Suzette Elgin - Native Tongue

“Sir,” Jones began, “it’s like this.”

“Is it,” said Thomas.

“We of the federal government have of course heard and read the official statements of the Lines to the effect that there is no genetic difference between linguist infants and the infants of the general population. And we are capable of appreciating the reasons for that position, in view of the regrettable friction between the Lines and the public.” He stopped, and Thomas tilted his head a fraction, and Jones felt deeply inferior for no reason that he could understand; but he was into it now and had no choice but to go on. They’d been told to be very careful with this man.

“You know what he can do, don’t you?” the chief had said to them, holding on to his desk with both big fists and leaning at them like a tree. “That man, all by himself, can just give an order. And every single linguist in government contract service would just stop what they were doing. That means every last interplanetary negotiation we have in progress — business, diplomatic, military, scientific, you name it — every last one would simply STOP. We can’t do a damn thing without the Lingoes, god curse their effing souls and may they fry one and all in hell. But that man, may he fry especially slowly, holds this government hostage. Do you understand that, Smith? You, Jones, do you remember that?”

And why, thought Jones, bewildered, had the government then sent him ? Smith, maybe… he understood that Smith had experience in dealing with linguists. But why him? Why not some real superstar?

Smith, who was watching him in mild amusement, knew the answer to that question. The government, which was composed of bureaucrats, felt that sending anyone obviously important to deal with Thomas would give Thomas an indication of the way he owned us all, and that that would be a tactical eror. As though Thomas himself were unaware of the facts of the matter… So they sent a team. One experienced ordinary-looking agent, with no spaghetti and no flash, just your average government token. And one very junior bumbler to set him off. Poor Jones.

“So, Mr. Chornyak,” Jones labored, “we of course understand the motivation for that stance on the part of the Lines — but we also know that it isn’t really in accordance with the facts. That is, we know that in actuality the genetic difference does exist.”

“All that inbreeding,” Thomas murmured courteously; and Smith chuckled inside as Jones swallowed the bait.

“Exactly,” said Jones happily.

“Unnatural practices.”

Jones looked startled and declared that he hadn’t said that.

“There is some other sort of inbreeding, Mr. Jones?”

“Well, there must be.”

“Oh? Why must there be? We could establish the sort of systematic genetic difference you suggest — claiming, by the way, that the linguist Households deliberately lie — we could only establish that sort of systematic genetic difference by systematically fucking our first cousins, generation after generation. Switching to sisters would do it even faster, though it might give us some other kinds of genetic differences. Two-headed babies. Armless babies. Headless babies. That sort of thing.”

“Mr. Chornyak, I assure you — ”

“Mr. Jones, I assure you that I did not leave my home, where I have important duties to see to on behalf of the government you claim to represent, and fly here through vile weather and a traffic pattern managed by lunatics, to listen to you attack the sexual habits of my family.”

It was too much for Jones, entirely too much. He had no idea how he’d gotten to the point where he now found himself, and he sat there opening and shutting his mouth like a toad.

“Mr. Chornyak,” said Smith, moved by pity, “do come off it.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Stop torturing my associate, Chornyak. It’s not nice. You are behaving like the Ugly Linguist. And the fact that he makes it so easy doesn’t make it any more sporting.”

Thomas chuckled, and Jones looked infinitely confused.

“We don’t believe you,” Smith went on. “This is no news to you at all. We’ve been telling you we didn’t believe you ever since we found out what linguists were for. And it’s got diddly to do with your sexual practices, in which the government hasn’t the slightest interest.”

“It is scientifically… drivel,” said Thomas.

“So you tell us. And we don’t believe that either.”

“And?”

“And we have put up with it, because you have us by the short hairs as always. Forty-three human infants have now died in our valiant attempts to go along with the arrangement it pleases you linguists to impose upon us. And how many computer scientists are now barely capable of cutting out paper dolls from trying to deal with all this I can’t imagine.”

“Eleven, as of yesterday,” said Thomas.

“How do you know that?” demanded poor pitiful Jones.

“They know everything,” Smith told him. “It gets boring after a while.”

“So,” said Thomas, “you decided that you had to have a linguist infant, because only a linguist infant could acquire the language you call Beta-2. Despite the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever that there is any such language. And even if you had to steal the infant. Rather a primitive act, stealing a human being, don’t you think?”

Smith was not going to be led down a path at the end of which he would hear himself admitting that he didn’t consider linguists to be human beings. Not a chance. He said nothing at all, and Thomas went on.

“Mr. Smith,” he said, “Mr. Jones, I swear to you — ” and to Jones’ astonishment he suddenly looked just like the pictures of Abraham Lincoln at his most tender and trustworthy… “ — that we of the Lines are now and always have been telling you the simple truth. Never mind the dubious genetic theory involved; we’ll ignore that. But the reason that you cannot put a human infant into an Interface with a non-humanoid Alien without destroying that infant utterly has nothing whatsoever to do with whether you use an infant of the Lines or not. It has to do with the fact that no human mind can view the universe as it is perceived by a non-humanoid extraterrestrial and not self-destruct. It is as simple as that.”

“So you say,” said Smith stubbornly.

“So we say, yes. And so we have always said. We tried, very early in the days of the Interfaces, because it did not happen that in early exploration of this galaxy we encountered only humanoid Aliens. Sometimes we did, yes; but just as often, we ran into sentient beings who were crystalline, or gaseous. You will recall the infamous encounter with the population of Saturn, which was a liquid — the Lines lost three infants to that one. And when we saw we had reached a limit that could not be breached by technology, we halted there. The United States government would be well advised to do the same.”

“It cannot be true of every non-humanoid Alien species,” declared Smith. “That’s ridiculous.”

And Thomas thought that no, it wasn’t ridiculous at all. It was distressing, but it was not ridiculous. No human being could hold his breath for thirty minutes; that was a natural barrier, and one learned not to fling oneself at it. No human being, so far as he knew, could share the worldview of a non-humanoid. It was not ridiculous.

“If you people are willing to keep trying,” said Thomas reasonably, “and if you don’t mind risking the sanity and the lives of your infants in this quixotic series of gambles, that’s your business. But we linguists are genuinely tired of having you blame the results of your stupidity on us.”

“Mr. Chornyak — ”

“No. You listen to me. What you sit here saying to me is very easily summed up, Smith. It goes like this. One: we linguists do know how to Interface with non-humanoid Aliens, but we won’t — for some mysterious reason. Our inherent wickedness. Our monstrous greed. Just for the hell of it. Who knows? We just won’t. Two: you non-linguists have made a real try at using your own babies, and they’ve all died horribly, or worse than died. Three: since that comes directly from our refusal to help, we are to blame for those tragedies — we, the linguists, not you who actually put the babies in the Interface time after time after bloody time and watch them suffer unspeakably. Four: since we are to blame for all that, and since humanity really and truly needs to grab off these non-humanoid tongues, you the government are thereby by god ENTITLED to one of our babies. It’s not kidnapping, it’s our just desserts after your patient forbearance long past the point of sweet reason. We owe you one of our babies!”