Native Tongue (24 page)

“But we don’t have a baby right now,” Dolbe pointed out. “And unless somebody just turns up out of nowhere, like that Landry kid, we don’t have any volunteer prospects right now, either. You’re not suggesting that we go into the kidnapping business again, are you?”

“I’m not sure,” said Brooks Showard very carefully. “I’m not sure exactly
what
I’m suggesting.”

“But see here, man—”

“Naw! Shut up, Dolbe, and let me think! Will you for chrissakes let me think?”

Dolbe shut his mouth and waited, while Showard frowned and beat his fist in a slow steady drumming against the edge of the table. They all waited, and they all saw the change in Showard as he got ready to tell them exactly what he had in mind. They hadn’t seen Brooks Showard with a look of optimism in so long they’d forgotten what it was like, but he looked optimistic now.

“Two things,” he said at last. “I say we do two things.”

“Name them,” said Dolbe briskly.

“I want you, Dolbe, to go twist some arms over at NSA and have them put some real muscle into digging up dirt on the Lingoes.”

“I thought you were going to talk about—”

“I’m getting to that! This is something I want out of the way first, Dolbe! There have
got
to be linguists that aren’t morally the equivalent of the Virgin Mary . . . there’ve got to be. I want ’em. I want to know which ones are open to blackmail. I want to know what they’re doing, when they’re doing it, who or what they’re doing it with, and how often. The works. The NSA is the right unit to do that, that’s what they’re for, and you, Dolbe, I want you to get them onto it. There’s only thirteen of the Lines, and all of them crammed together like animals in a communal building—that ought to be the easiest surveillance assignment NSA’s had in decades. Let’s get that going, in case we need it later.”

“Done,” said Dolbe. “Consider it done.”

“Okay. Now, for the business of sending the babies on the fancy trips . . . we have got babies.”

“We have?”

“Yeah. We have. We’ve got damnall cartons and bales of babies.
Freezers
ful of babies.”

“What?” And then, “Oh.”

“Brooks,” said Beau St. Clair, “we didn’t have very good luck with those test-tube infants. Remember? They were . . .
they . . . Ah, hell, I don’t know how to put it. But you remember—you were there.”

“Yes,” said Showard, “I remember. And I agree with you, it wasn’t the greatest. But if we’ve got to go monkeying around with the brains of infants, feeding them peyote with their pablum, I for one would rather start with the tubies. We’ve got plenty of them, there are no parents to grieve over what happens to them; it’s the obvious way to go. Let’s work it out on
them
. The doses. How much a baby can take without it wrecking his physical system, never mind the central nervous system. We’ll start it with the test-tube babies, and we’ll learn as we go along . . . And by the time somebody volunteers us another Infant Hero, gentlemen, we’ll be ready. We’ll know what we’re doing. Don’t you see? We’ll bygod solve this problem!”

The whole room was crackling with the new prospect that there might, there just might, be a nugget of success somewhere in the desert of failure that had extended everywhere around them as far in space or time as any of them could remember. It was champagne time, and the bubbles already popping. Even if it meant using the tubies again.

Brooks Showard grabbed a stack of government forms lying in the middle of the table and threw them up into the air, from pure happiness, standing there and letting it rain forms on him with an expression of simple bliss.

“Hey, let’s
go
!” he shouted at them. “Time’s a-wasting, and all those quaint sayings from Homeroom! Let’s
go
!”

Chapter Thirteen

REFORMULATION ONE, Göedel’s Theorem:

For any language, there are perceptions which it cannot express because they would result in its indirect self-destruction.

REFORMULATION ONE-PRIME, Göedel’s Theorem:

For any culture, there are languages which it cannot use because they would result in its indirect self-destruction.

(from an obscure pamphlet titled “Primer in Metalinguistics,” by an even more obscure group known as the Planet Ozark Offworld Auxiliary; they credit these statements to an inspiration from the great Doublas Hofstadter . . .)

Rachel heard the words, but it was as if they were in a language she had never studied; she could not process them. He must have seen that on her face, because he said them again, slowly and clearly. And then, when she understood, the stimulus finally overriding the shock, she curled her hands tightly into fists so that they wouldn’t tremble and told herself that she must be very very careful. But it was no good, she wasn’t able to be careful.

“Oh, no, Thomas!” It was the best and the worst she could manage. “Oh, she is too young!”

“Nonsense.”

“The child is only fourteen years old, Thomas! Oh, you can’t be serious—I don’t believe it.”

“I am totally serious; this isn’t a joking matter. And the ‘child’ will be fifteen when the marriage takes place, Rachel. I’ve scheduled it for her fifteenth birthday.”

Rachel struck her clenched fists together and pressed them to her chest; before she could stop, she had bent forward as a woman does in the sudden pain of labor, and a low mourning croon had come from her lips. It was a sound she had not known she knew how to make; it was a sound Thomas was certain to dislike.

“My God,” he said, his voice heavy with distaste. As she was aware, he despised that sort of female noise, and the obvious fact that it had been involuntary, a reflex response to pain, did not make him any less disgusted. “You sound precisely like a bawling cow, Rachel. An elderly bawling cow.”

The callousness was just what Rachel needed; it pulled her back instantly from her state of emotional disarray, and when she spoke again it was calmly, and in her ordinary cool tones.

“What,” she asked him, “will you men do next? First the girls married at eighteen. Then it was sixteen. Now you are prepared to see Nazareth marry at just barely fifteen . . . thirty seconds past, if I understand you correctly. Why not just move the marriage date to puberty and be done with it, Thomas?”

“It isn’t necessary,” he answered. “The present system, with marriage at sixteen, allows the husband to space his children three years apart and still see that the woman bears eight infants before the age of forty. Eight is quite enough, whatever the government may think about the matter, and we don’t feel that a woman much past forty should go through pregnancy. There’s no need for any such radical change as you are proposing.”

“Thomas—”

“Furthermore, Rachel, despite your histrionics you know I have not suggested that all girls of the Lines should marry at fifteen. Only that Nazareth must do so, and only because her circumstances are exceptional.”

“You would be exceptional, too, if you were under guard every moment of your life!”

“Once she’s married, there’ll be no need for night surveillance unless her husband is gone from home,” said Thomas. “And perhaps the need for daytime guards will be less as well. In time.”

“I have never understood the need for any of it,” Rachel declared.

“That’s very stupid of you.”

“Thomas, Belle-Anne has been in the mental hospital for months, and you know what she’s become. If she were released tomorrow—and that won’t happen—she has no mind left at all, she’s a husk! Nazareth has been in no danger since the day they
took Belle-Anne away, and it is in no way stupid for me to realize that. What possible danger could there be?”

“I worry about the other females at Barren House,” said Thomas. “I’m not prepared to accept unequivocally the idea that only Belle-Anne was suffering from religious mania, for one thing. And for another, my dear, there are few things easier for a copycat criminal to fake than religious mania.”

“Thomas . . . it’s absurd.”

“Nazareth is valuable to this Household,” he told her stiffly. “Far beyond the ordinary, she is valuable. Her linguistic skills would make her a prize under any circumstances, and REM34 is one of the languages most essential to the welfare of this planet—which makes her even more valuable. Finally, her genetics are superb. I expect her to provide us with infants of equal caliber. And I am not willing to take even the slightest chance that she’ll be harmed, Rachel, not now, not ever. Your emotionalism is unbecoming in a woman who ought to know the value of her own child, and who claims to love her.”

Rachel firmed her lips, and looked at him steadily, considering. It was just possible that he was telling her the truth, that he’d fed the data into the computers and been advised that the chance of someone following Belle-Anne’s example was sufficiently great to require protection for Nazareth. It was possible. It was certainly true that Nazareth was uniquely valuable to the Line both genetically and economically. But she knew Thomas very well, and she knew that there were ordinarily many layers of motive behind the surface one that he presented with such plausibility.

For example, if he hadn’t assigned those two young men to keep watch over Nazareth . . . he would have had an unsolved problem. If he were to end the surveillance he would have that problem back again. Some sort of face-saving function had been needed, because those two were so completely unpromising as linguists that they were useless for anything more than the most trivial social situations. That happened sometimes . . . a linguist would acquire the languages chosen for him like any other child, but would turn out to be utterly lacking in any ability to carry out the essential functions of interpreting and translating. It had been very convenient for Thomas to be able to give out the tale that he’d released the two cousins from their important duties as linguists to fill the equally important role of guards for Nazareth; if he released them from that, he’d have to think of something else. It would be awkward . . . there was always the danger of damage to the public’s image of the linguists as infallible in all matters linguistic.

“Rachel,” Thomas said, “that expression on your face is more than usually unpleasant. Please do not scowl at me in that way . . . at least wait until I’ve had breakfast.”

“Thomas?”

“Yes, Rachel?” Oh, the overlay of weary tolerance in that voice, damn his soul!

“Thomas,” she said urgently, “I can’t approve of this. You managed to distract me very neatly with all the trivia about the necessity for the guards—twenty points to you, my dear. But I cannot be distracted indefinitely . . . let’s return to the subject of this obscene marriage that you are suggesting.”

“Rachel,” said Thomas, adding practical reason to the tolerance, “it doesn’t make the slightest difference whether you approve or not. It would be pleasant if you did approve, of course. I make every effort to consider your personal wishes with regard to my children whenever I can. But when you refuse to be reasonable you leave me no choice but to ignore you. And Rachel, I am not ‘suggesting’ this marriage—I am
ordering
it.”

Rachel had been born a linguist, born a Shawnessey, and she had spent all her life surrounded by the men of the Lines. She did not misjudge Thomas. She knew him to be in many ways a good and kind and considerate man. She knew that his responsibilities were heavy, that his workload was brutal, and that at times he did things less than kindly only because he had no time to do them in any other way. As Head of the Lines, he had power; so far as she knew, he had never been tempted to abuse that power, and that was to his credit. She was willing to give him all the credit due him.

But she
resented
him; oh, how she resented him! And she resented him most at times like this one, when his total authority over her and over those she loved forced her to debase herself to him. She would choke on what she had to do now . . . but she had no other strategy available to her. She erased the anger from her face, erased the scowl to which he had objected, and let her eyes fill with the soft puzzled tearfulness that was considered appealing in women. And she sank to the floor beside Thomas’ chair and leaned her head against his knee, and for the sake of her daughter, she disciplined herself to beg.

“Please, my darling,” she said softly. “Please don’t do this dreadful thing.”

“Rachel, you are ridiculous,” he said. His body was rigid under her touch, and his voice was ice.

“Thomas, how often have I asked you for anything? How often, love, have I quarreled with your decisions or questioned
your good judgment? How often have I done anything but agree that you were wise in what you were about to do? Please, Thomas . . . change your mind. Just this one time. Thomas, indulge me, just this once!”

He reached down abruptly and hauled her upright in front of him like a parcel, or a child in tantrum, and he sat there laughing at her, shaking his head in mock astonishment.

“Darling . . .” Rachel said, forcing the words.

“Darling!” He let go of one of her shoulders and he tapped her on the end of her nose with his index finger. “I am not your darling . . . or anyone’s. As you know perfectly well. I am a cruel and vindictive and heartless monster who cares for nothing but his own selfish and twisted goals.”

“Thomas, I never ask you for anything!” she pleaded.

“My sweet,” he said, still laughing, “that is what you always say when you disagree with me. Every single time. Year after weary year. You really should talk to one of the young girls and see if they can’t suggest a new routine you could use . . . you’ve worn that one out completely.”