The Languages of Pao

Chapter XI

Beran’s resolve to return to Pao was difficult to implement. He had neither funds to buy, nor authority to commandeer, transportation. He tried to beg passage for himself and the girl; he was rebuffed and ridiculed. At last frustrated, he sulked in his rooms, ignoring his studies, exchanging hardly a word with Gitan Netsko, who spent most of her time staring blankly along the windy chasm. Beran one time inquired what she found of interest in barren stone and windy haze, to which she replied that she saw none of it, nothing except the thoughts which passed before her eyes.

Three months passed. And one morning Gitan Netsko remarked that she thought herself pregnant.

Beran stared at her incredulously. Barely adolescent himself, he had never envisioned fathering a child. He took Gitan Netsko to the clinic, registered her for the pre-natal regimen. His appearance aroused surprise and amusement among the staff of the clinic.

“You bred the child without assistance? Come now, tell us: who is the actual father?”

“She is indentured to me,” Beran stated, indignant and angry. “I am the father!”

“Forgive our skepticism, but you appear hardly the age of virility.”

“The facts seem to contradict you,” Beran retorted.

“We shall see, we shall see.” They motioned to Gitan Netsko. “Into the laboratory with you.”

At the last moment the girl became afraid. “Please, I’d rather not.”

“It’s all part of our usual routine,” the reception clerk assured her. “Come, this way, if you please.”

“No, no,” she muttered, and shrank back. “I don’t want to go!”

Beran was puzzled. He turned to the reception clerk. “Is it necessary that she go now?”

“Certainly!” said the clerk in exasperation. “We make standard tests against possible genetic discord or abnormality. These factors, if discovered now, prevent difficulty later.”

“Can’t you wait until she is more composed?”

“We’ll give her a sedative.” They laid hands on the girl’s shoulder. As they took her away, she turned an anguished glance back to Beran that told him many things that she had never spoken.

Beran waited—an hour, two hours. He went to the door, knocked. A young medic came forth and Beran thought to detect discomfort in his expression.

“Why the delay? Surely by now …”

The medic held up his hand. “I fear that there have been complications. It appears that you have not sired after all.”

A chill began to spread through Beran’s viscera. “What sort of complications?”

The medic moved away, back through the door. “You had best return to your dormitory. There is no need to wait longer.”

Tears swelling at his eyes, Beran ran forward, groping to hold back the door. “Tell me, tell me!”

But the door closed in his face, and there was no further response to his signals …

Gitan Netsko was taken to the laboratory, where she submitted to a number of routine tests. Presently she was laid, back down, on a pallet and rolled underneath a heavy machine. An electric field damped her cephalic currents, anaesthetized her while the machine dipped an infinitesimally thin needle into her abdomen, searched into the embryo and withdrew a half-dozen cells.

The field died; Gitan Netsko returned to consciousness. She was now conveyed to a waiting room, while the genetic structure of the embryonic cells was evaluated, categorized and classified by a calculator.

The signal returned: “A male child, normal in every phase. Class AA expectancy.” The index to her own genetic type was shown, and, likewise, that of the father.

The operator observed the paternal index without particular interest, then looked again. He called an associate, they chuckled, and one of them spoke into a communicator.

The voice of Lord Palafox returned. “A Paonese girl? Show me her face … I remember—I bred her before I turned her over to my ward. It is definitely my child?”

“Indeed, Lord Palafox. There are few indices we are more familiar with.”

“Very well—I will convey her to my dormitory.”

Palafox appeared ten minutes later. He bowed with formal respect to Gitan Netsko, who surveyed him with fear. She had experienced nothing but pain at his hands; none of her imaginings had prepared her for the callousness of his breeding.

Palafox spoke politely. “It appears that you are carrying my child, of Class AA expectancy, which is excellent. I will take you to my personal lying-in ward, where you will get the best of care.”

She looked at him blankly. “It is your child that I carry?”

“So the analyzers show. If you bear well, you will earn a bonus. I assure you, you will never find me niggardly.”

She jumped to her feet, eyes blazing. “This is horror—I won’t bear such a monster!”

She ran wildly down the room, out the door, with the medic and Palafox coming behind.

She sped past the door which led to the room where Beran waited, but saw only the great spine of the escalator which communicated with levels above and below.

At the landing she paused, looked behind with a wild grimace. The spare shape of Palafox was only a few yards behind. “Halt!” he cried in passion. “You carry my child!”

She made no answer, but turning, looked down the staircase. She closed her eyes, sighed, let herself fall forward. Down and down she rolled, bumping and thudding, while Palafox stared after her in amazement. At last she came to rest, far below, a limp huddle, oozing blood.

The medics took her up on a litter, but the child was gone and Palafox departed in disgust.

There were other injuries, and since Gitan Netsko had decided on death, the Breakness medicine could not force life upon her … and she died an hour or two after her fall.

When Beran returned the next day he was told that the child had been that of Lord Palafox; that, upon learning of this fact, the girl had returned to the dormitory of Palafox in order to collect the birth-bonus. The actual circumstances were rigidly suppressed; in the society of Breakness Institute, nothing could so reduce a man’s prestige, or make him more ridiculous in the eyes of his peers, than an episode of this sort: that a woman had killed herself rather than bear his child.

For a week Beran sat in his cubicle, or wandered the windy streets as long as his flesh could withstand the chill. And indeed it was by no conscious will that his feet took him trudging back to the dormitory.

Why had she gone to Palafox? Had she been promised swifter return to Pao? … Pao! Waves of homesickness swept over Beran. Pao, blue with water, green with leaves, warm from the sunlight! Pao! His only escape from misery was to return to Pao! Never had life seemed so dismal a panorama.

He reacted from his stupor and dullness with an almost vicious emotion. He flung himself into his work at the Institute, wadding knowledge into his mind to serve as poultice against his grief.

Two years passed. Beran grew taller; the bones of his face showed hard through his skin. Gitan Netsko receded in his memory, to become a bittersweet dream.

One or two odd things occurred during these years—affairs for which he could find no explanation. Once he met Palafox in a corridor of the Institute; Palafox turned him a glance so chill that Beran stared in wonder. It was himself who bore the grievance, not Palafox. Why then Palafox’s animosity?

On another occasion he looked up from a desk in the library to find a group of high-placed dominies standing at the side, looking at him. They were amused and intent, as if they shared a private joke. Indeed this was the case—and poor Gitan Netsko had provided its gist. The facts of her passing had been too good to keep, and now Beran was pointed out among the knowledgeable as the stripling who had, to paraphrase, ‘out-bred’ Lord Palafox to such an extent that a girl had killed herself rather than return to Palafox.

The joke at last became stale and half-forgotten; only emotional scar-tissue remained.

After the passing of Gitan Netsko, Beran once more began to frequent the space-port—as much in hopes of garnering news of Pao as watching the incoming women. On his fourth visit he was startled to see debarking from the lighter a large group of young men—forty or fifty—almost certainly Paonese. When he drew close enough to hear their speech, his assumption was verified; they were Paonese indeed!

He approached one of the group as they stood waiting for registration, a tall sober-faced youth no older than himself. He forced himself to speak casually. “How goes it on Pao?”

The newcomer appraised him carefully, as if calculating how much veracity he could risk. In the end he made a non-committal reply. “As well as might be, times and conditions as they are.”

Beran had expected little more. “What do you do here on Breakness, so many of you in a group?”

“We are apprentice linguists, here for advanced study.”

“‘Linguists’? On Pao? What innovation is this?”

The newcomer studied Beran. “You speak Paonese with a native accent. Strange you know so little of current affairs.”

“I have lived on Breakness for eight years. You are the second Paonese I have seen in this time.”

“I see … Well, there have been changes. Today on Pao one must know five languages merely to ask for a glass of wine.”

The line advanced toward the desk. Beran kept pace, as one time before he had kept pace with Gitan Netsko. As he watched the names being noted into a register, into his mind came a notion which excited him to such an extent that he could hardly speak … “How long will you study on Breakness?” he asked huskily.

“A year.”

Beran stepped back, made a careful estimate of the situation. The plan seemed feasible; in any case, what could he lose? He glanced down at his clothes: typical Breakness wear. Retiring to a corner, he pulled off his blouse and singlet; by reversing their order, and allowing them to hang loose outside his trousers, he achieved an effect approximately Paonese.

He fell in at the end of the line. The youth ahead of him looked back curiously, but made no comment. Presently he came to the registration desk. The clerk was a young Institute don four or five years older than himself. He seemed bored with his task and barely glanced up when Beran came to the desk.

“Name?” asked the clerk in heavy Paonese.

“Ercole Paraio.”

The clerk broodingly scanned the list. “What are the symbols?”

Beran spelled forth the fictitious name.

“Strange,” muttered the clerk. “It’s not on the roster … Some inefficient fool …” His voice dwindled; he twitched the sheet. “The symbols again?”

Beran spelled the name, and the clerk added it to the registration manifest. “Very well—here is your pass-book. Carry it at all times on Breakness. You will surrender it when you return to Pao.”

Beran followed the others to a waiting vehicle, and in the new identity of Ercole Paraio, rode down the slope to a new dormitory. It seemed a fantastic hope … And yet—why not? The apprentice linguists had no reason to accuse him; their minds were occupied by the novelty of Breakness. Who would investigate Beran, the neglected ward of Palafox? No one. Each student of the Institute was responsible only to himself. As Ercole Paraio, he could find enough freedom to maintain the identity of Beran Panasper, until such time as Beran should disappear … and if his ploy were discovered, what then? What harm could come?

Beran, with the other apprentice linguists from Pao, was assigned a sleeping cubicle and a place at the refectory table. In the morning the lessons would begin.

The class was convocated the next morning in a bare stone hall roofed with clear glass. The wan sunlight slanted in, cut the wall with a division between light and shade.

A young Institute don named Finisterle, one of Palafox’s many sons, appeared to address the group. Beran had noticed him many times—in the corridors of the Institute, tall, even more gaunt than the Breakness norm, with Palafox’s prow-like nose and commanding forehead, but with brooding brown eyes and a dark-oak skin inherited from his nameless mother. He spoke in a quiet, almost gentle voice, looking from face to face, and Beran wondered whether Finisterle would recognize him, and if he did, what his reaction might be.

“In a sense, you are an experimental group,” said Finisterle. “It is necessary that many Paonese learn many languages swiftly. Training here on Breakness may be a means to this end.

“Perhaps in some of your minds is confusion. Why, you ask, must we learn three new languages?

“In your case, the answer is simple: you will be an elite managerial corps—you will coordinate, you will expedite, you will instruct.

“But this does not completely answer your question. Why, you ask, must anyone learn a new language? The response to this question is found in the science of dynamic linguistics. Here are the basic precepts, which I will enunciate without proof or argument, and which, for the time being at least, you must accept arbitrarily.

“Language determines the pattern of thought, the sequence in which various types of reactions follow acts.

“No language is neutral. All languages contribute impulse to the mass mind, some more vigorously than others. I repeat, we know of no ‘neutral’ language—and there is no ‘best’ or ‘optimum’ language, although Language A may be more suitable for Context X than Language B.

“In an even wider frame of reference, we note that every language imposes a certain world-view upon the mass mind. What is the ‘true’ world-picture? Is there a language to express this ‘true’ world-picture? First, there is no reason to believe that a ‘true’ world-picture, if it existed, would be a valuable or advantageous tool. Second, there is no standard to define the ‘true’ world-picture. ‘Truth’ is contained in the preconceptions of him who seeks to define it. Any organization of ideas whatever presupposes a judgment on the world.”

Beran sat listening in vague wonder. Finisterle spoke in Paonese, with very little of the staccato Breakness accent. His ideas were considerably more moderate and equivocal than any others that Beran had heard expressed around the Institute.

Finisterle spoke further, describing the routine of study, and as he spoke it seemed that his eyes rested ever more frequently and frowningly upon Beran. Beran’s heart began to sink.

But when Finisterle had finished his speech, he made no move to accost Beran, and seemed, rather, to ignore him. Beran thought perhaps he had gone unrecognized after all.

Beran tried to maintain at least the semblance of his former life at the Institute, and made himself conspicuous about the various studios, research libraries and classrooms, so that there should be no apparent diminution in his activity.

On the third day, entering a depiction booth at the library, he almost bumped into Finisterle emerging. The two looked eye to eye. Then Finisterle stepped aside with a polite excuse, and went his way. Beran, his face hot as fire, entered the booth, but was too upset to code for the film he had come to study.

Then the next morning, as luck would have it, he was assigned to a recitation class conducted by Finisterle, and found himself seated across a dark teak table from this ubiquitous son of Palafox.

Finisterle’s expression did not change; he was grave and polite when he spoke to Beran—but Beran thought he saw a sardonic spark in the other man’s eyes. Finisterle seemed too grave, too solicitous, too courteous.

Beran’s nerves could stand no further suspense. After the class he waited in his seat while the others departed.

Finisterle, likewise, had risen to leave. He lifted his eyebrows in polite surprise when Beran spoke to him. “You have a question, Student Paraio?”

“I want to know what you plan toward me. Why don’t you report me to Palafox?”

Finisterle made no pretense of incomprehension. “The fact that as Beran Panasper you attend the Institute, and as Ercole Paraio you study languages with the Paonese? What should I plan, why should I report you?”

“I don’t know. I wonder if you will.”

“I cannot understand how your conduct affects me.”

“You must know I am here as ward of Lord Palafox.”

“Oh indeed. But I have no mandate to guard his interests. Even,” he added delicately, “if I desired to do so.”

Beran looked his surprise. Finisterle went on in a soft voice. “You are Paonese; you do not understand us of Breakness. We are total individuals—each has his private goal. The Paonese word ‘co-operation’ has no counterpart on Breakness. How would I advance myself by monitoring your case to Sire Palafox? Such an act is irreversible. I commit myself without perceptible advantage. If I say nothing, I have alternate channels always open.”

Beran stammered, “Do I understand then, that you do not intend to report me?”

Finisterle nodded. “Not unless it reacts to my advantage. And this I can not envision at the moment.”