The Judas Rose (43 page)

Gabriel Dow was only eleven, but he had sense enough to realize the strangeness of the study. He strongly suspected that when his father looked at the small garden his mother insisted on maintaining at the center of the apartment he saw it the way he saw the study. Maybe as the inside of a green egg instead of a white one; maybe as the representation in the natural world of the number eleven or the number seven-and-a-half. Gabe was nearly certain that when his father granted the world the privilege of his glance he imposed this kind of order upon it . . . he bet his father shit geometrically perfect ovoids.

Gabe was nervous; he was pretty sure what this morning's conference topic was going to be. He'd been expecting it for weeks, and was surprised that it had taken this long; probably they'd been trying to make special allowances for him because he was the very first ordinary kid to have native fluency in an Alien language, the very first one that didn't come from the thirteen linguist families. Probably they'd kind of hated to spoil his image. And more importantly, they were scared of his father; for
sure
, they were scared of his father.

Almost everybody was. Gabe wasn't. He hated him, but he wasn't scared of him. He knew what his own place was in the world of Macabee Dow; he came after mathematics, and before every other human being dead or alive. It wasn't the worst of places.

He crossed the room, liking the cool of the floor against his bare feet, and used one toe to touch the spot exactly beneath the center of the door to the desk; soundlessly, the desk extruded the elegant set of eleven steps that Gabriel's mother refused to climb because they made her dizzy. It was their narrowness, and their
steep angle, and the fact that they were so transparent as to be just this side of invisible, that made her dizzy, of course. Gabe had fallen off them dozens of times when he was little, before he got the hang of it—the important thing was not to
look
at them, just let your feet do it all for you.

“Macabee?” he said, uneasily. “Okay if I come up?”

“Would I have sent for you if I didn't want you to come up?”

Gabe shrugged, and took the steps swiftly; as he lifted his foot from the top one, the whole staircase folded itself back into the base of the desk, and he saw his father's fingers touch the spot that would put the stairs on LOCK. So that nobody else could join them.

There was no point in putting it off, and a certain number of points to be acquired by taking a confident stance. Gabe looked his father right in the eye, pitched his voice as low as it would go, and demanded, “Well? What have I done to disgrace us all now, sir?”

“Sir” was all right; it was a title of respect, untainted by emotion. It was words like “Father” and “Papa” and “Dad” that were forbidden, all of them being what his father called “terms of slop.”

“Sit,” said Macabee. “I'm not pleased.”

“No,” said Gabe, sitting as directed. “I guess you're not.”

“You do know what this is about, Gabriel.
Don't
you?”

“I guess so.”

“How long?”

“How long, sir?”

“How
long
, my son who is named for an angel, have you know that you were getting unsatisfactory evaluations as an interpreter?”

“Six weeks, maybe. Maybe a little longer.” Lots longer, really; six months, a year . . . he wasn't sure. He wasn't telling, either.

“Six weeks! They said nothing to me, not one single word, until yesterday afternoon!”

Gabriel shrugged again; everybody, he had noticed, shrugged a lot around his father. Or twitched. “They were afraid to tell you, I expect,” he said.

“You think so?”

“I know so. Everybody's scared of you, Macabee. You know that.”

“Except you.”

“And Raphael. And Michael.” His younger brothers, also named for angels. Who, his father had explained to them, were
not to be confused with the feathered lady harpists in billowy skirts that you saw on Christmas cards. An angel, Macabee had told them, was an abstraction of splendor suitable for the focus of spiritual energy; they had not argued with him.

“And your mother?”

Don't shrug, Gabriel
—he forced his shoulders to stillness.

“She's a woman,” he answered. “Women are scared of
everything
.”

“I see. Well, since you know what it's all about, and you're not afraid of me, that saves us time. You can begin by explaining it to me. I do not expect to hear the words ‘I don't know' used in this explanation.”

Gabriel stared hard at the bare white floor, trying to think. He'd known this was going to happen
some
time, and he'd known he would be ordered to explain; he'd intended to work out a really clear concise logical speech of explanation and have it ready, have it memorized. But he hadn't gotten around to it. He'd considered being a smartass and constructing the speech in his Alien language, of which Macabee understood not one word, but he hadn't gotten around to that either. He hadn't really wanted to
think
about any of this, that was why.

“Gabriel—
explain
. Why must I be told that you are, and I quote, ‘inattentive, slovenly, careless, and entirely inadequate' in the performance of your duties? Why
is
that, Gabe?”

“You're not going to understand,” the boy said miserably. “I don't know any way to make you understand.”

“Try me.”

“You're just going to say ‘you had an opportunity, and you had an obligation, and none of your remarks are relevant.' What's the point of trying to talk about it?”

“The point,” said Macabee Dow, “is that I need to know. If I don't understand at first, you can tell me again. As many times as it takes, until I have sufficient data
to
understand.”

“Jesus, I'll be here all morning.”

“If necessary.”

Gabe glanced at his father, and back at the floor again, and apologized; just because he hated him, that was no excuse for being rude. Macabee was never rude to
him
. “Sorry I cursed, Macabee,” he said. “I was showing off.”

“You were. It's understandable. Now begin.”

The boy sighed heavily, and he let his arms hang aimlessly beside his knees. “I don't know any way to
do
this, sir,” he said again, hopelessly. “I don't know how to start, even. And I know you said I wasn't supposed to say I don't know, but I
don't
.”

“Try linear mode. One word after another; full stop, every now and then. Until it's all said.”

Gabriel put his face in his hands, and he moaned. He knew how much that would irritate Macabee, who would not have moaned if you'd dipped his face in a vat of boiling oil, but moans were Gabriel's style. He was hoping for irritation sufficient to draw something in the way of a lecture on manliness and fortitude and assorted other good qualities from the professor, as a postponing strategy, but when he peeked through the cracks between his fingers he could see that it wasn't going to work.

The expression on Macabee's face came from the set titled “Grim & Patient,” at the extreme end of the set, and it would be there all morning. All day.
Just say it, Gabriel
, he told himself fiercely,
just go on and say it! What's the worst thing that can happen? He can't do anything about it, even if he'd like to kill you. And he wouldn't like to kill you. Because you and Raphael and Michael, abstractions of splendor in the making, represent Macabee Dow, Continued.

“Okay!” he blurted. “Okay! Macabee. . . . Macabee, I don't
want
to be a
linguist!
”

His father frowned through the grim and the patient. “You're
not
a linguist,” he observed. “What does that have to do with it? What's that got to do with you going to sleep during negotiations? What's that got to do with you elaborating an Alien delegate's speech—during a labor negotiation, Gabriel, of considerable importance—by adding a dozen unprintable Panglish obscenities? You're not a linguist, and nobody ever said you had to be; you're a simultaneous interpreter of a significant Alien language, who was given a spectacular opportunity guaranteeing you a spectacular future. All you have to do is interpret. You don't have to live in a herd underneath the ground, you don't have to do group gymnastics at six o'clock in the morning in the middle of winter, you're not required to spend all your spare time hacking away at
more
languages—you don't have to do any of that stuff. Just interpret. And your command of the language is flawless.” He stopped and tapped the scrap of pliofilm he was holding . . . the hard copy of the comset message complaining about him, Gabriel supposed. “Even these men at D.A.T. agree on that. They all say you're very good indeed at what you do, if you choose to be.”

“It's a
joint complaint?
”

“Five of them are signing, Gabe.
Five
. All disgusted. They have, they say, given you every possible chance, and I believe them. From the look on your face, I assume they've gone
beyond that. What's the matter with you, exactly, to make them say these things?”

“Macabee, listen to me,” the boy said urgently. “Try to just listen for a minute. I'm not going to be able to say this nice and neat, it's gonna be sloppy and all messed up. But I mean every word of it, and I'd like to get it over with. Without you doing a kind of running review as I go
along
, Macabee.”

“Agreed. You tell me when you're through.” And Macabee leaned back against the curving wall of the desk and folded his arms across his chest, staring at his son from under half-closed eyelids.

“Macabee,” Gabriel began, “you say I don't have to be a linguist, I only have to be an interpreter. But it's not that simple. The Lingoe kids are crazy—” He stopped suddenly, and backed up. “I'm sorry I said ‘Lingoe'; I didn't mean to. The
linguist
kids are crazy. They don't
mind
sitting in the damn interpreting booths from eight o'clock in the morning until noon, and then all afternoon long, listening to people go on and on and fucking
on
—sorry, sir—about should we put two hooks on the top of the box to hang stuff from or
three
hooks on the top of the box to hang stuff from. You know what they do, Macabee? When lunch finally comes around, you know what they do? They sit there and argue about verb endings, so help me god. . . . And they really care about them—I mean, they
really
care. When they're hassling a verb ending they're in heaven, they think case markers are more fun than baseball, they eat prepositions for breakfast . . . they're all crazy. They do that six days a week, and they don't do anything else, Macabee. When they go home at night I guess they sit around like old people, discussing the ‘implications' of verb endings—I know they go home and study half the fucking night after they're through with their regular homework. Hey, Macabee, come
on
—that's not a way to
live!
It's not
human! Shit
, who
cares
about all that stuff? No, don't say anything, Macabee, you promised me you wouldn't interrupt! Look, I want to spend time with my friends, and I want to watch the holos, and I want to go
do
stuff! The linguist kids
don't
, or at least if they do, they sure do a damn good job of hiding it from everybody. And that's the
point
, Macabee!” He gulped air and swallowed hard; he was already shaking, god damn it.

“Listen,” he said, desperate to make the man understand, “you put me in that Interface with the Chornyak kids when I was too little even to turn over by myself. And you proved—
proved
, just like you meant to do—that the linguists are telling the truth when they say any human kid can acquire an Alien language just
the same as their kids. You proved there wasn't any genetic difference, and you were right, and I'm sure that's good. Because it's hard to be prejudiced against the linguists if you know for absolutely sure and certain that they really
are
just like everybody else. They were telling the truth about not having any special language genes other people haven't got. And that means they're probably telling the truth about refusing to try for non-humanoid languages because you can't do it without hurting the kids, too. That's good to know, Macabee, and I'm glad you were in on that. It makes it a lot harder to go around saying the Lines are traitors to Earth, and all that crap. But Macabee—Macabee, listen to me, because
I
am going to tell
you
something that is the truth. Okay—it's not genetic. A linguist is a human being is a linguist is a human being. They weren't lying. You proved it—
I
proved it. But nevertheless—get ready, Macabee, here it comes, Gabriel's First Law Of Linguadynamics, are you ready? It goes like this: TO BE AN INTERPRETER FOR THE GOVERNMENT YOU HAVE TO BE A LINGUIST, BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO BE
CRAZY
LIKE A LINGUIST. Have you got that, Macabee? Ordinary normal, sane human beings can't
do
it, Macabee! You have to be an effing
fanatic!
You have to grow up thinking there's nothing else in the world worth caring about except languages—the way
you
grew up thinking there was nothing else but numbers!
Jesus
, Macabee!”