Twin-Bred

by Karen A. Wyle

  Mara closed her office door, retrieved a bar of chocolate from her stash of snacks, and sat in the chair near the window. She took a bite of the chocolate, breathed deeply in ecstasy, and sat back to relax for what felt like the first time in days.

  “Oh, Levi, I don’t know where to start. We’re learning so much already, even while they’re little children!”

  “Details, woman, details!”

  “One nice thing — something it turns out we have in common with the Tofa. They laugh. Lots of people had heard it — they just didn’t know what they were hearing. It’s a sort of whistle. They whistle rather a lot. People used to say that ‘man is the animal that laughs.’ Now we’ve found others.”

  “That’s nice. Good to know the Council’s investment is paying off.”

  “Stop that. We’ve also found out what they do instead of crying. They rock forward and back, and sometimes they hum. But there’s something much more important. We think we know why none of us has been able to really master the Tofa language. Although there isn’t much we can do about it, except to use the Twin-Bred as interpreters when they’re old enough. It isn’t a matter of anatomy, at least not as much as we thought. The membrane in front of their mouths vibrates in ways that aren’t that different from vocal chords. Do you know — I mean, do you remember —”

  “Let’s not bother with metaphysical side issues like whether I remember things. Keep talking.”

  Mara took another bite of chocolate first. “Mandarin.”

  “An admirably concise explanation.”

  “Mandarin is a tonal language. Some people thought that if you were tone-deaf, you couldn’t speak it properly. That the best you could do is stumble along, never knowing what you’re getting wrong, either annoying or amusing the people who really speak it. It turns out that just about no one is tone-deaf enough to have that much trouble with it. But it’s the idea I’m getting at.”

  “So the Tofa communicate with something we can’t hear? Ultrasonic vibrations?”

  “Mandarin is an analogy. We’re still not sure — there may be something even stranger that we’re missing — but we believe the extra level to the Tofa language is telepathic.”

  “And we know this how?”

  “Well, of course we’ve exposed all the Twin-Bred to both languages as much as possible. It’s a good thing the Tofa were so cooperative — supplying us with Tofa nurses. Which is something that still puzzles me. Why are they being this helpful? We don’t know whether they even understand what we’re trying to achieve, let alone approve of it.”

  “And after her tangent, she went on with her explanation.”

  “Shaddup. We’ve been recording twin-to-twin conversations in both Terran and Tofar. They’re becoming fluent in both languages, or as fluent as they could be at their age. And of course we want to know what they’re saying in Tofar! It would be utterly counterproductive to keep interrupting and asking questions, so we’ve been playing the human children audiovisual recordings of the Tofar conversations and making a game out of their giving us Terran translations. Except the children couldn’t always translate the Tofar on the recordings.

  “It took us a while to realize why. . . .

  Judy took a sip of juice. “Next one?”

  “All right. Here we go. Just pause every few words, like you’ve been doing, and translate for us.”

  Judy started the playback. She let it run for a few moments and then paused, but didn’t speak. Instead, she looked apologetic.

  “Sorry. I don’t remember.”

  The linguistic technician was confused. “Remember? We’re not asking you to remember. Just listen and tell us what La-ren was saying.”

  “But I can’t. I have to remember. The tape isn’t — it isn’t right.”

  The linguistic technician called in an audiovisual technician. They told Judy to run along — this would take a while.

  “Can I bring the juice?”

  “Huh? Oh, sure, sure.”

  They could find nothing wrong with the recorder or the playback. They decided to try the same tape with another translator. They tried Jimmy — Laura’s and Veda’s twins played together often, so if familiarity aided comprehension, he would be almost as good as Judy. But he could do no better. “The tape — it’s missing something.”

  “What could it be missing?”

  Jimmy shrugged.

  The technicians consulted more senior staff. Mara led a brainstorming session. Could there be some other sense involved? More children were brought in, a few at a time, and questioned about whether they felt or smelled or saw anything special when they talked to their twins. Finally, Suzie said, “The head buzz. No head buzz with the tape.”

  Judy’s face brightened. “That’s it!”

  The children all murmured agreement, while the adults looked at each other in silent bewilderment. All except one junior technician, who looked as if she was struggling with some guilty secret. After a moment, she cleared her throat. “Excuse me — I think I might know what they mean.”

  “. . . The tech told us that she’d been getting an odd sort of mental blurring, like interference, when she heard Tofa speaking Tofar. Turns out she tests very high on PSI exams.”

  “So human children are participating in some sort of telepathic exchange. Have you tested the human Twin-Bred for PSI ability? And compared their results to human children who aren’t Twin-Bred?”

  “We’re going to. We have to set it up, arrange for the control subjects. We may have to invent some new tests. This may be about receptivity to Tofa mental emanations, rather than something more general. If we do find that human Twin-Bred have some broader telepathic ability, we’ll have to figure out how that might interfere with the experimental conditions.

  “And there’s something else . . . .”

  Dar-tan stood in the kitchen. His sister Cindy looked over at him, wrinkled her brow, then ran over and gave him a hug. Their mother stifled a sigh — Dar-tan would always accept a hug from Cindy, not always from her. Then she looked again.

  “Cindy, could you come here for a moment? Tell me — why did you go hug Dar-tan?”

  “Face looked sad.”

  “But honey, Tofa don’t exactly have faces. Not like ours. And not faces that show when they’re sad.”

  “Dar-tan does! And the others. Other Twin-Bred. You see it?”

  She looked back at Dar-tan as if he could have grown features without her noticing. "No, hon."

  “Other Tofa — they see it. But they don’t like it. They go all queasy. Dar-tan told me.”

  The host mother took a deep breath. “Sweetie, why don’t you go stand next to Dar-tan until he feels better. I have to go write something down.”

  She went into the office and called up her New Observations file.

  “. . . So it seems both human Twin-Bred and the normal Tofa can detect something like facial expressions on Tofa Twin-Bred. Which the Tofa find unsettling, while the human Twin-Bred take it for granted. It may be that just like the language, the facial expressions have a telepathic component. Unlike the language, though, this isn’t something the Tofa normally use — it’d be an adaptation of the Tofa Twin-Bred to human influence.”

  “My, my. And just how far does this intriguing capability reach? Can the Tofa read our thoughts? And if they can, where can we hide from the shit hurricane when the Council finds out?”

  Mara gazed out the window at a Tofa nurse walking slowly past, with several Twin-Bred of both species clustered around him. “We don’t think it’s quite that simple, or that drastic. We’ve seen no sign that the Tofa children can communicate with their twins — or with each other, for that matter — without any spoken language. Of course, there could be differences between the abilities of Tofa children and adults. We can keep observing the Tofa Twin-Bred as they mature — but of course, that isn’t the same as observing normal Tofa adults. Though we do have the Tofa host mothers who have stayed with the Project.”

  “I do
n’t think you can assume that Tofa who have carried human fetuses to term are normal.”

  “And the Tofa nurses and such. We’ve been reviewing recordings of them as well. We record everything and everyone. We haven’t seen anything that looks like complete telepathic communication.”

  “Hmph. In your ostentatiously recorded setting, you haven’t seen something the Tofa might want to conceal.”

  “And for what it’s worth, we’ve also asked them whether they need words to communicate. They said yes. And some of our experts say the Tofa don’t lie.”

  “Wouldn’t it be pretty to think so.”

  The human Twin-Bred were tested for generalized telepathic ability with other humans. They fell within the normal variation for humans their age — except when the other human was a twin, as were several members of the staff. Results in those cases were slightly higher than otherwise. As expected, when human Twin-Bred were tested for telepathic communication with each other, their performance was substantially above general human norms.

  As for Tofa norms, perhaps the Tofa Twin-Bred were normal for Tofa; perhaps they were above or below that baseline. There was no way to know.

  Laura gathered her courage. One of the Tofa host mothers was right there, standing in the garden, looking across the nearest creek. She had no reason to wait.

  “Excuse me. Good morning. Hello. . . . May I ask you something?’

  The Tofa turned toward her, but said nothing. Laura looked up at the multicolored eyes and cleared her throat twice. “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

  The Tofa made a wiggling gesture with her upper left hand. “I am not disturbed. You may ask your question.”

  Laura stood up as straight as she could. This must be how Veda felt — or had trained herself not to feel — when standing near all the humans taller than herself. . . . . She dragged her mind back to her purpose. "I was wondering something.” She took her tablet out of her pocket and punched up a random page, then held it out toward the Tofa. “This is our language, Terran, in a form we can see instead of hear. We call it writing. You’ve probably seen it before.”

  The Tofa whistled very faintly. Laura blushed.

  “Yes, I have seen it. Almost all the adult humans carry these tablets, and sometimes small packages of paper with similar markings. You were wondering whether we have something similar?”

  Laura nodded vigorously. “I would have assumed that you do, because I’m so used to having things written down. But I couldn’t quite see how it would work, for you. Because of how Tofar — how it works. The telepathic component. Do you understand what I’m talking about?”

  The Tofa tilted her head slightly to the side. “Yes, I understand. Not everything we communicate can be written. We do not use writing as much as you seem to do.”

  “What about — do you ever write stories?”

  The Tofa did not respond. The eyes had not changed, but sonehow, Laura felt a stare.

  Laura’s report led to much speculation, and some heated discussions. Did Tofa have an oral storytelling tradition, or was the very idea of a story foreign to them? What conclusions could be drawn about Tofa culture and psychology from the possible absence of written literature? Did the reading of fiction spur the development of empathy, and were the Tofa inevitably lacking in that quality?

  “Oh, nonsense!” huffed Wendy Jergensen, Literature Coordinator, when Henry Abuto from the Education Department suggested the latter. “Tell me that the many illiterates in Shakespeare’s audience couldn’t empathize with Romeo, or with Lear! Tell me that no one cried at Euripedes’ The Trojan Women until they found a copy to read!”

  “But is it likely that the Tofa have theater?” asked Carla Horn, psychologist. “Theater implies an audience. How far could the performers project the nonverbal elements of dialogue?”

  Ms. Jergensen persevered. “What about storytellers, speaking to a handful of listeners around a campfire?

  Mr. Abuto snorted. “Wishful thinking, Wendy! Anthropomorphizing!”

  “Xenophobic jumping to conclusions!”

  Carla Horn put her fingers to her lips and blew a shrill whistle, making everyone jump. “Round over! Fighters, to your corners!” The combatants and bystanders all relaxed; some laughed, some grumbled, but the subject was dropped for the moment, and everyone went back to work.

  Chapter 13

  Kimball tapped his fingers together, studying his diagram of confidential personnel. How best to use his operative on the Project’s security staff?

  The training the operative was receiving could prove useful in covering the tracks of other operatives. But that would mean knowing who the other operatives were. That sort of cross-involvement was against his own views of security. Better to have the operative give Kimball a detailed account of the Project’s security procedures. And provide updates as needed.

  Which would hardly keep the fellow busy. Nor was his nominal job likely to do so. Apparently, all the security staff were bored. There had been no mobs to repel, and the administrators were discreetly handling any malcontents within their borders.

  Some of the human host mothers might be equally bored. The operative was a gregarious sort. It shouldn’t be hard for him to make some friends. Friends who would gossip. One never knew what nuggets gossip might contain.

  Laura had been sufficiently engrossed in her tablet that her soup had cooled. She took a spoonful and grimaced. The man at the next table saw her and chuckled. She looked over and smiled.

  “I should know better than to bring a book to lunch. Or at least, to bring a book and then take a bowl of hot soup. Chilled soup is one thing, but lukewarm soup isn’t much fun.”

  The man picked up his own bowl and held it out to her. “Here — I don’t really need this, with a big ol’ sandwich in front of me. It’s still nice and hot. And it’d end up in my beard anyway. Take it.”

  “Oh, no, I couldn’t!” Laura waved away temptation.

  “Yes, you could. And you can thank me by talking to me as you eat it.” The man came over, planted the bowl firmly in front of her, and sat down. He smiled as if they were friends already.

  “I’m Mannie. Well, Manuel, Manuel Jones, but people call me Mannie. You?”

  “Laura Hanson. I guess I’m going to eat your soup, while it’s hot.” She took a spoonful. “Oh, that’s nice. Thank you!”

  “You’re welcome. Glad to oblige. What’s the book?”

  Laura held her tablet out to show him. “Last and First Men, by Olaf Stapleton. It’s early science fiction, about the human race changing in all sorts of ways, and leaving Terra.”

  Mannie stroked his beard, which was short and well groomed, not likely to end up catching soup. “So how much did he get right?”

  “You could say he got things backwards. He has humans changing themselves pretty drastically before they ever leave Terra. We weren’t so different from Stapleton’s day, when we headed out. And where I am in the book, his humans are still in the Terran solar system. I don’t know whether they end up leaving it.”

  “I guess you read a lot. Must have wasted a lot of soup since you got here.” He shook a finger at her. Laura had to laugh.

  “I think I’ve seen you around, with a pair of twins. Are you a host mother?”

  Laura nodded. “My twins are Judy and La-ren. And you — is that a security uniform? What does security actually do, most of the time? If you’re allowed to say.”

  Mannie shrugged. “Not a whole lot, to be honest. If any angry mobs show up, we’ll clean their clocks. But that isn’t too likely when no one knows about us. Which is part of what we do, making sure no one does know. We monitor the media outside for any signs of an information leak. We keep the security software up to date. And we keep our ears open, in case anyone’s talking about sneaking off and spilling the beans.”

  Laura sat silent for a moment, taking this in. “So if any of us heard anything — suspicious, what would you want us to do about it?”

  “Well, you coul
d come and talk to any of us, I guess. But now that you know me, you could give me a call. We could meet over soup.”

  Laura exaggerated a frown. “Enough about the soup, already!”

  “Seriously, though. One reason we were hired so early, years before the kids will be going anywhere, is so we could get to know the kids, and everyone here could get to know us. So you’d know you could rely on us. The more time I can spend with the mothers and the kids, the better.” He pulled his face into mock sternness. “So it’s your duty to the Project to have lunch with me. Often.”

  Laura tried and failed to keep a straight face. Laughing, she gathered her dishes and left without an answer.

  Laura and Tilda sat drinking cocoa in Laura’s kitchen. Tilda’s twins, Mat-set and Suzie, were exploring the cottage. Judy and La-ren were acting as tour guides, pointing to games, naming toys.

  Tilda sipped and sighed. “Oh, that’s good. Cocoa feels so right on a cold day.”

  Laura gazed out the kitchen window at the lilac field and violet bushes, the raindrops from the latest shower sparkling in the sun. “My ancestors back on Terra wouldn’t have called this cold. They lived where it snowed, for months, every year. I wonder what that was like. Of course, I’ve seen the pictures and films, but that isn’t like living it. Now that would be cocoa weather!”

  Tilda shuddered a bit. “I think it sounds kind of scary. Blizzards you could get lost in. And the water would freeze into ice on the ground. You could slip. I’d rather look at the pictures.”

  Laura sat, lost in her thoughts, for a moment longer, imagining snowflakes on a furry sleeve, breath frosting in front of her, footprints on a path. Then she shook herself and returned to the present. “I think this cocoa needs a muffin. Here, try one.”

  Now it was Tilda who seemed preoccupied. “I know I worry about things. I should learn to relax and enjoy life. Like my friend Mannie. He just laughs about things that would make me curl up and suck my thumb like Suzie.”

  Laura smiled. “La-ren was intrigued about that, the last time Suzie and Mat-set were here. For a while, he was trying one finger after another, seeing which one tasted best. It took a while —” Laura did a double-take. “Did you say Mannie? Would that be Mannie in security? Curly hair, beard, big smile?”