Suzette Elgin - Native Tongue

The message on the private line, all certified debugged and then scrambled and rescrambled because there was no such thing as a truly debugged line, and the codes changed daily because even if you did all that you couldn’t be sure — the message said, “Emergency meeting in DAT40, 1900 hours.” Room 40, Department of Analysis & Translation… that would be one of the soundproof rooms in the lowest of the sub-basements. He remembered it from other times. No air, either too much heat or too much cold, and no bathroom facilities closer than a good brisk five minute walk. Damn.

Thomas was tired, and he had work to do, and he’d had other plans for this evening if he’d managed to get that work done. It had by god better be an emergency, but there was no way to find out except by going over there. That was the whole point of the private line and the debugging and the scrambling and the code changes.

By the time he got there he was thoroughly irritated. He’d wasted thirty precious minutes circling over the flyerpad on the building’s roof, waiting for permission to land, and ten minutes more waiting for some fool visiting potentate complete with cameras to clear off so that it was safe for him to leave the flyer. He was tired, and he was cold, and he was hungry, and he had nine thousand things on his mind, and he charged into Room 40 in a way that made the two men in there already exchange swift looks and sit up straighter in their chairs.

“All right!” he said as he sat down. “What is it?”

“It’s an emergency,” said one of them.

“So you said,” said Thomas. And “I don’t suppose there’s coffee?”

“Scotch if you like,” said the other, before the first — who knew better — could stop him.

Thomas Blair Chornyak stared at the fellow as he stared at everything he couldn’t see any good excuse for.

“No man who needs the use of his mind drinks anything stronger than a very good wine,” said Thomas. “Now do you have coffee or not?”

“We have coffee,” said the first fellow, and he went and got it and set it down in front of Thomas. He knew better than to put it in anything but a real cup, and he knew better than to bring it any way but black. He also knew enough to hurry. Dealing with a man who was the absolute top dog linguist in the world and all its outposts, you hurried.

“There you are, sir,” he said. “Black. And now to business.”

“Please.”

“Sir, we have some difficult news.”

“And?”

“Sir, we want you to know that this action was taken very reluctantly — VERY reluctantly.”

“For the love of the gospels, man,” said Thomas wearily, “will you spit it out or let me go back to my work?”

It came out in a rush, because the government man was worried. They’d promised him there’d be no trouble about this, but he found that hard to believe. If it had been him there would have been trouble. A lot of trouble. And he wasn’t even somebody important.

“Sir, a baby of the Lines has been kidnapped from the maternity ward at Santa Cruz Memorial Hospital.”

Chornyak did not so much as blink. He might as well have said that the sun had come up that morning in the east.

“Federal kidnapping, I assume,” he said. And they nodded.

“Female or male?”

“Female, sir.”

“Mmhmm.”

The junior man looked at his companion out of the corner of his eye, signaling confusion and now-what and a bunch of other stuff; the senior official, who’d been at this a long time, paid no attention to him. They’d wait; and when the Lingoe godfather chose to speak, he’d choose to speak. And if he was going to raise hell, well, he’d raise hell. And there was not one thing anybody could do about it, except if he used the needle he had in his pocket, and he wasn’t sure he could do that.

“Explain,” said Thomas at last. “Please.”

He was being excruciatingly polite. If he were pulling out your toenails one at a time, he would be excruciatingly polite.

“My name is John Smith, Mr. Chornyak,” said the senior official.

“Yes. I’ve worked with you before.”

“I was instructed to explain to you that in the interests of our efforts to acquire the Beta-2 language of the primary Jovian lifeforms it became necessary for us to take temporary custody of one of the infants of St. Syrus Household… somewhat abruptly.”

“Became necessary.”

“Yes, Mr. Chornyak.”

“I don’t follow you, Smith.”

He told him. He told him about the dead infants, about the meeting with the technicians, about the final decision that it had to be a linguist baby the next time.

“You were supposed to be advised of this in advance,” Smith lied. “But when news came in of the baby’s birth in California there wasn’t time to talk to you first — we didn’t know when we’d get another chance like that, you see.”

“And where is the baby now?”

“In one of our safe houses, sir.”

“Your friend here — does he have a name?”

The junior man cleared his throat uneasily and said, “Yes, sir. I’m Bill Jones, sir.”

Thomas carefully entered that information on his wrist computer, and smiled at them. John Smith and Bill Jones. Sure. And they all lived happily ever after.

“And when does the baby go into the Interface?”

“In three weeks, Mr. Chornyak. We can’t wait any longer than that, in view of the current crisis.”

“Ah, yes. The current crisis. Which is?”

“We don’t know, sir. We aren’t told. You know how that is, Mr. Chornyak. Need to know.”

“All right, I’ll assume the existence of the current crisis for the moment — it’s that or stay here all night, obviously. Given that assumption, Smith, do you suppose you could just explain to me, without a lot of fluff and quaver, why this extraordinary crime has been authorized — no, that’s not strong enough — has been committed by the government of the United States? Against a Household of the Lines, to which this government owes much and from which it has suffered no injury? Kidnapping — ” A corner of Thomas’ upper lip twitched, once. “ — is a crime. It is not a trivial crime. It carries the death penalty. I suggest that you explain to me why an official of my government has felt justified in kidnapping one of my relatives.”

Smith hesitated, and then said, “Sir, we explained to you.”

“You explained to me that you have failed in your experiments using human infants in the Interface with the lifeforms. Yes. I understand that. That does not surprise me — you were told that you would fail. What I do not understand, however, is why that set of entirely predictable events lead in some inexorable manner to this crime.”

Feeling that if he was ever to seem more than a cardboard character in this exchange this was his moment, Jones spoke up.

“Perhaps you’d let me handle that, John,” he said carefully.

“By all means, Bill. Have at it.” Smith shrugged. It wasn’t going well, and it probably wasn’t going to get any better, but he didn’t intend to let that bother him. He’d met with Chornyak before, on different but almost equally uncomfortable occasions. He’d met with linguists hundreds of times. And he knew that there was absolutely nothing an ordinary citizen could do if a linguist decided to structure an encounter in such a way that that citizen would look like a perfect ass. That was one of the skills the Lingoes learned, it was one of the things they trained their brats in from birth, and it was one of the reasons they were hated.

Jones appreciated it greatly when the Lingoe putting him down was a male, at least… when it was one of the bitches, he got physically sick. Oh, they observed all the forms, those women; they said all the right words. But they had a way of somehow leading the conversation around so that words came out of your mouth that you’d never heard yourself say before and would have taken an oath you couldn’t be made to say… He knew all about linguists. You couldn’t win, not face to face with one, and he knew better than to try. Let Jones beat himself to death on that rock if it appealed to him; he’d learn.