Native Tongue (17 page)

“Thomas, the other women in my Household aren’t going to swallow that. It’s been a month.”

“You tell them that it took the government this long to notify us, Andrew,” said Thomas bitterly. “Tell them there was a computer foulup and the baby’s records got lost—tell them it took this long to straighten it out. They’ll be angry enough about that to get their minds off the mourning. All right?”

“I think so. Yes . . . that should be all right. It’s plausible enough.”

“If the parents want a small, very quiet, very private memorial service—and if it suits you to permit it—let them have it. No reason why not, so far as I’m concerned.”

“All right, Thomas.”

“It’s all clear to you now, man?”

“The authorities get the truth—they’ll know about Terralone. And the parents. Everybody else gets the killer virus story, with computer foulup for addendum. Logical, reasonable, and the end of the matter.”

“Thank god.”

“Yes. Thank god. And it won’t happen again.”

“You think not?”

“Not if the government wants working linguists,” said Thomas grimly. “I made that very clear. You’ll see security around our infants like they were solid gold, Andrew.”

“On the public wards?”

“That’s their problem. If they want to move the women to the private wings at their expense, I sure as hell won’t cross them; if they want to make a spectacle for the public and think up some fantasy to leak to the media, that’s also up to them. But there’ll be no repetition of this particular incident.”

Thomas watched St. Syrus take off, and then he headed for home, watching the streaks of lightning off to his left, anxious to get inside before the storm broke. Though Paul John would have
said he well deserved the rain, and the wind, and a lightning bolt to boot. Cutting pathetic brainwashed government men to shreds and turning their heads to cottage cheese was supposed to be something a linguist resorted to only in emergencies. He’d stomped all over little Smith just because he wanted to do it, just because he was tired.

I’m getting old, Thomas thought, but I’m not getting wise. That’s misrepresentation. I’m supposed to get wise. . . .

Chapter Nine

“We are men, and human words are all we have: even the Word of God is composed actually of the words of men.”

(HUNTING THE DIVINE FOX,

by Robert Farrar Capon,

1974, page 8)

SPRING 2182. . . .

Thomas was home before dark, which wasn’t bad considering the farcical piece of silliness he’d been involved in . . . a Special Awards Session at the Department of Analysis & Translation to honor the staff language specialists who’d just finished a new series of teaching grammars and videotapes for the eastern dialects of REM9-2-84. With the massive help of their computers, of course. And now D.A.T. would be well equipped to teach innocent government personnel a new group of outrageously distorted versions of those languages, so that they could make silly asses of themselves at embassy functions, cocktail parties at the U.N., etc. with even greater ease than they had previously been able to manage. How nice; and how nice that he’d been invited to give the Awards Speech applauding their folly. It was suitable, no doubt, and the hypocrisy of it bothered him not at all; he had waxed positively lyrical about the wondrousness of their accomplishments.

Linguists had been volunteering their services to write the teaching grammars of the Alien languages since the very first one encountered—as they had volunteered to write the teaching grammars of Earth languages down through the centuries—and
the government had remained as ever staunchly convinced that its own “language specialists” knew more about grammar than linguists did. It was a kind of religious faith, damn near winsome in its naïve disregard for all observable facts. And a polite thanks-but-no-thanks . . . FATHer, we’d RATHer do it ourSELVES. Thomas chuckled, thinking that it justified any amount of hypocrisy. And he rationed these appearances carefully, accepting just that bare minimum of invitations of this sort absolutely necessary to keeping up a public image of linguist/government cooperation.

He stopped well away from the house and looked at it, slowly, scrupulously. Not because it was particularly attractive to view. Sheltered in the hillside as it was, with only the fourth floor showing above ground and the earth high over most of that, there wasn’t much of it to see. But what he was looking for was some small difference, something that would catch his attention if he
paid
attention, something that deviated from the familiar. The women had a tendency to accomplish changes by altering things one infinitestimal fraction at a time, spread over months and months, so that you never saw it happening until suddenly it was just
there
. . . he well remembered a rock garden that had appeared once on the east slope of the hill, complete with three giant boulders, seemingly sprung instantaneously from the earth. And when he’d demanded to know how it got there—the wide innocent eyes, and the innocent voices.

“We had no idea you minded, Thomas!”

“Goodness, we’ve been working on it for six months! If you didn’t want us to do it, why didn’t you say something sooner?”

Sometimes you went through the fuss and expense of having their projects torn down and disposed of, as a matter of principle; sometimes you let them alone just out of exhaustion. As the years went by, you learned the value of nipping them in the bud and avoiding the entire problem. He was trying to do that now, scanning the grounds and the entrance, and the solar collectors . . . looking for detail.

The women had a sly animal cleverness that seved them well, he thought, and that only experience could teach a man to anticipate. Once, years ago, and with his father watching him in amusement, he had issued a flat order that there would be NO CHANGES not specifically initiated by males. And then when the grass stood waist high on the lawn, and the hedges looked like wild bramble thickets, he finally noticed and called the wenches in to demand an explanation.

“But Thomas, dear, you said NO CHANGES, of any kind!”

“But Thomas, we were only doing as you told us to do . . . Oh dear, it’s so confusing.”

His wife had looked him straight in the eye, presuming a good deal on their years together, and had asked that he please explain to them
specifically
why a change in the height of the grass or the shape of a hedge did not constitute a change. They would, Rachel had assured him blandly, do better if he would take the time to clarify that for their feeble understanding. Women! Sometimes it amused him and sometimes it infuriated him; always, it made him wonder what in the name of heaven really went on inside their heads. Better that he didn’t know, probably.

Satisfied at last that nothing new was being erected on his premises one grain of sand at a time, and with the light failing rapidly, he turned his key in the antique lock that represented nothing but a concession to female sentimentality—the computer having identified him and released the barriers the moment he stepped within their range—and he went inside. Now, we would have peace. He was looking forward to the evening. He might even get some useful work done.

Except that there was no peace. Instead, there were women running up and down the stairs, there was disorder and bustle and confusion, and there was a low murmur that he recognized sadly as female nervous racket.

Thomas drew a long breath, and he stopped dead in the entrance. He did not fail to notice the row of ornamental pebbles set into the border of the threshold—that had not been there when he went off to the Awards circus, he was sure of it; he made a mental note to take it up with the ladies at the first opportunity, after he’d found out what was responsible for the disturbance he could sense all around him in place of the serenity he had been looking forward to. He let the door slide shut behind him, and coughed gently, and the racket died at once, the silence spreading from where he stood like ripples in still water; the women were passing along the word that he’d come home.

“Well,” he said in the new stillness, “Good evening to you all.”

“Good evening, Thomas.” From all directions.

“Well?”

They said nothing, and he spoke sharply. “What the devil is going on here? I could hear the uproar all the way to the slidewalk . . . what’s it all about?”

One of the older girls, one of the multitude of his nieces, came to the top of the staircase and stood looking at him.

“Well, damn it?”

“It’s Nazareth, Uncle Thomas,” said the girl.

“It’s Nazareth? It’s Nazareth
what
, child?” Knowing he’d get nowhere with her if he was cross—that would only addle her further—he hid his irritation and spoke gently.

“Nazareth . . . your daughter. She’s sick.”

Thomas considered that for a moment, and took off his coat to hand to the woman who had come up to stand waiting beside him. He remembered the girl now; Philippa, her name was. Superb at Laotian.

“In what way is Nazareth sick, Philippa?” he asked, heading down the stairs toward her, smiling.

“I don’t know, Uncle Thomas. We’ve been wondering whether to call the doctor.”

Thomas made a sharp noise in his throat . . . that was all he needed, one of those bloody Samurai stomping arrogantly around his house all evening . . . not that he’d stay long. Very busy men, the doctors; no time to do more than present their bill and shower their generalized contempt around in all directions. He respected the laser surgeons, who seemed to be capable craftsmen; as for the rest of them, his contempt for their ignorance was matched only by his outrage at their assumption that all humankind owed them automatic and unreasoning devotion. It was a tribute to the skill of the American Medical Association that although there had been Anti-Linguist riots again and again there had never even been an Anti-Physician rumble.

“Surely that’s not necessary, child,” he said. “It can’t be anything serious. What’s Nazareth doing, throwing up?”

His wife came then, finally, hurrying, and he turned to greet her. She hadn’t time to be polite, either, of course. And she looked tired. She always looked tired, and he found it very boring.

“We’ve had an awful time with Nazareth,” she said, without so much as a hello for preamble, “ever since dinner. She has dreadful abdominal pain, and her legs hurt her . . . her muscles keep cramping and knotting, poor thing . . . I feel so sorry for her! And she’s vomited until she has nothing left in her stomach and is just retching. . . .”

“Appendix, maybe?”

“Thomas. She had that out summer before last. And an appendix doesn’t cause muscle spasms in the legs.”

“Her period, then? She’s at the right age to start carrying on about that . . . and I’ve known women to claim everything short of total paralysis on that excuse, Rachel.”

She just looked at him steadily, and said nothing.

“Well, then. A bit of a virus, and the drama of it all. I’m sure she enjoys all the attention.”

“Whatever you say, Thomas.”

There it was. That mechanical whatever-you-say that meant nothing-that-you-say. He hated it. And she was forever doing it, in spite of knowing full well that he hated it.

“You don’t agree with me, Rachel,” he said.

“Perhaps you might consider taking a look at her. Before you make your decision.”

“Rachel, I have a lot of work to do, it’s already very late, and I’ve lost hours in a stupid meeting as it is—not to mention this very inappropriate meeting on my staircase. Do you really feel that I need to waste yet more time fussing over Nazareth? She’s healthy as a mule, always has been.”

“And that is why I’m worried,” Rachel said. “Because she’s never sick—never. Even the appendix was only removed because she had to do that frontier colony negotiation and they didn’t want to chance having her seriously ill with inadequate medical facilities at hand . . . she’s always well. And no, I don’t expect you to waste your time fussing over her.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

“I’m sure you are.”

“That will be enough, Rachel,” said Thomas sternly, glad that Philippa had taken herself off when Rachel appeared and wasn’t there to witness her aunt’s insolence; he would have been forced to do something obvious to counteract it, if she’d been there with them.

Rachel was becoming more and more difficult as she went into middle age, and if it hadn’t been for the extraordinary skill she had in the management of his personal affairs he would not have tolerated her behavior. A quick hysterectomy, and off she’d be to Barren House—it was tempting. But it wouldn’t be convenient for him to have her at Barren House, and so he put up with her. He knew what she would do now . . . she’d turn on her heel and flounce off to the girldorms, her rigid back eloquently saying for her all the things she dared not say aloud.

But she surprised him. She stood her ground, and she faced him calmly, saying, “Thomas, I’m really alarmed. This isn’t like Nazareth.”

“I see.”

“I think we should have a doctor.”

“At this hour? A house call? Don’t be absurd, Rachel . . . you know what that would cost. Furthermore, it’s excessive and hysterical over-reaction. Is Nazareth in coma? Hemorrhaging? Is
her heartbeat seriously irregular? Does she have difficulty breathing? Is there anything even remotely resembling an emergency?”