The Languages of Pao by Jack Vance

Author:Jack Vance [Vance, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Published: 2010-05-14T20:32:44+00:00

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CHAPTER XII

A YEAR PASSED--a year of anxiety, inward triumph, carefully stifled hope; a year of artifice, of intense study in which the necessity to learn seemed to kindle the powers of learning; a year during which Beran Panasper, the Paonese exile, was an attentive if irregular student at the Institute and Ercole Paraio, the Paonese apprentice linguist, made swift progress in three new languages: Valiant, Technicant and Cogitant.

To Beran's surprise and to his great advantage, Cogitant proved to be the language of Breakness, modified considerably against the solipsism latent in the original tongue.

Beran thought it best not to display ignorance of current conditions on Pao, and restrained his questions. Nevertheless, by circuitous methods, he learned much of what was transpiring on Pao.

On sections of two continents, the Hylanth Littoral of Shraimand, and along the shores of Zelambre Bay on the north coast of Vidamand, dispossession, violence and the misery of refugee camps still continued. No one knew definitely the scope of Bustamonte's plans--no doubt as Bustamonte intended. In both areas, the original population had been and were being disestablished, while the enclave of new speech expanded, a tide pressing against the retreating shores of the old Paonese customs. The areas affected were still comparatively small, and the new populations very young: children in the first and second octads of life, guided by a sparse cadre of linguists who under pain of death spoke only the new language.

In subdued voices the apprentices recalled scenes of anguish: the absolute passive obduracy of the population, even in the face of starvation; the reprisals, effected with true Paonese disregard for the individual life.

In other respects Bustamonte had proved himself a capable ruler. Prices were stable, the civil service was reasonably efficient. His personal scale of living was splendid enough to gratify the Paonese love of pomp, but not so extravagantly magnificent as to bankrupt the treasury. Only on Shraimand and Vidamand was there real dissatisfaction--and here of course dissatisfaction was a mild word for the sullen rancor, the pain and grief.

Of the infant societies which in due course would expand across the vacated lands, little was known and Beran found it hard to distinguish between speculation and fact.

A person born to the Paonese tradition inherited insensitivity toward human suffering--not so much callousness as an intuition of fate. Pao was a world of vast numbers and cataclysm automatically affected great masses of people. A Paonese hence might be touched by the plight of a bird with a broken wing, even as he ignored news of ten thousand drowning in a tidal wave.

Beran's Paonese endowment had been modified by his education; for no one could regard the population of Breakness as anything other than a set of discrete units. Perhaps for this reason he was moved by the woe of Shraimand and Vidamand. Hate, an element hitherto foreign to his nature, began to find a place in his mind. Bustamonte, Palafox--These men had vast horrors to answer for!

The year moved to its completion. Beran,

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