Robert Sheckley: Shall We Have a Llittle Talk?

As for why she wanted it that way - that wasn't too hard to fathom, either. A great majority of Terrans were idealists, and they believed fervently in concepts such as truth, justice, mercy, and the like. And not only did they believe, they also let those noble concepts guide their actions -except when it would be inconvenient or unprofitable. When that happened, they acted expediently, but continued to talk moralistically. This meant that they were 'hypocrites' - a term which every race has its counterpart of.

Terrans wanted what they wanted, but they also wanted that what they wanted should look nice. This was a lot to expect sometimes, especially when what they wanted was ownership of someone else's planet. But in one way or another, they usually got it.

Most alien races realized that overt resistance was impossible and so resorted to various stalling tactics.

Sometimes they refused to sell, or they required an infinite multiplicity of forms or the approval of some local official who was always absent. But for each ploy the contactor always had a suitable counterploy.

Did they refuse to sell property on racial grounds? The laws of Earth specifically forbade such practices, and the Declaration of Sentient Rights stated the freedom of all sentients to live and work wherever they pleased. This was a freedom that Terra would fight for, if anyone forced her to.

Were they stalling? The Terran Doctrine of Temporal Propriety would not allow it.

Was the necessary official absent? The Uniform Earth Code Against Implicit Sequestration in Acts of Omission expressly forbade such a practice. And so on and so on. It was a game of wits Earth invariably won, for the strongest is usually judged the cleverest.

But the Naians weren't even trying to fight back. Jackson considered that downright despicable.

The exchange of Naian currency for Terran platinum was completed and Jackson was given his change in crisp fifty-Vrso bills. Erum beamed with pleasure and said, 'Now, Mr Jackson, we can complete today's business if you will kindly trombramcthulanchierir in the usual manner.'

Jackson turned, his eyes narrowed and his mouth compressed into a bloodless downward-curving line.

'What did you say?'

'I merely asked you to—'

'I know what you asked! But what does it mean?'

'Well, it means - it means—' Erum laughed weakly. 'It means exactly what it says. That is to say - ethybolically speaking—'

Jackson said in a low, dangerous voice, 'Give me a synonym.'

'There is no synonym,' Erum said.

'Baby, you better come up with one anyhow,' Jackson said, his hand closing over Erum's throat.

'Stop! Wait! Ulp!' Erum cried. 'Mr Jackson, I beg of you! How can there be a synonym when there is one and only one term for the thing expressed - if I may so express it?'

'You're putting me on!' Jackson howled. 'And you better quit it, on account of we got laws against wilful obfuscation, intentional obstructionism, implicit superimposition, and other stuff like you're doing. You hear me?'

'I hear you.' Erum trembled.

'Then hear this: stop agglutinating , you devious dog! You've got a perfectly ordinary run-of-the-mill analytical-type language, distinguished only by its extreme isolating tendency. And when you got a language like that, man, then you simple don't agglutinate a lot Of big messy compounds. Get me?'

'Yes, yes,' Erum cried. 'But believe me, I don't intend to numniscaterate in the slightest! Not noniskakkekaki, and you really must debrucliili that!'

Jackson drew back his fist, but got himself under control in time. It was unwise to hit aliens if there was any possibility that they were telling the truth. Folks on Terra didn't like it. His pay could be docked; and if, by some unlucky chance, he killed Erum, he could be slapped with a six-month jail sentence.

But still...

'I'll find out if you're lying or not!' Jackson screamed, and stormed out of the office.

He walked for nearly an hour, mingling with the crowds in the slum quarters of Grath-Eth, below the grey, evil-smell-ing Ungperdis. No one paid any attention to him. To all outward appearances, he could have been a Naian, just as any Naian could have been a Terran.

Jackson located a cheerful saloon on the corner of Niis and Da Streets and went in.

It was quiet and masculine inside. Jackson ordered a local variety of beer. When it was served, he said to the bartender, 'Funny thing happened to me the other day.'

'Yeah?' said the bartender.

'Yeah, really,' Jackson said. 'I had this big business deal on, see, and then at the last minute they asked to trom-bramcthulanchierir in the usual manner.'

He watched the bartender's face carefully. A faint expression of puzzlement crossed the man's stolid features.

'So why didn't you?' the bartender asked.

'You mean you would have?'

'Sure I would have. Hell, it's the standard cathanprip-tiaia, ain't it?'

'Course it is,' one of the loungers at the bar said. 'Unless, of course, you suspected they was trying to numniscaterate.'

'No, I don't think they were trying anything like that,' Jackson said in a flat low, lifeless voice. He paid for his drink and started to leave.

'Hey,' the bartender called after him, 'you sure they wasn't noniskakkekakiV

'You never know,' Jackson said, walking slump-shouldered into the street.

Jackson trusted his instincts, both with languages and with people. His instincts told him now that the Naians were straight and were not practising an elaborate deception on him. Erum had not been inventing new words for the sake of wilful confusion. He had been really speaking the Hon language as he knew it.

But if that were true, then Na was a very strange language. In fact, it was downright eccentric. And its implications were not merely curious. They were disastrous.

That evening Jackson went back to work. He discovered a further class of exceptions which he had not known or even suspected. That was a group of twenty-nine multivalued potentiators. These words, meaningless in themselves, acted to elicit a complicated and discordant series of shadings from other words. Their particular type of potentiation varied according to their position in the sentence.

Thus, when Erum had asked him 'to trornbramcthulan-chierir in the usual manner', he had merely wanted Jackson to make an obligatory ritual obeisance. This consisted of clasping his hands behind his neck and rocking back on his heels. He was required to perform this action with an expression of definite yet modest pleasure, in accordance with the totality of the situation, and also in accord with the state of his stomach and nerves and with his religion and ethical code, and bearing in mind minor temperamental differences due to fluctuations in heat and humidity, and not forgetting the virtues of patience, similitude, and forgiveness.

It was all quite understandable. And all completely contradictory to everything Jackson had previously learned about Hon.

It was more than contradictory; it was unthinkable, impossible, and entirely out of order. It was as if, having discovered palm trees in frigid Antarctica, he had further found that the fruit of these trees was not coconuts, but muscatel grapes.

It couldn't be - but it was.

Jackson did what was required of him. When he had finished trombramcthulanchieriring in the usual manner, he had only to get through the official ceremony and the several small requirements after it.

Erum assured him that it was all quite simple, but Jackson suspected that he might somehow have difficulties.

So, in preparation, he put in three days of hard work acquiring a real mastery of the twenty-nine exceptional potentiators, together with their most common positions and their potentiating effect in each of these positions. He finished, bone-weary and with his irritability index risen to 97.3620 on the Grafheimer scale. An impartial observer might have noticed an ominous gleam in his china-blue eyes.