Jack Vance - The Last Castle

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Kingsley Amis is one of the more astute critics of science

fiction and recently, while speaking about the mainstream

writer Anthony Burgess and his occasional forays into SF,

Amis said ". . . he's a stylist and that's rare in this field." Quite

true. But we do have lack Vance and his haunting, mood-pos-

sessed visions of the distant future, written in a style that stirs

the reader to reaction and response. Here, in this award

winning story, he once more spins his seductive magic.

Nebula Award, Best Novella 1966

THE LAST CASTLE

Jack Vance

Toward the end of a stormy summer afternoon, with the sun

finally breaking out under ragged black rain clouds, Castle

Janeil was overwhelmed and its population destroyed.

Until almost the last moment the factions among the castle

clans were squabbling as to how Destiny properly should be

met. The gentlemen of most prestige and account elected to

ignore the entire undignified circumstance and went about

their normal pursuits, with neither more nor less punctilio

than usual. A few cadets, desperate to the point of hysteria,

took up weapons and prepared to resist the final assault.

Others still, perhaps a quarter of the total population, waited

passively, readyalmost happyto expiate the sins of the

human race.

In the end death came uniformly to all; and all extracted as

much satisfaction in their dying as this essentially graceless

process could afford. The proud sat turning the pages of their

beautiful books, or discussing the qualities of a centufy-old

essence, or fondling a favorite Phane. They died without

deigning to heed the fact. The hot-heads raced up the muddy

slope which, outraging all normal rationality, loomed above

the parapets of Janeil. Most were buried under sliding rubble,

but a few gained the ridge to gun, hack, stab, until they

themseves were shot, crushed by the half-alive power-wagons,

hacked or stabbed. The contrite waited in the classic posture

of expiation, on their knees, heads bowed, and perished, so

they believed, by a process in which the Meks were symbols

and human sin the reality. In the end all were dead: gentle-

men, ladies, Phanes in the pavilions; Peasants in the stables.

Of all those who had inhabited Janeil, only the Birds survived,

creatures awkward, gauche and raucous, oblivious to pride

and faith, more concerned with the wholeness of their hides

than the dignity of their castle.

As the Meks swarmed over the parapets, the Birds departed

their cotes. They screamed strident insults as they flapped east

toward Hagedorn, now the last castle of Earth.

Pour months before, the Meks had appeared in the park

before Janeil, fresh from the Sea Island massacre.

Climbing to the turrets and balconies, sauntering the Sunset

Promenade, from ramparts and parapets, the gentlemen and

ladies of Janeil, some two thousand in all, looked down at the

browngold warriors. Their mood was complex: amused

indifference, flippant disdain, over a substratum of doubt and

foreboding. All these moods were the product of three basic

circumstances: their own exquisitely subtle civilization, the

security provided by Janeil's wall and the fact that they could

think of nothing to do to alter the circumstances.

The Janeil Meks had long since departed to join the revolt.

There only remained Phanes, Peasants and Birds from which

to fashion what would have been the travesty of a punitive

..force.

At the moment there seemed no need for such a force.

Janeil was deemed impregnable. The walls, two hundred feet

tall, were black- rock-melt contained in the meshes of a

silver-blue steel alloy. Solar cells provided energy for all the

needs of the castle, and in the event of emergency food could

be synthesized from carbon dioxide and water vapor, as well

as syrup for Phanes, Peasants and Birds. Such a need was not

envisaged. Janeil was self-sufficient and secure, though incon-

veniences might arise when machinery broke down and there

were no Meks to repair it. The situation, then, was disturbing

but hardly desperate. During the day the gentlemen so in-

clined brought forth energy-guns and sport-rifles and killed as

many Meks as the extreme range allowed.

After dark the Meks brought forward power-wagons and

earth-movers, and began to raise a dike around Janeil.

The folk of the castle watched without comprehension until

the dike reached a height of fifty feet and dirt began to spill

down against the walls. Then the dire purpose of the Meks

became apparent, and insouciance gave way to dismal fore-

boding.

All the gentlemen of Janeil were erudite in at least one

realm of knowledge. Certain were mathematical theoreticians,

others had made a profound study of the physical sciences.

Some of these, with a detail of Peasants to perform the sheer

physical exertion, attempted to restore the energy-cannon to

functioning condition. Unluckily, the cannon had not been

maintained in good order. Various components were obvi-

ously corroded or damaged. Conceivably these components

might have been replaced from the Mek shops on the second

sub-level, but none of the group had any knowledge of the

Mek nomenclature or warehousing system. Warrick Madency

Arban (which is to say, Arban of the Madency family on the

Warrick clan) suggested that a work-force of Peasants search

the warehouse. But in view of the limited mental capacity of

the Peasants, nothing was done and the whole plan to restore

the energy-cannon came to naught.

The gentlefolk of Janeil watched in fascination as the dirt

piled higher and higher around them, in a circular mound like

a crater. Summer neared its end, and on one stormy day dirt

and rubble rose above the parapets, and began to spill over

into the courts and piazzas. Janeil must soon be buried and 'all

within suffocated.

It was then that a group of impulsive young cadets, with

more elan than dignity, took up weapons and charged up the

slope. The Meks dumped dirt and stone upon them, but a

handful gained the ridge where they fought in a kind of

dreadful exaltation.

Fifteen minutes the fight raged and the earth became

sodden with rain and blood. For one glorious moment the

cadets swept the ridge clean. Had not most of their fellows

been lost under the rubble anything might have occurred. But

the Meks regrouped, thrust forward. Ten men were left,-then

six, then four, then one, then none. The Meks marched down

the slope, swarmed over the battlements, and with somber

intensity killed all within. Janeil, for seven hundred years the

abode of gallant gentlemen and gracious ladies, had become a

lifeless hulk.

The Mek, standing as if a specimen in a museum case, was

a man-like creature native, in his original version, to a planet

of Etamin. His tough rusty-bronze hide glistened metallically

as if oiled or waxed. The spines thrusting back from scalp and

neck shone like gold, and indeed they were coated with a

conductive copper-chrome film. His sense organs were gath-

ered in clusters at the site of a man's ears; his visageit was

often a shock, walking the lower corridors, to come suddenly

upon a Mekwas corrugated muscle, not dissimilar to the

look of an uncovered human brain. His maw, a vertical

irregular cleft at the base of his 'face', was an obsolete organ

by reason of the syrup sac which had been introduced under

the skin of the shoulders, and the digestive organs, originally

used to extract nutrition from decayed swamp vegetation and

coelenterates, had atrophied. The Mek typically wore no

garment except possibly a work apron or a tool-belt, and in

the sunlight his rust-bronze skin made a handsome display.

This was the Mek solitary, a creature intrinsically as effective

as manperhaps more by virtue of his superb brain which

also functioned as a radio transceiver. Working in the mass,

by the teeming thousands, he seemed less admirable, less

competent: a hybrid of sun-man and cockroach.

Certain savants, notably Morninglight's D. R. Jardine and

Salonson of Tuang, considered the Mek bland and phlegmat-

ic, but the profound Claghorn of Castle Hagedorn asserted

otherwise. The emotions of the Mek, said Claghorn, were

different from human emotions, and only vaguely comprehen-

;sible to man. After diligent research Claghorn isolated over a

dozen Mek emotions.

In spite of such research, the Mek revolt came as an utter

surprise, no less to Claghorn, D. R. Jardine and Salonson than

to anyone else. Why? asked everyone. How could a group so

long submissive have contrived so murderous a plot?

The most reasonable conjecture was also the simplest: the

Mek resented servitude and hated the Earthmen who had

removed him from his natural environment. Those who

argued against this theory claimed that it projected human

emotions and attitudes into a nonhuman organism, that the

Mek had every reason to feel gratitude toward the gentlemen

who had liberated him from the conditions of Etamin Nine.

To this, the first group would inquire, "Who projects human

attitudes now?" And the retort of their opponents was often:

"Since no one knows for certain, one projection is no more

absurd than another."

Castle Hagedom occupied the crest of a black diorite crag

overlooking a wide valley to the south. Larger, more majestic

than Janeil, Hagedom was protected by walls a mile in

circumference, three hundred feet tall. The parapets stood a

full nine hundred feet above the valley, with towers, turrets

and observation eyries raising even higher. Two sides of the

crag, at east and west, dropped sheer to the valley. The north

and south slopes, a trifle less steep, were terraced and planted

with vines, artichokes, pears and pomegranates. An avenue

rising from the valley circled the crag and passed through a

portal into the central plaza. Opposite stood the great Rotun-

da, with at either side the tall Houses of the twenty-eight

families.

The original castle, constructed immediately after the re-

turn of men to Earth, stood on the site now occupied by the

plaza. The tenth Hagedom had assembled an enormous force

of Peasants and Meks to build the new walls, after which he

demolished the old castle. The twenty-eight Houses dated

from this time, five hundred years before.

Below the plaza were three service levels: the stables and

garages at the bottom, next the Mek shops and Mek living

quarters, then the various storerooms, warehouses and special

shops: bakery, brewery, lapidary, arsenal, repository, and the

like.

The current Hagedom, twenty-sixth of the line, was a

Claghorn of the Overwheles. His selection had occasioned

general surprise, because 0. C. Charle, as he had been before

his elevation, was a gentleman of no remarkable presence. His

elegance, flair, and erudition were only ordinary; he had never

been notable for any significant originality of thought. His

physical proportions were good; his face was square and

bony, with a short straight nose, a benign brow, narrow gray

eyes. His expression was normally a trifle abstractedhis

detractors used the word 'vacant'. But by a simple lowering of

the eyelids, a downward twitch of the coarse blond eyebrows,

it at once became stubborn and surly, a fact of which 0. C.

Charle, or Hagedorn, was unaware.

The office, while exerting little or no formal authority,

exerted a pervasive influence, and the style of the gentleman

who was Hagedorn affected everyone. For this reason the

selection of Hagedorn was a matter of no small importance,

subject to hundreds of considerations, and it was the rare

candidate who failed to have some old solectem or gaucherie

discussed with embarrassing candor. While the candidate

might never take overt umbrage, friendships were inevitably

sundered, rancors augmented, reputations blasted. 0. C.

Charle's elevation represented a compromise between two

factions among the Overwheles, to which clan the privilege of

selection had fallen.

The gentlemen between whom 0. C. Charle represented a

compromise were both highly respected, but distinguished by

basically different attitudes toward existence. The first was the

talented Garr of the Zurnbeld family. He exemplified the

traditional virtues of Castle Hagedorn: he was a notable

connoisseur of essences, he dressed with absolute savoir, with

never so much as a pleat nor a twist of the characteristic

Overwhele rosette awry. He combined insouciance and flair

with dignity. His repartee coruscated with brilliant allusions

and turns of phrase. When aroused his wit was utterly

mordant. He could quote every literary work of consequence;

he performed expertly upon the nine-stringed lute, and was

thus in constant demand at the Viewing of Antique Tabards.

He was an antiquarian of unchallengeable erudition and knew

the locale of every major city of Old Earth, and could

discourse for hours upon the history of the ancient times. His

military expertise was unparallelled at Hagedorn, and chal-

lenged only by D. K.. Magdah of Castle Delora and perhaps

Brusham of Tuang. Faults? Flaws? Few could be cited:

over-punctilio which might be construed as waspishness; an

intrepid pertinacity which could be considered ruthless.

0. Z. Garr could never be dismissed as insipid or indeci-

sive, and his personal courage was beyond dispute. Two years

before a stray band of Nomads had ventured into Lucerne

Valley, slaughtering Peasants, stealing cattle, and going so far

as to fire an arrow into the chest of an Isseth cadet. 0. Z.

Garr instantly assembled a punitive company of Meks, loaded

them aboard a dozen power-wagons and set forth in pursuit

of the Nomads, finally overtaking them near Drene River, by

the ruins of Worster Cathedral. The Nomads were unexpect-

edly strong, unexpectedly crafty, and were not content to

turn tail and flee. During the fighting 0. Z. Garr displayed the

most exemplary demeanor, directing the attack from the seat

of his power-wagon, a pair of Meks standing by with shields

to ward away arrows.

The conflict ended in a rout of the Nomads. They left

twenty-seven lean black-cloaked corpses strewn on the field,

while only twenty Meks lost their lives.

0. Z. Garr's opponent in the election was Claghorn, elder

of the Claghorn family. As with 0. Z, Garr, the exquisite

discriminations of Hagedorn society came to Claghorn as

easily as swimming to a fish.

He was no less erudite than 0. Z. Garr, though hardly so

versatile, his principal field of study being the Meks, their

physiology, linguistic modes, and social patterns. Claghom's

conversation was more profound, but less entertaining and

not so trenchant as that of 0. Z. Garr. He seldom employed

the extravagant tropes and allusions which characterized

Garr's discussions, preferring a style of speech which was

almost unadorned. Claghorn kept no Phanes; 0. Z. Garr's

four matched Gossamer Dainties were marvels of delight, and

at the viewing of Antique Tabards Garr's presentations were

seldom outshone. The important contrast between the two

men lay in their philosophic outlook. 0. Z. Garr, a traditional-

ist, a fervent exemplar of his society, subscribed to its tenets

without reservation. He was beset by neither doubt nor guilt;

he felt no desire to alter the conditions which afforded more

than two thousand gentlemen and ladies lives of great rich-

ness. Claghorn, while by no means an Expiationist, was

known to feel dissatisfaction with the general tenor of life at

Castle Hagedorn, and argued so plausibly that many folk

refused to listen to him, on the grounds that they became

uncomfortable. But an indefinable malaise ran deep, and

Claghorn had many influential supporters.

When the time came for ballots to be cast, neither 0. Z.'

Garr nor Claghorn could muster sufficient support. The office

finally was cofaferred upon a gentleman who never in his most

optimistic reckonings had expected it: a gentleman of deco-

rum and dignity but no great depth; without flippancy, but

likewise without vivacity; affable but disinclined to force an

issue to a disagreeable conclusion: 0. C. Charie, the new

Hagedorn,

Six months later, during the dark hours before dawn, the

Hagedom Meks evacuated their quarters and departed, taking

with them power-wagons, tools, weapons and electrical equip-

ment. The act had clearly been long in the planning, for

simultaneously the Meks at each of the eight other castles

made a similar departure.

The initial reaction at Castle Hagedom, as elsewhere, was

incredulity, then shocked anger, thenwhen the implications

of the act were pondereda sense of foreboding and calam-

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Jack Vance - The Last Castle

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