Robert Silverberg - The Shadow of Wings

The children came running toward him, laughing and shouting up from the lakeside to the spot on the grassy h I where he lay reading; and as Dr. John Donaldson saw what was clutched in the hand of his youngest son, he felt an involuntary tremor of disgust.

“Look, John! Look what Paul caught!” That was his oldest, Joanne. She was nine, a brunette rapidly growing tan on this vacation trip. Behind her came David, eight, fair-haired and lobster-skinned, and in the rear was Paul, the six-year-old, out of breath and gripping in his still pudgy hand a small green frog.

Donaldson shoved his book—Haley, Studies in Morphological Linguistics —to one side and sat up. Paul thrust the frog almost into his face. “I saw it hop, John—and I caught it!” He pantomimed the catch with his free hand.

“I saw him do it,” affirmed David.

The frog’s head projected between thumb and first finger; two skinny webbed feet dangled free at the other end of Paul’s hand, while the middle of the unfortunate batrachian was no doubt being painfully compressed by the small clammy hand. Donaldson felt pleased by Paul’s display of coordination, unusual for a six-year-old. But at the same time he wished the boy would take the poor frog back to the lake and let it go.

“Paul,” he started to say, “you really ought to—”

The direct-wave phone at the far end of the blanket bleeped, indicating that Martha, back at the bungalow, was calling.

“It’s Mommy,” Joanne said. Somehow they had never cared to call her by her first name, as they did him. “See what she wants, John.”

Donaldson sprawled forward and activated the phone.

“Martha?”

“John, there’s a phone call for you from Washington. I told them you were down by the lake, but they say it’s important and they’ll hold on.”

Donaldson frowned. “Who from Washington?”

“Caldwell, he said. Bureau of Extraterrestrial Affairs. Said it was urgent.”

Sighing, Donaldson said, “Okay. I’m coming.”

He looked at Joanne and said, as if she hadn’t heard the conversation at all, “There’s a call for me and I have to go to the cottage to take it. Make sure your brothers don’t go into the water while I’m gone. And see that Paul lets that confounded frog go.”

Picking up his book, he levered himself to his feet and set out for the phone in the bungalow at a brisk trot.

Caldwell’s voice was crisp and efficient and not at all apologetic as he said, “I’m sorry to have to interrupt you during your vacation, Dr. Donaldson. But it’s an urgent matter and they tell us you’re the man who can help us.”

“Perhaps I am. Just exactly what is it you want?”

“Check me if I’m wrong on the background. You’re professor of Linguistics at Columbia, a student of the Kethlani languages and author of a study of Kethlani linguistics published in 2087.”

“Yes, yes, that’s all correct. But—”

“Dr. Donaldson, we’ve captured a live Kethlan. He entered the System in a small ship and one of our patrol vessels grappled him in, ship and all. We’ve got him here in Washington and we want you to come talk to him.”

For an instant Donaldson was too stunned to react. A live Kethlan? That was like saying, We’ve found a live Sumerian, or, We’ve found a live Etruscan.

The Kethlani languages were precise, neat and utterly dead. At one time in the immeasurable past the Kethlani had visited the Solar System. They had left records of their visit on Mars and Venus, in two languages. One of the languages was translatable, because the Martians had translated it into their own, and the Martian language was still spoken as it had been a hundred thousand years before.

Donaldson had obtained his doctorate with what was hailed as a brilliant Rosetta Stone type analysis of the Kethlani language. But a live Kethlan? Why—

After a moment he realized he was staring stupidly at his unevenly tanned face in the mirror above the phone cabinet, and that the man on the other end of the wire was making impatient noises.

Slowly he said, “I can be in Washington this afternoon, I guess. Give me some time to pack up my things. You won’t want me for long, will you?”

“Until we’re through talking to the Kethlan,” Caldwell said.

“All right,” Donaldson said. “I can take a vacation any time. Kethlani don’t come along that often.”

He hung up and peered at his face in the mirror. He had had curly reddish hair once, but fifteen years of the academic life had worn his forehead bare. His eyes were mild, his nose narrow and unemphatic, his lips thin and pale. As he studied himself, he did not think he looked very impressive. He looked professorial. That was to be expected.

“Well?” Martha asked.

Donaldson shrugged. “They captured some kind of alien spaceship with a live one aboard. And it seems I’m the only person who can speak the language. They want me right away.”

“You’re going?”

“Of course. It shouldn’t take more than a few days. You can manage with the children by yourself, can’t you? I mean—”

She smiled faintly, walked around behind him and kneaded the muscle of his sun-reddened back in an affectionate gesture. “I know better than to argue,” she said. “We can take a vacation next year.”

He swiveled his left hand behind his back, caught her hand and squeezed it fondly. He knew she would never object. After all, his happiness was her happiness—and he was never happier than when working in his chosen field. The phone call today would probably lead to all sorts of unwanted and unneeded publicity for him. But it would also bring him academic success, and there was no denying the genuine thrill of finding out how accurate his guesses about Kethlani pronunciation were.

“You’d better go down to the lake and get the children,” he said. “I’ll want to say good-by before I leave.”

They had the ship locked in a stasis field in the basement of the Bureau of ET Affairs Building, on Constitution Avenue just across from the National Academy of Sciences. The great room looked like nothing so much as a crypt, Donaldson thought as he entered. Beam projectors were mounted around the walls, focusing a golden glow on the ship. Caught in the field, the ship hovered in midair, a slim, strange-looking torpedolike object about forty feet long and ten feet across the thickest place. A tingle rippled up Donaldson’s spine as he saw the Kethlani cursives painted in blue along the hull. He translated them reflexively: Bringer of Friendship.

“That’s how we knew it was a Kethlani ship,” Caldwell said, at his side. He was a small, intense man who hardly reached Donaldson’s shoulder; he was Associate Director of the Bureau, and in his superior’s absence he was running the show.

Donaldson indicated the projectors. “How come the gadgetry? Couldn’t you just sit the ship on the floor instead of floating it that way?”

“That ship’s heavy,” Caldwell said. “Might crack the floor. Anyway, it’s easier to maneuver this way. We can raise or lower the ship, turn it, float it in or out of the door.”

“I see,” Donaldson said. “And you say there’s a live Kethlan in there?”

Caldwell nodded. He jerked a thumb toward a miniature broadcasting station at the far end of the big room. “We’ve been in contact with him. He talks to us and we talk to him. But we don’t understand a damned bit of it, of course. You want to try?”

Donaldson shook his head up and down in a tense affirmative. Caldwell led him down to the radio set, where an eager-looking young man in military uniform sat making adjustments.

Caldwell said, “This is Dr. Donaldson of Columbia. He wrote the definitive book on Kethlani languages. He wants to talk to our friend in there.”