THE DRAMATURGES OF YAN

by John Brunner

  “Cancel this call,” Dr Lem said. The screen obediently blanked. He let the ‘net extension drift away from him with a lax hand and turned to look at his companions.

  None of them spoke.

  “I propose,” Dr Lem said finally, “that we file petition with the government of Earth as a responsible pressure-group—what’s the word? Ah! A lobby! To have Chart removed from Yan, if necessary by force. Something has got to be done to stop him re-creating the Mutine Age!”

  XIV

  “So now I have my first chance to see this famous Mutine Flash,” Chart murmured, bringing the high-speed floater to a hover. Marc had not ridden in one of these for years, and never in such an advanced model: totally soundless, not betraying by the least quiver or vibration that it was moving. No doubt this too was among the payment Chart had exacted from Tubalcain.

  The sun was just starting to tint the crystal shafts of the Mandala now. Chart had timed their arrival perfectly.

  “Have you planted your detector?” Marc asked.

  “Oh, yes.” Chart squinted sidewise at the haloed sun. “But don’t expect quick results, will you? It may take a score, perhaps a hundred superposed recordings before the signal can be extracted from the noise. That blur of dust around the sun must muddle the spectrum terribly.”

  “Here it comes!” Morag said from the rear seat of the vehicle.

  Down the translucent pillars a kind of fire suddenly washed: the sum and epitome of everything men had ever admired in a well-cut jewel. Pure colours shone out like the boom of a bell, were thrust aside by others in bands, in stripes, in swirling curves. Pearly iridescence overlaid one upon another, and then they dissolved together into new hues, while the light behind them grew unbearably brilliant. Yet they could not tear their eyes away. For Marc—doubtless also for Morag—there were hurtful memories being awoken; no modern man or woman could enjoy remembering that he or she had gone insane.

  Tantalisingly, a hint of meaning, of significance, rode the waves of colour, as though one were to chance on a worn rock half-buried in the ground and discern that there had once been an inscription on it, but in an alphabet whose last user was dead a thousand years.

  A brief incredible dazzling tumult of visual glory—and it was over. The sun was past the zenith.

  Chart exhaled loudly. Marc suspected he had held his breath throughout the thirty-six seconds of the Flash. Now he said in a tone of awe, “So much! And in so short a time! Why, it makes my little tricks with the aurora look like a—a baby’s finger-painting!”

  “You said it,” Morag murmured. “I don’t think you believed me really, did you? Until now!”

  “I…” Chart sat back in his control-chair. “I guess I didn’t. And these Yanfolk don’t even bother to come and watch that?”

  “I’ve never known any adult to come and watch it,” Marc confirmed.

  “Fantastic!” Seeming almost dazed, Chart shook his head. “You know I create sensory nuclei to assist my performances, don’t you? Objects—constructs—which radiate various signals, heighten mood, predispose the public to the response I want… But I never contrived anything as spectacular as that!”

  There was a short silence. Eventually he rubbed his eyes and took the floater’s controls again. “Where next? Oh, yes. These things they call the Gladen Menhirs.”

  So: a complete survey of the relics. The Gladen Menhirs marching in a perfect line around the entire planet, on land and under water; at intervals of precisely thirty-two point four kilometres: identical masses of synthetic stone, each sixty-seven metres high by fourteen square, with rounded corners. The Mullom Wat, rising from the Ocean of Scand, humming gently as the wind played across its open top. A vast empty volume cut into a monstrous rock, a kind of granite, with benches inside on which ten thousand Yanfolk might have sat in comfort, facing a blank wall. A spiral maze, like a seashell cut through the middle, leading in towards a central circle… and then out again. Going nowhere.

  And onwards… It took a day and a night and a day to visit all the most important relics in the northern hemisphere alone; they ate while flying and slept during the traverse of the ocean, automatically woken twice in order to circle down over mysterious little isolated objects poking out of the water, not as remarkable as the Mullom Wat but equally enigmatic.

  And, at each halt, Chart revealed how thoroughly he had studied Yan before setting course for it. As an appendix to his translation of the Epics, Marc had included a list of tentative identifications of these relics with items referred to in the poem. Some were not at all hard to recognise; the Mutine Mandala appeared so many times that there was no room for argument, and the Mullom Wat and a few others were almost as unmistakable. Where problems began to arise was when there was a chance that the original relic mentioned in the text no longer survived—had been located in Kralgak, perhaps, and smashed by the rain of meteorites.

  But Chart kept saying, after he had inspected a certain object, “Could that be the monument described in Book Six, where they’re turning the forest back through time?” Or else: “That reminds me of the passage near the beginning of Book Two where the dramaturges meet in council on a high headland.”

  Marc sat there, marvelling, and doing his best to confirm or deny these enlightened guesses. Time and again Chart seemed to spot, instantly, something he himself had overlooked. With every passing minute he found himself becoming more impressed.

  And then, eventually, Chart said, “Right! Now for the southern hemisphere.”

  Marc stared at him for a long moment. He said at last, “In—in this thing? You mean straight across Kralgak?”

  “Why not? I want to see the southern relics, too. And of course I must take a look at the wilders.”

  “But…!” Marc’s objection died on his lips as he glanced around the interior of the floater. Yes, a late-model Tubalcain floater probably could traverse Kralgak unharmed.

  “Worried about the meteorites?” Morag murmured. “No need! You don’t think I’d let Gregory risk his life, do you? Or mine! It’s rather precious to me.”

  “Uh… Yes, of course. I guess I’ve been conditioned by associating with the Yanfolk. For them, of course, the mere idea of crossing Kralgak is unthinkable.”

  “I expect it to be quite an impressive trip,” Chart said. “But nothing short of a twenty-ton rock could even displace this floater from its course. We’ll cross the ocean, though, rather than Kralgak proper. According to my sources, the densest concentration of wilders is to be found along the nearer shore of the southern continent, and from here we can fly a Great Circle course direct to where they live.”

  Despite his best intentions, when Marc saw the white foam on the deep blue water ahead, marking the limit of the zone where the meteorites pelted continually down, he had to brace himself, and his knuckles grew white on the arms of his seat. But Chart betrayed no tension—only a hint of excitement. Now and then he lifted an eyebrow to comment on an especially large splash. The whole sky, as they drew closer, seemed to be threaded with irregular streaks of fire, and there was a faint jar and Marc glanced up in alarm to find that a pebble had smashed on the transparent canopy of the floater. And there beyond was the daylight shimmer of the Ring, just visible through the blue blur of the sky: a faint, faint white band—

  Another pebble struck, and he winced. He heard Morag chuckle. Annoyed with himself, he turned his gaze downward, and there saw the water roiling and churning, exactly as though a fast current were pouring it over rapids.

  But it was at its deepest here. The rocks nearest the surface must be a good hundred metres down.

  “Magnificent,” Chart said. “Absolutely magnificent.”

  And… Yes, in a way it is. Marc had to concede that. Not that it was compensation for losing half a planet.

  “There!” Chart exclaimed suddenly, and threw up his arm towards the zenith. A vast lump of rock, weighing tons, was blasting downward to the right of their course, leaving a blinding stripe of white across the air.
When it struck the water, there was a colossal explosion, and a fountain of steam shot hundreds of metres into the air. Wind caught the spray, and for a brief instant the canopy of the floater was smeared with wet, before the automatic cleansing mechanism restored it to perfect transparency.

  “I wish I could get some really clear conception of the Yanfolk as they were in their great period,” Chart muttered. “I have this fairly accurate picture of the dramaturges, I think, but it’s the survivors I’m puzzled by. Marc!”

  “Yes?”

  “Marc, you know humans. Imagine some great disaster overtaking mankind back on Earth, before the go-board. Imagine—oh, say a war! You do know what a war is?”

  “Yes.”

  “Or any other kind of major disaster which overwhelmed the contemporary version of civilisation. Could you believe in mankind being so disheartened that they abandoned all hope of reconstruction?”

  “I—I guess I could,” Marc said. “But only if they were reduced to savagery, like the wilders.”

  “Yes, exactly. These wilders we’re going to look at are typical of what might have happened to mankind, although even in that case I’d have expected them to begin again after a few centuries, not remain in apathetic barbarism for ten thousand years.” The rain of fire continued on all sides, the ocean below seethed and surged, but he was no longer looking at it. “The civilised Yanfolk, though! Incredible! Relinquishing the—the cream of their achievements, as it were, and apparently being content with mere existence from that day forward.”

  “Not altogether content,” Morag said from the rear.

  “You mean these apes?” Chart said over his shoulder. “I know. There is discontent, that’s plain enough. But it took contact with mankind to spark it, and what’s a century compared to the previous nine and a half millennia? It’s almost as though the dramaturges were a different species, isn’t it? The spearhead of the race, as you might say. A small group in which all initiative, originality, inventiveness had been concentrated, and when they disappeared…” A gesture like spilling sand from his palm. “Yet they were the same species, weren’t they?”

  “I don’t know that anyone has ever suggested they were not,” Marc said.

  “And the wilders?”

  “I’ve never seen any myself,” Marc admitted. “But there are recordings you can dial from the informat. Physically they’re identical with the rest of the Yanfolk, except that they’re sometimes stunted, or diseased.”

  “I see,” Chart nodded. “Ah! Clearer water ahead. We must be through the meteorite zone.”

  Another pebble smashed on the canopy. But it made no more impression than the others. The floater continued unperturbed on its course.

  They found a tribe of wilders within less than half an hour of encountering the coast of the southern continent. Chart had put the floater into the anti-see mode, and it was neither visible nor audible as it drifted gently down along the reddish sandy shore. There were about twenty or twenty-five in the tribe they discovered: all naked, except for garlands of leaves around their necks and waists, and about equally divided between men and women. They had two children with them, but these were both very young and being carried.

  They were hunting for buried sand-worms, using sharpened sticks or their toes to rout the creatures out of their burrows. The moment they discovered them, they ate them. Only two of them carried them away from the spot where they were located; both these were men, who ran to the women carrying the children and handed over about half their spoils.

  “Fathers?” Chart inquired.

  “Not likely,” Marc decided when he had thought about it for a moment. “I seem to recall something about this in the informat recordings. They take turns in providing for the children. It’s a kind of rudimentary version of the northern pattern. You know that newborn children are dispatched in a special container called a kortch to a relative in another city, and may not see their natural parents again until they’re five or six years old?”

  “Of course. I studied up on Yannish familial relationships.” Chart was peering down with concentration at the wilders. “Yes, they do look physically very much like the northerners. Let’s see if we can hear them talking, shall we?”

  He flipped a control. Marc could not see anything happening; he asked what it was for.

  “I’ve sent out an anti-see monitor,” Chart said. “And by the sound of it, there’s not much talking going on, is there? Here!” He turned a knob, and there was a sudden soft sound in the cabin, the splash of wavelets on the beach, modified now and then by the brushing of feet among the low-lying liminal vegetation.

  “And they have no weapons,” he mused. “And only tools for crude jobs like digging. Correct?”

  Marc nodded.

  “I think they’ll do fine,” Chart declared suddenly. “But we’ll have to make doubly certain, of course. Let’s pick up that one who’s wandered out of sight of the rest.” He pointed with one hand to a male who had gone behind a large boulder, and with the other hand tapped a pattern of instructions on the control-board.

  The man rose abruptly into the air, seeming to yell, and vanished.

  “What are you doing?” Marc demanded.

  “Just studying him, seeing if he’s suitable,” Chart answered absently. “Hmm! Yes, physically in fair shape—a bit undernourished, but that could be rectified… Oh, yes! These wilders will do very well, if he’s a typical specimen.”

  “Do very well—for what?” Marc said slowly. A cold, unpleasant suspicion was burgeoning at the back of his mind.

  “To be pithed and programmed, of course,” Chart sighed. “I don’t have facilities to make up Yannish androids, do I? It’d be hell’s own job arranging for that, and expensive, too. But we’ve got to have programmed actors available, to take the dramaturge roles when the performance gets under way.”

  “Now let me get this straight.” Marc bit his lip. “You’re proposing to pith these wilders? To—to decorticate them?”

  “I just told you!” Chart snapped. “We shall have to have programmed actors!”

  There was a dead silence, apart from the clicking of the instruments which were continuing to analyse the bodily condition of the captive.

  “Take me back to Prell,” Marc said at last.

  Chart stared at him.

  “I said take me back to Prell,” he repeated. “I won’t have anything whatever to do with this!” He clenched his fists.

  “Marc, be reasonable!” Morag said, sitting forward.

  “You heard me!” Marc roared. “Come on! Put that poor devil back on the ground, and take me home!”

  XV

  What are we—supplicants?

  Walking stiffly at the head of the little delegation, self-appointed, on the way to visit Speaker Kaydad, Dr Lem found the question recurring and recurring in his mind. At his side Hector Ducci marched with determined, heavy steps; the Shigarakus, Harriet and Pedro brought up the rear. One last hope remained, they agreed, before they turned to Earth for assistance which was unlikely to be forthcoming. An appeal to Chart was certain to fail; an appeal to Chevsky was absurd, because he had already convinced himself that to have Chart perform on Yan while he was warden of the enclave would make him famous, perhaps lead to him being transferred to a major post on another planet.

  But an appeal to the Yanfolk might—just might…

  “We’re almost there, aren’t we?” Toshi said from behind him. He nodded. They had passed the tenuous border between the human and the Yannish zones of Prell about five minutes ago. Now they were surrounded not by the cuboidal, dogmatic shapes of human architecture, but by the almost egg-like forms of Yannish homes, their flat open roofs hidden by curved upper walls, their exterior almost featureless because the focus of their layout was inward, centred on the atrium and the pool, or the flowerbeds, or the carvings, or whatever other items the owners had selected as particularly to their taste.

  “Where is everybody?” Ducci muttered. “I never saw the streets
so empty before!”

  “Can’t you smell?” Harriet answered. “They’re making sheyashrim.” She sniffed exaggeratedly.

  “What?” Ducci copied her. “Why—why, yes! I hadn’t noticed before, but I guess that’s the third or fourth house we’ve passed where I could smell it.”

  “More like thirtieth or fortieth,” Jack Shigaraku said sourly, quickening his stride for a moment and coming up alongside Ducci and Dr Lem. “They must be brewing it by the barrelful.”

  There was silence among them for a moment as they all thought of that potent drug being prepared in such colossal quantities. Ordinarily, it was only required for the day following a birth, when—as though by an impulse from the collective racial subconscious of the Yanfolk—it was drunk ceremoniously among groups of responsible adults, who thereupon lapsed into wild animal dancing and ultimately into a rioting mass of crushed-together bodies.

  “Is this something to do with Chart’s plan?” Toshi asked when they had gone another few paces. Her husband shook his head.

  “I’ve no idea. Yigael?”

  Dr Lem sighed. “According to Marc’s translation of the Mutine Epics, the sheyashrim drug was developed by the dramaturges just prior to their great undertaking. But I’m afraid I’ve never read the Epics in the original. I can only take his word for it.”

  “That bastard!” Toshi said with venom. “Obsessed, that’s what he is! Throwing his lot in with Chart, the way he has—doesn’t he realise what he’s helping to bring about?”

  Dr Lem gave her a sidelong glare. He said, “Marc has never been kindly treated by the people of the enclave, has he? And you and Jack have been among those who treated him worst.”

  “Now just a moment—” Jack began.

  “I mean it!” With uncharacteristic force Dr Lem tilted his head back and stared the tutor in the eyes. “I know you prize human culture, I know you’re angry because he seemed to prefer Yannish company to that of his own kind. But he committed himself to his chosen course for a purpose. And before this is all over, I predict we’re going to be grateful for his comprehension of Yannish. Let’s face it! Without his translation of the Mutine Epics, what else would we have to tell us what’s likely to happen?”