Alien Tongues

by M. L. Janes

  To Grant's deep satisfaction, there was no dissention to that sentiment. These were men and women who had all experienced transformative events in their lives. They understood the existence of, and the importance of being prepared for, extraordinary new perspectives on life. A valuable consequence of that fact was that they were also never carried away by the emotion of new perspectives. They would immediately apply their practical minds to the details of what needed to happen.

  "If we're going to make such a large investment," said an older woman, "How are we going to protect it? Do we have good reason to believe that the Consortium will keep its part of the bargain? Do they have dissenting voices which at some point may take over leadership? Are we sure that they respect us and it's not just lip-service? I don't believe we ever had an alliance before with an organization which doesn't share our core principles."

  Grant had waited patiently for this question. Much better to make his next point as an answer to it, rather than as an upfront sales pitch. It was going to ring in his colleagues' ears for a long time.

  "It's more a question of, can they trust us?" he replied, "Because we're going to manage their money for them."

  There was a soft buzz among the attendees. He continued easily, "It won't come as a big surprise to you that our government enemies are now trying to freeze or even confiscate the Consortium's assets. Fortunately, they have good lawyers to protect those assets so far, but the politicians are now planning to play the terrorism card. So the Consortium has inquired about our trusteeship. They've paid some high-priced banking types to check into us, and of course have been impressed with our unimpeachable record with casinos and other sensitive financial organizations. But there's one additional layer or security that they are asking for, and I feel there's no reason not to give them. And that's a young man by the name of Séamus FitzGerald."

  A man with a French accent said, "He's the guy who protected those girls! He's been working in my Riviera operation. He's helped make a boat-load of money for us. I'd be sorry to lose him. Why they want him so bad?"

  "Very simple." Grant strolled to the back of the room and poured himself some freshly made tea. "In an instant, and without hesitation, that young man sacrificed his career and his freedom, left behind everything he owns and everything else he values, and placed his life in great danger, to protect those girls' lives. That fact was made clear to a Professor James Wilkie, particularly by his own assistant Dr Alice Turner who witnessed everything. I know Alice personally and, though she volunteers to work with me in order to pay off her mother's debt, she is no particular friend of the Syndicate. But she was fair enough to describe not only Séamus's actions but also our organization to the Professor. Wilkie is greatly trusted by the Consortium for having switched sides from the government on a matter of principle, being so outraged at the attempted murder of the girls. He considers Séamus a man to be trusted above all."

  "As a fellow man of principle?" The Frenchman asked. "If so, can we be sure his principles align with ours? Now we would be putting a great deal of trust in him, also."

  Grant walked back at a leisurely pace to the front of the room. "Strangely enough," he replied, "The answer to your question is no. Séamus is a very rare type of human being. He does not act on principle. I think if he did, he would never take an action, because he would be forever trying to weigh up one principle against another. No, Mr FitzGerald is a man of instinct, a man of action. If you ever should find the time to read a science-fiction novel called Moon Uprising, which I recommend because it was allegedly written by Wilkie after he joined the Consortium, then you will find this part of his nature distilled into the character of Ben, who is a sort of ape-like human-being."

  Grant shrugged, finished his tea and put down the cup. 'I apologize if I am rambling here. But let me say that, yes, I would trust Séamus as trustee of all my money, not just the Syndicate's. He cannot by nature disturb any agreed arrangement unless his instinct compels him to do so; he would take the view that he does not have the authority. And his instinct, remarkably, is detached not only from self-interest, but even from self-preservation."

  In September 2012, a skeleton was unearthed from under a car park in the City of Leicester (pronounced LES-ter), a town of about half a million people, in the East Midlands of England. As hoped by the excavators, DNA testing and other evidence caused Leicester University to conclude, beyond reasonable doubt, that the skeleton was of King Richard III, who had died in battle more than five hundred years earlier. Though he reigned for only two years, Richard was perhaps the most controversial monarch of all time. He is thoroughly vilified by William Shakespeare in one of the world's most famous plays, the tragedy of Richard III. In the play he has virtually no saving graces – he is almost pure evil. There is an irony that Shakespeare had the unhorsed Richard famously cry out in the battle, "A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!" as this Darth Vader character desperately struggles against the ultimate victor, Henry Tudor. (A theatrical contrivance, since Shakespeare did not want a horse onstage.) For years, horseless automobiles were unknowingly parked on top of him, as if subjecting him to the mordant humor of the British peasantry.

  But if we study the true history of Richard in the context of his times, little can be found to show him a worse character than the monarchs before or after him. Instead we learn more about Shakespeare who wrote the play a hundred years after Richard's death, under the reign of Henry Tudor's granddaughter. Since Elizabeth I held the throne by virtue of her grandfather's rebellion against his monarch, it was convenient to paint Richard in such colors to secure her legitimacy. It is a humbling lesson to view Shakespeare as a political hack, a sycophant to the dominant power of his time. The discovery of Richard's remains can never undo Shakespeare's hatchet job. But it is an intriguing message, sent over half a millennium ago and which can be read only now with today's scientific techniques, that history cannot be erased

  Alice Turner sat with her mother in a tea-shop, through the window of which she could see the 800-years-old castle where Richard III had spent childhood years. Alice thought how huge it was, and how tiny and inconsequential the pretty village below it and the surrounding farm land of the Yorkshire Dales. In the Middle Ages it had been a center of power of the known Western World. Now it stood quietly, among sheep and cows as it probably always had been, while the rest of the world had increased its population twenty-fold. It is understandably not on the route of Asian sightseeing tours, despite its delightful views and the intriguing incongruity of fortifications and pasture. Who among these visitors would appreciate that this castle, a key home to the House of York, as much as anything symbolized the end of the English language's retreat to near extinction among an oppressed feudal peasantry, to its world domination which obliged the children of even Asia's ruling families to speak it well? Such are history's bizarre turns. When the young Richard was warming himself at the fires at Middleham Castle, the Gaelic language – through its more widespread use and history of literature – would have appeared a better bet as the ultimate global lingua franca. Now it was only the refuge of Irish romantics like Séamus FitzGerald.

  "How was the Riviera?" her mother asked as she spread clotted cream on a scone.

  "I didn't pay it very much attention, Mum. I was there just to talk with Séamus about our project."

  "Such a nice boy. I do hope he comes back to the Labs. You were getting on so well with him. I was expecting a little romance there."

  "Oh, come on, Mum. You know he's not really my type. He was just my fantasy guy who I wanted a bit of a fling with. Don't get me wrong – I think he's really sweet and he's a special friend. But other than our project, we're never really going to have much in common. For sure I'm going to end up with another academic type."

  "How about Dave Orwood? Is that back to a friendship again?"

  "Funnily, yes. You know what an idiot he was when I first moved back here – thinking I was the solution to his divorce. Then he got insanely jealous of
me being seen with Séamus. Since Séamus left, he couldn't have been nicer. People keep telling me how he praises me as the best thing he ever had in his life, but he knows he'd never be good enough for me. Quite reformed, is our Dave!" Alice gave a short laugh.

  "But not reformed enough to be a decent husband?"

  Alice gave a dismissive gesture. "Oh, forget that. If I don't have enough in common with Séamus, I have nothing in common with Dave. Anyway, he can't get over me just because I was so hot in bed."

  "Alice!"

  "Mum, there's no one within earshot and don't pretend such facts are a shock to you. Anyway, a relationship here isn't relevant because I've decided to reduce my workload at the Labs. So you should seriously think about moving south to Cambridge."

  "Thank you for the offer, Dear, but I suspect that would cramp your style. I've been getting a lot stronger recently. I think I'm going to be fine staying up here by myself."

  Alice put down her tea-cup and took hold of her mother's arm. "That's great, Mum, but it's not just that. I want to get you further away from the Syndicate."

  Ellen Turner shrugged. "They're nice people. They understood what went wrong with your Dad."

  Alice felt an inner shudder. She hated that her mother had confided everything in Grant. "I simply don't understand why you and Séamus put so much faith in that man. He has a heart of stone."

  "Maybe, Dear. I can't myself see into a man's heart. But I do know he is a man of his word, and that's a rare thing today." She paused then, as if wanting to change the subject, said, "What about Séamus's mother? Early on, you told me about his father but you said before he was quiet about her. I think you just said he hadn't seen her in a long time. Did you learn anything more?"

  Alice could see some small figures walking round the castle. She imagined armies of attackers and defenders, engaged in bloody mayhem, slicing and burning each other in order that one family, probably little different from its rival family, could wear the crown in faraway Westminster.

  "Actually, I did. Séamus said that, after his father died, his mother went a bit strange. She couldn't deal with the loss and blamed Christianity for it – you know, because of the Catholic-Protestant conflict in the North. She said a priest came to her and said, it was all part of God's plan which we can't know. And she thought, well, if that's Christianity's answer to everything that happens, why bother with being Christian? I mean, if this is what can happen when God loves you, why would we care if God hates us?"

  Her mother nodded sympathetically, but was not the type to consider such arguments. She went to church to meet her neighbors.

  "Anyway, she finally found this cult. Apparently the cult believes we humans on earth are descended from some extraterrestrial humans who visited here and left us as a sort of experiment. They believe that there's a human society somewhere out there in the heavens which has all the answers, if only we can get in touch with them."

  Mrs Turner was pouring them more tea. "Well if these people ever do get in touch with them," she said brightly, "They'll have me sign up for their congregation. I dare say their Sunday services will be a lot more interesting than what we get now. So anyway, where is Séamus's mother now?"

  "She lives somewhere with this cult," Alice said, nibbling on a dry scone. "She went off to join them as soon as Séamus went to college. He says she was a very dutiful but mentally distant mother to him up to that point. She kept in contact for a while, but it seems the cult discouraged it. I think the cult accepts the need for families to raise kids but, once they're adults, treat them like anyone else. They say the family-clan structure of the world is the greatest source of human misery."

  Her mother smiled politely. "Maybe, but you're still my pride and joy, Alice Dear. In the end we're all selfish, aren't we? I mean you have to accept human nature, don't you?" She spent a moment, thinking. "It's also about language, isn't it? When you and I are talking, it's different from with other folk. When I say something to you, you seem to understand me so much better, like you really know what I'm thinking. I'm never going to have to worry that you get the wrong end of the stick."

  Alice nodded vaguely as she gazed up at the bastion of the House of York. She was thinking how fortunate she was, as a woman, not to have been born at an earlier time. She had a secure, well-paid position at Cambridge, and a flexible government role which allowed her to use the facility and visit her mother at will. A couple of the academics down south were interested in her and she felt both were fishing to see if she might be interest in marriage. They weren't particularly physically attractive, but she really enjoyed their company and they had a lot in common. Just like Al and Jo, Meg Moon's suitors in Moon Uprising. Alice burst out laughing.

  "Did I say something funny?" her mother asked with surprise.

  "No, Mum. You're right. The language of families. You can never upset anyone too much because they know the entire history of where you're coming from. That's the comfort, and that also the boundary." Séamus had never even reached the boundary, and the girls had spent their whole lives trying to scale over its wall.

  Jenny felt this was the most magical night of her life. For the first time, she had her three sisters all alone to herself. Admittedly, Ivan had parked his great frame at the other end of the bar, their chaperone for the night, but in practice he wasn't going to dare try and limit their fun. For certain, he wasn't going to risk the disapproval of Phyllis and the chances of getting lucky at the end of that night. Lots of men were eyeing up the four of them, so animated together, so exotic as four unique Asian looks, but all wearing the identical Irish mini-kilts. The standard approach line was to ask why they had Scottish dress, and they never tired of confusing the questioner by correcting him with the word Gaelic. One Frenchman had thought they had said Gallic, which led to further confusion, and had bought him more time with the girls.

  But they made it clear that no man was allowed to spend more than twenty minutes with them that night. They would happily exchange phone numbers, but this was emphatically their Girls' Night. Jenny has insisted upon that, to which Chrissy and Phyllis had shrugged and readily accepted, and Tina had pulled a face and said it would be a very rare event. Once they had begun drinking and talking, however, Tina seemed to be enjoying herself as much as anyone. To Jenny, she looked unbelievably sexy that night, her make-up doing extraordinary things with her looks, and her long, booted legs seeming to stretch for miles up to her mini-kilt.

  "God, Tina Baby," Jenny said when she finally felt the alcohol starting to hit her, "You could turn me into a lesbian so easily. Girls, isn't she just a doll? Dear, if you're ever stuck for the night and you want someone to go down on you, I'm really willing to try. And I never made that offer to any other woman."

  "That's very kind of you to offer, Jenny," Tina said dryly. "I don't want to hurt your feelings because you're such a good friend, but I'm just never going to take you up on it. The thought makes me want to puke."

  Jenny ran her hand down the side of Tina's neck and the front of her chest, which Tina permitted with a small grin. "Oh, you're a challenge!" The smaller girl said breathlessly. "It makes me want you even more!"

  "You should ask Chrissy," Tina told her. "She's more the type to experiment like that."

  "Hmmm." Jenny moved to Chrissy, who was standing right by. She touched her in the same way, again without resistance or response. "Well, Chrissy to me is more like a very beautiful boy without a cock. But I'm willing to give it a try."

  "Sorry," Chrissy told her. "You know, someday I might want to try it with another girl, but it wouldn't be with your type. Probably a Tina-type for me, too. Anyway, how do you know I don't have a cock?"

  "I know you don't," Phyllis added. "I saw you run with Séamus."

  "But you saw his," Tina said. "What was it like?"

  "Too dark, Silly. But he's got a really nice butt. You too, of course, Chrissy."

  "Can I ask for a moment of pure honesty here?" Tina continued. "Did any of you girls have any sex w
ith Séamus? I can say honestly that the only thing I did was get naked and let him kiss a nipple. Anything more than that?"

  All of the others shook their heads. "You went furthest, Tina," Phyllis said. "I just let him see my boobies when we had a mock knife-fight." Then she pointed at Chrissy. "You sat on him, totally naked together. He must have felt something!"

  "So did I," Chrissy said, grinning. "All that hair felt really good."

  Tina grabbed her shoulders and gave her a mild shake in a humorous act of jealousy. "Okay, okay," Chrissy hastily added. "He's all yours, when he's ready. But be careful, Baby. You're so hungry, you're in danger of swallowing him whole."

  Tina placed her forehead on Chrissy's chest in a play-act of sobbing, appearing to thump in frustration with her fists. Then it looked like an idea suddenly occurred to her, and her face brightened. "You know, maybe I'm the same as Jenny. Always wanting love from someone who doesn't want me in return!"

  The other girls all laughed. A group of three young men approached them, one of them asking if they could buy the girls drinks. Though he spoke in English, Chrissy knew they were locals and replied in French.

  "Of course you can," she told them, "And we enjoy talking to handsome young men like you. But here are the terms before you decide. This is our Girls' Night so we only talk for twenty minutes to any man, then we can exchange numbers for another time. That mountain of a man at the end of bar is here to protect us. And we never have sex for free." She glanced at Tina. "Even if we fall in love with you."

  The man grinned. "This year, I had sex for free with only two women. The first one cost me far too much in personal time, and the second one – in all modesty – should have paid me."