by Jack Vance
4. The Parloury:
The Parloury at Wysrod consists of three agencies, with their various bureaus: the Landmoote, representing the middle and lower castes; the Convention of Ilks; and the Five Servants. The grand structure on Travan Square is also known as ‘The Parloury’.
5. Penal system:
The penal system of Thaery proceeds by an archaic and highly complicated system. The injured, or first party, states his case before a magistrate, sometimes but not necessarily against the defence of the offending, or second, party. If the magistrate considers the case reasonable, a warrant is issued, and the first party may inflict the retribution in person; or he may hire one of several agencies to the same end.
The first party specifies the exact act he is penalizing and stipulates such punishment as he chooses. If the second party considers the punishment too severe, he takes the case before an arbitrator. If the arbitrator finds for the first party, the punishment may be increased or punitive costs levied. If he finds for the second party, an official agent visits the exact penalty upon the first party. Reasonable retributions are, therefore, encouraged. The second party may try to evade the penal officials, but he is forbidden to resist with violence, unless the penalty is death. For this reason penal officials never inflict death—although sometimes the effect is much the same.
6. For the information of tourists: Eisel Musicology.
That our tourists may maximally enjoy their visit to Eiselbar, we are pleased briefly to analyze the subject of music.
Let us begin with an attack upon the basic mystery: how can a succession of noises, no matter how pure the vibrations or how exact the harmonies, evoke emotional reactions within the soul of men? Noise, after all, has no intrinsic meaning.
We consider, then, two aspects of music: corporeal and natural analogues, and symbology. We notice immediately that musical tempi correspond to the range of bodily rhythms, most especially the heart-pulse. Musics progressing at tempi much faster or much slower than bodily rhythms are immediately felt to be unnatural and strained. Only on extraordinary occasions will very slow or very fast tempi accord with a human tempo. The dirge is a sublimation of slow moans of grief; the jig keeps pace with vigorous kicking and stamping of the feet.
Similarly, those musical timbres which have been proved to be most appealing and evocative are those reminiscent of organic processes: the human voice, bird songs, the lowing of cattle. By the same token, musical augmentations of tension and their release, as well as the resolution of chord progressions, find analogues in corporeal stresses and their relief, i.e. the weight of a toilsome load and its easing; constipation and discharge; dread of punishment and reprieve; thirst and the slaking of thirst; hunger and satiation; erotic yearning and fulfillment; flatulence and the relief of flatulence; hot discomfort and a plunge into cool water. Eisel musicologists have made exhaustive analyses in these directions, and are absolutely competent at producing the most effective timbres, crescendos and diminuendos upon their synthesizers. Eisel music is universal! And one need not be a witch doctor or a mad poet in order to derive the meanings. All persons, rich and poor, slow or quick, enjoy the same corporeal sensations.
Musical symbology is a more complex matter, involving cerebral and mnemonic processes.
The perception of musical symbols begins when an infant hears the tones of its mother’s lullaby.
Each culture is typified by its peculiar set of musical symbols; when you hear some person claim to understand or appreciate the music of a very alien culture, you may politely regard that person as either a dunce or a diddler.
However, when a general culture, such as that of the Gaean Reach, suffuses a local culture, there will be a mingling of symbologies, so that an ear of World A may to a limited degree interpret certain musics of World B. Eisel musicologists adeptly employ the Gaean symbology with a judicious enrichment of specifically local symbols. They have available a great battery of scales, chords, note sequences, and harmonic patterns, carefully filed, annotated and cross-indexed. With the principles cited above as theoretical foundation, they are able to elicit from their computative synthesizers the remarkable and useful range of Eisel music.
In ancient times (and even today in musically backward regions) folk blew into, or beat upon devices of wood, metal and fiber to elicit sounds of irregular and non-uniform quality. The music thus produced was (and is) necessarily impure and inexact, and never the same twice in succession, and therefore unsusceptible to rationalization, no matter how scholarly and experienced the analyst. Such practitioners were (and are) no more than posturing narcissists! They think of themselves as musical autocrats! Such ambitions have no place in an egalitarian society. Eisel musicologists are sternly schooled in theoretical principles. With their mighty computers, their versatile and responsive synthesizers, they formulate for the use of all people the range and scope of Eisel music.
Notes
1. The conventions of galactic direction are like those of a rotating planet. The direction of rotation is east, the opposite west. When the fingers of the right hand extend in the direction of rotation, the thumb points to the north and opposite is south. ‘Inward’ and ‘outward’ refer to motion toward or away from the center of the galaxy.
2. The Djans weave rugs of unexampled splendor and intricacy. Ten thousand knots per square inch is not unusual. The rugs are occasionally characterized as ‘one-life’, ‘two-life’, and so forth, to indicate the aggregate number of lifetimes invested in the creation of the rug.
3. See Glossary #1.
4. The Beneficial Service advises the Quadrates of the various Djan Territories and discreetly monitors Djan activities for signs of Pan-Djan agitation.
5. The seafarers of the Long Ocean assert sovereignty over offshore waters; they describe themselves as Nationals of the Sea Nation.
6. The Alien Influences Act forbids off-world traffic to and from Maske, and proscribes the return of emigrants.
7. Long Ocean tides, controlled by the mass of Skay, average forty feet between high and low. Graband Claw, reaching across the Long Ocean, creates a mirror which deflects the tidal wave through the Happy Isles, where the cycle is dephased and confused. Around the world at the Throtto, the Morks perform a similar function. Except for these circumstances the tidal wave, sweeping around the world, might reach heights of two hundred feet.
8. The inns of Thaery are, by force of law, situated no more than seven miles apart, for the convenience of those who walk the countryside. Their facilities are uniformly pleasant, clean and comfortable, partly through the diligence of the Bureau of Trade inspectors.
9. The mild and placid Djan, if kept in solitude, is apt to erupt in berserk fury upon trivial provocation. If thereafter he escapes to the wilderness he becomes a cunning and sadistic beast—a ‘slane’—committing atrocity after atrocity until he is destroyed.
10. See Glossary #2.
11. Culbrass: personal emblems, ornaments, tablets and other insignia of ilk or caste.
12. Honorifics are impossible to translate succinctly. The text provides what are at best more or less awkward approximations.
13. See Glossary #4.
14. This rite and its implications originally differentiated the Twelve Regular ships from the Irregular Thirteenth. The Unspeakable Fourteenth—the so-called Irredemptibles—differed even more fundamentally. The descendants of the Fourteenth, mingled through some freakish process with homo mora, comprise the Waels of Wellas.
15. Dath: a tall hat, in the shape of a truncated cone, from six inches to as much as twenty-four inches in height. The article, when worn by women, is often enlivened by flowers nested in the crown, or a spray of dyed eph-plumes, or a flurry of ribbons. The male dath is ordinarily unadorned, except, occasionally, for a trifle of silver culbrass.
16. The Marine Equalizer is that functionary who monitors National activity and in case of transgression commands the punitive measures.
17. Strochane: a mythical being with supernorma
l powers, whose commands no mortal men can disobey.
18. Loose translation of smaidair—i.e.: a person who has gained mana at the expense of another person, thus establishing a psychic disequilibrium. The imbalance is often mutually recognized and a voluntary reparation made. In other cases the balance is forcibly restored, and is barely distinguishable from ‘revenge’, though the distinction is very real.
19. See Glossary #3.
20. When Skay eclipses Mora, the Djans become disturbed and sometimes perform unconventional or even irrational acts. The Binadaries—i.e., those Djans of Maske and Saidanese of Skay who intend the expulsion of the Thariots—often perform aggressive acts during the dark of Skay.
21. Quat: a flat four-cornered hat, sometimes no more than a square of heavy fabric, occasionally weighted at the corners with small globes of pyrite, chalcedony, cinnabar or silver.
22. See Glossary #5.
23. The masculine Eisel headgear: a rimless hat of pleated cloth, ordinarily worn at a jaunty angle.
24. The light of Bhutra being intense, the Eisels live under shades and screens, often glass panels of monochromatic quality. Over the centuries they have developed a sensitivity to combinations—chords, so to speak—of monochromatic light. The discriminating Eisel can perceive visual combinations much as a trained musical ear is sensitive to the components of chords.
25. A limping and inadequate translation of the term chotz: that music with which an Eisel surrounds himself, to project his mood, or to present an ideal version of his personality. It is interesting to note that the Eisels are uninterested in the composition or rendition of music; they rarely sing or whistle, although occasionally they jerk their fingers or tap their feet in reflex reaction to the rhythm. The ability to play a musical instrument is so rare as to be considered a freakish eccentricity. The ‘personal music’ is produced by an ingenious mechanism programmed, not by musicians, but by musicologists.
26. Husler: honorific appellative, applied to all persons. Eisel society lacks formal caste distinctions, status being essentially a function of wealth.
27. See Glossary #6.
28. Shdavi: a tower supporting a residential globe high in the air, the construction resembling (and perhaps patterned upon) the stem and spore-pod of the indigenous myrophode.
29. The word among its cluster of meanings includes power, grandeur, disinclination to receive rebuffs gracefully.
30. An idiom signifying urgency and enjoining the person addressed to accurate disclosure.
31. The responsive idiom, signalizing the service about to be rendered, and including it into the balance of obligations existing between the two.
32. Close-fitting casque or bonnet, of leather or felt, with a pointed crown and earflaps, an article worn by Glint mountaineers
33. The usually mild Djan, when isolated from his fellows, is apt to become a rogue. When solitary Djan are recruited as perrupters, they are required to wear masks, to prevent them from establishing normal social relationships with their fellows, to the detriment of their fighting qualities.
34. A loose rendering of the word ankhe: futility, depression, discouragement.