Alien Tongues (7 page)

When he took her back to her room, he told Tina, "I really liked what you said.  Or, if I didn't actually like it, I know it was good for me to hear.  This language topic is very new to me, and I perhaps should have thought about it more before now."

Tina gave him a seductive smile. "Ah, Séamus, so you are also one of the babies here.  Or maybe I should say 'innocents.' Knowing we are doing something someone considers extremely important, but not have the slightest clue why."

"Yes, but I believe Alice doesn't know a lot more, either.  She's a code-breaker, so she's here because she knows how to find patterns in languages.   It's my boss and Wilkie who know the real story."

"Some terrorist code, perhaps?"  Tina threw herself on the bed and put her hands behind her neck.  "Or are those terrorists freedom-fighters? Doesn't every terrorist believe he is a freedom-fighter, and isn't every freedom-fighter viewed as a terrorist by someone?  Are we being manipulated for good or for bad?"

"I can only trust my government that it's for good," Séamus replied.

"And we girls should trust respectively the Thai, Chinese, Japanese and Philippine governments?"  Tina sighed.  "I think we can rely only upon our animal instincts and take care of our own families."  She tapped her foot at the end of her bed. "Can you sit a moment?"

"Literally a moment – I need to fetch Phyllis soon."  He sat on the corner of the bed.  "So you're still loyal to your family, despite how they treated you?"

"Funny, isn't it?   Maybe so many women want to start their own families because they want to find another one to be loyal to.  We're scared of having no loyalties."

"I don't think men are much different," he told her.  "What about football teams?"  He paused. "So you had dreams of starting a family with the Russian?"

"Yes, but I realize now that would have been a mistake."  She lifted her leg and placed a shoeless foot in his lap.  "Anyway, I'm glad I'm here.  I hope you are too, Séamus."

"Yes." He stared down at the foot.

"Can I ask you something?  Did the other girls touch you, or ask to be touched?"

More clearly now, Séamus felt forces moving around him which he could not understand.  "Yes.  One hugged me tightly, the other one asked for a shoulder massage.  How could you have guessed that?"

Tina stared at the ceiling.  "I'm guessing that we ladies have a lot in common.  I mean, if we have unusual language ability, we may all lack something, or have extra something-else, or both.  Maybe we read people very quickly, including even very small gestures and expressions. Who knows if we read well or badly?  But I think we all studied you and quickly realized, you are the one person we can depend upon.  Maybe the one person in this world.  Touching is our signal for that.  Most people we don't care to touch.  Maybe we're all dying to find that person who feels really good to touch."

Séamus thought of how little touching he and Sheryl had done in the last six months, and how acceptable that had felt to him.  Was that because he felt he could no longer depend upon her?

A few minutes later he knocked at the door marked "P."  A clear voice invited him in.  Phyllis was short like Jenny, athletically built like Chrissy and darker-skinned like Tina, but there the similarity ended.  The most striking difference was her large, round eyes, she alone having natural, deep shadows around them.  She was sitting on the bed as he entered but immediately jumped off it.  She walked up to him and appeared to straighten his jacket.

"Now, why did they send a handsome boy like you to look after us?" she said before he even spoke.  "They want us girls fighting over you, is that it?"

"Thanks for the flattery, Phyllis, but the key to this project is cooperation."

"Oh, we can fight and cooperate at the same time!"  Phyllis adopted a mock boxing stance, then grabbed his cheek.  "Just playing with you, Silly.  Do I kid myself I can keep a man like you?  I couldn't keep my husband and he wasn't so much to look at."

She shook hands with Wilkie and Alice, giving them a wide and warm smile.  "I'm a 27-year-old mother of two lovely kids, a boy of three and a girl of five," she started in response to the Professor's request.  "I was happily married for a couple of years but then my man started drinking and womanizing.  Finally he got some young girl pregnant and said he'd have to marry her or her dad would kill him.  Well, for sure he was going to leave me, so why make it difficult and hurt the children?  But then he couldn't give me any money.  He said his mother would take care of the kids while I got a job.  What else could I do?  My own mother was dead and my father wouldn't help.  Our daughter got sick and we needed money quickly for the hospital.  I went to Manila and applied at a night club.  At first they didn't want to take me because of the stretch-marks."  She indicated her belly. "But I begged them to give me a try.  I can dress up quite nicely and with my quality English, Japanese and Chinese, foreigners assume I'm high-class.  While I was working there I learned Korean, Arabic, Spanish and Russian.  I did a little time in jail when the club was raided by the police and we didn't pay them off.  Overall I did very well financially, but made the mistake of sending too much money to my mother-in-law.  She continued to demand even more for me to see my own kids.  Finally I hired a lawyer, got them back and I now pay for a nanny."

"From all that experience, how do you feel?" Alice asked.

Phyllis frowned in thought. "You may know that we Filipinos are Catholics and I know it is a mortal sin to be involved in such criminal activity.  I have confessed my sins many times but I still wonder if they have been forgiven.  If not, I will go to Hell for Eternity, I know that.  But it's for my kids, you understand that?  If my children now have a decent life, whatever happens to me will be worth it.  Anyway, I pray every day to the Blessed Virgin because I think maybe she will understand and put in a good word for me with Jesus.  What do you think?"

The three others sat, lost for words for the moment.  Finally Séamus said, "Talking as a fellow Roman Catholic, Phyllis, I wouldn't have any doubt about it.  It's what they always taught us."

She grinned at him with genuine reassurance.  "Other than that," she said, "I have been extremely lucky, of course.  Who could have imagined a village girl from East Samar could afford her own nanny?  Now this opportunity – it's all like a dream.  My children will go to university!  They're both very smart, you know."

The Professor gave the final of his four descriptions of the project to Phyllis.  When talking about
creoles
, he added, "Actually, Phyllis, I think you already know a couple of authentic creoles, as well as several languages we call
code-switching
which are often mistaken for creoles."

Phyllis frowned as a polite way of inviting more explanation.

"Your national language,
Tagalog
," Wilkie continued.  "How much English do you normally mix with it?"

She laughed. "Depends a lot on whom I'm talking with.  A Manila shop assistant, maybe five percent.  A well-dressed business customer at dinner, maybe up to forty percent."

"Well we sometimes call that
Tag-lish
.  Like a creole, it follows a perfect set of grammar rules.  But unlike a creole it's not designed to bridge two speakers of different languages.  Since users typically are fluent in both Tagalog and English, you just pick the words you like best.  That's different from
Chavacano
, which I know you speak and is a true creole, developed when native Filipinos mixed with Spanish speakers."

"Ah," Phyllis smiled.  "So that's why I picked up Spanish so quickly!" She shook her head.  "Did a lot of Filipinos go to work in Spain?"  Wilkie explained about the Spanish occupation of the Philippines for over three centuries. "Oh, yes, I think we did that in school.  Oops!" She pulled a face of exaggerated shame towards Séamus.  "But I do know about the Americans."

When asked if she had any questions, she said, "I'd like to know more about this brain-scan equipment.  Are you certain it's safe?   I mean, they thought X-rays were safe at one time, didn't they?  And my mother died of cancer."

"That you don't have to worry about," Wilkie said.  "It's just measuring output from your brain – tiny electronic impulses that occur in it every moment.  We want to measure what parts of your brain you are using, and at what intensity.  If we're really lucky, we'll get new insight into how the brain combines memory and genetic structure to both create and use a language."

"What do you mean, genetic structure?" Phyllis asked.

The Professor gave a small chuckle.  "It's sharp of you to question that expression and I have to say, we don't really know what we mean by it!  Just that we have established beyond any reasonable doubt that part of our brain, right at birth, is already equipped in vital ways to learn a language – any language it hears.  Somehow, it listens to the grammar embedded in the sentences of people around it, and seems able to slot them into some internal rule-book from which it can then construct an infinite number of other sentences, all correctly.  It's a bit like watching your father take apart the engine of his old truck, then deducing from that how to repair any engine on any vehicle.  It seems crazy, I know.  But any other theory would be worse than crazy – it would be unscientific."

"Let me explain it the way I think about it," Alice added.  "It's like we have a computer program inside our head.  Let's say instead of language, it designs dress patterns.  You feed it with a few thousand dress patterns as "samples."  From those, it works out all the rules for dress patterns.  It can then make you any dress pattern you need – all you need to do is give it an idea, and it works out all the rest."

Séamus wondered if the dress-pattern analogy might be viewed as condescending, but Phyllis nodded respectfully.  "It sort of makes sense to me.  Of course, we never know how we learn our native language because we're too young to remember what we were listening to.   But the other languages I learned since a teenager – often I ask myself, 'how did I ever learn to say an expression like that?'  I then ask the native speaker I'm talking to if it's correct and they say yes, how did I get so good at it?"

"Once into their teenage," the Professor added, "Almost everyone is
not
good at it.  It's as if, for all but a handful of people like you, the more our brain learns to reason for itself, the less it manages to copy language.  The computer program develops an increasing number of bugs, you might say."

When he took her back to her room, Phyllis asked Séamus if he could stay for a quick cup of coffee, which he accepted.

"I hope I didn't scare you too much when we met," she told him as they sat at her kitchen counter.  "I have a tendency to joke around when I'm a bit nervous."

He grinned.  "I don't scare easily and I suspect you are not really the nervous type.  I think it's just your style to challenge people.  See what they're made of.  I'm sorry if I came across a bit wooden, but my excuse is that this is my job.  Hopefully my career."

"So what is that, exactly?  Some kind of bodyguard?"

He measured the size of his biceps. "Bodyguards are typically bigger men than me, aren't they?  I know some self-defense, of course, that's basic training.  When they hired me, they were looking for someone who could do some intelligence work.  You know, detect something suspicious and act on it in good time."

As he spoke, Séamus recalled Alice's ex-boyfriend.  He had included the event in his report that morning, but had not given it much priority.  He had made some inquiries about potential organized crime in the area.  If he was worthy of his job, he would make sure that nothing about any local syndicate might jeopardize his mission.  In all other respects, whatever crimes were taking place on his doorstep were wholly irrelevant to him.  Any investigation, beyond relevance to current mission, was strongly discouraged.  He was not law enforcement, and his job had absolutely nothing to do with justice.  That was the first lesson they drilled into you.

"I'm a big martial arts fan," Phyllis said with enthusiasm.  "While we're here, how about practicing some together?"

Séamus frowned. "I don't know.  Mine isn't quite of the
Gungfu, Wushu
, Knights-of-the-Middle-Kingdom variety.  Its purpose is to stop the guy killing you or your subject.  A hundred-Euro note might be your best weapon.  Your back-up might be a corkscrew or razorblade.  That's where it becomes difficult to disentangle from intelligence."

Phyllis was not to be deterred.  "Well, then maybe I can teach you some stuff!  Come on, Mr FitzGerald, we're going to have a long, cold, lonely winter.  I for one am not stepping outside this building until Summer.  I'm used to hot and humid all year round.  So unless you got plans to take me to a sauna, you're going to have to help me break a sweat here."

"There's a gym downstairs.  I think it even has a small sauna."

She moved her head close to him, deliberately looking upwards at him.  "Let's get sweaty down there, then, Mister.  I've got a mother's tummy and I need the exercise or it gets slack."  She took his hand and ran it over her stomach, which felt muscular enough to Séamus.

As he returned to his own room, he thought of Tina's remarks about touching.  Was touch communication?  If so, could people lie with their bodies as easily as with their mouths? Given the hardship and even trauma of these girls' lives, could they really put any trust in touch, or even trust their own touch?  Maybe we simply choose to put trust in touch for that moment we can get it, Séamus thought, like massage.  Maybe it's enough that we have power over that touch, and the girls had realized their power over him.  That power was a fair exchange for their cooperation to get the job done, because they sensed the vital importance to him of a successful completion. Perhaps they now relished their new, dominant role in the world market for their services.