Golden Age of Science Fiction Vol X

by Various

  "Can she be milked?" Mrs. Stewart wailed after them.

  "What a gadawful situation," Zack muttered, grabbing a pitchfork and heading for the barn.

  The scientists seated themselves around the big dining-room table and faced Professor Sims.

  "Gentlemen, it's the most amazing thing that ever happened. That cow is glowing out there like a miniature atomic pile, and under the circumstances as we know them, should be deader than a door nail, but there she stands, shining like the morning sun, chewing her cud and just mooing away as if nothing happened."

  "What is your theory, Professor?" one of the assistants asked.

  "I have one, but it's utterly fantastic," Sims answered.

  "So is that cow out there. Let's hear it!"

  "Do you remember how much more frequent saucer sightings were reported in this area alone?" Sims asked. All the assistants nodded their heads.

  "Well," Sims went on, "I am of the opinion that a saucer actually landed out there and they came across the cow by accident. They either shot her with some sort of radium ray gun, or some luminous substance unknown to us."

  "Why didn't Junius die?" one of the assistants asked.

  Sims shook his head. "They wished to examine her. You see, gentlemen, whatever it was, it served a threefold purpose. It made her luminous, immobile and--" Sims placed both hands on the table and leaned forward for emphasis, "transparent."

  There was a gasp and exclamations.

  "Transparent? How?--"

  "I was within a foot of the cow, felt her hide, and through the glasses I could see the skeletal frame, the chest cavity, the heart beating within, the entire intestinal tract, much, much more clearly than could be seen by the best X-ray."

  As if on command, the assistants all rose simultaneously.

  "Sit down, gentlemen, the cow isn't going anywhere. We shall have to face this situation with sound scientific reasoning. There will be a closed van here soon to pick up Junius and haul her to the laboratory where we can examine her more thoroughly. Now my belief is that the saucer took off in haste, such great haste that they forgot to extinguish poor Junius. I believe they will be back looking for her, therefore we shall have to return her tonight and conceal ourselves around the area and watch."

  "Splendid idea, Professor Sims!" one of the assistants exclaimed.

  Yelling voices in the farmyard caught their attention. They saw Sgt. Johnson through the dining-room window, coming across the yard, yelling and pointing to the sky. Sims rushed from the house, met Johnson, grasped him by the shoulders, shaking him.

  "What happened, man, what happened?" Sims asked.

  "Black light, black light!" Johnson shouted, pointing skyward. Sims looked up. Nothing but the serene blue of the summer sky and an occasional bird caught his eye.

  Sims shook him again, more roughly.

  "Speak, man, what happened?"

  "Black light flashed down on the cow! Blackest light you ever saw!"

  The group gathered around him in the yard, trying to make sense out of what he said. So engrossed were they with his babblings, that none but Mrs. Stewart was aware of the fact that Junius had entered the farmyard and was eyeing them curiously.

  "Junius!" she exclaimed.

  "Moooo!"

  The crowd looked up to see the ordinary, unlit Junius standing calmly by the gate.

  "Hurry and get the milk pail, Zack, Junius is all right now!" Mrs. Stewart yelled happily to her husband, as Professor Sims and his assistants led the hysterical trooper into the house.

  High over the horizon, a faint, silvery disc was disappearing at fantastic speed into outer space.

  * * *

  Contents

  ROUGH TRANSLATION

  By Jean M. Janis

  Don't be ashamed if you can't blikkel any more. It's because you couldn't help framishing.

  "Shurgub," said the tape recorder. "Just like I told you before, Dr. Blair, it's krandoor, so don't expect to vrillipax, because they just won't stand for any. They'd sooner framish."

  "Framish?" Jonathan heard his own voice played back by the recorder, tinny and slightly nasal. "What is that, Mr. Easton?"

  "You know. Like when you guttip. Carooms get awfully bevvergrit. Why, I saw one actually--"

  "Let's go back a little, shall we?" Jonathan suggested. "What does shurgub mean?"

  There was a pause while the machine hummed and the recorder tape whirred. Jonathan remembered the look on Easton's face when he had asked him that. Easton had pulled away slightly, mouth open, eyes hurt.

  "Why--why, I told you!" he had shouted. "Weeks ago! What's the matter? Don't you blikkel English?"

  Jonathan Blair reached out and snapped the switch on the machine. Putting his head in his hands, he stared down at the top of his desk.

  You learned Navajo in six months, he reminded himself fiercely.

  You are a highly skilled linguist. What's the matter? Don't you blikkel English?

  * * * * *

  He groaned and started searching through his briefcase for the reports from Psych. Easton must be insane. He must! Ramirez says it's no language. Stoughton says it's no language. And I, Jonathan thought savagely, say it's no language.

  But--

  Margery tiptoed into the study with a tray.

  "But Psych," he continued aloud to her, "Psych says it must be a language because, they say, Easton is not insane!"

  "Oh, dear," sighed Margery, blinking her pale blue eyes. "That again?" She set his coffee on the desk in front of him. "Poor Jonathan. Why doesn't the Institute give up?"

  "Because they can't." He reached for the cup and sat glaring at the steaming coffee.

  "Well," said his wife, settling into the leather chair beside him, "I certainly would. My goodness, it's been over a month now since he came back, and you haven't learned a thing from him!"

  "Oh, we've learned some. And this morning, for the first time, Easton himself began to seem puzzled by a few of the things he was saying. He's beginning to use terms we can understand. He's coming around. And if I could only find some clue--some sort of--"

  Margery snorted. "It's just plain foolish! I knew the Institute was asking for trouble when they sent the Rhinestead off. How do they know Easton ever got to Mars, anyway? Maybe he did away with those other men, cruised around, and then came back to Earth with this made-up story just so he could seem to be a hero and--"

  "That's nonsense!"

  "Why?" she demanded stubbornly. "Why is it?"

  "Because the Rhinestead was tracked, for one thing, on both flights, to and from Mars. Moonbase has an indisputable record of it. And besides, the instruments on the ship itself show--" He found the report he had been searching for. "Oh, never mind."

  "All right," she said defiantly. "Maybe he did get to Mars. Maybe he did away with the crew after he got there. He knew the ship was built so that one man could handle it in an emergency. Maybe he--"

  "Look," said Jonathan patiently. "He didn't do anything of the sort. Easton has been checked so thoroughly that it's impossible to assume anything except, (a) he is sane, (b) he reached Mars and made contact with the Martians, (c) this linguistic barrier is a result of that contact."

  * * * * *

  Margery shook her head, sucking in her breath. "When I think of all those fine young men," she murmured. "Heaven only knows what happened to them!"

  "You," Jonathan accused, "have been reading that columnist--what's-his-name? The one that's been writing such claptrap ever since Easton brought the Rhinestead back alone."

  "Cuddlehorn," said his wife. "Roger Cuddlehorn, and it's not claptrap."

  "The other members of the crew are all alive, all--"

  "I suppose Easton told you that?" she interrupted.

  "Yes, he did."

  "Using double-talk, of course," said his wife triumphantly. At the look on Jonathan's face, she stood up in guilty haste. "All right, I'll go!" She blew him a kiss from the door. "Richie and I are having lunch at one. Okay? Or would you rat
her have a tray in here?"

  "Tray," he said, turning back to his desk and his coffee. "No, on second thought, call me when lunch is ready. I'll need a break."

  He was barely conscious of the closing of the door as Margery left the room. Naturally he didn't take her remarks seriously, but--

  He opened the folder of pictures and studied them again, along with the interpretations by Psych, Stoughton, Ramirez and himself.

  Easton had drawn the little stick figures on the first day of his return. The interpretations all checked--and they had been done independently, too. There it is, thought Jonathan. Easton lands the Rhinestead. He and the others meet the Martians. They are impressed by the Martians. The others stay on Mars. Easton returns to Earth, bearing a message.

  Question: What is the message?

  Teeth set, Jonathan put away the pictures and went back to the tape on the recorder. "Yes," said his own voice, in answer to Easton's outburst. "I do--er--blikkel English. But tell me, Mr. Easton, do you understand me?"

  "Under-stand?" The man seemed to have difficulty forming the word. "You mean--" Pause. "Dr. Blair, I murv you. Is that it?"

  "Murv," repeated Jonathan. "All right, you murv me. Do you murv this? I do not always murv what you say."

  A laugh. "Of course not. How could you?" Suppressed groan. "Carooms," Easton had murmured, almost inaudibly. "Just when I almost murv, the kwakut goes freeble."

  Jonathan flipped the switch on the machine. "Murv" he wrote on his pad of paper. He added "Blikkel," "Carooms" and "Freeble." He stared at the list. He should understand, he thought. At times it seemed as if he did and then, in the next instant, he was lost again, and Easton was angry, and they had to start all over again.

  * * * * *

  Sighing, he took out more papers, notes from previous sessions, both with himself and with other linguists. The difficulty of reaching Easton was unlike anything he had ever before tackled. The six months of Navajo had been rough going, but he had done it, and done it well enough to earn the praise of Old Comas, his informant. Surely, he thought, after mastering a language like that, one in which the student must not only learn to imitate difficult sounds, but also learn a whole new pattern of thought--

  Pattern of thought. Jonathan sat very still, as though movement would send the fleeting clue back into the corner from which his mind had glimpsed it.

  A whole new frame of reference. Suppose, he toyed with the thought, suppose the Martian language, whatever it was, was structured along the lines of Navajo, involving clearly defined categories which did not exist in English.

  "Murv," he said aloud. "I murv a lesson, but I blikkel a language."

  Eagerly, Jonathan reached again for the switch. Categories clearly defined, yes! But the categories of the Martian language were not those of the concrete or the particular, like the Navajo. They were of the abstract. Where one word "understand" would do in English, the Martian used two--

  Good Lord, he realized, they might use hundreds! They might--

  Jonathan turned on the machine, sat back and made notes, letting the recorder run uninterrupted. He made his notes, this time, on the feelings he received from the words Easton used. When the first tape was done, he put on the second.

  Margery tapped at the door just as the third tape was ending. "In a minute," he called, scribbling furiously. He turned off the machine, put out his cigarette and went to lunch, feeling better than he had in weeks.

  Richie was at the kitchen sink, washing his hands.

  "And next time," Margery was saying, "you wash up before you sit down."

  Richie blinked and watched Jonathan seat himself. "Daddy didn't wash his hands," he said.

  Margery fixed the six-year-old with a stern eye. "Richard, don't be rude."

  "Well, he didn't." Richie sat down and reached for his glass of milk.

  "Daddy probably washed before he came in," said Margery. She took the cover off a tureen, ladled soup into bowls and passed sandwiches, pretending not to see the ink-stained hand Jonathan was hiding in his lap.

  Jonathan, elated by the promise of success, ate three or four sandwiches, had two bowls of soup and finally sat back while Margery went to get coffee.

  Richie slid part way off his chair, remembered, and slid back on again. "Kin I go?" he asked.

  "Please may I be excused," corrected his father.

  * * * * *

  Richie repeated, received a nod and ran out of the dinette and through the kitchen, grabbing a handful of cookies on the way. The screen door banged behind him as he raced into the backyard.

  "Richie!" Margery started after him, eyes ablaze. Then she stopped and came back to the table with the coffee. "That boy! How long does it take before they get to be civilized?" Jonathan laughed. "Oh, sure," she went on, sitting down opposite him. "It's funny to you. But if you were here all day long--" She stirred sugar into her cup. "We should have sent him to camp, even if it would have wrecked the budget!"

  "Oh? Is it that bad?"

  Margery shuddered. "Sometimes he's a perfect angel, and then--It's unbelievable, the things that child can think of! Sometimes I'm convinced children are another species altogether! Why, only this morning--"

  "Well," Jonathan broke in, "next summer he goes to camp." He stood up and stretched.

  Margery said wistfully, "I suppose you want to get back to work."

  "Ummmm." Jonathan leaned over and kissed her briefly. "I've got a new line of attack," he said, picking up his coffee. He patted his wife's shoulder. "If things work out well, we might get away on that vacation sooner than we thought."

  "Really?" she asked, brightening.

  "Really." He left the table and went back to his den.

  Putting the next tape on the machine, he settled down to his job. Time passed and finally there were no more tapes to listen to.

  He stacked his notes and began making lists, checking through the sheets of paper for repetitions of words Easton had used, listing the various connotations which had occurred to Jonathan while he had listened to the tapes.

  As he worked, he was struck by the similarity of the words he was recording to the occasional bits of double-talk he had heard used by comedians in theaters and on the air, and he allowed his mind to wander a bit, exploring the possibilities.

  Was Martian actually such a close relative to English? Or had the Martians learned English from Easton, and had Easton then formed a sort of pidgin-English-Martian of his own?

  Jonathan found it difficult to believe in the coincidence of the two languages being alike, unless--

  He laughed. Unless, of course, Earthmen were descended from Martians, or vice versa. Oh, well, not my problem, he thought jauntily.

  * * * * *

  He stared at the list before him and then he started to swear, softly at first, then louder. But no matter how loudly he swore, the list remained undeniably and obstinately the same:

  Freeble--Displeasure (Tape 3)

  Freeble--Elation (Tape 4)

  Freeble--Grief (Tape 5)

  "How," he asked the empty room, "can a word mean grief and elation at the same time?"

  Jonathan sat for a few moments in silence, thinking back to the start of the sessions with Easton. Ramirez and Stoughton had both agreed with him that Easton's speech was phonemically identical to English. Jonathan's trained ear remembered the pronunciation of "Freeble" in the three different connotations and he forced himself to admit it was the same on all three tapes in question.

  Stuck again, he thought gloomily.

  Good-by, vacation!

  He lit a cigarette and stared at the ceiling. It was like saying the word "die" meant something happy and something sad at one and the same, like saying--

  Jonathan pursed his lips. Yes, it could be. If someone were in terrible pain, death, while a thing of sorrow, could also mean release from suffering and so become a thing of joy. Or it could mean sorrow to one person and relief to another. In that case, what he was dealing with here was not only--


  The crash of the ball, as it sailed through the window behind his desk, lifted Jonathan right from his chair. Furious, his elusive clue shattered as surely as the pane of glass, he strode to the window.

  "Richie!"

  His son, almost hidden behind the lilac bush, did not answer.

  "I see you!" Jonathan bellowed. "Come here!"

  The bush stirred slightly and Richie peeped through the leaves. "Did you call me, Daddy?" he asked politely.

  Jonathan clamped his lips shut and pointed to the den. Richie tried a smile as he sidled around the bush, around his father, and into the house.

  "My," he marveled, looking at the broken glass on the floor inside. "My goodness!" He sat down in the leather chair to which Jonathan motioned.

  "Richie," said his father, when he could trust his voice again, "how did it happen?"

  His son's thin legs, brown and wiry, stuck out straight from the depths of the chair. There was a long scratch on one calf and numerous black-and-blue spots around both knees.

  "I dunno," said Richie. He blinked his eyes, deeper blue than Margery's, and reached up one hand to push away the mass of blond hair tumbling over his forehead. He was obviously trying hard to pretend he wasn't in the room at all.

  * * * * *

  Jonathan said, "Now, son, that is not a good answer. What were you doing when the ball went through the window?"

  "Watching," said Richie truthfully.

  "How did it go through the window?"

  "Real fast."

  Jonathan found his teeth were clamped. No wonder he couldn't decode Easton's speech--he couldn't even talk with his own son!

  "I mean," he explained, his patience wavering, "you threw the ball so that it broke the window, didn't you?"

  "I didn't mean it to," said Richie.

  "All right. That's what I wanted to know." He started on a lecture about respect for other people's property, while Richie sat and looked blankly respectful. "And so," he heard himself conclude, "I hope we'll be more careful in the future."