Son of the Tree by Jack Vance
I
A BRIGHT penetrating chime struck into two hundred minds, broke two hundred bubbles of trance.
Joe Smith awoke without drowsiness. He was constricted, shrouded like a cocoon. He tensed, he struggled, then the spasm of alarm died. He relaxed, peered intently through the darkness.
The air was musky and humid with warm flesh–flesh of many men, above, below, to right and left, twisting, straining, fighting the elastic mesh.
Joe lay back. His mind resumed a sequence of thought left off three weeks ago. Ballenkarch? No–not yet. Ballenkarch would be further on, further out in the fringes. This would be Kyril, the world of the Druids.
A thin ripping sound. The hammock split along a magnetic seam. Joe eased himself out onto the catwalk. His legs were limp as sausages and tender. There was little tone in his muscles after three weeks under hypnosis.
He walked the catwalk to the ladder, descended to the main deck, stepped out the port. At a desk sat a dark-skinned youth of sixteen, wide-eyed and smart, wearing a jumper of tan and blue pliophane. «Name, please?»
«Joe Smith.»
The youth made a check on a list, nodded down the passage. «First door for sanitation.»
Joe slid back the door, entered a small room thick with steam and antiseptic vapor. «Clothes off,» bawled a brassy-voiced woman in tight trunks. She was wolf-lean–her blue-brown skin streamed with perspiration. She yanked off the loose garment issued him by ship's stores–then, standing back, she touched a button. «Eyes shut.»
Jets of cleansing solutions beat at his body. Various pressures, various temperatures, and his muscles began to waken. A blast of warm air dried him and the woman, with a careless slap, directed him to an adjoining chamber, where he shaved off his stubbly beard, trimmed his hair and finally donned the smock and sandals which appeared in a hopper.
As he left the room a steward halted him, placed a nozzle against his thigh, blew under his skin an assortment of vaccines, anti-toxins, muscle toners and stimulants. So fortified, Joe left the ship, walked out on a stage, down a ramp to the soil of Kyril.
He took a deep breath of fresh planetary air and looked about him. A sky overhung with a pearly overcast. A long gently-heaving landscape checked with tiny farms rolled away to the horizon–and there, rising like a tremendous plume of smoke, stood the Tree. The outlines were hazed by distance and the upper foliage blended with the overcast but it was unmistakable. The Tree of Life.
He waited an hour while his passport and various papers of identification were checked and countersigned at a small glass-sided office under the embarkation stage. Then he was cleared and directed across the field to the terminal. This was a rococo structure of heavy white stone, ornately carved and beaded with intricate intaglios.
At the turnstile through the glass wall stood a Druid, idly watching the disembarkation. He was tall, nervously thin, with a pale fine ivory skin. His face was controlled, aristocratic–his hair jet-black, his eyes black and stern. He wore a glistening cuirass of enameled metal, a sumptuous robe falling in elaborate folds almost to the floor, edged with orphreys embroidered in gold thread. On his head sat an elaborate morion built of cleverly fitted cusps and planes of various metals.
Joe surrendered his passage voucher to the clerk at the turnstile desk. «Name please.» «It's on the voucher.»
The clerk frowned, scribbled. «Business on Kyril?»
«Temporary visitor,» said Joe shortly. He had discussed himself, his antecedents, his business, at length with the clerk in the disembarkation office. This new questioning seemed a needless annoyance. The Druid turned his head, looked him up and down. «Spies, nothing but spies!» He made a hissing sound under his breath, turned away.
Something in Joe's appearance aroused him. He turned back. «You there»–in a tone of petulant irritation.
Joe turned. «Yes?»
«Who's your sponsor? Whom do you serve?» «No one. I'm here on my own business.»
«Do not dissemble. Everyone spies. Why pretend otherwise? You arouse me to anger. Now–whom, then, do you serve?»
«The fact of the matter is that I am not a spy,» said Joe, holding an even courtesy in his voice. Pride was the first luxury a vagrant must forego.
The Druid smiled with exaggerated thin-lipped cynicism. «Why else would you come to Kyril?»
«Personal reasons.»
«You look to be a Thuban. What is your home world then?»
«Earth.»
The Druid cocked his head, looked at him sidewise, started to speak, halted, narrowed his eyes, spoke again. «Do you mock me with the child's myth then–a fool's paradise?»
Joe shrugged. «You asked me a question. I answered you.»
«With an insolent disregard for my dignity and rank.»
A short plump man with a lemon-yellow skin approached with a strutting cocksure gait. He had wide innocent eyes, a pair of well-developed jowls and he wore a loose cloak of heavy blue velvet.
«An Earthman here?» He looked at Joe. «You, sir?»
«That's right.»
«Then Earth is an actuality.» «Certainly it is.»
The yellow-skinned man turned to the Druid. «This is the second Earthman I've seen, Worship. Evidently–»
«Second?» asked Joe. «Who was the other?»
The yellow-skinned man rolled his eyes up. «I forget his name. Parry–Larry–Barry...»
«Harry? Harry Creath?»
«That's it–I'm sure of it. I had a few words with him out at Junction a year or two ago. Very pleasant fellow.»
The Druid swung on his heel, strode away. The plump man watched him go with an impassive face, then turned to Joe. «You seem to be a stranger here.»
«I just arrived.»
«Let me advise you as to these Druids. They are an emotional race, quick to anger, reckless, given to excess. And they are completely provincial, completely assured of Kyril's place as the center of all space, all time. It is wise to speak softly in their presence. May I inquire from curiosity why you are here?»
«I couldn't afford to buy passage farther.»
«And so?»
Joe shrugged. «I'll go to work, raise some money.»
The plump man frowned thoughtfully. «Just what talents or abilities will you use to this end?»
«I'm a good mechanic, machinist, dynamist, electrician. I can survey, work out stresses, do various odd jobs. Call myself an engineer.»
His acquaintance seemed to be considering. At last he said doubtfully, «There is a plentiful supply of cheap labor among the Laity.»
Joe swung a glance around the terminal. «From the look of that truss I'd say they were pretty shaky on the slide-rule.»
The other pursued his lips in dubious agreement. «And of course the Druids are xenophobic to a high degree. A new face represents a spy.»
Joe nodded, grinned. «I've noticed that. The first Druid I see raked me over the coals. Called me a Mang spy, whatever that is.»
The plump man nodded. «It is what I am.»
«A Mang–or a spy?»
«Both. There is small attempt at stealth. It is admitted. Every Mang on Kyril is a spy. Likewise with the Druids on Mangtse. The two worlds are striving for dominance, economic at the moment, and there is a great deal of rancor between us.» He rubbed his chin further. «You want a position then, with remuneration?»
«Correct,» said Joe. «But no spying. I'm not mixing in politics. That's out. Life's too short as it is.»
The Mang made a reassuring gesture. «Of course. Now as I mentioned the Druids are an emotional race. Devious. Perhaps we can play on these qualities. Suppose you come with me to Divinal. I have an appointment with the District Thearch and if I boast to him about the efficient technician I have taken into my service...» He left the rest of the sentence floating, nodded owlishly at Joe. «This way then.»
Joe followed him through the terminal, along an arcade lined with shops to a parking area. Joe glanced down the line of air-cars. Antique design, he thought –slipshod construction.
The Mang motioned him into the largest of these cars. «To Divinal,» he told the waiting driver.
The car arose, slanted up across the gray-green landscape. For all the apparent productivity of the land the country affected Joe unpleasantly. The villages were small, cramped and the streets and alleys glistened with stagnant water. In the fields he could see teams of men-six, ten, twenty–dragging cultivators. A dreary uninspiring landscape.
«Five billion peasants,» said the Mang. «The Laity. Two million Druids. And one Tree.»
Joe made a noncommittal sound. The Mang lapsed into silence. Farms below–interminable blocks, checks, rectangles, each a different tone of green, brown or gray. A myriad conical huts leaking smoke huddled in the corners of the fields. And ahead the Tree bulked taller, blacker, more massive.
Presently ornate white stone palaces appeared, huddled among the buttressed roots, and the car slanted down over the heavy roofs. Joe glimpsed a forest of looping balustrades, intricate panels, mullioned skylights, gargoyles, columns, embellished piers.
Then the car set down on a plat in front of a long high block of a structure, reminding Joe vaguely of the Palace at Versailles. To either side were carefully tended gardens, tessellated walks, fountains, statuary. And behind rose the Tree with its foliage hanging miles overhead.
