Native Tongue

Chapter Six

Michaela was more than satisfied with the post she’d found. Verdi Household was surrounded by old oaks and evergreens, tucked into the arm of a bend in the Mississippi just outside Hannibal, Missouri. It was nothing at all like Washington D.C., although she’d been warned to expect that its summer heat would make Washington’s seem almost pleasant in retrospect. The house would have been called a mansion if it had held an ordinary American family; for the throng of linguists it was adequate, but no more than that, and could not have been considered luxurious. As for the grounds, Michaela suspected that they might have been criticized if the public had known much about them, because the Verdis had a fondness for gardens and didn’t appear to have spared much expense in those behind the house. But out in the country like this, with a stretch of woods between them and the highway, no one was likely to know. Linguists didn’t have visitors because they didn’t have time; and they adamantly refused to allow members of the press on their grounds.

In spite of the crowding in the house, the Verdis had found a room with its own bath for Michaela, and a window overlooking the river. She was in the corner of the house on an upper floor, and to get down to the common rooms she had to go all the way around an outside corridor and across a walkway that went over the roof of the Interface. When she’d first arrived, that had worried her, and she’d gone immediately to the senior woman of the Household to express her concern.

“I’m concerned about my room, Mrs. Verdi,” she had said.

“But it’s such a nice room!”

“Oh, yes,” she said hastily, “the room itself is beautiful, and I am most grateful for it. But I can’t get to my patient in less than four minutes, Mrs. Verdi, and that’s alarming. I’ve clocked it by three different routes, and four minutes is absolutely the best I can do — it’s that bridge over the Interface that slows me down.”

“Oh, I see!” Sharon Verdi had said, the relief on her face telling Michaela a good deal about the shifting and crowding they must have done to give her the room she had. “Oh, that’s all right… really.”

“But four minutes! A great deal can happen in four minutes.”

For example, you can die in four minutes,” thought Michaela. It had not taken Ned Landry four minutes.

“My dear child,” the woman began, and Michaela guarded her face against any betrayal of how she despised the idea of being a linguist’s dear child, “I assure you it’s no problem. Great-grandfather Verdi has nothing serious wrong with him, you know; he’s just very old and weak. Until the last few months we’ve always been able to assign one of the girls to sit with him, taking turns… he just wants company.”

“But now you think he needs a nurse?”

“No,” Sharon Verdi laughed, “he still just needs company. But he has taken it into his head that he wants the same person all the time, you see, and there’s nobody we can spare on that basis. And so we need you, my dear — but you won’t have crises to deal with. Nothing that requires you to get to his room in ten seconds flat, or anything like that. One of these nights he will go to his just reward peacefully, in his sleep; he’s sound as a racehorse. And until then, I’m afraid that your major problem is not going to be rushing to emergencies, it’s going to be boredom. That man can barely sit up without a strong arm to help him, but there is nothing wrong with his voice, and he can talk any one of us into a coma. You’ll earn your salary, I promise — and want a raise.”

“Ah,” said Michaela. “I understand. Thank you, Mrs. Verdi.”

“You’re quite welcome… and don’t worry. Nothing he needs won’t wait five minutes, or fifteen for that matter. And if he ever should have a touch of something or other that makes you feel you really need to be closer, there’s a very comfortable couch in his room where we could put you up for a night or two.”

Michaela had nodded, satisfied. True, she would be taking the old man out of this world a bit more quickly than the Verdis anticipated; but while she was serving as his nurse, he would have the best care she could provide him, and no corners cut. She was an excellent nurse; she had no intention of lowering her standards. And she was awfully glad to be able to stay in the spacious corner room, where she could lean out like Rapunzel and watch the river.

Stephan Rue Verdi, 103 and not more than 99 pounds dripping wet, lived up to his billing. He was as formidable a talker as she’d ever encountered. But she didn’t find him all that boring. When his great-granddaughter judged the old man’s narrative skill, she didn’t have Michaela’s experience with Ned to use as a standard.

“When I was a child,” old Stephan would begin, and she’d murmur at him to let him know she was listening (but that wasn’t enough, she had to sit down right beside him where he could look at her without effort), “when I was a child, things were different. I can tell you, things were very different! I don’t say they were better, mind — when you start saying they were you’re doddering — but they were surely different.”

“When I was a child, we didn’t have to live the life these children live, poor little things. Up every morning before it’s even light yet, out in the orchards and the vegetable gardens working like poor dirt farmers by five-thirty most of the year… and a choice… ha! some choice!… between running around the blasted roads and doing calisthenics for hours, or chopping wood, come the time of year there’s nothing left to do in the way of agriculture. And then the poor little mites get to listen to the family bulletin while they eat their breakfast… when I was a child, we linguists lived in proper houses like anybody else, and we had our own family tables. None of these great roomfuls of people like eating in a cafeteria and everybody all jumbled in together like hogs at a trough…”

“The family bulletin, Mr. Verdi,” Michaela prompted him. He tended to lose track.

“Oh, the bulletin, now that’s very very important, the bulletin! That’s a list the kidlings have to face every morning while they try to eat, with everything on it they have to do that day and everything they didn’t do or didn’t do right the day before… Poor little mites,” he said again.

“Hmmm,” said Michaela. He would settle for “hmmmm” most of the time, since he preferred to do all the talking himself.

“Oh, yes! ‘Paul Edward, you’re to be at St. Louis Memorial at nine sharp, they’re operating on the High Muckymuck of Patoot and he won’t let them touch him unless there’s an interpreter right there to pass along his complaints.’ ‘Maryanna Elizabeth, you’re expected at the Federal Court house from nine to eleven, and then you’re wanted clear across town at the Circuit Court — don’t take time for lunch, you’ll be late.’ ‘Donald Jonathan, you have three days scheduled in the Chicago Trade Complex; take your pocket computer, they’ll expect you to convert currencies for the Pateets!”

“My word,” Michaela said. “How do these children ever get to all those places?”

“Oh, we’re very efficient. Family flyer, great big thing, revs up outside at 8:05 on the button — the five minutes to let the poor little things go to the bathroom, don’t you know — and runs them into St. Louis to the State Department of Analysis & Translation, where they’ve got a whole army of chauffeurs and pilots and whatalls waiting, pacing up and down for fear they’ll be late. They deliver everybody where they’re going all day long and then bring ’em back again to SDAT at night, and we do it in reverse.”

“Mmmmm.”

“And then, supposing a tyke’s not scheduled for the Patoots or the Pateets, well, he’s got to go to school for two hours… flyer puts him down on the slidewalks in Hannibal, you see, or they run him there in the van. School… phooey. I say the kids that get out of it ’cause they’re scheduled in solid, and then just make it up with the mass-ed computers, they’re the lucky ones. Would you want to spend two blessed hours five days a week with a bunch of other bored-sick kids, saying the Pledge Allegiance and singing the Missouri State Song and the Hannibal Civic Anthem and listening to them read you the King James — not that I’ve got anything against the King James, but the kids can read, you know, in a couple dozen languages! They sure don’t need somebody to read to ’em… And celebrating damnfool so-called holidays like Space Colony Day and Reagan’s Birthday? ’Course, they do Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas and such, too, all that stuff… but would you want to do that? All that truck, I mean? Phooey… I can remember when we still had classes at school!”

“Now, Mr. Verdi,” Michaela chided.

“I can. I can so.”

“Tsk.”

“Well… I can remember when my father told me about it.”

“Mmmm.”

“And when I was a tyke myself, all we had to do was the mass-ed computer lessons, at home, Now, the kids have all that to do AND the damnfool school for two hours! HOMEroom, they call it! Did you ever hear such damnfool stuff: HOMEroom!”

“Socialization, Mr. Verdi,” Michaela said.

“Socialization! Damnfool!”

“Mmmmm.”

“I remember what socialization did for me, young lady! Even when they tried to put it in the mass-ed curriculum! It made me detest the Pledge Allegiance and the State Song and the damnfool Civic Anthem and the whole shebang, that’s what it did! Oh, I know, they say that when the kids got nothing but the mass-eds they started to act strange and their folks didn’t feel like they were normal kids… I’ve heard that. I don’t believe a word of it.”

“Mmmmmm.”

“Poor little things. You ever heard Mr. Hampton Carlyle stand up and recite all the verses of Hiawatha at you, little lady?”

“All the verses?”

“Well, it took him a week, you know. Including the gestures… You’re blessed if you never had to go through that, let me tell you. And they’re still doin’ it to the kids, to this day! Oh, and then there’s Artsandcrafts! Whoopee, let’s make a little basket out of paper for the Spring Pageant and stick it full of paper flowers! And there are Special Activites… Oh, I declare, Mrs. Landry, it’d gag a maggot. It’s out of the Middle Ages, that’s what it is.”

“Mmhmmm.”

“When I was a child, I had my work to do. I’d interfaced with an AIRY, and I had to know that. And I had Basque, and one of the Reformed Cherokee dialects, and I had Swedish, and I had Ameslan.”

“Ameslan?”

“American Sign Language, girl, don’t they teach you anything? I had all that, and I had my mass-ed lessons to get, and I had to help out around the place. But I had time to play, and I had time to lie up in a black walnut tree and just dream once in a while, and go wading in the creek… these children now, Mrs. Landry, they don’t have a minute to call their own. Freetime, they’re supposed to get. After they’ve worked all day for the government, and after they’ve gone to Homeroom — if they can fit that in — and done the mass-ed lessons no matter what. And after they’ve put in the extra tutorials with their grammar books and dictionaries, and filled their backup requirements, and after they’ve done such stuff as run hell for leather through a shower and cut their toenails and the like, and after they’ve gone to every family briefing scheduled for them for the evening… if there’s any time left, girl, that’s theirs. That’s their freetime, and precious little of it do they get. Fifteen minutes, if they’re lucky.”

“Mr Verdi?”

“What? What?”

“You say they have to fill their backup requirements. What’s that?”

“Shoot.”

The old man looked cross, and Michaela patted his hand and told him he didn’t have to tell her if he didn’t want to bother with it.

“Oh, no, I’ll tell you!” he said. “Backup… that’s basic.”

“Mmmm.”

“You know how it works, this Interfacing?”

“No, sir. Only what I see on the news.”

“Huh. Bunch of damnfool.”

“I expect it is.”

“Well, now, the Interface is a special environment we build in the Households. There’s two parts to it, each one with all the temperature and humidity regulated down to the dot, and special stuff piped in and whatnot, with the environment on one side exactly right for whichever Patoots or Pateets we’ve got in residence at the time, and the environment on the other side just right for humans. And between the two there’s this barrier… you can’t have cyanide gas coming on through to the kiddies just because the Patoots need it, and vice versa for oxygen and whatall, you see… but it’s a specially made barrier that you can see through and hear through just like it wasn’t hardly there at all. And we put the baby in the human side, and the AIRY’s live in the other, and the AIRY’s and the baby interact for a year or so and pretty soon you’ve got an Earth baby that’s a native speaker of whatever the AIRY speaks, you see.”

“Oh,” said Michaela. “My!”

“But that’s for just the first time!” said the old man emphatically. “That’s just for the very first time an Alien language is acquired as a native language by a human being. And after that, why, the human child is the native speaker and you don’t have to go through all that. You just put that child, the one you Interfaced the first time, together in the ordinary way with another human infant, and that’s backup, don’t you know. The second child will acquire the Alien language from the one that was Interfaced, now there’s a human native speaker available. That’s necessary, let me tell you.”

“Mmmmm.”

“You’re not paying attention to me, are you? You asked me what backup was, you know, and now you’re not paying attention!”

Michaela sat up very straight and insisted that indeed she was.

“You think I’m boring, do you? Everybody thinks I’m boring! Lot of damnfool phooey, if you ask me! What do they know?”

Michaela didn’t think he was boring at all, as it happened, because the more she could learn about the habits and lifestyles of the Lingoes, the more efficiently and safely she could murder them. She considered every word that Stephan Verdi said potentially of the greatest value to her — you never knew when some scrap of information would be precisely the scrap that you most needed — and she was able to assure him with complete honesty that she was listening to every word he said and enjoying it.

“I’d know if you were lying, don’t you forget,” he said.

“Would you?”

“You can’t lie to a linguist, young woman — don’t you try it.” Michaela smiled.

“Already tried it, haven’t you! I can tell by that smirk you’ve got on your face! Pretty doesn’t cover up body-parl, girl, never has and never will!”

“Mr. Verdi… all that excitement’s not good for you.”

“Excitement? You don’t excite me, you hussy, it’d take a good deal more than you to excite me! I’ve seen everything there is, in my time, and taken most of it to bed if I fancied it! Why, I’ve — ”

“Mr. Verdi,” Michaela broke in, “you wanted to explain to me why I can’t lie to a linguist.”

“I did?”

“Mmmhmm.”

“Well… let me tell you this: if you lie to a linguist, girl, and you get away with it, if you lie to a linguist and he doesn’t catch you out, it’s only because he let you lie, for his own very good reasons. You keep that in mind.”

“I will.” And she would.

“Backup,” she reminded him then. She’d almost lost track herself this time.

“Oh, yes. Well. You see, after Interfacing, that human child is the one and the only living human being that can speak the Alien language — and it’s taken years to produce just the one. And you never know what could happen. You’d have important treaties set up, don’t you know, or something else important — and the kiddy gets wiped out in a flyer accident. Struck by lightning. Whatever. You can’t have that, you see. There’s got to be another child coming along behind that knows the language, too, and another one behind that. Providing backup, in case anything happens. And of course grownups can’t ever acquire languages like babies do, but they make a point of picking up a language as best they can every year or two, from tapes and whatall, and trying to talk to the kids that learned it Interfacing, you see. And that way, if the little one that had the AIRY’s language first should go to his Maker before the backup child was old enough to work alone, well, in an emergency you could send along the grownup that had the language sort of half-assed… that’s the only way that grownups can learn languages, most of ’em… and the child that was too young, and they could get by as a team after a fashion. In an emergency, don’t you know! You wouldn’t want that as a general thing, ’cause it doesn’t work for warm spit. But in an emergency… well!”

“It sounds like a hard life for the children,” Michaela said.

“It is. It’s purely awful. Like being born in the damnfool army.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, and he pulled fretfully at his covers until she’d rearranged them to his satisfaction.

“It doesn’t sound easy for the adults, either,” she added, when she had him settled.

“Oh, phooey. They’re used to it. Time they’ve done nothing but work all the time for twenty years, they wouldn’t know what to do with themselves if they got the chance to live any other way. Phooey.”

Most of the time he got a little agitated over a sentence or two in every paragraph, but he was really enjoying himself tremendously. She watched, and she’d take his pulse if he began to look flushed, while he roared at the top of his lungs about interfering damnfool women and their interfering damnfool nonsense, but she decided very quickly that Sharon Verdi was quite right. The old man’s body was worn out, to such an extent that he couldn’t get around anymore or do much for himself; but inside the frail assortment of muscles and bones and wrinkled flesh he was, as she’d said, fit as a racehorse. She did not need to worry about Stephan Verdi.

Only once had she seen him become so excited that she’d had to interfere and insist on a sedative. That was the day he got started talking about the Anti-Linguist Riots of 2130, with people throwing rocks at the children and setting fire to the linguists’ houses… That was when the families had made the shift from living in individual homes like everyone else and had set up the communal Households, where there would be security in numbers. And had earth-sheltered every one of them, not only for economy’s sake but also as a defense measure. So that each could be a kind of fortress on very short notice.

Talking of that, shouting that the linguists sacrificed their whole lives so the rest of the universe could live fat and lazy and at their ease, and shouting about ingratitude that would make the devil puke… the old man began to cry, and Michaela knew how that shamed him. A man, crying. Once Head of this Household, and crying. She’d stopped him gently, and soothed him into taking a glass of wine and a sedative, and she’d sat there beside him till he fell asleep. And since then, at the first sign that he was about to take up the subject of the riots, she headed him off expertly into a safer topic.

“You’re a good child,” he’d say to her from time to time.

“I’m glad you’re pleased with me, sir.”

“You’re the best listener that I ever knew!”

“My husband always used to say that,” she said demurely.

“Well, he was right, by damn. Does a man good to have somebody like you that can pay attention when he talks!”

“Mmhmmm.”

In many ways Michaela was sorry she had to kill him. He was a nice old man. For a linguist.