Caltraps of Time (11 page)

‘If only I could crack that! It’s wrecking all my programme!’

Anson regarded his chief with a calm but guarded gaze, like an experienced mother considering a fractious child.

‘You think there’s one word
shnyewh,
don’t you? and so, I’m afraid, do the interpreters; they’re very helpful, but they can’t know everything. But there isn’t one word: there are two. Neither of them starts with the same sound as the word
Sshmeqk,
by the way — that’s another compound, a double
sh-
sound. Both of them begin with a simple
sh.
Listen to this.’

After some fiddling, Anson got his machine intoning
‘Shny-wh, shny-wh, shny-wh ...
’

‘That’s the word I got whenever I pitched my informants a question I knew had a negative answer. Now listen to this; this was a response I got when I asked certain carefully chosen questions.’

Again a repeated
‘Shny-wh, shny-wh, shny-wh ...
’

‘There is a difference somewhere.’

‘Well, try the slow speed. Here’s number one.’

Jacobs heard
‘Thkhhnnauhhwh ... thkhhnnauhhwh
...’

‘Now number two.’ ‘
Thkhhnnohjhgh ... thkhhnnohjhgh
...’

‘The
vowel
sounds different!’

‘Only because of the influence of the final consonant. In the first word it was
that
one, the second symbol of the second pair on my first chart; in the second word it was the
first
of the second pair. If you can’t stomach my symbols, you could write the end of the second word with
ph
instead of
wh.
It’s tenser, tighter if you like. But let’s try the sound-spectrograph.’

Anson switched on a small illuminated screen, on which he presently conjured up two versions of a figure resembling an out-of-focus black-and-white photograph, marred by movement, of the ruins of a rope-bridge in a dense jungle gorge, during a thick fog.

‘Now here’s your
no
-word,
shnyewh.
Left to right is time. Upwards for higher pitch. Compare the other word, alongside,
shnyeph.
This time we get this odd transient up there near the end (which you never get in our own attempts — may be something to do with the tensing of the mantle round the outer teeth) and the second pseudo-formant’ (pointing to a sagging strand of the rope-bridge) ‘drops quite a bit, compared to its level in your first word, here ... Now here instead are my synthetic versions. They are the minimal freehand drawings that I could get a 95 per cent “correct” response to when I played them back as sound to natives. They are, if you like, the skeleton, the basic structure; all the rest are adventitious trimmings.’

Anson lit up a chastely futuristic piece of abstract art in which the rope-bridge and jungle had been replaced by smooth blips and snakes, and the fog had gone. Then he ‘played’ it back. It was recognizable, if rather clipped and twangy, as the two original sneezes. The second came to a perceptibly harder end.

‘Now, this
ph
-sound turns out to be a compound of two
wh-
phonemes. I happen to have succeeded in dissecting these two words, so to speak. The first, which means, roughly, no, is a kind of agglutination of
esh,
which means indeed, in fact, or something like that;
nye,
which means not, or negative; and
ewh,
which means thus, or so, or in that way. So their no means, etymologically, “Indeed not so.” ‘

‘ “Indeed not so!” What about the second word, for heaven’s sake!’

Again that considering gaze.

‘Well, the second word is
esh
plus
nye
plus
ewh
all over again, plus another
wh
which comes, I’m virtually certain (but it’d take months to prove) from
whe.’

‘And what the hell does
whuh
mean?’ snarled Jacobs.

‘
Whe
means definitely, certainly, or definite, certain, known, or certainty. They use it to indicate the exact spot on a plant or a picture, the known place of an event, an agreed shade of colour — their colours, that is, not the ones we distinguish.’

‘And what the — for God’s sake cut the cackle and tell me what all that means!’

‘In literal order, it means, “Indeed not so certain;” or, as we might say, “Indeed not definitely or certainly so.”‘

‘ “Indeed not so certain” — what does that mean?’

‘It’s
their
equivalent of our word perhaps.’

‘ “Perhaps”: then all they’ve done is refused to make their minds up about the specimens. And, my God, that ravine that wasn’t supposed to be crossable — they only meant
perhaps
it was crossable?’

‘Very likely.’

And poor old Jackson: they only meant
perhaps
he’d survive?’

‘Yes, I should imagine so. I ought to have cottoned on to that myself— I heard about it.’

‘My God, you should. Maybe I ought to have thought sooner about asking you, but you could have thought about our practical problems too, Jimmy ... By the way, surely when two words are so alike one of them is going to drop out sooner or later. I mean, it could be risky even to a Shmur?’

‘Remember we don’t know how their aural set-up works. Or even their syntactical consciousness. Their grammar must bring about some queer verbal thinking. You know, so far I can only distinguish two classes of word, Dependants and Independants, and two functions, Absolute and Modifier; the Independants can act as Absolutes, but need not do so ... But still, there is something in what you say. It could solve itself by an extra consonant creeping into the perhaps word through the shoving on of yet another Modifier. But as a matter of fact it wouldn’t surprise me if the
perhaps
word were to die out presently in favour of some other less ambiguous expression. Language never stays still. They have produced such an expression in my hearing which may gain ground, although at the moment it has a rather contemptuous overtone. It’s
bheng elyeny,
or
phonemicaliy
(he wrote on the pad)
you
might write it
wweng elyeny,
which of course means chance equal.’

‘So they can’t make up their minds whether to let us have specimens or not. How am I going to persuade them to say yes? It’s vital to our programme to get at least some artefacts back, and the geneticists and so on will want to take the cell structure of crop specimens apart.’

‘No, I think there’s something else here. Don’t tell me, let me guess ... I don’t think the interpreters would have slipped up on this one, but you were going it alone, weren’t you?’

‘Yes, I was.’

‘Well ... what those fellows may have
thought
you were asking was, I suggest, whether you could, physically, succeed in getting their specimens safely from here to Earth. The syntax is a bit tricky, but you should have requested permission —
qhedyep geph
if you like — instead of inquiring about possibility —
ezhnye bvew.
So, if I’m right, they thought you thought they might know how tough these specimens’d be. And naturally they said perhaps. Am I right?’

‘My God, I believe you are! All they meant was, they didn’t know whether the things would survive the journey! I’ll start begging specimens off them right away ... Well, Jimmy, I’ll give you a dinner at Savoni’s for that, when we get back to Earth; after we get out of quarantine, that is.’

‘Do you think’ (Anson dropped his voice) ‘they’ll ever let us out of quarantine, Chief?’

‘Indeed ... not... so ... certain.’

<>

~ * ~

The Transfinite Choice

Something went wrong with the five-mile linear accelerator. The public were no wiser when the press, radio, and TV had given their impressions of what the official spokesman’s interpretation of what the atomic experts’ version of their own suspicions was. By 1980 they were still arguing about it.

All Naverson Builth knew about it was that one moment he was standing by at the first of a new series of experiments and the next moment he was lying on his back and that the hall was completely deserted. Moreover, it seemed to have acquired a number of new gadgets and machines, and a different coat of paint. There was dead silence. The hall was lit, but rather dimly.

Naverson tried shouting. He discovered that he was all right and eventually got to the doors. They were locked. He went round to the communication phone. The phone was not there. There was no trace of it or its connections.

He was still shouting and banging on the doors when a huge metal arm came out of nowhere and picked him up. About twenty feet up it pulled him through a hinged opening and deposited him on a floor which he could not recall existing at that height and place. A long jointed prong approached him and felt all round him, while his arms and legs were held back by clamps. It clicked disapprovingly and folded up. A metallic voice spoke from the roof. It said: ‘Namplize.’

‘Who the hell are you, and what the hell do you think you’re doing with me?’ shouted Naverson. ‘I was working in the hall and suddenly I find myself all alone. What’ve you done with the phone, and what are these machines pulling me about for? How long have I been here, anyway?’

‘Namplize.’

‘Don’t you speak English, then? Who the hell are you?’

‘Namplize.’

‘Parlez-vous français? Qu’est-ce que l’on fait alors dans cette galère?’

‘Namplize.’

‘
Govoritye li vy po russki? ... Tϋrkiyizce konushurmusunuz?’

‘Namplize-urnlay.’

‘¿Habla Listed español? ... Parla italiano?’

‘Namplize-farce.’

‘Sprechen sie Deutsch? Um Gottes Willen, was ist hier los?’

‘Namnadrissplize.’

‘To hell with you. I can’t understand a word you say.’

Silence.

The clamps tightened on his limbs and another long prong approached. It had a tiny mirror or window near its end, and an opposing pincer-pair alongside. It felt its way into his overall-pockets and pulled out and appeared to inspect various objects from them. Finally it got hold of a typed envelope addressed to him. It scanned this slowly all over, both sides, upside-down and sideways as well as right way up, including the postmark (which for once was legible). Then it returned the envelope to the pocket, and folded up. The big arm, still clutching him firmly, swung him up into a recess in the wall, tidied his feet in, and a door slid shut. The recess shot up like a lift, stopped, a door slid open on the other side, and he was blinking at a small room dazzlingly lit. In it was a little old man with shaven poll, in a pale blue tunic, apparently seated at a console with stops and levers. He was facing the recess, and just taking a swig from a curiously shaped flask, which he set down on the floor. Naverson clambered stiffly out, feeling his legs and arms.

‘Now what the hell is all this? Who are you, and what are you doing in this plant? I’ve never seen you before here and you seem to have been monkeying about with the machinery.’

‘Suzzdummuvspightchplize,’ said the little old man gently but firmly, staring at Naverson. It was the same voice.

‘I don’t understand you.
Ne comprends pas. Verstehe nicht. Ya ne ponimáyu. Anlamiyorum. No capisco. No entiendo.’

‘W-atplize.’ The old man pressed a switch and called downwards: ‘Undrowda, hooh srigh. Nannriggig. Paarurwclurz. Paarurwimvlup, nammprax navverrazawn boughillut un paarurw-rawtung, prundatt prax wennawnsimtaow! Nattgur-wuzzuzdum ... Sregjunzplize.’

A metallic voice cackled up at him. He pressed a button. Metal arms gripped Naverson. A little pang on one earlobe. Unconsciousness.

Naverson woke up in a swirl of mental confusion. Clamps were being peeled from his skull, which had been shaved. He was naked, lying on a couch. A few attendants, about half of whom (to his horror) appeared to be women, were studying charts and manipulating knobs. The room was even smaller than the last, and brighter. The temperature was about 8o° F. He found that he was able to understand the speech of those about him, on the whole, though some of their nouns and even verbs were strange. The attendants were dressed in one-piece translucent suits which covered most of their faces, but were transparent at the eyes.

‘Where am I?’ he said, or rather he said ‘Waayaa?’
(Where here?)
in the speech of those around him, but the intention was the same and we can transpose from now on.
But let no one suppose that ours is more than a free translation ...

‘In glossopsychic centre,’ said a voice behind his head, which proved to be that of a young man standing there. ‘You seem from year approximately one, nine, seven, two. Trouble in sub-quark domain probably switched you here, linear accelerator, year two, three, four, six. Linguistic shunt achieved. Skill, please.’

‘Skill? Elementary particle analysis.’

‘Perhaps try utilize ... Suit ready here, on please.’

Naverson slipped into the translucent suit, which was evidently made to measure.

‘Hungry,’ he said.

~ * ~

Ten months later, months of intensive education, found him in a post with the new world-government department of Direct Parameter Control (‘Drik Premda Kindrurw’). Naverson thanked his stars. The world population was now some four millions of millions and the lot of most persons under the relentless pressure of their own increasing numbers was unenviable. Confined to a small cabin (with every mod con) in continent-wide multi-storey warrens, which only stopped at the sea and the mountains, they and their children ‘educated’, supervised and entertained by giant television screens, compulsorily sterilized after their second child, fed on piped algal infusions, never seeing natural daylight except when drafted for their one year’s open-air hard labour in every five of their first thirty adult years, the great majority had little to live for and nothing to die for. When children grew up (at twenty-four, owing to the low diet) they had to find a new home, and the population computers assigned them one in a new block built at a new level above the old flat roofs, or in a marginal section nudging the nearest foothills. Roof blocks, however, were few, being difficult to construct because so many interfered with the air-transport and interplanetary roof-termini and the solar energy collectors. Such colonies as Mars and Venus and Luna could support were negligible.