Robert Sheckley - Shall We Have a Llittle Talk?

Jackson had had it. He was sick of the Hon language and of all things Naian. He had the vertiginous feeling that the more he learned, the less he knew. It was downright perverse.

'Hokay,' Jackson said, to himself and to the universe at large. 'I have learned the Naian language, and I have learned a set of completely inexplicable exceptions, and I have also learned a further and even more contradictory set of exceptions to the exceptions.'

Jackson paused and in a very low voice said: 'I have learned an exceptional number of exceptions. Indeed, an impartial observer might think that this language is composed of nothing but exceptions.

'But that,'' he continued, 'is damned well impossible, unthinkable, and unacceptable. A language is by God and by definition systematic, which means it's gotta follow some kind of rules. Otherwise, nobody can't understand nobody. That's the way it works and that's the way it's gotta be.

And if anyone thinks they can horse around linguisticwise with Fred C. Jackson—'

Here Jackson paused and drew the blaster from his holster. He checked the charge, snapped off the safety, and replaced the weapon.

'Just better no one give old Jackson no more double-talking,' old Jackson muttered. 'Because the next alien who tries it is going to get a three-inch circle drilled through his lousy cheating guts.'

So saying, Jackson marched back to the city. He was feeling decidedly lightheaded, but absolutely determined. His job was to steal this planet out from under its inhabitants in a legal manner, and in order to do that he had to make sense out of their language. Therefore, in one way or another, he was going to make sense. Either that, or he was going to make some corpses.

At this point, he didn't much care which.

Erum was in his office, waiting for him. With him were the mayor, the president of the City Council, the borough president, two aldermen and the director of the Board of Estimates. All of them were smiling - affably, albeit nervously. Strong spirits were present on a sideboard, and there was a subdued air of fellowship in the room.

All in all, it looked as if Jackson were being welcomed as a new and highly respected property owner, an adornment to Fakka. Aliens took it that way sometimes: made the best of a bad bargain by trying to ingratiate themselves with the Inevitable Earthman.

'Mun,' said Erum, shaking his hand enthusiastically.

'Same to you, kid,' Jackson said. He had no idea what the word meant. Nor did he care. He had plenty of other Naian words to choose among, and he had the determination to force matters to a conclusion.

'Mun /' said the mayor.

'Thanks, pop,' said Jackson.

'Mun /' declared the other officials.

'Glad you boys feel that way,' said Jackson. He turned to Erum. 'Well, let's get it over with, okay?'

'Mun-mun-mun ,' Erum replied. 'Mun, mun-mun.'

Jackson stared at him for several seconds. Then he said, in a low, controlled voice, 'Erum, baby, just exactly what are you trying to say to me?'

'Mun, mun, mun ,' Erum stated firmly. 'Mun, mun mun mun. Mun mun .' He paused, and in a somewhat nervous voice asked the mayor: 'Mun, mun?'

'Mun ... mun mun ,' the mayor replied firmly, and the other officials nodded. They all turned to Jackson.

'Mun, mun-mun?'' Erum asked him, tremulously, but with dignity.

Jackson was numbed speechless. His face turned a choleric red and a large blue vein started to pulse in his neck. But he managed to speak slowly, calmly, and with infinite menace.

'Just what? he said, 'do you lousy third-rate yokels think you're pulling?'

'Mun-mun?' the mayor asked Erum.

'Mun-mun, mun-mun-mun ,' Erum replied quickly, making a gesture of incomprehension.

'You better talk sense,' Jackson said. His voice was still low, but the vein in his neck writhed like a firehose under pressure.

'Mun!' one of the aldermen said quickly to the borough president.

'Mun mun-mun mun?' the borough president answered piteously, his voice breaking on the last word.

'So you won't talk sense, huh?'

'Mun! Mun-mun!' the mayor cried, his face gone ashen with fright.

The others looked and saw Jackson's hand clearing the blaster and taking aim at Erum's chest.

'Quit horsing around!' Jackson commanded. The vein in his neck pulsed like a python in travail.

'Mun-mun-mun!' Erum pleaded, dropping to his knees.

'Mun-mun-mun!' the mayor shrieked, rolling his eyes and fainting.

'You get it now,' Jackson said to Erum. His finger whitened on the trigger.

Erum, his teeth chattering, managed to gasp out a strangled ' Mun-mun, mun?' But then his nerves gave way and he waited for death with jaw agape and eyes unfocused.

Jackson took up the last fraction of slack in the trigger. Then, abruptly, he let up and shoved the blaster back in its holster.

'Mun, mun!' Erum managed to say.

'Shaddap,' Jackson said. He stepped back and glared at the cringing Naian officials.

He would have dearly loved to blast them all. But he couldn't do it. Jackson had to come to a belated acknowledgement of an unacceptable reality.

His impeccable linguist's ear had heard, and his polyglot brain had analysed. Dismayingly, he had realized that the Naians were not trying to put anything over on him. They were speaking not nonsense, but a true language.

This language was made up at present of the single sound 'mun'. This sound could carry an extensive repertoire of meanings through variations in pitch and pattern, changes in stress and quantity, alteration of rhythm and repetition, and through accompanying gestures and facial expressions.

A language consisting of infinite variations on a single word! Jackson didn't want to believe it, but he was too good a linguist to doubt the evidence of his own trained senses.

He could learn this language, of course.

But by the time he had learned it, what would it have changed into?

Jackson sighed and rubbed his face wearily. In a sense it was inevitable. All languages change. But on Earth and the few dozen worlds she had contacted, the languages changed with relative slowness.

On Na, the rate of change was faster. Quite a bit faster.

The Na language changed as fashions change on Earth, only faster. It changed as prices change or as the weather changes. It changed endlessly and incesssantly, in accordance with unknown rules and invisible principles. It changed its form as an avalanche changes its shape. Compared with it, English was like a glacier.

The Na language was, truly and monstrously, a simulacrum of Heraclitus' river. You cannot step into the same river twice, said Heraclitus; for other waters are for ever flowing on.

Concerning the language of Na, this was simply and literally trite.

That made it bad enough. But even worse was the fact that an observer like Jackson could never hope to fix or isolate even one term out of the dynamic shifting network of terms that composed the Na language. For the observer's action would be gross enough by itself to disrupt and alter the system, causing it to change unpredictably. And so, if the term were isolated, its relationship to the other terms in the system would necessarily be destroyed, and the term itself, by definition, would be false.

By the fact of its change, the language was rendered impervious to condification and control. Through indeterminacy, the Na tongue resisted all attempts to conquer it. And Jackson had gone from Heraclitus to Heisenberg without touching second base. He was dazed and dazzled, and he looked upon the officials with something approaching awe.