Native Tongue

by Shannon Greenland

  I swung my legs over the side of the bed and sat for a minute with my eyes closed, debating whether or not I could sneak five more minutes of sleep. I rubbed my eyes and convinced myself I’d gotten more rest than the four hours I really had.

  With a resolute sigh, I forced my eyelids open and gazed with envy at my roommates, who all snuggled in, snoring away a lazy Sunday morning.

  I pushed up from my bed and padded across the carpet to the bathroom. As I passed Cat’s bed, I noticed she’d fallen asleep with her earphones in. A slight chchch hissed in the air, telling me music was still playing.

  Across the room Beaker smacked her lips and rolled over in bed, rousing me from my sleepy trance, and I continued on to the bathroom.

  Twenty minutes later, showered and dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, I made my way from our bedroom down the hall to the cafeteria.

  Normally food held no significance in my life. I could take it or leave it. But the cook always served bacon with pecan pancakes on Sunday mornings. The combination rocked my world. As I entered the cafeteria, I inhaled the awesome salty/sweet aroma, and a content smile curved my lips.

  With its aluminum tables and chairs, our dining hall resembled a miniature version of a school cafeteria. Except the food was much better.

  TL sat alone at a table to my right. An empty plate with syrup remnants sat to his left, and the morning newspaper littered the space in front of him.

  Mystic stood at the beverage center making a cup of herbal tea. Beside him stretched the buffet piled with food.

  “Morning,” I greeted TL, eyeing the mound of bacon on the buffet table.

  “Good morning.” He folded his paper. “Eat lots. I know it’s your favorite.”

  I smiled. It wasn’t often he made casual, nonbusiness conversation.

  I crossed the dining hall to the buffet and picked up a plate. Mystic stepped up beside me. Forking up three gorgeous pancakes, I glanced over at him. “You’re up early.”

  He sipped his tea. “I’m going to meditate with the sunrise.”

  “Mmm.” Why anyone would voluntarily get up this early stretched beyond my comprehension.

  “The fruit’s fresh. I recommend the melon.”

  I moved down the buffet line, bypassing the fruit, and piled on the bacon.

  He tsked me, “Bad girl,” and snagged a pecan from my top pancake.

  “Hey.” I slapped his hand with a piece of bacon.

  Mystic laughed. “How can somebody so skinny eat all that food?”

  I picked up the syrup bottle and drenched my mountain of breakfast. “Not sure. I think this might weigh more than me.”

  With another laugh, he headed off. “Later, gator.”

  TL had gone, and so I ate alone, having no problem devouring and sopping up every last bite.

  Fifteen minutes later, as I was dumping my garbage, Parrot walked in.

  “Hey.” I smiled.

  “Hey,” he replied, a blank expression on his face.

  “Food’s good,” I tried for conversation.

  Nodding, Parrot strode over to the buffet, grabbed a pancake, put some bacon on it, and rolled it up. He took a bite and headed right past me.

  “You wanna hang out later?” I called to his back, trying so hard to be a friend.

  “Thanks, but I’ve got a lot to do,” he answered, not turning back, and disappeared out the cafeteria door.

  I didn’t take it personally. That was Parrot. Quiet, contemplative, stoic, a guy of few words. And that was when he was feeling fine. Factor in his obvious discontent with this mission, and I knew he’d be locked up tight.

  But . . . that wasn’t good enough for me. I unclipped my cell from my waistband and texted him. SORRY. CAN U COME BACK, PLEASE? I HAVE A QUESTION.

  I sat back down where I’d eaten breakfast and waited.

  A few seconds later he reappeared. “What’s up?”

  I tried to think of a nonpersonal question to ask, something pertaining to the mission, but came up empty. I wanted to know Parrot. I motioned to the seat across from me. “Sit. Let’s talk.”

  Parrot sighed, as if it was the worst thing I could have asked him to do.

  “Please?”

  Slowly, he approached the table and slid into a chair across from me.

  Conversation wasn’t my strong point, and it certainly wasn’t his. So I knew this wouldn’t be the easiest. “We’re going on a mission together. I . . . want to get to know you better. And you need to know me. So what do you want to know?” Good. Not a bad tactic. Have him ask me questions first.

  “Playing twenty questions, huh?” he tried for humor.

  I smiled. “Whatcha got for me? Ask me anything.”

  “All right. I’ll play.” He thought for a second. “Where were you born?”

  “Right here.”

  “You mean in California?”

  “Yes, California. Right here in San Belden.”

  He lifted his brows. “No kidding?”

  I told him about living at the ranch as a small kid and how David and I had known each other even back then.

  Parrot didn’t respond for a few seconds. “That’s amazing.”

  I nodded. “I know. And you? Where were you born?”

  “Arizona. On a reservation.”

  “What was it like to live on a reservation?”

  He shrugged. “Same as anywhere, I guess. Most people think we live all basic and old-world. It’s understandable ignorance. I lived my whole life in an apartment. Went to school. Did my chores. We had traditional stuff, too, just like any culture has. Ceremonies, holidays . . .”

  “Did you get to wear any of those cool clothes I’ve seen in the movies?”

  Parrot laughed. “Yeah, traditional clothes when the occasion called for it.”

  “Favorite color?” I continued with the questions.

  Blue for him. Green for me.

  “Favorite food?” He asked.

  Tacos for him. Lollipops for me.

  “Lollipops aren’t food,” he teased.

  “Sure they are,” I defended myself, and we laughed again.

  Parrot’s cell beeped, and he glanced down. “I got to go. I’ve got another native speaker who I’m scheduled to converse with in my lab.”

  I nodded, smiling. “I’m glad we had a chance to talk.”

  He reached across the table and squeezed my arm. “Me, too. I’ll see ya later.”

  “’Bye.” I watched him walk from the cafeteria and then made my way to the elevator and down to Subfloor Four.

  Keying in my code to the computer lab, I stepped through, and the door suctioned closed behind me.

  Chapling stood in the corner, his arms braced on the table that held the coffee, staring at it as if it were a lifeline.

  I smiled at the sight. “Hey.”

  Around a yawn, he glanced up—“Hey”—and went right back to staring at the brewing coffee. “Just got out of bed. Need caffeine. Major caffeine.”

  “Where exactly is your bed?” I asked, realizing I didn’t know such a simple thing.

  “Right by TL’s room.”

  “You mean that door that’s always closed? I’d assumed it was a closet.”

  Chapling nodded.

  “But I never see you come and go.”

  Looking up, he smiled broadly. “Yes!” He grabbed the coffee and poured the thick muck into his never-been-washed mug, then took a gurgly sip. “Oh, yes. Yesyesyesyesyes.” He held his mug up. “Want some?”

  I crinkled my nose. “No.” I loved coffee, but not Chapling’s brand of “mud.”

  He waddled across the room and flipped a light switch on, off, and back on again. The cement wall behind the switch shifted back an inch and then slid left, revealing a five-foot-tall compartment wide enough to hold one chubby redheaded little person.

  I did a double take. What the . . . ?

  “It’s a tunneling elevator. Goes up and down and side to side. I can go just about anywhere on the ranch in this thing.”


  “Cool.” I crossed the lab to where Chapling stood and crouched down to check out the elevator. “So you go to your room in this?”

  He nodded. “Anywhere.”

  Way back when I first moved into the ranch, I’d been in the barn with TL, Wirenut, David, and Jonathan, prepping for the Ushbanian mission. Chapling had appeared from nowhere, and I’d wondered where he’d come from. “Can you go to the barn in this thing?”

  Chapling sipped his coffee. “Yepper.”

  I stepped back from the tunneling elevator. “I want one.”

  Giggling, he flipped the light switch again, and the door slid from the left to merge seamlessly back with the wall.

  Chapling hobbled over to his computer station and climbed up. “So I hear you and David tore up the Boardwalk last night.”

  Rolling my chair out, I took a seat. “For someone who never leaves this cave, you sure know a lot.”

  He cut me a sly glance. “Yes, I do, don’t I?”

  I narrowed my eyes. “What does that mean? What are you up to?”

  Chapling’s sly glance transformed into pure childish mischievousness. He took his wireless mouse and, click, click, click, then turned his monitor so I could see.

  Across his flat screen, small black-and-white video boxes flicked on. I ran my gaze over them, realizing they portrayed every room in the ranch as well as the pool, the barn, and all angles of the outside.

  In the top right corner I watched as Mystic sat on the hill behind the house meditating. The video box beside it displayed Bruiser stretched out on her bed, still sleeping. In the bottom left corner, Jonathan jumped rope in the barn. I saw Beaker in the bathroom, brushing her teeth. In the cafeteria, Wirenut and Cat served themselves from the buffet line. TL sat at his desk, studying a file. David pulled a T-shirt over his head, giving me a quick glance of his gorgeous bare chest. Behind David, Adam said something and David cracked up. And there in the middle sat me and Chapling staring at his computer.

  I waved at myself, and Chapling giggled.

  He clicked the mouse a couple more times and the screens flicked to another scene. The date stamp in the lower right corner read yesterday evening. I glanced through all the video boxes on the screen and zeroed in on me and David making out in the truck.

  My face caught on fire. I put my hand in front of the screen. “Chapling!”

  He giggled again and clicked everything off.

  I laughed with him; I couldn’t help it. “You’re awful. I had no idea you were such a voyeur. Where are all the cameras?”

  “The cameras are hidden everywhere. Lamps, light switches, faucets, pictures, furniture. And I’m not a voyeur. I rarely even look at all this. It’s just in case something happens.”

  I folded my arms and gave him my best disciplinary glare. “Then how come you knew about me and David?”

  “Because I updated the video software last night. Your smoochy-smoochy scene was kind of hard to ignore.”

  I felt my face grow warm again. “Well, anyway . . . we’ve got work to do.”

  Chapling saluted me. “You’re up.”

  I rolled my chair back over to my computer station. “Let’s talk about the Rutina mission. It’s illegal to video or to take pictures of the glyphs. Any ideas on what to do about that? Somehow I’ve got to get them into my computer so I can work with the symbols.”

  “Yeah, TL, Jonathan, and I discussed that last night. TL’s arranged for a hieroglyphic historian and artist to accompany you all on the mission. This guy works for the IPNC. He’ll sketch the graphics, and you can scan them into your laptop. The alliance doesn’t know about your new program. They just know there’re a couple of historians, you and this guy, coming to analyze the cave drawings and provide a translation of them.”

  I nodded. “Between his expertise and my new program, we should be able to figure out the code.”

  On the cart beside me, a stack of hieroglyphic books stood waiting. I’d been through about half of them so far, turning their words and pictures into code for my new translation program.

  I was still in the initial stages, and, although I hadn’t said anything, I didn’t feel confident I could have it ready in two weeks.

  There were so many minute details about cave drawings. And the ones in Rutina were a combination of many different cultures. That was one of the main purposes of my program, though. To take patterned, documented glyphs, break them down, be able to decipher combinations of drawings from different cultures, and come up with a highly probable translation. But even if I worked around the clock, I wasn’t sure . . . I just wasn’t sure.

  And what if I couldn’t figure them out? What if my new program didn’t come through? What would we do? These cave drawings were a key factor in this mission.

  My brain stopped its doubtful tirade as I realized this was all stuff I normally argued to TL. He would then assure me I could do it, and I would force myself to succeed. And sure enough in the end, I’d always come through. Kind of weird I hadn’t put up an argument with him this time and, in fact, didn’t really want him to know I doubted myself. I wanted him to think I felt confident with my abilities.

  Hmmm . . . funny how things had changed. How I had changed.

  Breathing out a rush of focused breath, I grabbed one of the worn, hard leather books and got down to work.

  [4]

  My fingers raced over the keys as I input code into my glyph-translation program. A week had gone by, and I wasn’t nearly as close to completing it as I thought I’d be.

  “Hey.”

  One week gone, and only three weeks to go before we left for Rutina, South America.

  “Hello?”

  I concentrated on the recently scanned glyphs and the measurements I’d taken of them. I referenced the meanings from my research books and merged the two. I ran a quick script to assure they understood each other.

  “Yo?”

  I compared it to yesterday’s rendering, hoping, hoping, they worked in conjunction . . . I watched as my screen scrolled with garbled language. Aaarrrggghhh . . . What was I doing wrong?

  “GiGi!”

  I jumped, almost tipping over in my chair.

  Chapling stepped into my line of vision. His Brillo-pad hair poofed out into a red Afro as he grinned and waved. “Lunchtime. Go eat.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “You interrupted me for that?”

  He showed me a text message on his phone. “Boss man says you have to.”

  With a groan I rubbed my sore neck. “I have too much work to do to go eat.”

  Pursing his lips, Chapling leaned forward and checked out my screen. “Want me to take a look?”