The Enemy Papers

by Barry B. Longyear

  We waved back, then I stopped Fish Face and turned toward him. "Can you imagine what Boston Beau's gang will do here?"

  Fish Face nodded without changing expression. Then he pointed toward one of the creatures dressed in white belts who appeared to be directing foot traffic at one of the mall intersections. I felt slightly sick when I realized that the Asthu needed traffic cops to keep pedestrians from running into each other. "There's a copper. Let's find out where his station is."

  We walked up to the egg in white belts and I began. "Could you tell me where the police station is?"

  I was standing directly in front of the officer, and he rotated until he brought one of his eyes around to face me. It went wide, then he staggered backward a step. "Mig ballooma!"

  "Police station?" I tried again.

  Slightly recovered, the officer took a step toward us, scanned with one eye, then the other. "Egger bley sirkis."

  "What?"

  The officer pointed at me, then at Fish Face. "Sirkis, sirkis, dether et?"

  Fish Face poked me in the arm. "Listen, he's saying 'circus.'" The tiny mouth on the egg rapidly became much larger, then the entire body dipped back and forth, "Sirkis! Sirkis!" As the bodies began piling up at the intersection, the officer reached beneath one of his white belts and pulled out a red and white card. "Sirkis!"

  I looked at it, then turned to Fish Face. "It's an advanced reserve ticket for the show." I turned back to the officer and nodded. "Yes, circus. Police station?"

  He tucked the card back under his belt, then held up his hands.

  "Nethy bleu et 'poleece stayshun' duma?" A lane of traffic mistook the officer's hand gesture for a signal and began piling into the cross-lane flow. "Gaavuuk!" The officer scanned around once, then waded into the bodies, shouting, pointing, and shoving. After a few minutes of this, traffic began flowing again, and the officer returned. He pointed at a door a few paces from the corner. "Agwug, tuwhap thubba."

  I pointed in the direction of the door. "Police station?"

  He held up his arms again in that gesture that was probably a shrug, thereby causing the halted lane to pile into the cross-lane again. "Ah, gaavuuk! Nee gaavuuk!" Back he went to untangle the bodies. Fish Face pulled at my arm and pointed at the door.

  "I think we better go before the copper comes back. Think that's the station?"

  I shrugged. "Let's try it anyway." We walked the few steps to the door. On the door was painted a variety of incomprehensible lines, dots, squiggles, and smears. Toward the bottom was spelled out, "English Spoke Hear." I nodded, then turned to Fish Face. "It's an interpreter." I pushed open the door and we entered a cramped, windowless stall. In the back, behind a low counter, one of the egg-shaped creatures was leaning in a corner.

  Fish Face tapped me on the shoulder. "Is he asleep?"

  I walked over to the counter and tapped on it. "Excuse me?" No response. I knocked harder. "Excuse me, do you speak English?"

  The egg opened the eye facing me, started a bit, blinked, then went big in the mouth. "Sirkis!" He stood and reached under the wide brown belt he wore and pulled out an advanced reserve ticket. "Sirkis!"

  I nodded. "Yes, we're with the circus." I turned to Fish Face. "Stretch Dirak and the advance have done quite a job." I turned hack. "Do you speak English?"

  The mouth went big again as the eyes squinted. "English spoke hear."

  "What's your name!"

  "Name are Doccor-thut, well, sirs." Doccor-thut dipped forward in the good egg's version of a bow.

  I smiled. "We need an interpreter."

  "English spoke hear."

  "Yes, can you come with us? We want to go to the police station."

  Doccor-thut rotated a bit, went down behind the counter and came up again carrying a book. He held it up to one eye and began paging through it. "Police... police... hmmmm. Regulation of community affairs... community... community, ah... hmmmm... station... hmmm." Doccor-thut put the hook down and faced an eye toward me. "You want to operate a radio?"

  Fish Face placed a hand on my shoulder. "Let me give it a try." He wiggled a finger at Doccor-thut. "Come with me."

  Doccor-thut pressed a button, part of the countertop slid open, and he walked through the opening. He followed Fish Face to the door, and I brought up the rear. Out in the mall, Fish Face pointed at the traffic cop. "Police."

  Doccor-thut aimed an eye at Fish Face. "You want police radio?"

  Fish Face shook his head. "Take us to the police's boss."

  Doccor-thut went back to the book. "Boss... circular protuberance or knoblike swelling—"

  Fish Face took the book. "Allow me!" He found the definition he wanted, faced the book at Doccor-thut, then pointed with his finger. "Boss. Supervisor, employer."

  And so on.

  These kinds of translation misunderstandings provided the foundation for such exchanges in "Enemy Mine" as the following:

  ... Any minute we could be washed off that sandbar. "Jerry, you're being silly about that rod. You know that."

  "Surda." The Drac sounded contrite if not altogether miserable.

  "Ess?"

  "Ess eh 'surda'?"

  Jerry remained silent for a moment. "Davidge, gavey not certain not is?"

  I sorted out the negatives. "You mean 'possible,' 'maybe,' 'perhaps' ?"

  "Ae, possiblemaybeperhaps. Dracon fleet Irkmaan ships have. Before war buy; after war capture. Rod possiblemaybeperhaps Dracon is."

  "So, if there's a secret base on the big island, surda it's a Dracon base ?"

  " Possiblemaybeperhaps, Davidge."

  What follows are some notes I made on another story idea flop that contributed to the form "Enemy Mine" took. At this point, though. I feel obligated to point out that I never condemn any idea, no matter how badly it smells. This is how I keep in check this overly developed critical faculty of mine that tends to dry up everything that comes within its range. The advantage is that parts and pieces are saved, allowing such things as "Enemy Mine" to come into being. The disadvantage is that my files are crammed with a whole lot of crap that is going to be very embarrassing if someone should wade through them after my mortal exit for the purpose of writing the definitive Barry B. Longyear biography. Chances are, the work will be titled: I Can't Believe He Wrote All This Crap!

  Again, I digress.

  Here are my notes on the other story language idea:

  UNTITLED

  Begin a story in English, dropping in alien language words and phrases along the way, until the reader is sufficiently familiar with the alien language that the last paragraph of the story can be written entirely in the alien tongue.

  The first step is to invent the alien language. It has to be alien, but still easily learned if the reader is going to be able to make it through the last paragraph without a fight. [I worked up the grammar, spelling, pronunciation, and a vocabulary of about three hundred words. The end result was a cross between Spanish, Japanese, Hebrew, and pig Latin.]

  Invent a situation that would justify the language exercise. One character must learn the language from another, or at least the reader has to learn it.

  General semantics teaches that certain terms (called semantic blanks) are regarded as representing some aspect of reality (have meaning) but, instead, are meaningless (have no corresponding referent in reality); "justice," "fair," "socialism," "reasonable," and "rights" being among the many. The theory is that if two persons, each speaking a different language and understanding none of the other's language, and each one refusing to learn the other's language, invented a third language for purposes of communication, they would not be able to talk about "justice," or "socialism."

  One can point at a rock and call it a "blug." The second person agrees, and from then on when the word "blug" is used, each party will know what is being referred to. But what do you point at to arrive at an agreement on a term for "justice"?

  What if negotiators representing different political powers (human and alien) were cut off from any
means of translating their words and had to invent a language of their own? Why invent a language of their own? They could sit out the technical difficulty and continue as before unless the difficulty were one that, first, caused an immediate danger, and second, could not be cured in time. Put them in space. The negotiators must be separated from the translators (either mechanical or human) for some credible reason.

  Let's say that all sides to this negotiation are highly suspicious of each other, and that the ground rules limit just the chiefs of each negotiating team into a self-contained vessel such as a shuttle. The translators (human and alien) do their work by remote means from the parent ship. Slam! Sabotage. The parent ship explodes, blowing the shuttle clear. The tiny craft with its limited range and supplies is stranded in space. The only ones aboard are the negotiation team chiefs: three different kinds of aliens and an English-speaking human. They must work together to have a chance at surviving, but before that they must be able to communicate. They begin trying.

  Now, to back up some and stick in some characters. First, the human negotiator. The experience is going to have to teach him something, so make him a hidebound, ding-word happy diplomatic type. What is he going to learn? The brotherhood of creatures, we're all in this together, stuff is too old [which is interesting, since that's the main theme of "Enemy Mine."]. What about the theory itself? Ninety-nine percent of all religions, codes of ethics, ideologies, moralities, concepts of right and wrong are founded on ding-words; semantic blanks; if it doesn't, have an existing-in-reality, mutually agreed-upon referent, the term is meaningless. That would be something to learn.

  How is our diplomat going to get the lesson along with the reader? The premise of semantic blanks must be explained. Another character: the human negotiator's translator. A cynical fellow who has spent his life studying languages, and seeing them used and abused through negotiations of various kinds. The diplomat and the translator are having a talk prior to the negotiators boarding the shuttle. The diplomat makes campaign noises about "serving the good of humanity," and the translator tells him he's full of bull, then why. Diplomat disagrees, then boards shuttle.

  What are these characters negotiating about? The first round opens making clear to the reader what the issue is. A territorial thing: war, economics, something like that, replete with fine, high-sounding phrases signifying nothing. It has to be done in English, and the human diplomat is the only one getting the conversation in English. Diplomat is viewpoint character.

  Blam! The parent ship goes up, the shuttle is blown clear, and our cast is stranded without a common word between them. Now what? They are diplomats, not pulp SF geniuses who can take bobby pins and wads of bubble gum and rig a faster-than-light drive or universal translator. They are all word mechanics, ding-word mechanics at that. They hate each other's guts. The long-arm-of-coincidence rule prevents the Seventh Cavalry from riding in and saving them; they have to work their own way out. First, a little trust. Then they begin pointing at various things and naming them.

  Problem: just to develop a get-along-in-this-situation working language will take endless pages, particularly if the reader must learn the language as well. Working up to a "Hey-I'm-a-former-physicist-and-we-can-try-this" language level will take volumes. Ending of story? They talk each other to death.

  OVER AND OUT

  The idea above went into my story dump, but many of the attempts at learning the other's language wound up in "Enemy Mine."

  Speaking of translations, "Enemy Mine" has been translated into a number of languages, and it always makes me wonder about the sense the reader gets when he or she reads my stuff in another language. The title of my collection Manifest Destiny in German, for example, is Erbfeinde. To me it sounds like a city planning board addicted to rules, regulations, permits, and payoffs stalking the urban landscape in search of human angst. According to my Cassell's German Dictionary it means either "hereditary enemy" or "old foe." In that volume, "Enemy Mine" becomes "Mein lieber Feind," which means, as near as I can tell, "My beloved Enemy." The little barracks ditty Davidge sings in the story:

  "Highty tighty Christ almighty,

  Who the Hell are we?

  Zim zam, Gawd Damn,

  We're in Squadron B."

  came out like this in German:

  "Groß und prächtig, Christ allmächtig,

  Wer zur Hölle sind denn wir?

  Zicke, Zacke, verfluchte Kacke,

  Das Geschwader B sind wir."

  I would show you the Japanese version of this song, but I can't find it in the text.

  I did manage to drive the learning-the-other-language thing to the point where many could read the Drac when Davidge begins teaching the baby Zammis its line: "Naatha nu enta va. Zammis zea dos Jeriba estay va Shigan, asaam naa denvadar."

  The story completed. I moved on to other things. A year later, however. I found myself writing the book-length sequel to "Enemy Mine," The Tomorrow Testament. Again I was faced with humans and Dracs rubbing elbows, and other things. This meant, of course, keeping consistent with the language used in "Enemy," as well as the tidbits of Drac customs and whatnot mentioned in the original story. The only problem was that I had none of this information. It was necessary to go though the original story, pull out the Drac language, and make up a vocabulary. Since the main structure of The Tomorrow Testament depends on the Drac bible, The Talman, a philosophical work by Dracs, about Dracs, and for Dracs, would be necessary to expand the vocabulary considerably, not to mention writing the bloody Drac bible.

  The Tomorrow Testament done, I again got on with other things. Among them were several other alien languages, and I made a point of doing some planning and taking careful notes. Two real screw-ups, however, involved a tribe in my fantasy novel The God Box, whose only use of the verb "to be" is the word "be," as in "I be hungry," and "we be a family." If Aristotle had been born into this tribe, his famous statement of identity would be "A be A," although there would be no change in Shakespeare's "To be or not to be."

  This tribe also cannot pronounce L's. Instead of substituting another sound, they simply leave it blank, showing this absence by the use of an apostrophe, as in 'o"ypop. In other words, Aristot'e be a phi'osopher. It was after writing a few pages of dialog using this tribe and its language quirks that I began losing my hair.

  Time passed, dust gathered on my Nebula and Hugo for "Enemy Mine," and about seventeen years after writing the original story, I signed a contract to do another Drac book, The Last Enemy a work told from the point of view of a Drac. Out came the notes, and I had to face a very uncomfortable truth: my memory of being a meticulous note-keeper is somewhat at variance with reality. Back again through everything, picking out names and language. Perhaps now that I've got the vocabulary in a book (at the back of this volume) I won't have to write it up again.

  What I have learned from the above experiences, beside planning ahead and keeping accurate notes, is that alien languages, as well as alien names, need to be understood and used by humans, at least the alien languages that appear in print science fiction. Movies can get away with a bunch of squeaks, glottal stops, clicks, grunts, and whistles. The characters are usually so one-dimensional anyway, whatever they say isn't important. In print, however, names need to be remembered, and the alien words that appear at least need to be gotten through, if not understood and remembered.

  All too often, though, writers find themselves in need of an "alien-sounding" name for a character. The result often looks like a convention of consonants assaulted by a shotgun full of apostrophes, hyphens, and asterisks. I have seen grown men and women turn blue from asphyxiation as their tongues became knotted from trying to pronounce some of these efforts. For myself, if I can read my alien words and names out loud without stumbling, I figure the reader won't have any trouble. For those of you who do have trouble, the character Uhe's name is pronounced YOO-ee. The rest sound just like they're spelled in Spanish, Japanese, and Urdu.

  Let's face it. None of this woul
d have happened except for Mr. Meekle. He was a teacher of mine at the Harrisburg Academy in Harrisburg. Pennsylvania, when I was in the eighth grade. He taught a unique course designed to make one's choice of a foreign language in high school easier. It went like this: for the first quarter we studied Latin. Second quarter we studied French. Third quarter we studied German. Fourth quarter we studied Spanish. After all of the grammars, verb forms, vocabularies, and irregularities, by the time I entered high school I was confused to the point where I was hardly able to speak English.

  I've always wanted to learn another language, though, but did miserably in school in this regard. I took Latin in high school, and as I dropped the course and walked out, I told the teacher, "I'm not going to be a Latin teacher, and I can't think of another reason to take this course." Years later, as I was doing mountains of research on ancient Rome and trying to make out various inscriptions, I wept as I begged God to let me take back what I had said.

  I didn't do well at Spanish, either. I reached my peak in Spanish at Wayne State University in Detroit in 1966. I was sitting outside wondering what to do with the rest of my life when a distinguished gentleman in a very natty three-piece set of pin-stripes came walking by. He asked a student something, the student shrugged, made like, man, a peace sign, you know, and wandered off. However, the man's question had been in Spanish! This was my chance to do a good deed and put to use some of this stuff I'd been studying for years. I stood up, went to him, and in a perfect Castillian accent asked, "Habla español?"