Tongues Read online

  There wasn’t much Seamus could think to say to that. “You’re welcome.”

  Seamus stayed connected to the android until all the Onomayu began to drift off to sleep. When he deemed it no longer necessary to interact, he hit the disconnect button on the android’s control panel in front of him. The visual of the Onomayu hut disappeared, to be replaced by the bare interior of the retreat’s control room.

  “Well, that went well,” Alan said. He’d monitored the entire scenario on a side monitor. Not quite as immediate as being hooked into the android’s receptors, but still he could tell what had happened.

  “I got lucky,” Seamus said. “That could have been a complete fiasco.”

  “Lucky thing you knew that poem,” Alan said. “They seemed to like it.”

  “No,” Seamus corrected. “They didn’t know what to make of it. It was complete nonsense to them.”

  “Will you walk with me?” Seamus asked Enkiru the next morning, when the village was just beginning to wake up. “Would you show me your valley? It is very beautiful here.”

  The boy agreed. They dressed and left the hut. Enkiru led them through the village, past the various huts where men and women were just beginning to stir. On the way, they passed the worship hut. Enkiru walked immediately to the same blank spot as he had the previous evening and pressed his forehead to the smooth section of beam. Then, he stood back and waited expectantly for Seamus to perform the ritual.

  When Seamus was finished, Enkiru asked, “Do you miss your god?”

  Seamus frowned. Was this a personal question? “Um—I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Do you miss touching the face of your god? In your home?”

  Oh. Slowly Seamus understood. “I guess so,” he said at length.

  Enkiru accepted his answer, and led on. They began to head north, out of the village and toward the mountains.

  “May I ask you a question?” Seamus asked when they were far enough out. “A personal one?”

  Enkiru frowned. “You need not ask to ask. I am your patron.”

  “Oh. Well, tell me—how is it that you have no god?”

  The boy looked at the ground. “I have no god because I have no kamin-na.”

  “But how is it that you have no kamin-na?” Seamus pressed. “Please, I wish to understand. There are many things in your village that are different.”

  The boy seemed to accept Seamus’s explanation. “I have no kamin-na because no god wishes to speak through me.”

  A definition? Seamus thought. “So is the kamin-na the god speaking through you? Are they the words of the god?”

  The boy looked puzzled, as if he were being asked to confirm that the sky was blue. “Of course.”

  “I see. Forgive me if I pry, but why is it that no god speaks through you?”

  Enkiru shrugged, a mannerism that struck Seamus as particularly human. “Because I am not worthy.”

  “But why not? What makes you unworthy?”

  “Because I have no kamin-na.”

  Seamus considered. The circular logic apparently made perfect sense to the boy, and by his expression, he thought it should make perfect sense to Seamus, too. “So how does one get the kamin-na?”

  Enkiru regarded Seamus shrewdly. “You are hanní in your village, aren’t you?”

  Seamus frowned. “What is a hanní?”

  “One who asks questions that everyone knows the answers to.”

  Seamus was becoming more confused than ever. He cursed Huntsberger for throwing him into contact with this species so soon. “Why would anyone do that?”

  “To lead the people to wisdom that they don’t know they already have. You are hanní!” Enkiru suddenly grabbed Seamus’s wrist and pressed it to his forehead.

  “Perhaps I am a hanní,” Seamus said, “but I would like that to be our little secret, all right?”

  Enkiru frowned. “For what reason?”

  “Because I have very little wisdom to give, most of the time. I am . . . not always a very good hanní.”

  To his relief, the boy laughed. “Very well. I won’t tell.”

  “Can we stop here a moment?” Seamus asked, indicating a convenient patch of rock to sit on. “I am older than you, and I am tired.” In truth the android could keep up the hike all day, but Seamus wanted to sit. So they sat.

  “So you have not answered my question,” Seamus said. “How does one come by the kamin-na? How do you get the god to speak through you?”

  Enkiru answered far more readily now that he thought Seamus was a hanní. “When you are of age, your god chooses you.”

  “And then what happens?”

  “You begin to speak the kamin-na.”

  “Immediately?”

  Enkiru nodded. “But the beginners aren’t very good. Not right away.”

  “How do you know they aren’t very good?”

  “Because they only have a few sounds.”

  “And what are these sounds?”

  “The sounds of the kamin-na.”

  “Such as?”

  Enkiru stood up straight, as if reciting a school lesson. “He uttered a basic vowel: æ. Seamus noted it in the android’s memory.

  “I see. And what is this sound?”

  Enkiru shrugged. “I do not know. I have no kamin-na.”

  Seamus sighed inwardly. This could take all day. “But the sound—does it mean something?”

  “Yes.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know. I have no—”

  Seamus decided to try a different tack. “How do you know it means something, if you do not know what it means?”

  “Because it is part of the kamin-na. It comes from the gods.”

  “All right.” Seamus resisted the impulse to shake the boy. “What do you think it could mean?”

  “It could be one of the elements,” Enkiru said.

  Now we’re getting somewhere, Seamus thought. “And what are the elements?”

  Enkiru made a face. “Do you want me to name all of them?”

  “I want you to name the ones you can.”

  Enkiru could name every one of the elements, it turned out. He rattled them off without so much as a pause, evidencing even further the spectacular memory of the Onomayu. Most of the qualities were abstract concepts such as love, peace, happiness; Seamus knew he was receiving only the translation matrix’s crude approximations of these concepts, so he resolved to devote considerable study to fleshing out his understanding of the sixty-two elements. For thirty of the words that Enkiru mentioned the translator had no definition.

  The boy finished and watched Seamus for approbation, as if he were a student coming to the end of a recitation for his teacher.

  Seamus’s mind was working so fast he almost forgot that the boy was there. Sixty concepts. A similar number of phonemes in the Onomayu language.

  “So,” Seamus said, understanding, “each sound is paired with one of these qualities?”

  “Yes, hanní.”

  “But . . . how is the pairing done? It is different for each person, yes?”

  Enkiru nodded. “You must listen to the voice of your god to help you interpret the words of the kamin-na.”

  I see, Seamus thought. “And . . . how long does that take?”

  “All your life. It is a very private, very sacred process.” Enkiru looked away from Seamus. “My god has never spoken to me.” He took a deep breath, then looked back to Seamus. “Tell me, please . . . how you arrived at your kamin-na.”

  Seamus stirred uncomfortably on his rock. “Um, much as everyone else,” he hedged. “My process was . . . not special.”

  “But it was special!” Enkiru said. “It had to be. You possess qualities in your kamin-na that no one else possesses. Surely you are blessed by your god.”

  “I—” Seamus stammered. He replayed Enkiru’s words: you possess qualities in your kamin-na that no one e
lse possesses. What could that mean?

  The answer was plain: ‘twas brillig and the slithy toves . . . the Onomayu language contained no V. In his haste to speak the kamin-na, he’d unwittingly used sounds the Onomayu had never heard before.

  Surely you are blessed by your god.

  Enkiru leaned in closer. “Teach me, please,” he said, and his voice shook with an earnestness that transcended species. “Teach me how you learned to speak the kamin-na with such authority. Teach me so that I needn’t spend my whole life broken.”

  Seamus could not avoid Enkiru’s eyes. He tried to pull away from the naked need he saw there, but he couldn’t.

  “Please,” Enkiru said.

  Seamus’s breath lodged in his lungs. He’d heard those words before, years ago, on a distant world, light years away, from a being with a much different set of vocal chords, but the need had been much the same.

  Teach me. Please.

  “I—I—”

  Seamus severed the connection with the android. In an instant all the vista of the mountainside went blank, to be replaced by the bare walls of the retreat center’s control room. Last of all faded Enkiru’s face, though the eyes remained long after the image was gone, the eyes that pleaded with Seamus more eloquently than any words could.

  “I can’t,” Seamus muttered.

  Several hours later, Huntsberger came to his room. The reverend pressed the door chime. Seamus heard it, but did not answer. He merely remained sitting on his bed, staring at the blank wall.

  Huntsberger did not ring again. Instead, he opened the door and stepped inside. He looked at Seamus. Seamus did not look back. A brief silence ensued.

  Seamus finally broke the silence. “I solved your mystery.”

  “Oh?”

  “It’s really very simple. Anybody could have figured it out. Just a simple matter of sixty-two abstract concepts, each of them attached to the phonemes of the Onomayu language, assigned by association over a period of adolescence to old age. The rhythm conveys the tone, but each listener constructs the meaning for himself. It’s like linguistic mood music.”

  “I know,” Huntsberger said. “I reviewed the data from the android.”

  Seamus finally took his eyes off the picture to look at the reverend. “That’s it. There’s never going to be a grammar for the language. The syntax and the semantics both are completely constructed by the recipient. It’s a purely internal process.” He turned to look back at the picture on the wall. “Anybody could have figured that out, if they’d bothered to take the time. You didn’t need me.”

  “No, I suppose I didn’t.”

  Seamus pried his eyes off the picture again. He regarded the reverend. “But you knew that already, didn’t you?”

  “I suspected,” Huntsberger admitted.

  “Then why did you bring me here?”

  “Honestly? Because xenolinguistics is a hobby of mine. Almost the entire linguistic community believes you were wronged by the investigation into what happened on Menaus. It’s our duty to right injustices where we can.”

  “I was convicted as an accessory to seventy-eight counts of murder and inciting a rebellion.”

  “You were just the scapegoat. You know that.”

  “You don’t understand. I deserved my sentence.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “You should. Because it’s true. I knew that what I was doing would very likely start a civil war on Menaus. I knew that if I did what I did those people I called my friends would be in danger. But I did it anyway.”

  “Because you thought it was the right thing to do.”

  “Yeah,” Seamus admitted at length. “I thought so, anyway.”

  “Maybe it was.”

  Seamus shook his head. “It wasn’t.”

  “You’ve surely not kept up on the newsfeeds due to your imprisonment. Perhaps you don’t realize that Menaus eliminated their slave castes last month. Not bad for a caste-dominant society. Slavery has been completely abolished. They’re struggling, but they’re making progress.”

  Seamus felt as if the reverend had wrung out his intestines. “You—you mean it?”

  Huntsberger nodded. “So perhaps some good came of your decisions after all. Only history will be the final arbiter of your judgment. And God, of course.”

  “But . . . I don’t really believe in God.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Huntsberger said. “After all, what is God for if not to help us decide the right thing to do?”

  Seamus had no answer to that.

  “I’ll leave you to your thoughts,” Huntsberger said. “I just thought you should know . . . the Onomayu have been tending to our android since you disconnected. They think he had a stroke of some sort. The villagers are praying over him even as we speak.” He paused. “They are a remarkably spiritual people, you have to admit.”

  The reverend withdrew, leaving Seamus staring up at the picture on the wall.

  The android’s eyes blinked open. Seamus reestablished the optical connections, and he saw what the android saw.

  He was lying on a pallet in the Onomayu hut where he had bedded down the night before. The hut was gloomy; it was heading toward evening on Onomayu.

  The hut was empty save for one other. Enkiru bent over the android, his hand clasped in the android’s. When he realized that Seamus was stirring, his face lit in a beatific smile that Seamus didn’t need to be an Onomayu to interpret.

  “Hanní!” “You’re—are you—are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” Seamus could have sat up right then, but given that the boy had apparently kept this vigil over his sickbed, he thought it best not to overdo it. “I’m fine, really. Just—an old man’s health. Nothing to worry about.”

  Enkiru studied his face. “Your god looks out for you,” he said. “You are lucky to return from such a fit.”

  “Yes,” Seamus admitted. “I guess he does.”

  Enkiru leaned in close to whisper, even though no one else was nearby. “I know now why you left your own village.”

  “Oh?”

  The boy nodded. “You left to die, didn’t you? You left to kiss the face of your god?”

  Seamus considered. “I guess you could say that.”

  The boy stood up quickly. “I must go tell the others you’re awake. They’re entreating their gods for your health in the worship hut.” He sprinted to the entrance of the hut, but turned around at the threshold. “You will be all right, won’t you?”

  Seamus nodded. “I just need a good night’s rest, that’s all. Tomorrow I will teach you how to begin to speak the kamin-na.”

  The boy beamed, and left the hut. Seamus lay back on the pallet and stared at the ceiling. He almost wished he had a personal god he could entreat for help. He had absolutely no idea how he was going to teach this boy to speak a language that had no rules.

  The next day, at morning worship, several of the Onomayu who were invited to speak the kamin-na performed their version of giving thanks to their deities for Seamus’s quick recovery. The health of visitors was of paramount importance to them, and Seamus’s recovery was occasion for great joy among the villagers. It was proof that their deities had heard their prayers and had seen fit to grant their requests.

  Seamus listened to the speakers of the kamin-na with renewed appreciation. He heard now the tell-tale repetitions of various sounds as the speakers poured out their souls in messages that played like a dance of random ideas, united by sound and rhythm into melodious sermons that only the speakers understood. The audience members were equally enraptured; never mind that the messages they received were by design far removed from the intent of the speakers—that was the nature of the kamin-na. For in the kamin-na the wisdom was as much in the receiving as it was in the speaking. It was a belief based on randomness as the true conveyor of cosmic import.

  But as the kamin-na speakers tended toward long-winde
dness, Seamus fidgeted inwardly. Soon enough the morning service would end, and a young boy would look to him for religious instruction. If there was ever a more ironic case of the blind leading the blind . . . .

  The worship service did end, and Seamus and Enkiru ascended into the mountains again. The boy stayed at Seamus’s elbow the entire trek, a worried look in his face.

  “Don’t worry,” Seamus reassured him. “I can guarantee I will not be suffering any more attacks today."

  Enkiru did not ask him how he knew this. The boy proceeded eagerly, his pace brisk, eager to begin his instruction. Although the android could have easily outpaced the boy, Seamus kept his gait to a leisurely stroll.

  They reached the rock where they had sat the previous day. Seamus sat next to Enkiru. The boy regarded him expectantly.

  At length Enkiru spoke. “Hanní? Hanní, would you instruct me?”

  Seamus sighed. The words were similar to those he’d heard those many years ago, on Menaus. The words that had begun a rebellion. For the first time in a long time, Seamus prayed to whatever god was listening that he would not take a misstep.

  He turned to the boy. “Tell me again,” he said, “why it is that you have no kamin-na.”

  Enkiru frowned. “I told you already.”

  “I know, but I am hanní, remember? I ask questions that everybody knows the answers to.”

  Enkiru looked away, shame-faced. “Because my god does not speak to me.”

  “And why does your god not speak to you?”

  Enkiru shrugged. “I’m not sure. Probably because I have not proven myself worthy.”

  “I see. And what must you do to prove yourself worthy?”

  “I don’t know. If I knew, I would do it.”

  “But everyone else in your village has heard the voice of their god?”

  “Everyone. Even ones much younger.”

  “And what did they do to be worthy to hear their gods’ voices?”

  Enkiru’s shame deepened. “I—I’m not sure. Perhaps they have more faith.”

  “Perhaps,” Seamus said. “Or perhaps they have less.”

  Enkiru’s eyes went wide. “What do you mean?”

  “When a god speaks to one of your people, how do they speak?”

  “I’m not certain. The gods always speak privately.”

  Exactly as Seamus had suspected. “So the only way you know that a god has spoken to one of your people is when they tell you so?”