Jack Vance - Gaean Reach 01 Read online

  Sammatzen threw up his hands. “I move to rescind the edict dissolving the domains of Uaia. Who dissents?”

  “I do,” declared Adelys Lam. “I am yet a Redemptionist; I will never be anything else.”

  “Who assents?…I count eleven votes, including my own. The edict is canceled; and we now adjourn for the day.”

  Jorjol strode from the chamber, robes flapping about his long legs. Kelse, Gerd Jemasze and Schaine followed. Out upon the avenue Jorjol halted to look first one way then the other. To his left the way led across the Persimmon Sea, to Uaia and the lands of the Retent; to his right, only a hundred yards along Kharanotis Avenue, the space depot offered transit to other worlds.

  “How he hates us!” mused Schaine. “And think! We nurtured this hate by our own deeds. We were so vain and proud that we refused to admit an Uldra waif into our Great Hall; think of the tragedy it brought to all of us! I wonder: have we learned our lesson?”

  Kelse was silent for a moment. Then he said: “This is the language of Olanje and not the reality of Uaia. It contains bright glimmers of truth but not all the truth.”

  Jemasze said: “There are as many realities as there are people. At Suaniset any gentleman may dine at our table, no matter what clothes he wears.”

  Kelse gave a sour chuckle. “And at Morningswake as well. Uther Madduc fostered his private reality perhaps too rigidly.”

  “There goes Jorjol!” said Gerd Jemasze, “off to inflict himself upon another world.” For Jorjol had chosen to turn right, toward the spaceport.

  The three strolled along Kharanotis Avenue toward the Seascape Hotel. A tall mesh fence separated the road from the swamp, and a gap in the foliage afforded a view across the swamp, down to the slow water of the Viridian River. A morphote, resting on a log, made an incomprehensible gesture and slipped off into the undergrowth.

  *Kachemba: a secret Uldra cult-place, dedicated to divination and sorcery, usually located in a cave

  *Morphote viewing is a sport on many levels. The morphotes stimulate upon themselves all manner of growths: spines, webs, wens, fans, prongs, to make themselves objects of fantastic splendor. Morphote viewers have contrived an elaborate nomenclature to define the elements of their sport.

  *Wittols: One of every thousand Uldras is born albino, eunuchoid, short of stature and round-headed. These are the wittols, treated with a mixture of repugnance, contempt and superstitious awe. They are credited with competence at small magic and witchcraft; occasionally they deal in spells, curses and potions. Major magic remains the prerogative of the tribal warlocks. The wittols bury dead, torture captives, and serve as emissaries between tribes. They move with safety across the Alouan, since no Uldra warrior would either deign or dare to kill a wittol.

  *Sky-shark: A crude one-man aircraft, little more than a flying plank fitted with a gun or some other weapon, used by Uldra nobles for attacks upon enemy tribes or duels among themselves.

  *Weldewiste: a word from the lexicon of social anthropology, to sum up a complicated idea comprising the attitude with which an individual confronts his environment; his interpretation of the events of his life; his cosmic consciousness; his perception of self vis-à-vis the universe; his character and personality from the purview of comparative culture.

  *The two most common appellatives of the Gaean Reach are Dm., for Domine, which may properly be applied to all persons of distinguished or exalted station, and Vv., a contraction of Visfer (originally Viasvar, an Ordinary of the ancient Legion of Truth, then a landed gentleman, finally the common polite appellative.)

  *SLU: Standard Labor-value Unit; the monetary unit of the Gaean Reach, defined as the value of an hour of unskilled labor under standard conditions. The unit supersedes all other monetary bases, in that it derives from the single invariable commodity of the human universe: toil.

  *On the worlds of the Gaean Reach and Alastor Cluster, especially those with rural populations, a new profession has come into existence: the man skilled in star-naming and star-lore. For a fee he enlivens nocturnal gatherings with his tales, marvels and descriptions of the worlds surrounding stars within the vision of those present.

  *Blasphemy mask: the Uldra warlocks array themselves in a burnt-clay mask in the likeness of their enemy, with whatever of his accoutrements they are able to possess, together with his caste tassels; then they visit the kachemba, or secret fane, pertaining to the tribe of the enemy, and there blaspheme the tutelars of this tribe, in the expectation that the tutelars will revenge themselves upon the person represented.

  *Aurau: untranslatable; said of a tribesman afflicted with revulsion against civilized restrictions, and sometimes of a caged animal yearning for freedom.

  *Karoo: Uldra festivities, including feasting, music, dancing, declaiming, athletic contests. An ordinary karoo occupies a night and a day; a Grand Karoo continues three days and nights, or longer. The karoos of the Retent tribes are wild and often macabre.

  *Criptid: a long low pad-footed variant of the terrestrial horse. The Uldras of the Retent disdain criptids as mounts fit only for wittols, sexual deviates and women.

  *Sarai: Untranslatable: a limitless expanse, horizon to horizon, of land or water, lacking all impediment or obstacle to travel and projecting an irresistible urgency to be on the way, to travel toward a known or unknown destination.

  *Soum: the thick tough dun lichen which carpets most of the Palga.

  *During the latter stages of this period the Board of Directors of the SEE (Society for the Emancipation of the Erjins), returning to Olanje from their places of refuge, decried ‘this orgy of unnecessary and meaningless slaughter’. They recommended that, when feasible, the erjins be captured rather than killed, in order that the captives might be educated, rehabilitated and encouraged to create a new peaceful society, in some unspecified area of Uaia. In the emotional climate of the mop-up, the SEE doctrine received small implementation.

  *Xheng: untranslatable; a dark and peculiar emotion which might most succinctly be translatedhorror-lust: a generalized desire to inflict torments and agonies, a fervent dedication to the achievement of sadistic excesses.