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      The inhabitants of the planet Myrin have much to endure from Earthmen, inevitably, perhaps, since they represent the only intelligent life we have so far found in the galaxy. The Tenth Research Fleet has already left for Myrin. Meanwhile, some of the fruits of earlier expeditions are ripening.

      As has already been established, the superior Myrinian culture, the so-called Confluence of Headwaters, is somewhere in the region of eleven million (Earth) years old, and its language, Confluence, has been established even longer. The etymological team of the Seventh Research Fleet was privileged to sit at the feet of two gentlemen of the Geldrid Stance Academy. They found that Confluence is a language-cum-posture, and that meanings of words can be radically modified or altered entirely by the stance assumed by the speaker. There is, therefore, no possibility of ever compiling a one-to-one dictionary of English-Confluence, Confluence-English words.

      Nevertheless, the list of Confluent words which follows disregards the stances involved, which number almost nine thousand and are all named, and merely offers a few definitions, some of which must be regarded as tentative. The definitions are, at this early stage of our knowledge of Myrinian culture, valuable in themselves, not only because they reveal something of the inadequacy of our own language, but because they throw some light on to the mysteries of an alien culture. The romanised phonetic system employed is that suggested by Dr Rohan Prendernath, one of the members of the etymological team of the Seventh Research Fleet, without whose generous assistance this short list could never have been compiled.

      AB WE TEL MIN The sensation that one neither agrees nor disagrees with what is being said to one, but that one simply wishes to depart from the presence of the speaker

      ARN TUTKHAN Having to rise early before anyone else is about; ­addressing a machine

      BAGI RACK Apologising as a form of attack; a stick resembling a gun

      BAG RACK Needless and offensive apologies

      BAMAN The span of a man’s consciousness

      BI The name of the mythical northern cockerel; a reverie that lasts for more than twenty (Earth) years

      BI SAN A reverie lasting more than twenty years and of a religious nature

      BIT SAN A reverie lasting more than twenty years and of a

      blasphemous nature

      BI TOSI A reverie lasting more than twenty years on cosmological themes

      BI TVAS A reverie lasting more than twenty years on geological themes

      BIUI TOSI A reverie lasting more than a hundred and forty-two years on cosmological themes; the sound of air in a cavern; long dark hair

      BIUT TASH A reverie lasting more than twenty years on Har Dar Ka themes (c.f.)

      CANO LEE MIN Things sensed out-of-sight that will return

      CA PATA VATUZ The taste of a maternal grandfather

      CHAM ON TH ZAM Being witty when nobody else appreciates it

      DAR AYRHOH The garments of an ancient crone; the age-old

      supposition that Myrin is a hypothetical place

      EN IO PLAY The deliberate dissolving of the senses into sleep

      GEE KUTCH Solar empathy

      GE NU The sorrow that overtakes a mother knowing her child will be born dead

      GE NUP DIMU The sorrow that overtakes the child in the womb when it knows it will be born dead

      GOR A Ability to live for eight hundred years

      HA ATUZ SHAK EAN Disgrace attending natural death of maternal grandfather

      HAR DAR KA The complete understanding that all the soil of Myrin passes through the bodies of its earthworms every ten years

      HAR DI DI KAL A small worm; the hypothetical creator of a

      hypothetical sister planet of Myrin

      HE YUP The first words the computers spoke, meaning, ‘The light will not be necessary’

      HOLT CHA The feeling of delight that precedes and precipitates wakening

      HOLT CHE The autonomous marshalling of the senses which produces the feeling of delight that precedes and precipitates wakening

      HOZ STAP GURT A writer’s attitude to fellow writers

      INK TH O Morality used as an offensive weapon

      JILY JIP TUP A thinking machine that develops a stammer; the action of pulling up the trousers while running uphill

      JIL JIPY TUP Any machine with something incurable about it; pleasant laughter that is nevertheless unwelcome; the action of pulling up the trousers while running downhill

      KARNAD EES The enjoyment of a day or a year by doing nothing; fasting

      KARNDAL CHESS The waste of a day or a year by doing nothing; fasting

      KARNDOLI YON TOR Mystical state attained through inaction; feasting; a learned paper on the poetry of metal

      KARNDOL KI REE The waste of a life by doing nothing; a type of fasting

      KUNDULUM To be well and in bed with two pretty sisters

      LAHAH SIP Tasting fresh air after one has worked several hours at one’s desk

      LA YUN UN A struggle in which not a word is spoken; the underside of an inaccessible boulder; the part of one’s life unavailable to other people

      LEE KE MIN Anything or anyone out-of-sight that one senses will never return; an apology offered for illness

      LIKI INK TH KUTI The small engine that attends to one after the act of excretion

      MAL A feeling of being watched from within

      MAN NAIZ TH Being aware of electricity in wires concealed in the walls

      MUR ON TIG WON The disagreeable experience of listening to oneself in the middle of a long speech and neither understanding what one is saying nor enjoying the manner in which it is being said; a foreign accent; a lion breaking wind after the evening repast

      NAM ON A The remembrance, in bed, of camp fires

      NO LEE LE MUN The love of a wife that becomes especially vivid when she is almost out-of-sight

      NU CROW Dying before strangers

      NU DI DIMU Dying in a low place, often of a low fever

      NU HIN DER VLAK The invisible stars; forms of death

      NUN MUM Dying before either of one’s parents; ceasing to fight just because one’s enemy is winning

      NUT LAP ME Dying of laughing

      NUT LA POM Dying laughing

      NUT VATO Managing to die standing up

      NUTVU BAG RACK TO be born dead

      NU VALK Dying deliberately in a lonely (high) place

      OBI DAKT An obstruction; three or more machines talking together

      ORAN MUDA A change of government; an old peasant saying meaning, ‘The dirt in the river is different every day’

      PAN WOL LE MUDA A certainty that tomorrow will much resemble today; a line of manufacturing machines

      PAT O BANE BAN The ten heartbeats preceding the first heartbeat of orgasm

      PI KI SKAB WE The parasite that afflicts man and Tig Gag in its various larval stages and, while burrowing in the brain of the Tig Gag, causes it to speak like a man

      PI SHAK RACK CHANO The retrogressive dreams of autumn attributed to the presence in the bloodstream of Pi Ki Skab We

      PIT HOR Pig’s cheeks, or the droppings of pigs; the act of name-

      dropping

      PLAY

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