"Jack Vance - The Languages of Pao" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vance Jack)

Shraimand, Vidamand, Minamand, Nonamand, Dronamand, Hivand and
Impland, after the eight digits of the Paonese numerative system. Aimand,
largest of the continents, has four times the area of Nonamand, the least.
Only Nonamand, in the high southern latitudes, suffers an unpleasant
climate.
An accurate census of Pao has never been made, but the great mass of
the population--estimated at fifteen billion persons--lives in country
villages.
The Paonese are a homogeneous people, of medium stature, fair-skinned
with hair-color ranging from tawny-brown to brown-black, with no great
variations of feature or physique.
Paonese history previous to the reign of Panarch Aiello Panasper is
uneventful. The first settlers, finding the planet hospitable, multiplied to an
unprecedented density of population. Their system of life minimized social
friction; there were no large wars, no plagues, no disasters except recurrent
famine, which was endured with fortitude. A simple uncomplicated people
were the Paonese, without religion or cult. They demanded small material
rewards from life, but gave a correspondingly large importance to shifts of
caste and status. They knew no competitive sports, but enjoyed gathering in
enormous clots of ten or twenty million persons to chant the ancient drones.
The typical Paonese farmed a small acreage, augmenting his income with a
home craft or special trade. He showed small interest in politics; his
hereditary ruler, the Panarch, exercised an absolute personal rule which
reached out, through a vast civil service, into the most remote village. The
word "career" in Paonese was synonymous to employment with the civil
service. And, in general, the governmental was sufficiently efficient.
The language of Pao was derived from Waydalic, but molded into
peculiar forms. The Paonese sentence did not so much describe an act as it
presented a picture of a situation. There were no verbs, no adjectives; no
formal word comparison such as good, better, best. The typical Paonese
of all, he must never seem indecisive or uncertain. To do so would break
the archetype.
well-fleshed. His silver-gray hair shone fine as a baby s; he had a baby s
clear skin and wide unwinking stare. His mouth drooped, his eyebrows
arched high, conveying a perpetual sense of sardonic and skeptical inquiry.
To the right sat his brother Bustamonte, bearing the title Ayudor--a
smaller man, with a shock of coarse dark hair, quick black eyes, knobs of
muscles in his cheeks. Bustamonte was energetic beyond the usual Paonese
norm. He had toured two or three nearby worlds, returning with a number
of alien enthusiasms which had gained him the dislike and distrust of the
Paonese population.
On Aiello's other side sat his son, Beran Panasper, the Medallion. He
was a thin child, hesitant and diffident, with fragile features and long black
hair, resembling Aiello only in his clear skin and wide eyes.
Across the table sat a score of other men: functionaries of the
government, petitioners, three commercial representatives from Mercantil,
and a hawk-faced man in brown and gray who spoke to no one.
Aiello was attended by special maids wearing long gowns striped with
black and gold. Each dish served him was first tasted by Bustamonte--a
custom residual from times when assassination was the rule rather than the