The Languages of Pao

Chapter VI

Beran, Medallion and son of Panarch Aiello, had lived his life under the most uneventful circumstances. With his diet carefully prescribed and scheduled, he never had known hunger and so had never enjoyed food. His play was supervised by a corps of trained gymnasts and was considered ‘exercise’; consequently he had no inclination for games. His person was tended and groomed, every obstacle and danger was whisked from his path; he had never faced a challenge, and had never known triumph.

Sitting on Palafox’s shoulders, stepping out through the window into the night, Beran felt as if he were living a nightmare. A sudden weightlessness—they were falling! His stomach contracted, the breath rose in his throat. He squirmed and cried out in fear. Falling, falling, falling; when would they strike?

“Quiet,” said Palafox shortly.

Beran’s eyes focused. He blinked. A lighted window moved past his vision. It passed below; they were not falling; they were rising! They were above the tower, above the pavilion! Up into the night they drifted, light as bubbles, up above the tower, up into the star-bright sky. Presently, Beran convinced himself that he was not dreaming; it was therefore through the magic of the Breakness wizard that they wafted through the middle-air, light as thistle-down. As his wonder grew, his fear lessened, and he peered into Palafox’s face. “Where are we going?”

“Up to where I anchored my ship.”

Beran looked wistfully down to the pavilion. It glowed in many colors, like a sea-anemone. He had no wish to return; there was only a vague regret. Up into the sky they floated, for fifteen quiet minutes, and the pavilion became a colored blot far below. His eyes flooded with tears; he lapsed into a state of apathy, hardly caring what happened to him.

Palafox held out his left hand; impulses from the radar-mesh in his palm were reflected back from the ground, converted into stimulus. High enough. Palafox touched his tongue to one of the plates in the tissue of his cheek, spoke a sharp syllable.

Moments passed; Palafox and Beran floated like wraiths. Then a long shape came to blot out the sky. Palafox reached, caught a hand-rail, swung himself and Beran along a hull to an entrance hatch. He pushed Beran into a staging chamber, followed and closed the hatch.

Interior lights glowed.

Beran, too dazed to take an interest in events, sagged upon a bench. He watched Palafox mount to a raised deck, flick at a pair of keys. The sky went dull, and Beran was caught in the pulse of sub-space motion.

Palafox came down from the platform, inspected Beran with dispassionate appraisal. Beran could not meet his gaze.

“Where are we going?” asked Beran, not because he cared, but because he could think of nothing better to say.

“To Breakness.”

Beran’s heart took a queer jump. “Why must I go?”

“Because now you are Panarch. If you remained on Pao, Bustamonte would kill you.”

Beran recognized the truth of the statement. He felt bleak, lost, forlorn. He knew nothing of Breakness, except what had been conveyed by the attitudes and voice-tones of others. The image so formed in his mind was not reassuring.

He stole a look at Palafox—a man far different from the quiet stranger at Aiello’s table. This Palafox was tall as a fire-demon, magnificent with pent energy. A wizard, a Breakness wizard!

Palafox glanced down at Beran. “How old are you, boy?”

“Nine years old.”

Palafox rubbed his long chin. “It is best that you learn what is to be expected of you. In essence, the program is uncomplicated. You will live on Breakness, you shall attend the Institute, you shall be my ward, and the time will come when you serve me as one of my own sons.”

“Are your sons my age?” Beran asked hopefully.

“I have many sons!” said Palafox with grim pride. “I count them by the hundreds!” Becoming aware of Beran’s bemused attention, he laughed humorlessly. “There is much here that you do not understand … Why do you stare?”

Beran said apologetically, “If you have so many children you must be old, much older than you look.”

Palafox’s face underwent a peculiar change. The cheeks suffused with red, the eyes glittered like bits of glass. His voice was slow, icy cold. “I am not old. Never make such a remark again. It is an ill thing to say to a Breakness dominie!”

“I’m sorry!” quavered Beran. “I thought …”

“No matter. Come, you are tired, you shall sleep.”

Beran listlessly rose to his feet.

Palafox, displaying neither kindliness nor severity, lifted him into a bunk. Heat rays warmed Beran’s skin; turning his face to the dark-blue bulkhead, he fell asleep.

Beran awoke in puzzlement to find himself not in his pink and black bed. After contemplating his position, he felt relatively cheerful. The future promised to be interesting, and when he returned to Pao he would be equipped with all the secret lore of Breakness.

He rose from the bunk, shared breakfast with Palafox who seemed to be in high spirits. Beran took sufficient courage to put a few further inquiries. “Are you actually a wizard?”

“I can perform no miracles,” said Palafox, “except perhaps those of the mind.”

“But you walk on air! You shoot fire from your finger!”

“As does any other Breakness dominie.”

Beran looked wonderingly at the long keen visage. “Then you are all wizards?”

“Bah!” exclaimed Palafox. “These powers are the result of bodily modification. I am highly modified.”

Beran’s awe became tinged with doubt. “The Mamarone are modified, but …”

Palafox grinned down at Beran like a wolf. “This is the least apt comparison. Can neutraloids walk on air?”

“No.”

“We are not neutraloids,” said Palafox decisively. “Our modifications enhance rather than eliminate our powers. Anti-gravity web is meshed into the skin of my feet. Radar in my left hand, at the back of my neck, in my forehead provides me with a sixth sense. I can see three colors below the red and four over the violet. I can hear radio waves. I can walk under water, I can float in space. Instead of bone in my forefinger, I carry a projection tube. I have a number of other powers, all drawing energy from a pack fitted into my chest.”

Beran was silent for a moment. Then he asked diffidently, “When I come to Breakness, will I be modified too?”

Palafox considered Beran as if in the light of a new idea. “If you do exactly as I say you must do.”

Beran turned his head. “What must I do?” he asked in a restrained voice.

“For the present, you need not concern yourself.”

Beran went to the port and looked out, but nothing could be seen but speed-striations of gray and black. “How long before we reach Breakness?” he asked.

“Not so very long … Come away from the port. Looking into sub-space can harm a susceptible brain.”

Indicators on the control panel vibrated and fluttered; the space-boat gave a quick lurch.

Palafox stepped up to look from the observation dome. “Here is Breakness!”

Beran, standing on his tiptoes, saw a gray world, and behind, a small white sun. The space-boat whistled down into the atmosphere, and the world grew large.

Beran glimpsed mountains enormous beyond imagination: claws of rock forty miles high trailing plumes of vapor, rimed by ice and snow. The boat slipped across a gray-green ocean, mottled by clumps of floating weed, then once more rode over the crags.

The boat, now moving slowly, dipped into a vast valley with rock-slab walls and a bottom hidden by haze and murk. Ahead a rocky slope, wide as a prairie, showed a trifle of gray-white crust. The boat approached, and the crust became a small city clinging to the shoulder of the mountain-side. The buildings were low, constructed of rock-melt with roofs of russet brown; some of them joined and hung down the crag like a chain. The effect was bleak and not at all imposing.

“Is that Breakness?” asked Beran.

“That is Breakness Institute,” said Palafox.

Beran was vaguely disappointed. “I had expected something different.”

“We make no pretensions,” Palafox remarked. “There are, after all, a very few dominie. And we see very little of each other.”

Beran started to speak, then hesitated, sensing that he was touching upon a sensitive subject. In a cautious voice he asked, “Do your sons all live with you?”

“No,” said Palafox shortly. “They attend the Institute, naturally.”

The boat sank slowly; the indicators on the control board fluttered and jumped as if alive.

Beran, looking across the chasm, remembered the verdant landscape and blue seas of his homeland with a pang. “When will I go back to Pao?” he asked in sudden anxiety.

Palafox, his mind on other matters, answered offhandedly. “As soon as conditions warrant.”

“But when will that be?”

Palafox looked swiftly down at him. “Do you want to be Panarch of Pao?”

“Yes,” said Beran decidedly. “If I could be modified.”

“Perhaps you may be granted these wishes. But you must never forget that he who gets must give.”

“What must I give?”

“We will discuss this matter later.”

“Bustamonte will not welcome me,” said Beran gloomily. “I think he wants to be Panarch too.”

Palafox laughed. “Bustamonte is having his troubles. Rejoice that Bustamonte must cope with them and not you.”