Visitor: A Foreigner Novel

by C. J. Cherryh

  The ship-aijiin, he decided, were probably in the same situation he and mani were—they had to let their subordinates do what they could do, and wait. Jase-aiji had been down here. He would definitely be talking to Sabin-aiji, who had seen the kyo ship before, and dealt with it.

  Ogun-aiji would be waiting. And Lord Geigi and Gin-nandi would both be waiting, all the aijiin of everything—just waiting for reports out of that room.

  Probably there were kyo on that ship waiting for Prakuyo to report to them, too.

  Nand’ Bren said it was hard to understand the kyo, but maybe that was one thing they all had in common. The paidhiin got to go in and find things out, and figure things out.

  Prakuyo was somebody important. But since he came, himself, he was probably not the most important.

  Prakuyo had changed, which was good. He had been very thin. Now he looked a lot more like the others. He was rounder than Geigi or Bindanda. And one could not think that he had come all this way for teacakes, or conversation. Neither would anybody else. He really hoped they would not say anything about taking any Reunioners away with them: he would give them Braddock, but certainly nobody else.

  And when nand’ Bren had not included him in that late session with Prakuyo and the others, he had had, in that very moment, a feeling that it was very adult business afoot, that had to be done right, and without any stupid mistakes.

  But when aijiin were in conflict—and subordinates went in—it made a difference how good those subordinates were.

  The Mospheiran paidhiin had been doing it for a long, long time, and nand’ Bren was the best there had ever been. He was sure of that. Nand’ Bren was the very best.

  And nand’ Bren had not left him totally without information: nand’ Bren had seen to it he had the little screen, and told him it would always keep up to date with whatever people put in.

  And now the kyo had them. He had had that from Antaro’s reports.

  His tablet was on the little table, right beside the bed. He had not turned it on since before supper. He thought now the light might wake his aishid.

  But not if he got under the covers with it. So he reached out an arm, took it, threw the covers over his head so he could see it, and pushed the button to turn it on.

  It was not the image he had left on it. It was an image of steps on a stairway. Then people, humans, going up such steps.

  A ladder. An atevi worker climbing it.

  A mountain. Humans climbing the snowy part, in heavy coats.

  It was making changes without his doing anything, and his aishid said nand’ Bren was asleep.

  He touched the Ragi side of the screen and it said aloud, in nand’ Bren’s voice, mountain. Climb the mountain.

  He felt a chill. He touched the kyo side of the screen. It said, Hsuna. Hsuna nak.

  Not in nand’ Bren’s voice.

  He heard a stir in the room. He came out from under the covers, hair all in disarray. The sound had waked everybody.

  “Nandi?” Jegari asked.

  “The little screen,” he said. “One of the kyo is putting words in.” The image kept changing. “Every time it changes, one of them is adding words.”

  His aishid gathered to see, eyes shining gold in the light from the little screen.

  “It seems a good thing,” Veijico said. “Is it not, nandi?”

  Could his aishid ask him such a question? He had no idea. He had absolutely no idea whether he should speak, or whether his voice might go to the other machine.

  Surely not. It had no way to hear him. Had it? He had not tried to change the screen. Whoever was awake surely would not know they were all sitting here watching.

  Was it Prakuyo? He thought not. He thought rather that voice belonged to the smallest of them. Hakuut.

  That was spooky. It was really spooky.

  19

  No breakfast as yet—but there was hot tea.

  And two messages had arrived in Bren’s message bowl last night, through the servant passage. Kandana, on night watch, had read both, had advised staff, who had decided not to wake him, and Bindanda delivered them with the pre-breakfast tea, the first a message with no seal, no cylinder, on the Guild’s impermanent paper.

  It came from Antaro, of Cajeiri’s bodyguard, and said: New words are appearing in the device in the middle of the night.

  The second message came from Cenedi.

  For the paidhi when he wakes.

  That was interesting. He had not touched the device. He had debriefed with Jase and his aishid and gone straight to bed. It was beside him, atop his physical notebook—he took his best preliminary notes on paper, a habit a voyage to another star and back had not broken, and that battered notebook had seen some travel.

  But had the fishing net indeed caught words last night?

  He turned the device on, sipped tea, and ran through the early section.

  Hakuut, he thought, by the timbre of the voice.

  The lad—he mentally thought of Hakuut that way, fresh-faced, smaller, less in rank—the lad had worked hard at it: picture after picture. He skipped ahead and looked at those sequences designed to get at abstracts.

  Filled in.

  God, had the fellow gotten any sleep?

  There had to be some clues in there, some places where he hadn’t been able to puzzle out the desired path, where it came to abstracts.

  But it was everything he had hoped to do in days. There. On every device this morning. Hakuut had handed them a starting-point . . . actually . . . actually—he checked a group of images that he had set up to establish words like same and different, like and unlike. Filled in. He checked one and another of the concept sections. Filled in.

  God. A gift.

  He poured himself another cup of strong tea and started through it, with an application that exceeded any he’d poured into University graduate finals. He hadn’t had to absorb vocabulary this fast, this crazily, since that ages-ago night when he’d firmly believed the Linguistics certification board was going to try to set him back a year, purely on age requirements.

  Three in the morning, he’d hit a wall and plowed through it. Three in the morning, and a strange sense of how the various numerologies worked in the word cores, and how the logic of the shift revolved simply around convenience and ease of pronunciation, not in some arcane set of word classes that human study had created to explain it. It had been, was still, just that simple—once one had done enough of a type. One could find a logic buried in a class of things.

  And here was a string of identified abstracts, people, processes, acts, connectors, modifiers, done up in seals and ribbons, as atevi would say.

  Seals. As in—locked down.

  And in the thought that just perhaps Hakuut, who had drawn a sharp caution from Prakuyo during the session, might have done something else the other two might not approve—and because changing one device’s content changed them all—he got up from his desk, took the device to the counter where he could make a computer connection, and backed up the state of the device as it was at this exact moment.

  Seals and ribbons. His fishing net had hauled up a school of fish. Multiple schools of fish. Enough fish from an alien sea that he might be able to figure out their linguistic ecology.

  If he had a month or so to do it.

  He didn’t have that. He had three hours until he had to show up for breakfast.

  If he dared, he’d report himself sick and confined to bed.

  But he had made that resolution, which he still thought was the only safe course, to be truthful and forthcoming with their visitors.

  He could walk out and say—pardon me, honored guests, but I have been handed a gift which it will require weeks to appreciate, so meanwhile shall we put a hold on everything and simply live here together and enjoy all the food you can eat?

  Well, he could not quite say it, or propose it that fluently. That was the problem, was it not?

  He had three hours. He had shaved, showered, he had put on shirt and tro
users. It would not be the first time his staff had finished dressing him while he read some critical paper.

  • • •

  Ilisidi was in good spirits at breakfast, her ordinary self, not troubling to speak a word of kyo, but definitely in good humor, at one end of the table. Cajeiri’s place was on her right, beside Jase, across from Bren—the kyo having the whole other end of the table. Cajeiri had arrived just a little off from his usual excitement, with a serious look in Bren’s direction as they sat down.

  Bren said, conversationally, “A good night of very peaceful sleep, young gentleman.”

  Cajeiri was no stranger to double meanings. “Yes, nand’ paidhi.”

  “Good sleep, yes,” Prakuyo added cheerfully, as the servants began to serve. “Very good sleep. You sleep good?”

  “Indeed,” Ilisidi said. “And today we understand we shall visit Central. Very good.”

  There were nods and thumps and a gentle booming.

  “Today,” Bren said, just as cheerfully, in kyo, “we see more words in the device. Good help, Prakuyo. Thank you.”

  “Good, yes,” Prakuyo said, and followed it with something to the effect that Hakuut had done the addition.

  “Hakuut says the words, yes, I hear Hakuut’s voice.”

  A nod, a little thump. “Excellent, nand’ Bren.”

  “What is this we are saying, nand’ paidhi?” Ilisidi asked, reasserting herself. “Kindly inform us.”

  “Hakuut worked late, and generously amplified our store of words last night, aiji-ma, so we can make much faster progress on structure. I think your great-grandson has been doing the same as I have, this morning: studying. I could only wish I had more hours. But this will be a great asset.”

  “Well, well, perhaps my great-grandson can spend a little time with our guests today before the excursion.”

  Turn Cajeiri loose on his own with Prakuyo and perhaps steal a little more time with the new vocabulary? Jase had written reports ready to pass to various people who needed them—explaining, for one thing, the sensitivity of kyo hearing and why they were not using coded com. He might pass them while they were escorting the kyo upstairs, but it seemed fairly urgent to get those reports where they needed to be before kyo appeared in their midst.

  He saw, on the other hand, Cajeiri’s face, not showing the childish delight at that recommendation one might expect. Rather it was a sober look, a little concern. Perhaps it had not been Cajeiri’s aishid’s judgment alone that had sent word to the dowager’s security in the middle of the night. Cajeiri would very likely have been the one to spot the activity—and sensibly notify those who needed to know and pass the message.

  “Indeed, the young gentleman has looked forward to this meeting,” he said, with his own sober reservations, and not without the thought that the dowager herself wanted her great-grandson to have a try at communication. “Perhaps he might indeed enjoy a little time after breakfast. —Prakuyo-nandi.” A switch to kyo. “Cajeiri wants much to talk to Prakuyo and guests after breakfast. Yes?”

  “Yes,” Prakuyo said. “Yes, good talk to Cajeiri.”

  “Good, yes,” Cajeiri said. “Good you come, nand’ Prakuyo.”

  “Very good,” Prakuyo said. Very was the guess, based on context and its similarity to much. “Very good, nand’ Cajeiri. Does the dowager wish to talk?”

  Context was starting to fill in, the structure, words inflecting in relation to each other, the advanced forms. One could not duplicate it yet. But one could guess.

  “Mani, he asks—”

  “We shall listen,” Ilisidi said.

  That was how he had found them once at Reunion, Bren recalled. He had been beyond worried about how things had been going, and he had come back to find Ilisidi and her great-grandson entertaining Prakuyo, having communicated in their own unique way.

  Admit she had understood one word of kyo? No. Answer the question as if she had not needed to hear it? Quite smoothly.

  One memory resurrected, a very good one, where Prakuyo was concerned, the moment Prakuyo had known he was free, and Prakuyo had become quite cheerful, talking to his fellows in quiet tones.

  Dishes had arrived, quietly, dishes that, served up, evoked that cheerful booming and thumping that had not been in evidence in last night’s long session. Bindanda had kept his own little notebook at Reunion, he had admitted it—being Guild, very likely had memorialized in Guild records the very recipes he had observed Prakuyo to enjoy.

  And they flowed from the kitchen in quantity now, a good start to a very critical day.

  • • •

  “Everything,” Jase called to say, in Ragi, “is being arranged. Handoff will be at our convenience, and we have suggested 1430, ship-reckoning, as a good time. Does that work? It’s all for you. We can move it.”

  “We can meet that,” Bren said, and settled back to work at the dining table, concentrating on rapid memorization. The devices had an optional disconnect from updates, which was useful right now, keeping the screen from jumping about as the group in the sitting area looked up and added words.

  He could have gone to his suite and shut the door. He could have separated himself from the gathering in the sitting area—which occasionally erupted in thumps and booms, and now and again in soft exclamations from Cajeiri.

  But it was good to hear. It was good to know things were on track and people were agreeing and words were arriving. The curtains were drawn back, and he had a view of the group at the table and they had a view of him, while the good-natured exchanges around that table constantly reassured him he was not, at the moment, necessary to the conversation.

  Ilisidi presided over that gathering, though her comments were few. Prakuyo and Cajeiri and Hakuut had the liveliest exchanges, with occasional low-voice words from Matuanu. “Add it to the device!” Cajeiri would say, and Hakuut would say, “One has done it!”

  One could worry about a little too much revelation going on over there, a little too much information slipping out on what met them on their return from Reunion—an account of the aishidi’tat’s problems was not an auspicious topic, unless it paid for similar information from Prakuyo on what had become of Reunion, or what Prakuyo had done in the interval. That was a question he longed to ask, but asking it led to places he was not sure they should go at this stage, with this limited vocabulary, and by no means did he want to open topics that might lead into a tangle of more topics.

  There were words he wanted. He ached to get up, go over there, steer the conversation in certain directions at certain opportune moments to get what he wanted, but he concentrated on structure; that was his immediate and fairly urgent need: the little words, the connectors, the directionals, the actions in time, what one wanted to do versus what actually happened . . .

  So, so many deadly shades of doing and being . . .

  He had found in the discussion, however, a significant equivalency of pronouns, or at least a handful of them. Ragi had he, associate of mine; he, associate of the second, third, fourth, fifth degree of associations; he, without association to anyone I know, and he, my enemy before one even got to he, the associate of my enemy and so on. And that was just one pronoun. But it was at least structurally predictable.

  Mosphei’ and ship-speak handled those situations mostly with tonality, body language, and facial expressions, precisely where atevi might go stone-faced.

  Kyo—had some sort of we, you, and they, and we moderated by particles into a we including you, and we not including you, we including others and you, we including others but not you, and we as distinct from others. Particles starting with you similarly designated an outside party. Or not. There was a word for I, but it seemed far rarer than we. There was a he, several versions of he, but whether there was also a distinct she or an it he had not yet discovered.

  We. That word Prakuyo had rejected early on. We had induced real upset, back at Reunion, when they had all been strangers. Emotional context, there. Possibly it had been, in that moment, just keep your
distance.

  Prakuyo’s current association right now sat evident before him: Matuanu, who rarely spoke, and Hakuut, who occasionally spoke too much.

  Mirror, he wondered, himself, the dowager, the young gentleman? No, Prakuyo had identified Matuanu as a bodyguard and Hakuut as a computer tech.

  That left the question what was Prakuyo? They still had no sure notion.

  All the expressive booms and thumps that the teams on- and off-site were recording and breaking down remained just as inaccessible today as yesterday, an impenetrable system that might turn meanings in a subtle way, or turn an utterance absolutely upside down. They thought now they could identify happy sounds and he knew one—a deep penetrating hum—that was distinctly unhappy. They might be able to teach the kyo what human expressions meant. But emotion itself might be a difficulty. Kyo did seem very emotive. Atevi weren’t. It might be a cultural answer to a problem—but society depended on it. Mospheirans vented emotion, but the kyo might be making noise to conceal it, rather than express it.

  Could kyo deceive and lie, with those thumps and booms, or were they to some degree involuntary? They had controlled them—considerably—but not eliminated them.

  There were likely already mistranslations or almost-translations in the vocabulary they had from the kyo, assumptions equally foundational and profound, but nobody knew enough yet, on either side, to be able to sort those out. Neither side in that sitting area had yet a clue what the triggers were.

  But the good-humored exchanges, the occasional bursts of surprise and amusement—those seemed genuine, at least a foundation of good intent, lowering tensions—and raising expectations for fair dealing.

  Should one be surprised that the aiji-dowager, who had no patience with people wanting favors they would not outright name and far less with people persisting in trivial discussion, was sitting there, part of the interactions, smiling and seeming amused while Cajeiri and Hakuut settled on a definition of fast and slow.

  Oh, one should not in the least be surprised. She was expert at such meetings. And dealing with a power that could blow the station to hell kept her, oh, very alert, and one had an uncomfortable suspicion—entertained. Not a flinch, not a twitch, not a frown. She was the soul of willing hospitality.