Native Tongue (30 page)

“They?”

“The Jeelods . . . surely they know the Terran culture better than this! They’ve been negotiating with us, trading with us, for nearly fifteen years.”

“Oh, they know better,” said Nazareth. “This is a deliberate tactic to stall negotiations . . . and to insult the American negotiators.”

“Are you sure?”

“Quite sure, Mr. Shannontry.”

“Well, damn them, then!”

“As you say, sir.”

“The arrogance . . . not to mention the just plain bad manners. . . .”

“Oh, yes. The Jeelods are not noted for their exquisite manners, Mr. Shannontry. And I thank you very much for wanting to lend a hand, by the way—I didn’t know there was anyone to call on.”

Shannontry shrugged carelessly. “I’m not
much
to call on, my dear,” he said. “I can say hello and good-bye and thank you, and very little more; and I say what little I
can
say with an accent that will have you in stitches. But I read the language easily enough, and the Department thought I could at least help with translations, look things up for you in the dictionaries, that sort of trivia.”

“It was kind of you to come,” said Nazareth.

“Well . . . it was my pleasure. I was looking forward to actually hearing the language in use, frankly. But I don’t know what we do now, Mrs. Adiness, and it’s very obvious that those men don’t know either.”

Nazareth permitted herself one smile, and said “Well, there is certainly nothing
I
can do, Mr. Shannontry.”

“No . . . under the circumstances, there certainly isn’t. Good God . . . now what?”

Nazareth looked bewildered and helpless, and waited. She was having a wonderful time. The government men could not possibly begin negotiations with female Jeelods; that was out of the question. No female, by definition, had adult legal rights, which would make any decisions vacuous in any case. Furthermore, it
would set a precedent and lead to the potential for endless repetition of this tactic from other Alien peoples. There were quite a large number of extraterrestrial cultures which allowed the females of their species what appeared to be equal or roughly equal status with the males.

On the other hand, the government men had no way of knowing what precisely they
could
do, without causing an interplanetary diplomatic crisis. And the longer they just sat there, the worse it was going to get.

There went one of them now, scuttling for the door, to get some instructions from somebody higher up. Nazareth chuckled, hoping he’d run into somebody from the team that had so proudly announced a few years back that they had cracked one of the REM18 languages by use of a computer alone; it had been necessary to send a linguist to tell them, very gently, that the word they had translated as English “friend” in fact meant “one whom it is permissible to eat, provided the proper spices are used in preparation of the corpse.” Nothing like a government “expert” to liven up one’s already marvelous nineteenth birthday!

As the man left the room, the Jeelod negotiating team went at once into the posture of ritual absence, and Jordan Shannontry said, “Look at that, now—what does that mean?”

“They are insulted,” Nazareth told him. “When they perceive an insult they will always do that. It slows things down very effectively.”

“Lord help us all,” sighed Shannontry. “Is there anything at all that we can do?”

“I’m afraid it isn’t my place to propose a course of action,” said Nazareth, quite properly. She had not trained as a wife, but she knew her role as woman linguist as well as any woman in the Lines. Her place was to interpret and to translate, to respond as best she could to direct questions posed to her regarding the language and the culture of the Aliens involved in the negotiation, and otherwise to be silent. It most emphatically was not her place to suggest strategies or diplomatic policy to anyone present.

Shannontry studied her carefully, and she flushed slightly under his steady glance, and looked away.

“This is completely unfair to you,” he said emphatically. “You’re far too young to be put in such a position, and I resent it deeply . . . it’s unkind, and it’s inexcusable.”

Nazareth had no idea what to say, and she didn’t dare look at him. He sounded as though he were genuinely concerned about her, but she knew better than to rely on that—any moment, he might spring the trap he was constructing with the feigned
gallant words, as Aaron did, and then she would be in trouble. She kept her silence, and waited, wary as any burnt child with an unfamiliar fire to contend with.

“Mrs. Adiness,” he said gently, no anger at all in his voice that she could spot, “this just won’t do. My dear, if you will tell me what to say, I will go over there and
say
it. Abominably, of course—but I will say it. Just write it down for me and model it for me a time or two, and I’ll take care of the matter.”

“Would you do that?”

“Of course.”

Nazareth was charmed. He really was going to help.

“We have plenty of time, then,” she said.

“We do?”

She explained about the absence rituals lasting eighteen minutes and eleven seconds, and he made an impatient noise.

“I suppose in this case it’s just as well,” he muttered.

“Probably.”

“Well . . . what shall I say to them?”

Nazareth thought a moment. First there would be the narrative frame that would shelter the direct sentence, and the triple particle that would disambiguate the three embeddings. Then the very simple message. . . . WE WILL BE MOST HAPPY TO WAIT UNTIL YOUR MEN ARE ABLE TO COME TO THE NEGOTIATION. The other half of the narrative frame . . . some honorifics . . .

“It will be long,” she said dubiously.

“That’s all right,” he answered. “I’ll manage. And if my barbarous accent offends their ears, it’s their own damn fault. Just write it out.”

She did, and she said it for him.

“Again, please.”

She said it again.

“That first cluster. . . .”

She repeated it slowly, tipping her chin so that he could see clearly the position of her tongue against her teeth.

“Oh, I perceive. Like that. . . . All right, here we go. Listen to me, please—will they understand?”

Nazareth would have winced at the mangled stream of sound that represented Shannontry’s oral skill at REM34, but that would have been as bad manners as those the Jeelods were exhibiting. She bit her lip, instead, and he laughed.

“That bad? Here . . . brace yourself, Mrs. Adiness, and I’ll try it again.”

Better. Not much, but better.

“Yes,” she said. “They’ll understand that, even if they don’t like it very much. And it’s time, I think—yes, they’re turning around. Perhaps if you felt willing to go ahead before the man from the Department gets back. . . .”

“Absolutely,” he said, apparently not offended by the hint of a suggestion of action. “I’ll be right back.”

Nazareth would never have dared leave the interpreter’s booth and march right over to the Alien delegation, and she doubted that many men would have, but Jordan Shannontry seemed as comfortable as if he’d been in his own Household. She watched, as delighted as if it had been an entertainment especially for her benefit, while he faced the Jeelod women, bowed first to the left and then to the right—which showed that he had studied the culture, for all his shortcomings with the pronunciation of the language—and just said it right out. Twice. Slowly. And then again, to be absolutely certain that they had heard and understood.

The American negotiators didn’t like it one little bit, and as Shannontry made his way back across the room they caught at his sleeve and made desperate “What’s going on?” faces at him, but he was magnificent. He shook them off as if they were tiny children, and he did not stoop to explain one thing to them. Marvelous, thought Nazareth, marvelous! To be so certain of yourself . . . to be so controlled! To dare to behave like that . . .

He was with her in half a minute, and he touched her wrist politely, not sitting down.

“I suggest we leave at once, Mrs. Adiness,” he said. “Before our federal friends can create any additional commotion. Come—I’ll get you out of here, and then I will come back and explain the situation.”

She was afraid to do that, but he was firm, overruling her objections and moving her briskly out of the booth and into the corridor, gathering up her work materials for her as they went so that she didn’t have to bother with them. Only when they were safely outside the conference room and she was seated in the cubicle reserved for the linguists’ use during breaks and delays did he say anything more.

“You’re not to worry,” he said. “Not at all. Whatever happens, I’ll explain that you behaved precisely as you should have behaved and that there is no reason for anyone to be annoyed with you in even the slightest degree. If they want to complain, let them complain about me—you did nothing but comply with
my
instructions, and if there was an error it was
my
error. Now you just relax, dear, and wait, while I go see what can be done about all this. I assume they will send a team of men?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Yes, of course. They are as anxious to get the tariff established—in their favor, naturally—as we are to have it firmly established in ours. This was just a—a tactic.”

“Worked very well, too, didn’t it?”

Nazareth ducked her head to hide her face, and agreed that it surely had.

“Well . . . we’ll get it settled. And a decent Jeelod team at the table. And then, my dear, I will send someone to bring you back to the booth, and not until.”

And he was gone, leaving her entirely bemused. She was not only impressed, she was astonished . . . she tried to imagine Aaron, in such a situation, and she laughed aloud. He would not have been there in the first place, not Aaron. He would work if a woman were there acting as
his
backup. He would even condescend to work on a multilingual negotiation with a woman serving as interpreter for one of the other languages. But act as backup for a woman himself? He would have gone to any lengths, made up any excuse, before he would have done such a thing.

It crossed her mind then, oddly, that it must be miserable to be Aaron Adiness and have to live in constant terror of your own ego. It had never before occurred to her.

Poor Aaron. That was a new thought. Poor Aaron.

Chapter Sixteen

Q:
      
What do you see, Nils? Can you tell me?

A:
      
(
LAUGHTER
)

Q:
      
Try . . . it’s very important. What do you see? What is it, that you’re looking at?

A:
      
It. No. Not it.

Q:
      
Go ahead, Nils . . . call what you see ‘it.’ Pretend that ‘it’ will do. What do you see?

A:
      
(
LAUGHTER
)

Q:
      
Nils, you’re not trying! You promised you would try, for the sake of science, and for my sake. Please, try, man. . . .

A:
      
It’s not a thing. It’s not a not-thing. It’s not an idea. It’s not a non-idea. It’s not a part of reality. It’s not a not-part of reality. It’s not a not-part of a not-part of not-reality.

Q:
      
Nils, that’s not a hell of a lot of help to us.

A:
      
(
LAUGHTER
)

(Dr. Quentun Silakady,

interviewing an experimental subject under LSD)

Somehow Brooks Showard had taken it for granted there would be no more of the experiments that combined babies and hallucinogenic drugs. It had been hell, watching the tubies fail one after another, when they’d started with such high hopes.
And it
had
been a good idea, by God. . . . Beau St. Clair was suffering a kind of soul-destroying guilt now, that the effing med-Sammys didn’t seem to be able to do much about—not and keep him conscious enough for duty, at any rate—but it had been a
fine
idea. An excellent idea, that could have been the breakthrough they’d been praying for. Except that it hadn’t worked.

And considering how it turned out, considering what they had to send off to the orphanage in Arlington, Brooks took it for granted that that was the end of it. He and Beau and Lanky had agreed, too, that whatever the next move was going to be, it was up to Arnold Dolbe. Lanky’d done his share; endless variations with the computers. And Beau and Brooks had done theirs. Now it was up to Arnold.

Who surprised them. They stared at him, shocked speechless.

“Well? Why the funny looks?” Dolbe said belligerently.

When they still said nothing he turned bright red and repeated himself. “I said,
why the funny looks?
”

Showard cleared his throat and tried to speak for all of them.

“We thought . . . we thought it had been pretty conclusively demonstrated that the hallucinogen idea didn’t work, Arnold. A good idea. A
damn
good idea—but it didn’t work.”

“I don’t agree,” said Dolbe.

“Hey!”

“I don’t. I don’t agree.” Dolbe spoke doggedly, staring at them with the stubborn expression that had carried him through many a situation when he knew nothing about what he was doing. He expected it to carry him through this time, when he had at least one or two facts at his command. “I think it worked rather well.”