The Judas Rose (26 page)

It seemed to her that it was as ridiculous to be expanding forever out into space as it had been to be all crowded together and stuck on Earth. Or wherever—if you were an Alien—you
happened to be stuck. It seemed to her that there ought to be a middle ground.

“I want to go home,” said Benia aloud, to nobody at all. Benia, who was never, never going to go home again. “I want to go home.”

CHAPTER 11

Gentlemen: we have now presented to you the first forty semantic units of the interplanetary signal-language PanSig, in three major sensory moralities, together with a brief historical introduction to the system. At this point, it is our experience that someone inevitably rises to make what we at D.A.T. call “the Krawfkelliga Proposal”, in honor of the first staff trainee to suggest it. In order to save time for all of us, we are going to run that proposal past you and get it over with; it goes like this:

Since the inventory of shapes on which the PanSig vocabulary is based is necessarily limited, each shape should be used more than once, as a mechanism for increasing the vocabulary. For example, take the triangle, which has been assigned the meaning equivalent [LET'S DO BUSINESS TOGETHER]; that's one shape used, and only one semantic unit gained. Suppose we take as vocabulary items one triangle, two triangles, and three triangles, assigning to each of them a meaning-equivalent; then we've still used only one shape from the inventory, but we've tripled our vocabulary for that shape. And so on through the entire
set
of meaningful shapes.

Gentlemen, this seems so intuitively obvious, and so right—certainly, if we were using PanSig only with human beings it would be the first step we'd take! But if we were communicating with human beings, we wouldn't
need
PanSig, remember? Gentlemen, the Krawfkelliga Proposal was tried, and it failed in the most spectacular fashion. It
will not
work. We will be grateful if you will refrain from bringing it up again in this course.

The reason it won't work is that nothing in the optic system of humanoid Aliens—much less
non
humanoid Aliens—guarantees that the Alien looking at one square or one triangle or one circle
(from the Terran point of view, that is) is not already seeing two or more of that shape. Furthermore, we have no way of knowing whether the number of shapes seen remains a
stable
number over time, the way it does for us. Where the nonhumanoids are concerned, you must remember that we have no way of knowing even if they see the
same
shape we see; all we know is that, like us, they distinguish among the shapes and see them as differing and unique items. But how
many
do they see? Gentlemen, for all we know they see hundreds, or thousands! Let us not complicate matters any further than they are complicated already by the simple facts of the situation.

           
(from Training Lecture #2, for junior staff; Special PanSig Division, United States Department of Analysis & Translation)

“Are you absolutely sure of your facts, Crab?” Heykus was leaning forward with his hands on the seeyum's gleaming surface, half-standing. “Are you positive?”

“Would I have come tearing over here this morning if I
weren't
positive?” the man asked, clearly annoyed at the questions.

His annoyance was justified; Crab Lowbarr had plenty of junior staff he could have sent in his place if he'd thought he was only reporting a rumor. Heykus looked at him a moment longer, thinking hard, and then he made a swift decision. And did something that was so rare for him that Crab Lowbarr was shocked. Heykus sat down and sent for a half-bottle of good wine and two wine glasses.

When Crab had recovered from his astonishment, he mentioned that he hadn't known Heykus drank. Politely. And his chief, who based the decision upon the fact that Jesus Himself had been quite willing to turn water into wine at the wedding in Cana—when He could just as easily have turned it into milk or apple juice or anything else whatsoever—said, “I don't. But sometimes, for a very special and wonderful celebration, I have a glass of wine in joyful fellowship. Weddings . . . births of sons . . . that sort of thing.” He did not add that it was also a move that would give him precious time to think, before he had to do any more serious talking, and he sincerely hoped that would not occur to Crab as a possibility.

“And announcements that an ordinary human baby has learned an Alien language,” Lowbarr said cheerfully. “I agree. Joyful fellowship! Absolutely.”

“Weddings and births come along pretty often, but this has
happened only once, and can never happen again. That makes it especially celebration-worthy.”

“Only once, yeah—only one time can be the
first
time. But it's going to happen again plenty of times from now on,” Crab said.

“Are you sure of that?”

“Heykus, for god's sake!” protested the other man. “So help me Niobe! What do I have to say to get you to quit with the are you sure and are you positive crap? The Lingoes have been telling us the truth all this time, damn their asses all the way to hell and back, and if I wasn't one hundred and six percent sure of what I'm saying I
would not be here
. Now lay off with the dubious inquiries.
Shit
.”

“There really is no genetic difference between the babies of the Lines and other babies?”

Crab shook his head slowly from side to side, one hand laid melodramatically over his heart. “None.
None
. I've called enough of our scientists to run a damn conference, and they all tell me the same thing. They've known for years—‘many years' is the way they put it—that any human kid can learn an Alien language in an Interface just the same as a child of the Lines.”

“But they didn't feel it was necessary to tell
us
that? During these many years.”

“Ah . . .” Crab cleared his throat and looked carefully blank. “They tell me they were instructed to keep their radical opinions to themselves, Heykus, and they didn't feel that it was advisable to argue.”

“Pentagon?”

“Yep.”

Heykus sighed, and took some more time making a note on his wrist computer; Crab would assume it was a reminder to call in some Pentagon flunkies and kick ass over this. He would have been very surprised to know that what Heykus had entered was the words to the first verse of “The Old Rugged Cross.” And then the wine came, and he stopped to pour it and to go through the ceremony of toasting the momentous occasion.

“To the youngster who has broken the monopoly of the Lines,” he said solemnly, raising his glass.

Lowbarr repeated that, and added “To the
truth!
” as his contribution. And although Heykus disliked doing so intensely, he had no choice but to join in.

“To the truth!” he echoed, and raised his glass once again, and drank, hoping he wouldn't choke on the wine. It was awkward, drinking to the truth while you did your best to figure
out a way to perpetuate what was so far as you knew the most elaborate lie the human race had ever been told. And when the toasts were safely over, he would have to relax and strive for small talk. Small talk that was in preparation for large talk, that he would have to do quickly, as soon as this man could decently be sent on about his business and Heykus could decide how the emergency should be handled.

“Well, now,” he began. “Now I've survived the shock, perhaps you could tell me one more time. With a little more detail.” He leaned back and gave Crab his most encouraging jovial smile.

“Heykus, there isn't much more detail,” Crab answered. “There's a wild-eyed eggdome at Massachusetts Multiversity named Macabee Dow. Powerful man—controls a hell of a lot of money, knows things nobody else understands but a lot of people need, that kind of thing. Shaves his head and stains it blue.”

“He does?”

“He does. A militant. You know. ‘You wanna hate an eggdome? Hate
me
, here's my eggdome badge!' Anyhow, when his first kid was born, this Dow character just haled himself over to Chornyak Household and talked them into Interfacing his kid along with theirs. He signed a hundred waivers of responsibility, of course, and I suppose it cost him both arms and a leg, but they went along with it. And now, Heykus, little Gabriel Macabee Dow is two years old plus a bit, and a native speaker of REMwhatsis. Same behavior as the linguist kids . . . tiny vocabulary, little baby sentences, you know the kind of thing, but the Chornyaks assure me it's normal language acquisition. And that the Dow baby understands everything the AIRY says, sits around gabbling with the other kids in the Interface—the works. I went over and took a look at the setup for myself, and it's as specified, Heykus.”

“How did this professor talk the Chornyaks
into
that?”

Crab rolled his eyes and shrugged his shoulders; Heykus found the man's body language offensively excessive, but at least it wasn't particularly subtle. Massive bewilderment, he was bodyparling, and now he was going to put words to the music. “Apparently it was no problem, and that baffles me. According to Jonathan Chornyak, Muckymuck of Muckymucks, the Lines have never had any objection to Interfacing kids from outside, so long as there was space available. He claims they've made the offer to share the Interface time and time again, direct to this department, and have always been turned down.
Rudely
, he says. He says they got tired of offering.”

“He's probably correct,” Heykus said. “Relations between this department and the Lines have never been precisely cordial. I can imagine the dialogue. ‘Hey, wanna share our Interface?' And one of our prize diplomatic types telling the man where he could take his offer and what ingenious things he could do with it when he got there.”

“I know.” They both knew, and had been caught in the middle many a time.

“How did Macabee Dow know it was such a simple matter, though?” Heykus asked. “The Lines have certainly not gone around making offers to the general public—they don't have as much contact with the public in a year as you and I do in an ordinary morning.”

“Heykus, I don't have any idea how Dow knew, and he isn't telling. He just glares at me like I was the newest fungus and snorts like a horse and mutters stuff about pseudoscience and government claptrap and then claps his mouth shut and smirks at me.”

“Smirks at you? Why?” Heykus didn't like the sound of this at all. Somebody was going to have to take a very careful look at Macabee Dow, and at how essential the continuation of his work was; and somebody was going to have to decide whether Macabee Dow wouldn't serve his nation more effectively from a comfortable private room in a federal mental hospital with a Takeover Chip in his nostril and a layer of Thorazine added for insurance. “Why would he feel that it was appropriate to smirk at you?” he said again.

“Well, hell, Heykus, his kid is the very first kid ever, not from the Lines, to learn an Alien language.
Sure
he smirks about it! I'd smirk too, in his place.”

Heykus leaned his chin in his hand and closed his eyes, thinking long and hard, while Crab finished the excellent wine. What, precisely, was he going to do now? He hadn't been expecting this, and there weren't any contingency plans for it. He was furious with the Chornyaks for going ahead with it without notifying D.A.T., and he knew that was wasted anger, because there was nothing that would delight the Chornyaks more than knowing that they'd managed to upset Heykus Clete. And Crab Lowbarr was going to expect Heykus really to be feeling the satisfaction he'd been pretending to feel. His security clearance qualified him to know all about the government Interfacing experiments with nonhumanoid Alien languages—the standard classified information about the Government Work projects—but he'd go to his grave as ignorant of the problems of Alien
superiority as a servomechanism supervisor. Unless this business with the Dow child had brought on catastrophe, and the whole thing was going to become public knowledge, in which case Crab Lowbarr would have to take his chances like everybody else.

But there was something very strange here, nagging at the back of his mind. Something that did not add up. This had been going on for almost two years, or a little more than two years, and not one hint had come his way? Not one memo? Macabee Dow undoubtedly had the kind of influence that would have kept his child's private life out of the media until such time as he chose to have it there, but it was extraordinary that Heykus had not learned of it long ago. The only possible explanation of that information lag was that the men of the Lines, out of sheer mischief, had taken the kind of elaborate steps that would have been necessary to keep the Director of D.A.T. in the dark and save this little surprise for him. Only the linguists would have the skill, or the motivation, to lay down the kind of smokescreen required and maintain it this long.

“Is something wrong, Heykus?”

Lowbarr's voice seemed to come from very far away, and Heykus heard it through a dull fury that he knew was not helping matters.
Yes, something is wrong
. In a just war, you take a life because it is necessary to do so, and taking Crab Lowbarr's life—and Macabee Dow's, and little Gabriel Dow's—would have been quick and simple. But that wouldn't have been enough. And even if Heykus felt that he was justified in ordering a “natural disaster” that would get rid of a large group, that group would have to include all of the linguists of Chornyak Household, just for starters. Women and children, as well as men. And even then, he would have to start looking for the loose ends. People Dow had mentioned the project to, casually, at parties. Their wives; their children. People
those
people had talked to about it, perhaps because they were disgusted that Dow would even consider doing anything so repulsive. And then there were the staff members here at D.A.T. who'd read whatever kind of disinformational items the linguists had sent along to screw the lid down on the story. And everybody
they
had talked to. . . . It was ridiculous. You'd have to wipe out the population of the Earth to get rid of all the potential loose ends! You might just as well tell the truth and let the population of the Earth do whatever it would do if it knew the facts!