The Languages of Pao

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The Languages of Pao Page 6

by Jack Vance


  Palafox presented himself, and the two sat down to a table with a carafe of peppery tea between them. Palafox confined himself to bland platitudes. He ignored the unpleasantness of their last meeting on Pao, and showed no interest in the reason for Bustamonte’s presence.

  At last Bustamonte hitched himself forward and spoke to the point. “The late Panarch Aiello at one time sought your aid. He acted, as I see now, with foresight and wisdom. Therefore I have come in secrecy to Breakness to arrange a new contract between us.”

  Palafox nodded, sipping his tea without comment.

  “The situation is this,” said Bustamonte. “The accursed Brumbos exact a monthly tribute from me. I pay without pleasure — nevertheless I make no great complaint, for it comes cheaper than maintaining arms against them.”

  “The worst loser appears to be Mercantil,” observed Palafox.

  “Exactly!” said Bustamonte. “Recently, however, an additional extortion occurred. I fear it to be the forerunner of many more similar.” Bustamonte described the visit of Cormoran Benbarth. “My treasury will be open to endless forays — I will become no more than a paymaster for all the bravos of Batmarsh. I refuse to submit to this ignoble subservience! I will free Pao: this is my mission! For this reason I come for counsel and strategic advice.”

  Palafox arranged his goblet of tea with a delicacy conveying an entire paragraph of meaning. “Advice is our only export. It is yours — at a price.”

  Bustamonte frowned. “And this price?” he asked, though he well knew.

  Palafox settled himself more comfortably in his chair. “As you know this is a world of men, and so has been since the founding of the Institute. But necessarily we persist, we sire offspring, we rear our sons — those whom we deem worthy of us. It is the lucky child who wins admission to Breakness Institute. For each of these, twenty depart the planet with their mothers, when the indenture expires.”

  “In short,” said Bustamonte crisply, “you want women.”

  Palafox nodded. “We want women — healthy young women of intelligence and beauty. This is the only commodity which we wizards of Breakness cannot fabricate — nor would we care to.”

  “What of your own daughters?” Bustamonte asked curiously. “Can you not breed daughters as easily as sons?”

  The words made no impression upon Palafox; it was almost as if he had not heard them. “Breakness is a world of men,” he said. “We are Wizards of the Institute.”

  Bustamonte sat in pensive consideration, unaware that to a man of Breakness, a daughter was scarcely more desirable than a two-headed Mongoloid. The Breakness dominie, like the classical ascetics, lived in the present, certain only of his own ego; the past was a record, the future an amorphous blot waiting for shape. He might lay plans for a hundred years ahead; for while the Breakness wizard paid lip-service to the inevitability of death, emotionally he rejected it, convinced that in the proliferation of sons he merged himself with the future.

  Bustamonte, ignorant of Breakness psychology, was only reinforced in the conviction that Palafox was slightly mad. Reluctantly he said, “We can arrive at a satisfactory contract. For your part, you must join us in crushing the Batch, and ensuring that never again …”

  Palafox, smiling, shook his head. “We are not warriors. We sell the workings of our minds, no more. How can we dare otherwise? Breakness is vulnerable. A single missile could destroy the Institute. You will contract with me alone. If Eban Buzbek arrived here tomorrow he could buy counsel from another wizard, and the two of us would pit our skills.”

  “Hmmph,” growled Bustamonte. “What guarantee have I that he will not do so?”

  “None whatever. The policy of the Institute is passionless neutrality — the individual wizards, however, may work where they desire, the better to augment their dormitories.”

  Bustamonte fretfully drummed his fingers. “What can you do for me, if you cannot protect me from the Brumbos?”

  Palafox meditated, eyelids half-closed, then said, “There are a number of methods to achieve the goal you desire. I can arrange the hire of mercenaries from Hallowmede, or Polensis, or Earth. Possibly I could stimulate a coalition of Batch clans against the Brumbos. We could so debase Paonese currency that the tribute became valueless.”

  Bustamonte frowned. “I prefer methods more forthright. I want you to supply us tools of war. Then we may defend ourselves, and so need be at no one’s mercy.”

  Palafox raised his crooked black eyebrows. “Strange to hear such dynamic proposals from a Paonese.”

  “Why not?” demanded Bustamonte. “We are not cowards.”

  A hint of impatience entered Palafox’s voice. “Ten thousand Brumbos overcome fifteen billion Paonese. Your people had weapons. But no one considered resistance. They acquiesced like grass-birds.”

  Bustamonte shook his head doggedly. “We are men like other men. All we need is training.”

  “Training will never supply the desire to fight.”

  Bustamonte scowled. “Then this desire must be supplied!”

  Palafox showed his teeth in a peculiar grin. He pulled himself erect in his chair. “At last we have touched the core of the matter.”

  Bustamonte glanced at him, puzzled by his sudden intensity.

  Palafox continued. “We must persuade the amenable Paonese to become fighters. How can we do this? Evidently they must change their basic nature. They must discard passivity and easy adjustment to hardship. They must learn truculence and pride and competitiveness. Do you agree?”

  Bustamonte hesitated. Palafox had outdistanced him, and seemed bent on a course other than he had envisioned. “You may be right.”

  “This is no overnight process, you understand. A change of basic psychology is a formidable process.”

  Bustamonte was touched by suspicion. There was strain in Palafox’s manner, an effort at casualness.

  “If you wish an effective fighting force,” said Palafox, “here is the only means to that end. There is no short-cut.”

  Bustamonte looked away, out over the Wind River. “You believe that this fighting force can be created?”

  “Certainly.”

  “And how much time might be required?”

  “Twenty years, more or less.”

  “Twenty years!”

  “We must begin with children, with babies.”

  Bustamonte was silent several minutes. “I must think this over.” He jumped to his feet, strode back and forth shaking his hands as if they were wet.

  Palafox said with a trace of asperity: “How can it be otherwise? If you want a fighting force you must first create fighting spirit. This is a cultural trait and cannot be inculcated overnight.”

  “Yes, yes,” muttered Bustamonte. “I see that you are right, but I must think.”

  “Think also on a second matter,” Palafox suggested. “Pao is vast and populous. There is scope not merely for an effective army, but also a vast industrial complex might be established. Why buy goods from Mercantil when you can produce them yourself?”

  “How can all this be done?”

  Palafox laughed. “That is where you must employ my special knowledge. I am Dominie of Comparative Culture at Breakness Institute.”

  “Nevertheless,” said Bustamonte obstinately, “I still must know how you propose to bring about these changes — never forgetting that Paonese resist change more adamantly than the advent of death.”

  “Exactly,” replied Palafox. “We must alter the mental framework of the Paonese people — a certain proportion of them, at least — which is most easily achieved by altering the language.”

  Bustamonte shook his head. “This process sounds indirect and precarious. I had hoped …”

  Palafox interrupted incisively. “Words are tools. Language is a pattern, and defines the way the word-tools are used.”

  Bustamonte was eyeing Palafox sidelong, his expression suggesting that he considered the dominie no more than an impractical academician. “How can this theory be appl
ied practically? Do you have a definite detailed plan?”

  Palafox inspected Bustamonte with scornful amusement. “For an affair of such magnitude? You expect miracles even a Breakness Wizard cannot perform. Perhaps you had best continue with the tribute to Eban Buzbek of Batmarsh.”

  Bustamonte was silent.

  “I command basic principles,” said Palafox presently. “I apply these abstractions to practical situations. This is the skeleton of the operation, which finally is fleshed over with detail.”

  Bustamonte still remained silent.

  “One point I will make,” said Palafox, “that such an operation can only be effectuated by a ruler of great power, one who will not be swayed by maudlin sentiment.”

  “I have that power,” said Bustamonte. “I am as ruthless as circumstances require.”

  “This is what must be done. One of the Paonese continents — or any appropriate area — will be designated. The people of this area will be persuaded to the use of a new language. That is the extent of the effort. Presently they will produce warriors in profusion.”

  Bustamonte frowned skeptically. “Why not undertake a program of education and training in arms? To change the language is going far afield.”

  “You have not grasped the essential point,” said Palafox. “Paonese is a passive, dispassionate language. It presents the world in two dimensions, without tension or contrast. A people speaking Paonese, theoretically, ought to be docile, passive, without strong personality development — in fact, exactly as the Paonese people are. The new language will be based on the contrast and comparison of strength, with a grammar simple and direct. To illustrate, consider the sentence, ‘The farmer chops down a tree.’* In the new language the sentence becomes: ‘The farmer overcomes the inertia of the axe; the axe breaks asunder the resistance of the tree.’ Or perhaps: ‘The farmer vanquishes the tree, using the weapon-instrument of the axe.’”

  * Literally rendered from the Paonese in which the two men spoke, the sentence was: ‘Farmer in state of exertion; axe agency; tree in state of subjection to attack.’ the italicized words denoting suffixes of condition.

  “Ah,” said Bustamonte appreciatively.

  “The syllabary will be rich in effort-producing gutturals and hard vowels. A number of key ideas will be synonymous; such as ‘pleasure’ and ‘overcoming a resistance’ — ‘relaxation’ and ‘shame’ — ‘out-worlder’ and ‘rival’. Even the clans of Batmarsh will seem mild compared to the future Paonese military.”

  “Yes, yes,” breathed Bustamonte. “I begin to understand.”

  “Another area might be set aside for the inculcation of another language,” said Palafox off-handedly. “In this instance, the grammar will be extravagantly complicated but altogether consistent and logical. The vocables would be discrete but joined and fitted by elaborate rules of accordance. What is the result? When a group of people, impregnated with these stimuli, are presented with supplies and facilities, industrial development is inevitable.

  “And should you plan to seek ex-planetary markets, a corps of salesmen and traders might be advisable. Theirs would be a symmetrical language with emphatic number-parsing, elaborate honorifics to teach hypocrisy, a vocabulary rich in homophones to facilitate ambiguity, a syntax of reflection, reinforcement and alternation to emphasize the analogous interchange of human affairs.

  “All these languages will make use of semantic assistance. To the military segment, a ‘successful man’ will be synonymous with ‘winner of a fierce contest’. To the industrialists, it will mean ‘efficient fabricator’. To the traders, it equates with ‘a person irresistibly persuasive’. Such influences will pervade each of the languages. Naturally they will not act with equal force upon each individual, but the mass action must be decisive.”

  “Marvellous!” cried Bustamonte, completely won over. “This is human engineering indeed!”

  Palafox went to the window and looked across Wind River. He was faintly smiling and his black eyes, usually so black and hard, were softly unfocused. For a moment his real age — twice Bustamonte’s and more — was apparent; but only for a moment, and when he swung about, his face was as emotionless as ever.

  “You understand that I merely talk at random — I formulate ideas, so to speak. Truly massive planning must be accomplished: the various languages must be synthesized, their vocabularies formulated. Instructors to teach the languages must be recruited. I can rely on my own sons. Another group must be organized, or perhaps derived from the first group: an elite corps of coordinators trained to fluency in each of the languages. This corps will ultimately become a managerial corporation, to assist your present civil service.”

  Bustamonte raised his eyebrows, blew out his cheeks. “Well … possibly. So far-reaching a function for this group seems unnecessary. Enough that we create a military force to smite Eban Buzbek and his bandits!”

  Bustamonte jumped to his feet, marched back and forth in excitement. He stopped short, looked slyly toward Palafox. “One further point we must discuss: what will be the fee for your services?”

  “Four brood of women a month,” said Palafox calmly, “of optimum intelligence and physique, between the ages of fourteen and twenty-four years, their time of indenture not to exceed fifteen years, their transportation back to Pao guaranteed, together with all substandard and female off-spring.”

  Bustamonte, with a knowing smile, shook his head. “Four brood — is this not excessive? Surely you cannot successfully breed sixty-four women a month?”

  Palafox darted him a burning glance. To question the genetic strength of a Breakness dominie was a prime solecism. Bustamonte, aware of his mistake, added hastily, “However, I will agree to this figure. In return you must return me my beloved nephew, Beran, so that he may make preparation for a useful career.”

  “As a visitor to the floor of the sea?”

  “We must take account of realities,” murmured Bustamonte.

  “I agree,” said Palafox in a flat voice. “They dictate that Beran Panasper, Panarch of Pao, complete his education on Breakness.”

  Bustamonte broke out into furious protest; Palafox responded tartly; there was contention, with Bustamonte erupting into rage. Palafox remained contemptuously calm, and Bustamonte at last acceded to his terms.

  The bargain was recorded upon film and the two parted, if not amicably, at least in common accord.

  Chapter X

  Winter on Breakness was a time of chill, of thin clouds flying down Wind River, of hail fine as sand hissing along the rock. The sun careened only briefly above the vast rock slab to the south, and for most of the day Breakness Institute was shrouded in murk.

  Five times the dismal season came and passed, and Beran Panasper acquired a basic Breakness education.

  The first two years Beran lived in the house of Palafox, and much of his energy was given to learning the language. His natural preconceptions regarding the function of speech were useless, for the language of Breakness was different from Paonese in many significant respects. Paonese was of that type known as ‘polysynthetic’, with root words taking on prefixes, affixes and post-positions to extend their meaning. The language of Breakness was basically ‘isolative’, but unique in that it derived entirely from the speaker: that is to say, the speaker was the frame of reference upon which the syntax depended, a system which made for both logical elegance and simplicity. Since Self was the implicit basis of expression, the pronoun ‘I’ was unnecessary. Other personal pronouns were likewise non-existent, except for third person constructions — although these actually were contractions of noun phrases.

  The language included no negativity; instead there were numerous polarities such as ‘go’ and ‘stay’. There was no passive voice — every verbal idea was self-contained: ‘to strike’, ‘to receive impact’. The language was rich in words for intellectual manipulation, but almost totally deficient in descriptives of various emotional states. Even if a Breakness dominie chose to break his solipsistic shell
and reveal his mood, he would be forced to the use of clumsy circumlocution.

  Such common Paonese concepts as ‘anger’, ‘joy’, ‘love’, ‘hate’, ‘grief’, were absent from the Breakness vocabulary. On the other hand, there were words to define a hundred different types of ratiocination, subtleties unknown to the Paonese — distinctions which baffled Beran so completely that at times his entire stasis, the solidity of his ego, seemed threatened. Week after week Fanchiel explained, illustrated, paraphrased; little by little Beran assimilated the unfamiliar mode of thought, and, simultaneously, the Breakness approach to existence.

  Then … one day Palafox summoned him and remarked that Beran’s knowledge of the language was adequate for study at the Institute; that he would immediately be enrolled for the basic regimen.

  Beran felt hollow and forlorn. The house of Palafox had provided a certain melancholy security; what would he find at the Institute?

  Palafox dismissed him, and half an hour later Fanchiel escorted him to the great rock-melt quadrangle, saw him enrolled and installed in a cubicle at the student dormitory. He then departed, and Beran henceforth saw nothing either of Fanchiel or of Palafox.

  So began a new phase of Beran’s existence on Breakness. All his previous education had been conducted by tutors; he had participated in none of the vast Paonese recitatives, wherein thousands of children chanted in unison all their learning — the youngest piping the numbers “Ai! Shrai! Vida! Mina! Nona! Drona! Hivan! Imple!”; the oldest the epic drones with which Paonese erudition concerned itself. For this reason Beran was not as puzzled by the customs of the Institute as he might have been.

  Each youth was recognized as an individual, as singular and remote as a star in space. He lived by himself, shared no officially recognized phase of his existence with any other student. When spontaneous conversations occurred, the object was to bring an original viewpoint, or novel sidelight, to the discussion at hand. The more unorthodox the idea, the more certain that it would at once be attacked. He who presented it must then defend his idea to the limits of logic, but not beyond. If successful he gained prestige; if routed, he was accordingly diminished.

 

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