by Robin Roseau
“But I am your Galatzi wife, here willingly.”
“And so, I will free you now. Then you will learn Talmon ways.”
I lay quietly while she freed me. Then I wrapped arms around her and held her tightly, both of us clutching to the other.
“There are things I must show you,” she said finally. “Come.”
Both of us naked, she pulled me from the bed.
She gave me a tour of the house. It was surprisingly large, but if we were to host guests, that made sense.
It was actually two tours, the second not obvious until she took me to the kitchen. And then she said, “I know how to use nothing in this room. You must teach me.”
I looked around, and I was shocked. “Kalorain?”
“Blaine and Aston did this,” she said.
I moved to the oven. It was a modern, high technology oven. I should have realized it. It carried a digital display of the time! But I hadn’t thought about it. There was a refrigerator, and actual hot and cold running water.
I turned to her.
“The entire house,” she said. “All the lights. I know how to turn them on, and I know how to run the water. That is all. I do not know how to make it hot or cold. How do you make a house cold?”
“Oh, I cannot explain that in Talmonese.”
“But you know how?”
“Yes. I can teach you the controls, but I cannot explain how it works, not in Talmonese. Kalorain, I may never be able to explain it in Talmonese. You don’t even have all the words I need.”
She nodded. “This is what Cecilia said. Can you tell in English?”
I paused. “Not within your rules for me.” She laughed. “Could I? If I prepared.”
“English is not the language of your home.”
“No,” I said. “Talmonese is. But you’re right, and there are only three people on the planet who speak that language.”
She pointed to the refrigerator. “Chaladine said that holds food fresh for days.”
“Or longer, depending on the food,” I said. “And it works the same way cooling a house works, although the controls are different.”
Kalorain stepped over. She opened the refrigerator. There was nothing in it, but even the light fascinated her. Then she closed it and opened the freezer. She pulled out an ice cube and held it on her palm. “This is simple water.”
“Yes,” I said. “You get ice in the winter.”
“It is not winter now. This is magic.”
“This is…” I paused. “What do I do when there is not a Talmonese word?”
“You describe the word you want, and I help you.”
“No,” I said. I paused. “Kalorain, there are things I must explain, and it is not that I don’t know the words. It is that there are no words.”
“Then you must ask my permission. Please explain these things.”
“You have seen my tablet.”
“Yes.”
“You will almost never see me use it.”
“I thought Star People used their tablets all the time.”
“I have one in my head.”
She stared. “I think that doesn’t make sense.”
“I know. I have one in my head. It can talk to me, only to me, and I can talk to it.”
Her eyes narrowed. “In what language?”
“I’m not sure I should answer that.”
“In what language?” she asked more firmly.
“Deutsche.” She frowned. “If Governor Grace insists,” I said. “We can turn it off. But on this, we should ask her wisdom.”
She paused. “We will ask Chaladine first, and she will ask Governor Grace, if she does not decide for us.”
“All right,” I said. “The tablet in my head is called an implant. That word means…” And then I offered the closest Talmonese equivalent. “We give them a name. Mine is called Melina. It is a just a name.” She nodded. “My implant has a…” And then I asked Melina for the word. “It has a dictionary,” I said. “English to Talmonese, and another that is Talmonese to English. I had to ask Melina for the word ‘dictionary’.”
“And Melina told you.”
“Yes. But you saw: if I know a word, I use it. If Melina knows a word, I have to ask her.”
“I see.”
“Melina has no words for many things we have. I do not believe you should punish me for words you do not have, only for words you do have, when I make mistakes.”
“And you will not fight when I punish you.”
“No. I will not fight.”
She nodded. “All right. But I am not satisfied Melina knows every word. And so you will explain these words we do not have, and if I find a proper, Talmonese word, you will earn a point. It is not my fault that Melina did not know the word.”
“Agreed,” I said immediately. “But I believe, to be fair, we should ask Chaladine or Governor Grace if it is the correct word for the word I used.”
“We cannot bother them five times a day.”
“No. We will keep a list of new translations. Governor Grace will want to see the new words, anyway. It is one dictionary we all use, after all.”
“So Governor Grace will use the words I teach you.”
“Yes.”
“All right. I will credit back mistakes, but I will not delay points or punishment.”
“Agreed,” I said. “We were talking about the…” I paused. “Refrigerator.”
“Yes,” she said. “A new word for Talmon.”
I nodded. “You called it magic. It is not magic, it is technology.”
“Which is a word for magic. One point.”
“No,” I said. “They are not the same.”
“If you cannot explain how it works, it is magic,” she said with a smile.
“I can explain,” I said. “In German.” I pointed to the refrigerator. “And perhaps in English. Maybe even in Talmonese.”
“Then explain. No German. No English.”
“Fine. I need to use my tablet to show you. Is it here?”
“Yes.” She led me to a room she had called my office. My tablet was in a desk drawer. She handed it to me, and I verified the charge, and then I led her back to the kitchen. I set the tablet on the counter, activated it, and then slaved it to my implant. Then I asked Melina to show the major systems of a modern refrigeration unit. They hadn’t changed significantly in centuries, and this was barely technology.
“This is the refrigerator,” I said. “Most of it hides.” I pointed with my finger. “This is the part you see.”
“Yes.”
“This brings the…” I looked up the word. “The power that makes it work. It is the same power that makes the lights work. Now that I can’t explain in Talmonese, not very well.”
“Keep going.”
“That power runs this,” I said. I looked up another word. “It is a pump, like one that pumps water, but it runs from this power instead of other ways. Do I need to explain how it works?”
“No.”
“This does not pump water. It pumps a very particular type of air.”
“A pump for air.”
“Yes. Different air behaves differently. It is like water and alcohol.”
“How is it like water and alcohol? It is air.”
“Water freezes at zero degrees. Did you know this?”
“Yes.”
“Alcohol freezes at a lower temperature. Which temperature is based on which alcohol.”
“Beer or wine.”
“Yes, although it is even more complicated. Beer and wine both have a lot of water.”
“I understand.”
“The temperature at which something freezes is just one thing that changes,” I said.
“I understand.”
“Do you know how a thermometer works?”
“Yes. When it is hot, the liquid is higher.”
“That liquid is a metal named mercury.”
“Okay,” she said.
“A thermometer works becau
se mercury is very sensitive to temperature. As it warms, it expands.” I switched to an image of a traditional, mercury thermometer. “Because it expands, it needs more room, so it climbs higher in the thermometer. When it cools, it shrinks.”
“Magic.”
I sighed and blackened the tablet.
“Hey!” she complained.
“It is not magic,” I whispered. “It is technology.”
“Finish explaining.”
“It is not magic.”
“Finish explaining!”
I nodded and put the refrigeration system back on the tablet. “Almost everything behaves the same way. If it is hotter, it expands. If it cools, it shrinks. Almost everything. But some things do it more than others. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“It works the other way.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you can force mercury to expand, then it must become hotter.”
“How would you do that?”
“With mercury, you wouldn’t.”
“Then why are we talking about mercury?”
“Because it was an example,” I said. “You use a particular type of air.” I pointed. “It is inside these tubes.”
“Okay,” she said slowly.
“The air here is warm,” I said. “It enters the pump and is pushed closer together.”
“You force it to shrink! It gets colder.”
“It flows through here. The heat in the air is cooled by the surrounding air as the air gets colder. The heat goes somewhere.”
“It goes here,” she said, pointing.
“Right. The air follows here, still under pressure, but here, it is allowed to expand.”
“It gets hot! But that is inside the refrigerator. It should make it hot, not cold.”
“It must absorb heat,” I said. “Like a towel absorbs water.”
“It takes the heat from inside.”
I smiled. “Not magic anymore.”
She stared at me. Then she bent her head to the tablet and began tracing her finger along the paths. “Warm. Squish. Cold. Grow.” She made gestures, and I saw her as she grew to understand it better and better. She looked at me, her eyes wide.
Then she began to smile. “How does the pump work?”
I laughed. “You ask me to risk points. Kalorain, at some point I will not be able to explain. That may be because of words. It may be that it requires so much you don’t understand. It may be because I do not completely understand.”
“You don’t know all of this?”
“No. Other people do. Do you know everything about fishing boats?”
“No. I see your point.” She looked back down at the tablet then over at the refrigerator. Finally she turned back to me. “It was magic until you explained it.”
“All right, but even if it is magic to you, it is not magic to me. And magic to me does not mean magic to Aston and Blaine. Do you see?”
“Technology.” She said the word carefully. “This is technology.” She pointed to the tablet.
“Yes,” I said. “Much more advanced technology.”
“And the tablet in your head.”
“Very, very advanced. This.” I tapped the tablet. “It is worth about the same as my horse. The tablet in my head is so expensive I could never have paid for it.”
“Who paid for it then?”
“Cecilia’s boss, and for it, I must work for Cecilia for thirty years.”
“Thirty years!”
“That isn’t so long,” I said. “I get to live here.”
She laughed. “So you move here and get a tablet besides.”
“Yes.”
She smiled then tapped the tablet. “Science.” That word was in Talmonese. “Not technology. One point, and if I count, I could count one point each time you said it.”
“I am sorry,” I said. “But they mean different things. Science means knowing that mercury expands when it is warm. Technology means using science to make a thermometer.”
She frowned. “Are you sure. It is a Talmonese word.”
“Yes, I am sure,” I said.
She sighed. “I don’t know a word that means all that.”
“In German, we make big words by taking small words and putting them together.”
“Sometimes you call it German and sometimes you call it Deutsche. Which is it?”
“Ah, it is Deutsche when speaking Deutsche, and it is German when speaking English.”
“That makes no sense. It is English when speaking Talmonese and English when speaking English.”
“I know. I cannot explain why.”
“So magic.”
I laughed. “We will agree: that is magic.”
She smiled. Oh, she was so lovely. My heart did a little pitter patter. She looked me up and down. “I have never been to school while wearing no clothes.”
“You make your children wear clothing to school?”
She laughed. “Yes.” She looked at my tablet. “Will you let me use this?” I didn’t answer right away, and she pouted.
“It isn’t that,” I said. “This tablet is from my first home. From Frantzland. It only speaks Deutsche. Cecilia brings tablets from her old home, Centos Four.”
She waved her finger at me. “That was a point.”
“What point?”
“Four. That is English.”
“That is the name of her planet. Even if I speak Deutsche, I still call this place Talmon.”
“And so her home is Centos Four.” She said the second word in Talmonese then grinned at me.
“If I am speaking Deutsche,” I said, “I do not call her planet Centos Vier. I still say Centos Four, because that is what the people who live there call it.”
She smiled. “What is the name of this planet?”
“Talmon,” I said.
“It is not Talmon Three?” she asked, using the English word.
“Are we discussing this because you really want to discuss it, or because you feel cheated you cannot give me points? Because you know I will make real mistakes.”
“Both,” she said. “Help me understand.”
I nodded. “All right. Let us start with my home. Frantzland. You understand the number means which planet from the star. Talmon is third planet, so you could call it Talmon Three.”
“I understand.”
“Frantzland is Frantz One, but no one calls it that. Ever.”
“Why not?”
“Because they don’t. The only time you would call it that is if you needed to distinguish from the other planets in the system. But almost always, if someone says Frantzland, they mean the only planet with life on it.”
“Then why is Centos Four called that?”
“Because when people went to Centos Four, that is what they called it.”
She blew out her breath. “That is no explanation.”
“I know.” I paused. “Imagine you are on Earth. And you are going to a new world, a long, long way away. And you know the star has two planets you might live on. You might say Centos Four so people understood you didn’t mean Centos Three.”
“Oh.”
“Over time, if people only live on Centos Four, you might stop saying the Four. But on Centos Four, they never stopped. And it gets worse.”
“No.”
“Yes. Most stars do not have a name. They have a number. No. Many, many stars do not even have a number. Talmon Star may have had only a number. Your ancestors may have traveled to star 87531. Talmon may not be the name of the star. It may mean only this planet, like Earth does not mean the star, it only means the planet. Do you see?”
“Yes.”
“It gets worse.”
“No!” she insisted.
“Frantzland star not called Frantz. Only had number.” And I realized my Talmonese was slipping. “But let us pick… Hmm. Earth.”
“Earth.”
“Yes. It is an example. Earth star is called Sol. So Earth is Sol-Three.”
; “Understand.”
“Imagine that you didn’t know any of that. You are traveling from here to settle Earth, a wild planet no one has ever been on. It doesn’t even have a name. You call it Sol-Three.”
“Okay.”
“You arrive, and you name it Earth.”
“Okay.”
“And then you never leave, and everyone forgets about you.”
“Like happened to Talmon.”
“Yes,” I said. “Except they not really forget. They still know Sol is Sol. So to them, your planet is Sol-Three, but to you, it is Earth.”
“The same planet has two names.”
“So if I come to visit, I may say I am going to Sol-Three. But if you came to Frantzland to visit me, you would say you are from Earth.”
She shook her head and turned away. After a moment, I set my hand on her back and stepped closer. “Kalorain?”
“How are we ever going to learn all of this?”
“You probably won’t,” I said. “It doesn’t really matter what Earth’s sun is called. It doesn’t matter what number Frantzland star is.”
“Then what matters?”
I turned her face to me. “What matters is that I am your Galatzi wife, and you make me very, very happy.”
She smiled then turned to me. We hugged, pressing our bodies together. “No more lessons for me today,” she said. “It is time for your lessons.”
“I have been practicing Talmonese.”
“You have.”
“Do I have points?”
“Not yet.” She pushed away. “You will.”
I nodded. “I know.”
She took my hand. “I wish to show you the other technology.”
And she did. She showed me the lights, and the electrical outlets. She showed me the water, and she felt great joy showing me the “magic” in the bathroom. I decided I would let her believe that one room was magic.
We arrived at the bedroom and moved to the closet. She pulled out sandals and a sort of robe, two of them. I had seen them on the streets but hadn’t really understood. I was about to learn. “I know we can bathe here,” she said. “But I will show you the Talmon way.”
“All right.”
We headed back downstairs, now dressed, if you wanted to call it that. But then she looked at the kitchen and stepped over. She pointed to the tablet. “Can you teach it Talmonese?” I realized we had broken off our conversation.
