Suzette Elgin - Native Tongue

And that could mean only one thing.

“Sweet jesus christ on a donkey in the shade of a lilac tree,” said Thomas out loud, stunned.

“Drink up,” Adam directed. “Do you good. You’re not half drunk enough.”

He was not drunk at all, he was stone cold sober. And a whole bottle of bourbon would not have made him drunk at that moment.

It could only mean one thing.

Because there was no way that the little girls of all those different Households could all be acquiring a single Alien language, all at the same time. No way .

And it began to fall together for him. Things he had half noticed, without being aware that he noticed them. Things he had seen from the corner of his eye, heard from the corner of his ear — things he had sensed.

He looked at the men of his blood, the men of the Lines, laughing and hearty and slightly tipsy and contented, surfeited with the rare pleasure of the evening and one another’s good company. And all he could think was: FOOLS. ALL OF YOU, FOOLS. AND I AM THE BIGGEST FOOL AMONG YOU. Because he was Head not of just Chornyak Household, but of all the Households, and that was supposed to mean something. That was supposed to mean that he always knew what was going on in the Lines, before it could go farther than it ought to go.

How could it have happened? Where could his mind have been?

He said nothing to the others, because of course he could be wrong. There could be some other explanation. There could be some cluster of related Alien languages spread out among the Lines by coincidence, something of that sort. Or he could be imagining the patterns, distracted by the liquor he so rarely drank. He put it aside and concentrated on fulfilling his role as host for the rest of the evening, because it was his duty to do so and because he would not spoil this for everyone else when he might be mistaken.

It dragged on, interminably, all the pleasure gone from it for him. Adam passed out and had to be carried to a cubbyhole in the dorms reserved for just such undignified accidents. Adam could not control his women, and he could not handle his liquor, and no doubt it was unpleasant for him to have to always compare himself with Thomas, and so he drank until he could compare no longer. It seemed to Thomas that this celebration, that had become a mockery, would never end.

When at last it was over, as had to happen despite his distorted time perceptions, Thomas was weak with a mixture of relief and dread. And glad that he could get away now to his office, where no one would dare go at night without his express invitation, and where Michaela Landry would be waiting for him as he had instructed her to be. He had expected to be in an unusually good mood at the end of this evening, and he had wanted her to be there, to talk to.

He still wanted her to be there, frantic as he felt. Not for her body — he had no interest in her body tonight. But for her blessed skill at listening with her whole heart and her whole mind. And for the fact that he could trust her absolutely.

He felt that if he could not have talked to someone about this he would have gone mad. He could talk to Michaela, bless her.

“Michaela, do you understand what I’m telling you? Do you follow what I’m saying?”

“I’m not sure,” she said carefully. “I’m not a linguist, my darling… I know nothing about these things. Perhaps if you would not mind explaining it to me again, I might understand.”

He badly needed to say it all again, that was clear to her. And for once she badly needed to hear it again. To be sure that he was saying what she thought he was saying, and to learn what he had learned. Because the women had not told her, of course, any more than they would have told any other woman who had to live among the men. Not even Nazareth. And Michaela had not guessed.

“Michaela,” said Thomas sternly, “if you would pay attention, you wouldn’t have any problem — it’s not beyond you to understand this.”

“Of course, Thomas. Forgive me — I will listen very very carefully this time.”

“Now you know about the Encoding Project, Michaela; you’re in and out of Barren House constantly, you couldn’t possibly not know. For generations our women have been playing at that game… constructing a ‘woman’s language’ called Langlish. You must have at least heard them speak of it.”

“I think I do remember something about it, Thomas.”

“Well, it’s nonsense, and it’s always been nonsense. In the first place, it is impossible to ‘construct’ a human language. We don’t know how any human language began, but we damn well know that it wasn’t because somebody sat down and created one from scratch.”

“Yes, my dear.”

“And in the second place, if it were possible to do such a thing, it certainly could not be done by women… as is made painfully clear by the travesty they’ve produced. Eighty-plus phonemes. Switching the obligatory word order — by committee, mind you — every two or three years. Sets of hundreds of particles. Five different orthographies, for different situations. Eleven different separate rules for the formation of simple yes/no questions. Thirteen — ” He caught himself then, remembering, and apologized. “None of that means anything at all to you, Michaela. I’m sorry.”

“It’s very interesting, Thomas,” she said. “And I’m sure it must be important, when a person understands it.”

“It is important. It bears out everything that I’ve said about the folly of both the Project itself and the women involved in it. It is exactly what you would expect to see happen when a group of women took on an entirely absurd task and worried at it in their spare time for interminable years. With committees and caucuses thrown in. It is what I would have predicted, and I do understand the result — and that is the problem.”

“I’m so sorry, my dear; now I really don’t follow you.”

“Michaela, I’ve made a point of checking up on the progress — or regress — of Langlish every six months or so. It’s puerile, mechanical, a kind of overelaborated Interlingua beside which Interlingua looks as authentic as Classical Greek. It has always been like that. It has been a source of amazement to the men of the Lines that our women could produce such a monstrosity… and has been proof enough, if we had needed further proof, that language acquisition skills are not directly correlated with intelligence. But — and this is the point — out of that travesty, that ‘Langlish,’ there could not possibly have developed any coherent system that could be learned and spoken by little girls throughout the linguist Households. It is impossible that that could have happened.”

Michaela noted the signs of strain in the muscles of his neck and shoulders, and moved to a different position where the turn of his head to look at her would ease them.

“But you seem to think that it has happened,” she said. “Or do I still misunderstand?”

“No… I think it has happened. I don’t understand it, it makes not the remotest sense, but I think that it has happened. And I will not have it, Michaela!”

“Certainly not,” she said promptly. “Of course you won’t.”

“I won’t have it,” he continued, as if she’d said nothing. “I have never believed in being overly strict with our women, but this I will not permit. Whatever it is, unless I have somehow got it entirely wrong, it’s dangerous — it has to be stopped, and stopped now , while it involves only a handful of little girls and a gaggle of foolish old women. Damn their conniving souls!”

“Will they tell you the truth about it, Thomas, do you think? If they’re frightened, I mean. I suppose this Langlish must mean a good deal to them.”