"Green Magic - a short story by Jack Vance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vance Jack)Green Magic
Green Magic
by Jack Vance
Howard Fair, looking over the relics of his
great-uncle Gerald McIntyre, found a large ledger entitled:
WORKBOOK & JOURNAL
Open at Peril!
Fair read the journal with interest, although his own work went far
beyond ideas treated only gingerly by Gerald McIntyre.
"The existence of disciplines concentric to the elementary magics must
now be admitted without further controversy," wrote McIntyre. "Guided by a
set of analogies from the white and black magics (to be detailed in due
course), I have delineated the basic extension of purple magic, as well as
its corollary, Dynamic Nomism."
Fair read on, remarking the careful charts, the projections and
expansions, the transpolations and transformations by which Gerald
McIntyre had conceived his systemology. So swiftly had the technical arts
advanced that McIntyre's expositions, highly controversial sixty years
before, now seemed pedantic and overly rigorous.
"Whereas benign creatures: angels, white sprites, merrihews,
sandestins--are typical of the white cycle; whereas demons, magners,
trolls and warlocks are evinced by black magic; so do the purple and green
cycles sponsor their own particulars, but these are neither good nor evil,
bearing, rather, the same relation to the black and white provinces that
these latter do to our own basic realm."
Fair reread the passage. The "green cycle"? Had Gerald McIntyre
wandered into regions overlooked by modern workers?
He reviewed the journal in the light of this suspicion, and discovered
additional hints and references. Especially provocative was a bit of
scribbled marginalia: "More concerning my latest researches I may not
state, having been promised an infinite reward for this forbearance."
The passage was dated a day before Gerald McIntyre's death, which had
occurred on March 21, 1898, the first day of spring. McIntyre had enjoyed
very little of his "infinite reward," whatever had been its nature... Fair
returned to a consideration of the journal, which, in a sentence or two,
had opened a chink on an entire new panorama. McIntyre provided no further
illumination, and Fair set out to make a fuller investigation.
His first steps were routine. He performed two divinations, searched
the standard indexes, concordances, handbooks and formularies, evoked a
demon whom he had previously found knowledgeable: all without success. He
found no direct reference to cycles beyond the purple; the demon refused
even to speculate.
Fair was by no means discouraged; if anything, the intensity of his
interest increased. He reread the journal, with particular care to the
justification for purple magic, reasoning that McIntyre, groping for a
lore beyond the purple, might well have used the methods which had yielded
results before. Applying stains and ultraviolet light to the pages, Fair
made legible a number of notes McIntyre had jotted down, then erased.
Fair was immensely stimulated. The notes assured him that he was on the
right track, and further indicated a number of blind alleys which Fair
profited by avoiding. He applied himself so successfully that before the
week was out he had evoked a sprite of the green cycle.
It appeared in the semblance of a man with green glass eyes and a
thatch of young eucalyptus leaves in the place of hair. It greeted Fair
with cool courtesy, would not seat itself, and ignored Fair's proffer of
coffee.
After wandering around the apartment inspecting Fair's books and curios
with an air of negligent amusement, it agreed to respond to Fair's
questions.
Fair asked permission to use his tape-recorder, which the sprite
allowed, and Fair set the apparatus in motion. (When subsequently he
replayed the interview, no sound could be heard.)
"What realms of magic lie beyond the green?" asked Fair.
"I can't give you an exact answer," replied the sprite, "because I
don't know. There are at least two more, corresponding to the colors we
call rawn and pallow, and very likely others."
Fair arranged the microphone where it would more directly intercept the
voice of the sprite.
"What," he asked, "is the green cycle like? What is its physical
semblance?"
The sprite paused to consider. Glistening mother-of-pearl films
wandered across its face, reflecting the tinge of its thoughts. "I'm
rather severely restricted by your use of the word 'physical'. And
'semblance' involves a subjective interpretation, which changes with the
rise and fall of the seconds."
"By all means," Fair said hastily, "describe it in your own words."
"Well, we have four different regions, two of which floresce from the
basic skeleton of the universe, and so subsede the others. The first of
these is compressed and isthiated, but is notable for its wide pools of
mottle which we use sometimes for deranging stations. We've transplanted
club-mosses from Earth's Devonian and a few ice-fires from Perdition. They
climb among the rods which we call devil-hair--" he went on for several
minutes but the meaning almost entirely escaped Fair. And it seemed as if
the question by which he had hoped to break the ice might run away with
the entire interview. He introduced another idea.
" 'Can we freely manipulate the physical extensions of Earth?' " The
sprite seemed amused. "You refer, so I assume, to the various aspects of
space, time, mass, energy, life, thought and recollection."
"Exactly."
The sprite raised its green corn-silk eyebrows. "I might as sensibly
ask: can you break an egg by striking it with a club? The response is on a
similar level of seriousness."
Fair had expected a certain amount of condescension and impatience, and
was not abashed. "How may I learn these techniques?"
"In the usual manner: through diligent study."
"Ah, indeed--but where could I study? Who would teach me?"
The sprite made an easy gesture, and whorls of green smoke trailed from
his fingers to spin through the air. "I could arrange the matter, but
since I bear you no particular animosity, I'll do nothing of the sort. And
now, I must be gone."
"Where do you go?" Fair asked in wonder and longing. "May I go with
you?"
The sprite, swirling a drape of bright green dust over its shoulders,
shook his head. "You would be less than comfortable."
"Other men have explored the worlds of magic!"
"True: your uncle Gerald McIntyre, for instance."
"My uncle Gerald learned green magic?"
"To the limit of his capabilities. He found no pleasure in his
learning. You would do well to profit by his experience and modify your
ambitions." The sprite turned and walked away.
Fair watched it depart. The sprite receded in space and dimension, but
never reached the wall of Fair's room. At a distance which might have been
fifty yards, the sprite glanced back, as if to make sure that Fair was not
following, then stepped off at another angle and disappeared.
Fair's first impulse was to take heed and limit his explorations. He
was an adept in white magic, and had mastered the black art--occasionally
he evoked a demon to liven a social gathering which otherwise threatened
to become dull--but he had by no means illuminated every mystery of purple
magic, which is the realm of Incarnate Symbols.
Howard Fair might have turned away from the green cycle except for
three factors.
First was his physical appearance. He stood rather under medium height,
with a swarthy face, sparse black hair, a gnarled nose, a small heavy
mouth. He felt no great sensitivity about his appearance, but realized
that it might be improved. In his mind's eye he pictured the personified
ideal of himself: he was taller by six inches, his nose thin and keen, his
skin cleared of its muddy undertone. A striking figure, but still
recognizable as Howard Fair. He wanted the love of women, but he wanted it
without the interposition of his craft. Many times he had brought
beautiful girls to his bed, lips wet and eyes shining; but purple magic
had seduced them rather than Howard Fair, and he took limited satisfaction
in such conquests.
Here was the first factor which drew Howard Fair back to the green
lore; the second was his yearning for extended, perhaps eternal, life; the
third was simple thirst for knowledge.
The fact of Gerald McIntyre's death, or dissolution, or
Disappearance--whatever had happened to him--was naturally a matter of
concern. If he had won to a goal so precious, why had he died so quickly?
Was the "infinite reward" so miraculous, so exquisite, that the mind
failed under its possession? (If such was the case, the reward was hardly
a reward.)
Fair could not restrain himself, and by degrees returned to a study of
green magic. Rather than again invoke the sprite whose air of indulgent
contempt he had found exasperating, he decided to seek knowledge by an
indirect method, employing the most advanced concepts of technical and
cabalistic science.
He obtained a portable television transmitter which he loaded into his
panel truck along with a receiver. On a Monday night in early May, he
drove to an abandoned graveyard far out in the wooded hills, and there, by
the light of a waning moon, he buried the television camera in graveyard
clay until only the lens protruded from the soil.
With a sharp alder twig he scratched on the ground a monstrous outline.
The television lens served for one eye, a beer bottle pushed neck-first
into the soil the other.
During the middle hours, while the moon died behind wisps of pale
cloud, he carved a word on the dark forehead; then recited the activating
incantation.
The ground rumbled and moaned, the golem heaved up to blot out the
stars.
The glass eyes stared down at Fair, secure in his pentagon.
"Speak!" called out Fair. " Enteresthes, Akmai Adonai
Bidemgir! Elohim, pa rahulli! Enteresthes,
HVOI! Speak!"
"Return me to earth, return my clay to the quiet clay from whence you
roused me."
"First you must serve."
The golem stumbled forward to crush Fair, but was halted by the pang of
protective magic.
"Serve you I will, if serve you I must."
Fair stepped boldly forth from the pentagon, strung forty yards of
green ribbon down the road in the shape of a narrow V. "Go forth into the
realm of green magic," he told the monster. "The ribbons reach forty
miles; walk to the end, turn about, return, and then fall back, return to
the earth from which you rose."
The golem turned, shuffled into the V of green ribbon, shaking off
clods of mold, jarring the ground with its ponderous tread.
Fair watched the squat shape dwindle, recede, yet never reach the angle
of the magic V. He returned to his panel truck, tuned the television
receiver to the golem's eye, and surveyed the fantastic vistas of the
green realm.
Two elementals of the green realm met on a
spun-silver landscape. They were Jaadian and Misthemar, and they fell to
discussing the earthen monster which had stalked forty miles through the
region known as Cil; which then, turning in its tracks, had retraced its
steps, gradually increasing its pace until at the end it moved in a
shambling rush, leaving a trail of clods on the fragile moth-wing mosaics.
"Events, events, events," Misthemar fretted, "they crowd the chute of
time till the bounds bulge. Or then again, the course is as lean and spare
as a stretched tendon... But in regard to this incursion..." He paused for
a period of reflection, and silver clouds moved over his head and under
his feet.
Jaadian remarked, "You are aware that I conversed with Howard Fair; he
is so obsessed to escape the squalor of his world that he acts with
recklessness."
"The man Gerald McIntyre was his uncle," mused Misthemar. "McIntyre
besought, we yielded; as perhaps now we must yield to Howard Fair."
Jaadian uneasily opened his hand, shook off a spray of emerald fire.
"Events press, both in and out. I find myself unable to act in this
regard."
"I likewise do not care to be the agent of tragedy."
A Meaning came fluttering up from below: "A disturbance among the
spiral towers! A caterpillar of glass and metal has come clanking; it has
thrust electric eyes into the Portinone and broke open the Egg of
Innocence. Howard Fair is the fault."
Jaadian and Misthemar consulted each other with wry disinclination.
"Very well, both of us will go; such a duty needs two souls in support."
They impinged upon Earth and found Howard Fair in a wall booth at a
cocktail bar. He looked up at the two strangers and one of them asked,
"May we join you?"
Fair examined the two men. Both wore conservative suits and carried
cashmere topcoats over their arms. Fair noticed that the left thumb-nail
of each man glistened green.
Fair rose politely to his feet. "Will you sit down?"
The green sprites hung up their overcoats and slid into the booth. Fair
looked from one to the other. He addressed Jaadian. "Aren't you he whom I
interviewed several weeks ago?"
Jaadian assented. "You have not accepted my advice."
Fair shrugged. "You asked me to remain ignorant, to accept my stupidity
and ineptitude."
"And why should you not?" asked Jaadian gently. "You are a primitive in
a primitive realm; nevertheless not one man in a thousand can match your
achievements."
Fair agreed, smiling faintly. "But knowledge creates a craving for
further knowledge. Where is the harm in knowledge?"
Misthemar, the more mercurial of the sprites, spoke angrily. "Where is
the harm? Consider your earthen monster! It befouled forty miles of
delicacy, the record of ten million years. Consider your caterpillar! It
trampled our pillars of carved milk, our dreaming towers, damaged the
nerve-skeins which extrude and waft us our Meanings."
"I'm dreadfully sorry," said Fair. "I meant no destruction."
The sprites nodded. "But your apology conveys no guarantee of
restraint."
Fair toyed with his glass. A waiter approached the table, addressed the
two sprites. "Something for you two gentlemen?"
Jaadian ordered a glass of charged water, as did Misthemar. Fair called
for another highball.
"What do you hope to gain from this activity?" inquired Misthemar.
"Destructive forays teach you nothing!"
Fair agreed. "I have learned little. But I have seen miraculous sights.
I am more than ever anxious to learn."
The green sprites glumly watched the bubbles rising in their glasses.
Jaadian at last drew a deep sigh. "Perhaps we can obviate toil on your
part and disturbance on ours. Explicitly, what gains or advantages do you
hope to derive from green magic?"
Fair, smiling, leaned back into the red imitation-leather cushions. "I
want many things. Extended life--mobility in time--comprehensive
memory--augmented perception, with vision across the whole spectrum. I
want physical charm and magnetism, the semblance of youth, muscular
endurance... Then there are qualities more or less speculative, such as--"
Jaadian interrupted. "These qualities and characteristics we will
confer upon you. In return you will undertake never again to disturb the
green realm. You will evade centuries of toil; we will be spared the
nuisance of your presence, and the inevitable tragedy."
"Tragedy?" inquired Fair in wonder. "Why tragedy?"
Jaadian spoke in a deep reverberating voice. "You are a man of Earth.
Your goals are not our goals. Green magic makes you aware of our goals."
Fair thoughtfully sipped his highball. "I can't see that this is a
disadvantage. I am willing to submit to the discipline of instruction.
Surely a knowledge of green magic will not change me into a different
entity?"
"No. And this is the basic tragedy!"
Misthemar spoke in exasperation. "We are forbidden to harm lesser
creatures, and so you are fortunate; for to dissolve you into air would
end all the annoyance."
Fair laughed. "I apologize again for making such a nuisance of myself.
But surely you understand how important this is to me?"
Jaadian asked hopefully, "Then you agree to our offer?"
Fair shook his head. "How could I live, forever young, capable of
extended learning, but limited to knowledge which I already see bounds to?
I would be bored, restless, miserable."
"That well may be," said Jaadian. "But not so bored, restless and
miserable as if you were learned in green magic."
Fair drew himself erect. "I must learn green magic. It is an
opportunity which only a person both torpid and stupid could refuse."
Jaadian sighed. "In your place I would make the same response." The
sprites rose to their feet. "Come then, we will teach you."
"Don't say we didn't warn you," said Misthemar.
Time passed. Sunset waned and twilight darkened. A
man walked up the stairs, entered Howard Fair's apartment. He was tall,
unobtrusively muscular. His face was sensitive, keen, humorous; his left
thumb-nail glistened green.
Time is a function of vital processes. The people of Earth had
perceived the motion of their clocks. On this understanding, two hours had
elapsed since Howard Fair had followed the green sprites from the bar.
Howard Fair had perceived other criteria. For him the interval had been
seven hundred years, during which he had lived in the green realm,
learning to the utmost capacity of his brain.
He had occupied two years training his senses to the new conditions.
Gradually he learned to walk in the six basic three-dimensional
directions, and accustomed himself to the fourth-dimensional short-cuts.
By easy stages the blinds over his eyes were removed, so that the dazzling
over-human intricacy of the landscape never completely confounded him.
Another year was spent training him to the use of a code language--an
intermediate step between the vocalizations of Earth and the meaning
patterns of the green realm, where a hundred symbol-flakes (each a
flitting spot of delicate iridescence) might be displayed in a single
swirl of import. During this time Howard Fair's eyes and brain were
altered, to allow him the use of the many new colors, without which the
meaning-flakes could not be recognized.
These were preliminary steps. For forty years he studied the flakes, of
which there were almost a million. Another forty years was given to
elementary permutations and shifts, and another forty to parallels,
attenuation, diminishments and extensions; and during this time he was
introduced to flake patterns, and certain of the more obvious displays.
Now he was able to study without recourse to the code language, and his
progress became more marked. Another twenty years found him able to
recognize more complicated Meanings, and he was introduced to a more
varied program. He floated over the field of moth-wing mosaics, which
still showed the footprints of the golem. He sweated in embarrassment, the
extent of his wicked willfulness now clear to him.
So passed the years. Howard Fair learned as much green magic as his
brain could encompass.
He explored much of the green realm, finding so much beauty that he
feared his brain might burst. He tasted, he heard, he felt, he sensed, and
each one of his senses was a hundred times more discriminating than
before. Nourishment came in a thousand different forms: from pink eggs
which burst into a hot sweet gas, suffusing his entire body; from passing
through a rain of stinging metal crystals; from simple contemplation of
the proper symbol.
Homesickness for Earth waxed and waned. Sometimes it was insupportable
and he was ready to forsake all he had learned and abandon his hopes for
the future. At other times the magnificence of the green realm permeated
him, and the thought of departure seemed like the threat of death itself.
By stages so gradual he never realized them he learned green magic.
But the new faculty gave him no pride: between his crude ineptitudes
and the poetic elegance of the sprites remained a tremendous gap, and he
felt his innate inferiority much more keenly than he ever had in his old
state. Worse, his most earnest efforts failed to improve his technique,
and sometimes, observing the singing joy of an improvised manifestation by
one of the sprites, and contrasting it to his own labored constructions,
he felt futility and shame.
The longer he remained in the green realm, the stronger grew the sense
of his own maladroitness, and he began to long for the easy environment of
Earth, where each of his acts would not shout aloud of vulgarity and
crassness. At times he would watch the sprites (in the gossamer forms
natural to them) at play among the pearl-petals, or twining like quick
flashes of music through the forest of pink spirals. The contrast between
their verve and his brutish fumbling could not be borne and he would turn
away. His self-respect dwindled with each passing hour, and instead of
pride in his learning, he felt a sullen ache for what he was not and could
never become. The first few hundred years he worked with the enthusiasm of
ignorance, for the next few he was buoyed by hope. During the last part of
his time, only dogged obstinacy kept him plodding through what now he knew
for infantile exercises.
In one terrible bittersweet spasm, he gave up. He found Jaadian weaving
tinkling fragments of various magics into a warp of shining long splines.
With grave courtesy, Jaadian gave Fair his attention, and Fair laboriously
set forth his meaning.
Jaadian returned a message. "I recognize your discomfort, and extend my
sympathy. It is best that you now return to your native home."
He put aside his weaving and conveyed Fair down through the requisite
vortices. Along the way they passed Misthemar. No flicker of meaning was
expressed or exchanged, but Howard Fair thought to feel a tinge of faintly
malicious amusement.
Howard Fair sat in his apartment. His perceptions,
augmented and sharpened by his sojourn in the green realm, took note of
the surroundings. Only two hours before, by the clocks of Earth, he had
found them both restful and stimulating; now they were neither. His books:
superstition, spuriousness, earnest nonsense. His private journals and
workbooks: a pathetic scrawl of infantilisms. Gravity tugged at his feet,
held him rigid. The shoddy construction of the house, which heretofore he
never had noticed, oppressed him. Everywhere he looked he saw slipshod
disorder, primitive filth. The thought of the food he must now eat
revolted him.
He went out on his little balcony which overlooked the street. The air
was impregnated with organic smells. Across the street he could look into
windows where his fellow humans lived in stupid squalor.
Fair smiled sadly. He had tried to prepare himself for these reactions,
but now was surprised by their intensity. He returned into his apartment.
He must accustom himself to the old environment. And after all there were
compensations. The most desirable commodities of the world were now his to
enjoy.
Howard Fair plunged into the enjoyment of these
pleasures. He forced himself to drink quantities of expensive wines,
brandies, liqueurs, even though they offended his palate. Hunger overcame
his nausea, he forced himself to the consumption of what he thought of as
fried animal tissue, the hypertrophied sexual organs of plants. He
experimented with erotic sensations, but found that beautiful women no
longer seemed different from the plain ones, and that he could barely
steel himself to the untidy contacts. He bought libraries of erudite
books, glanced through them with contempt. He tried to amuse himself with
his old magics; they seemed ridiculous.
He forced himself to enjoy these pleasures for a month; then he fled
the city and established a crystal bubble on a crag in the Andes. To
nourish himself, he contrived a thick liquid, which, while by no means as
exhilarating as the substances of the green realm, was innocent of organic
contamination.
After a certain degree of improvisation and make-shift, he arranged his
life to its minimum discomfort. The view was one of austere grandeur; not
even the condors came to disturb him. He sat back to ponder the chain of
events which had started with his discovery of Gerald McIntyre's workbook.
He frowned. Gerald McIntyre? He jumped to his feet, looked far over the
crags.
He found Gerald McIntyre at a wayside service station in the heart of
the South Dakota prairie. McIntyre was sitting in an old wooden chair,
tilted back against the peeling yellow paint of the service station, a
straw hat shading his eyes from the sun.
He was a magnetically handsome man, blond of hair, brown of skin, with
blue eyes whose gaze stung like the touch of icicles. His left thumb-nail
glistened green.
Fair greeted him casually; the two men surveyed each other with wry
curiosity.
"I see you have adapted yourself." said Howard Fair.
McIntyre shrugged. "As well as possible. I try to maintain a balance
between solitude and the pressure of humanity." He looked into the bright
blue sky where crows flapped and called. "For many years I lived in
isolation. I began to detest the sound of my own breathing."
Along the highway came a glittering automobile, rococo as a hybrid
goldfish. With the perceptions now available to them, Fair and McIntyre
could see the driver to be red-faced and truculent, his companion a
peevish woman in expensive clothes.
"There are other advantages to residence here," said McIntyre. "For
instance, I am able to enrich the lives of passersby with trifles of novel
adventure." He made a small gesture; two dozen crows swooped down and flew
beside the automobile. They settled on the fenders, strutted back and
forth along the hood, fouled the windshield.
The automobile squealed to a halt, the driver jumped out, put the birds
to flight. He threw an ineffectual rock, waved his arms in outrage,
returned to his car, proceeded.
"A paltry affair," said McIntyre with a sigh. "The truth of the matter
is that I am bored." He pursed his mouth and blew forth three bright puffs
of smoke: first red, then yellow, then blazing blue. "I have arrived at
the estate of foolishness, as you can see."
Fair surveyed his great-uncle with a trace of uneasiness. McIntyre
laughed. "No more pranks. I predict, however, that you will presently
share my malaise."
"I share it already," said Fair. "Sometimes I wish I could abandon all
my magic and return to my former innocence."
"I have toyed with the idea," McIntyre replied thoughtfully. "In fact I
have made all the necessary arrangements. It is really a simple matter."
He led Fair to a small room behind the station. Although the door was
open, the interior showed a thick darkness.
McIntyre, standing well back, surveyed the darkness with a quizzical
curl to his lip. "You need only enter. All your magic, all your
recollections of the green realm will depart. You will be no wiser than
the next man you meet. And with your knowledge will go your boredom, your
melancholy, your dissatisfaction."
Fair contemplated the dark doorway. A single step would resolve his
discomfort.
He glanced at McIntyre; the two surveyed each other with sardonic
amusement. They returned to the front of the building.
"Sometimes I stand by the door and look into the darkness," said
McIntyre. "Then I am reminded how dearly I cherish my boredom, and what a
precious commodity is so much misery."
Fair made himself ready for departure. "I thank you for this new
wisdom, which a hundred more years in the green realm would not have
taught me. And now, for a time, at least, I go back to my crag in the
Andes."
McIntyre tilted his chair against the wall of the service station. "And
I, for a time, at least, will wait for the next passerby."
"Good-bye, then, Uncle Gerald."
"Good-bye, Howard."
© Jack Vance
1963, 2000
"Green Magic" was first published in the Magazine of Fantasy and
Science Fiction, June 1963. It has also appeared in Jack Vance's
collections Green Magic (Underwood-Miller, 1979) and The Narrow
Land (DAW, 1982).
Green Magic
Green Magic
by Jack Vance
Howard Fair, looking over the relics of his
great-uncle Gerald McIntyre, found a large ledger entitled:
WORKBOOK & JOURNAL
Open at Peril!
Fair read the journal with interest, although his own work went far
beyond ideas treated only gingerly by Gerald McIntyre.
"The existence of disciplines concentric to the elementary magics must
now be admitted without further controversy," wrote McIntyre. "Guided by a
set of analogies from the white and black magics (to be detailed in due
course), I have delineated the basic extension of purple magic, as well as
its corollary, Dynamic Nomism."
Fair read on, remarking the careful charts, the projections and
expansions, the transpolations and transformations by which Gerald
McIntyre had conceived his systemology. So swiftly had the technical arts
advanced that McIntyre's expositions, highly controversial sixty years
before, now seemed pedantic and overly rigorous.
"Whereas benign creatures: angels, white sprites, merrihews,
sandestins--are typical of the white cycle; whereas demons, magners,
trolls and warlocks are evinced by black magic; so do the purple and green
cycles sponsor their own particulars, but these are neither good nor evil,
bearing, rather, the same relation to the black and white provinces that
these latter do to our own basic realm."
Fair reread the passage. The "green cycle"? Had Gerald McIntyre
wandered into regions overlooked by modern workers?
He reviewed the journal in the light of this suspicion, and discovered
additional hints and references. Especially provocative was a bit of
scribbled marginalia: "More concerning my latest researches I may not
state, having been promised an infinite reward for this forbearance."
The passage was dated a day before Gerald McIntyre's death, which had
occurred on March 21, 1898, the first day of spring. McIntyre had enjoyed
very little of his "infinite reward," whatever had been its nature... Fair
returned to a consideration of the journal, which, in a sentence or two,
had opened a chink on an entire new panorama. McIntyre provided no further
illumination, and Fair set out to make a fuller investigation.
His first steps were routine. He performed two divinations, searched
the standard indexes, concordances, handbooks and formularies, evoked a
demon whom he had previously found knowledgeable: all without success. He
found no direct reference to cycles beyond the purple; the demon refused
even to speculate.
Fair was by no means discouraged; if anything, the intensity of his
interest increased. He reread the journal, with particular care to the
justification for purple magic, reasoning that McIntyre, groping for a
lore beyond the purple, might well have used the methods which had yielded
results before. Applying stains and ultraviolet light to the pages, Fair
made legible a number of notes McIntyre had jotted down, then erased.
Fair was immensely stimulated. The notes assured him that he was on the
right track, and further indicated a number of blind alleys which Fair
profited by avoiding. He applied himself so successfully that before the
week was out he had evoked a sprite of the green cycle.
It appeared in the semblance of a man with green glass eyes and a
thatch of young eucalyptus leaves in the place of hair. It greeted Fair
with cool courtesy, would not seat itself, and ignored Fair's proffer of
coffee.
After wandering around the apartment inspecting Fair's books and curios
with an air of negligent amusement, it agreed to respond to Fair's
questions.
Fair asked permission to use his tape-recorder, which the sprite
allowed, and Fair set the apparatus in motion. (When subsequently he
replayed the interview, no sound could be heard.)
"What realms of magic lie beyond the green?" asked Fair.
"I can't give you an exact answer," replied the sprite, "because I
don't know. There are at least two more, corresponding to the colors we
call rawn and pallow, and very likely others."
Fair arranged the microphone where it would more directly intercept the
voice of the sprite.
"What," he asked, "is the green cycle like? What is its physical
semblance?"
The sprite paused to consider. Glistening mother-of-pearl films
wandered across its face, reflecting the tinge of its thoughts. "I'm
rather severely restricted by your use of the word 'physical'. And
'semblance' involves a subjective interpretation, which changes with the
rise and fall of the seconds."
"By all means," Fair said hastily, "describe it in your own words."
"Well, we have four different regions, two of which floresce from the
basic skeleton of the universe, and so subsede the others. The first of
these is compressed and isthiated, but is notable for its wide pools of
mottle which we use sometimes for deranging stations. We've transplanted
club-mosses from Earth's Devonian and a few ice-fires from Perdition. They
climb among the rods which we call devil-hair--" he went on for several
minutes but the meaning almost entirely escaped Fair. And it seemed as if
the question by which he had hoped to break the ice might run away with
the entire interview. He introduced another idea.
" 'Can we freely manipulate the physical extensions of Earth?' " The
sprite seemed amused. "You refer, so I assume, to the various aspects of
space, time, mass, energy, life, thought and recollection."
"Exactly."
The sprite raised its green corn-silk eyebrows. "I might as sensibly
ask: can you break an egg by striking it with a club? The response is on a
similar level of seriousness."
Fair had expected a certain amount of condescension and impatience, and
was not abashed. "How may I learn these techniques?"
"In the usual manner: through diligent study."
"Ah, indeed--but where could I study? Who would teach me?"
The sprite made an easy gesture, and whorls of green smoke trailed from
his fingers to spin through the air. "I could arrange the matter, but
since I bear you no particular animosity, I'll do nothing of the sort. And
now, I must be gone."
"Where do you go?" Fair asked in wonder and longing. "May I go with
you?"
The sprite, swirling a drape of bright green dust over its shoulders,
shook his head. "You would be less than comfortable."
"Other men have explored the worlds of magic!"
"True: your uncle Gerald McIntyre, for instance."
"My uncle Gerald learned green magic?"
"To the limit of his capabilities. He found no pleasure in his
learning. You would do well to profit by his experience and modify your
ambitions." The sprite turned and walked away.
Fair watched it depart. The sprite receded in space and dimension, but
never reached the wall of Fair's room. At a distance which might have been
fifty yards, the sprite glanced back, as if to make sure that Fair was not
following, then stepped off at another angle and disappeared.
Fair's first impulse was to take heed and limit his explorations. He
was an adept in white magic, and had mastered the black art--occasionally
he evoked a demon to liven a social gathering which otherwise threatened
to become dull--but he had by no means illuminated every mystery of purple
magic, which is the realm of Incarnate Symbols.
Howard Fair might have turned away from the green cycle except for
three factors.
First was his physical appearance. He stood rather under medium height,
with a swarthy face, sparse black hair, a gnarled nose, a small heavy
mouth. He felt no great sensitivity about his appearance, but realized
that it might be improved. In his mind's eye he pictured the personified
ideal of himself: he was taller by six inches, his nose thin and keen, his
skin cleared of its muddy undertone. A striking figure, but still
recognizable as Howard Fair. He wanted the love of women, but he wanted it
without the interposition of his craft. Many times he had brought
beautiful girls to his bed, lips wet and eyes shining; but purple magic
had seduced them rather than Howard Fair, and he took limited satisfaction
in such conquests.
Here was the first factor which drew Howard Fair back to the green
lore; the second was his yearning for extended, perhaps eternal, life; the
third was simple thirst for knowledge.
The fact of Gerald McIntyre's death, or dissolution, or
Disappearance--whatever had happened to him--was naturally a matter of
concern. If he had won to a goal so precious, why had he died so quickly?
Was the "infinite reward" so miraculous, so exquisite, that the mind
failed under its possession? (If such was the case, the reward was hardly
a reward.)
Fair could not restrain himself, and by degrees returned to a study of
green magic. Rather than again invoke the sprite whose air of indulgent
contempt he had found exasperating, he decided to seek knowledge by an
indirect method, employing the most advanced concepts of technical and
cabalistic science.
He obtained a portable television transmitter which he loaded into his
panel truck along with a receiver. On a Monday night in early May, he
drove to an abandoned graveyard far out in the wooded hills, and there, by
the light of a waning moon, he buried the television camera in graveyard
clay until only the lens protruded from the soil.
With a sharp alder twig he scratched on the ground a monstrous outline.
The television lens served for one eye, a beer bottle pushed neck-first
into the soil the other.
During the middle hours, while the moon died behind wisps of pale
cloud, he carved a word on the dark forehead; then recited the activating
incantation.
The ground rumbled and moaned, the golem heaved up to blot out the
stars.
The glass eyes stared down at Fair, secure in his pentagon.
"Speak!" called out Fair. "Enteresthes, Akmai Adonai
Bidemgir! Elohim, pa rahulli! Enteresthes,
HVOI! Speak!"
"Return me to earth, return my clay to the quiet clay from whence you
roused me."
"First you must serve."
The golem stumbled forward to crush Fair, but was halted by the pang of
protective magic.
"Serve you I will, if serve you I must."
Fair stepped boldly forth from the pentagon, strung forty yards of
green ribbon down the road in the shape of a narrow V. "Go forth into the
realm of green magic," he told the monster. "The ribbons reach forty
miles; walk to the end, turn about, return, and then fall back, return to
the earth from which you rose."
The golem turned, shuffled into the V of green ribbon, shaking off
clods of mold, jarring the ground with its ponderous tread.
Fair watched the squat shape dwindle, recede, yet never reach the angle
of the magic V. He returned to his panel truck, tuned the television
receiver to the golem's eye, and surveyed the fantastic vistas of the
green realm.
Two elementals of the green realm met on a
spun-silver landscape. They were Jaadian and Misthemar, and they fell to
discussing the earthen monster which had stalked forty miles through the
region known as Cil; which then, turning in its tracks, had retraced its
steps, gradually increasing its pace until at the end it moved in a
shambling rush, leaving a trail of clods on the fragile moth-wing mosaics.
"Events, events, events," Misthemar fretted, "they crowd the chute of
time till the bounds bulge. Or then again, the course is as lean and spare
as a stretched tendon... But in regard to this incursion..." He paused for
a period of reflection, and silver clouds moved over his head and under
his feet.
Jaadian remarked, "You are aware that I conversed with Howard Fair; he
is so obsessed to escape the squalor of his world that he acts with
recklessness."
"The man Gerald McIntyre was his uncle," mused Misthemar. "McIntyre
besought, we yielded; as perhaps now we must yield to Howard Fair."
Jaadian uneasily opened his hand, shook off a spray of emerald fire.
"Events press, both in and out. I find myself unable to act in this
regard."
"I likewise do not care to be the agent of tragedy."
A Meaning came fluttering up from below: "A disturbance among the
spiral towers! A caterpillar of glass and metal has come clanking; it has
thrust electric eyes into the Portinone and broke open the Egg of
Innocence. Howard Fair is the fault."
Jaadian and Misthemar consulted each other with wry disinclination.
"Very well, both of us will go; such a duty needs two souls in support."
They impinged upon Earth and found Howard Fair in a wall booth at a
cocktail bar. He looked up at the two strangers and one of them asked,
"May we join you?"
Fair examined the two men. Both wore conservative suits and carried
cashmere topcoats over their arms. Fair noticed that the left thumb-nail
of each man glistened green.
Fair rose politely to his feet. "Will you sit down?"
The green sprites hung up their overcoats and slid into the booth. Fair
looked from one to the other. He addressed Jaadian. "Aren't you he whom I
interviewed several weeks ago?"
Jaadian assented. "You have not accepted my advice."
Fair shrugged. "You asked me to remain ignorant, to accept my stupidity
and ineptitude."
"And why should you not?" asked Jaadian gently. "You are a primitive in
a primitive realm; nevertheless not one man in a thousand can match your
achievements."
Fair agreed, smiling faintly. "But knowledge creates a craving for
further knowledge. Where is the harm in knowledge?"
Misthemar, the more mercurial of the sprites, spoke angrily. "Where is
the harm? Consider your earthen monster! It befouled forty miles of
delicacy, the record of ten million years. Consider your caterpillar! It
trampled our pillars of carved milk, our dreaming towers, damaged the
nerve-skeins which extrude and waft us our Meanings."
"I'm dreadfully sorry," said Fair. "I meant no destruction."
The sprites nodded. "But your apology conveys no guarantee of
restraint."
Fair toyed with his glass. A waiter approached the table, addressed the
two sprites. "Something for you two gentlemen?"
Jaadian ordered a glass of charged water, as did Misthemar. Fair called
for another highball.
"What do you hope to gain from this activity?" inquired Misthemar.
"Destructive forays teach you nothing!"
Fair agreed. "I have learned little. But I have seen miraculous sights.
I am more than ever anxious to learn."
The green sprites glumly watched the bubbles rising in their glasses.
Jaadian at last drew a deep sigh. "Perhaps we can obviate toil on your
part and disturbance on ours. Explicitly, what gains or advantages do you
hope to derive from green magic?"
Fair, smiling, leaned back into the red imitation-leather cushions. "I
want many things. Extended life--mobility in time--comprehensive
memory--augmented perception, with vision across the whole spectrum. I
want physical charm and magnetism, the semblance of youth, muscular
endurance... Then there are qualities more or less speculative, such as--"
Jaadian interrupted. "These qualities and characteristics we will
confer upon you. In return you will undertake never again to disturb the
green realm. You will evade centuries of toil; we will be spared the
nuisance of your presence, and the inevitable tragedy."
"Tragedy?" inquired Fair in wonder. "Why tragedy?"
Jaadian spoke in a deep reverberating voice. "You are a man of Earth.
Your goals are not our goals. Green magic makes you aware of our goals."
Fair thoughtfully sipped his highball. "I can't see that this is a
disadvantage. I am willing to submit to the discipline of instruction.
Surely a knowledge of green magic will not change me into a different
entity?"
"No. And this is the basic tragedy!"
Misthemar spoke in exasperation. "We are forbidden to harm lesser
creatures, and so you are fortunate; for to dissolve you into air would
end all the annoyance."
Fair laughed. "I apologize again for making such a nuisance of myself.
But surely you understand how important this is to me?"
Jaadian asked hopefully, "Then you agree to our offer?"
Fair shook his head. "How could I live, forever young, capable of
extended learning, but limited to knowledge which I already see bounds to?
I would be bored, restless, miserable."
"That well may be," said Jaadian. "But not so bored, restless and
miserable as if you were learned in green magic."
Fair drew himself erect. "I must learn green magic. It is an
opportunity which only a person both torpid and stupid could refuse."
Jaadian sighed. "In your place I would make the same response." The
sprites rose to their feet. "Come then, we will teach you."
"Don't say we didn't warn you," said Misthemar.
Time passed. Sunset waned and twilight darkened. A
man walked up the stairs, entered Howard Fair's apartment. He was tall,
unobtrusively muscular. His face was sensitive, keen, humorous; his left
thumb-nail glistened green.
Time is a function of vital processes. The people of Earth had
perceived the motion of their clocks. On this understanding, two hours had
elapsed since Howard Fair had followed the green sprites from the bar.
Howard Fair had perceived other criteria. For him the interval had been
seven hundred years, during which he had lived in the green realm,
learning to the utmost capacity of his brain.
He had occupied two years training his senses to the new conditions.
Gradually he learned to walk in the six basic three-dimensional
directions, and accustomed himself to the fourth-dimensional short-cuts.
By easy stages the blinds over his eyes were removed, so that the dazzling
over-human intricacy of the landscape never completely confounded him.
Another year was spent training him to the use of a code language--an
intermediate step between the vocalizations of Earth and the meaning
patterns of the green realm, where a hundred symbol-flakes (each a
flitting spot of delicate iridescence) might be displayed in a single
swirl of import. During this time Howard Fair's eyes and brain were
altered, to allow him the use of the many new colors, without which the
meaning-flakes could not be recognized.
These were preliminary steps. For forty years he studied the flakes, of
which there were almost a million. Another forty years was given to
elementary permutations and shifts, and another forty to parallels,
attenuation, diminishments and extensions; and during this time he was
introduced to flake patterns, and certain of the more obvious displays.
Now he was able to study without recourse to the code language, and his
progress became more marked. Another twenty years found him able to
recognize more complicated Meanings, and he was introduced to a more
varied program. He floated over the field of moth-wing mosaics, which
still showed the footprints of the golem. He sweated in embarrassment, the
extent of his wicked willfulness now clear to him.
So passed the years. Howard Fair learned as much green magic as his
brain could encompass.
He explored much of the green realm, finding so much beauty that he
feared his brain might burst. He tasted, he heard, he felt, he sensed, and
each one of his senses was a hundred times more discriminating than
before. Nourishment came in a thousand different forms: from pink eggs
which burst into a hot sweet gas, suffusing his entire body; from passing
through a rain of stinging metal crystals; from simple contemplation of
the proper symbol.
Homesickness for Earth waxed and waned. Sometimes it was insupportable
and he was ready to forsake all he had learned and abandon his hopes for
the future. At other times the magnificence of the green realm permeated
him, and the thought of departure seemed like the threat of death itself.
By stages so gradual he never realized them he learned green magic.
But the new faculty gave him no pride: between his crude ineptitudes
and the poetic elegance of the sprites remained a tremendous gap, and he
felt his innate inferiority much more keenly than he ever had in his old
state. Worse, his most earnest efforts failed to improve his technique,
and sometimes, observing the singing joy of an improvised manifestation by
one of the sprites, and contrasting it to his own labored constructions,
he felt futility and shame.
The longer he remained in the green realm, the stronger grew the sense
of his own maladroitness, and he began to long for the easy environment of
Earth, where each of his acts would not shout aloud of vulgarity and
crassness. At times he would watch the sprites (in the gossamer forms
natural to them) at play among the pearl-petals, or twining like quick
flashes of music through the forest of pink spirals. The contrast between
their verve and his brutish fumbling could not be borne and he would turn
away. His self-respect dwindled with each passing hour, and instead of
pride in his learning, he felt a sullen ache for what he was not and could
never become. The first few hundred years he worked with the enthusiasm of
ignorance, for the next few he was buoyed by hope. During the last part of
his time, only dogged obstinacy kept him plodding through what now he knew
for infantile exercises.
In one terrible bittersweet spasm, he gave up. He found Jaadian weaving
tinkling fragments of various magics into a warp of shining long splines.
With grave courtesy, Jaadian gave Fair his attention, and Fair laboriously
set forth his meaning.
Jaadian returned a message. "I recognize your discomfort, and extend my
sympathy. It is best that you now return to your native home."
He put aside his weaving and conveyed Fair down through the requisite
vortices. Along the way they passed Misthemar. No flicker of meaning was
expressed or exchanged, but Howard Fair thought to feel a tinge of faintly
malicious amusement.
Howard Fair sat in his apartment. His perceptions,
augmented and sharpened by his sojourn in the green realm, took note of
the surroundings. Only two hours before, by the clocks of Earth, he had
found them both restful and stimulating; now they were neither. His books:
superstition, spuriousness, earnest nonsense. His private journals and
workbooks: a pathetic scrawl of infantilisms. Gravity tugged at his feet,
held him rigid. The shoddy construction of the house, which heretofore he
never had noticed, oppressed him. Everywhere he looked he saw slipshod
disorder, primitive filth. The thought of the food he must now eat
revolted him.
He went out on his little balcony which overlooked the street. The air
was impregnated with organic smells. Across the street he could look into
windows where his fellow humans lived in stupid squalor.
Fair smiled sadly. He had tried to prepare himself for these reactions,
but now was surprised by their intensity. He returned into his apartment.
He must accustom himself to the old environment. And after all there were
compensations. The most desirable commodities of the world were now his to
enjoy.
Howard Fair plunged into the enjoyment of these
pleasures. He forced himself to drink quantities of expensive wines,
brandies, liqueurs, even though they offended his palate. Hunger overcame
his nausea, he forced himself to the consumption of what he thought of as
fried animal tissue, the hypertrophied sexual organs of plants. He
experimented with erotic sensations, but found that beautiful women no
longer seemed different from the plain ones, and that he could barely
steel himself to the untidy contacts. He bought libraries of erudite
books, glanced through them with contempt. He tried to amuse himself with
his old magics; they seemed ridiculous.
He forced himself to enjoy these pleasures for a month; then he fled
the city and established a crystal bubble on a crag in the Andes. To
nourish himself, he contrived a thick liquid, which, while by no means as
exhilarating as the substances of the green realm, was innocent of organic
contamination.
After a certain degree of improvisation and make-shift, he arranged his
life to its minimum discomfort. The view was one of austere grandeur; not
even the condors came to disturb him. He sat back to ponder the chain of
events which had started with his discovery of Gerald McIntyre's workbook.
He frowned. Gerald McIntyre? He jumped to his feet, looked far over the
crags.
He found Gerald McIntyre at a wayside service station in the heart of
the South Dakota prairie. McIntyre was sitting in an old wooden chair,
tilted back against the peeling yellow paint of the service station, a
straw hat shading his eyes from the sun.
He was a magnetically handsome man, blond of hair, brown of skin, with
blue eyes whose gaze stung like the touch of icicles. His left thumb-nail
glistened green.
Fair greeted him casually; the two men surveyed each other with wry
curiosity.
"I see you have adapted yourself." said Howard Fair.
McIntyre shrugged. "As well as possible. I try to maintain a balance
between solitude and the pressure of humanity." He looked into the bright
blue sky where crows flapped and called. "For many years I lived in
isolation. I began to detest the sound of my own breathing."
Along the highway came a glittering automobile, rococo as a hybrid
goldfish. With the perceptions now available to them, Fair and McIntyre
could see the driver to be red-faced and truculent, his companion a
peevish woman in expensive clothes.
"There are other advantages to residence here," said McIntyre. "For
instance, I am able to enrich the lives of passersby with trifles of novel
adventure." He made a small gesture; two dozen crows swooped down and flew
beside the automobile. They settled on the fenders, strutted back and
forth along the hood, fouled the windshield.
The automobile squealed to a halt, the driver jumped out, put the birds
to flight. He threw an ineffectual rock, waved his arms in outrage,
returned to his car, proceeded.
"A paltry affair," said McIntyre with a sigh. "The truth of the matter
is that I am bored." He pursed his mouth and blew forth three bright puffs
of smoke: first red, then yellow, then blazing blue. "I have arrived at
the estate of foolishness, as you can see."
Fair surveyed his great-uncle with a trace of uneasiness. McIntyre
laughed. "No more pranks. I predict, however, that you will presently
share my malaise."
"I share it already," said Fair. "Sometimes I wish I could abandon all
my magic and return to my former innocence."
"I have toyed with the idea," McIntyre replied thoughtfully. "In fact I
have made all the necessary arrangements. It is really a simple matter."
He led Fair to a small room behind the station. Although the door was
open, the interior showed a thick darkness.
McIntyre, standing well back, surveyed the darkness with a quizzical
curl to his lip. "You need only enter. All your magic, all your
recollections of the green realm will depart. You will be no wiser than
the next man you meet. And with your knowledge will go your boredom, your
melancholy, your dissatisfaction."
Fair contemplated the dark doorway. A single step would resolve his
discomfort.
He glanced at McIntyre; the two surveyed each other with sardonic
amusement. They returned to the front of the building.
"Sometimes I stand by the door and look into the darkness," said
McIntyre. "Then I am reminded how dearly I cherish my boredom, and what a
precious commodity is so much misery."
Fair made himself ready for departure. "I thank you for this new
wisdom, which a hundred more years in the green realm would not have
taught me. And now, for a time, at least, I go back to my crag in the
Andes."
McIntyre tilted his chair against the wall of the service station. "And
I, for a time, at least, will wait for the next passerby."
"Good-bye, then, Uncle Gerald."
"Good-bye, Howard."
© Jack Vance
1963, 2000
"Green Magic" was first published in the Magazine of Fantasy and
Science Fiction, June 1963. It has also appeared in Jack Vance's
collections Green Magic (Underwood-Miller, 1979) and The Narrow
Land (DAW, 1982).
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