The Languages of Pao

Chapter IX

On Pao there was peace and the easy flow of life. The population tilled their farms, fished the oceans, and in certain districts sieved great wads of pollen from the air, to make a pleasant honey-tasting cake. Every eighth day was market day; on the eight-times-eighth day, the people gathered for the drones; on the eight-times-eight-times-eighth day, occurred the continental fairs.

The people had abandoned all opposition to Bustamonte. Defeat at the hands of the Brumbos was forgotten; Bustamonte’s taxes were easier than those of Aiello, and he ruled with a lack of ostentation befitting his ambiguous accession to the Black.

But Bustamonte’s satisfaction at the attainment of his ambition was not complete. A dozen aspects of his new life exasperated him; fears he had never suspected affected him with an intense disquiet. An impulsive man, his reaction to these unpleasant stimuli was often more violent than the occasion demanded. He was by no means a coward, but personal safety became an obsession; a dozen casual visitors who chanced to make abrupt motions were exploded by Mamarone hammer-guns. Bustamonte likewise imagined himself the subject of contemptuous jest, and other dozens lost their lives for displaying a merry expression when Bustamonte’s eye happened to fall upon them. The bitterest circumstance of all was the tribute to Eban Buzbek, Hetman of the Brumbos.

Each month Bustamonte framed a stinging defiance to send Eban Buzbek in lieu of the million marks, but each month caution prevailed; Bustamonte, in helpless rage, despatched the tribute.

Four years passed; then one morning a red, black and yellow courier ship arrived at the Eiljanre spaceport, to discharge Cormoran Benbarth, scion of a junior branch of the Buzbeks. He presented himself at the Grand Palace as an absentee landlord might visit an outlying farm and greeted Bustamonte with casual amiability.

Bustamonte, wearing the Utter Black, maintained an expressionless face with great effort. He made the ceremonial inquiry: “What fortunate wind casts you upon our shores?”

Cormoran Benbarth, a tall young bravo with braided blond hair and magnificent blond mustaches, studied Bustamonte through eyes blue as cornflowers, wide and innocent as the Paonese sky.

“My mission is simple,” he said. “I have come into possession of the North Faden Barony, which as you may or may not know is hard against the south countries of the Griffin Clan. I require funds for fortification and recruitment of followers.”

“Ah,” said Bustamonte. Cormoran Benbarth tugged at the drooping blond mustache.

“Eban Buzbek suggested that you might spare a million marks from your plenty, in order to incur my gratitude.”

Bustamonte sat like an image of stone. His eyes held the innocent blue gaze for thirty seconds while his mind raced furiously. Submission to the extortion might entice an endless series of needy clansmen to the palace. The idea was intolerable. But could he deny this young brigand without fear of retaliation?

To Bustamonte’s devious Paonese mind, it was inconceivable that the request could be anything other than a demand backed by an implicit threat of violence, to which he could offer no resistance. He threw up his arms in frustration, ordered forth the required sum and received Cormoran Benbarth’s thanks in baleful silence.

Benbarth returned to Batmarsh in a mood of mild gratitude; Bustamonte’s fury induced an abdominal acerbation, and his resolve to defy the Brumbos became the guiding force of his life.

Bustamonte spent moody weeks in reflection. It presently became clear that he must swallow his pride and petition those whose offices he had once rejected: the dominies of Breakness Institute.

Assuming the identity of an itinerant engineer, Bustamonte took passage to the depot planet Journal and there boarded a packet for the voyage through the outer Marklaides.

Presently he arrived at Breakness. A lighter came up to meet the packet. Bustamonte gratefully departed the cramped hull, and was conveyed down through gigantic crags to the Institute.

At the terminus he encountered none of the formalities which gave occupation to a numerous branch of the Paonese civil service; in fact he was given no notice whatever.

Bustamonte became vexed. He went to the portal, looked down across the city. To the left were factories and workshops, to the right the austere mass of the Institute, in between the various houses, manors and lodges, each with its appended dormitory.

A stern-faced young man—hardly more than a lad—tapped him on the arm, motioned him to the side. Bustamonte stepped back as a draft of twenty young women with hair pale as cream moved past him. They entered a scarab-shaped car, which slid away down-slope.

No other vehicle could be seen, and the terminal was now almost empty. Bustamonte, white with anger, the knobs of muscles twitching in his cheeks, at last admitted that either he was not expected, or that no one had thought to meet him. It was intolerable! He would command attention; it was his due!

He strode to the center of the terminus, and made imperious motions. One or two persons paused curiously, but when he commanded them in Paonese to fetch a responsible authority, they looked at him blankly and continued on their way.

Bustamonte ceased his efforts; the terminus was vacant except for himself. He recited one of the rolling Paonese curses, and went once more to the portal.

The settlement was naturally unfamiliar; the nearest house was a half-mile distant. Bustamonte glanced in alarm toward the sky. The little white sun had fallen behind the crag; a murky fog was flowing down Wind River; light was failing over the settlement.

Bustamonte heaved a deep breath. There was no help for it; the Panarch of Pao must tramp his way to shelter like a vagabond. Grimly he pushed open the door, and stepped forth.

The wind caught him, wheeled him down the lane; the cold ate through his thin Paonese garments. He turned, ran on his short thick legs down the lane.

Chilled to the bone, his lungs aching, he arrived at the first house. The rock-melt walls rose above him, bare of opening. He trudged along the face of the building, but could find no entrance; and so crying out in anguish and rage, he continued down the road.

The sky was dark; small pellets of sleet began to sting the back of his neck. He ran to another house, and this time found a door, but no one responded to his pounding. He turned away, shivering and shaking, feet numb, fingers aching. The gloom was now so thick he could barely distinguish the way.

Lights shone from windows of the third house; again no one responded to his pounding at the door. In fury Bustamonte seized a rock, threw it at the nearest window. The glass clanged: a satisfying noise. Bustamonte threw another rock, and at last attracted attention. The door opened; Bustamonte fell inside stiff as a toppling tree.

The young man caught him, dragged him to a seat. Bustamonte sat rigid, feet sprawled, eyes bulging, breath coming in sobs.

The man spoke; Bustamonte could not understand. “I am Bustamonte, Panarch of Pao,” he said, the words coming blurred and fuzzy through his stiff lips. “This is an ill reception—someone shall pay dearly.”

The young man, a son of the resident Dominie, had no acquaintance with Paonese. He shook his head, and seemed rather bored. He looked toward the door and back to Bustamonte, as if preparing to eject the unintelligible intruder.

“I am Panarch of Pao!” screamed Bustamonte. “Take me to Palafox, Lord Palafox, do you hear? Palafox!”

The name evoked a response. The man signaled Bustamonte to remain in his seat and disappeared into another room.

Ten minutes passed. The door opened, Palafox appeared. He bowed with bland punctilio. “Ayudor Bustamonte, it is a pleasure to see you. I was unable to meet you at the terminal, but I see that you have managed very well. My house is close at hand, and I would be pleased to offer you hospitality. Are you ready?”

The next morning Bustamonte took a tight check-rein on himself. Indignation could accomplish nothing, and might place him at embarrassing odds with his host, although—he looked contemptuously around the room—the hospitality was poor quality indeed. Why would men so knowledgeable build with such austerity? In point of fact, why would they inhabit so harsh a planet?

Palafox presented himself, and the two sat down to a table with a carafe of peppery tea between them. Palafox confined himself to bland platitudes. He ignored the unpleasantness of their last meeting on Pao, and showed no interest in the reason for Bustamonte’s presence.

At last Bustamonte hitched himself forward and spoke to the point. “The late Panarch Aiello at one time sought your aid. He acted, as I see now, with foresight and wisdom. Therefore I have come in secrecy to Breakness to arrange a new contract between us.”

Palafox nodded, sipping his tea without comment.

“The situation is this,” said Bustamonte. “The accursed Brumbos exact a monthly tribute from me. I pay without pleasure—nevertheless I make no great complaint, for it comes cheaper than maintaining arms against them.”

“The worst loser appears to be Mercantil,” observed Palafox.

“Exactly!” said Bustamonte. “Recently, however, an additional extortion occurred. I fear it to be the forerunner of many more similar.” Bustamonte described the visit of Cormoran Benbarth. “My treasury will be open to endless forays—I will become no more than a paymaster for all the bravos of Batmarsh. I refuse to submit to this ignoble subservience! I will free Pao: this is my mission! For this reason I come for counsel and strategic advice.”

Palafox arranged his goblet of tea with a delicacy conveying an entire paragraph of meaning. “Advice is our only export. It is yours—at a price.”

Bustamonte frowned. “And this price?” he asked, though he well knew.

Palafox settled himself more comfortably in his chair. “As you know this is a world of men, and so has been since the founding of the Institute. But necessarily we persist, we sire offspring, we rear our sons—those whom we deem worthy of us. It is the lucky child who wins admission to Breakness Institute. For each of these, twenty depart the planet with their mothers, when the indenture expires.”

“In short,” said Bustamonte crisply, “you want women.”

Palafox nodded. “We want women—healthy young women of intelligence and beauty. This is the only commodity which we wizards of Breakness cannot fabricate—nor would we care to.”

“What of your own daughters?” Bustamonte asked curiously. “Can you not breed daughters as easily as sons?”

The words made no impression upon Palafox; it was almost as if he had not heard them. “Breakness is a world of men,” he said. “We are Wizards of the Institute.”

Bustamonte sat in pensive consideration, unaware that to a man of Breakness, a daughter was scarcely more desirable than a two-headed Mongoloid. The Breakness dominie, like the classical ascetics, lived in the present, certain only of his own ego; the past was a record, the future an amorphous blot waiting for shape. He might lay plans for a hundred years ahead; for while the Breakness wizard paid lip-service to the inevitability of death, emotionally he rejected it, convinced that in the proliferation of sons he merged himself with the future.

Bustamonte, ignorant of Breakness psychology, was only reinforced in the conviction that Palafox was slightly mad. Reluctantly he said, “We can arrive at a satisfactory contract. For your part, you must join us in crushing the Batch, and ensuring that never again …”

Palafox, smiling, shook his head. “We are not warriors. We sell the workings of our minds, no more. How can we dare otherwise? Breakness is vulnerable. A single missile could destroy the Institute. You will contract with me alone. If Eban Buzbek arrived here tomorrow he could buy counsel from another wizard, and the two of us would pit our skills.”

“Hmmph,” growled Bustamonte. “What guarantee have I that he will not do so?”

“None whatever. The policy of the Institute is passionless neutrality—the individual wizards, however, may work where they desire, the better to augment their dormitories.”

Bustamonte fretfully drummed his fingers. “What can you do for me, if you cannot protect me from the Brumbos?”

Palafox meditated, eyelids half-closed, then said, “There are a number of methods to achieve the goal you desire. I can arrange the hire of mercenaries from Hallowmede, or Polensis, or Earth. Possibly I could stimulate a coalition of Batch clans against the Brumbos. We could so debase Paonese currency that the tribute became valueless.”

Bustamonte frowned. “I prefer methods more forthright. I want you to supply us tools of war. Then we may defend ourselves, and so need be at no one’s mercy.”

Palafox raised his crooked black eyebrows. “Strange to hear such dynamic proposals from a Paonese.”

“Why not?” demanded Bustamonte. “We are not cowards.”

A hint of impatience entered Palafox’s voice. “Ten thousand Brumbos overcome fifteen billion Paonese. Your people had weapons. But no one considered resistance. They acquiesced like grass-birds.”

Bustamonte shook his head doggedly. “We are men like other men. All we need is training.”

“Training will never supply the desire to fight.”

Bustamonte scowled. “Then this desire must be supplied!”

Palafox showed his teeth in a peculiar grin. He pulled himself erect in his chair. “At last we have touched the core of the matter.”

Bustamonte glanced at him, puzzled by his sudden intensity.

Palafox continued. “We must persuade the amenable Paonese to become fighters. How can we do this? Evidently they must change their basic nature. They must discard passivity and easy adjustment to hardship. They must learn truculence and pride and competitiveness. Do you agree?”

Bustamonte hesitated. Palafox had outdistanced him, and seemed bent on a course other than he had envisioned. “You may be right.”

“This is no overnight process, you understand. A change of basic psychology is a formidable process.”

Bustamonte was touched by suspicion. There was strain in Palafox’s manner, an effort at casualness.

“If you wish an effective fighting force,” said Palafox, “here is the only means to that end. There is no short-cut.”

Bustamonte looked away, out over the Wind River. “You believe that this fighting force can be created?”

“Certainly.”

“And how much time might be required?”

“Twenty years, more or less.”

“Twenty years!”

“We must begin with children, with babies.”

Bustamonte was silent several minutes. “I must think this over.” He jumped to his feet, strode back and forth shaking his hands as if they were wet.

Palafox said with a trace of asperity: “How can it be otherwise? If you want a fighting force you must first create fighting spirit. This is a cultural trait and cannot be inculcated overnight.”

“Yes, yes,” muttered Bustamonte. “I see that you are right, but I must think.”

“Think also on a second matter,” Palafox suggested. “Pao is vast and populous. There is scope not merely for an effective army, but also a vast industrial complex might be established. Why buy goods from Mercantil when you can produce them yourself?”

“How can all this be done?”

Palafox laughed. “That is where you must employ my special knowledge. I am Dominie of Comparative Culture at Breakness Institute.”

“Nevertheless,” said Bustamonte obstinately, “I still must know how you propose to bring about these changes—never forgetting that Paonese resist change more adamantly than the advent of death.”

“Exactly,” replied Palafox. “We must alter the mental framework of the Paonese people—a certain proportion of them, at least—which is most easily achieved by altering the language.”

Bustamonte shook his head. “This process sounds indirect and precarious. I had hoped …”

Palafox interrupted incisively. “Words are tools. Language is a pattern, and defines the way the word-tools are used.”

Bustamonte was eyeing Palafox sidelong, his expression suggesting that he considered the dominie no more than an impractical academician. “How can this theory be applied practically? Do you have a definite detailed plan?”

Palafox inspected Bustamonte with scornful amusement. “For an affair of such magnitude? You expect miracles even a Breakness Wizard cannot perform. Perhaps you had best continue with the tribute to Eban Buzbek of Batmarsh.”

Bustamonte was silent.

“I command basic principles,” said Palafox presently. “I apply these abstractions to practical situations. This is the skeleton of the operation, which finally is fleshed over with detail.”

Bustamonte still remained silent.

“One point I will make,” said Palafox, “that such an operation can only be effectuated by a ruler of great power, one who will not be swayed by maudlin sentiment.”

“I have that power,” said Bustamonte. “I am as ruthless as circumstances require.”

“This is what must be done. One of the Paonese continents—or any appropriate area—will be designated. The people of this area will be persuaded to the use of a new language. That is the extent of the effort. Presently they will produce warriors in profusion.”

Bustamonte frowned skeptically. “Why not undertake a program of education and training in arms? To change the language is going far afield.”

“You have not grasped the essential point,” said Palafox. “Paonese is a passive, dispassionate language. It presents the world in two dimensions, without tension or contrast. A people speaking Paonese, theoretically, ought to be docile, passive, without strong personality development—in fact, exactly as the Paonese people are. The new language will be based on the contrast and comparison of strength, with a grammar simple and direct. To illustrate, consider the sentence, ‘The farmer chops down a tree.’{Literally rendered from the Paonese in which the two men spoke, the sentence was: ‘Farmer in state of exertion; axe agency; tree in state of subjection to attack.’ the italicized words denoting suffixes of condition.} In the new language the sentence becomes: ‘The farmer overcomes the inertia of the axe; the axe breaks asunder the resistance of the tree.’ Or perhaps: ‘The farmer vanquishes the tree, using the weapon-instrument of the axe.’ ”

“Ah,” said Bustamonte appreciatively.

“The syllabary will be rich in effort-producing gutturals and hard vowels. A number of key ideas will be synonymous; such as ‘pleasure’ and ‘overcoming a resistance’—‘relaxation’ and ‘shame’—‘out-worlder’ and ‘rival’. Even the clans of Batmarsh will seem mild compared to the future Paonese military.”

“Yes, yes,” breathed Bustamonte. “I begin to understand.”

“Another area might be set aside for the inculcation of another language,” said Palafox off-handedly. “In this instance, the grammar will be extravagantly complicated but altogether consistent and logical. The vocables would be discrete but joined and fitted by elaborate rules of accordance. What is the result? When a group of people, impregnated with these stimuli, are presented with supplies and facilities, industrial development is inevitable.

“And should you plan to seek ex-planetary markets, a corps of salesmen and traders might be advisable. Theirs would be a symmetrical language with emphatic number-parsing, elaborate honorifics to teach hypocrisy, a vocabulary rich in homophones to facilitate ambiguity, a syntax of reflection, reinforcement and alternation to emphasize the analogous interchange of human affairs.

“All these languages will make use of semantic assistance. To the military segment, a ‘successful man’ will be synonymous with ‘winner of a fierce contest’. To the industrialists, it will mean ‘efficient fabricator’. To the traders, it equates with ‘a person irresistibly persuasive’. Such influences will pervade each of the languages. Naturally they will not act with equal force upon each individual, but the mass action must be decisive.”

“Marvellous!” cried Bustamonte, completely won over. “This is human engineering indeed!”

Palafox went to the window and looked across Wind River. He was faintly smiling and his black eyes, usually so black and hard, were softly unfocused. For a moment his real age—twice Bustamonte’s and more—was apparent; but only for a moment, and when he swung about, his face was as emotionless as ever.

“You understand that I merely talk at random—I formulate ideas, so to speak. Truly massive planning must be accomplished: the various languages must be synthesized, their vocabularies formulated. Instructors to teach the languages must be recruited. I can rely on my own sons. Another group must be organized, or perhaps derived from the first group: an elite corps of coordinators trained to fluency in each of the languages. This corps will ultimately become a managerial corporation, to assist your present civil service.”

Bustamonte raised his eyebrows, blew out his cheeks. “Well … possibly. So far-reaching a function for this group seems unnecessary. Enough that we create a military force to smite Eban Buzbek and his bandits!”

Bustamonte jumped to his feet, marched back and forth in excitement. He stopped short, looked slyly toward Palafox. “One further point we must discuss: what will be the fee for your services?”

“Four brood of women a month,” said Palafox calmly, “of optimum intelligence and physique, between the ages of fourteen and twenty-four years, their time of indenture not to exceed fifteen years, their transportation back to Pao guaranteed, together with all substandard and female off-spring.”

Bustamonte, with a knowing smile, shook his head. “Four brood—is this not excessive? Surely you cannot successfully breed sixty-four women a month?”

Palafox darted him a burning glance. To question the genetic strength of a Breakness dominie was a prime solecism. Bustamonte, aware of his mistake, added hastily, “However, I will agree to this figure. In return you must return me my beloved nephew, Beran, so that he may make preparation for a useful career.”

“As a visitor to the floor of the sea?”

“We must take account of realities,” murmured Bustamonte.

“I agree,” said Palafox in a flat voice. “They dictate that Beran Panasper, Panarch of Pao, complete his education on Breakness.”

Bustamonte broke out into furious protest; Palafox responded tartly; there was contention, with Bustamonte erupting into rage. Palafox remained contemptuously calm, and Bustamonte at last acceded to his terms.

The bargain was recorded upon film and the two parted, if not amicably, at least in common accord.