THE DRAMATURGES OF YAN by John Brunner

Author:John Brunner [Brunner, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ACE Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

XII

Marc said eventually, “I don’t think I quite understand.”

“Alchemy,” Chart said. “Are you familiar with the magical and alchemical manuals they wrote on Earth some fifteen hundred years ago?”

The implication behind the words, of course, was: I am. With genuine humility, Marc admitted that he was not.

“I had to look into them last time I was hired by the continent of Europe.” Chart drained his mug and let the jug refill it. His manner was lazy, casual, off-hand, that of a man with supreme and unchallengeable competence. “They were composed in a sort of association-code, using agreed conventional images—dragons, astrological figures, various oblique references of that kind. Provided one had been trained in the jargon, one could read them with relative ease. Outsiders, however, found only obscure and baffling nonsense. As a matter of fact, I’m astonished that you yourself aren’t grounded in that area. Nothing I’ve run across, apart from those alchemical manuals, remotely resembles your rendering of the Mutine Epics.”

“But the version you have,” Marc hastened to point out, “is terrible! I was so proud of it a few years ago—and now I realise just what its shortcomings are.”

“Can you rectify them?” Chart demanded.

“I…” Marc licked his lips. “Some of them,” he said at length.

“Good. As you’ve no doubt gathered, this ship is equipped with one of the most superb computers ever designed, a late model from Tubalcain with approximately sixteen megabrains’ capacity. Three or four times what you need to run a go-board, for example. Currently I have the two versions of the Mutine Epics—the translation you made, and the facsimile of the original which you deposited with the university that published it—running as a sub-programme, for reconciliation and comparison with all the alchemical manuals I’ve been able to locate. So far there’s a high degree of concordance in that subtlest of attributes, style. I put it to you that the dramaturges of Yan, the so-called ‘great scientists’ of this planet, were nothing of the kind, but aesthetically biased. In a word, they were artists.”

“Strangely enough,” Marc said after a moment, “I’d been thinking just before Morag found me that you were the nearest human being I’d ever heard of to the Yannish dramaturges.”

“Interesting!” Chart raised his eyebrows. “Because it’s a parallel which had not escaped me.” He spoke without false modesty. “Even through the filter of this translation which you now deprecate, I sensed a certain rapport.”

“But this—this notion of the Epics as a technical manual,” Marc said, reverting to the point which had sunk deep into his mind and begun to fester there, “is… Well, an interesting hypothesis, of course. What evidence have you for it, though?”

“I think I’ll ask the ship for an opinion,” Chart said with a shrug. “It’s been analysing the content of the conversation I just had with Kaydad, Goydel and Vetcho.” He checked. “Before I consult it, one more point. Am I correct in thinking that the Yanfolk would have selected their most—most conservative individuals to deal with us Earthsiders? I hinted as much to the computer.

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