Free The Last Castle by Jack Holbrook Vance

Mek speaks for all Meks. We think with one mind. Are not men of a like sort?’
    “ ‘Each thinks for himself. The lunatic who assured you of this tomfoolery is an evil man. But at least matters are clear. We do not propose to send you to Etamin Nine. Will you withdraw from Janeil, take yourselves to a far land and leave us in peace?’
    “ ‘No. Affairs have proceeded too far. We will now destroy all men. The truth of the statement is clear: one world is too small for two races.’
    “ ‘Unluckily then, I must kill you,’ I told him. ‘Such acts are not to my liking, but, with opportunity, you would kill as many gentlemen as possible.’ At this the creature sprang upon me, and I killed it with an easier mind than had it sat staring.
    “Now you know all. It seems that either you or 0. Z. Garr stimulated the cataclysm. 0. Z. Garr? Unlikely. Impossible. Hence, you, Claghorn, you! have this weight upon your soul!”
    Claghorn frowned down at the axe. “Weight, yes. Guilt, no. Ingenuousness, yes; wickedness, no.”
    Xanten stood back. “Claghorn, your coolness astounds me! Before, when rancorous folk like 0. Z. Garr conceived you a lunatic—”
    “Peace, Xanten!” exclaimed Claghorn irritably. “This extravagant breast-beating becomes maladroit. What have I done wrong? My fault is that I tried too much. Failure is tragic, but a phthisic face hanging over the cup of the future is worse. I meant to become Hagedorn, I would have sent the slaves home. I failed, the slaves revolted. So do not speak another word. I am bored with the subject. You can not imagine how your bulging eyes and your concave spine oppress me.”
    “Bored you may be,” cried Xanten. “You decry my eyes, my spine—but what of the thousands dead?”
    “How long would they live in any event? Lives are as cheap as fish in the sea. I suggest that you put by your reproaches and devote a similar energy to saving yourself. Do you realize that a means exists? You stare at me blankly. I assure you that what I say is true, but you will never learn the means from me.”

    “Claghorn,” said Xanten, “I flew to this spot intending to blow your arrogant head from your body—” But Claghorn, no longer heeding, had returned to his wood-chopping.
    “Claghorn!” cried Xanten.
    “Xanten, take your outcries elsewhere, if you please. Remonstrate with your Birds.”
    Xanten swung on his heel, marched back down the lane. The girls picking berries looked at him questioningly and moved aside. Xanten halted, looked up and down the lane." Glys Meadowsweet was nowhere to be seen. In a new fury he continued. He stopped short. On a fallen tree a hundred feet from the Birds sat Glys Meadowsweet, examining a blade of grass as if it had been an astonishing artifact of the past. The Birds for a marvel had actually obeyed him and waited in a fair semblance of order.
    Xanten looked up toward the heavens, kicked at the turf. He drew a deep breath and approached to Glys Meadowsweet. He noted that she had tucked a flower into her long loose hair.
    After a second or two she looked up and searched his face. “Why are you so angry?”
    Xanten slapped his thigh, seated himself beside her. “ ‘Angry’? No. I am out of my mind with frustration. Claghorn is as obstreperous as a sharp rock. He knows how Castle Hagedorn can be saved but he will not divulge his secret.”
    Glys Meadowsweet laughed—an easy merry sound, like nothing Xanten had ever heard at Castle Hagedorn. “Secret? When even I know it?”
    “It must be a secret,” said Xanten. “He will not tell me.”
    “Listen. If you fear the Birds will hear it, I will whisper.” She spoke a few words into his ear.
    Perhaps the sweet breath befuddled Xanten’s mind. But the explicit essence of the revelation failed to strike home into his consciousness. He made a sound of sour amusement. “No secret there. Only what the prehistoric Scythians termed ‘bathos’. Dishonor to the gentlemen! Do we dance with the