Throy (32 page)

Cora Tamm brought out a fresh pot of tea, and sitting on the terrace the group watched the sun settle into the hills beyond the river.

Glossaries

Glossary A

The Gnosis is a philosophical quasi-religious system devoid of both formal organization and a hierarchy of priests. The thrifty Soumi reasoned that a credo purporting to provide enlightenment must be readily comprehensible; if expensive specialists were needed for interpretation, the doctrine must be considered unsuitable and impractical. One of the elders deputed to select an optimum doctrine was blunt, averring that ‘only fools would foist a religion upon themselves which cost them their hard-earned money.’

Gnosis itself was not without interest, and embodied a number of novel concepts. The Cosmos, or ALL, as it was known, included the whole of its own equipment and required no further assistance in the form of a deity or ‘prime mover,’ thus obviating the need for an expensive class of intermediaries, priests or other interpreters of the divine will.

ALL existed in the shape of a four-dimensional torus rotating at a stately rate, so that beginnings and endings constantly merged with each other, and each human being lived over and over again in the same body, either perfecting itself through careful practice of the Ameliorations, and eventually moving upward or failing, whereupon it must attempt the same life again, over and over until satisfactory adjustments had been made, so that it might enter a new ‘Xoma,’ which once again must be lived in exact accord with propriety. In general, Gnosis was considered a cheerful and optimistic doxology, since the worst that could happen to a transgressor was that he or she might backslide a Xoma or two.

The Ameliorations were taught children along with other schoolwork, so that at an early age they were trained to gentility, cleanliness, industry, thrift, and respect for their elders.

From time to time an individual might show strange or unusual personality traits, so that he became known as a ‘wild jay,’ and prompted his family and friends to a good deal of rueful head-shaking. Often these ‘wild jays’ would go to live in a special quarter of Soumjiana, known as ‘Lemuria.’ In the streets and plazas of Soumjiana hundreds of vendors grilled sausages on braziers and sold them to passers-by; most of the city’s sausage vendors, musicians and street artists were ‘Lemurians.’

In his private life, the Soumian was generally prim and fastidious, his most notable vice being, perhaps, over-indulgence at the table. His sexual habits were somewhat mysterious; overt sexual misconduct, however, incurred his disapproval, and also aroused a great spate of gossip. The offending parties quickly became notorious, and slunk about their daily routines trying to pretend nothing had happened.

To the off-world observer wealthy folk were hard to distinguish from persons of ordinary income, since everyone made a great point of owning only ‘the best,’ meaning goods of durability, excellence of finish and practical function. The affluent could be picked out only by the most subtle of indications, and great skill was used in demonstrating one’s position in life while carefully avoiding ‘bouschterness’
¹
. All Soumi, no matter what their caste, reckoned themselves ladies and gentlemen. A paradox of Soumi behaviour is their emphatic dedication to egalitarianism, while simultaneously supporting a society of rigid stratification into as many as twenty levels of status. These status levels are not formally recognized, nor are they characterized by a nomenclature; nevertheless their reality impinges upon everyone and he or she is continually gauging his or her personal status against that of everyone in sight. Soumi are insistent upon asserting superiority of caste over their inferiors, while caustic and envious of those who assert superiority over themselves. Such tensions create a dynamic quality of striving and maintenance of genteel standards; scandals are always enjoyed if for no other reason than the diminished status of the persons involved, which, by a sort of transcendental osmosis, augments the status of other folk.

          The workings of this mysterious system are fascinating. If a dozen strangers are placed in a room, within minutes the hierarchy of caste will have been established. How? No one knows, save the Soumi themselves.

Despite the absence of titles or precise nomenclature, the level of a person’s caste is denoted exactly by a subtle use of linguistic tonality, or phrasing of a sentence, or the choice of appropriate terminology: nuances which the Soumi ear instantly recognizes. Still, the overt basis of Soumi society is expressed in an almost aggressive doctrine, a slogan taught in the schoolroom: “Each person the equal of all! Each person a full-fledged Ameliorative! Each person of full gentility!”

Glossary B

YIP NOMENCLATURE

Each Yip adult is denominated by six names, except in the case of special circumstances. The Yip, when asked to identify himself, responds with his formal name, for instance: Idris Nadelbac Myrvo. ‘Idris’ is his birth name, chosen for symbolic attributes. ‘Idris,’ for example, indicates a personality daring but unassuming. ‘Nadelbac’ is the lineage name derived from the father; ‘Myrvo’ denotes the mother’s lineage. Additionally, there is the familiar name, to be used by non-Yips or persons friendly but not intimate. For instance, Idris Nadelbac Myrvo might use the common or ‘open’ name ‘Carlo.’ There would be two further names: both secret and self-applied. The first designated a quality to which the person aspired, such as ‘the Lucky’ or ‘the Harmonious.’ The second, most secret of all was the sixth name: ‘the Ruha.’ It was also the most important of all the names, and, in effect, was the man himself.

The ‘Ruha’ figured in a peculiar Yip custom. At the center of old Yipton there had been a cavernous hall, the Caglioro. The dimensions of the Caglioro astounded tourists, when guides led them along a rickety balcony forty feet above the floor, with the ceiling still another forty feet overhead. From this vantage the tourists could overlook an area of amazing extent, crowded with Yips, squatting around small flickering lamps. The tourists always complained of the terrible stench, and spoke of ‘the Big Chife.’ Nevertheless they never failed to be awed by the carpet of human flesh below, only darkly to be seen by the twinkling little lamps; indeed it was a scene surpassing their imaginations. Inevitably they asked their guide: “What brings these folk here? Why do they crouch in the darkness?”

          “They have nothing better to do,” was the usual bland response.

“But they are doing something! They seem to be moving or stirring about; we can see this by the shine of the little lamps.”

“They come to meet their friends, and trade fish, and they also come to gamble. It is their obsession.”

If the guide were in a good mood, or if he hoped for a large gratuity, he might describe the gambling. “It is not always a light-hearted game. The play often becomes intense. The stakes might be coins or tools or fish: anything of value. When an unlucky or unskillful gambler loses all he owns, what then does he use for his desperate wager? He puts up a fragment of his Ruha: in effect, himself. If he wins, he is once more whole. If he loses (and being unskillful or unlucky, this is often the case) he parts with a one-fortieth portion of himself, such being the recognized fractions into which a Ruha may be divided.

          “This deficiency is noted by fixing a white cord to the hair at the back of the head. Often he continues to lose, and pieces of him may be scattered all over Yipton, and ever more white strands dangle down his back. If and when he loses all forty parts of his Ruha, he has lost all of himself and is no longer allowed to gamble. Instead he is called ‘No-name’ and made to stand at the side of the Caglioro, staring blankly over the scene. His Ruha is gone; he is no longer a person. His first four names are meaningless, while his wonderful fifth name has become a horrid joke.

“Out on the floor of the Caglioro, another process starts - the negotiations between those who owned parts of the Ruha, in order that the entire property may be brought under a single ownership. The bargaining is sometimes hard, sometimes easy; sometimes the parts are used as gambling stakes. But in the end the Ruha is brought under the ownership of a single individual, who thereby augments his status. The ’No-name’ is now a slave, though he owes neither service nor duty to his master; he obeys no orders and runs no errands. It is worse; he is no longer a whole man; his Ruha has been taken into the soul of his master. He is nothing: before

he is dead he has become a ghost.

“There is a single mode of escape. The man’s father and mother, or his grandfather and grandmother, may give up their Ruhas to the creditor, so that the first Ruha is returned to its original owner. He is once more a whole man, free to gamble as he chooses out on the floor of the Caglioro.”

Footnotes

Precursory Footnotes

¹
The biological techniques for introducing new species into alien surroundings without danger to the host environment had long been perfected.

²
Bureau:

A: Records and statistics.

B: Patrols and surveys: Police and security services.

C: Taxonomy, cartography, natural sciences.

D: Domestic services.

E: Fiscal affairs: exports and imports

F: Visitors accommodations.

³
Collateral: only forty Wooks, Offaws, Clattucs, Diffins, Veders and Lavertys could be reckoned Cadwal Agents.’ The excess became ‘collaterals’ (co-Wooks, co-Lavertys, co-Clattucs, etcetera), and upon their twenty-first birthday were required to leave the house of their birth and seek their fortune elsewhere. The occasion was fraught always with heartbreak, sometimes fury and, not infrequently, suicide. The situation was criticized as ‘brutal’ and ‘heart-less,’ especially among the LPFers of Stroma, but no remedy or better method could be devised within the intent of the Charter which defined Araminta Station as an administrative agency, not a residential settlement.

⁴
IPCC: the Interworld Police Coordination Company; often described as the single most important institution of the Gaean Reach. IPCC power was immense but carefully monitored and controlled by the IPCC special Branch. On the rare occasions when an IPCC agent was found guilty of corruption or abuse of power, he was neither reprimanded, nor demoted, nor discharged; he was executed. As a result, IPCC prestige was everywhere high.

Bureau B at Araminta Station was an IPCC affiliate and qualified Bureau B personnel became, in both theory and practice, IPCC agents.

Chapter 1 Footnotes

¹
Chilke: pronounced with two syllables, accent on the first, to rhyme with ‘silky.’

Chapter 2 Footnotes

¹
An unkind detractor had described Bodwyn Wook sitting in his great chair as ‘an old yellow monkey peeking out of a barrel.’ Still, his orders were seldom disobeyed, and no one ever boasted of having outwitted Bodwyn Wook. There had been another remark to the effect that: “When Bodwyn Wook is conniving and fooling you, his eyelids droop and a dreamy look comes over his face, like a Mongoloid baby sucking a sugar-tit.”

Chapter 3 Footnotes

¹
Gnosis: see Glossary A

Chapter 4 Footnotes

¹
A situation ultimately traced to dietary factors: specifically, the presence of black spiderclams in the Yip diet.

²
Oomp: Elite guards in the service of the Oomphaw at Yipton.

Chapter 5 Footnotes

¹
The double government included, first, the Factor’s Association which represented the ranchers and arbitrated their differences; and, second, the Board of Civil Regulation, which governed the rest of the population. Neither service recognized the jurisdiction of the other, each claiming paramount authority. Informal liaison personnel managed to keep the two systems working with acceptable efficiency, and for a fact neither wished to take on total responsibility.

²
If the Yip were asked to desist from this sort of conduct, his response was typically puzzled acquiescence and smiling affability.

If the expostulations persisted, the Yip, still smiling, would furtively sidle away, hoping to avoid any more of this incomprehensible

discord.