Konni wiped sweat from her forehead. "Do you understand these people?" she asked. "The people themselves, I mean, not the language."
They were eight days out from Kettle, with thirteen more to go before they reached the Oven—Tyss. She had copied Colonel Voker's Tyspi cubes, and with Varlik's help had been doing a cram course on the language. The hyperspace ship Hedanik was Iryalan but leased by the T'swa, and her operations crew as well as medical and housekeeping staffs, plus thirty-seven of her thirty-nine casualties, were T'swa. So the temperature was kept at a constant, and to T'swa pleasant, 95 degrees Fahrenheit. Not that the T'swa required high temperatures: They simply had an easy physiological and psychological tolerance of them. T'swa regiments had more than once fought in snow and ice.
"Understand the T'swa?" Varlik looked at her question; he'd never explicitly thought about it before. "I guess I don't. But I don't think I really understand Iryalans, either; I'm just used to them. And I suppose I'm getting pretty used to the T'swa now. Why do you ask?"
"I've listened to all the cubes you've loaned me of your conversations with T'swa. The ones where you were speaking Standard, that is. And some of their attitudes and responses—I don't believe I could ever understand them. I wondered if it's the same for you."
"I suppose it is. I just don't notice it so much anymore—I take it for granted.
"I'll tell you something, though. When the T'swa talk Tyspi to me, I usually understand everything they say. I'm a quick study, with excellent recall. But sometimes when two of them talk to each other, I hardly understand anything at all. Sometimes too many of the words are unfamiliar, but at other times I know the words and still don't know what they're talking about. So I guess I don't understand the T'swa all that well. But it's never seemed very important; it's as if I understand them well enough."
Varlik got up stiffly. "I'm hurting. Let's go to physical therapy for a bit."
"You go," Konni said. "What I need is a nap."
They left the small reading room, Konni turning right toward her room, Varlik hobbling left toward the therapy section. As he passed an open office door, he glanced in and saw a T'swa medic named Usu. On an impulse he stopped.
"Usu, may I interrupt you?"
The T'swi looked up from his papers and nodded, gesturing to a chair. "How can I help you?"
Varlik entered and sat, groping for an answer. "It's nothing really important, I guess, but . . . Well, there are a lot of things I don't understand about the T'swa."
"Oh?" The T'swi said nothing more then, waiting.
"For example, sometimes two T'swa will be talking and I don't understand at all what they're saying—even when I understand the words."
Usu nodded, eyeing Varlik thoughtfully. "I can see the difficulty. Let me make a few comments that may help. In the Confederation, not only most of your activities but also much of your reality are deeply constrained by the compulsion for and environment of Standardness. Both your Standard Technology and your Standard Management spill over onto beliefs and attitudes that, strictly speaking, are neither technological nor pertain to management. In fact, Standard Technology and Standard Management are, to quite a large degree, specialized codifications of broad, long-standing attitudes and beliefs. A codification which then reinforces those beliefs and attitudes by particularizing, institutionalizing, and enforcing them.
"Those attitudes, constraints, and prohibitions have severely inhibited seeing, and even looking . . ."
"My vision is better than most people's," Varlik interrupted. "I see really well."
"I do not doubt that. But I was not referring to your eyes. I referred to the inability of your culture to put its attention on, or even to notice, things that do not fit its conceptual framework." The bright T'swa eyes peered mildly at Varlik as if watching for some glimmer of comprehension; then Usu continued.
"Thus, you lack the concepts necessary to understand T'swa life and reality broadly, and where you have no concepts, your language has no words.
"Now in learning our language—those few of you who have undertaken to—you learn many of our words. But at least at first, the meanings attached to a Tyspi word—the meanings you are able to attach to a Tyspi word—are concepts you already have in your own culture. For many words in Tyspi, your concepts are quite adequate to our meanings, but for numerous other words, they allow only a partial and frequently crude understanding. Which means you understand the word, or approximate its meaning, in some contexts but not in others.
"While there are numerous other words that are not translatable at all into Standard because they apply entirely to concepts that you do not have."
Varlik sat frustrated. If that was true, then it seemed to him he would never understand the T'swa, and somehow just now it seemed important to.
"However," Usu went on, "it is certainly possible to begin gaining those concepts and thus share more of the realities of the T'swa. Indeed, perhaps you have already begun. If you would like, I can undertake to help you."
Varlik looked at the T'swi, this one a man smaller than himself, with artist's hands. "I'd appreciate it." He paused. "You're not a warrior, are you?"
A grin flashed. "No. While I am employed by a war lodge, the Lodge of Kootosh-Lan, my way is the Way of Service, not of War. Do you know the Matrix of T'sel?"
"I've seen a chart; in fact, I ran off a copy. It had headings like play and fight. And work."
"That is it. I have tasks to complete now, but if you wish, I can meet with you here at 15.50 and we can look into this matter further. And bring your chart; it will be useful."
Varlik got up. "Can I bring Konni Wenter with me? She's interested, too. In fact, I wouldn't have brought this up if it hadn't been for her questions."
"That will be fine. I will procure a third chair and expect you here at 15.50."
At half-past fifteen, Varlik and Konni were there. Usu had brought with him a T'swa woman, strongly built, whom he introduced as Dzo-Dek, the lab director and his wife. Her hair too was straight and short. Varlik had already been told that T'swa didn't cut their hair, that it seldom grew as long as an inch. Apparently that was true for both sexes. It behaved more like coarse fur, Varlik told himself, than like human hair.
He handed Usu a printout, creased from having been folded. "Here's the chart."
Usu scanned it and smiled. "Ah, yes. And here, the heading 'Jobs'—the Tyspi word is R'bun, which I translated as 'Service,' but 'Jobs' is also a reasonable approximation. R'bun partakes of both concepts."
Usu had returned his gaze to Varlik as he spoke. "You have had experience with T'swa warriors. Where in this matrix does the T'swa warrior fit? At what action level, in what activity?"
"Why, at Fight, I suppose. At the action of Fight, in the activity of War."
"Ah. And where do the Iryalan troops fit?"
"Hmmm. Most of them—most of them fit at the action of Work, in the activity of War."
"Very good. And in the activity of War, which action level do you suppose would be most successful in terms of victory?"
"Why, it would have to be Fight. Here." His finger touched the chart's lower right-hand intersect.
"And what would you say if I told you that T'swa warriors fit here instead?" A long black finger touched down at the intersect of Play and War.
Varlik peered, then looked up at Usu. "I guess I'd have to ask how that could be. It's my understanding that your warriors almost always win, although I've had a lecture by a trooper named Bin on the win/lose equation always tending to balance at unity—one."
Usu grinned. "Then your education in T'sel began before today. But I must tell you that the activity of the T'swa warrior is not Fight, but Play. And I must take the lesson given by your warrior friend another step: The T'swa warrior neither wins nor loses, because it is all the same to him. What transpires in his career will be interpreted as winning and losing by those who do not have the T'sel; therefore, to discuss it with you, he spoke of it as he did. The T'swa warrior, in fact, has no victory nor defeat, no enemy nor any rival. He is an artist creating in the play form called War, and what another might regard as his enemy, the T'swa regards as a playmate. Almost always, their playmates regard the T'swa warrior as an enemy, but our warriors regard themselves as no one's enemy, and no one as theirs."
Varlik recalled Tisi-Kasi kneeling on the forest ridge, regaining t'suss, a neutral attitude toward win/lose, and wondered if he still had t'suss when he was killed. Somehow he hoped so.
"Each T'swa warrior," Usu continued, "becomes a master at the art of war before his regiment is ever commissioned, and performs his art as perfectly as he is able, without distracting himself with concerns of victory or defeat, survival or death. The warrior at Fight will usually fall to him. And for just those reasons, our regiments enjoy great success."
Briefly, Usu's eyes caught Varlik's with a glint that Varlik had seen in other T'swa eyes. "But let me tell you something else about this," Usu went on. "If you play at War without skill—if you are not an accomplished artist—then this fellow"—his finger moved to the Fight/War intersect—"is very likely to kill you. Even if he is not particularly skilled, his intention and energy make him dangerous." Usu chuckled. "Of course, if you are truly at Play, death will not matter to you. But the person at Play will seldom opt for War without the intention of becoming an artist at it."
Varlik nodded. Conceptually he could see and accept this, though as a reality . . . "Usu," he said, "I hope I don't offend you by asking, but how can you be so sure of the warrior's state of mind?"
Usu's grin was broad. "That is a very good question, my friend, and perhaps my answer will not entirely satisfy you. On Tyss, our training, to use your word, is in whatever activity we have chosen for our life. But before that, and beginning in infancy, all children and youth receive the same basic education, which is education in the T'sel.
"Now I have used your Standard word 'education' because you have no word closer to tengsil, our word which encompasses that concept. But the actions which constitute tengsil include those that allow a person to see, to experience, to verify for himself, the very basis of T'sel. And tengsil is the same for he who plays at any of these." His finger moved across the row at Play, from Fun to War.
"I am a—your people have translated it 'physician,' though 'healer' might be closer. Those to whom I administer may either live or die. I may help them recover numerous times, but sooner or later they will die, and I am agreeable to their doing it. Truly! If my patient dies, he departs with my full willingness and best wishes. I will perform my art to the utmost of my not inconsiderable skill, but if he dies, I am neither distressed nor offended. I do have a certain preference, only slight, that he survives and regains health and facility, and I intend that he shall. But that preference has nothing in it of desire, and I do not even remotely insist on it."
Varlik blew lightly through pursed lips, then nodded slightly, not in agreement so much as acknowledgement. "So then . . ." He paused, looking at the chart. "Are all T'swa at Play? And if they are, why do you show these lower levels? How do you even know about them?"
"May I answer that?" Dzo-Dek asked, looking at Varlik.
"Of course."
"Not all T'swa are at Play," she said. "About two percent are at one of the other levels, and we regard them as somewhat retarded, which they are. But our enlightenment about the other levels did not grow out of studying them. It grew out of the study of other cultures. And the lower levels are part of the Matrix because they belong there; they exist."
"And in the Confederation, what percent are below the Play level?" Varlik asked.
"Among adults, approximately ninety-seven percent. It varies a little from world to world."
Varlik's lips had thinned slightly. "And how do you know that?" he asked.
Dzo-Dek reached past her husband to touch the intersect of Play and Wisdom/Knowledge. "Those who play here"—she tapped the chart—"have direct access to an immense—let us say an immense data base. And their training provides tools your culture is not yet familiar with. The rest of us—those at War or Service or Games or Fun—we learn the easier of those procedures in order to have direct access to the T'sel, but only those who specialize become able across the full gamut of them. They are our educators and— You have lost the concept: our scientists; our researchers."
The last word meant nothing to Varlik; his head was beginning to hurt. "So apparently you lump us, the people of the Confederation, with your retarded." His voice and face were strained when he said it.
Dzo-Dek smiled slightly. "No, there are major differences. First, what you mean by 'retarded' is mentally retarded. What I referred to is emotionally handicapped, although that certainly hampers rational thinking. And secondly, the two percent on Tyss that I spoke of are the way they are despite being exposed to the T'sel from birth. The people of the Confederation have not had that opportunity."
Usu interposed, looking first at Varlik and then Konni, the largeness of his eyes accentuated by their lack of visible definition between pupil and iris. "I believe we have taxed your receptiveness on this subject," he said. "You are still patients, and it might be well if you went to your beds."
Varlik nodded. His brief antagonism had died but he did feel depressed, and a little groggy. Getting up, he left the room without a word, Konni following. He went to his ward and she to her tiny room, and both went to bed without taking time to shower. Varlik didn't even try to sort out what he'd been told, and sleep took him quickly.
Not for the first time among the T'swa, he dreamed richly, though ten seconds after waking in the morning he could recall none of it.
But it seemed to him that remembering the dreams was unimportant. They'd been enjoyable when they happened, and the new day felt great to him, even in this mole of a ship burrowing through space. Konni, too, when he met her at breakfast, looked relaxed and cheerful.
And neither of them approached Usu or Dzo-Dek for any further lectures on the T'swa or the T'sel.