Мириам Дефорд: The Long Echo

Vengeance was all her tears, as fits the grief of queens.

“And so on, for about a hundred lines more.”

“I think it’s very impressive,” said Sha.

“So now it goes reverberating back and forth through the ages,” Rof jeered. “Let’s hope it meets a soft, perceptive mind somewhere, in a highly susceptible condition, to make you immortal without your knowledge, my boy. Somebody who loves the thought of savage vengeance, by preference, and who can use your translation to frustrate civilization.

“Incidentally, I didn’t understand a word of it. So how about giving it to us in Interlinguan, for the sake of a poor uncultured Space Cadet, so that we can meditate on those happy days, to provide us with a good night’s sleep?”

* * * *

Dutch Schultz said loudly: “A boy has never wept or dashed a thousand krim.”

He uttered no other intelligible word before he died.

The men at his bedside looked blankly at one another.

“It was clear enough,” a doctor said, “and most of it seemed to be English, but it didn’t make any sense to me.”

“Just nonsense, as far as I could get it,” the detective agreed. “He certainly didn’t finger any mobster I ever heard the name of.

“Well, I guess that’s that. We’re right back where we started. Nobody will ever know what that gibberish meant— if it meant anything at all.”

They kept on trying.

But nobody knows to this day who murdered Dutch Schultz. And it was not until 2000 years had passed that, four light-years away, anybody understood those ten words.