The Poison Oracle by Peter Dickinson Read Free Book Online Page A

formulate notions of cause and effect. It can be done, but you have to go a long way round, using very clumsy expressions to achieve it. There are almost no general nouns, either. You see, the marshes are a closed world, in which almost everything is known, and has its own name. They have a few general nouns for things that seem to them mysterious, such as foreigners and particularly witchcraft. But you can’t say ‘plant’, for instance. You can’t even say ‘reed’. You have to name the particular type of reed.”
    “That must make life difficult.”
    “They get along. Then there’s another aspect of the linguistic-cultural nexus that particularly interests me. You speak the language in sentences, but the sentences are made up not of words but of word-accretions . . .”
    “Like those long words in German?”
    “A bit like that. But all the word-accretions are constructed round roots of relationship . . .”
    “Cousins and things?”
    “Not that kind of relationship—or not only. We tend to build up our sentences round verbs. That’s to say our central notions are notions of action. They accrete their words round particular roots which describe the relationship between the various parts of the accretion. Their central notion seems to be a notion of everything’s position in a very complicated network of relationships.”
    “Isn’t cause and effect a relationship?”
    “Yes, of course it is, but I didn’t say that they had ways of describing all possible relationships—only the ones that seem to matter to them. For instance they can use a single syllable to express a particular personal obligation which it would take us several sentences to attempt to describe. But the thing about cause and effect is that it’s a relationship of such enormous power—I mean for us it is the relationship—it’s what verbs are about—that if you admitted it into a system like the marshmen’s I think it would destroy it—destroy the language, and thus, ultimately, the way of life. I must admit that I find the whole problem of relation-roots absolutely fascinating.”
    “That’s funny. It doesn’t sound really your thing.”
    “Oh?”
    “Well—oh hell, I suppose this is rude—but you don’t look as though you related to anything much, except Dinah.”
    With extreme care Morris parted a fresh section of the short, almost bristly hairs and peered at the line of greyish flesh below.
    “It is arguable that the looker-on sees most of the game,” he said in as distant and donnish a voice as he could contrive.
    “That’s what I mean,” she said. “You sit up here in this glass fortress, miles from anything that’s actually happening, teaching a monkey conditional clauses. That’s all done with, that way of life. You can’t know what it’s like, what it’s about, what it means, until you’ve been part of it. I bet you don’t even go into the marshes if you can help it!”
    “I don’t go at all. I was taught the language by an old man called Kwan, who was the previous Sultan’s bodyguard. He used to arrange for the singing boys who sometimes come for state occasions to sing me a lot of their songs, which I taped. But he died just under a year ago, and as far as I know the only other person in the palace who speaks the language is Dyal, the present Sultan’s bodyguard.”
    “There are some in the women’s quarters. I think that’s what they must be. I hadn’t realised.”
    “There ought to be eight of them, very black, tattooed with different patterns under their eyebrows.”
    “I haven’t looked that close. They keep to themselves, and—I oughtn’t to say this, but they really stink.”
    “I believe they rub themselves all over with rancid buffalo milk.”
    “It smells worse than that. The Arab word for them means . . .”
    “I know.”
    “I’m glad it’s only buffalo milk. Why eight?”
    “Well, there’s a slightly odd arrangement down in the marshes. I’m not an anthropologist, so I