Jack Vance: Planet of Adventure

Reith took pains to control his voice; still he spoke thickly. "What have you done to her?"

"She has been treated with Liquid One. It invigorates and tones, and opens the passages for Liquid Two."

"Bring her forth."

Zap 210 emerged from the cage. Reith took her hand, stroked her head. "You are safe. We're going back to the surface." He stood for a few minutes quietly waiting while she wept in relief and nervous exhaustion on his shoulder.

The Pnume came close. One said: "The return of all charts is demanded."

Reith managed a thick laugh. "Not yet. I have other demands to make of you-but elsewhere. Let us leave this place. Foreverness oppresses me."

In a hall of polished gray marble Reith faced the Pnume Elders. "I am a man; I am disturbed to see men of my own kind living the unnatural lives of Pnumekin.

You must breed no more human children, and the children now underground must be transferred to the surface and there maintained until they are able to fend for themselves."

"But this means the end of the Pnumekin!"

"So it does, and why not? Your race is seven million years old or more. Only in the last twenty or thirty thousand years have you had Pnumekin to serve you.

Their loss will be no great hardship."

"If we agree-what of the charts?"

"I will destroy all but a very few copies. None will be delivered to your enemies."

"This is unsatisfactory! We would then live in constant dread!"

"I can't worry as to this. I must retain control over you, to guarantee that my demands have been met. In due course I may return all the charts to you-sometime in the future."

The Pnume muttered disconsolately together a few moments. One said in a flat whisper: "Your demands will be met."

"In this case, conduct us back to the Sivishe salt flats."

At sunset the salt flats were quiet. Carina 4269 hung in a smoky haze behind the palisades, glinting upon the Dirdir towers. Reith and Zap 210 approached the old warehouse. From the office came Anacho's spare form. He stepped forward to meet them. "The sky-car is here. There is nothing to keep us."

"Let's hurry then. I can't believe that we're free."

The sky-car lifted from behind the warehouse and swept north. Anacho asked:

"Where do we go?"

"To the Kotan steppes, south of where you and I first met."

All night they flew, over the barren center of Kislovan, then over the First Sea and the Kotan marshlands.

At dawn they drifted over the edge of the Steppes while Reith studied the landscape below. They crossed a forest; Reith pointed to a clearing. "There: where I came down to Tschai. The Emblem camp lay to the east. There, by that grove of feather-bush: there we buried Onmale. Drop down there."

The sky-car landed. Reith alighted and walked slowly toward the woods. He saw the glint of metal. Traz came forth. He stood quietly as Reith approached. "I knew that you would come."

Traz had changed. He had become a man: something more than a man. On his shoulder he wore a medallion of metal, stone and wood. Reith said: "You dug up the emblem."

"Yes. It called to me. Wherever I walked upon the steppe I heard voices, all the voices of all the Omnale chieftains, calling to be taken up from the dark. I brought forth the emblem; the voices are now silent."

"And the ship?"

"It is ready. Four of the technicians are here. One stayed at Sivishe, two lost heart and set off across the steppes for Hedaijha."

"The sooner we depart the better. When we're actually out in space I'll believe that we've escaped."

"We are ready."

Anacho, Traz and Zap 210 entered the spaceship. Reith took a last look around the sky. He bent, touched the soil of Tschai, crumbled a handful of mold between his fingers. Then he too entered the unlovely hulk. The port was closed and sealed. The generators hummed. The ship lifted toward the sky. The face of Tschai receded; the planet exhibited rotundity, became a graybrown ball, and presently was gone.