The Judas Rose (54 page)

“You've thought that for decades, and you've been wrong the whole time. Nevertheless, we will—if you so direct—try it again at the next contact we have with them, just as we have on each preceding occasion. I must say that by now the speeches are well memorized; it's no work to run through the performance twice annually and on miscellaneous occasions.”

“All right, Sundy; I agree that yours is probably a lost cause,” Heykus said. “‘But do it again anyway. Since we don't know why they always refuse, we can't anticipate factors that might cause them to agree. Go on as you've been doing.”

“Certainly. Glad to oblige. It won't do any good whatsoever, but we'll go on doing it.”

“Thank you. Your optimism is always appreciated. Lo Chen?”

Phong smiled; his role was a less burdensome one than poor Sundbystyner's and he could afford the better humor. “No progress,” he said. “The linguists will
not
surrender any of their AIRYs to the Department. Not for any price; not under any circumstances.
Still
. Their arguments vary from session to session, Heykus, which means we don't have to do set pieces at
them the way John Charles does, but that's just because they're playing games with us and
they
prefer the variety. They don't have any intention of ever sharing the quota with us and letting us use their AIRYs to stock government Interfaces.”

“And they can make that stick.”

“Damn right they can.” The man laughed, showing beautiful white teeth. “We try to do anything clever, Jonathan effing Asher will just pull every last member of the Lines out of whatever negotiations are ongoing until we stop being cute. Total strike, in other words. And there we'd be—I assume you can imagine the chaos that would create. We're short-handed now, even with every available linguist working full forty-hour weeks—” He paused, and the smile left his face. “Let me take this opportunity,” he said gravely, “to point out to you again that this means every available linguist now earns twenty hours a week overtime wages. As long as we are discussing extravagances, Heykus. The taxpayers don't like that, Heykus.”

“Noted. The damn fools that put them on hourly wages in the first place, instead of flat rate contracts, are all dead. Do not inflict upon me the abuse that is rightfully theirs.”

“Noted right back at you,” said Phong. “And continuing . . . even with all the linguists serving double, we don't have enough staff to get everything done efficiently. If they went on strike I don't know exactly what would happen, but I do know it wouldn't be nice.”

“I might add,” Sundbystyner put in, “that we can be ninety-nine percent certain that even if the linguists would agree to loaning out, or renting out, their Aliens-in-Residence, there's very little chance the Consortium would go along with it. We risk having the quota
reduced
, for example. Or cut off entirely.”

“Which might be a good thing,” said Aldrovandus Barton. “Then we could drop the whole goddamn farce and settle down to work with the status quo. I do
not
see what is so wonderful about acquiring ever more Alien languages, and I will
never
see it—my god, if we'd stopped with the first one we'd learned and never learned another, we wouldn't be anywhere near the end of what could be gained from that.”

The point of ever more languages was not that it was wonderful to acquire them, like collecting ever more varieties of butterflies, but that without them you could not spread the Word of God to all the peoples of the universe. But Heykus assuredly could not say that, and so he said nothing and allowed Barton to glare at him. He was accustomed to the reaction, and understood it.

“On the other hand,” Lo Chen went on, aware that there was no hope of a productive discussion on the preceding point, “the linguists have been extremely cooperative about letting us Interface infants, selected by Government Work, with
their
infants. All they've ever required is that the government should provide the additional Tenders needed for convenient care of the smaller babies, plus a standard fee per child to cover insurance and administrative costs. We've run nearly two hundred infants through their system to date, without having even minor hassles. Oh, the usual drivel from the infants' mothers, sure, but no problems associated with the Lines.”

“So it's good news and it's bad news,” Heykus proposed. “That doesn't sound to me like ‘total failure,' which was the unfortunate phrase used in your memorandum.”

“Barton will be happy to explain to you why my good news is not good news,” Lo Chen told him. “That's his department. But I have one more item.”

“Go on, then—sorry I interrupted.”

“Last item from Phong Lo Chen, liaison man with the Lines, coming up. There has been
no
progress in getting the linguists to go to the alternate plan you suggested three years ago, Heykus. They think it's a hilarious idea—at least that's the public pose, and I have no way of knowing what the private one is, if there
is
a private one. They will not—repeat, not—agree to Interface linguists who are native speakers of Alien languages with infants, as if
they
were AIRYs. Not at any price. Yes, it has been explained to them that since no physical ‘Interface' is required for Terrans plus Terrans, a single native speaker of one of the major tongues could serve as language acquisition datasource for perhaps fifty or more infants at a time. We've offered money, we've offered ample staff to look after the infants physically, we've appealed to their sense of patriotism, we've tried everything. They just tell us the idea is stupid.”

“Stupid!”

“Their very phrase. They seem to feel that they're doing more than enough already, and arguing against
that
claim isn't easy—see above, right? They will—as I notified you almost a year ago—teach classes in the languages for us, provided all students allegedly aiming at native fluency are no older than ten years and preferably younger. They have agreed, without any hesitation that I can see, to let adults sit in on these classes up to the capacity of the rooms, provided two conditions are met—and I will again give you their own words: (a) the adults promise to keep their mouths shut unless specifically asked to talk, and (b)
it is fully understood that the adults should not expect to achieve native fluency.”

“So?”

“What do you mean, ‘so'?”

“So that's
good
, isn't it? So we're grateful for their cooperation. So why have no such classes been initiated?”

Phong sagged in his chair and thrust both hands deep into his pockets. “Shit, Heykus” he said disgustedly.

“Well? What's holding them up?”

“
Shit
. You know perfectly
well
. Whole thing has to go through department channels, right? Okay. First decision: which languages will be taught. There are hundreds of them. There are at least thirty that involve extremely critical interactions with Alien populations. The linguists' schedules are already impossible; they've told us that they can manage classes in three languages, maximum, and have directed us to choose them. And that, Heykus, is where we are stuck.”

“That is. . . .” Heykus' voice trailed off; he found himself with no word to complete the sentence. And Phong was nodding agreement.

“It is,” he said. “It sure is.
But
, you have this very important top dog official who insists that it's got to be REM-X because that's the minilaser people. And you have the very important top dog official who insists that it's got to be REM-Y and REM-Z because that's the medical drugs people. And you've got—”

“Never mind, Phong,” Heykus interrupted. “I surrender. I understand. Is that the only hitch?”

“
Oh
, no. We've also got the entire teaching staff of the Foreign Service threatening that
they
will strike, quit, riot, you name it, if we allow so much as one filthy Lingoe to put his little toe in a federal language classroom. If Alien languages are to be taught, by god,
they
will teach them!”

“But they don't
speak
them!”

“Heykus, that is the great American tradition. Don't be ridiculous. They can
pronounce
them, after a fashion, and they can write tests over them, and they have
text
books of them, and they have graded
readers
for them. Oh, and let's not forget folksongs. The Foreign Service language teachers know Alien folksongs.”

“Sweet suffering saints.”

“It's our own fault,” said Barton. “We should have listened to the linguists a hundred years ago when they told us to let them do the language teaching.”

“And had our buildings burned down?” Heykus allowed shock to tint his voice, just a touch. “Now who's being ridiculous?”

The silence in the room went on and on, as the men contemplated the set of interlocking absurdities with which they were struggling, until finally Barton asked Heykus if he might be allowed to make his report or leave, whichever Heykus preferred.

“Judas, Aldrovandus, please do,” said Heykus. “Sorry. This business is so infuriating that I lose all track of what I'm doing. You say total failure, too, don't you?”

“One hundred percent. No—make that ninety-six percent, Heykus. Let's not overdramatize. It's not really
total
at my end of the string. But it's very close.”

“All right, Aldro. spell it out.”

“May I? Just spell it out, without bullshit? Yes? All right, here you are: NO CHILD NOT OF THE LINES IS GOING TO BECOME A LINGUIST EXCEPT THOSE EXCEEDINGLY RARE CHILDREN WHO HAVE AN
AVOCATION
TO BECOME A LINGUIST. In the same sense that the word ‘avocation' is used in religious orders, gentlemen. There
will
be a few lay linguists, yes. But we're talking extremely small numbers.”

“Like what?”

“Oh . . . let's see. The original charter group was one hundred infants, which is handy for the math. Maybe six of that hundred are like the children of the Lines . . . their desire is unto nouns and verbs. But the other ninety-four, gentlemen, are going to be doctors and lawyers and pilots and artists and technicians and explorers and military men and politicians and colonists and so on,
just like everybody else
. They are not going to spend their lives the way linguists spend their lives. And I do not blame them one damn little bit.”

Heykus leaned forward, his hands holding the edge of the table, and spoke harshly, protesting. “Barton, hold on—that was supposed to be a major point, something made exquisitely clear to every one of the youngsters. They are supposed to have been made to understand that if they will just stay
with
it, and the next group and the next, then pretty soon a linguist will be able to put in a four-day week, and a four-hour day, just like the rest of the working population.”

“Sure! Fifty years from now! Look, Heykus, that's not going to apply to these kids—they'd be retired before there was any real change in their working conditions. They're not willing to sacrifice their lives for The Plight Of Linguists, or some such sanctimonious thing. They want their
own
lives—and they want
normal
lives. If they've got to work like slaves, they want to do it out in the colonies where it means carving out something
substantial for themselves and their families, not in some effing interpreting booth in Washington, DC!”

He looked at Heykus' stricken expression, and moderated his tone a little, leaning toward the other man in turn and speaking with equal intensity but less venom. “Clete,” he said gently, “come on. Don't look like you've lost your last friend. This is something that we
ought
to have known. That we ought to have been prepared for, if we'd stopped to think.
You
think about it, will you?”

“I'm thinking.”

“Heykus, my youngest son was one of the charter group. And I'm ashamed of myself, as his father, for ever thinking it would work and allowing him to be involved.”

“Tell me.”

“Well . . . the linguists have an accurate analogy that they always use.”

Heykus nodded. “The circus families.”

“Yeah. The old circus families—hell, I don't know why I put it that way, they're still going strong. After hundreds of years. Just as the linguists, Heykus, will still be going strong hundreds of years from now. Look, a linguist kid is born into an enviroment where all that anybody does is work with languages. He stays in that environment, is educated there, has all his social life there; he doesn't even know anybody who isn't part of that environment except in the most superficial way. The indoctrination is total, from day one, every day of those kids' lives, and there's a whole peer group all in the same bucket to shore it up. Traditions. A long family history. But when my boy comes home from the interpreting booth all excited about the interpositional classifiers or whatever the hell it is, who's he supposed to
talk
to? Sure, there's some glamour to it for a while, but it wears off in a hurry. And any normal kid sees, real quick, that it's not as much glamour as he could find if he went out to the colonies, or went into the Space Corps, or did any one of a hundred other things that are readily available to him.”