Caltraps of Time

by David I. Masson

  Finally, when Jacobs asked if his mission might take back to Earth a few native ornaments, utensils, and cultivated plants (without mentioning the elaborate decontamination and quarantine that these, and the team, would have to undergo before release), he met with a flat no, delivered with the Shm’qh equivalent of an inscrutable smile, the tail switching gently, the ear-tufts slightly displayed, and the elbows spread out. Jacobs tried persuasion as eloquent as he could make it. All to no effect, except that ‘Shny’wh’ turned to ‘Shnyiwh’ and finally to ‘Shnyeewh’ and the elbows spread wider and wider.

  The doctor doubled as ethnologist because of his experience in physiographic measurements. He was unable to help. ‘Why don’t you try Jimmy Anson? He’s better on the psycho side than I am. I’ve a lot on my hands just now. I’m much more worried about our leucocyte counts than you are over your precious relics.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Oh, no cause for immediate alarm. But they indicate we’re adjusting to something, some foreign body or bodies; I don’t suppose it’s one so much as a whole host of different alien entities. It isn’t doing us any real harm — but how would Earth react?’

  Jacob sought out Anson, the linguistician. ‘You have the advantage over us, old man; you can at least take back all those analyses and recordings. All we’ve got is photographs and film. I can’t think why they’re so down on letting us have specimens. I shall be darned unpopular with the powers at home. Never happened to me before.’

  The linguistician had been added to the expedition almost as an afterthought, together with a great deal of equipment which had caused some bad language among those who were working out loads and logistics. Pitied by the interpreters at first, he was later regarded with envious tolerance as he took, with their only too necessary assistance, recording after recording, from cubs and adults of both sexes and all ages, often using thumbnail sketches to get his or their meaning across, or to keep the victims amused. He had a battery of results which seemed to keep him perfectly happy working on day after day, only now and again breaking surface to get the interpreters to arrange a new test interview. The Shm’qh let him torment them with palatograms, pharyngoscopes, torches, and X-ray photography, uncomplaining. Eventually he took to wandering in the settlements with a pocket recorder, sometimes sketching the vegetation to distract attention.

  ‘Are they adamant about it then?’

  ‘A flat refusal every time I ask — quite cheerful, but always No. I think we must have offended them more deeply over Scatterthwaite’s gaffe than we realized. You know two of them threw it back at Simons and Harte the other day?’

  ‘Really? I can’t believe it! What were they doing?’

  ‘Doing no harm, simply carrying the genny up to Blue Knoll the day the beano was on. Two Shmur’ — Jacobs usually called the race that to his crew — ‘did the grin gesture at them and called out — you know — tchuffjim or whatever it is.’

  ‘You mean ty-whdy-m, I suppose?’

  ‘That’s it. Only they used the short-z vowel. Could there be anything in that? Does that take the sting out of it, do you think?’

  A slow smile spread over Anson’s face, then became a grin. ‘In a way, yes, but not the way you suppose. I think I have the answer to that problem.’

  ‘Do you indeed? well let’s have it, for God’s sake, man. We might be on the edge of a volcano — they could be working up to attack us!’

  ‘No, it’s all right, I think. There’s no malice and no guile in this race, as far as I can see. But first about that vowel. These vowels aren’t phonemes in the strict sense—’

  ‘What’s a phoneme, for heaven’s sake?’

  ‘Take too long to explain properly. But roughly speaking, it’s a class of sound, like say t or d or short o, recognized by a particular language, which makes a brick you can build meaningful words out of. Now these Sshm-qh vowels aren’t like that at all. They’re more like the intonation in an English sentence. They carry feeling-tones. If I say Sshm-qh by itself, with a sort of murmur-vowel — we’d call it schwa — in the middle, it means I am just mentioning the Sshm-qh without any special feeling. (By the way, if you can’t use a phonetic schwa-symbol when you’re writing the language, why not write an ordinary e, instead of that ambiguous apostrophe, or the hyphen?) Now, if I say Sshmiqh or Sshmeeqh (or in this case, probably Sshmϋqh) with an i-type vowel, I’m amused, or specially cheerful. If I say Sshmooqh with that u-sound, it means I love them, or I’m feeling sentimental or something. If I say Sshmahqh with that a-sound, it means I’m angry, or frightened, or that some sort of emergency is on. If I say Sshmauqh with that o-sound, it means I’m sad, or depressed, or awed about something.’

  ‘Would you use these vowels just for key words, or a whole sentence?’

  ‘A whole sentence or a whole speech. They’re supra-segmental phonemes in the American sense, really — they carry over the whole utterance. The Sshmeqh mouth returns to the i-position, or the a-position, or whatever it is, whenever it gets the chance. In fact they’re an unconscious reaction, more or less.’

  ‘Is that why their speech is so monotonous in tone?’

  ‘Yes, you’ve got it. They’ve no function for pitch variation.’

  ‘So those two villains were amused at the idiocy of the men carrying a heavy genny?’

  ‘Not necessarily. No, I don’t think so. They were in a cheerful mood, or joking, but I don’t think they were jibing at Simons and — was it Harte you said?’

  ‘Yes. They’ve kept clear of the blighters ever since. Say they hate their guts.’

  ‘Quite unnecessary. I wish they’d called me in. You see, I don’t think you quite realize the sound structure of this language. How many different consonant sounds do you think there are?’

  ‘Well, there’s b, d, f, g, a sort of gh-sound, j, at least two kinds of /-sound, m, n, and I suppose linguists call ng another? Then there’s p, q, a qh-sound, sh, t, v, at least one kind of w, a separate wh- or hw-sound, that ubiquitous y-sound, and a kind of zh-sound — or is that the same as j? That makes, say, twenty-one?’

  Anson sighed, just perceptibly. ‘Of distinguishable consonants there are at least thirty-six; not that that’s high for a language, that is considering there are no vowels properly speaking. And these consonants are not as haphazard as you seem to think.’

  ‘You mean, we may have got a consonant wrong in that tchuffjim word — it may mean something else?’

  ‘Just that — and a little bit more. Come and look at my charts.’ Anson rolled down a cylinder on a wall. Three columns of twelve symbols (six pairs) each, were printed on it in his clear hand.

  ‘I can’t follow these phoney — phonee — phonemes, do you call them?’

  ‘No, these are not phonemic symbols. They are my shot at a structure of broad phonetic symbols in accordance with Sshmeqh phonology; or rather according to this Sshmeqh language: there are others further round the planet, I’m told, quite different, and what’s more many of them are full of true vowels too. In fact I’ve been going to ask you if I could have a month away at the nearest language frontier — it’s supposed to be the equivalent of only 2,500 kilometres south-south-east -and take a tape machine. That one’s a tone language, moreover, like Chinese as it were. I could test whether the Sshmeqh pictograms were interlingual too. I’d use one of the short-hop craft. I’d like to take one of the interpreters and a native friend of mine who knows the way and could help with the other language. We’d need some hot-climate clothing and so on. I would have to leave all the possible analyses till I got back. It should provide enough material to give the elements of a second language for any future expedition, eh?’

  ‘What would you do about your stuff here? You’d be out of effective radio range, too.’

  ‘I’d leave it sealed and labelled, in case anything happened to me, with all my notes. I could leave instructions about what native to contact in case we never turned up again and you thought it worth se
nding a second machine with a search party.’

  ‘I think maybe we could manage it, if you set out within a week and come back within four weeks after that. That gives us a week or two’s margin for search in case. Sound the interpreters and see who would best like to go with you ... Well now, what do these columns of symbols stand for?’

  ‘Thanks, Chief. Well, the left-hand column here is what with us would be labials — lip-sounds. Actually they use the orifice-mantle and outer teeth. There are two kinds of p-sound, two b’s, no f or v by itself at all, two w-sounds, two wh-like sounds above them there, two m’s, and two labial laterals (rather a strange bird linguistically).’

  Jacobs snorted.

  ‘Similarly with these palatals, or what with us would be palatalized gingivals and such. They use the inner rows of teeth and the tongue. There are two ty-like sounds, two sh-like sounds, and so on, all corresponding to the labial examples in the first column ... Then on the right are the quasi-velar, quasi-uvular sounds — two q’s, two qh’s and so on. They use the retro-tongue for these, not the main tongue at all. All these thirty-six are not counting collocational variants. What the retrolingual l does to a neighbouring orifice-l, for instance, is nobody’s business.’

  Jacobs ground his teeth silently.

  ‘Well, the word these two men thought was tyewhdyem (but I spell it with only four consonant symbols to your seven, and two schwas) was, I’m pretty certain, tchewhdyemm — look, I’ll write it here, though I’d spell it professionally with only five consonants at most; and the first consonant, you see here, is a different one.’

  ‘And that means?’

  ‘Tough, brave, stout-hearted; or courage, guts, if you like: that’s what they were calling them, tough guys. The i-vowel and the grin posture, in so far as they were conscious at all, were complimentary, a slap on the back, I expect.’

  ‘My God! ... How do the words come to be so much alike?’

  ‘They’re only alike to you because you aren’t used to Sshmeqh phonology. Also, we don’t know for certain what really reaches their aural centres in their brains. Listen to this -’ and he switched on a machine. It was saying over and over again, ‘Tch-mb-, tch-mb-, tch-mb-...’

  ‘Now this.’

  ‘Ty-mm-ny, ty-mm-ny, ty-mm-ny ...’

  ‘Can’t hear much difference except at the end.’

  ‘Wait. Listen to this. This is word number one.’

  Depressing another switch, Anson produced from the same machine something in a deep yawning tone that sounded like ‘Ttthawmhwbbah ... tlthawmhwbbah ...’

  ‘That’s quarter-speed or so. Now the second word.’

  This time the machine produced ‘Ttrrhhohmwwawhnn ... ttrrhhohmwwawhnn ...’

  ‘Yes, I begin to see. You think that’s what they really hear?’

  Who’s to say? We can’t dissect them, and even if we could! And as they have no true writing, only a kind of pictography, there are no graphic clues. All I’m saying is, there is a difference which quartering the speed brings out, and maybe their auditory chain can pick up this difference easier than ours can. Now I have another surprise for you. These thirty-six consonants aren’t true phonemes. There are only about eighteen phonemes. A pretty meagre equipment by human standards, particularly as there aren’t any true vowels, but quite adequate to furnish a language. Anyway, about half of the thirty-six consonants are the manifestations, I’m pretty sure, of combinations of phonemes. You know how some men’ll say “Canh say” instead of “Can’t say.” Well, that voiceless n at the end of “Canh” may be regarded as a combination, in their speech, of an n-phoneme and a t-phoneme. Same here, only all over. Look, here’s my battery of phonemes.’

  Anson unrolled another chart in which the three columns now contained six symbols each.

  ‘I won’t bother you with details, but that sound tch, for instance, in the word meaning brave, is a compound of two ty-phonemes. I have a suspicion that in that particular case the first ty comes from a word ety meaning very, which you can hear quite a lot of. And the long m-sound at the end is undoubtedly two m’s, only I haven’t disentangled their meanings. One of the two b-sounds in the language is really a combination of p and b, and so with all the other pairs of voiced stops and fricatives.’

  Jacobs groaned softly. ‘I’d give a lot to be dealing with Earth!’

  ‘Oh, I could show you far worse things in a lot of human languages. This lot is child’s play. Now, I have another little surprise. You say you’re always meeting a no, especially when you ask if you can take some specimens home — right?’

  ‘If only I could crack that! It’s wrecking all my programme!’

  Anson regarded his chief with a calm but guarded gaze, like an experienced mother considering a fractious child.

  ‘You think there’s one word shnyewh, don’t you? and so, I’m afraid, do the interpreters; they’re very helpful, but they can’t know everything. But there isn’t one word: there are two. Neither of them starts with the same sound as the word Sshmeqk, by the way — that’s another compound, a double sh-sound. Both of them begin with a simple sh. Listen to this.’

  After some fiddling, Anson got his machine intoning ‘Shny-wh, shny-wh, shny-wh ...’

  ‘That’s the word I got whenever I pitched my informants a question I knew had a negative answer. Now listen to this; this was a response I got when I asked certain carefully chosen questions.’

  Again a repeated ‘Shny-wh, shny-wh, shny-wh ...’

  ‘There is a difference somewhere.’

  ‘Well, try the slow speed. Here’s number one.’

  Jacobs heard ‘Thkhhnnauhhwh ... thkhhnnauhhwh ...’

  ‘Now number two.’ ‘Thkhhnnohjhgh ... thkhhnnohjhgh ...’

  ‘The vowel sounds different!’

  ‘Only because of the influence of the final consonant. In the first word it was that one, the second symbol of the second pair on my first chart; in the second word it was the first of the second pair. If you can’t stomach my symbols, you could write the end of the second word with ph instead of wh. It’s tenser, tighter if you like. But let’s try the sound-spectrograph.’

  Anson switched on a small illuminated screen, on which he presently conjured up two versions of a figure resembling an out-of-focus black-and-white photograph, marred by movement, of the ruins of a rope-bridge in a dense jungle gorge, during a thick fog.

  ‘Now here’s your no-word, shnyewh. Left to right is time. Upwards for higher pitch. Compare the other word, alongside, shnyeph. This time we get this odd transient up there near the end (which you never get in our own attempts — may be something to do with the tensing of the mantle round the outer teeth) and the second pseudo-formant’ (pointing to a sagging strand of the rope-bridge) ‘drops quite a bit, compared to its level in your first word, here ... Now here instead are my synthetic versions. They are the minimal freehand drawings that I could get a 95 per cent “correct” response to when I played them back as sound to natives. They are, if you like, the skeleton, the basic structure; all the rest are adventitious trimmings.’

  Anson lit up a chastely futuristic piece of abstract art in which the rope-bridge and jungle had been replaced by smooth blips and snakes, and the fog had gone. Then he ‘played’ it back. It was recognizable, if rather clipped and twangy, as the two original sneezes. The second came to a perceptibly harder end.

  ‘Now, this ph-sound turns out to be a compound of two wh-phonemes. I happen to have succeeded in dissecting these two words, so to speak. The first, which means, roughly, no, is a kind of agglutination of esh, which means indeed, in fact, or something like that; nye, which means not, or negative; and ewh, which means thus, or so, or in that way. So their no means, etymologically, “Indeed not so.” ‘