THE BRAINS OF EARTH

By Jack Vance

Scanned by BW-SciFi

Copyright ©, 1966, by Ace Books, Inc.

All Rights Reserved

Printed in U.S.A.

I

Ixax at the best of times was a dreary pla­net. Winds roared through the jagged black mountains, pro­pelling jets of rain and sleet which, rather than softening the landscape, tended to wash what soil existed into the ocean. Vegetation was scant: a few drab forests of brittle den­drons; wax-grass and tube-wort bunching out of crevices; lichens in sullen splotches of red, purple, blue and green. The ocean however, supported extensive beds of kelp and algae; these, with a fairly abundant catalogue of marine ani­malculae, conducted the greater part of the planet's photo-synthetic process.

In spite of, or because of, the challenge of the environ­ment, the original amphibian animal, a type of ganoid ba­trachian, evolved into an intelligent andromorph. Assisted by an intuitive awareness of mathematical justness and har­mony, with a visual apparatus that presented the world in tactile three-dimensional style rather than as a polychrome set of two-dimensional surfaces, the Xaxans were almost pre­ordained to build a technical civilization. Four hundred years after their advent into space they discovered the no­pal—apparently through the workings of sheer chance—and so involved themselves in the most terrible war of their his­tory.

The war, lasting over a century, devastated the already barren planet. Scum crusted the oceans; the few sparse pockets of soil were poisoned by yellowish-white powder sifting out of the sky. Ixax had never been a populous world; the handful of cities now were rubble: heaps of black stone, liver-brown tile, chalk-white shards of fused talc, wads of rotting organic stuff, a chaos which outraged the Xaxan compulsion for mathematical exactness and nicety. The survi­vors, both Chitumih and Tauptu (so to transcribe the clicks and rattlings of the Xaxan communicative system), dwelt in underground fortresses. Distinguished by Tauptu aware­ness and Chitumih denial of the nopal, they nourished to­ward each other an emotion akin to but a dozen times more intense than Earthly hate.

After the first hundred years of war the tide of battle ran in favor of the Tauptu. The Chitumih were driven to their stronghold under the Northern Mountains; the Taup­tu battle-teams inched forward, blasting the surface de­fense-ports one by one, dispatching atomic moles against the mile-deep citadel.

The Chitumih, although aware of defeat, resisted with a fervor corresponding to their more-than-hate for the Tauptu. The rumble of approaching moles sounded ever louder; the outlying mole-traps collapsed, then the inner-ring of diver­sion-tunnels. Looping up from a burrow ten miles deep, an enormous mole broke into the dynamo chamber, destroying the very core of Chitumih resistance. The corridors went pitch-dark; the Chitumih tumbled forth blindly, prepared to fight with hands and stones. Moles gnawed at the rock; the tunnels reverberated with grinding sound. A gap appeared, followed by a roaring metal snout. The walls broke wide apart; there was a blast of anaesthetic gas, and the war was over.

The Tauptu climbed down across the broken rock, search-lights glowing from their heads. The able-bodied among the Chitumih were pinioned and sent to the surface; the crushed and mangled were killed where they lay.

War-Master Khb Tachx returned to Mia, the ancient cap­itol, flying low through a hissing rain-storm across a dingy sea, over a foreland pocked with great craters in the shape of earth-colored star-bursts, over a range of black mountains, and the charred rubble of Mia lay before him.

There was a single whole building in evidence, a long squat box of gray rock-melt, newly erected.

Khb Tachx landed his air-car, and ignoring the rain, walk­ed toward the entrance of the building. Fifty or sixty Chi­tumih huddling in a pen slowly turned their heads, sensing him with the perceptors which fulfilled the function of eyes. Khb Tachx accepted the impact of their hate with no more attention than he gave the rain. As he approached the build­ing a frantic rattle of torment sounded from within, and a­gain Khb Tachx paid no heed. The Chitumih were more affected. They shrank back as if the pain were their own, and in clenched dull vibrations reviled Khb Tachx, defy­ing him to do his worst.

Khb Tachx strode into the building, dropped to a level a half-mile below the surface, proceeded to the chamber re­served for his use. Here he removed his helmet, his leather cloak, wiped the rain from his gray face. Divesting him­self of his other garments he scrubbed himself with a stiff-bristled brush, removing dead tissue and minute surface scales from his skin.

An orderly grated his finger-tips across the door. "You are awaited."

"I will come at once."

With a passionless economy of motion he dressed in fresh garments, an apron, boots, a long cape smooth as a beetle-shell. It so happened that these garments were uniformly black, although this was a matter of indifference to the Xaxans who differentiated surfaces by texture rather than color. Khb Tachx took up his helmet, a casque of striated metal, crowned by a medallion symbolizing the word tauptu—"pur­ged". Six spikes rose from the keel, three corresponding to the inch-high knuckles of bone along his cranial crest, the re­maining three denoting his rank. After a moment's reflection Khb Tachx detached the medallion, then pulled the helmet down over his bare gray scalp.

He left his chamber, walked deliberately along the cor­ridor to a door of fused quartz, which slid soundlessly a­side at his approach. He entered a perfectly circular room with vitreous walls and a high paraboloid dome. Insofar as the Xaxans derived pleasure from the contemplation of in­animate objects, they enjoyed the serene simplicity of these particular conformations. At a round table of polished ba­salt sat four men, each wearing a six-spike helmet. They immediately noticed the absence of the medallion from Khb Tachx's helmet, and derived the import he meant to con­vey: that with the collapse of the Great Northern Fortress the need for distinction between Tauptu and Chitumih had ended. These five governed the Tauptu as a loose commit­tee, without clear division of responsibility except in two regards: War-Master Khb Tachx directed military strategy; Pttdu Apiptix commanded those few ships remaining to the space-fleet.

Khb Tachx seated himself, and described the collapse of the Chitumih stronghold. His fellows apprehended him im­passively, showing neither joy nor excitement, for they felt none.

Pttdu Apiptix dourly summed up the new circumstances. "The nopal are as before. We have won only a local vic­tory."

"Nevertheless, a victory," Khb Tachx remarked.

A third Xaxan countered what he considered an extreme of pessimism. "We have destroyed the Chitumih; they have not destroyed us. We started with nothing, they everything: still we have won."

"Immaterial," responded Pttdu Apiptix. "We have been unable to prepare for what must come next. Our weapons against the nopal are makeshift; they harass us almost at will."

"The past is past," Khb Tachx declared. "The short step has been taken; now we will take the long one. The war must be carried to Nopalgarth."

The five sat in contemplation. The idea had occurred many times to all of them, and many times they had drawn back from the implications.

A fourth Xaxan remarked abruptly, "We have been bled white. We can wage no more war."

"Others now will bleed," Khb Tachx responded. "We will infect Nopalgarth as the nopal infected Ixax, and do no more than direct the struggle."

The fourth Xaxan reflected. "Is this a practical strategy? A Xaxan risks his life if he so much as shows himself on Nopalgarth."

"Agents must act for us. We must employ someone not instantly recognizable as an enemy—a man of another pla­net."

"In this connection," Pttdu Apiptix remarked, "there is a first and obvious choice ..."

II

A voice which quavered from fright or excitement —the girl at the ARPA switchboard in Washington could not de­cide which—asked to speak to "someone in charge." The girl inquired the caller's business, explaining that ARPA con­sisted of many departments and divisions.

"It's a secret matter," said the voice. "I gotta talk to one of the higher-ups, somebody connected with the top sci­ence projects."

A nut, decided the girl, and started to switch the call to the public relations office. At this moment Paul Burke, an assistant director of research, walked through the foyer. Burke, loose-limbed, tall, with a reassuringly nondescript ap­pearance, was thirty seven, once-married, once-divorced. Most women found Burke attractive; the switchboard oper­ator, no exception, seized the opportunity to attract his at­tention. She sang out, "Mr. Burke, won't you speak to this man?"

"Which man?" asked Burke.

"I don't know. He's quite excited. He wants to talk to someone in authority."

"May I ask your position, Mr. Burke?" The voice evoked an instant image in Burke's mind: an elderly man, earnest and self-important, hopping from one foot to the other in excitement.

"I'm an assistant director of research," said Burke.

"Does that mean you're a scientist?" the voice asked cau­tiously. "This is business that I can't take up with under­lings."

"More or less. What's your problem?"

"Mr. Burke, you'd never believe me if I told you over the phone." The voice quavered. "I can't really believe it myself."

Burke felt a trace of interest. The man's voice commu­nicated its excitement, aroused uneasy prickles at the nape of Burke's neck. Nevertheless, an instinct, a hunch, an intui­tion told him that he wanted nothing to do with this urgent old man.

"I've got to see you, Mr. Burke—you or one of the sci­entists. One of the top scientists." The man's voice faded, then strengthened as if he had turned his head away from the mouth-piece as he spoke.

"If you could explain your problem," said Burke cau­tiously, "I might be able to help you."

"No," said the man. "You'd tell me I was crazy. You've got to come out here. I promise you you'll see something you've never imagined in your wildest dreams."

"That's going pretty far," said Burke. "Can't you give me some idea what it's all about?"

"You'd think I was crazy. And maybe I am." The man laughed with unnecessary fervor. "I'd like to think so."

"What's your name?"

"Are you coming out to see me?"

"I'll send someone out."

"That won't do. You'll send the police, and then—there'll —be—trouble!" He almost whispered these last words.

Burke spoke aside to the operator, "Get a tracer on this call." Into the phone he said, "Are you in trouble yourself? Anyone threatening you?"

"No, no, Mr. Burke! Nothing like that! Now tell me the truth: Can you come out to see me right now? I got to know!"

"Not unless you give me a better reason than you have."

The man took a deep breath. "Okay. Listen then. And don't say I didn't warn you. I—" The line went dead.

Burke looked at the telephone in mingled disgust and relief. He turned to the operator. "Any luck?"

"I didn't have time, Mr. Burke. He hung up too soon." Burke shrugged. "Crack-pot, probably . . . But still . . ." He turned away, neck still tingling eerily. He went to his office, where presently he was joined by Dr. Ralph Tarbert, a mathematician and physicist dividing his time between Brookhaven and ARPA. Tarbert, in his middle fifties, was a handsome lean-faced man, nervously muscular, with a shock of electric white hair of which he was very proud. In contrast to Burke's rather rumpled tweed jackets and flannel slacks, Tarbert wore elegant and conservative suits of dark blue or gray. He not only admitted but boasted of intellectual snobbery, and affected a cynicism which Burke sometimes found frivolous enough to be irritating.

The unfinished telephone call still occupied Burke's mind. He described the conversation to Tarbert who, as Burke had expected, dismissed the incident with an airy wave of the hand.

"The man was scared," mused Burke, "no question about that."

"The devil looked up from the bottom of his beer mug."

"He sounded stone-sober. You know, Ralph, I've got a hunch about this thing. I wish I'd gone to see the man."

"Take a tranquilizer," suggested Tarbert. "Now, let's talk about this electron-ejection thing . . ."

Shortly after noon a messenger brought a small package to Burke's office. Burke signed the book, examined the pack­age. His name and address had been printed with a ball­point pen; there was also an inscription: OPEN IN ABSO­LUTE PRIVACY.

Burke ripped open the parcel. Inside he found a card­board box, containing a dollar-size disk of metal, which he shook out into his hand. The disk seemed at the same time light and heavy; massive but weightless. With a soft ex­clamation Burke opened his hand. The disk floated in mid­air. Slowly, gently, it began to rise.

Burke stared, reached. "What the devil," he muttered. "No gravity?"

The telephone rang. The voice asked anxiously, "Did you get the package?"

"Just this minute," said Burke.

"Will you come to see me now?"

Burke took a deep breath. "What's your name?"

"You'll come alone?"

"Yes," said Burke.

III

sam gibbons was a widower, two years retired from a prosperous used-car business in Buellton, Virginia, sixty-five miles from Washington. With his two sons at college, he lived alone in a big brick house two miles from town, on the crest of a hill.

Burke met him at the gate—a pompous man of sixty, with a pear-shaped body, an amiable pink face now mottled and trembling. He verified that Burke was alone, made sure that Burke was both a recognized scientist—"up on all that space and cosmic ray stuff"—and in a position of authority.

"Don't get me wrong," said Gibbons nervously. "It's got­ta be this way. You'll see why in a few minutes. Thank God I'm out of it." He blew out his cheeks, looked up toward his house.

"What goes on?" asked Burke. "What's all this about?"

"You'll know soon enough," said Gibbons hoarsely. Burke saw that he was staggering with fatigue, that his eyes were red-rimmed. "I've got to bring you to the house. That's all I do. From then on it's up to you."

Burke looked up the driveway toward the house. "What's up to me?"

Gibbons patted him nervously on the shoulder. "It's all right; you'll just be—"

"I'm not moving until I know who's there," said Burke.

Gibbons glanced furtively over his shoulder. "It's a man from another planet," he blurted through wet lips. "Mars maybe; I don't know for sure. He made me telephone some­body he could talk to, and I got hold of you."

Burke stared toward the front of the house. Behind a window, veiled by curtains, he glimpsed a tall square-shouldered shape. It never occurred to him to doubt Gibbons. He laughed uncertainly. "This is rather a shock."

"You're telling me," said Gibbons.

Burke's knees were stiff and weak; he felt an enormous reluctance to move. In a hollow voice he asked, "How do you know he's from another planet?"

"He told me," said Gibbons. "I believed him. Wait till you see him yourself."

Burke drew a deep breath. "Very well. Let's go. Does he speak English?"

Gibbons smiled in feeble amusement. "Out of a box. He has a box on his stomach and the box talks."

They approached the house. Gibbons pushed the door open, motioned Burke to enter. Burke stepped forward, stopped short in the hall.

The creature who waited was a man, but he had arriv­ed at his estate by a different route from that traveled by Burke's forebears. He stood four inches taller than Burke, with a skin rough and gray as elephant hide. His head was narrow and long, his eyes blank and blind-looking, like cabochons of beer-colored quartz. A bony crest rose from his scalp, studded with three bony knobs. Striking down from his brow the crest became a nose, thin as a scimi­tar. The chest was deep and narrow, the arms and legs corded and ropy with sinew.

Burke's faculties, numbed by the sheer drama of the sit­uation, slowly returned. Studying the man, he sensed a harsh fierce intelligence, and became uneasily conscious of dislike and distrust—feelings which he strove to suppress. It was inevitable, he thought, that creatures of different planets must find each other uncomfortable and strange. Trying to compensate he spoke with a heartiness that rang false even to his own ears. "My name is Paul Burke. I un­derstand that you know our language."

"We have studied your planet for many years." The voice came in discrete and distinct words from an apparatus hanging over the alien's chest: a muffled unnatural voice accompanied by hisses, buzzings, clicks and rattles, pro­duced by vibrating plates along the creature's thorax. A translation machine, thought Burke, which presumably re­translated English words into the clicks and rattles of the stranger's speech. "We have wished to visit you before but it is dangerous for us."

" 'Dangerous'?" Burke was puzzled. "I can't understand why; we're not barbarians. Which is your home planet?"

"It is far away from your solar system. I do not know your astronomy. I can not name it. We call our planet Ixax. I am Pttdu Apiptix." The box seemed to find difficulty with l's and r's, pronouncing them with a rasping and rattling of the glottal mechanism. "You are one of your world's scientists?"

"I am a physicist and mathematician," said Burke, "al­though now I hold an administrative position."

"Good." Pttdu Apiptix held up his hand, turned the palm toward Sam Gibbons who stood nervously at the back of the room. The small squat instrument he held chattered, shivering the air as a hammer-blow splinters ice. Gibbons croaked, fell to the floor in a strange round heap, as if all his bones had vanished.

Burke sucked in his breath, aghast. "Here, here!" he stam­mered. "What are you doing?"

"This man must not talk to others," said Apiptix. "My mission is important."

"Your mission be damned!" roared Burke. "You've vio­lated our laws! This isn't—"

Pttdu Apiptix cut him short. "Killing is sometimes a ne­cessity. You must alter your way of thinking, because I plan that you help me. If you refuse, I will kill you and find another."

Burke's voice refused to make itself heard. At last he said hoarsely, "What do you want me to do?"

"We are going to Ixax. There you will know."

Burke remonstrated gently, as if addressing a maniac. "I can't possibly go to your planet. I have my job to look after. I suggest that you come with me to Washington—" He stopped short, embarrassed by the other's sardonic patience.

"I care nothing for your convenience, or your work," said Apiptix.

On the verge of hysterical anger Burke trembled, leaned forward. Pttdu Apiptix displayed his weapon. "Do not be influenced by your emotional urges." He twisted his face in a wincing grimace—the only change of facial expression

Burke had noticed. "Come with me, if you wish to live." He backed away, toward the rear of the house.

Burke followed on stiff legs. They went out a rear door into the back yard, where Gibbons had built himself a swimming pool and a tiled barbecue area.

"We will wait here," said Apiptix. He stood motionless, watching Burke with the blank stolidity of an insect. Five minutes passed. Burke could not speak for a weakness of rage and apprehension. A dozen times he leaned forward on the brink of plunging at the Xaxan and taking his chances; a dozen times he saw the instrument in the harsh gray hand and drew back.

Out of the sky dropped a blunt metal cylinder the size of a large automobile. A section fell open. "Enter," said Apip­tix.

For the last time Burke weighed his chances. They were non-existent. He stumbled into the car. Apiptix fol­lowed. The section closed. There was an instant sensation of swift motion.

Burke spoke, holding his voice steady with great effort. "Where are you taking me?"

"To Ixax."

"What for?"

"So that you will learn what is expected of you. I un­derstand your anger. I realize that you are not pleased. Nevertheless you must grasp the idea that your life is changed." Apiptix put away his weapon. "It is useless for you to—"

Burke could not control his rage. He flung himself at the Xaxan, who held him off with a rigid arm. From somewhere came a mind-cracking blaze of purple light, and Burke lost consciousness.

IV

burke awoke in an unfamiliar place, in a dark chamber smelling of damp rock. He could see nothing. Under him was what seemed to be a resilient mat; exploring with his fingers he found a hard cold floor a few inches below.

He rose on his elbow. There was no sound to be heard: an absolute silence.

Burke felt his face, tested the length of his beard. There was bristle at least a quarter-inch long. A week had passed.

Someone was approaching. How did he know? There had been no sound; only an oppressive sense of evil, almost as palpable as a physical stench.

The walls glowed with sudden luminosity, revealing a long narrow chamber, with a graceful vaulted ceiling. Burke raised himself on the pad, a...