“And language…”
“Well, without indulging in chauvinism, I think all Cundaloans should be taught Solarian. They’ll use it at some time or other in their lives. Certainly all your scientists and technicians will have to use it professionally. The languages of Laui and Muara and the rest are beautiful, but they just aren’t suitable for scientific concepts. Why, the agglutination alone — Frankly, your philosophical books read to me like so much gibberish. Beautiful, but almost devoid of meaning. Your language lacks — precision.”
“Aracles and Vranamaui were always regarded as models of crystal thought,” said Vahino wearily. “And I confess to not quite grasping your Kant and Russell and even KorzybskL — but then, I lack training in such lines of thought. No doubt you are right. The younger generation will certainly agree with you, “I’ll speak to the Great House and may be able to get something done now. But in any case you won’t have to wait many years. All our young men are striving to make themselves what you wish. It is the way to success.”
“It is,” said Lombard; and then, softly, “Sometimes I wish success didn’t have so high a price. But you need only look at Skontar to see how necessary it is.”
“Why — they’ve done wonders in the last three years. After the great famine they got bade on their feet, they’re rebuilding by themselves, they’ve even sent explorers looking for colonies out among the stars.” Vahino smiled wryly. “I don’t love our late enemies, but I must admire them.”
“They have courage,” admitted Lombard. “But what good is courage alone? They’re struggling in a tangle of obsolescence. Already the over-all production of Cundaloa is three times theirs. Their interstellar colonizing is no more than a feeble gesture of a few hundred individuals. Skontar can live, but it will always be a tenth-rate power. Before long it’ll be a Cundaloan satellite state.
“And it’s not that they lack resources, natural or otherwise. It’s that, having virtually flung our offer of help back in our faces, they’ve taken themselves out of the main stream of Galactic civilization. Why, they’re even trying to develop scientific concepts and devices we knew a hundred years ago, and are getting so far off the track that I’d laugh if it weren’t so pathetic. Their language, like yours, just isn’t adapted to scientific thought, and they’re carrying chains of rusty tradition around. I’ve seen some of the spaceships they’ve designed themselves, for instance, instead of copying Solarian models, and they’re ridiculous. Half a hundred different lines of approach, trying desperately to find the main line we took long ago. Spheres, ovoids, cubes — I hear someone even thinks he can build a tetrahedral spaceship!”
“It might just barely be possible,” mused Vahino. “The Riemannian geometry on which the interstellar drive itself is based would permit…”
“No, no! Earth tried that sort of thing and found it didn’t work. Only a crank — and, isolated, the scientists of Skontar are becoming a race of cranks — would think so.
“We humans were just fortunate, that’s all. Even we had a long history before a culture arose with the mentality appropriate to a scientific civilization. Before that, technological progress was almost at a standstill. Afterward, we reached the stars. Other races can do it, but first they’ll have to adopt the proper civilization, the proper mentality — and without our guidance, Skontar or any other planet isn’t likely to evolve that mentality for many centuries to come.
“Which reminds me…” Lombard fumbled in a pocket. “I have a journal here, from one of the Skontaran philosophical societies. A certain amount of communication still does take place, you know; there’s no official embargo on either side. It’s just that Sol has given Skang up as a bad job. Anyway” — he fished out a magazine…”there’s one of their philosophers, Dyrin, who’s doing some new work on general semantics which seems to be arousing quite a furor. You read Skontaran, don’t you?”
“Yes,” said Vahino. “I was in military intelligence during the war. Let me see…” He leafed through the journal to the article and began translating aloud:
“The writer’s previous papers show that the principle of nonelementalism is not itself altogether a universal, but must be subject to certain psychomathe-matical reservations arising from consideration of the broganar — that’s a word I don’t understand — field, which couples to electronic wave-nuclei and…”
“What is that jabberwocky?” exploded Lombard.
“I don’t know,” said Vahino helplessly. “The Skontaran mind is as alien to me as to you.”
“Gibberish,” said Lombard. “With the good old Skontaran to-hell-with-you dogmatism thrown in.” He threw the magazine on the little bronze brazier, and fire licked at its thin pages. “Utter nonsense, as anyone with any knowledge of general semantics, or even an atom of common sense, can see.” He smiled crookedly, a little sorrowfully, and shook his head. “A race of cranks!”
“I wish you could spare me a few hours tomorrow,” said Skorrogan.
“Well — I suppose so.” Thordin XI, Valtam of the Empire of Skontar, nodded his thinly maned head. “Though next week would be a little more convenient.”
“Tomorrow — please.”
The note of urgency could not be denied. “All right,” said Thordin. “But what will be going on?”
“I’d like to take you on a little jaunt over to Cundaloa.”
“Why there, of all places? And why must it be tomorrow, of all times?”
“I’ll tell you — then.” Skorrogan inclined his head, still thickly maned though it was quite white now, and switched off his end of the telescreen.
Thordin smiled in some puzzlement. Skorrogan was an odd fellow in many ways. But. . well. . we old men have to stick together. There is a new generation, and one after that, pressing on our heels.
No doubt thirty-odd years of living in virtual ostracism had changed the old joyously confident Skorrogan. But it had, at least, not embittered him. When the slow success of Skontar had become so plain that his own failure could be forgotten, the circle of his friends had very gradually included him again. He still lived much alone, but he was no longer unwelcome wherever he went. Thordin, in particular, had discovered that their old friendship could be as alive as ever before, and he was often over to the Citadel of Kraaka-haym, or Skorrogan to the palace. He had even offered the old noble a position back in the High Council, but it had been refused, and another ten years — or was it twenty? — had gone by with Skorrogan fulfilling no more than his hereditary duties as duke. Until now, for the first time, something like a favor was being asked… Yes, he thought, I’ll go tomorrow. To blazes with work. Monarchs deserve holidays, too.
Thordin got up from his chair and limped over to the broad window. The new endocrine treatments were doing wonders for his rheumatism, but their effect wasn’t quite complete yet. He shivered a little as he looked at the wind-driven snow sweeping down over the valley. Winter was coming again.
The geologists said that Skontar was entering another glacial epoch. But it would never get there. In another decade or so the climate engineers would have perfected their techniques and the glaciers would be driven back into the north. But meanwhile it was cold and white outside, and a bitter wind hooted around the palace towers.
It would be summer in the southern hemisphere now, fields would be green, and smoke would rise from freeholders’ cottages into a warm blue sky. Who had headed that scientific team? — Yes, Aesgayr Haasting’s son. His work on agronomics and genetics had made it possible for a population of independent smallholders to produce enough food for the new scientific civilization. The old freeman, the backbone of Skontar in all her history, had not died out.