"Take a look at your hands, Pete." Josh shot an angry look at Captain Tamoshoe as he spoke.
"What about my hands?" But as I looked down and saw what looked like varicose veins in my palms I closed the marks inside my fists.
"The skiff is waiting, Pete."
"Let it wait." And as Josh started toward me I raised the commkit over my head. "Don't try it, Josh—I will use this."
It wasn't much of a weapon, but it made Josh stop. "You stupid kid," he said dispassionately. "You're going to die."
"Am I?" I asked Captain Tamoshoe.
"Almost certainly," he answered me.
Without moving from the place I stood I said, "Get out of here, Josh. I want to talk to the captain."
Josh looked at me with an expression I had once seen in my father's eyes. Then, with a nod to the captain, he let himself be hoisted out of the hole.
"He wants you to live, Jhirinki. And you were not assigned to my ship to die."
In the stillness that followed his words I realized that he and I were the only people left here, that the others were back at the ferry, waiting to leave Shy-gei-ath. I felt an enormous loneliness fall over me, dark and heavy.
"Why not come back?"
I shook my head. "No. This is what I'm all about. I've spent my life learning to do what has to be done here. I can't leave when I'm this close."
"Have you a choice?"
For just a moment I knew panic. Then: "Will I last all that much longer if I leave?"
"No. Not that much longer."
"Then I'll stay."
"But what will you do, Jhirinki?"
The strange part was that I knew the answer. "As long as I can, I'll describe the forms to you, the way the machine did for me. You can leave me a skiff relay, can't you?" Not waiting for an answer I hurried on. "I'll try to translate what I've found and you can record it for the Margien Language Institute."
Captain Tamoshoe considered this. "I've always thought," he remarked absently, "that a man's death should be as much in his hands as his life. You'll get the relay."
"And food?"
He didn't answer me, so I knew. "Thank you, Captain."
"Goodbye, Peter Jhirinki," he said as he left.
" 'Lom-de-sti-gei ath dev lim-gei,' " I dictated from the wall to the commkit. I listened for the relay sound that would tell me they had recorded the line on board the Nordenskjold.
A half-dozen lines were left. Lines that wavered in front of me, milky with haze.
"Pete!"
But that wasn't my machine. It was someone I used to know. Why would Josh call me? What did he want?
"Pete, for God's sake!"
"What?"
That must have been what he wanted to hear. But I couldn't hold my commkit steady. My hands had gone funny. Purple. The tendons were soft, spongy.
"… translations?"
That mattered to me. That was important. More important than my strange hands. I had to tell them.
"A few words—"
"What words?"
"Shy-gei-ath." Like Terra and Terrans.
The twin suns were hot above me, but it was dark. I burned and burned and it was dark. If I looked at the floor I could see my face. But I didn't do that.
"The wall, Pete. The wall."
From here on the floor I could watch my wall as I told them about it. I knew what it meant at last.
"Shy, infinitive verb. To be. Active sense. Gei, infinitive verb. To be. Passive sense. Shy-sti-gei, to be alive. Sti-gei, to exist. Shy-sti, to conceive. They build from there." Was that sound me?
"But the wall, Pete."
It was an effort, but I began to read. But breathing hurt and I got slower and slower. " 'In the time of the Fourth Moon, I sought out a high place and made it safe against the end of Shy-gei-ath.' "
"Go on."
" 'Against the end … it happened I found this place and required a stronghold to be built. The time was short for we could see in the night in the Fourth Moon. Waters would soon rise, the mountains change and Rel-ath-gei would consume all.' " That would quiet them, the noisy ones above me. I looked at the wall through darkening eyes, turning on the floor to read the end of the story.
"Peter! Answer me!"
I kicked the commkit, laughing.
"What about the place name. What does that mean? We've got most of what we need to crack it, Peter. What does the name mean?"
Reluctantly I pulled myself across the floor, feeling like a slug, not a man. Just a bit more and they'd leave me alone with my wall. I'd earned that.
"The word?" I asked the commkit.
"Shy-gei-ath," the tinny voice prompted.
"Shy-gei-ath. This place. Here." But that wasn't quite right, I thought as I watched the ash sifting through the hole. "Shy-gei-ath. To be … to …"
"Go on; tell us. What does it mean?"
So I told them. "To be home."
The End
* * *
About "The Meaning of the Word"
Language has always interested me. How people say things influences how they think. The obsessive desire to know has also interested me. It was not my conscious intention to combine those particular interests in a story, but they seem to be there.
Somewhere in a large box of background material in my office closet there are two legal-sized foolscap notebooks crammed full of shy-gei-an language, with grammar and forms and usage as well as a very large vocabulary. One of these years I may dig it out and do something more with it.
When the story appeared in If magazine, there were a few "minor" changes: the first word had been dropped and three short paragraphs had been added. Here the story is returned to its original form.
I don't usually write in the first person—my characters are very definite, very separate individuals in my mind and, for the most part, I give them the same third-person integrity that I give my friends. But Peter was an exception, and the story is, I think, stronger for the reader sharing Peter's head.
© 1973 Universal Publishing Company, © 1978 Chelsea Quinn Yarbro.
The House the Blakeneys Built
Avram Davidson
"Four people coming down the Forest Road, a hey," Old Big Mary said.
Young Red Tom understood her at once. "Not ours."
Things grew very quiet in the long kitchenroom. Old Whitey Bill shifted in his chairseat. "Those have's to be Runaway Little Bob's and that Thin Jinnie's," he said. "Help me up, some."
"No," Old Big Mary said. "They're not."
"Has to be." Old Whitey Bill shuffled up, leaning on his canestick. "Has to be. Whose elses could they be. Always said, me, she ran after him."
Young Whitey Bill put another chunk of burnwood on the burning. "Rower, rower," he muttered. Then everyone was talking at once, crowding up to the windowlooks. Then everybody stopped the talking. The big foodpots bubbled. Young Big Mary mumbletalked excitedly. Then her words came out clearsound.
"Look to here—look to here—I say, me, they aren't Blakeneys."
Old Little Mary, coming down from the spindleroom, called out, "People! People! Three and four of them down the Forest Road and I don't know them and, oh, they funnywalk!"
"Four strange people!"
"Not Blakeneys!"
"Stop sillytalking! Has to be! Who elses?"
"But not Blakeneys!"
"Not from The House, look to, look to! People—not from The House!"
"Runaway Bob and that Thin Jinnie?"
"No, can't be. No old ones."
"Children? Childrenchildren?"
All who hadn't been lookseeing before came now, all who were at The House, that is—running from the cowroom and the horseroom and dairyroom, ironroom, schoolroom, even from the sickroom.
"Four people! Not Blakeneys, some say!"
"Blakeneys or not Blakeneys, not from The House!"
Robert Hayakawa and his wife Shulamith came out of the forest, Ezra and Mikicho with them. "Well, as I said," Robert observed, in his slow careful
way, "a road may end nowhere, going in one direction, but it's not likely it will end nowhere, going in the other."
Shulamith sighed. She was heavy with child. "Tilled fields. I'm glad of that. There was no sign of them anywhere else on the planet. This must be a new settlement. But we've been all over that—" She stopped abruptly, so did they all.
Ezra pointed. "A house—"
"It's more like a, well, what would you say?" Mikicho moved her mouth, groping for a word. "A … a castle? Robert?"
Very softly, Robert said, "It's not new, whatever it is. It is very much not new, don't you see, Shulamith. What—?"
She had given a little cry of alarm, or perhaps just surprise. All four turned to see what had surprised her. A man was running over the field towards them. He stopped, stumbling, as they all turned to him. Then he started again, a curious shambling walk. They could see his mouth moving after a while. He pointed to the four, waved his hand, waggled his head.
"Hey," they could hear him saying. "A hey, a hey. Hey. Look to. Mum. Mum mum mum. Oh, hey …"
He had a florid face, a round face that bulged over the eyes, and they were prominent and blue eyes. His nose was an eagle's nose, sharp and hooked, and his mouth was loose and trembling. "Oh, hey, you must be, mum, his name, what? And she run off to follow him? Longlong. Jinnie! Thin Jinnie! Childrenchildren, a hey?" Behind him in the field two animals paused before a plow, switching their tails.
"Mikicho, look," said Ezra. "Those must be cows."
The man had stopped about ten feet away. He was dressed in loose, coarse cloth. Again he waggled his head. "Cows, no. Oh, no, mum mum, freemartins, elses. Not cows." Something occurred to him, almost staggering in its astonishment. "A hey, you won't know me! Won't know me!" He laughed. "Oh. What a thing. Strange Blakeneys. Old Red Tom, I say, me."
Gravely, they introduced themselves. He frowned, his slack mouth moving. "Don't know them name," he said, after a moment. "No, a mum. Make them up, like children, in the woods. Longlong. Oh, I, now! Runaway Little Bob. Yes, that name! Your fatherfather. Dead, a hey?"
Very politely, very wearily, feeling—now that he had stopped—the fatigue of the long, long walk, Robert Hayakawa said, "I'm afraid I don't know him. We are not, I think, who you seem to think we are … might we go on to the house, do you know?" His wife murmured her agreement, and leaned against him.
Old Red Tom, who had been gaping, seemed suddenly to catch at a word. "The House! A hey, yes. Go on to The House. Good now. Mum."
They started off, more slowly than before, and Old Red Tom, having unhitched his freemartins, followed behind, from time to time calling something unintelligible. "A funny fellow," said Ezra.
"He talks so oddly," Mikicho said. And Shulamith said that all she wanted was to sit down. Then—
"Oh, look," she said. "Look!"
"They have all come to greet us," her husband observed.
And so they had.
Nothing like this event had ever occurred in the history of the Blakeneys. But they were not found wanting. They brought the strangers into The House, gave them the softest chairseats, nearest to the burning; gave them cookingmilk and cheesemeats and tatoplants. Fatigue descended on the newcomers in a rush; they ate and drank somewhat, then they sank back, silent.
But the people of the house were not silent, far from it. Most of them who had been away had now come back, they milled around, some gulping eats, others craning and staring, most talking and talking and talking—few of them mumbletalking, now that the initial excitement had ebbed a bit. To the newcomers, eyes now opening with effort, now closing, despite, the people of the house seemed like figures from one of those halls of mirrors they had read about in social histories: the same faces, clothes, … but, ah, indeed, not the same dimensions. Everywhere—florid complexions, bulging blue eyes, protruding bones at the forehead, hooked thin noses, flabby mouths.
Blakeneys.
Thin Blakeneys, big Blakeneys, little Blakeneys, old ones, young ones, male and female. There seemed to be one standard model from which the others had been stretched or compressed, but it was difficult to conjecture what this exact standard was.
"Starside, then," Young Big Mary said—and said again and again, clearsound. "No elses live to Blakeneyworld. Starside, Starside, a hey, Starside. Same as Captains."
Young Whitey Bill pointed with a stick of burnwood at Shulamith. "Baby grows," he said. "Rower, rower. Baby soon."
With a great effort, Robert roused himself. "Yes. She's going to have a baby very soon. We will be glad of your help."
Old Whitey Bill came for another look to, hobbling on his canestick. "We descend," he said, putting his face very close to Robert's, "we descend from the Captains. Hasn't heard of them, you? Elses not heard? Funny. Funnyfunny. We descend, look to. From the Captains. Captain Tom Blakeney. And his wives. Captain Bill Blakeney. And his wives. Brothers, they. Jinnie, Mary, Captain Tom's wives. Other Mary, Captain Bob's wife. Had another wife, but we don't remember it, us, her name. They lived, look to. Starside. You, too? Mum, you? A hey, Starside?"
Robert nodded. "When?" he asked. "When did they come from Starside? The brothers."
Night had fallen, but no lights were lit. Only the dancing flames, steadily fed, of the burning, with chunks and chunks of fat and greasy burnwood, flickered and illuminated the great room. "Ah, when," said Old Red Tom, thrusting up to the chairseat. "When we children, old Blakeneys say, a hey, five hundredyear. Longlong."
Old Little Mary said, suddenly, "They funnywalk. They funnytalk. But, oh, they funnylook, too!"
"A baby. A baby. Grows a baby, soon."
And two or three little baby Blakeneys, like shrunken versions of their elders, gobbled and giggled and asked to see the Starside baby. The big ones laughed, told them, soon.
"Five hundred …" Hayakawa drowsed. He snapped awake. "The four of us," he said, "were heading in our boat for the Moons of Lor. Have you—no, I see, you never have. It's a short trip, really. But something happened to us, I don't know … how to explain it … we ran into something … something that wasn't there. A warp? A hole? That's silly, I know, but—it was as though we felt the boat drop, somehow. And then, after that, our instruments didn't work and we saw we had no celestial references … not a star we knew. What's that phrase, 'A new Heaven and a new Earth?' We were just able to reach her. Blakeneyworld, as you call it."
Sparks snapped and flew. Someone said, "Sleepytime." And then all the Blakeneys went away and then Hayakawa slept.
It was washtime when the four woke up, and all the Blakeneys around The House, big and little, were off scrubbing themselves and their clothes. "I guess that food on the table is for us," Ezra said. "I will assume it is for us. Say grace, Robert. I'm hungry."
Afterwards they got up and looked around. The room was big and the far end so dark, even with sunshine pouring in through the open shutters, that they could hardly make out the painting on the wall. The paint was peeling, anyway, and a crack like a flash of lightening ran through it; plaster or something or the sort had been slapped onto it, but this had mostly fallen out, its only lasting effect being to deface the painting further.
"Do you suppose that the two big figures could be the Captains?" Mikicho asked, for Robert had told them what Old Whitey Bill had said.
"I would guess so. They look grim and purposeful … When was the persecution of the polygamists, anybody know?"
Current social histories had little to say about that period, but the four finally agreed it had been during the Refinishing Era, and that this had been about six hundred years ago. "Could this house be that old?" Shulamith asked. "Parts of it, I suppose, could be. I'll tell you what I think, I think that those two Captains set out like ancient patriarchs with their wives and their families and their flocks and so on, heading for somewhere where they wouldn't be persecuted. And then they hit—well, whatever it was that we hit. And wound up here. Like us."
Mikicho said, in a small, small voice, "And perhaps it will be another si
x hundred years before anyone else comes here. Oh, we're here for good and forever. That's sure."
They walked on, silent and unsure, through endless corridors and endless rooms. Some were clean enough, others were clogged with dust and rubbish, some had fallen into ruin, some were being used for barns and stables, and in one was a warm forge.
"Well," Robert said at last, "we must make the best of it. We cannot change the configurations of the universe."
Following the sounds they presently heard brought them to the washroom, slippery, warm, steamy, noisy.
Once again they were surrounded by the antic Blakeney face and form in its many permutations. "Washtime, washtime!" their hosts shouted, showing them where to put their clothes, fingering the garments curiously, helping them to soap, explaining which of the pools were fed by hot springs, which by warm and cold, giving them towels, assisting Shulamith carefully.
"Your world house, you, a hey," began a be-soaped Blakeney to Ezra; "bigger than this? No."
Ezra agreed, "No."
"Your—Blakeneys? No. Mum, mum. Hey. Family? Smaller, a hey?"
"Oh, much smaller."
The Blakeney nodded. Then he offered to scrub Ezra's back if Ezra would scrub his.
The hours passed, and the days. There seemed no government, no rules, only was and habits and practices. Those who felt so inclined, worked. Those who didn't … didn't. No one suggested the newcomers do anything, no one prevented from doing anything. It was perhaps a week later that Robert and Ezra invited themselves on a trip along the shore of the bay. Two healthy horses pulled a rickety wagon.
The driver's name was Young Little Bob. "Gots to fix a floorwalk," he said. "In the, a hey, in the sickroom. Need boards. Lots at the riverwater."
The sun was warm. The House now and again vanished behind trees or hills, now and again, as the road curved with the bay, came into view, looming over everything.
"We've got to find something for ourselves to do," Ezra said. "These people may be all one big happy family, they better be, the only family on the whole planet all this time. But if I spend any much more time with them I think I'll become as dippy as they are."
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