Nazareth had the privilege of great age; she had diapered this alpha male many many times. And of course, by comparison with her father and her brother, who’d been Heads before him, he was a very mild alpha male indeed. She leaned across the desk and patted his free hand.
“Don’t tease now, Jonathan Asher,” she admonished him. “I’m much too old for that. I’ll forget what we’re talking about and you’ll have to start all over again from the beginning.”
“Would you now?”
“I’m sure I would. In fact, I feel my memory failing me this very minute, Charles.”
“You’re faking,” he said. “But you’re right, I should get on with it. This is not a holiday, although I may declare it one yet, in honor of the triumph of the Lines over the ecclesiasticals. It’s the way you women bamboozled the priests that warms my heart, you perceive.”
“Oh? Really?”
“They’re so damned irritating. They don’t have the guts for being men, but they want the privileges, so they go hiding in the skirts of what they rightly call their ‘Mother’ Church, where you can’t get at them. I suppose it’s a good thing males like that have some respectable haven to flee to, but it rankles. You always want to dare them to come out and fight, but you can’t do that because they’re all dressed up in skirts. I can’t tell you how much satisfaction it gives me that you women whipped that pack of—”
Nazareth clucked her tongue, and he stopped short.
“Well, they are.”
“Some of them are rather nice,” she said. “And think what a lot of good they do.”
He glared at her, and she suggested that he tell her what had happened next.
“Oh, yes. Nazareth, what the Bishop came to tell me this morning is that the nun they had in charge of laundering your heresies—that’s what he calls them, dear, ‘heresies’—was actually in charge of a secret rebellion inside the convents. Can you believe that? All the time they thought she was doing nothing but following her orders and turning out authorized sanitized gibberish, she was in solemn truth recruiting nuns—who recruited nuns, who recruited nuns—to make handwritten copies of those very same heresies and distribute them in secret from one end of the world to the other. And they don’t know how long that went on . . . they keep saying ‘sixty years’ but they don’t really know . . . or how many nuns are involved, or how deep the Wicked Nun’s tendrils are in the loam!”
Nazareth ignored the ache in her heart, and asked, cautiously, “What are they going to do to her, Jonathan?”
“To who?”
“To whoever it was that did this? The Wicked Nun? What will they do to her?”
“They can’t do anything to her,” he laughed, “except rejoice in what they confidently assume to be the warm place she inhabits in Hell; she died without their ever knowing what she’d been up to. And the nun that gave it all away only tattled on her deathbed; she’s far beyond their reach as well. As for the ones she ratted on, only god knows what they will do to them—but she didn’t name them, Natha, and the good fathers will have to catch them, first! And at this point—”
His face changed, and the sterness she saw there now was not feigned. “Nazareth,” he said, “I gave the Bishop my word that what I am telling you will remain confidential, and I expect that promise to be honored. You may know—even the Bishop would agree that you’re entitled to know, and whether he agreed or not, I would rule that you were. But you are not to tell anyone else. Do you understand?”
“Ah,” she said, “don’t concern yourself; I won’t speak of it to anyone at all.” She did not add that she was safe as churches, but allowed him to make the joke and joined him in laughing at his wit.
“In confidence, then,” he said. “They have no information but the knowledge that the plot existed, and that it still exists. But so determined are they to ‘stamp out the perversion’ that they are sending one hundred priests—one hundred, Nazareth—to search out the terrible tawdry traitors and bring them in.”
Nazareth sat back and sighed, shaking her head in the amazement he would expect of her, her heart quieting on its own. It was all right; everything was all right. And she listened respectfully while Jonathan told her about the plan to post priests as observers to the convents until the guilty nuns betrayed themselves and then to bring them in one by one with no one else ever knowing, on trumped-up excuses. Finding and destroying the Láadan texts one by one as they went along, with no one else ever knowing. All very hush-hush and solemnly secret; it was clear that the priests were well aware that no more powerful instrument for change exists than language, for all that they weren’t linguists, and that they took this matter absolutely seriously.
When he had finished telling her the last detail, and describing the discomfiture of the visiting bishop, and admiring the set of extraordinary coincidences the women of the Lines had managed to turn to their own purposes to make all this happen, and marveling over how many points all this meant for the Lines, he finally began to weary of the subject. He was vastly amused that one hundred priests were to go out and devote their lives to superstitious nonsense concocted by the linguist women and revised by nuns. And he most certainly would not, as the bishop had advised that he do, order the women of the Lines to give up the use of Langlish/Láadan forever.
“It will be a very cold day in hell,” he noted grimly, “theirs or ours, when we find it necessary to take instruction in the managing of our women from the Roman Catholic Church!”
“Such arrogance!” Nazareth observed, looking shocked.
“So I informed him. And I gave him a thirty point blood pressure boost by telling him that not only would I not forbid you women your Annual Central Caucus, as he said I ‘must’ do, but I intended to add an additional half-day to it to demonstrate what value I placed on his meddling.”
“My goodness.”
“I believe I made my feelings clear.”
“I’m sure you did. And well you should have. It’s none of his business what we do.”
“I told him,” Jonathan said, “that the women of the Lines have been speaking Láadan among themselves for decades, and that the result has been the antithesis of the corruption and cataclysms he predicts. The only effect the use of the language has had upon our women, I told His Exalted Whatsis, has been to make them ever more womanly.”
“Why, thank you, Jonathan! What a lovely thing to say!”
“It’s no more than the simple truth,” he told her kindly. “It has been good for you women, and for all of us. But, Nazareth—”
“Yes, my dear?” She cocked her head and leaned toward him, her lips half-parted and her posture attentive.
“Nazareth, this must never happen again. I mean that.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“If you had come to me and explained what you wanted to do,” he said, humoring her, and taking pleasure in the humoring, “I would have told you no. For many many reasons, not the least of which is that you women are far too busy to take on popularization projects of that kind. Not to mention that it was a disrespectful piece of mischief—the priests are poor excuses for men, but they are men nonetheless, and no doubt many of them, as you say, do a great deal of good. But Nazareth, most of all I would have told you no because the idea was a waste of time, with not a hairbreadth’s chance of succeeding. I’m glad you weren’t stopped, because it’s tremendous that you women managed to lead a whole church round the barn like you did—but I would have stopped you if I’d known. I suppose you had some notion that if you could get other women to speak the language it would be helpful to them, didn’t you? Yes . . . I see you did. That’s very touching, and very generous and kind, and very romantic—but Aunt Natha, it’s also ridiculous. Women outside the Lines aren’t interested in languages! They are interested in their clothes and their houses and their clubs and their husbands and their children—period. Maybe—on a good day—they are interested in their gardens. Their heads are as empty of any other thought as an egg is empty o
f beefsteak. It was such a hopeless project, Nazareth! So foolish. . . . I am a little surprised that you encouraged it, frankly. Is it possible, Nazareth, that you really are getting old?”
She shook her head, and sighed again, and looked helpless and distracted, and he told her not to worry about it any more. Not to ever consider doing such a thing again, and not to let the details of the Church’s current quandary go past this room—but not to worry about it. And she left him sitting there thinking what a dear old thing she was, and in a mood that meant a pleasant day for one and all.
In her bed, allegedly “taking a little nap,” Nazareth carefully considered the status of the plan point by point and decided that she in fact did not need to worry, although her serenity of mind wasn’t precisely what Jonathan had been envisioning. She was sorry that the dying nun had become frightened and talked, because it was a complication—and because she must have suffered over it. But it was bound to happen eventually, and Nazareth had expected it for years; it was astonishing that it hadn’t happened sooner, in fact. And it wasn’t serious, not now.
The tiny cells of Láadan within the convents were everywhere now, not only on this world but on colony worlds, and they were sheltered by women who knew how to nurture the language and who loved it enough to speak it and to teach it. For priests to be out searching for it, and with any luck finding it, thus putting themselves in the constant company of women who were being shaped by the language, was excellent. It was doing the men of the Lines enormous good, and it would be good for the priests as well. If they caught a nun or two, it would make no difference; the language had spread too far to root out. For all the technological marvels of this society, its men had not yet devised any way to put toothpaste back into its tube. Nazareth would in fact send out a message that a few sisters here and there might want to allow themselves to be “caught” at reasonable intervals of time. Just enough of them, and all of them too deeply repentant to bring down any punishment of consequence; it would lull the men of the Church and keep them from becoming excessive in their vigilance.
After all, hadn’t it now been proved beyond all question that the language was no threat? It had been a fad, pushed by the forces of the media, waved in the public eye, taken up by the very best people, scholarly articles written about it by the most distinguished old puffballs—it had had everything going for it. And it had still failed dismally, no? Vanished! Evaporated! Who could be afraid of such a phantom as that?
Meanwhile, Láadan would spread; the tiny wild vine wreaths, unnoticed by anyone, would go up on wall after wall. It would continue to keep the women of the Lines, and all the women who knew it beyond, immune to the state of violence that the men struggled with so incessantly; it would continue to provide the women with the patience necessary to bring the men out of those endless loops of violence always begetting more violence. The day would come when they would have a war, and all of the men would look at each other and laugh and just go home.
Nazareth had no more intention of trying to explain to the other women how that would happen, or what the principle of resonance had to do with the price of eggs, than she had had all those many years ago of explaining to them what it meant to really believe that language can change reality. They would find out, in good time, long after she was gone; she was too tired to hurry that process or to wrangle with them about it, even if there were any reason to think that might be useful. They would have her diaries, full of casseroles and desserts and intricate soups and sauces ready for decoding; let them read about it there, with her safely out of range of all their argument.
In a while, Láadan would move out among Protestant and other women as well as Catholic, because the easing of the prejudice against the “Lingoes” was at last beginning to heal the split between them and the rest of the world. Soon women of the Lines and other women would be mingling freely again, whether the government approved of that or not; soon, there would be non-linguist women coming to the Womanhouses as friends, and bringing their children along with them to be friends, too. They would hear Láadan spoken there, not just in church services and set pieces, but as common everyday language. And the little ones, both boys and girls, would pick up the language as effortlessly as they picked up any other language, and use it among themselves.
Nazareth closed her eyes, thinking that after all she might sleep a little, and smiled at the ceiling. If she lived long enough, she would be so interested to see what they were going to be like—the first human men who had learned Láadan as infants and toddlers. It might make little difference, or no difference at all; on the other hand, it might make a difference worth rejoicing over, and the chances were good enough to make that the likely outcome.
We never dared teach our male children, she thought; it would have alerted the men to things they were better off not noticing. It was always “just for girls,” and peer pressure has kept it that way without much effort on our part. But out in the world, and out in the colonies, it would be different. The little ones would be enchanted to have a “secret language” to play with and to share. Bless the children.
She wouldn’t live long enough to see it all happen, but she didn’t mind; it was enough to have lived to see it all begin. And so she drifted into sleep, at peace. No plan is one hundred percent successful; no woman expects any such thing. But this plan was moving along at a satisfying seventy-five percent, more than adequate for the purpose. A jog here, a jog there—the occasional dropped stitch that let you know it wasn’t the work of a machine, and no harm done. She was more than willing to settle for that.
EPILOGUE
TO: The Council of the Consortium
FROM: XJHi
SUBJECT: The problem of Earth
NOTE: This paper has been prepared in response to the COTC’s annual resolution condemning the practice of perpetual surveillance over the planet Earth and its colonies, and to the annual proposal that XJHi at minimum begin reform of that practice by reducing the number of live observors in place within Earth’s territorial boundaries. XHJi must once again respond by requesting that the COTC decide upon an alternative solution to the Terran problem; until such an alternative is available, institution of reforms is not possible. XHJi respectfully directs the attention of the Council to the attached position statement, which summarizes the situation and appeals—once again—for immediate action rather than a new series of delays. END NOTE.
The decision of the COTC to intervene in the evolutionary development of the planet Earth by providing aid on a limited basis was not made on impulse. It was based upon a set of alarming and inescapable facts. As follows:
1.It had become obvious that the Terrans were on the point of moving out into space whether we intervened or not, making it necessary that some action be taken.
2.Although Terran males remained at that stage of evolution in which violence is a primary drive of the organism, there were hopeful signs; a small but significant percentage of the males, although quite naturally unable simply to bypass this stage, had become aware that it was undesirable and were beginning to work toward the goal of going beyond it.
3.The majority of Terran females had moved beyond the stage of violence still gripping the males. (This is consistent with the general pattern of the species, in which development toward maturity proceeds somewhat more rapidly in females than in males, and was to be anticipated.)
4.Unfortunately, the result of #2 and #3 above was not, as might have been hoped, a stable cultural environment in which the evolutionary lead of the females spurred the males to close the gap. On the contrary. The male majority reacted to this gender difference with violence! Why this should have been the case is a matter of considerable controversy. The Terran males claim to have scientific evidence that the females are of an intelligence inferior to theirs; if they are correct, it is possible that this accounts at least in part for the failure of the females to function as effective models for the males. Whatever the explanation, however, by 11,302 one thing was certain:
the females of Earth (together with the more advanced males viewed by their peers as effeminate and weak) were literally in danger from their male counterparts. The lack of developmental synchrony between the two genders of the species, which up to this time had been of no particular concern, now manifested itself as a difference so extreme that it placed a radical strain upon the entire Terran cultural fabric.
5.The weapons systems developed by the Terrans had reached a stage acutely dangerous not only to Earth but to its neighbors as well. Although we had ample measure for neutralizing the effects of these weapons systems when given advance warning of their use, a number of Consortium worlds would have been totally vulnerable to them if surveillance had not been maintained. (In this regard, XJHi would be most grateful if the Council members would explain how the safety of those endangered worlds could have been ensured without invading the privacy and violating the sovereignty of Earth!)
6.In 11,303 the problem was placed on the COTC agenda for formal discussion. The ensuing debate was characterized by what could almost be described as earthly vehemence, and resulted in a series of paradoxes that were not given the attention they deserved. Debate ended when it became clear that only three courses of action were open to us:
A. We could put an end to the matter once and for all by eliminating the planet, in its entirety, from the universe.
B. We could place Earth under complete quarantine, with constant surveillance maintained to guarantee that its activities would have no effects beyond the borders of its own atmospheres, and leave it to work out its difficulties independently.
C. We could interfere in Terran evolution, minimally, in the hope that with our guidance Earth could be kept safe long enough for the males to reach the end of the violent stage and for balance to be restored.
Not one of these alternatives allowed the Consortium to maintain its own ethic of nonviolence—hence the paradoxes. Alternative A was not given serious consideration, although logic required that it be included in the debate. The focus of controversy, from the beginning, was on the choice between Alternatives B and C.
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