At the seventh level v1.., p.13
At The Seventh Level (v1.0), page 13
Some of the Elder Members had been almost apoplectic with rage at the very idea. Indeed, the Member from the Sector of the Lion, a conservative and wealthy sector inhabited mostly by the old and sedate families of Abba’s very rich, had threatened to retire from the Council if the others persisted in their intention.
“I say it is blasphemous!” he had shouted, his old voice trembling but still powerful. “Never in the history of Abba, never once in ten thousand years, has a female been involved in matters of government—that is the first thing! And even if the Poet Jacinth were not a female, even if that did not enter into this, the very idea, the very concept, of approaching a Poet of the Seventh Level, a holy being dedicated to a life of meditation and sacred composition, and asking that Poet to assist in a…a translation! Gentlemen, my gorge rises at the thought! On two counts, this whole plan is both blasphemous and obscene, and I will take the Sector of the Lion out of Abba if necessary before I will see it implemented by this Council!”
The emissary chuckled, remembering the old man’s thunder and fire, ringing through the hall and all being duly noted by the robosecs on their aluminum pedestals. Nothing bothered them, of course, except noises that interfered with the performance of their duty.
It had been far from easy to persuade the old man—and many others who, though perhaps less dramatically vocal, sided with him on the question. It was a tricky problem, an unheard-of problem, with no precedent to follow, and a planet with ten thousand years of recorded history is accustomed to a heavy backlog of precedent.
Fortunately, they had had a powerful weapon on their side. The Elder Member from the Sector of the Lion was a wealthy man, and it was his credit disk that was being hurt by the situation that they wanted the Poet Jacinth to solve for them. Had it been anything else he would never have given in.
They had shown him the figures, patiently repeating, until he at last grasped the size of the sum that it was costing the planet of Abba—and the taxpayers of Abba, including himself as one of the heaviest-paying of those taxpayers—to provide the ten planet-colonies of Abba with enough edible protein to maintain their populations. They had reminded him, also, of the inevitable tragedy that faced Abba if the planet-colonies could not be made more economical to operate, to provide living-space for the ever-growing population that threatened to swamp the home-planet. They had shown him the bill that resulted from attempting to ship food out from Earth, the agricultural planet two galaxies away. And they had waved under bis nose, finally, all the incredible advantages of that ubiquitous plant from the distant world X513, the ithu plant that was 93 percent edible protein, and that would grow anywhere, anywhere at all.
The old man had gasped and stuttered and spluttered, but in the end he had given in and the rest with him.
And now here he sat, Emissary of the August Council, all decked out in title and finery to cover the trembling man beneath, all alone with the task of justifying all this to the holy woman.
The Emissary sighed a mighty sigh. He was not a devout man. Religion, he felt, was a necessity, since it kept the females busy and out of trouble, and since it provided the Three Galaxies with those very useful people, the Maklunites, with their insane dedication to service and self-sacrifice. It was not for men, however, particularly busy men like himself. It was only at moments like this that he felt its lack. He gave the altar across from him an uneasy look, wondering, and then put the unworthy thought from his mind. After all, this was but a female he was to deal with.
When at last he was allowed to enter the garden of the Trance Cloister be found the Poet Jacinth sitting on a boulder underneath a small waterfall, waiting for him to speak. He stood before her, miserable, tom between his proper knowledge of the proper attitude to take when speaking with a female and the proper attitude to take when speaking with a Poet—never mind a Poet of the Seventh Level!—and she had smiled at him and nodded pleasantly and put him at ease with a casual couplet on the weather, and he had simply thrown tradition to the winds, since it failed him here, and begun to speak.
“I come to you today on a strange errand, my lady Poet,” he began. “It would perhaps be easier for both of us if you would hear me out before you speak.”
She nodded, her lovely face solemn and attentive, leaning forward slightly to hear him better. It was most flattering. She reminded him of one of the youngest and most delightful of his concubines, and he warmed slightly to his task.
“You will know, of course,” he said, “of the ten planet-colonies maintained by Abba. They are planet-surrogates, of course, artificial asteroids except for three that were once this planet’s moons. On all of these ten planets, Poet Jacinth, there is a very serious problem, and it is the opinion of the Council that only you can help us find its solution.”
She frowned, the perfect brows drawing together charmingly over her dark eyes, but she had remained silent as he had asked her to do. It crossed his mind that she was after all only a young female, and a virgin, and that it was not going so badly.
The Emissary relaxed, and if he had been watching Jacinth he would have seen a smile tug at the corners of her mouth, but he was staring at the blossoms of the gaza trees and trying to keep his mind on the seriousness of his mission, and he did not notice the Poet’s lack of respect.
“You see,” he went on, “the living-space on these ten colony planets is desperately needed by our people. The crowding in our cities in such that, given the culture of our people, we cannot continue to support our population. You understand, of course, that the extended household of the family, with women’s quarters and parks and garden, could not lend itself to blocks of buildings hundreds of stories high?”
She nodded charmingly.
“We must then send colonists, pioneers, to the new planets. And it is quite true that people, particularly the young people, and most particularly those young people who have not managed to win a place in any of the Professions except that of Service, are eager and willing to go as colonists.
“Unfortunately, most unfortunately, however, the colonies are not succeeding.” A gaza blossom, a great green star covered with white pollen, fell onto his robe, and he brushed it off impatiently.
“Where was I?”
To his great pleasure, the Poet clapped her hands softly, and immediately a student appeared with a tray of teas and wine, giving him a moment to recollect himself.
“Ah, yes,” he said, as the student poured their drinks, “the colonies are failing. They are failing because on not one of the ten planets within the practical reach of our starships can any of the protein plants, which we know of, be successfully cultivated. This leaves us with three choices. One, we can send edible protein, grown on Abba, to the colonies; this we are now doing, but we are no longer able to bear the drain on our own resources. Two, we can send protein from Earth, at an incredible and unendurable cost; this would not help much longer even if we could afford it, since almost all of Earth is now given over to fruits and vegetables. Third, protein synthesis can be instituted by the colonists themselves. This, too, is being done, but with the best facilities available to our scientists, it has been impossible to devise any sort of synthetic protein that can be eaten with pleasure over any long period of time. The colonists rebel against the diet, they find it tasteless and boring, and the eventual result, if they force themselves to eat it for the sake of the colony, is an epidemic of psychosomatic stomach difficulties—all in their heads, certainly, but quite as destructive to their health as genuine organic disease. We have been at our wit’s ends, my lady Poet—until we learned, two years ago, of the existence of a protein plant which is both good to eat and economical to grow, and which can be grown on the ten colonies…or anywhere else, for that matter.”
He glanced at his ring, saw with horror that there was little time left before the compulsory Hour of Meditation. He would have to get through the rest of it in a rush.
“This plant,” he said, “comes from the world X513, whose inhabitants are known as the Serpent People. We need only establish communication with them, only learn how trade may be discussed! It is that simple—and this we have not been able to do. The greatest linguists of Abba have put two years of work into the attempt to learn this language, and they have failed. In every conversational attempt made so far, the Serpent People have left after only a few sentences, obviously deeply offended in some way, and it has only been with great difficulty that we have managed to obtain their consent to one more meeting, two months away, at the Intergalactic Trade Fair. They do not come to the Trade Fair ordinarily…they are a curious, proud people, apparently quite self-sufficient on their world, not at all anxious to engage in any social or business activity. We do not understand them, and they either do not understand us or do not care to try.”
She was nodding gravely, her eyes lowered, one hand idly playing in the falling water behind her.
“Poet Jacinth,” he said earnestly, “the future of the colonies, and therefore the future of this planet, depends upon you. You are the greatest expert in language and the use of language that we have. There is no one else we can turn to now to determine how the language of the Serpent People can be used successfully. It is for this reason alone that we have interrupted your solitude and your meditation. We hope that you will appreciate the gravity of the situation. We hope you will forgive us.”
He had come to an end at last, and he realized, ashamed, that he was trembling and covered with perspiration. There he stood in his almost-royal garments, he, a male of the Profession of Government, trembling like a frightened child before a slender little female in a red linen shift. It had been too much for him; never in his lifetime had he so exposed himself before a female, not even before his mother. He had bolted then, as he bad wanted to do at the beginning, thrusting into her hands the packet of language tapes and the translations of the experts, and had almost run for the exit gate. There had been no time for her to speak, nor would he have waited to hear her if there had. His only concern was to escape, to get out of his borrowed finery and into his own clothing, and to spend at least half an evening in the company of his most humble and unintelligent concubine. He did not even know if he had succeeded or failed in his mission, nor did he care; he had done all that he could do.
II
Jacinth went over the data for the third time, wonderingly. The linguists, all Poets of the Fourth Level, had done what appeared to her to be an excellent job. They had taken standard tapes beamed from X513, submitted them to computer analysis in the ordinary way, and seemingly had produced all the needed information. And yet it had not sufficed for communication.
Methodically she went over it again, one info-packet at a time. The answer had to be in there somewhere.
They had isolated and catalogued the consonant phonemes first. M, B, V, TH, Z, L, R, NG. Only eight? Two nasals, two liquids, two fricative, and two stops. That wasn’t much to make a language of, eight consonant phonemes. And only eight vowels as well, three nasals plus the standard five, A, E, I, O, U. A sixteen-phoneme system did not offer much complexity of sound, unless it was a tonal system, and the computer had ruled that out It was a non-tonal.
Morphemes appeared to be all of one syllable, all simple in construction. It looked like a language constructed by a child, or an extremely language-naive adult. It was curious that it should have offered difficulty at all, much less that it had stumped the best of their linguists for two years.
The Poet Jacinth wished, not for the first time, that she had someone to talk to. As a fully invested Poet, however, she was required to speak only in verse, and it did very badly for general discussion. Plus, she was not allowed to speak to females, lest she give them unseemly ideas of aspiring to the Profession themselves. And males did not care to talk to her because of the conflict between the attitude of paternal tolerance due her as a female and the attitude of humble reverence due her as a Poet.
She sighed and went to the corner of the room where her corn-system console stood, and punched the key for a servorobot. When it appeared she requested a small computer and a linguistics program tape.
She attached the computer hookup to her com-system, folded her slim legs under her, and sank down at the keyboard to work. review linguistics program, she tapped out.
In a moment the computer clicked and its side panel flashed the single word completed.
She then inserted the tapes prepared by the linguists for the language of XS13, instructing the computer to indicate deviations from the basic information on the first tape.
While the computer hummed its way through the task she examined once again the threedy image of a citizen of X513 that had been included wife the data, marveling at the beauty of the being whose picture glowed in her hand.
She inserted the threedy slide in her corn-system and punched the project button, and at once the image was projected lifesize in the center of the room for her examination.
These were a very beautiful people, if the specimen whose image she saw before her was any example. It stood perhaps eight feet high, if “stood” was the proper word to use, since the Serpent People resembled a serpent more than any other creature with which Jacinth was familiar, and their manner of “standing” was much that of the King Cobra of Earth. How much length might be involved in the coiled body she could not judge, but eight feet was held upright The entire body was transparent, except for what she assumed was the head, and appeared to be made of strung beads of translucent crystal, caught together at the top and twisted into a rope. Alternate strands of the “beads” were in shades of deep green and blue, the others were without color, and the whole meshed at the top in a sphere of opaque beads which must house the being’s brain and whatever structures it might use for speech.
She studied it silently, knowing very well how deeply she might be in error in her analysis even of its physical structure. Perhaps the seeming “head” was really the creature’s foot, or its stomach, or its sexual organs. Perhaps it was not one being but a colony, each strand representing a unique individual, all joined in some communal life-system. There was as yet no way of knowing, since no citizen of X513 had ever been examined by the Doctors of Abba, or of any other planet so far as was known.
Behind her the computer clicked again to signal completion of the review. She turned off the slide and went to examine the side panel. It said no deviations.
Very well, then. Her instinct had found no flaws in the analysis. Her computer agreed with her instinct. Therefore there were no flaws in the analysis, the translations of the language were as correct as could be asked, the representations of the sounds on the tapes were adequate, and no portion of the system violated the base theory of universal linguistics. Nonetheless, it had not been possible to speak to the Serpent People.
The Poet Jacinth smiled; it was a stimulating problem.
Somewhere in all of this there had to be the reason, the single explanatory factor that was being overlooked.
She left everything as it was so that she might return to it when she chose, deactivating the servorobots that would otherwise have put everything away for her, and went out into the garden.
Sitting on her favorite stone, the soft sound of falling water on her back, she closed her eyes and performed the ritual seventeen breaths, allowing all consciousness of her surroundings to leave her. When her relaxation of consciousness was complete, all that was left to her of physical awareness was the sensation that both the light and the water flowed through her being as freely as through the air, and she waited, patient and poised. Somewhere, there was something that she almost knew, something that she almost realized, something that was familiar about the language and about the problem, something that she remembered, almost…She let the time pass, unaware, and waited.
And then she had it. She allowed her consciousness to return to her gently, becoming aware of the garden about her, noticing that it had grown almost dark and the air in the garden had turned cold and heavy with pale green dew. There would be people upset about her.
She rose quickly and went into her room, gathered up the materials and reactivated the servorobots, and then she began to dictate, ignoring the soft bell that called her to eat. She would eat when she had finished with this, after she was sure that she had captured all that she must say, before she became in any way confused. She began to dictate to the corn-system, watching with pleasure the intricate pattern of its dancing lights as it wrote down her words:
TO THE COUNCIL OF ABBA:
When first I read the letters that you sent me (and I am honored that you asked my help, for in the service of this spinning world lies my whole happiness and my satisfaction) there came to me a sense that I had known, somewhere before, a problem of this kind, a feeling that I once solved just such a problem, as a child, perhaps? Certainly long ago.
And so I went at once into my garden and let the Light direct me to your aid.
Then I remembered what I had forgotten.
I was a child, a small and noisy female, spending my days in the courts of my lady mother, and there had been summoned to the household ban-harihn a student of Poetry, ranking at Third Level, whose single function was to teach us all to sing, and some were to leam to play the singing strings.
And so…
The members of the Council were hushed as it came to an end. It was, somehow, blasphemous that a female should write so well; it was humiliating that she should solve a problem that had baffled the greatest of their linguists; it was embarrassing that the solution should have been so—once pointed out—overpoweringly obvious.
Emissary ban-Dan stepped to the center of the Council Chamber and cleared his throat “Is it clear to all the Members,” he asked, “just what the Poet Jacinth is telling us? I should like to add that her conclusions have, of course, already been checked by the linguists and she is quite correct. There should be no further problem in our communicating—after a fashion—with the people of X513.”
