by John Brunner
“Where are the indices of a culture? In its museums? Never! They are in the nursery-rhymes the children are babbling, the culture-heroes they are taught to emulate, the slang phrases, the jokes which abstract the attitudes of the society into a quintessential distillate like—like the contents of a medical syringe!”
Marc spared a second to look at Morag. She was sitting statue-still, yet poised as though she would nod at any moment, expressing her vigorous agreement.
“And they’re in the ideals the members of that culture set for themselves, in the habits people have, in the tastes they show, in the preferences no matter how petty which they display.
“Now, since the advent of the go-board, we are at liberty to roam from one to another of—how many is it? Almost a hundred planets! Ninety-one, I think, last time I checked.” Chart gave a harsh laugh. “Culture? On a world where the first arrivals did no more than break ground, build a few huts and general public services, and wandered on because they hated the settlers, the people looking for a permanent home who followed them from a dozen separate worlds and kept treading on their toes? That’s what I take care of. I make cultures. Or, at least, I remake them. I dramatise them. I make them vivid, comprehensible, direct to their inhabitants. Sometimes I’ve worked with ancient traditions, on Earth. They hired me twice in North America, and three times in Europe, and once each in Asia, Africa, Australia. Then they wanted me for South America, and I decided not to accept. I moved on—to Cinula, Hyrax, Groseille, Logres, Pe t’Shwé! And in each place I analysed, studied, deduced, selected, taking those jokes, those nursery-rhymes, those garbled folk-memories, those tales and ballads and epigrams and—and symbols which form the shared experience of tens of millions of people. Is there a human culture in this galaxy? If there is, then I built it.”
Marc’s throat was dry and his palms were prickly with sweat. He could not have challenged that proud assertion if his life had hung on doing so.
“You see? I am now one hundred and forty-five years old. I have performed at least once for every human world. The last, and greatest, of my human challenges came on Tubalcain, where they paid me—in part—by building this ship. To make a human culture on a world which is so completely ruled by machines that there is literally nothing except a child which is manufactured without intervention of those machines, not even air, not even drinking-water, not even food… And I did it. Not with this ship, either. With my old one, which I had used for half a century. And with my own brain.”
He put his palms on his temples, fingers outstretched so that they looked like horns rising from his skull.
“What—what did they receive on Tubalcain?” Marc whispered.
“The sense of belonging to a human society,” Chart said. “What else? I did what I always do—I dramatised. Have you woken in the morning to…? Oh! I don’t know who your heroes are! But to a hero, who greeted you and enlisted you in the venture which made him that hero! To the company of conquerors who gave your planet to you, who welcomed you as one of their number and let you contribute to their great famous victory! Once, in Asia, I gave that sense of participation, in a single month, to a hundred and eighty-eight million people! But then, of course”—his voice fell to a conversational level—“Earth is so unbelievably rich.”
Morag smiled and leaned back in her chair, as though she had been worried about Chart’s ability to summarise his work adequately, but was now well satisfied with his explanation.
“Ten thousand years from now,” Chart said, “they will recognise me as the binding force in human space colonisation. It would have been a good point at which to stop. Unfortunately I am still healthy and active and have no desire to stop. Had it not been for falling in with Morag, I might have lapsed into suicidal despair. But she did seek me out and suggest to me… Yan.”
He folded his hands comfortably on his lap. “They tell me that without being human the Yanfolk are amazingly close to us Earthsiders. Splendid. They have a culture which is rocking under the gentle, barely noticeable impact of the little human enclave here. Do they require it to be bolstered, re-dramatised for its members after so many millennia during which their nourishment has been no more than folklore, ancient legends, thin and watery fare? Well, do they? I was about to ask the ship, a short time ago, precisely that question. It must by now have completed the analysis of the conversation it recorded during the visit by the Yannish delegation.”
Marc tensed. From the air, the same voice he had heard when Morag brought him on board said, “Analysis confirms the tentative prediction. Aware that their culture is vulnerable to the superior material achievements of mankind, the hrath in-group of the Yanfolk have been desperately hunting for means to re-actualise the great days of the past and thereby counter the so-called ‘aping’ of human behaviour by the younger generation. Having totally failed despite their best efforts, they are now prepared to adopt any means which comes to hand. Their fullest assistance will be forthcoming.”
“Might I also hope,” Chart said when that had sunk in, “for the assistance of the greatest living translator of Yannish poetry? I think I shall need it; machines—as I learned the hard way on Tubalcain—leave a great deal to be desired.”
Marc sat rigid for long moments, his brain whirling. On the one hand, the risk of deranging Yannish society, so stable for so long, by applying human bias to its cherished ancient dreams; on the other, the tempting prospect of being associated with the first ever of Chart’s performances to be built around an alien tradition.
And if Chart is right, and he really knows how to recover the key which will turn the Mutine Epics into a technical manual…
He said suddenly, not quite having taken the decision, “Yes, of course!”
XIII
“A—a message, Warden,” Erik Svitra said nervously as he crossed the living-area of the Chevsky home. Somehow, since the moment when the warden spotted him and swept him up in his wake, returning to the enclave from the spot where Chart’s ship rested, he seemed to have become—well—involved. There was an old-fashioned aura of politicking which informed this house; people came and went all day, and its owner sat holding court among them. Erik had conceived the blasphemous notion that a man bearing the only official, Earth-granted title in the enclave ought to get out and around a bit more, ought to feel the pulse of his community more directly. But he was a stranger, and on this alien-dominated world perhaps things operated differently.
Interrupting his conversation with the Dellian Smiths, Chevsky said, “What message? What about?”
“It’s printed for you only,” Erik said, and held out the small autosealed capsule which the communet had just delivered. That was a facility rare on more advanced worlds; he had wondered ever since his first day on Yan just what the purpose was of according such elaborate facilities to such a small and relatively poor community of humans.
“Excuse me,” Chevsky muttered, and thumbed the capsule. It hesitated a fraction of a second before identifying him, then split with a pop and unreeled its contents. He scanned them.
“Well, I’ll be… The bitch! The bitch!”
The Smiths stared at him, and Erik, and the other people in the room: nine of them. Erik had learned some of their names, but ever since that encounter with the gifmak drug his memory had had lacunae in it.
“Sid!” Chevsky said with magnificent disgust. “Hell, it’s a plot, that’s what it is! They’re out to get me!”
“Who?” demanded Smith’s wife, Rachel.
“Lem—and Pokorod—and Ducci—and the rest of that self-appointed gang of self-important bastards!” Chevsky rolled the message and capsule into a ball and hurled it at a disposer. “Know what they’ve done now?”
Heads shook on all sides of him.
“Sid’s gone. Took a go-board route this morning and went without even talking to me!” Huge exaggerated tears formed in Chevsky’s eyes, and Rachel handed him tissues to wipe them.
“She wasn’t much!” he forced out through sudd
en sobs. “But she was a wife for me, and a man needs a wife!”
Heads nodded, just as they had shaken.
“Without even saying goodbye!” Chevsky burbled.
I wonder how she swung that deal, Erik thought. I guess she must have had private credit stacked up. He’d insist on controlling their joint account. Lucky bitch! I wish I could afford a go-board route!
“That settles it, then!” Chevsky roared. “We call a town’s meeting on this! Put in a majority petition to Earth, get rid of those pompous bastards! I mean we want to see Chart perform here, right?”
“Right!”—in a chorus.
“Even if it’s a performance based on the—the native traditions, not ours!” Chevsky put out his hand and someone thrust a full glass into it, some sort of beer. Erik had sampled it and found it sour.
He was fairly certain he knew who had fed Chevsky that line. Rachel Smith was possessed of a certain naïve subtlety—if that were possible—and knew how to sugar unpalatable facts. He detected her influence in the next remarks, as well.
“After all, perhaps the great skill of this famous artist Gregory Chart will help us to understand our native neighbours better, ease our adjustment of life-patterns!”
Not that the notion registered well with everyone…
“In any case, though,” Chevsky pursued relentlessly, “we’ve been fortunate in that Erik over there not only helped me—uh—save my face when my bitch of a wife wanted to screw me up…”
Pause. Several grins aimed at Erik, who stood there hating it but trying, from politeness, to grin back.
“But also tipped off a news-machine which had heard about Chart—and dashed for the go-board—and went into TE mode before Ducci and that meddling son of his could stop it.” Chevsky leaned back expansively, stretching his arms and legs. “Thanks to which… I guess I didn’t tell you before, but I just made some inquiries through the informat, and that news-machine was registered on Earth. So we can rely on the news about Chart having spread throughout the inhabited galaxy.”
Pause. To let the statement sink in.
“Which means that we are going to be put well and truly on the map. According to the informat, wherever Chart goes a gang of wealthy tourists from Cinula, Ilium, Groseille, and even Earth go too, in order to catch his latest masterwork. The first time he hits an alien-type culture, they expect to like double the mass interest he regularly gets, Here’s the biggest commercial proposition ever on Yan, isn’t it?”
“I don’t see Pedro Phillips here,” said a voice from the corner of the room furthest from Erik. The speaker was someone Erik didn’t really know, had only heard the name of, a certain Boris Dooley who had apparently wandered off the board a few years ago and stopped over longer than he meant to. He worked at reclamation and purification along with the Smiths.
Chevsky favoured him with a scowl. “Meaning—?” he invited, his voice taking on a dangerous purr.
“Meaning Pedro’s the merchant of the enclave,” Boris said. “Meaning if there were real commercial interest in the matter he’d be on our side. I want to know why Doc Lem, and Doc Pokorod, and the rest, are scared by Chart.”
There was a short hostile silence. Erik said suddenly, not having intended to speak up, “I…”
All eyes fixed on him. He licked his lips.
“Well!” he said obstinately. “I mean I know I just dropped in here the other day. I mean I don’t have too much say in this matter. But I have been around—like I made it over thirty worlds already, in my professional capacity—and I do get this bad feeling about Chart, who’s an Earthsider, taking on this big ancient Yannish scene. I mean, like, there are things out there we couldn’t duplicate, right? I mean there are some of these Yan people who don’t like humans. I mean…”
He spread his plump brown hands helplessly. “I mean I can feel like something bad,” he concluded. “Last place I want to be when Chart cuts loose is right on the same planet. And that’s my carefully considered opinion.”
He could tell, just by looking, he had touched a sore spot in the minds of several of the people in the room. But Chevsky said bluffly, “Now look here, Erik, feller! You only just got here, you said so yourself! You leave the worrying to us, hm? You just enjoy your first stopover on Yan—or get back on the go-board if you don’t like it. Leave the worrying to us old hands. We know what to do about all this!”
“Sorry,” Erik muttered, and moved to take a chair in an obscure corner.
“Right!” Chevsky went on. “We were talking about calling a town’s meeting, weren’t we? Anyone here feel it’s not necessary?”
No one.
“Good, then we can push ahead. I guess it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that we have right now and right here in this room an influential cross-section of the humans on Yan, and if we play our cards right we should be able to swing the meeting around to…”
Erik stopped listening. He was calculating whether his surviving credit would stake him to a go-board course for another world. Not necessarily a world where he could hope for good pickings in his trade—just somewhere other than Yan.
He could feel his spine crawl every time anyone mentioned Chart performing for these here alien natives. He had long ago acquired a healthy respect for the prickly premonitions he now and then experienced. The way he saw it, the best viewpoint during a Chart performance was from any other world bar the one where he was currently in business.
Of course, it would be a shame to leave Yan without having tried out this reputed sexual compatibility bit. But…!
Great artist! What does that not excuse? Hell! Like novaing a sun to study the effect of a sudden rise in temperature on the culture of its habitable planet!
At approximately the same moment:
“Is there any means whereby we can constitute ourselves a legal entity?” worried Pedro Phillips. As a merchant, he was involved in interstellar trade, and owing to the risk of spreading disease, or unstabling precarious local economies, there were many many regulations he had to take into account. It followed that he would be the one preoccupied by legalisms.
It seemed equally fitting that Ducci should be the one to snort, and to say with force, “Legal? Legal precedents don’t happen until the first time—and what we have here is a first time, isn’t it?”
Around him, in comfortable chairs on Dr Lem’s verandah overlooking his famous i hedge, precisely that group which he had long thought of as “responsible” in the enclave—whether or not they had authority—exchanged sober looks and nods. At her master’s feet, Pompy uttered a sigh. Like all chubbles she was sensitive to the mood of those around her owing to the vast olfactory zones on her back, and she was beginning to get annoyed with the continual crises she could detect through the stench of tension which assailed her. Last night, Dr Lem recalled, she had had a nightmare. That was the first since their arrival on Yan. She had clawed and scrabbled into bits a valuable Yannish rug.
This egocentric bastard Chart! Stirring us around like a pot of stew!
He said, hoping to introduce a calmer note, “Let’s review what we so far know. Let’s—”
“What is there to reconsider?” interrupted the normally calm Jack Shigaraku. He hunched forward on his chair. “We know Chart has received a favourable response, not only from the young apes, but from the conservative older Yanfolk. We know he’s enlisted the help of Marc Simon, and whether or not one approves of his behaviour”—letting it be implied that he didn’t, which was not surprising, because like all tutors on foreign worlds he had an acute sense of the continuity of Earthsider culture and wanted it to be preserved—“one must compute with the fact that he has the greatest understanding of Yannish of any living human. He’s turned his coat, so to speak. He’s…”
He cancelled the conclusion of the sentence, and sat back. But it was clear, Dr Lem realised, that everyone knew what he had been going to say.
“If only it hadn’t been Morag Feng who lured Chart here!” Jack’s wife Toshi
mourned.
“But it was,” Pedro snapped. “And we’re stuck with the fact!” Having seized their attention, he continued: “As to making ourselves a legal entity, I’ve been consulting the informat and—”
The communet sounded. Dr Lem turned in his chair with a muttered apology, and as he reached for the floating extension which served the verandah heard Pedro doggedly ploughing on: “And I find that we, as a quorum of the total human population, have the right to declare ourselves a political entity. A—hell, what’s the word? Oh, yes, a party! What we have to do now is this. When the next town’s meeting is called…”
He suddenly grew aware that no one was listening to him. Everybody else had turned to stare at Dr Lem, and at the miniature communet screen which had drifted towards his chair. The image on it was poor, and the sound was almost as bad as it squawked and blasted from the speaker. But the characteristics were unmistakable.
“That’s an interstellar call!” Toshi said in a tone of awe, and added unnecessarily, “Shhh!”
From the screen the shifting, blurred, but occasionally identifiable image of a plump but quite attractive woman with dark hair and bright pink cheeks was saying: “Dr Lem! One finds you in the directory for the enclave on Yan as its doyen, the only person listed except the warden who is currently not taking calls, so you’ll forgive me if—”
“Who are you?” Dr Lem interrupted, recovering from his surprise. “Where are you calling from? What do you want?”
“My name is Claudine Shah, and I’m calling from Earth,” the woman said. Everyone on the verandah tensed. A call from Earth! There could have been no more than half a dozen of those since the foundation of the enclave.
“And I represent a travel bureau which has long been considering the addition of a ringed world to its available itineraries. A news-machine that passed your way recently reported the presence of Groegory Chart on Yan, and obviously this would be an optimum chance to—”