Suzette Elgin - Native Tongue

There was also the appeal of what it would be like to have his kid be the very first one ever to crack a nonhumanoid language… that, now, would be very nice. He didn’t see any reason why it shouldn’t happen; it was going to happen sometime, why not with his kid? It made sense. And he could imagine it, how he’d feel, being the one responsible for having finally broken the choke hold the effing Lingoes had on the taxpayers of this country! God damn , but that would feel good! People would suddenly find his conversation pure gold, if it turned out like that. Yeah. Ned could have really gotten to like it, if it happened.

You didn’t tell a woman you were going to do something she might be silly about, of course. You did it, that’s all; and afterward, you told her. Right away, so you could get the crap over with, her bawling and all that shit. Or you waited as long as you could put it off, so you didn’t have to put up with the crap. Depending. This was one of the do-it-now times, since there wasn’t anything Ned could use as a plausible explanation for the baby not being there when Michaela got back from the party at her sister’s that he’d given her permission to go to.

She’d been surprised when he said she could go. It wasn’t like him. He didn’t approve of her being away from the house at night without him, especially now when it was important for her to get all her strength back so she could go back to her morning job at the hospital. The money she made as a nurse was useful to him, it went into a special account that he had big plans for, and every week that there wasn’t any credit on his account for her services caused him a pretty good twinge. It bruised him, losing that money.

But the party had been a lucky break this time, and he’d done a really great job of telling her how she’d earned some fun and she could stay until midnight if she wanted to. It had gotten her away long enough for the fellow from G.W. to bring over the papers to be signed — and that very handsome transfer of credits — and for Ned to turn over the baby along with all its clothes and toys and stuff. He’d been scrupulously careful that there was nothing left to remind her of the kid, even though that meant he’d had to go up and check out its room personally, and he was allergic as hell to the No-Toxin spray they used in there, it made him cough and choke and swell up like a toad. He wanted to be absolutely certain all the kid’s stuff was gone.

He suspected that Michaela had a holo of the baby somewhere on her person, maybe in that locket she wore all the time, and he’d have to get that later when she was asleep. No point in going through a scene about it and having her get herself all upset about it, that wasn’t the way to handle a woman. And except for the hologram, there was nothing at all. The records he’d need if Government Work ever tried to renege on something were all in his computers, backed up with his accountant’s computers, and a hard copy in a lockbox at his lawyer’s. There was nothing for her to see, nothing to smell, he’d fixed it like there’d never been any baby. As there never should have been. He’d been guilty of poor planning, not seeing that; he was willing to admit that. He could have avoided all this hassle, if he’d just given it some thought.

And he was proud of her, because she took it like the true lady he knew her to be. He’d been prepared for a scene, and was ready to put up with quite a lot of female hysterics and nonsense, considering. She didn’t say a word. Her eyes, dark blue eyes just like cornflowers, he loved her eyes — her eyes had gotten big; and he’d seen her give a kind of jerk, like she’d been punched and the wind knocked out of her. But she didn’t say anything. When he told her she had to go down to the clinic in the morning and have a sterilization done before it happened again, god forbid, she only paled a little bit, and got that cute look she had sometimes when she was scared.

She’d asked him a few questions, and he gave her easy answers that didn’t tell her any more than she needed to know. He’d signed the baby over, and that was the end of it. He reminded her that it was something any right-thinking American would be proud to do, because it was a heroic sacrifice for the sake of the United States of America and all of Earth and all of Earth’s colonies, for chrissakes. He explained to her carefully that as long as the Lingoes wouldn’t do their godgiven duty and put their babies to work on the nonhumanoid languages, as long as they kept on with their effing treason, it was up to normal people to step in and show them that bygod we could do it ourselves without their help, and to hell with them. Everybody knew that the Lingoes knew how to get the nonhumanoid languages, if they didn’t get such a jolly out of keeping it a secret… he spent quite a bit of time making it clear to Michaela that all of this was the fault of the linguists. And he told her how the President would probably send them a personal note of thanks — no specifics, of course, since the official line was that the government had no connection with G.W. — but they could get away with telling a couple of close friends.

It was going to make a hell of a story, especially if the President called , and they’d told Ned that sometimes he did; he already knew how he was going to start it. When Michaela told him she didn’t understand why the agency was called Government Work if the government wasn’t supposed to have anything to do with it, he realized that that would be a nice touch to the story, too, and he patted her fondly on her little butt and explained about the old saying. “Good enough for government work,” they used to say. Whatever that had meant.

He didn’t tell her about the money, because he didn’t want her getting any ideas, and women always did get ideas. He could just imagine her, talking about the fountain that his shit of a brother-in-law had let Michaela’s sister wheedle him into putting in their front hall, maybe saying that with ten thousand credits he ought to be able to get her one like it. Nah. He was going to get her something nice, but he’d get her something she ought to have, not some piece of junk she just thought she wanted because some other woman had one. And he’d let it slip, toward the end of their discussion, that he might be planning something a little special for her. You had to hand it to her, after all; for a woman, she was pretty goddam sensible.

“You know, Mikey,” he said, feeling expansive about it all, and so damn proud of her for not carrying on, “for a woman, you’re pretty damn sensible. I mean that.”

She smiled at him, and he admired the lovely curl of the corners of her lips — he had specified a smile like that, when he was still looking. “Thank you, darling,” she said, pure sugar, pure sweet sugar, not even a pout because he’d called her “Mikey” and she hated that. Hell, it was cute , “Mikey” was! He didn’t mind saying “MiKAYluh” in front of company, he’d humor her about that most of the time, but he liked calling her “Mikey,” it suited her. Thinking about it, he said it again, and reached over to pull the hairpins out of her hair so she’d have to put it up again. She looked distressed, and he chuckled. God she was cute when she was upset… he was a very lucky man, and he’d see to it that she got something really special this time.

“Let me tell you what happened today at the goddam meeting,” he began, watching the swift movements of her fingers repairing the havoc he’d wreaked in the silken hair. “Wait till you hear, sweetheart, it was just about the dumbest goddam piece of puke MetaComp has tried to pull yet, if you know what I mean… and you always do know what I mean, don’t you, sweet lady? Let me tell you — this is a good one. We were all sitting there — ”