Wyst: Alastor 1716 by Jack Vance

and Tanzel on
the bonterfest. She’s never been anywhere and seen nothing, much less tasted
boater. I don’t care if I use all your pigments! You are so rich, you can get
more, and I must make these cult-globes, dog defile them!”
    “Why doesn’t Esteban pay for Tanzel? He never seems to lack
tokens.”
    Skorlet gave a bitter snort. “Esteban is too
self-important to spare tokens for anyone. In all candor, he should have lived
out in the Bad Worlds where he could be a tycoon. Or an exploiter. For certain
he’s no egalist. And you’d never imagine the wild schemes that throng his mind.”
    Surprised by Skorlet’s vehemence, Jantiff went to his chair.
Skorlet continued to daub grimly at her contrivances and Jantiff growled: “What
good are those things that you’re wasting my pigments on?”
    “I don’t know what good they are! I take them down to
Disjerferact and people pay good tokens for them and that’s all I care. Now I
need just a bit of that orange—Jantiff, it’s no use showing me that mulish
expression!”
    “Here, take it! This is the last time! From now on I’m
locking everything up in my case!”
    ‘lanai, you’re a very small person?’
    “And you’re very large—with other people’s belongings!”
    “Control your tongue, Jantiff! You have no right to hector me!
Now turn on the screen. The Whispers are making an important speech and I want
to hear it.”
    “Bah,” muttered Jantiff. “Just more of the same.” Nevertheless,
upon meeting Skorlet’s lambent gaze, he rose to his feet and did her bidding.
    Jantiff wrote a letter home:
    Dearest family:
    First my inevitable requests. I don’t want to be a nuisance, but
circumstances are against me. Please send me another selection of
pigments, of double size. They cannot be obtained here, like everything else.
Still, life progresses. The food of course is deadly dull; everyone is obsessed
with “bonter.” Some friends are planning a “gypsy banquet,” whatever that is. I’ve
been invited, and I’ll probably attend, if only to get away from gruff and
deedle for a few hours.
    I fear that I’m developing a fragmented personality. I wonder
sometimes if I’m not living in a dreamland, where white is black and black is
not white, which would be ,too simple, but something, totally absurd Me, say,
ten dead dogfish or the smell of gilly-flowers. Mind you, Arrabus was at one
time a very ordinary industrialized nation. Is this the inevitable sequence?
The ideas succeed each other with a frightening logic. Life is short; why waste
a second on thankless drudgery? Technology exists for this, purpose! Therefore,
technology must be augmented and extended, to dispel as much drudgery as
possible. Let the machines toil! Leisure, the rich flavor of sheer existence,
is the goal! Very good, if only the machines could do everything. But they won’t
repair themselves, and they won’t perform human services, so even Arrabins must
drudge: a sour thirteen hours a week. Next, the machines are unkind enough to
break down. Contractors must be hired, from compounds in Blale and Froke and
other places at the back of the Weirdlands. Needless to say, the contractors
refuse to work on the cheap. In fact, or so I am told, they absorb almost the
whole of the gross Arrabin product. The Arrabins could relieve the situation by
training persons so inclined to be technicians and mechanics, but egalists assert
that specialization is the first step, toward elitism. No doubt they are right.
It never occurs to anyone that the contractors are elitists of the very finest
water, who grow rich exploiting the Arrabins—if exploiting is the proper word.
    I wrote “never occurs to anyone,” but perhaps this isn’t quite accurate.
The other night I heard a public address by the Whispers. I made some sketches
as they appeared on the screen; I enclose one of them. The Whispers are chosen
by a random process. On each level of every block someone, selected by lot,
becomes a monitor. The