Jack Vance: The Asutra

Etzwane had no choice but hypocrisy. He said politely, "I'm sorry if I have given offense; I want only to remain inconspicuous. Needless to say, I am not here by my own choice."

"You waste my time with your witticisms," bawled Polovits. "I intend to hear no more! " He strode away, and Etzwane went to practice the Song.

Kretzel inquired as to his lack of zest, and Etzwane explained that Polovits was about to take his life. Kretzel gave a whinny of shrill laughter. "That spleenful little dingbat; he's not worth the rumble of an ahulph's gut! He won't give you to death, because he's afraid to speak a lie. Do you think the Ka are fools? Come, I will teach you Canto 2023, wherein the stave-cutters kill a stone-roller because he dented their moss. Then you need only play the eleventh phrase should Polovits so much as raise a finger. Better! Tell old Polovits that you are rehearsing the Canto of Open Inspection, and that you consider his conduct slack. To work. Polovits-is of no more consequence than a bad smell."

"Gastel Etzwane," said Polovits, during the morning calisthenics. "You move with the grace and agility of a pregnant grampus. I cannot accept those kneebends as accomplished facts. Has your well-known musical virtuosity rendered you absentminded? Well, then, answer! I count your silence an insolence. How long must I suffer your slights?"

"Not long at all," said Etzwane. "Yonder walks a Monitor; summon him. By chance I have here my pipes and I will play the Canto of Open Inspection, and we shall have justice."

Polovits' eyes seemed to burn red. His mouth slowly opened, then snapped shut. He swung around and made as if to summon the Ka. As if by great effort he restrained himself. "So then: he takes you and half this band of club-footed cretins to the hole; how do I gain? I only must start again with a group as bad. We are wasting time! Back to the calisthenics; once again the kneebends. Smartly now! " But Polovits spoke somewhat pensively and refused to meet Etzwane's gaze.

Kretzel asked Etzwane, "How is Polovits now?"

"He is a changed man," said Etzwane. "His tirades have ended, and likewise his tantrums; he is now as meek as a grass-tit, and the drills are almost a pleasure."

Kretzel was silent and Etzwane once again took up the pipes. He noticed a tear rolling down the brown folds of Kretzel's cheek, and lowered the pipes. "Has something occurred to distress you?"

Kretzel rubbed at her face. "I never think of home; I would long since have been dead had I mourned. But one word stirred a memory and brought it to life; and I thought of the meadows above the Elshuka Pond where my family held a steading. The grass was high, and when I was a little girl I worked long burrows through the grass and surprised two tits at their nesting… One day I burrowed a long tunnel through the grass. When it broke open I looked up into the face of Molsk the Man-taker. He took me away in a sack and I never again saw the Elshuka Pond… I have no great time to live. They will mix my bones into this sour black soil, when I would once again be home in the sunlight."

Etzwane blew a pensive tune on the pipes. "Were many slaves on Kahei when you came?"

"We were among the first. They used us to build their Roguskhoi. I evaded the worst of it when I learned the Song. But the others are gone, save a few. Old Polovits, for one."

"And in all this time has no one escaped?"

" 'Escaped'? To where? The world is a prison! "

"I could take pleasure in doing general harm, if I were able."

Kretzel gave an indifferent shrug. "Once I felt the same way, but now-I have played the Great Song too many times. I feel almost a Ka."

Etzwane recalled the occasion at Shagfe when the Ka captive had destroyed Hozman Sore-throat's asutra. What had triggered this spasm of violence? If all the Ka of Kahei could feel the same impulse, there would be no more asutra. Etzwane became conscious of how little he in fact knew of the Ka, of their way of life, their innate character. He put questions to Kretzel, who at once became cross and advised that he apply himself to the Great Song.

Etzwane said, "I know twenty-two cantos; there are more than fourteen thousand yet to be learned; I will be an old man before my questions are answered."

"And I will be dead," snapped Kretzel. "So then, attend to the mechanism; hear the double quaver at the end of the second phrase. This is a common device and signifies what is called 'vehement assertion.' The Ka are a brave and desperate people; their history is a series of tragic plights, and the double quaver expresses this mood, the challenge flung into the face of destiny."

Polovits, the furious old fighting-cock, with startling abruptness had become a surly introvert, who gave minimum effort to the drills. The tension created by his old antagonism had collapsed; the drills became periods of droning boredom.

The mood, for Etzwane, infected every aspect of existence; he began to feel a disassociation, a sense of existence on two levels, inner and outer, and his mind, retreating into a subjective middle distance, watched the work of his body without interest or participation.

What of the Great Song? Each day Etzwane dutifully went to Kretzel. He played the cantos and memorized the significances, but the project began to loom vast and futile. He could learn the fourteen thousand cantos, and so become another Kretzel… Etzwane became wrathful, outraged by his own passivity. "I defeated the Roguskhoi! I used my energy and intellect! I refused to submit! I must use these same resources to enforce my terms upon destiny! "

So he told himself, and, spiritually regenerated, plotted revolt, sabotage, a guerrilla operation, kidnap and holding of hostages, the capture of the bronze disk-ship beside the compound, signals and communications… Each of his schemes foundered on the same reef: impracticality. In frustration he thought to organize a team of kindred spirits, but encountered a discouraging lack of zest. Except in one person, a gaunt and brooding man from the Saprovno district who used the name Shapan, from a weed with tenacious tendrils and fish-hook barbs. Shapan seemed interested in Etzwane's views, and Etzwane began to feel that he had encountered an ally until one day Kretzel casually identified him as the most notorious provocateur of the camp. "He's been the death of a dozen men. He urges them into illicit conduct, then notifies the Ka, and to what purpose other than sheer perversity I cannot fathom, for he has profited not a whit."

Etzwane became first furious, then disgusted with himself, then sardonically apathetic. Shapan seemed eager to formulate new plots, but Etzwane feigned perplexity.

A clanging of gongs awoke the slaves while darkness still pressed dank and heavy upon the camp. There were flutings and the thud of running feet; emergency of some sort was afoot. From the lumpy cupola atop the garage sounded a wild ululation: the _ general alarm. The slaves ran forth to find a transport ship at rest in the exercise yard. The slaves stood back, murmuring doubts and speculations.

From the ship came a dozen Ka, asutra clutching their necks. Etzwane sensed haste in their conduct. Ka song-speech, in the "referential " First Style, fluted across the compound. Again the ululating alarm sounded; the corporals ran forth and ordered their platoons; those who had trained with weapons were marched to the transport ship and up into a long, dim hold. The deck was dirty and layered with filth; the air carried an abominable stench. The slaves stood crowded together, one man's chin on another man's %shoulder, and the odor of sweating bodies added a sweet-sour overtone to the reek.

The hulk lurched and moved; the slaves held to stanchions or braced against the hull, or each other; there was no room to fall. Some became sick and commenced a lugubrious groaning; a few began to yell in anger and panic, but were silenced by blows. The cries were muffled; the groaning gradually subsided.