The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert (56 page)

“It's been seven months,” she said. “It stands to reason that they're not going to wait forever.”

“The usual gestation period is two months longer,” he said.

She frowned, ignoring the quip. “But we're no closer today than we were at the beginning!”

Ohashi leaned forward. His eyes appeared to swell behind the thick lenses. “Do you often wonder at their insistence that
we
communicate with
them
? I mean, rather than the other way around?”

“Of course I do. So does everybody else.”

He sat back. “What do you think of the Islamic team's approach?”

“You know what I think, Hiko. It's a waste of time to compare all the Galactics' speech sounds to passages from the Koran.” She shrugged. “But for all we know actually they could be closer to a solution than anyone else in…”

The door behind her banged open. Immediately, the room rumbled with the great basso voice of Theodore Zakheim, psychologist with the Ural-Altaic team.

“Hah-haaaaaaa!” he roared. “We're all here now!”

Light footsteps behind Zakheim told Francine that he was accompanied by Emile Goré of the Indo-European Latin-Root team.

Zakheim flopped onto a chair beside Francine. It creaked dangerously to his bulk.

Like a great uncouth bear!
she thought.

“Do you always have to be so noisy?” she asked.

Goré slammed the door behind them.

“Naturally!” boomed Zakheim. “I am noisy! It's my nature, my little puchkin!”

Goré moved behind Francine, passing to the head of the table, but she kept her attention on Zakheim. He was a thick-bodied man, thick without fat, like the heaviness of a wrestler. His wide face and slanting pale blue eyes carried hints of Mongol ancestry. Rusty hair formed an uncombed brush atop his head.

Zakheim brought up his briefcase, flopped it onto the table, rested his hands on the dark leather. They were flat slab hands with thick fingers, pale wisps of hair growing down almost to the nails.

She tore her attention away from Zakheim's hands, looked down the table to where Goré sat. The Frenchman was a tall, gawk-necked man, entirely bald. Jet eyes behind steel-rimmed bifocals gave him a look of down-nose asperity like a comic bird. He wore one of his usual funereal black suits, every button secured. Knob wrists protruded from the sleeves. His long-fingered hands with their thick joints moved in constant restlessness.

“If I may differ with you, Zak,” said Goré, “we are
not
all here. This is our same old group, and we were going to try to interest others in what we do here.”

Ohashi spoke to Francine: “Have you had any luck inviting others to our conferences?”

“You can see that I'm alone,” she said. “I chalked up five flat refusals today.”

“Who?” asked Zakheim.

“The American Indian-Eskimo, the Hyperboreans, the Dravidians, the Malayo-Polynesians and the Caucasians.”

“Hagglers!” barked Zakheim. “I, of course, can cover us with the Hamito-Semitic tongues, but…” He shook his head.

Goré turned to Ohashi. “The others?”

Ohashi said: “I must report the polite indifference of the Munda and Mon-Kmer, the Sudanese-Guinean and the Bantu.”

“Those are big holes in our information exchange,” said Goré. “What are they discovering?”

“No more than we are!” snapped Zakheim. “Depend on it!”

“What of the languages not even represented among the teams here on the international site?” asked Francine. “I mean the Hottentot-Bushmen, the Ainu, the Basque and the Australian-Papuan?”

Zakheim covered her left hand with his right hand. “You always have me, my little dove.”

“We're building another Tower of Babel!” she snapped. She jerked her hand away.

“Spurned again,” mourned Zakheim.

Ohashi said:
“Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.”
He smiled. “Genesis eleven-seven.”

Francine scowled. “And we're missing about twenty per cent of Earth's twenty-eight hundred languages!”

“We have all the significant ones,” said Zakheim.

“How do
you
know what's significant?” she demanded.

“Please!” Goré raised a hand. “We're here to exchange information, not to squabble!”

“I'm sorry,” said Francine. “It's just that I feel so hopeless today.”

“Well, what have we learned today?” asked Goré.

“Nothing new with us,” said Zakheim.

Goré cleared his throat. “That goes double for me.” He looked at Ohashi.

The Japanese shrugged. “We achieved no reaction from the Galactic, Kobai.”

“Anthropomorphic nonsense,” muttered Zakheim.

“You mean naming him Kobai?” asked Ohashi. “Not at all, Zak. That's the most frequent sound he makes, and the name helps with identification. We don't have to keep referring to him as ‘The Galactic' or ‘that creature in the spaceship.'”

Goré turned to Francine. “It was like talking to a green statue,” she said.

“What of the lecture period?” asked Goré.

“Who knows?” she asked. “It stands there like a bow-legged professor in that black leotard. Those sounds spew out of it as though they'd never stop. It wriggles at us. It waves. It sways. Its face contorts, if you can call it a face. We recorded and filmed it all, naturally, but it sounded like the usual mishmash!”

“There's something in the gestures,” said Ohashi. “If we only had more competent pasimologists.”

“How many times have you seen the same total gesture repeated with the same sound?” demanded Zakheim.

“You've carefully studied our films,” said Ohashi. “Not enough times to give us a solid base for comparison. But I do not despair—”

“It was a rhetorical question,” said Zakheim.

“We really need more multilinguists,” said Goré. “Now is when we most miss the loss of such great linguists as Mrs. Millar's husband.”

Francine closed her eyes, took a short, painful breath. “Bob…” She shook her head.
No. That's the past. He's gone. The tears are ended.

“I had the pleasure of meeting him in Paris shortly before the … end,” continued Goré. “He was lecturing on the development of the similar sound schemes in Italian and Japanese.”

Francine nodded. She felt suddenly empty.

Ohashi leaned forward. “I imagine this is … rather painful for Dr. Millar,” he said.

“I am
very
sorry,” said Goré. “Forgive me.”

“Someone was going to check and see if there are any electronic listening devices in this room,” said Ohashi.

“My nephew is with our recording section,” said Goré, “He assures me there are no hidden microphones here.”

Zakheim's brows drew down into a heavy frown. He fumbled with the clasp of his briefcase. “This is very dangerous,” he grunted.

“Oh, Zak, you always say that!” said Francine. “Let's quit playing footsy!”

“I do not enjoy the thought of treason charges,” muttered Zakheim.

“We all know our bosses are looking for an advantage,” she said. “I'm tired of these sparring matches where we each try to get something from the others without giving anything away!”

“If your Dr. Langsmith or General Speidel found out what you were doing here, it would go hard for you, too,” said Zakheim.

“I propose we take it from the beginning and re-examine everything,” said Francine. “Openly this time.”

“Why?” demanded Zakheim.

“Because I'm satisfied that the answer's right in front of us somewhere,” she said.

“In the ultimatum, no doubt,” said Goré. “What do you suppose is the
real
meaning of their statement that human languages are
‘limited'
communication? Perhaps they are telepathic?”

“I don't think so,” said Ohashi.

“That's pretty well ruled out,” said Francine. “Our Rhine people say no ESP. No. I'm banking on something else: By the very fact that they posed this question, they have indicated that we
can
answer it with our present faculties.”

“
If
they are being honest,” said Zakheim.

“I have no recourse but to assume that they're honest,” she said. “They're turning us into linguistic detectives for a good reason.”

“A good reason for
them,
” said Goré.

“Note the phraseology of their ultimatum,” said Ohashi. “They
submit
a problem. They
open
their rooms to us. They are
available
to us. They
regret
their threat. Even their display of power—admittedly awe-inspiring—has the significant characteristic of nonviolence. No explosion. They offer rewards for success, and this…”

“Rewards!” snorted Zakheim. “We lead the hog to its slaughter with a promise of food!”

“I suggest that they give evidence of being nonviolent,” said Ohashi. “Either that, or they have cleverly arranged themselves to present the
face
of nonviolence.”

Francine turned, and looked out of the hut's end window at the bulk of the spaceship. The low sun cast elongated shadows of the ship across the sand.

Zakheim, too, looked out of the window. “Why did they choose this place? If it had to be a desert, why not the Gobi? This is not even a good desert! This is a miserable desert!”

“Probably the easiest landing curve to a site near a large city,” said Goré. “It is possible they chose a desert to avoid destroying arable land.”

“Frogs!” snapped Zakheim. “I do not trust these frogs with their problem of communication!”

Francine turned back to the table, and took a pencil and scratch-pad from her briefcase. Briefly she sketched a rough outline of a Galactic, and wrote “frog?” beside it.

Ohashi said: “Are you drawing a picture of your Galactic?”

“We call it ‘Uru' for the same reason you call yours ‘Kobai,'” she said. “It makes the sound ‘Uru'
ad nauseam.
”

She stared at her own sketch thoughtfully, calling up the memory image of the Galactic as she did so. Squat, about five feet ten inches in height, with the short bowed legs of a swimmer. Rippling muscles sent corded lines under the black leotard. The arms were articulated like a human's, but they were more graceful in movement. The skin was pale green, the neck thick and short. The wide mouth was almost lipless, the nose a mere blunt horn. The eyes were large and spaced wide with nictating lids. No hair, but a high-crowned ridge from the center of the forehead swept back across the head.

“I knew a Hawaiian distance swimmer once who looked much like these Galactics,” said Ohashi. He wet his lips with his tongue. “You know, today we had a Buddhist monk from Java at our meeting with Kobai.”

“I fail to see the association between a distance swimmer and a monk,” said Goré.

“You told us you drew a blank today,” said Zakheim.

“The monk tried no conversing,” said Ohashi. “He refused because that would be a form of earthly striving unthinkable for a Buddhist. He merely came and observed.”

Francine leaned forward. “Yes?” She found an odd excitement in the way Ohashi was forcing himself to casualness.

“The monk's reaction was curious,” said Ohashi. “He refused to speak for several hours afterwards. Then he said that these Galactics must be very holy people.”

“Holy!” Zakheim's voice was edged with bitter irony.

“We are approaching this the wrong way,” said Francine. She felt let down, spoke with a conscious effort. “Our access to these Galactics is limited by the space they've opened to us within their vessel.”

“What is in the rest of the ship?” asked Zakheim.

“Rewards, perhaps,” said Goré.

“Or weapons to demolish us!” snapped Zakheim.

“The pattern of the sessions is wrong, too,” said Francine.

Ohashi nodded. “Twelve hours a day is not enough,” he said. “We should have them under constant observation.”

“I didn't mean that,” said Francine. “They probably need rest just as we do. No. I meant the absolute control our team leaders—unimaginative men like Langsmith—have over the way we use our time in those rooms. For instance, what would happen if we tried to break down the force wall of whatever it is that keeps us from actually touching these creatures? What would happen if we brought in dogs to check how
animals
would react to them?” She reached in her briefcase, brought out a small flat recorder and adjusted it for playback. “Listen to this.”

There was a fluid burst of sound: “Pau'timónsh' uego' ikloprépre ‘sauta' urusa'a'a…” and a long pause followed by “tu'kimóomo ‘urulig ‘lurulil ‘oog ‘shuquetoé…” pause, “sum ‘a ‘suma ‘a ‘uru ‘t ‘shóap!”

Francine stopped the playback.

“Did you record that today?” asked Ohashi.

“Yes. It was using that odd illustration board with the moving pictures—weird flowers and weirder animals.”

“We've seen them,” muttered Zakheim.

“And those chopping movements of its hands,” said Francine. “The swaying body, the undulations, the facial contortions.” She shook her head. “It's almost like a bizarre dance.”

“What are you driving at?” asked Ohashi.

“I've been wondering what would happen if we had a leading choreographer compose a dance to those sounds, and if we put it on for…”

“Faaa!” snorted Zakheim.

“All right,” said Francine. “But we should be using some kind of random stimulation pattern on these Galactics. Why don't we bring in a nightclub singer? Or a circus barker? Or a magician? Or…”