Analog SFF, July-August 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  David stood aghast. “Father—you kidnapped a gecko?”

  “Of course not! All I did was intercept her and arrange for us to talk privately. You know how badly we need a new approach. Monroe was the one who decided she should visit the orbiter as some kind of emissary, and now this is turning into a disaster.” Father tugged at his short beard. “Somebody has to get through to her, and you're the only one left.”

  David flushed with excitement. “Me?”

  “Your Gariniya is much more natural-sounding than mine, anyway.”

  What an opportunity! But this wasn't about pronunciation. Father had never let him in on direct contact—and would never, unless he was desperate. That probably meant they had weeks left, or even days. Add to that the fact that Officer Monroe's failure to communicate with the gecko was the only thing keeping Father from being charged with violations of the Accords on Indigenous Sentients. They had to get out of this somehow.

  But what could he possibly hope to do with a poor Gariniki who had just found herself carried off to a diplomatic orbiter?

  * * * *

  I do not understand this prison. I have searched it, tested every surface with fingertip and claw, but learnt nothing.

  Is it the cell of Duro-mudi?—but no, for there is no barrier of thorns here, no green of leaves, and no flowing water. There is only a soft bed of I-know-not-what, a mirror-basin lying empty and useless while a wall of silver reflects my face, and a chair of knife-metal where my tormentors like to sit.

  My tormentors have the faces and ruffs of simians, but are too large and have no tails at all. The male blasphemes before me: I must avert my face as he allows the sacred Word to escape his mouth in this improper place, so far from the House of Leaves and the Mouth of Singing Crystal. Yet the female is worse. She sits and utters simian calls while a dark box in her lap—O, save me!—speaks. Imagine it: to hear the living Word issue from a dead box! My heart quails when I think of it, and I hide my face in atonement for whatever misdeed might have brought me to this test of faith.

  It is not that I have never blasphemed myself. Every child has done so.

  My first memories are of the gathering in the House of Leaves; of the sun glowing through the roof-leaves layered like scales; of us children sitting curl-tailed in awe while the Word flowed through the people with the inexorable power of water; of learning the Great Tales of our people, questioning and understanding them.

  “But why the Great Tales?” I blurted out once by the granite basin in our kitchen.

  “Allayo!” my mother cried. She turned her great-pupilled eyes away and gestured holy cleansing.

  So I asked again in the proper place, amidst the gathering, in that sacred hall before the Mouth of Singing Crystal.

  “The sacred Word is life, or death,” she told me. “It binds, it brings bliss or misery. It is the blood of the People, that flows freely in its heart, in the House of Leaves, and the Great Tales like flesh grow from it; outside, the blood and flesh are clothed in small images that give understanding without unleashing the full might of the Word, like scales over the skin.”

  Living scales will not grow on the dead objects that surround me here. It is not at all what I imagined when I left my childhood behind in the Lands and began my Trial, seeking my own Great Tale. But monstrous Cheora of the Two Faces greets travelers with pain first, wisdom afterward. For though a thousand things I neither recognize nor understand strike me dumb, yet in this desert of the Word I have grasped a greater truth, that it is the very alikeness of things that permits social speech.

  How shall I bring this understanding back to the People? Can one forsaken by the Word yet return to claim it? I cling to my faith to sustain me, repeating to myself each hour: This is my Trial, and if I can endure it, it will become my Tale.

  But in such a Wordless place, how can my prayers be answered?

  * * * *

  “It's not all bad,” Father said, once the vibrations of shuttle takeoff had subsided.

  David turned away from the window. With his stomach churning nervously at the thought of facing diplomats and geckos, he hadn't been enjoying the view anyway. “How so?”

  “Think about it. In a way, I've been preparing you for this moment all your life—your chance to act as a full-fledged research scientist. I'm sure you'll do admirably.”

  “Oh, thanks.” Yesterday's lectures would be preferable to a last-minute pep talk. Those, at least, had been accompanied by real audio and video of the captive Gariniki. She was young and bright-scaled, but certainly an adult, because the orbiter's hidden recorders had captured her commenting on objects in her room. Patting the bed she whispered, “Yahara-mudi's nest of palm"; drawing one finger along the bottom of the sink it was, “In the desert Herremi could not see her face"; and testing the locked door, “Duro-mudi languished thirty days.” Gariniya, the translator's nightmare—it was awesome.

  “You might want to think of a phrase or two to demonstrate in case Officer Monroe asks,” Father said. “Just don't forget, her judgment of you and our colony's future will be passed on to all the Allied Systems.”

  David winced. Somehow he had to keep his cool, not let on that they'd been backed into a corner. There was one major problem. He'd spent hours in the night trying to convince himself that Father would never actually kidnap a gecko—how could he face Officer Monroe bearing that kind of guilt?—but he just wasn't sure. “Father,” he said. “Please tell me you didn't actually steal her from the protected Lands.”

  Father's face reddened, but he gave a short laugh. “Just the kind of concern I should expect from a colleague, I suppose. Well, don't worry, look at this.” From beneath his seat he pulled an artifact case and slid it across onto David's lap. “She was walking the north desert.”

  David hissed in a breath as the lid came open. On top was a ceremonial knife in a scabbard of intricately worked grazer leather, with a leaf-shaped blade and a hilt wound with stone beads. Underneath was a mass of white feathers. Lifting the top layer, he found himself unfolding a hooded coat of perforated leather densely clad with yorro plumage. “Whoa, Father, is this—”

  “Sun armor. Before this I'd thought it was just another metaphor.”

  “It's gorgeous.”

  David suspected it was an heirloom; the unblemished feathers were layered without gaps, but the leather inside showed that patches had been resewn, and two of the worn tie-thongs had been replaced. He might have studied its details for hours, had the shuttle not docked at last with a clank and hiss.

  They followed a crewman in Allied Systems blue onto the orbiter and along to a social lounge where their host was waiting.

  Officer Monroe stood before an unlidded viewportal, half silhouetted by the dark-centered pink whorl of the McKinley nebula. She looked clean and powerful there, wearing sleek interdweller's clothing that would be totally impractical in the rainforest or on the gravel roads of Garini Base.

  “Welcome back, Doctor Linden,” she said. “Hello, David.”

  David stood up straight. “Nice to meet you,” he said. “We don't want to abandon our home to pirates.”

  Father shot him a look.

  Officer Monroe smiled. “It's a hard situation here, David. The language problem means you on Garini have had a more difficult task opening native relations than any colony in two hundred years. We don't want to see you evicted, but we've reached the limit on leniency permitted by Systems law. I'm authorized to open diplomatic communication if it can be achieved within three days, but if it can't, I'm charged with revoking the colony charter and initiating evacuation. The Garinians must be respected.”

  "I respect them.”

  “I'm sure you do. Your father has a lot of faith in you, David, and I hope you can reassure our guest. I didn't mean to unbalance a delicate situation.”

  David nearly informed her how stupid she was for approaching a gecko with a machine translator, but Father was giving him the look again. “That's okay,” he grumbled.

 
; “Officer Monroe, juveniles have special status among the Gariniki,” Father said. “That will give David an excellent chance to put her at ease. I'll just take him down.”

  A hall led out of the lounge; its smooth pale walls were trying to be sophisticated but only managed to be boring. Father hustled him toward a door twenty feet down on the left side.

  “I thought I told you to act professionally,” he said. “You're not just David here. You're my son, and the representative of five thousand people on Garini Base.”

  “I'm sorry.”

  “And when you go in there, you're a representative of the Allied Systems, too.”

  “Father,” said David. “Do you think being juvenile can really help me? You want me to use signs?”

  Father shrugged. “We've got three days,” he said, herding him through the door. “Do whatever works.”

  As David entered, the gecko-girl leapt to the bed alcove and backed tail first up the wall, toe-claws digging hard into its pliant surface.

  David watched her breathlessly. She was a creature of jewels against the blandness of the molded softform. Her brilliant green tail curled and uncurled above her head; her huge amber eyes did not blink. After all these years, here he was, finally face to face with a real Gariniki.

  He had nothing to say.

  How could he use words, knowing she would close herself off? But how could he use gestures, knowing he'd demote himself to the social position of a child? Nervously, he pushed up his glasses and tugged at his homemade grazer-leather vest.

  The gecko-girl's flicking tail slowed somewhat at that; she blinked, double lidded, and licked her lips with a blue tongue.

  It seemed enough like interest that David took off his glasses and held them out to her.

  The gecko climbed down from the alcove and came toward him. The length of her limbs was more noticeable when she stood upright, giving her a more humanoid look, though she still stood only as tall as his chest. She did not take the glasses, but pushed his hand aside and lifted a corner of his vest between thumb and forefinger.

  “The plains thunder in summertime,” she whispered. “Criyayo was famed for dexterous fingers.”

  David's heart thundered like the hooves of the grazers. He took a breath to reply, then stopped himself, realizing that it was his silence that had won him her speech. That and this vest, made of the same leather as her sun-armor. It was a sign that they shared something: Garini, the planet she probably hadn't laid eyes on for days.

  Maybe if he took her to see it, she might speak more.

  Trying not to startle her, he pressed open the door. Father and Officer Monroe were nowhere in sight—if he was lucky, they'd be somewhere watching the surveillance monitors instead of talking in the lounge. He beckoned to the gecko-girl, who came cautiously up the hall behind him, seemingly aware that there was nowhere to run.

  The lounge door whirred open on an empty room. Thank God. David pointed toward the view of Garini, but the gecko-girl didn't even look at it. With a cry, she ran forward to where the vivid pink funnel of the nebula shone through the viewportal, and fell prostrate on the floor.

  Oh, no—he'd just ruined their last chance!

  Then he heard her speaking. Speaking and speaking, face-down and low, but in complete sentences, in a way no human had ever witnessed.

  “Let the Word take me, let it not forsake my tongue in the desert of the over-dark. On the mountainside the Mouth opens, singing, singing in the winds, and the People bow down at the birthplace of the Word, and not a one but is taken with speech. Once was silence, in time before time, and the People speechless, clinging to the trees. Then the Word issued forth from the sacred Mouth, bringing civilization to the Lands, but the people ask: Where did it arise? Oh, my eyes have been opened! The Mouth of Singing Crystal is but the lesser mouth, the child of the mother, the Mouth of the Heavens! And what great Word shall issue forth to me in the House of Metal at its lips? But let it take me, oh, let the Word take me!”

  “The mouth in the sky?” David mouthed half consciously, grasping for purchase in the flood of cryptic meanings. “The word take me?”

  Instantly her head snapped up and her giant amber eyes blinked at him, once, twice. “Can a scaleless one be taken by the Word in the presence of a Mouth?” she asked. “You are not of the People, nor of the Lands. Where does a man of skin come from that the Word can touch him?”

  She had heard him! David felt sweat break on his forehead and did the only reasonable thing he could think of. He answered. “My name is David," he said. “I'm a human. Humans come from—” To say Garini would mislead her, but to explain the Allied Systems would only confuse her. God help him—why did this have to be about diplomacy? “From a place called Earth, which lies on the other side of the McKinley nebula." He pointed to it.

  She gaped at him, blue mouthed.

  “We are your neighbors,” he said. “We have only three days before we leave. We do not want to leave. We love Garini.” This was ridiculous—he wasn't speaking, he was constructing sentences like a machine! “We wish to speak, to the Elders of the People, for peace. I wish to speak.”

  The gecko-girl cocked her head to one side. “The Word issues from the Mouth—David. There is only one place to speak to the Elders: in the place of the Word. It does not matter where you came from. You must come to the gathering in the House of Leaves.”

  * * * *

  I have come to understand that the young human,David, is possessed.

  Maybe he is Young Torias the Speaker—for Torias was born within the sacred Mouth amidst the songs of crystals, so filled with the power of the Word that he could not hold his tongue for anyone, not until the Word's coursing energy wore him away to an early death.

  A man of skin and hair, like one of the People? I would have thought such a thing impossible, but that was when I believed the sacred Mouth unique, and the gift of the Word due only to the People. Yet now I have beheld the Mouth of the Heavens in its true form and vastness, no longer merely the Flower of the Over-dark it appears from the treetops of the Lands—and I find I have belittled its true power. If the humans have emerged from it, then perhaps they too cannot hold their tongues, for who can control the might of the Word once it has been released? So it surely is with David, and I pity him the wasting death that comes to an overused vessel of the Word, even as I envy him what he must feel, being so taken.

  Yesterday, when I told him to come to the House of Leaves, I was so certain: There before me stood one taken by the Word, asking to speak, nearly shaking with its force passing through him. Let him come, I thought, and he shall have what he desires and bring word of the Mouth of the Heavens to the People. Yet now I wonder if it was only my own desire to end my Trial, to say what I needed so I might return home to the Lands with my Tale.

  Today High Elder Sarinu-mudi heard me speak of my journey. We stood within the lips of the Mouth of Singing Crystal, where the slightest claw tap is transformed into echoing music. Before him I felt like a blaspheming child—worse, a heretic. Lucky indeed to receive his patience and tolerance, luckier, that he has seen fit to grant my request to appear in the House of Leaves and to have my Trial judged before the People in the presence of David and the other simians, Arthur and Monroe.

  How did young Reomus feel on his return from Trial, bringing amphibious companions from south of the Lands? The gathering speaks of him as confident, triumphant in expanding the reach of the People. Yet his companions gestured like children and did not lay claim to the Word as mine do. David has tried to restrain his possessed tongue—another sign that he is worthy to be heard—yet I see Arthur press him with simian calls, and I am afraid.

  Afraid, for I am no longer a child, but not yet among the mudi, and still I shall bring strangers to the House of Leaves.

  May the Word save me.

  * * * *

  David sweated with more than rainforest heat, standing in a dense thicket of sonamo outside the House of Leaves. As much as they'd talked in the p
resence of the nebula, Allayo hadn't said a single word to him since, and he couldn't for the life of him figure out why. Father knew something was wrong, but there hadn't been enough time to discuss it because Monroe had jumped to conclusions and whisked them down here with unholy speed to meet her artificial deadline.

  They couldn't afford to reveal that she was shoving them blind into their only opportunity to speak.

  Officer Monroe smiled, melting in her too-pretty clothes. “I'm still impressed to see how you've turned linguistic findings into actual results,” she said. “Mouth of Singing Crystal, a cave on a mountainside, and House of Leaves, an actual place? It must have taken years of work to separate the literal from the metaphorical.”

  Father stared at her while sweat ran down his temples into his beard, no doubt still struggling with their linguistic problem. “Oh, yes,” he replied at last. “Years of work.”

  David didn't mention that when years of work failed, blind luck might also do the trick. He tried to ignore them and the two somber gecko escorts, listening instead to the musical hum emitted when the wind blew across the Mouth of Singing Crystal.

  “About the official treaty,” said Officer Monroe. “You let me know once you've opened communication for me, Dr. Linden, and I'll join the discussion then.”

  David couldn't leave that one alone. “Not with a machine translator, you won't.”

  “Shh!” Father turned back to Monroe with an embarrassed smile. “Well, Officer Monroe, we won't ask you to speak immediately—I'm thinking we should let David start, since he's the one with the existing relationship with our native ambassador. If it comes to that, I'll translate for you. You've got to keep your machine translator for incoming only.”

  She frowned. “If it comes to that? Why wouldn't it come to that?”

  “Well, of course it will,” Father said.

  David shoved his hands in his pockets. “I think I'll let Allayo do most of the talking.”

  Officer Monroe looked surprised. She glanced at their escorts and lowered her voice. “David, that's a lot of trust to place in such a new ambassador.”