“In your day in the field, you were one of the best lingsters the Guild ever produced. Your skills are as sharp as ever. I need them.”
“I wonder if I need this assault on my ethics.”
Impatient with her hesitation, he said, “I can do this, Essa. I know I can!”
“Hubris, old friend,” she said somberly. “Occupational hazard, I suppose.”
But she gave up arguing and went inside.
The experiment he'd designed wasn't a new idea; in fact, early theoretical xenolinguists such as Elgin and Watson had discussed it centuries before. Raise a human child with an alien, and she'll have the other's language in her head from birth, as well as her native tongue. A chance to interface between languages without the programs, the drugs, the implants that lingsters normally used to forge understanding out of chaos. The theory had been well thought out long ago. But the opportunity and the resolve had never presented themselves until now.
He had the chance to save human lives from a violent enemy, and expand the boundaries of knowledge at the same time. It was hard to say which was the more compelling.
“Saving lives by sacrificing two innocent children, do you mean?” Orla Eiluned interrupted the old man's story.
He turned stiffly from the window where he'd been staring at the ponds. Sunlight played over the water now, and the fishing birds that had not yet flown south arrived to work their craft on unsuspecting carp. Perhaps, he thought with sudden insight, he devoted his last years to these fish precisely because they had no voices.
There was no point in explaining; she knew it as well as he: human children were born with a template for language, any language. The young of Homo sapiens learned second, third, even fourth languages rapidly, easily, while their parents labored over the grammar of a second. But there was more, something seen many times in human history. Nations were thrown together by conquest, or met in shared servitude, their languages mutually unintelligible. Pidgins developed: odd, ungrammatical mixes, bits from here or there to get the adults through the daily task of living and working together.
The next step had to be taken by the second generation, the children who invented the creole, the beginnings of a genuinely new language in the interface between the two their parents spoke. And they did it easily, compulsively, brilliantly. The mystery of how language had come into being was solved: Children were its inventors. Children had spoken those first words in the caves and around the cooking fires.
“You must return with me at once to the Mother House,” Orla Eiluned said.
“I don't travel anymore.”
“Nevertheless, I insist. There's much at stake.” She stood, staring moodily out the window at the gleaming ponds over which a hazy net of insects hung and an occasional turquoise kingfisher flashed through shadow. “Whatever inspired you to retire to this damp island?”
“Solitude and ghosts,” the old man said. “This estuary has seen the blood of a great nation's birth and passing away. It comforts me to remember how insubstantial human dreams are in the sweep of time.”
“And sometimes, how unprincipled?” she suggested.
He shook his head. “Perhaps we ought never allow scientists to play with their toys unsupervised.”
The Head frowned as if she wished to argue the point, then thought better of it. “Well—Go on!”
Essa had given the old stone house a name since he was last here, and the deaf old man who cooked and cleaned for them had carved it and hung it over the door: Manhattan.
Heron stopped at the foot of the porch steps and read it. Melting snow dripped off the house's sloping roof, and the wind soughed gently in the pine trees behind him. Beyond, in the clearing, the 'car that was his as Head of the Mother House—a luxury not granted to other people these troubled days—lifted off and went to shelter. Essa watched him, sharp-faced.
“An odd choice,” he suggested. “I would have chosen something to do with mountains. Or trees, perhaps.”
“You don't recognize the reference?”
He frowned. “I seem to remember something about buying an island— No? That isn't right?”
Essa snorted. “You read the wrong history, my friend!”
He smiled at her as they went inside. “How're they doing?”
“See for yourself.”
For three years he'd divided his time between his duties at the Mother House and the children's hide-away, but his heart grew ever more firmly rooted in the stone house. In Geneva the talk was of colonies lost and cities destroyed, the war coming nearer and nearer to Earth itself. The sense of some horror creeping closer day by day, some catastrophe waiting to engulf them all when they were least expecting it, sapped his energy. He found himself glancing anxiously over his shoulder at shadows, jumping at noises, suspicious of strangers until his nerves frayed and he couldn't work. He worried whether there'd even be time to complete the language project, let alone reap any benefits from it. But in this forest he could be hopeful, dreaming of the future as if he were as young as his small subjects in a world at peace.
He never spoke of the children or the stone house when he was in Geneva, allowing the Guild Procurators to believe that when he was away he was busy writing his memoirs. When the day came that the project was revealed, he expected they would be displeased at his secrecy, but by then the results would justify his actions.
Essa led him to the well-equipped playroom where the toddlers, almost three years old now, spent most of their day alone in each other's company. He stared through the one-way glass, watching them; they were absorbed with each other, a head of golden curls bending close to one of dark silver. The hidden mikes picked up a steady stream of infant babbling; at the same time the computer recorded and analyzed the proto-speech for replay and reinforcement later.
Ideally, he would have isolated the children from all other human contact, but Essa hadn't allowed that. “The human child will lose her humanity,” she'd argued. “Our culture is transmitted, not inherited. We teach our young to grow up human!” In any case, there was a flaw in a language produced in total absence of models; even if it should work, the basic problem of interfacing afterwards with existing tongues would still remain.
He listened to the children's voices coming from the speakers, the rising and falling music of baby speech, trying with his practiced ear to catch the tonal variations, the patterns of stress and juncture that should be emerging by now, hinting at the assignment of meaning. They seemed content at their play, and they were obviously healthy—Essa saw to that. If anything, their physical progress seemed accelerated by isolation, not hindered.
He wondered idly if this was how parents felt, watching their offspring at play, a combination of pride and awe and helplessness. The Venatixi child was beautiful, but it seemed to him that little Keri was his equal. She turned now and smiled, perhaps at something T'biak said. But he felt as if she sensed his presence behind the glass wall, and instinctively he smiled back, though she couldn't possibly see him. He knew a sudden, peculiar ache in his heart, and a sadness for which he knew no cause touched him briefly.
He shook the sensations away and returned his thoughts to the project. The children were not cut off from adult contact altogether, only the language exchanges were limited. His aim was to produce speakers able to move easily back and forth from their native tongues to the creole he expected them to invent in the buffer zone between them. If his theory was correct, that new language would prove to be as rich and full of subtlety as either of the parent tongues, and it would provide the key to communication between humans and the Venatixi that was so desperately needed.
As the project had begun, he'd taken into his confidence two talented members of his faculty at the Mother House, an older man and a young woman, and they'd come to the stone house with him. When the children were fed or bathed, they were taken separately by their adult guardians and spoken to in the languages of their birth. At least, he had to assume that was happening with T'biak, since communicati
on with the Venatixi attendant remained non-existent.
In front of him, as he stared through the one-way glass, he saw the daily working out of a miracle he'd dared to dream. Why, then, didn't he feel more cheerful? Where did this sudden, oppressive sense of loneliness come from today?
“Shall we review the observation notes first, or do you want to listen to the language samples the AI has processed so far?” Essa asked.
He'd almost forgotten her presence, and was glad to turn his attention to the choice. On each of his visits he reviewed the progress, made recommendations, but generally left day to day activities in Essa's capable hands, a task she handled well.
“The samples, of course!” He strode ahead of her to the small room at the back of the house which he used as his study. Essa fed cubes into the computer for him. The AI had analysed the morphemes it identified in their speech, and assigned probable meaning to the combinations. He settled himself in a comfortable chair behind the desk to listen, familiarizing himself with the sounds at the same time as he studied the tentative Inglis spellings the computer had used for them. He was surprised at how few words the AI confidently identified; somehow he'd expected more by now.
Of course, so much of the verbalizing Keri and T'biak were doing remained baby babble; he knew what could be expected of toddlers, and these two were hardly different. A project like this demanded patience and time. He worked until his stomach complained that it was suppertime.
As he was about to leave the study, the young woman staff member came to find him.
“What is it, Birgit?”
“The Venatixi's missing, Magister,” she said. “We need him to take T'biak out of the playroom now. The children're hungry and need to be fed.”
“Perhaps Merono knows where he is?” The older lingster seemed to have befriended the alien, an action Heron approved but couldn't share.
“I can't find Merono either.”
“Have you checked the outbuildings?” Essa asked. The alien never socialized with the other staff when his duties were done, and lived by himself outside the house.
“Empty too. But he's never been missing before! He always takes good care of T'biak.”
“Well, let's think this through. The weather's been mild today. Perhaps he's gone for a walk?”
“Perhaps he's gone home to Venatix!” Essa said.
He glanced at her and saw she was only half joking. No one could be really sure if the Venatixi approved of what they were attempting to do here, or even if he understood. He remembered his first suspicions of the man, and Essa's unease over the manner in which T'biak had been found for the project. Perhaps she was right and the alien had tired of his role as a hostage of sorts, and had escaped? But why leave a child of his own race in enemy hands? It wouldn't make sense. At least, he amended, it wouldn't if one were human. And it would be disastrous for the project; they needed the adult Venatixi to teach the boy his own language, or the whole attempt would fail.
He ordered a search of the area around the house and the nearby forest. The days were slowly lengthening as spring approached, but darkness still fell early so far north, and there was very little daylight left. In a drift of snow turning to slush, they found the blood-soaked body of Merono who might one day have succeeded Heron as Head of the Mother House. He looked as if wolves had got him. But no wolf tears off a man's hands.
“Why was he killed?” Birgit wailed. “Merono was never anything but kind to the Venatixi. He was more like a father than a colleague to us all.”
They had to wait for morning to hunt for tracks. No new snow fell overnight, yet they never found any tracks; the Venatixi had disappeared without a trace. All they learned was that the alien had taken his small supply of belongings with him. He wasn't coming back. Perhaps he'd taken his victim's hands with him too, for they were never found either.
Heron returned to the house in a somber mood. He'd lost a gentle, valuable member of his team, victim of a grisly crime, and an indispensable if unlikable alien. He wasn't at all certain what to do next.
Essa waited for him to come in, the sleepy alien boy cradled in her arms. “Now what?” she demanded, voicing his own question.
He shook his head. At that moment he felt overwhelmed with horror at the brutal murder. But he knew an even greater frustration at being blocked so near his goal; such an opportunity would never arise twice in a man's lifetime. Yet there was no way he could succeed without the Venatixi. Everything hung on the children growing up bilingual.
While he hesitated, little Keri came and clasped him about the leg. One of the pups that had attached itself to her whined softly, and she let go of Heron to pick it up. Watching the child cradling the pup, he had a bleak vision of his future: abandoning the project, returning to his sterile, bachelor rooms at the Mother House, knowing he'd never see Keri again.
The thought caught him by surprise; his project lay in ruins and he mourned the loss of contact with a child? That shouldn't have mattered at all. He was ashamed of his sentimental weakness.
“We can't abandon this precious boy,” Essa said, absently ruffling the child's silver hair. “But what will we do with him?” Then he saw how to make the best of this, how to salvage something from his ambitious plan.
“We'll keep them both here. We'll work with T'biak—teach him Inglis—”
“No, Heron.” Essa shook her head. “Let the children go. It's over.”
“I don't accept that. We have too much at stake here!”
“How would teaching T'biak Inglis bring an end to the war? The problem of communicating with his people will still remain.”
“Forget that, Essa. Think instead of the new possibilities!” His excitement grew as the new plan unfolded before him. “We have a chance to observe how an alien brain processes human language! A chance to see how much truly is due to biogrammar and whether that biogrammar itself varies from race to race.”
She didn't seem to be listening. “Poor little orphan!”
“We've had experience with other races learning Inglis, of course.” He was thinking aloud now, exploring the dimensions of his idea. “But how much do we really know about how they acquire language in the first place? We accept the concept of Universal Grammar because it's proved serviceable, but we don't really know how it works! Perhaps it's only a useful illusion. If we're ever going to open up the Guild to lingsters from other races, we'll have to know.”
Essa wasn't impressed by his argument. “How could we teach him his own heritage? We know so little about the Venatixi!”
“Teach him whatever you'd teach Keri,” he said impatiently. “It's that or perish for him. Don't you see?” His face felt flushed and a nervous energy seemed to have taken hold of his hands, which moved in an eager ballet, an emotional sign language that for once was not under his conscious control.
“It's Keri, isn't it?” she said thoughtfully. “Are you quite certain that your motive isn't to keep her here at all cost?”
“Essa! We have a chance to train our first alien-born lingster. Think how the Guild will benefit!”
“And how will we do this—with two less staff? Birgit and I and that senile old cook—I don't owe this much work to the Guild!”
“I'll find you local help with the chores. It won't be as sensational a situation as before—it won't cause as much gossip. And I'll come more often myself,” he promised. It seemed very necessary that Essa be persuaded to continue; he valued her support and her intelligence.
She hugged the alien boy to her breast, looking doubtful. “I don't know. Heron—”
“Essa, old friend. Do it for me.”
Unconvinced and grumbling, Essa carried T'biak off to bed. Keri trotted behind them, the pup at her heels.
He watched them go. At least she hadn't refused his request. It irritated him that Essa should think he proposed this new direction because he was so concerned with Keri. He was taken with her, yes—she was a pretty child. But obviously his first duty was to salvage something f
rom the wreckage of the experiment. Essa herself fussed over the boy like an anxious mother bird; he wasn't convinced the child appreciated so much attention. The one thing he'd come to be certain about the Venatixi was that they didn't experience feelings the same way humans did.
Alone, he sat staring out the window at the mountains through a curtain of melted snow dripping off the roof, and planned the training of an alien lingster to serve the Guild.
“So you blame the Guild for your continuing this unethical experiment?” Orla Eiluned had been watching him intently as he spoke, as if ready to pounce on the first lie he dared to utter. “Of course, you would need to find another scapegoat once the war ended!”
The war had ended as suddenly and as inexplicably as it had begun; but it was an uneasy peace based on incomprehension and there was little room for joy in it. Humans and Venatixi remained as far apart as ever.
Outside his window, a late dragonfly hovered, admiring its own reflection in the glass. He watched until it darted suddenly away in a whir of opal brightness over the fish ponds beyond. There would be no more dragonflies this year.
“No,” he said when the iridescent insect was out of sight. “I don't blame the Guild. But there was an urge in me to expand its work, and a pride in doing so. As there must be in every good Head.”
She thought about that for a moment. “An ‘occupational hazard,’ I believe your Essa called it?”
For the first time, she smiled thinly at him.
He had hardly arrived back in Geneva when the announcement came of the truce with the Venatixi; for a moment he wondered if T'biak's attendant could have known the news before they did, but that still didn't explain abandoning the child. The ambassador's name featured prominently in the news. It occurred to Heron to wonder why, if the ambassador was capable of arranging a truce now, he'd ever come to Heron about the project in the first place. But as the diplomat never contacted Heron to officially end it, Heron felt justified that he hadn't.
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