Jack Vance

Green Magic

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."