Guyal turned eagerly to Kerlin; Kerlin raised a finger for silence. “Indeed, indeed, a goodly thought, especially since here beside us is a rotor of extreme swiftness, used in reeling the cognitive filaments of the cases … Now then observe: I reach to this panel, I select a mesh, I withdraw a thread, and note! The meshes ravel and loosen and part. And now to the bobbin on the rotor, and I wrap the thread, and now with a twist we have the cincture made …”
Shierl said dubiously, “Does not the ghost observe and note your doing?”
“By no means,” asserted Kerlin. “The pane of vitrean shields our actions; he is too exercised to attend. And now I dissolve the cage and he is free.”
The ghost wandered forth, cringing from the light.
“Go!” cried Kerlin. “Back to your genetrix; back, return and go!”
The ghost departed. Kerlin said to Guyal, “Follow; find when Blikdak snuffs him up.”
Guyal at a cautious distance watched the ghost seep up into the black nostril, and returned to where Kerlin waited by the rotor. “The ghost has once more become part of Blikdak.”
“Now then,” said Kerlin, “we cause the rotor to twist, the bobbin to whirl, and we shall observe.”
The rotor whirled to a blur; the bobbin (as long as Guyal’s arm) became spun with ghost-thread, at first glowing pastel polychrome, then nacre, then fine milk-ivory.
The rotor spun, a million times a minute, and the thread drawn unseen and unknown from Blikdak thickened on the bobbin.
The rotor spun; the bobbin was full — a cylinder shining with glossy silken sheen. Kerlin slowed the rotor; Guyal snapped a new bobbin into place, and the unraveling of Blikdak continued.
Three bobbins — four — five — and Guyal, observing Blikdak from afar, found the giant face quiescent, the mouth working and sucking, creating the clacking sound which had first caused them apprehension.
Eight bobbins. Blikdak opened his eyes, stared in puzzlement around the chamber.
Twelve bobbins: a discolored spot appeared on the sagging cheek, and Blikdak quivered in uneasiness.
Twenty bobbins: the spot spread across Blikdak’s visage, across the slanted fore-dome, and his mouth hung lax; he hissed and fretted.
Thirty bobbins: Blikdak’s head seemed stale and putrid; the gunmetal sheen had become an angry maroon, the eyes bulged, the mouth hung open, the tongue lolled limp.
Fifty bobbins: Blikdak collapsed. His dome lowered against the febrile mouth; his eyes shone like feverish coals.
Sixty bobbins: Blikdak was no more.
And with the dissolution of Blikdak so dissolved Jeldred, the demonland created for the housing of evil. The breach in the wall gave on barren rock, unbroken and rigid.
And in the Mechanismus sixty shining bobbins lay stacked neat; the evil so disorganized glowed with purity and iridescence.
Kerlin fell back against the wall. “I expire; my time has come. I have guarded well the Museum; together we have won it away from Blikdak … Attend me now. Into your hands I pass the curacy; now the Museum is your charge to guard and preserve.”
“For what end?” asked Shierl. “Earth expires, almost as you … Wherefore knowledge?”
“More now than ever,” gasped Kerlin. “Attend: the stars are bright, the stars are fair; the banks know blessed magic to fleet you to youthful climes. Now — I go. I die.”
“Wait!” cried Guyal. “Wait, I beseech!”
“Why wait?” whispered Kerlin. “The way to peace is on me; you call me back?”
“How do I extract from the banks?”
“The key to the index is in my chambers, the index of my life …” And Kerlin died.
Guyal and Shierl climbed to the upper ways and stood outside the portal on the ancient flagged floor. It was night; the marble shone faintly underfoot, the broken columns loomed on the sky.
Across the plain the yellow lights of Saponce shone warm through the trees; above in the sky shone the stars.
Guyal said to Shierl, “There is your home; there is Saponce. Do you wish to return?”
She shook her head. “Together we have looked through the eyes of knowledge. We have seen old Thorsingol, and the Sherrit Empire before it, and Golwan Andra before that and the Forty Kades even before. We have seen the warlike green-men, and the knowledgeable Pharials and the Clambs who departed Earth for the stars, as did the Merioneth before them and the Gray Sorcerers still earlier. We have seen oceans rise and fall, the mountains crust up, peak and melt in the beat of rain; we have looked on the sun when it glowed hot and full and yellow … No, Guyal, there is no place for me at Saponce …”
Guyal, leaning back on the weathered pillar, looked up to the stars. “Knowledge is ours, Shierl — all of knowing to our call. And what shall we do?”
Together they looked up to the white stars.
“What shall we do …”
-- THE END --
About the Author
Jack Vance (1916 – )
Jack Vance was born in 1916 and studied mining, engineering and journalism at the University of California. During the Second World War he served in the merchant navy and was torpedoed twice.
Author Jack Vance has been central to both science fiction and fantasy since 1945, publishing nearly ninety novels and collections. He has received every major genre award, including the Edgar, Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy and Science Fiction Writers of America Grand Master.
Beginning in the late 1940s, Vance contributed a variety of short stories and novels to the pulp magazines, but nothing of this early work, dependent as it was on pulp conventions, prefigured the mature Vance. The change began with his first published book, The Dying Earth (1950). The novel's convincing articulation of a future Earth in which magic has replaced science was instantly influential, and remains so to the present, continuing to inspire authors and game designers.
Vance's second original contribution to the science fiction and fantasy fields was his sophisticated approach to the "planetary romance," a style of science fiction tale in which the setting is a richly detailed planet, the characteristics of which significantly effect the plot. Vance's work not only expanded this genre's existing archetypes, but established several new ones, significantly inspiring other authors to this day.
As Vance's created worlds became richer and more complex, so too did his style. His writing had always tended toward the baroque, but by the early 1960s it had developed into an effective, high-mannered diction, saturated with a rich but distanced irony. His resulting genius of place, and command as a landscape artist and gardener of worlds has rarely been matched.
Also By Jack Vance
The Dying Earth
1. The Dying Earth (1950) (aka Mazirian the Magician)
2. The Eyes of the Overworld (1966) (aka Cugel the Clever)
3. Cugel’s Saga (1966) (aka Cugel: The Skybreak Spatterlight)
