray stone castle; beside another a cargo vessel lay moored.

During the late afternoon, clouds rolled down from the north; plum-colored gloom fell across the landscape. Ifness slowed the boat and upon consideration descended to a sheltered crescent of beach. As lightning began to lash the sky, Etzwane and Ifness rigged a tarpaulin over the cockpit, then, with rain drumming on the fabric, they drank tea and ate a meal of bread and meat. Etzwane asked, "Suppose the asutra attacked Durdane with spaceships and powerful weapons: what would the people of the Earth worlds do? Would they send warships to protect us?"

Ifness leaned back against the thwart. These are unpredictable matters. The Coordinating Board is a conservative group; the worlds are absorbed in their own affairs. The Pan-Humanic League is no longer influential, if ever it was. Durdane is far away and forgotten; the Schiafarilla intervenes. The Coordination might make a representation, depending upon a report from the Historical Institute, which enjoys prestige. Dasconetta, for purposes to which I have alluded, seeks to minimize the situation. He will not acknowledge that the asutra are the first technologically competent nonhuman creatures we have encountered, a highly important occasion."

"Curious! The facts speak for themselves."

"True. But there is more to it, as you might guess. Dasconetta and his clique advocate caution and further research; in due course they propose to issue the announcement under their own aegis; I will never be mentioned. This scheme must be thwarted."

Etzwane, engaged in rueful reflections regarding the quality of Ifness' concern, went to look out into the night. The rain had dwindled to a few dark drops; the lightning flickered far to the east, back over the Mirv. Etzwane listened, but could hear no sound whatever. Ifness also stepped out to look at the night.

"We might proceed, but I am uncertain in regard to the Keba and the intervening rivers. Kreposkin is exasperating in that he can neither be totally scorned nor totally trusted. Best that we wait for the light. " He stood peering through the dark. "According to Kreposkin, yonder along the beach is the site of Suzerain, a town built by the Shelm Fyrids some six thousand years ago… Caraz, then as now, was savage and vast. No matter how many enemies fell in battle, more always came. One or another warrior tribe laid Suzerain waste; now there is nothing left: only the influences Kreposkin calls esmeric."

I do not know that word."

It derives from a dialect of old Caraz and means the association or atmosphere.clinging to a place: the unseen ghosts, the dissipated sounds, the suffused glory, music, tragedy, exultation, grief, and terror, which according to Kreposkin never dissipates."

Etzwane looked through the dark toward the site of the old city; if esmeric were present, it worked but weakly through the dark. Etzwane returned to the boat and tried to sleep on the narrow starboard berth.

The morning sky was clear. The blue sun, Etta, swung up near the horizon, producing a false blue dawn, then pink Sasetta slanted sidewise into the sky, then white Zael, and again blue Etta. After a breakfast of tea and dried fruit, and a cursory glance at the site of old Suzerain, Ifness took the boat into the air. Ahead, dull as lead in the light from the east, a great river mouth gaped into the mass of Caraz. Ifness named the river the Usak. At noon they passed the Bobol, and at midafternoon reached the mouth of the Keba, which Ifness identified by the chalk cliffs along the western shore and the trading post Erbol, five miles inland.

Ifness swung south over the watercourse, here forty miles wide with three sun trails across the brimming surface. The river seemed to curve somewhat to the right, then at the horizon's verge it swept majestically back to the left. Three barges, minuscule from the height, floated on the face of the river, two inching upstream to the force of billowing square sails, another drifting downstream with the current.

"The charts are of small benefit henceforth," said Ifness. "Kreposkin mentions no settlements along the middle Keba, although he refers to the Sorukh race, a warlike folk who never turn their backs in battle." Etzwane studied Kreposkin's rude maps. "Two thousand miles south along the river, into the Burnoun district: that would take us about here, to the Plain of Blue Flowers."

Ifness was not interested in Etzwane's opinions. "The maps are only approximations," he said crisply. "We will fly a certain distance, then undertake a local investigation. " He closed the book and turning away became absorbed in his own thoughts.

Etzwane smiled a trifle grimly. He had become accustomed to Ifness' mannerisms and no longer allowed himself to become wrathful. He went forward and looked out over the tremendous purple forests, the pale-blue distances, the bogs and swamps of mottled green, and, dominating the landscape, the flood of the river Keba. Here was where he had come, to wild Caraz, because he feared staleness and insipidity. What of Ifness? What had urged the fastidious Ifness to such vicissitudes? Etzwane started to ask the question, then held his tongue; Ifness would give a mordant answer, with Etzwane none the better informed.

Etzwane turned and looked south, into Caraz, where so many mysteries awaited illumination.

The boat flew all night, holding its course by the reflection of the blazing Schiafarilla upon the river. At noon Ifness lowered the boat toward the river, which here ran irregularly about ten miles wide, swelling, narrowing, and encompassing a myriad of wooded islands.

"Be on the lookout for habitation, or even better, a riverboat," Ifness told Etzwane. "We now require local information."

"How will you understand? The folk of Caraz speak an outlandish yammer."