by R. Lee Smith
“I’m not going to tell you again to stop with the profanities. And all I’m suggesting is that the things you like to call proof of intelligence look to me like nothing more than proof that some as-yet unknown master race has trained a considerably lesser one to perform certain menial tasks. Look at it logically,” he said, turning back to the Manifestors. “As Miss Bierce herself acknowledges, he’s starting our fires, providing our food, patrolling around our camp…tasks he took on literally the moment he met us!”
Meoraq’s head tipped a little further. The fading yellow stripes on his throat grew a little brighter. He said nothing, did not move.
“But has he tried to learn our language? No. In fact, does he make any effort to speak with anyone who doesn’t speak to him first? No. Does he show the slightest curiosity about where we come from? No!” Scott began to pace back and forth in front of the murmuring crowd, gesturing now and then to punctuate his points. His color was high; his step, light. He was a man in his element and, ragged uniform and scruffy beard-stubble aside, he looked good when he was there. “When native tribes are first discovered by a civilized society, they react, ladies and gentlemen. They show awe. Curiosity. Excitement. They’re people who recognize foreign people for the first time and it’s an amazing, fantastic moment for them! But has this…Meoraq ever showed even a smidgeon of interest in…in our clothes, for example? Has he ever tried to touch someone’s hair? Indicated that he even noticed we have more fingers? Different features? Different bodies? No! Obviously, there is some higher life on this planet somewhere,” Scott concluded. “But after observing this particular specimen, I am more convinced than ever that we haven’t found it yet. What we have here is…”
He paused dramatically to think, and in that pause, Amber suddenly realized that she had been struck speechless for the first time in her life. It was a terrifying thought; maybe it had been outrage that silenced her, but she’d been just as silent all the same. Mesmerized. Not just letting him say it, but letting him say it in front of Meoraq.
She opened her mouth.
Meoraq put his hand on her shoulder without looking at her and squeezed hard.
She closed her mouth, fuming.
“Okay,” said Scott, holding up both hands as if to quiet all the people who weren’t talking anyway. “What we appear to be dealing with is a kind of dog. And before you all get offended on its behalf—”
No one appeared to be offended. Amber opened her mouth again and this time got a squeeze and a silencing point. He still didn’t look at her.
“—dogs can be highly specialized animals,” Scott concluded. “We have bomb dogs, don’t we? Drug dogs. Seeing eyes and hearing ears. And of course, attack dogs. My point is, no matter how well-trained the dog is, no one would ever confuse it for a sentient life form, would they? And why not? Because even when the dog can do what it does better than anyone else around it, it still can’t think.”
“Just because he can’t speak English doesn’t mean he can’t think!” Amber insisted, shrugging off Meoraq’s hand. “He—He drew pictures, for crying out loud! He gestures! He—”
“So do monkeys,” said Scott.
“But if he’s so intelligent,” said Dag, and immediately backed off when Meoraq looked his way, “and I’m not saying you aren’t, man. But if he is, how come he can manage twenty different ways to say gann, but not human? How hard is that?”
Everyone looked at Meoraq, Amber among them. Meoraq eyed them all and then just looked at Amber. His spines were flat again.
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “Maybe we’re thinking of it too…one-dimensionally. Like sound is all there is. But for him, the way you say it matters as much as the sounds it makes. I don’t know.”
“That’s such a ludicrous answer,” muttered Scott, and made a point of walking away a few steps just so he could shake his head and come back. “Just admit it, you’re as clueless as the rest of us.”
“I did admit it,” she said tightly. “That’s what I don’t know means.”
“And for those people who are trying to learn a non-inflected language like English when their own is more tonal,” interrupted Yao, “it can be very difficult. There are five different ways to say ma in Mandarin. It can mean anything from mother to horse. Language is not a science, Mr. Scott. It is far more abstract than most people realize, and to this I would add that the physical structure of our speech may be impossible for him to emulate.”
“Yeah, that’s another thing,” said Amber. “His mouth. He doesn’t have lips, you know? And his tongue is all weird.”
Crandall made a loud, derisively suggestive sound that earned him all of Meoraq’s attention.
“You’re a dick,” Amber snapped. And to everyone else, said, “I mean it’s different from a normal tongue. A human tongue,” she amended, catching a narrow glance from the lizard. “I don’t think it moves much. He pretty much only uses it to chew, so however he’s making the sounds he makes, he’s not doing it the way we do.”
“As usual,” Scott sighed, “you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“But I do.” Mr. Yao stood up and faced himself off squarely against Scott. “If your Aunt Harriet had parrots instead of terriers, you might know what Miss Bierce is trying to tell you. Our friend appears to have bifurcated trachea—a split flap at the back of his throat which produces all his sounds. The shape of his mouth could easily account for some sort of resonance cavity which allows him precise control over sounds our ears may not even be capable of hearing.”
“You said that was for pheromones,” Scott said with a meaningful glance back at his Manifestors. Some of them obediently laughed or rolled their eyes.
Mr. Yao’s lips thinned. “One does not supersede the other, Mr. Scott. I cannot advise you strongly enough to learn that particular lesson. One does not supersede the other, and if I can be blunt, I would observe that his ability to speak our language has nothing to do with his ability to understand it.”
“Which he does,” Amber insisted. “And sooner or later, he’s going to stop being polite and you’re going to get your proof about whether or not he knows what we’re saying in the form of a sword up your ass!”
The slap didn’t hurt. Not really. She staggered back a few steps, but she wasn’t in any danger of falling down, and if she’d known the slap was coming, she probably wouldn’t have even staggered. But that was the thing; she didn’t see it coming. Scott was able to pull back his arm and smack her right across the mouth and she never…never really saw it coming.
She stared at him, one hand cupped over her stinging lips, unable to quite believe she’d just been hit. There wasn’t any blood on her fingers, although she could taste it, coppery, on her throbbing lips. She looked around, blinking in a kind of numb bewilderment, and saw people she knew just looking back at her. Some of them were frowning, but whether at her for swearing or Scott for slapping, she couldn’t tell. Some of them dropped back in the crowd, or picked at their fingernails, or found something else to look at, as if she’d done something embarrassing and vaguely disturbing, like wet her pants. She looked at Nicci, but Nicci wouldn’t meet her eyes. She looked at Meoraq, but he was looking at Scott. So she looked at Scott.
He tipped his chin up, giving her a grim sort of nod. “I’ve given you all the last chances you’re going to get, Miss Bierce. It’s time you learned to start watching your mouth when you speak to m—”
He didn’t see the slap coming either. Whap, right across his cheek. It hurt her wrist quite a bit. All the ladies in the movies acted like slapping a man’s face was about as difficult as swatting a fly, but faces were pretty hard surfaces, really.
Scott staggered back, tripped over his boots and fell on his ass, which was satisfying to see even though she knew it was mostly luck.
“You ever lay a fucking hand on me again and I’ll knock your fucking teeth out!” she shouted. “You don’t get to tell me how to run my fucking mouth!”
“Okay, cal
m down.” Eric eased himself forward a step, his hands once more raised and placating. “Take it easy.”
“Tell him to calm down!” She brushed at her mouth again, but it still wasn’t bleeding on her. Her hand was shaking. She could not believe how angry she was.
Or how close to tears.
No one told Scott to calm down. Dag was helping him up. People were whispering. Looking at her. Saying things that made Scott nod in his tight, angry way as he brushed grass off his clothes.
‘I don’t care if they like me!’ she thought furiously.
“Okay,” said Scott. He straightened his sleeves, his collar, his shirt-front. His cheek was a little red where she’d hit him, but only a little, like her lips that felt so swollen and tasted so coppery but stubbornly refused to bleed. He said, “I’m not doing this tonight. If you want to freak out and start hitting people—”
“You hit me first!”
Scott threw up his hands, a see-what-I-have-to-deal-with gesture straight to God. People murmured, commiserating. Amber could feel herself blushing, feel her breath growing hotter in her chest. “I’m done with you. Done. You show me some respect or the next time you take a walk, I won’t send the lizard after you.”
Meoraq had not moved more than his eyes or his spines in all this time, but at that, he suddenly stood up. He took two steps, unhurried, and slapped Scott right out of the air even as he was leaping away. He caught him before he hit the ground, pulled him close, then said quietly, “Lizard?”
He said it strangely, softening the z and rattling on the r, but he said it and it was easy to hear because no one else made a sound.
Meoraq tipped his head to the side in that way he seemed to think was threatening and said, once more in lizardish, that no one sent him anywhere and if S’kot or any other human (he said that oddly as well, drawing out the ooo-sound and hammering a hard T on the end) thought otherwise, he would…something. The word he used was not a familiar one and in this context could have meant anything. Whatever he said, he sounded like he meant it. And then he tipped his head even further on its side and asked if S’kot understood him.
“Yes,” said Scott at once, his eyes huge.
Meoraq asked if he was sure. S’kot apparently heard nothing but hisses and grunts (he exaggerated the animal quality of these sounds; Scott flinched hard both times) of a lizard when Meoraq spoke.
“I…” Scott rolled his eyes wildly back at Amber, waxen-faced. “Say something, for God’s sake! What does he want?”
“What does he want?” Amber huffed out an angry, humorless laugh and rubbed a final time at her unwounded mouth. “He wants a fucking apology, Commander.”
Scott’s mouth worked as his face slowly filled up with color. He made a few half-hearted shrugging gestures, looking for help in the crowd while Manifestors averted their eyes and his loyal lieutenants just looked at each other. “I’m…responsible for these people,” he said at last. “I wasn’t trying to be rude, I just…need to be sure what we’re dealing with. That’s all.”
Meoraq’s eyes narrowed. His head tipped. He waited.
“That’s as close as he’s going to get,” said Amber. “You might as well let him go.”
Meoraq hauled back one hand and slapped Scott again. The sound was a shocking thing, loud as a gunshot. People jumped, Amber among them, but Meoraq kept slapping. His spines were flat, but his throat was dark; his arm raised and swung five more times as Scott thrashed in his grip, and he was calm the whole time. At the end, he just stopped and waited while Scott brayed, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Get him off me!”
Meoraq released Scott with a shove and turned around. He went back to his place at the fire and crouched down. He picked up a stick and stirred coals.
Scott looked at Amber, wild-eyed and shock-white everywhere that Meoraq hadn’t slapped him purple, his clothes still bunched up around his neck. His mouth worked a few times, but his eyes kept cutting at Meoraq. Finally, he spat, “You just remember to watch your mouth, Bierce,” then spun around, grabbing at Eric and Crandall, and staggered away.
Amber sat down and waited while people cleared rapidly away. She could hear Scott across the camp, loudly holding court, but she couldn’t make out exactly what he was saying. She didn’t have to. She could guess.
Meoraq was watching her. After a while, she looked back at him.
He pointed at her and said something stern about never speaking for him again. He was a…foot?…and when he wanted something said, he’d say it.
She started to get up (but not in a huff she could be pissed off without going off in a huff like a stupid girl), but he caught her shoulder and shoved her back down. He said something she was too angry to catch, squeezed her shoulder extra-hard, then let go of her to pat her once on the head. He told her he didn’t need…something. Defending? But that he acknowledged her obedience and he forgave her for wandering off.
Forgave her. Like she’d done something wrong. Big scaly son of a bitch.
“I’m sorry,” she muttered, looking back at the fire.
“Eh?”
“For calling you a lizard all those times. I guess it is pretty rude.”
He snorted, then tapped at her knee with his knuckles. He told her he knew she didn’t mean it as an insult.
“Sometimes I do,” she admitted. “Let me ask you something. Honestly.”
He rolled his hand through the air in a bring-it-on gesture that translated perfectly.
“Is there any point to this? To you and me, I mean. Talking. I don’t know.” She rubbed at her face. “It doesn’t feel like anything’s changing. Unless it’s getting worse. I don’t mean just me and Scott, although God knows that’s about as bad as it can get.”
Meoraq grunted in what she was coming to think of as his affirming way. His stare was unnervingly direct.
‘He’s getting this,’ she found herself thinking. ‘And if he’s not getting every word, it’s at least nine out of every ten.’
“Is it just me?” she asked, and immediately wished she sounded more frustrated and less…whiny. “I always thought I was pretty good at coping with things, but I’ve got to tell you, Meoraq, I suck at this marooned-on-an-alien-planet crap.”
His hand rolled again, inviting examples.
“We have to start working together. We have to start planning for our future, you know? Otherwise, he’s right, all we’re doing is killing time while we wait to die. And I realize that I could maybe be better…”
She gave him a chance to comment, but he merely looked at her, wonderfully inexpressive as only a lizard could be.
“But damn it,” she sighed, combing restlessly at her hair, “if the future means getting along with that son of a bitch, I’d almost rather see it all end here.”
His head cocked the other way. He leaned forward, the tip of his snout in kissing distance of her face. He spoke. You blah blah blah, something about God…blah blah and stop whining.
“Easy for you to say. If Scott gets bitchy at you, you can slap him around and leave. I have to live with these people!”
Meoraq scowled and scratched at the side of his snout. After a moment, he asked what kind of help she wanted.
“Oh hell, I don’t know.” She rubbed at another chunk of headache. “But I feel like I’m the only one who’s actually trying to find a way to live here! And everyone else is trying to find a way to live back on Earth. I want to go home too! I want clean sheets and a cheeseburger and a hot shower and everything else they want, but it’s not happening! We have to be here! We have to kill things if we’re going to eat and pick grass out of the water we drink! We don’t get soap and we don’t get toilet paper and if we can’t figure out what we do get in one hell of a hurry, we’re all going to die here!”
He looked briefly heavenward and then rubbed at the bony ridges over his eyes. He muttered something about his God sending him to them.
“Yeah, and I can see you’re thrilled to be a part of that—”
He snorted.
“—but I’m glad you’re here, because we’re all going to die without you.” That sounded a lot more true than she liked. She tried to hide it with a smile, but it wouldn’t stick. “Everything is so hard. I’m tired. I can’t…do this forever.”
He stood up, saying something she mostly understood without guessing: “Things will get easier when we can speak more freely.”
“Easier is a relative term, lizardman.”
“Truth,” he agreed in lizardish. “But then, life is in the journey. If you cannot have an easy journey, have an interesting story.”
“That needs to be a fortune cookie,” said Amber. “I don’t know how my story can possibly be more interesting than it already is without…well, I was going to say alien invasion or a giant lizard, but we appear to have those bases covered.”
He grunted and gazed into the fire.
After several minutes—she had all but forgotten he was there, lost in her own relentless playback of the whole rotten day—he nudged at her arm. When she glanced his way, he was holding up that square of jerky and staring straight ahead into the fire.
She took it. “Thanks. What is this stuff, by the way?”
“Cuuvash.” He clasped his empty hands and watched the embers.
She repeated him, pretending not to see the way he rolled his eyes at her pronunciation, and gnawed off a piece of the dried meat. Her jaws were still sore from the last time he’d shared this stuff, but it was still pretty good. Like jerky, only not as salty, with a richer flavor and a weird undertaste almost like cheap wine. She ate, eyeing him suspiciously. “You’re not having any.”
He said no again, but in a different way. Not yet, maybe. Then he stirred, rubbing at his brow-ridges, and looked at her. “It’s time to go,” he told her.
An icy stone dropped into her belly. The jerky…the cuuvash got stuck in her throat. She swallowed hard, coughed, and managed, “You’re leaving?”