Hope Of Gain Is The Enemy Of Borders
No further unpleasantness marred the caravan's stay in Wessolp, not even a attempt on Dirant's life despite universal agreement that he deserved one or two. Stadeskosken moved out in the morning and halted soon after, for the man in charge wished to address a few points of concern.
“Today we enter Pavvu Omme Os. Few of us have been to this country before. I have not. Therefore we all feel keenly the duty a guest owes to both his hosts: the one soon to house him and the other back home whom he must not disgrace. Noble thoughts, but remember that we are here to move product. Set up fast and be pushy. Every buyer expects that, whatever the country. Now. I hope you have read your pamphlets as instructed. Tell me, how shall we address these Pavvus?”
“Forbear to call them Pavvus!” the employees roared back, and Silone smiled, satisfied.
The section of their informational material that dealt with terminology was quite clear. “The tendency to abbreviate has resulted in many harmless or even appealing formulations such as 'the GE' or Grenlof in place of Greater Enloffenkir, or Adaban rather than 'man or woman belonging to the Adabanneher tribe.' Not all abbreviations deserve a place in the speech of the conscientious traveler, however. Pavvu Omme Os, or Healthy Tranquil Country as it may be rendered outside of the Usse tongue, has for a northern neighbor Pavvu Istis, or Empty Country. The thoughtful reader has already made two discoveries. One is that to use the common term “Pavvus” to refer to the inhabitants of this land is as much as to call them “Countries,” and the other regards the failure of the term to distinguish between the two peoples who, though to us they seem as alike as two Adabannehers, conceive of themselves as being just as distinct from each other as Adabannehers are from Hewekers.
“Let us move on then to permissible forms of address. To begin, consider what the inhabitants of Pavvu Omme Os and Pavvu Istis call themselves, that being Jalpi Peffu in the case of the former and for the latter, Jalpi Sessu. That is to say, the Town People and Shore People respectively. The traveler hoping to cultivate friendships with his hosts as he goes about their country is well advised to habituate himself to the use of those terms, but the traveling businessman must never do so. The Jalpi Peffu are no isolated tribe. They are aware the outside world calls them Pavvus, however absurd a name they find it. They deem an honest mistake a lesser crime than insincerity, and further view the merchant who makes a false show of friendship before attempting a sale as a base, dishonest person. A saying current in Pavvu Omme Os, 'Don't pat the pig with a knife in your hand,' applies to this category of relationship.
“There exists a compromise useful to the commercial traveler: 'Omme' or 'Ommes.' The word omme signifies 'tranquil' and is therefore not entirely capable of standing on its own in a purely grammatical sentence, but it has a pleasant sound to the ear of the native Usse speaker. Furthermore, it indicates a concern for local sentiment in its attempt to separate the Jalpi Peffu from the Jalpi Sessu which is unlikely to be taken amiss.
“An unfortunate fact which must be admitted here is that any such solicitous measures will not be reciprocated. Aside from a few academics, there is hardly a single Jalpi Peffu aware that there are multiple tribes populating Greater Enloffenkir, and that rare cosmopolitan believes Adaban to be the proper term for all of them combined; that is to say, that 'Adabanneher' is a subdivision of 'Adaban' and not the full name of which the latter is a shortening. There is nothing to be done about this but smile and accept compliments as they are intended to be taken.”
That was what the first printing said before Stadeskosken's editors managed to shorten the expert's advice to this: “Forbear to call them Pavvus. Ommes is better.” The first printing had been made available to any employee who wished to gain a more in-depth understanding, possibly in preparation for future trips, but most made do with the condensed edition unless they were managers or held an ambition to become such. Silone kept shoving the thing into Silfour's hands until the latter gave up. Dirtwo acquiesced on the first attempt, aware his Sticktoitiveness was too close to Silfour's for him to rely on putting up a more obstinate resistance.
The commercial venture resumed and crossed the invisible line into Pavvu Omme Os, though some very visible soldiers waited on the other side. They stood tall in their brown wool coats that everyone knew covered metal armor that did not quite match that of Adaban creation in quality, and they held their halberds straight. By tall of course the Adabans meant short, for Omme men had trouble looking over the heads of Adaban women. Among the Stadeskosken employees, “qualified for the Omme army” soon became the euphemism of choice for the shorter among them.
But aside from the soldiers, nothing about the land of Pavvu Omme Os differed from Wessolp's territory. That disappointed Dirant. He had been told so often not to believe old legends about foreign lands filled with strange and exotic phenomena such as rivers flowing up mountains, children born in the saddle during cattle raids, secluded villages where dragons and humans lived together, and fields where silk is grown like corn that he had been starting to suspect they were all true. He decided to take that as a reminder not to jettison all his former convictions just because he met a god a couple times and was transported to another continent for an hour.
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“And yet is it wrong to think the world would be more delightful if Pavvu Omme Os were covered in ice throughout the year that the natives shaped into houses for themselves?” He asked that of Onsalkant Stiskenhalpt, the man riding nearest him and one of the better-traveled employees, rather than any of the locals. Otherwise the question might have been indelicate.
“At any rate, that would really be something for my Emmeg to put in her dispatches, really thrill the readers.”
“I wasn't entirely looking to thrill anyone with my travel diaries, dear,” Mrs. Onsalkant remarked.
Onsalkant winked at Dirant. “If you ever are in this situation yourself, my advice is that you must absolutely not say, 'And how well you have succeeded, my dear!'” His wife laughed, which called into question the value of the advice.
The first town where the convoy was permitted to participate in the market sat on the Meggi Tem, the southern of the country's two major rivers. Called Eptem, the non-truncated pamphlet described it this way: “The word eptem signifies a seat of honor of some sort and not merely a chair usable by anyone. Once this lovely town served as the capital of a kingdom long lost to the shifting fortunes of politics. Today it is most famous for its monuments to multiple battles in which the defenders succeeded in preventing armies composed primarily of Adabans and Hewekers from crossing the river. Perhaps as a result of that, the inhabitants often display neither hostility nor friendliness toward the traveler from Greater Enloffenkir, but condescension instead.”
Lieutenant-Governor Toltes Uimtu Sutki did his best to live up to that characterization. He delivered his instructions to the expedition's fluent Usse translators in a loud voice, halting every couple sentences to ask if they had understood all that. As to the limits of permitted behavior, those were not onerous. The visitors were warned that selling anything outside of the designated market time and place would result in revocation of their permit and that making arrangements with a buyer to be finalized at the market counted. Pavvu Omme Os officers had brains of their own and permission to use them; attempts to exploit edge cases in the law would be punished. Outside of that, any untoward activities by a member of the trade mission such as robbery or public drunkenness would incur a hefty fine. They were expected to return to the lodgings they had arranged beforehand to sleep, but their other movements were not restricted. That was all. He hoped they would have a great time in Eptem, he said with a smile which communicated even to those bereft of Usse knowledge that he suspected they would not.
They did not. Sightseeing went well enough at first. They were free to walk around and gaze at the Omme houses, most of them made from some gray brick. Smaller than Fennizen's buildings, the normal house was a single story with an attic. Larger ones, the homes of the rich and public edifices such as the lieutenant-governor's headquarters, delighted the travelers with a form of decoration unknown at home. Rather than some elaborate facade, arresting paint scheme, or decorative pillars, those buildings relied on the bricks themselves, which eschewed a rectangular regularity in favor of distinct shapes that converted the walls themselves into entrancing geometric arrangements.
They checked out Omme fashion as well. The men wore loose, baggy, or downright puffy pants that stopped somewhere on the calf to allow a good look at their thick socks which went up who knew how much farther. They had wool coats over that, not closed like the military version and not brown either, but rather colored to match the shirt underneath. Ommes typically covered most of the crown and forehead with head scarves dyed in bright colors that again formed geometric designs, but their hair, commonly light brown or dirty blond, poked out in the sides and back. Women wore the same as far as socks and head scarves, though most let more hair show. They wore skirts in place of pants and kept closed their coats of a shorter cut below which a bit of shirt extended for color coordination purposes.
“The variety is nice, yet I must prefer our hats to theirs.” A member of the mission flicked the end of the wide, wide brim of the hats worn by the Adaban men.
“But we are in town. You don't wear traveling hats there either, or not normally,” said someone else who sported the version with a smaller brim that drooped fetchingly, the women who preferred it hoped.
“What you say is true and the very reason I begged to be allowed on this trip.”
Attempts to find the local points of interest went less well, since every local insisted on pointing the Adabans to assorted monuments of Omme military victories. The travelers took those recommendations as evidence of an earnest neighborly spirit at first, but the problem arose when natives refused to tell the Adabans about any other good locations no matter how many times they explained they had seen all the war monuments already. Even worse, when the travelers asked how to gain admission to one of those famed Omme orchestras, the citizens invariably told them, “Practice!” How they all laughed afterward.
Many of the employees began to fear their journey would not be so pleasant as they had imagined. Nevertheless, a job was a job, and the next day all the company personnel, even the Ritualist, assisted with unloading the stuff designated for sale there and manning the Stadeskosken section in the town market. It was the day most of them took their weekly day off mandated by company policy, but all had agreed (in writing) that simply traveling did not count as work.
The locals contrived a process which allowed them to buy obviously inferior Adaban goods. They pointed the company's stalls out to their friends, rolled their eyes, and laughed as they made their ironic purchases. “Ah, smiling customers,” Silone remarked during a lull. That wry observation relieved some of the tension felt by the employees. If even Silapobenk of all people found humor in the situation, so could they.
They were glad to hear the order to move out. The lieutenant-governor escorted them to the outskirts of town personally. When seeing the Stadeskosken people off so they could become someone else's problem, his manner had some agreeableness to it, enough so that the travelers could appreciate better the personal qualities of that giant of an Omme who was even taller than some of them. But not many.