Ben Bova - Foundation’s Friends

“They never bother with the library in their normal spying. Even if they set up something special for you, there’s now an interference field blocking out our conversation. Chances are, though, that they won’t bother to monitor you again until you leave here.“

She seemed edgy. Impatient. As if she didn’t like having this conversation. As if she wanted him to get on with it, or maybe just get it over with.

“If you don’t mind,” he said. “I haven’t interrupted you here before, I thought that just this once-”

“Of course, “ she said. But she was still tense. As if she feared what he might say.

So he explained to her all his thoughts about language. All that he had gleaned from Kispitorian’s and Magolissian’s work. She seemed to relax almost as soon as it became clear he was talking about his research. What did she dread, he wondered. Was she afraid I came to talk about our relationship? She hardly needed to fear that. He had no intention of making things more difficult by whining about things that could riot be helped.

When he was through explaining the ideas that had come to him, she nodded carefully-as she had done a thousand times before, after he explained an idea or argument. “I don’t know,” she finally said. As so many times before, she was reluctant to commit herself to an immediate response.

And, as he had often done, he insisted. “But what do you think?”

She pursed her lips. “Just offhand-I’ve never tried a serious linguistic application of community theory, beyond jargon formation, so this is just my first thought-but try this. Maybe small isolated populations guard their language-jealously, because it’s part of who they are. Maybe language is the most powerful ritual of all, so that people who have the same language are one in a way that people who can’t understand each other’s speech never are. We’d never know, would we, since everybody for ten thousand years has spoken Standard.”

“So it isn’t the size of the population, then, so much as-’’

“How much they care about their language. How much it defines them as a community. A large population starts to think that everybody talks like them. They want to distinguish themselves, form a separate identity. Then they start developing jargons and slangs to separate themselves from others. Isn’t that what happens to common speech? Children try to find ways of talking that their parents don’t use. Professionals talk in private vocabularies so laymen won’t know the passwords. All rituals for community definition.”

Leyel nodded gravely, but he had one obvious doubt.

Obvious enough that Deet knew it, too. “Yes, yes, I know, Leyel. I immediately interpreted your question in terms of my own discipline. Like physicists who think that everything can be explained by physics. “

Leyel laughed. “I thought of that, but what you said makes sense. And it would explain why the natural tendency of communities is to diversify language. We want a common tongue, a language of open discourse. But we also want private languages. Except a completely private language would be useless-whom would we talk to? So wherever a community forms, it creates at least a few linguistic barriers to outsiders, a few shibboleths that only insiders will know. “

“And the more allegiance a person has to a community, the more fluent he’ll become in that language, and the more he’ll speak it.”

“Yes, it makes sense,” said Leyel. “So easy. You see how much I need you?”

He knew that his words were a mild rebuke-why weren’t you home when I needed you-but he couldn’t resist saying it. Sitting here with Deet, even in this strange and redolent place, felt right and comfortable. How could she have withdrawn from him? To him, her presence was what made a place home. To her, this place was home whether he was there or not.

He tried to put it in words-in abstract words, so it wouldn’t sting. “I think the greatest tragedy is when one person has more allegiance to his community than any of the other members. “

Deet only half smiled and raised her eyebrows. She didn’t know what he was getting at.

“He speaks the community language all the time,” said Leyel. “Only nobody else ever speaks it to him, or not enough anyway. And the more he speaks it, the more he alienates the others and drives them away, until he’s alone. Can you imagine anything more sad? Somebody who’s filled up with a language, hungry to speak, to hear it spoken, and yet there’s no one left who understands a word of it.”

She nodded, her eyes searching him. Does she understand what I’m saying? He waited for her to speak. He had said all he dared to say.

“But imagine this,” she finally said. “What if he left that little place where no one understood him, and went over a hill to a new place, and all of a sudden he heard a hundred voices, a thousand, speaking the words he had treasured all those lonely years. And then he realized that he had never really known the language at all. The words had hundreds of meanings and nuances he had never guessed. Because each speaker changed the language a little just by speaking it. And when he spoke at last, his own voice sounded like music in his ears, and the others listened with delight, with rapture, his music was like the water of life pouring from a fountain, and he knew that he had never been home before. “

Leyel couldn’t remember hearing Deet sound so-rhapsodic, that was it, she herself was singing. She is the person she was talking about. In this place, her voice is different, that’s what she meant. At home with me, she’s been alone. Here in the library she’s found others who speak her secret language. It isn’t that she didn’t want our marriage to succeed. She hoped for it, but I never understood her. These people did. Do. She’s home here, that’s what she’s telling me.

“I understand,” he said.

“Do you?” She looked searchingly into his face.

“I think so. It’s all right.”

She gave him a quizzical look.

“I mean, it’s fine. It’s good. This place. It’s fine.”

She looked relieved, but not completely. “You shouldn’t be so sad about it, Leyel. This is a happy place. And you could do everything here that you ever did at home.”

Except love you as the other part of me, and have you love me as the other part of you. “Yes, I’m sure.”

“No, I mean it. What you’re working on-I can see that you’re getting close to something. Why not work on it here, where we can talk about it?”

Leyel shrugged.

“You are getting close, aren’t you?”

“How do I know? I’m thrashing around like a drowning man in the ocean at night. Maybe I’m close to shore, and maybe I’m just swimming farther out to sea.”

“Well, what do you have? Didn’t we get closer just now?”

“No. This language thing-if it’s just an aspect of community theory, it can’t be the answer to human origin.”

“Why not?”

“Because many primates have communities. A lot of other animals. Herding animals, for instance. Even schools of fish. Bees. Ants. Every multicelled organism is a community, for that matter. So if linguistic diversion grows out of community, then it’s inherent in prehuman animals and therefore isn’t part of the definition of humanity.”

“Oh. I guess not.”

“Right.”

She looked disappointed. As if she had really hoped they would find the answer to the origin question right there, that very day.

Leyel stood up. “Oh well. Thanks for your help. “

“I don’t think I helped.”

“Oh, you did. You showed me I was going up a dead-end road. You saved me a lot of wasted-thought. That’s progress, in science, to know which answers aren’t true.”