Suzette Elgin - Native Tongue

“It sounds like a hard life for the children,” Michaela said.

“It is. It’s purely awful. Like being born in the damnfool army.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, and he pulled fretfully at his covers until she’d rearranged them to his satisfaction.

“It doesn’t sound easy for the adults, either,” she added, when she had him settled.

“Oh, phooey. They’re used to it. Time they’ve done nothing but work all the time for twenty years, they wouldn’t know what to do with themselves if they got the chance to live any other way. Phooey.”

Most of the time he got a little agitated over a sentence or two in every paragraph, but he was really enjoying himself tremendously. She watched, and she’d take his pulse if he began to look flushed, while he roared at the top of his lungs about interfering damnfool women and their interfering damnfool nonsense, but she decided very quickly that Sharon Verdi was quite right. The old man’s body was worn out, to such an extent that he couldn’t get around anymore or do much for himself; but inside the frail assortment of muscles and bones and wrinkled flesh he was, as she’d said, fit as a racehorse. She did not need to worry about Stephan Verdi.

Only once had she seen him become so excited that she’d had to interfere and insist on a sedative. That was the day he got started talking about the Anti-Linguist Riots of 2130, with people throwing rocks at the children and setting fire to the linguists’ houses… That was when the families had made the shift from living in individual homes like everyone else and had set up the communal Households, where there would be security in numbers. And had earth-sheltered every one of them, not only for economy’s sake but also as a defense measure. So that each could be a kind of fortress on very short notice.

Talking of that, shouting that the linguists sacrificed their whole lives so the rest of the universe could live fat and lazy and at their ease, and shouting about ingratitude that would make the devil puke… the old man began to cry, and Michaela knew how that shamed him. A man, crying. Once Head of this Household, and crying. She’d stopped him gently, and soothed him into taking a glass of wine and a sedative, and she’d sat there beside him till he fell asleep. And since then, at the first sign that he was about to take up the subject of the riots, she headed him off expertly into a safer topic.

“You’re a good child,” he’d say to her from time to time.

“I’m glad you’re pleased with me, sir.”

“You’re the best listener that I ever knew!”

“My husband always used to say that,” she said demurely.

“Well, he was right, by damn. Does a man good to have somebody like you that can pay attention when he talks!”

“Mmhmmm.”

In many ways Michaela was sorry she had to kill him. He was a nice old man. For a linguist.

Andrew St. Syrus had the languid good looks characteristic of his family. Skin so fair that ten minutes in the sun meant a burn, and hair the color of good English wheat. And he had a beautiful mouth. Like all the St. Syrus men, he grew a full mustache above it to serve as a counterweight of masculinity. And he had learned, painstakingly, in daily sessions supervised by other St. Syrus men, the repertoire of male body language that no St. Syrus man could afford to dispense with. Thomas Chornyak, now, if he lounged a bit in his chair you saw only a sturdy male bulk lounging in a chair; if Andrew took the same posture he appeared to be draped over the chair for the elegance of the effect, and it was fatal. Andrew sat up straight, and he kept his shoulders square, and he made damn sure every unit of his body-parl had an unambiguous message like a drone string on a dulcimer… I AM VERY MALE. It was a nuisance, and the Household was searching for at least two husbands from outside the Lines who could offer a substantial contribution of genes best described as hulking.

He arrived at Chornyak Household before breakfast, refused anything but a cup of strong black coffee, and went straight to Thomas’ office to tell him about the kidnapping.

“My God, Andrew,” Thomas said at once, both hands gripping his desk. “Jesus… that’s awful.”

“It’s not pleasant.”

“You’re sure it’s a kidnapping? Not just a mixup… one of those cases you read about once in a while where some woman takes home the wrong baby?”

“They’d have one extra at the hospital, if it were that.”

Thomas made a face, and apologized.

“It was a stupid question,” he said. “I’m shocked stupid, I’m afraid. Forgive me.”

“It’s understandable.”

“Not really, Andrew — but go on.”

“They think it must have happened sometime between midnight and the four o’clock feeding… that’s when they noticed that the baby was gone. Somebody just waltzed up to the night nurse with a fake note saying they wanted the child for Evoked Potentials, and she handed it over like a sack of groceries.”

“How could that happen? A baby is not a sack of groceries!”

“Well,” sighed Andrew, “the nurse on duty had no reason to be suspicious. Someone’s always coming after babies from the Lines for neurological testing — you know that. The man was dressed like a doctor, he acted like a doctor, the note was scrawled like a doctor’s usual bad excuse for handwriting. she had no way of knowing. Hell… nobody argues with a doctor, Thomas — you can’t blame the woman.”

“She should have checked.”

“Thomas. She’s a nurse. A woman. What do you expect?”