The Languages of Pao

Chapter XX

Beran Panasper, Panarch of Pao, sat in the rotunda of the pink-colonnaded lodge on Pergolai, in the same black chair where his father Aiello had died.

The other places around the carved ivory table were vacant; no one was present but a pair of black-dyed neutraloids, looming outside the door.

Presently there was motion at the door, the Mamarone’s challenge in voices like ripping cloth. Beran identified the visitor, signaled the Mamarone to open.

Finisterle entered the room, gravely deigning no notice of the hulking black shapes. He stopped in the center of the room, inspected Beran from head to foot. He spoke in Pastiche, his words wry and pungent as the language itself. “You carry yourself like the last man in the universe.”

Beran smiled wanly. “When today is over, for better or worse, I will sleep well.”

“I envy no one!” mused Finisterle. “Least of all, you.”

“And I, on the other hand, envy all but myself,” replied Beran morosely. “I am truly the popular concept of a Panarch—the overman who carries power as a curse, delivers decisions as other men hurl iron javelins … And yet I would not change—for I am sufficiently dominated by Breakness Institute to believe that no one but myself is capable of disinterested justice.”

“This credence which you deprecate may be no more than fact.”

A chime sounded in the distance, then another and another.

“Now approaches the issue,” said Beran. “In the next hour Pao is ruined or Pao is saved.” He went to the great black chair, seated himself. Finisterle silently chose a seat down near the end of the table.

The Mamarone flung back the fretwork door; into the room came a slow file—a group of ministers, secretaries, miscellaneous functionaries: two dozen in all. They inclined their heads in respect, and soberly took their places around the table.

Serving maidens entered, poured chilled sparkling wine.

The chimes sounded. Once more the Mamarone opened the door. Marching smartly into the room came Esteban Carbone, Grand Marshal of the Valiants, with four subalterns. They wore their most splendid uniforms and helms of white metal which they doffed as they entered. They halted in a line before Beran, bowed, stood impassively.

Beran had long realized this moment must come.

He rose to his feet, returned a ceremonious greeting. The Valiants seated themselves with rehearsed precision.

“Time advances, conditions change,” said Beran in an even voice, speaking in Valiant. “Dynamic programs once valuable become harmful exaggerations when the need has passed. Such is the present situation on Pao. We are in danger of losing our unity.

“I refer in part to the Valiant camp. It was created to counter a specific threat. The threat has been rebuffed; we are at peace. The Valiants, while retaining their identity, must now be reintegrated into the general population.

“To this end cantonments will be established among all the eight continents and the larger isles. To these cantonments the Valiants shall disperse, in units of fifty men and women. They shall use the cantonment as an organizational area and shall take up residence in the countryside, recruiting locally as becomes necessary. The areas now occupied by the Valiants will be restored to their previous use.” He paused, stared from eye to eye.

Finisterle, observing, marvelled that the man he had known as a moody hesitant youth should show such a strong face of decision.

“Are there any questions or comments?” asked Beran.

The Grand Marshal sat like a man of stone. At last he inclined his head. “Panarch, I hear your orders but I find them incomprehensible. It is a basic fact that Pao requires a strong arm of offense and defense. We Valiants are that arm. We are indispensable. Your order will destroy us. We will be diluted and dispersed. We will lose our esprit, our unity, our competivity.”

“I realize all this,” said Beran. “I regret it. But it is the lesser of the evils. The Valiants henceforth must serve as a cadre, and our military arm will once again be truly Paonese.”

“Ah, Panarch,” spoke the Grand Marshal abruptly, “this is the crux of the difficulty! You Paonese have no military interest, you …”

Beran held up his hand. “We Paonese,” he said in a harsh voice. “All of us are Paonese.”

The Grand Marshal bowed. “I spoke in haste. But, Panarch, surely it is clear that dispersion will lessen our efficiency! We must drill together, engage in exercises, ceremonies, competitions …”

Beran had anticipated the protest. “The problems you mention are real, but merely pose logistical and organizational challenges. I have no wish to diminish either the efficiency or the prestige of the Valiants. But the integrity of the state is at stake, and these tumor-like enclaves, benign though they be, must be removed.”

Esteban Carbone stared glumly at the ground a moment, then glanced left and right at his aides for support. Their faces were bleak and dispirited.

“A factor you ignore, Panarch, is that of morale,” Carbone said heavily. “Our effectiveness …”

Beran interrupted briskly. “These are problems which you, as Grand Marshal, must solve. If you are incapable, I will appoint someone else. There will be no more discussion—the basic principle as I have outlined it must be accepted. You will confer with the Minister of Lands over details.”

He rose to his feet, bowed in formal dismissal. The Valiants bowed, marched from the room.

As they left a second group entered, wearing the simple gray and white of the Technicants. They received, in general, the same orders as the Valiants, and put forward the same protests. “Why need the units be small? Surely there is scope on Pao for a number of industrial complexes. Remember that our efficiency depends on a concentration of skill. We cannot function in such small units!”

“Your responsibility is more than the production of goods. You must educate and train your fellow Paonese. There will undoubtedly be a period of confusion, but eventually the new policy will work to our common benefit.”

The Technicants departed as bitterly dissatisfied as the Valiants.

Later in the day Beran walked along the beach with Finisterle, who could be trusted to speak without calculation as to what Beran might prefer to hear. The quiet surf rolled up the sand, retreated into the sea among glistening bits of shell, fragments of bright blue coral, strands of purple kelp.

Beran felt limp and drained after the emotional demands which had been made upon him. Finisterle walked with an air of detachment, and said nothing until Beran asked directly for his opinions.

Finisterle was dispassionately blunt. “I think that you made a mistake in issuing your orders here on Pergolai. The Valiants and Technicants will return to familiar environments. The effect will be that of returning to reality, and in retrospect the instructions will seem fantastic. At Deirombona and at Cloeopter, the orders would have had more direct reference to their subject.”

“You think I will be disobeyed?”

“The possibility appears strong.”

Beran sighed. “I fear so myself. Disobedience may not be permitted. Now we must pay the price for Bustamonte’s folly.”

“And my sire, Lord Palafox’s ambition,” remarked Finisterle.

Beran said no more. They returned to the pavilion and Beran immediately summoned his Minister of Civil Order.

“Mobilize the Mamarone, the entire corps.”

The Minister stood stupidly. “Mobilize the Mamarone? Where?”

“At Eiljanre. Immediately.”

Beran, Finisterle and a small retinue flew down out of the cloudless Paonese sky to Deirombona. Behind them, still beyond the horizon, came six sky-barges, bearing the entire Mamarone corps, growling and mumbling to each other.

The air-car grounded. Beran and his party alighted, crossed the vacant plaza, passed under the Stele of Heroes, and entered the long low structure which Esteban Carbone used for his headquarters, as familiar to Beran as the Grand Palace at Eiljanre. Ignoring startled expressions and staccato questions, he walked to the staff room, slid back the door.

The Grand Marshal and four other officers looked up in an irritation which changed to guilty surprise.

Beran strode forward, impelled by an anger which over-rode his natural diffidence. On the table lay a schedule entitled: Field Exercises 262: Maneuver of Type C Warships and Auxiliary Torpedo-Units.

Beran fixed Esteban Carbone with a lambent glare. “Is this the manner in which you carry out my orders?”

Carbone, after his initial surprise, was not to be intimidated.

“I plead guilty, Panarch, to delay. I was certain that after consideration you would understand the mistake of your first command …”

“It is no mistake. Now—at this very moment—I order you: implement the instructions I gave you yesterday!”

The men stared eye to eye, each determined to pursue the course he deemed vital, neither intending to yield.

“You press us hard,” said the Marshal in a glacial voice. “Many here at Deirombona feel that we who wield the power should enjoy the fruits of power—so unless you wish to risk …”

“Act!” cried Beran. He raised his hand. “Or I kill you now!”

Behind him there was sudden movement, a spatter of blue light, a hoarse cry, a clatter of metal. Wheeling, Beran saw Finisterle standing over the body of a Valiant officer. A hammer-gun lay on the floor; Finisterle held a smoking energy-needle.

Carbone struck out with his fist, hit Beran hard on the jaw. Beran toppled back upon the desk. Finisterle turned to shoot, but was forced to hold his fire for the confusion.

A voice cried, “To Eiljanre! Death to the Paonese tyrants!”

Beran rose to his feet, but the Marshal had departed. Nursing his sore jaw, he spoke into a shoulder microphone; the six sky-barges, now above Deirombona, swooped down to the square; the monstrous black Mamarone poured forth.

“Surround the corps headquarters,” came Beran’s orders. “Allow neither entrance nor exit.”

Carbone had broadcast orders of his own; from nearby barracks came hasty sounds, and into the plaza poured groups of Valiant warriors. At sight of the neutraloids they stopped short. Mamarone in magenta and green stared at the young Valiants, and the air seemed to harden with hate along the line of sight.

Squad leaders sprang forward; the Valiants became a disciplined force instead of a mob. For a space there was silence, while Mamarone and Myrmidon weighed each other.

At the necks of the squad leaders vibrators pulsed. The voice of Grand Marshal Esteban Carbone issued from a filament. “Attack and destroy. Spare no one, kill all.”

The battle was the most ferocious in the history of Pao. It was fought without words, without quarter. The Myrmidons outnumbered the Mamarone, but each neutraloid possessed three times the strength of an ordinary man.

At a signal the Myrmidons came running forward, weaving and dodging. The neutraloids opened fire with shatter-beams and killed several dozen Myrmidons. The Myrmidons, lying prone, returned the fire; the neutraloids, secure behind absorption shields, waited.

The Myrmidons advanced in enveloping waves, one segment forcing the neutraloids to shelter behind their shields, while the other advanced, and so they leapfrogged across the plaza, fifty feet at a time.

Within the headquarters Beran called into his microphone.

“Marshal, I beseech you, prevent this spilling of blood. It is unnecessary, and good Paonese will die!”

There was no response. In the plaza only a hundred feet separated Mamarone from Myrmidon; they stood almost eye to eye, the neutraloids grinning in humorless rancor, contemptuous of life, unconscious of fear; the Myrmidons seething with impatience and verve, anxious for glory. The neutraloids, behind their screens and with backs against the wall of the corps headquarters, were secure from small weapons; however once they should move away from the wall, their backs would be vulnerable.

Suddenly they dropped the screens; their weapons poured death into the nearby ranks: a hundred men fell in an instant. The screens returned into place and they took the retaliating fire without casualty.

The gaps in the front line were filled instantly. Horns blew a brilliant fanfare; the Myrmidons drew scimitars and charged against the black giants.

The neutraloids dropped the screens, the weapons poured out death, a hundred, two hundred warriors were killed. But twenty or thirty sprang across the final few yards. The neutraloids drew their own great blades, hacked, hewed; there was the flash of steel, hisses, hoarse calls, and again the Mamarone stood free. But while the shields had been down, lances of fire from the rear ranks of the Myrmidons found targets, and a dozen neutraloids were fallen.

Stolidly the black ranks closed. Again the Myrmidon horns sounded, again the charge, and again the hack and splinter of steel. It was late afternoon; ragged clouds low in the west veiled the sun, but an occasional beam of orange light played across the battle, glowing on the splendid fabrics, reflecting from glistening black bodies, shining dark on spilled blood.

Within the staff headquarters Beran stood in bitter frustration. The stupidity, the arrogance of these men! They were destroying the Pao he had hoped to build—and he, lord of fifteen billion, could find insufficient strength to subdue a few thousand rebels.

In the plaza the Myrmidons at last split the neutraloid line into two, battered back the ends, bunched the giant warriors into two clots.

The neutraloids knew their time had come, and all their terrible detestation for life, for men, for the universe boiled up and condensed in a clot of pure fury. Swinging their great swords with one hand, grasping necks and heads with the other, they waded back and forth across the plaza, and the ground was littered with corpses and parts of corpses. One by one they succumbed, to a thousand hacks and cuts. Their number dwindled—to fifty, to thirty, to twenty, to ten, to five.

These last few looked at each other, and laughed, inhuman hoarse bellows, and presently they too died, and the plaza was quiet except for subdued sobbing. Then behind, by the Stele, the Valiant women set up a chant of victory, forlorn but exulting, and the survivors of the battle, gasping and sick, joined the paean.

Beran and his small company had already departed, flying back to Eiljanre in the air-boat. Beran sat steeped in misery. His body shook, his eyes burnt in their sockets, his stomach felt as if it were caked with lye. Failure, the breaking of his dreams, the beginning of chaos! All to the score of Palafox!

He thought of the tall spare form, the lean face with the wedge-shaped nose and opaque black eyes. The image carried such intensity of emotion as to become almost dear to him, something to be cherished from all harm, except that destruction which he himself would deal—in the event, of course, that he himself should survive. Because now hostility had erupted into bloodshed, and it was inconceivable that the Myrmidons should not go on the offensive. With what weapons could he subdue them? He had no army, no air-force, no space-navy, not even the Mamarone. He had his own two hands, no more.

Beran laughed aloud. Could he enlist the aid of Palafox?

With the last rays of sunset flickering over the roofs of Eiljanre, he arrived at the Palace.

In the great hall sat Palafox, in his usual gray and brown, a wry sad smile on his mouth, a peculiar shine to his eyes.

Elsewhere in the hall sat Cogitants, Palafox’s sons for the most part. They were subdued, grave, respectful. As Beran came into the room, the Cogitants averted their eyes.

Beran ignored them. Slowly he approached Palafox, until they stood only ten feet apart.

Palafox’s expression changed no whit; the sad smile trembled on his mouth; the dangerous shine glittered in his eyes.

It was clear to Beran that Palafox had completely succumbed to the Breakness syndrome. Palafox was an Emeritus.