The Judas Rose (27 page)

“No, nothing's wrong,” he said. “I'm just very surprised. And a little taken aback at the implications.”

“It's an unexpected breakthrough, that's for damn sure,” said
Crab, comfortably. Just as if he were not sitting there with his survival being considered, pro and con, by Heykus Joshua Clete. Heykus thanked the Lord God Almighty, as he did time and again in the course of any working week, that telepathy was still not among the usual abilities of His children on this planet.

“But do you know what it means?” he asked Lowbarr. “It means that all we have to do in order to double, triple, quadruple, the number of interpreters we have is build Interfaces of our own and stock them with AIRYs and babies. It means we can step up the settlement of space—” He stopped, suddenly.

“What is it, Heykus? What the hell's the matter?”

“It means the Soviets can do the same thing,” Heykus spat. “Doesn't it? I don't suppose it crossed anybody's mind that this should be classified information.”

“It crossed my mind.” Lowbarr wasn't pleased at the implication that he'd been careless. “But Macabee Dow didn't choose to call me on this until
after
he'd held a press conference. I just barely managed to get over here and tell you before you saw it on the newspapes.”

“I see.”

“I told him what I thought, and he told me how little he cared. He also told me that this hadn't been going on at the bottom of the sea, and if it was such a big deal somebody should have told him so sooner.”

Heykus nodded.

“Some kind of hanky-panky's been going on, hasn't it?”

“It doesn't matter now,” Heykus told him firmly. “What does matter is for us to move on this. We can build Interfaces bigger and faster and better than the Russians can, and we'll have to. We'll have to do something about the number of AIRYs available to us, and that isn't going to be easy. While the details are being worked out, there are things we have to do
right
now. I want work started on construction of Interfaces here in Washington—the technicians at Government Work will know how to proceed on that. I want liaison men calling at the houses of the Lines, to reserve every space available in
their
Interfaces for infants of our choice—infants chosen by me personally, from the families of our top personnel. I don't want even one more such space to go to an academic with ambitions; they are
all
to go to our people. In fact, Crab, I don't want that put off, I want it done immediately. I want liaison teams on their way by noon today. If this has been gossip around the Multiversity for the past two years, even just within a small circle of Dow's friends, there are undoubtedly other academics who've just been waiting to be sure
his child wouldn't die or go mad or turn out not to be able to acquire the language. Now that they know there's no risk, they'll feel the same way we do—they'll want the goodies for themselves. We can't have that.”

“Heykus . . .” Crab spoke hesitantly, a puzzled scowl on his face. “Wait a minute.”

“What's the problem?”

“Well, isn't that up to the Lingoes? The Interfaces belong to them—it seems to me that who they share them with is not something we can decide.”

“They'll cooperate,” Heykus said grimly. “You leave that part of it to me.”

“And how do you propose to—”

Heykus was suddenly weary, worn out with the sudden crisis and the multiple layers of deceptions, worn out with having to be polite to this man; at such times he understood very well how the good old-fashioned dictator must have enjoyed the privilege of just snapping his fingers and ordering the guards to take whoever it was away to the dungeons and throw away the keys.

“Lowbarr,” he said, trying not to let the adrenalin rebound show, “it doesn't really matter whether I'm going to be able to convince them or not. The government still has to proceed
as if
we would be able to do so. Can't you see that?” He didn't wait for the answer; it wasn't relevant. “How fast can you get this organized?”

Crab Lowbarr had begun making notes as soon as he realized that what he was hearing was direct orders and not simply conversation; he looked up from his wrist computer and asked, “With full authority from you, Heykus?”

“Whatever you need. Funds, people, anything.”

“Give me two hours—maybe a little less. I'll get it going.”

“Good man.”

“Is that all?”

“No. It's not. Next, I need a congressman with top security clearance over here. We're going to need a modification of the child labor laws to let children outside the Lines work in the interpreting booths. That's got to be worded extremely carefully; I want somebody good, and somebody effective. Somebody who'll know how to tuck it away in an amendment to a big appropriation bill where nobody will notice it until we
want
it noticed.”

“Okay, Heykus. But that's it.”

“I beg your pardon.”

Crab spread his hands wide and shook them at his superior,
palms up and supplicating. “Look, there aren't many of us around with the necessary clearances for all this, and we're spread damn thin already. There are things we do that can't just be dumped in the ON HOLD file. If you really want teams headed for the Lines in the next two hours, you've given me all I can handle. Let me get on
this
stuff, and then I'll come back this afternoon for the additions to your list.”

Heykus nodded; it was annoying, but the man was correct, and it shouldn't have been necessary for him to remind anybody.

“You're right,” he said. “You go ahead and get matters underway. I need time to sit down and consider carefully each and every aspect of this development; I need time to set up appropriate strategies. I shouldn't be going off half-cocked like this. Don't come back later today, Crab; get the teams going, send me the congressman, and come back
tomorrow
afternoon. If anything comes up in the meantime that's a genuine emergency, I'll send for you.”

“All right.” Lowbarr stood up and stretched, groaning aloud. “Too much wine,” he said. “This is no time for me to be this relaxed.” He reached into his pocket, brought out a strip of Null-Alk capsules, and took two, while Heykus glared at this clear evidence of both dissipation and weakness. “How do you know, Heykus,” Crab chuckled, noting the expression on his face, “that I don't carry these for the benefit of other people who lack my sterling character?”

Heykus didn't stoop to answer that. He turned down the volume on the glare slightly, and nodded at Lowbarr as he snapped a mock salute and headed out through the desk exit and toward the office door.

“Crab?” he called after him. “Give me a call in about an hour and let me know how things are going!”

“Right!” the answer came back, and then the door hissed, irising open and then shut. Heykus wanted a good long look at the man on comscreen, to get a chance to study him more closely than was polite when face to face; even more, he wanted a chance to see the fiz-display data. He needed to know if Crab Lowbarr was under any stresses that the effects of the wine had canceled or dulled while he was here; he needed to know if any unusual pattern was going to show up when Heykus asked him a few questions about
exactly
when he had first learned that there was a baby not of the Lines in the Chornyak Interface. And of course, while he was waiting for Lowbarr's call, he would get the man's file from the computer and find out what sort of abrupt exit from this world would be most appropriate and believable, if
it turned out to be necessary. It was a duty he found repugnant; it was also a duty he would not have even considered laying on the shoulders of anyone else.

Finally, the moment came when he had done everything that he
could
do right then. He had placed all the necessary calls and was waiting for the replies to come in. He had reviewed all the relevant files, and abstracted the data that had to be remembered. He had made careful notes of the agenda for this day, and, so far as it was possible with the information that he had available, for the next few days as well. He had gone down on his knees and let his God know how troubled he was, and how badly divine help was needed. And now there was nothing he could do except wait for the various wheels to begin turning, for the excellent people who worked for him to do their jobs. There was nothing more that he, personally, could do for a little while, and it was therefore now possible for him to let himself really
feel
what was happening.

The angel had not mentioned this development to him in any specific terms; no doubt it fit tidily into the several broad pronouncements made about anticipating trials and tribulations. It happened from time to time, something major that he had not been told to prepare against, and it always made him feel as if he were flying in heavy traffic with all his instruments broken. He recognized the sensations of his body as panic, and knew that it would be better to distract himself from it.
Review the situation, Heykus
, he told himself sternly.
Get it straight in your head, so that you don't make the stupid mistakes of a frightened man. Lay it out, and take a good long thorough look at it, while you are fortunate enough to have this bit of empty time.

First point:
the members of the Interstellar Consortiums are fully in agreement with us that Terrans should not be informed of the degree of superiority they appear to have over us
. They
are not going to do anything that will make matters worse, and will do everything they can to make them better. Which means we can rely on them to refuse absolutely all our demands for an increased quota of AIRYs to staff the new government-built Interfaces.

Second point:
the linguists of the Lines hate us, and with very good reason; furthermore, their livelihood depends on the monopoly of the Alien language interpreting business. Which means that we can rely on
them
to refuse absolutely all demands that they turn over some of their AIRYs to D.A.T. to
staff our new Interfaces. And we can count on them to take a good long time about it, which will be helpful
.

Third point:
the number of lay infants that will acquire native fluency in Alien languages by sharing the Interfaces of the Lines will be very small. Because the linguists—for the same reasons that will guarantee their refusal to give up any of the AIRYs—will refuse to let us put more than one or two infants in each Interface. No matter how much I protest, no matter how much I insist that they show a decent patriotism, no matter what I threaten them with. They'll “discover” reasons why having more than one or two would ruin the whole process, or they'll just flatly refuse to explain. Which means that I am only going to have to put round-the-clock surveillance, complete with electronic ears, on a few dozen children who might somehow know more than they ought to know and spill beans they didn't even realize they were carrying. Nothing that is beyond the resources of this department, or the security groups, is going to be needed.

Fourth point:
leaking the change in the child labor laws to the media is going to be easy . . . they'll grab it, and they'll take off with it. And we can count on the do-goodys to raise bloody hell long enough and loud enough to force Congress—reluctantly, bowing to the public will—to limit the number of hours the kids outside the Lines are allowed to spend in the interpreting booths. With any luck at all, and enough arrogant kicking and screaming from this department, we'll get a ten-hour-a-week absolute limit.

Fifth point:
the normal retarding effect of federal regulations will make all of this take three times as long as it ought to take, and we can always get new regulations laid on if the ones we have now aren't molasses enough.

And there was the extra point, the super-point, the one that was the clincher.
Extra point:
the Lord God Almighty and all the Heavenly Hosts are on
our
side. Which means that we have an advantage. Which means that the Soviets will have a much worse time with this than we are going to have. Which means that we will manage, somehow. We will keep the lid on this, just as we always have, and there is no reason to panic.

His heartbeat was back to normal again; the sinking feeling in his stomach was gone; there was no longer a fine beading of sweat on his palms and on his upper lip.
Good.

Heykus ordered strong coffee sent in, murmured a prayer of thanks that he was himself again, such as he was, and sat back to wait for the comset call from Crab Lowbarr that ought to be coming in any minute now.

CHAPTER 12

“It is of course utter nonsense to claim that any connection exists between language change and social change, except in the most superficial sense of the word. The fate of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (also known, quaintly, as the ‘linguistic relativity hypothesis') is a case in point; it now stands entirely discredited. Its primary advocates were not men, but women, who repeatedly demonstrated the depths of their ignorance even as they made pathetic attempts to teach the concept and to write about it.

“Poor things. . . . They could not grasp the difference between the strong version of the hypothesis—that language controls perception—and the more reasonable (though equally invalid) weak version, which proposed only that language
structures
perception. They persisted in ignoring the fact that neither Sapir nor Whorf had formulated the hypothesis which bore their names; they never really understood that neither of those great scholars would have supported such foolishness for even a moment. They were incapable of comprehending the massive evidence against both versions of the hypothesis, even when it was meticulously and patiently presented by the most distinguished scholars. They rushed to report, and to elaborate upon, the supporting pronouncements of a few naive males—who, I must pause to add, did not have female gender as an excuse for their disgraceful stupidity—and seemed entirely blind to the manner in which even those men added elaborate disclaimers to their work and in later years withdrew it in its entirety.