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Title: The men return
Author: Jack Vance
Illustrator: Robert Engle
Release date: September 4, 2023 [eBook #71565]
Language: English
Original publication: New York, NY: Royal Publications, Inc, 1957
Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MEN RETURN ***
THE MEN RETURN
By JACK VANCE
Illustrated by ENGLE
Alpha caught a handful of air, a globe of
blue liquid, a rock, kneaded them together....
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Infinity July 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
_Only rarely will the_ Infinity-plus _symbol--INFINITY's award
of unusual merit--appear on an individual story. (For a typical
example of the way it will be used, see "Tales of Tomorrow"
elsewhere in this issue.)_ The Men Return _is an exception by
virtue of being one of the most unusual stories ever written. We do
not guarantee that you will like it, but we are sure that you will
either like it tremendously or hate it violently. And we're very
anxious to learn your reactions!_
The Relict came furtively down the crag, a shambling gaunt creature
with tortured eyes. He moved in a series of quick dashes, using panels
of dark air for concealment, running behind each passing shadow, at
times crawling on all fours, head low to the ground. Arriving at the
final low outcrop of rock, he halted and peered across the plain.
Far away rose low hills, blurring into the sky, which was mottled and
sallow like poor milk-glass. The intervening plain spread like rotten
velvet, black-green and wrinkled, streaked with ocher and rust. A
fountain of liquid rock jetted high in the air, branched out into black
coral. In the middle distance a family of gray objects evolved with
a sense of purposeful destiny: spheres melted into pyramids, became
domes, tufts of white spires, sky-piercing poles; then, as a final
_tour de force_, tesseracts.
The Relict cared nothing for this; he needed food and out on the plain
were plants. They would suffice in lieu of anything better. They
grew in the ground, or sometimes on a floating lump of water, or
surrounding a core of hard black gas. There were dank black flaps of
leaf, clumps of haggard thorn, pale green bulbs, stalks with leaves
and contorted flowers. There were no recognizable species, and the
Relict had no means of knowing if the leaves and tendrils he had eaten
yesterday would poison him today.
He tested the surface of the plain with his foot. The glassy surface
(though it likewise seemed a construction of red and gray-green
pyramids) accepted his weight, then suddenly sucked at his leg. In a
frenzy he tore himself free, jumped back, squatted on the temporarily
solid rock.
Hunger rasped at his stomach. He must eat. He contemplated the plain.
Not too far away a pair of Organisms played--sliding, diving, dancing,
striking flamboyant poses. Should they approach he would try to kill
one of them. They resembled men, and so should make a good meal.
He waited. A long time? A short time? It might have been either;
duration had neither quantitative nor qualitative reality. The sun had
vanished, and there was no standard cycle or recurrence. Time was a
word blank of meaning.
* * * * *
Matters had not always been so. The Relict retained a few tattered
recollections of the old days, before system and logic had been
rendered obsolete. Man had dominated Earth by virtue of a single
assumption: that an effect could be traced to a cause, itself the
effect of a previous cause.
Manipulation of this basic law yielded rich results; there seemed no
need for any other tool or instrumentality. Man congratulated himself
on his generalized structure. He could live on desert, on plain or
ice, in forest or in city; Nature had not shaped him to a special
environment.
He was unaware of his vulnerability. Logic was the special environment;
the brain was the special tool.
Then came the terrible hour when Earth swam into a pocket of
non-causality, and all the ordered tensions of cause-effect dissolved.
The special tool was useless; it had no purchase on reality. From the
two billions of men, only a few survived--the mad. They were now the
Organisms, lords of the era, their discords so exactly equivalent to
the vagaries of the land as to constitute a peculiar wild wisdom.
Or perhaps the disorganized matter of the world, loose from the old
organization, was peculiarly sensitive to psycho-kinesis.
A handful of others, the Relicts, managed to exist, but only through a
delicate set of circumstances. They were the ones most strongly charged
with the old causal dynamic. It persisted sufficiently to control the
metabolism of their bodies, but could extend no further. They were fast
dying out, for sanity provided no leverage against the environment.
Sometimes their own minds sputtered and jangled, and they would go
raving and leaping out across the plain.
The Organisms observed with neither surprise nor curiosity; how could
surprise exist? The mad Relict might pause by an Organism, and try to
duplicate the creature's existence. The Organism ate a mouthful of
plant; so did the Relict. The Organism rubbed his feet with crushed
water; so did the Relict. Presently the Relict would die of poison
or rent bowels or skin lesions, while the Organism relaxed in the
dank black grass. Or the Organism might seek to eat the Relict; and
the Relict would run off in terror, unable to abide any part of the
world--running, bounding, breasting the thick air; eyes wide, mouth
open, calling and gasping until finally he floundered in a pool of
black iron or blundered into a vacuum pocket, to bat around like a fly
in a bottle.
The Relicts now numbered very few. Finn, he who crouched on the rock
overlooking the plain, lived with four others. Two of these were old
men and soon would die. Finn likewise would die unless he found food.
* * * * *
Out on the plain one of the Organisms, Alpha, sat down, caught
a handful of air, a globe of blue liquid, a rock, kneaded them
together, pulled the mixture like taffy, gave it a great heave. It
uncoiled from his hand like rope. The Relict crouched low. No telling
what devilry would occur to the creature. He and all the rest of
them--unpredictable! The Relict valued their flesh as food; but they
also would eat him if opportunity offered. In the competition he was
at a great disadvantage. Their random acts baffled him. If, seeking
to escape, he ran, the worst terror would begin. The direction he set
his face was seldom the direction the varying frictions of the ground
let him move. But the Organisms were as random and uncommitted as the
environment, and the double set of vagaries sometimes compounded,
sometimes canceled each other. In the latter case the Organisms might
catch him....
It was inexplicable. But then, what was not? The word "explanation" had
no meaning.
They were moving toward him; had they seen him? He flattened himself
against the sullen yellow rock.
The two Organisms paused not far away. He could hear their sounds, and
crouched, sick from conflicting pangs of hunger and fear.
Alpha sank to his knees, lay flat on his back, arms and legs flung out
at random, addressing the sky in a series of musical cries, sibilants,
guttural groans. It was a personal language he had only now improvised,
but Beta understood him well.
"A vision," cried Alpha, "I see past the sky. I see knots, spinning
circles. They tighten into hard points; they will never come undone."
Beta perched on a pyramid, glanced over this shoulder at the mottled
sky.
"An intuition," chanted Alpha, "a picture out of the other time. It is
hard, merciless, inflexible."
Beta poised on the pyramid, dove through the glassy surface, swam under
Alpha, emerged, lay flat beside him.
"Observe the Relict on the hillside. In his blood is the whole of the
old race--the narrow men with minds like cracks. He has exuded the
intuition. Clumsy thing--a blunderer," said Alpha.
"They are all dead, all of them," said Beta. "Although three or
four remain." (When _past_, _present_ and _future_ are no more than
ideas left over from another era, like boats on a dry lake--then the
completion of a process can never be defined.)
Alpha said, "This is the vision. I see the Relicts swarming the Earth;
then whisking off to nowhere, like gnats in the wind. This is behind
us."
The Organisms lay quiet, considering the vision.
A rock, or perhaps a meteor, fell from the sky, struck into the surface
of the pond. It left a circular hole which slowly closed. From another
part of the pool a gout of fluid splashed into the air, floated away.
Alpha spoke: "Again--the intuition comes strong! There will be lights
in the sky."
The fever died in him. He hooked a finger into the air, hoisted himself
to his feet.
Beta lay quiet. Slugs, ants, flies, beetles were crawling on him,
boring, breeding. Alpha knew that Beta could arise, shake off the
insects, stride off. But Beta seemed to prefer passivity. That was well
enough. He could produce another Beta should he choose, or a dozen
of him. Sometimes the world swarmed with Organisms, all sorts, all
colors, tall as steeples, short and squat as flower-pots.
"I feel a lack," said Alpha. "I will eat the Relict." He set forth, and
sheer chance brought him near to the ledge of yellow rock. Finn the
Relict sprang to his feet in panic.
* * * * *
Alpha tried to communicate, so that Finn might pause while Alpha ate.
But Finn had no grasp for the many-valued overtones of Alpha's voice.
He seized a rock, hurled it at Alpha. The rock puffed into a cloud of
dust, blew back into the Relict's face.
Alpha moved closer, extended his long arms. The Relict kicked. His feet
went out from under him, and he slid out on the plain. Alpha ambled
complacently behind him. Finn began to crawl away. Alpha moved off to
the right--one direction was as good as another. He collided with Beta,
and began to eat Beta instead of the Relict. The Relict hesitated; then
approached and, joining Alpha, pushed chunks of pink flesh into his
mouth.
Alpha said to the Relict, "I was about to communicate an intuition to
him whom we dine upon. I will speak to you."
Finn could not understand Alpha's personal language. He ate as rapidly
as possible.
Alpha spoke on. "There will be lights in the sky. The great lights."
Finn rose to his feet and, warily watching Alpha, seized Beta's legs,
began to pull him toward the hill. Alpha watched with quizzical
unconcern.
It was hard work for the spindly Relict. Sometimes Beta floated;
sometimes he wafted off on the air; sometimes he adhered to the
terrain. At last he sank into a knob of granite which froze around him.
Finn tried to jerk Beta loose, and then to pry him up with a stick,
without success.
He ran back and forth in an agony of indecision. Beta began to
collapse, wither, like a jellyfish on hot sand. The Relict abandoned
the hulk. Too late, too late! Food going to waste! The world was a
hideous place of frustration!
* * * * *
Temporarily his belly was full. He started back up the crag, and
presently found the camp, where the four other Relicts waited--two
ancient males, two females. The females, Gisa and Reak, like Finn, had
been out foraging. Gisa had brought in a slab of lichen; Reak a bit of
nameless carrion.
The old men, Boad and Tagart, sat quietly waiting either for food or
for death.
The women greeted Finn sullenly. "Where is the food you went forth to
find?"
"I had a whole carcass," said Finn. "I could not carry it."
Boad had slyly stolen the slab of lichen and was cramming it into his
mouth. It came alive, quivered and exuded a red ichor which was poison,
and the old man died.
"Now there is food," said Finn. "Let us eat."
But the poison created a putrescence; the body seethed with blue foam,
flowed away of its own energy.
The women turned to look at the other old man, who said in a quavering
voice, "Eat me if you must--but why not choose Reak, who is younger
than I?"
Reak, the younger of the women, gnawing on the bit of carrion, made no
reply.
Finn said hollowly, "Why do we worry ourselves? Food is ever more
difficult, and we are the last of all men."
"No, no," spoke Reak. "Not the last. We saw others on the green mound."
"That was long ago," said Gisa. "Now they are surely dead."
"Perhaps they have found a source of food," suggested Reak.
Finn rose to his feet, looked across the plain. "Who knows? Perhaps
there is a more pleasant land beyond the horizon."
"There is nothing anywhere but waste and evil creatures," snapped Gisa.
"What could be worse than here?" Finn argued calmly.
No one could find grounds for disagreement.
"Here is what I propose," said Finn. "Notice this tall peak. Notice
the layers of hard air. They bump into the peak, they bounce off, they
float in and out and disappear past the edge of sight. Let us all
climb this peak, and when a sufficiently large bank of air passes, we
will throw ourselves on top, and allow it to carry us to the beautiful
regions which may exist just out of sight."
There was argument. The old man Tagart protested his feebleness; the
women derided the possibility of the bountiful regions Finn envisioned,
but presently, grumbling and arguing, they began to clamber up the
pinnacle.
* * * * *
It took a long time; the obsidian was soft as jelly, and Tagart several
times professed himself at the limit of his endurance. But still they
climbed, and at last reached the pinnacle. There was barely room to
stand. They could see in all directions, far out over the landscape,
till vision was lost in the watery gray.
The women bickered and pointed in various directions, but there was
small sign of happier territory. In one direction blue-green hills
shivered like bladders full of oil. In another direction lay a
streak of black--a gorge or a lake of clay. In another direction were
blue-green hills--the same they had seen in the first direction;
somehow there had been a shift. Below was the plain, gleaming like
an iridescent beetle, here and there pocked with black velvet spots,
overgrown with questionable vegetation.
They saw Organisms, a dozen shapes loitering by ponds, munching
vegetable pods or small rocks or insects. There came Alpha. He moved
slowly, still awed by his vision, ignoring the other Organisms. Their
play went on, but presently they stood quiet, sharing the oppression.
On the obsidian peak, Finn caught hold of a passing filament of air,
drew it in. "Now--all on, and we sail away to the Land of Plenty."
"No," protested Gisa, "there is no room, and who knows if it will fly
in the right direction?"
"Where is the right direction?" asked Finn. "Does anyone know?"
No one knew, but the women still refused to climb aboard the filament.
Finn turned to Tagart. "Here, old one, show these women how it is;
climb on!"
"No, no," he cried. "I fear the air; this is not for me."
"Climb on, old man, then we follow."
Wheezing and fearful, clenching his hands deep into the spongy mass,
Tagart pulled himself out onto the air, spindly shanks hanging over
into nothing. "Now," spoke Finn, "who next?"
The women still refused. "You go then, yourself," cried Gisa.
"And leave you, my last guarantee against hunger? Aboard now!"
"No. The air is too small; let the old one go and we will follow on a
larger."
"Very well." Finn released his grip. The air floated off over the
plain, Tagart straddling and clutching for dear life.
They watched him curiously. "Observe," said Finn, "how fast and easily
moves the air. Above the Organisms, over all the slime and uncertainty."
But the air itself was uncertain, and the old man's raft dissolved.
Clutching at the departing wisps, Tagart sought to hold his cushion
together. It fled from under him, and he fell.
* * * * *
On the peak the three watched the spindly shape flap and twist on its
way to earth far below.
"Now," Reak exclaimed vexatiously, "we even have no more meat."
"None," said Gisa, "except the visionary Finn himself."
They surveyed Finn. Together they would more than outmatch him.
"Careful," cried Finn. "I am the last of the Men. You are my women,
subject to my orders."
They ignored him, muttering to each other, looking at him from the side
of their faces. "Careful!" cried Finn. "I will throw you both from this
peak."
"That is what we plan for you," said Gisa.
They advanced with sinister caution.
"Stop! I am the last Man!"
"We are better off without you."
"One moment! Look at the Organisms!"
The women looked. The Organisms stood in a knot, staring at the sky.
"Look at the sky!"
The women looked; the frosted glass was cracking, breaking, curling
aside.
"The blue! The blue sky of old times!"
A terribly bright light burnt down, seared their eyes. The rays warmed
their naked backs.
"The sun," they said in awed voices. "The sun has come back to Earth."
The shrouded sky was gone; the sun rode proud and bright in a sea of
blue. The ground below churned, cracked, heaved, solidified. They felt
the obsidian harden under their feet; its color shifted to glossy
black. The Earth, the sun, the galaxy, had departed the region of
freedom; the other time with its restrictions and logic was once more
with them.
"This is Old Earth," cried Finn. "We are Men of Old Earth! The land is
once again ours!"
"And what of the Organisms?"
"If this is the Earth of old, then let the Organisms beware!"
The Organisms stood on a low rise of ground beside a runnel of water
that was rapidly becoming a river flowing out onto the plain.
Alpha cried, "Here is my intuition! It is exactly as I knew. The
freedom is gone; the tightness, the constriction are back!"
"How will we defeat it?" asked another Organism.
"Easily," said a third. "Each must fight a part of the battle. I
plan to hurl myself at the sun, and blot it from existence." And he
crouched, threw himself into the air. He fell on his back and broke his
neck.
"The fault," said Alpha, "is in the air; because the air surrounds all
things."
Six Organisms ran off in search of air and, stumbling into the river,
drowned.
"In any event," said Alpha, "I am hungry." He looked around for
suitable food. He seized an insect which stung him. He dropped it. "My
hunger remains."
He spied Finn and the two women descending from the crag. "I will eat
one of the Relicts," he said. "Come, let us all eat."
Three of them started off--as usual in random directions. By chance
Alpha came face to face with Finn. He prepared to eat, but Finn picked
up a rock. The rock remained a rock, hard, sharp, heavy. Finn swung it
down, taking joy in the inertia. Alpha died with a crushed skull. One
of the other Organisms attempted to step across a crevasse twenty feet
wide and disappeared into it; the other sat down, swallowed rocks to
assuage his hunger, and presently went into convulsions.
Finn pointed here and there around the fresh new land. "In that
quarter, the new city, like that of the legends. Over here the farms,
the cattle."
"We have none of these," protested Gisa.
"No," said Finn. "Not now. But once more the sun rises and sets, once
more rock has weight and air has none. Once more water falls as rain
and flows to the sea." He stepped forward over the fallen Organism.
"Let us make plans."
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