by Elle Casey
And Campbell’s father would leave them.
The bus dropped them a couple of blocks from the clinic and glided off; they walked the rest of the way. The streets were quiet and cheerful, relatively deserted and smelling of last night’s rain, and if anyone took notice of the chattering little boy and his murmuring mother, they didn’t show it.
It was so much easier when there was no one else with her but Campbell and Tom, and people like them. They could speak as loudly as they wished. There was no pity, no misunderstandings, no explanations, no writing things down for those who didn’t—or wouldn’t—understand their speech. She could just speak, and listen, and be.
Tom thought being word-bound was a privilege. “Speech came first,” he would say constantly. “It makes us more human.”
“We’re all human. It’s not like dogs are telepathic, “ she’d answer.
Hayley didn’t like this dividing the world up into “us” versus “them,” but Tom courted it. While she did her best to deal with the world without speaking, he set himself apart. He spoke constantly, aggressively; he relished making the thoughtful people uncomfortable. Hayley didn’t like it. She said it wasn’t other people’s fault the three of them were born abnormal.
“What you don’t seem to understand,” Tom said during the argument after her and Campbell’s first visit to the clinic, “is that we’re not abnormal. People like us—two hundred years ago we were the normal ones. Now? We’re not abnormal, we’re special. We’re the last guardians of spoken language, and they’re killing our culture. Drama’s already gone. No one likes to listen to speech, and you can’t act by thought unless you’re talking about something that actually happened to you. And do you know people used to sing words, not just sounds?” She did know this, but always let him continue this favorite rant. “Once they get rid of us, a hundred thousand years—two hundred thousand, maybe more—what happens to all those years of language? They vanish.”
“No one’s trying to get rid of us,” she’d said.
“Oh yeah? If you take Campbell back there, how long’s it gonna be before he can’t speak to you—or won’t speak to you?”
Hayley still didn’t have an answer to that.
They arrived at the clinic, the Butler Institute for the Profoundly Word-Bound. Inside, the quiet of the outdoors ended. People spoke here, out in the open, unafraid. It was a paradoxical relief, to feel so welcome in a place designed to eradicate the need for speech.
Hayley didn’t want Campbell to stop speaking. She wanted him to remember his language and to feel connected to it, to her—to his father, if Tom would allow it. Tom said if she did this, he’d be gone. She was going to do it anyway. Campbell hadn’t signed up to be a guardian of a fading tradition. Hayley hadn’t, either, but she was too old for a neural implant. At four, Campbell was almost too old.
All she knew was, if she could wave a magic wand and suddenly hear and send thoughts like a thoughtful person, she would wave that wand till it broke. And if there was a way to help her son be in the world more easily—a way for him to transcend all the barriers a word-bound man faced—that was the way she would choose.
As for Tom, when she thought about him leaving, Hayley’s chest contracted so hard she felt like she would turn inside out. She wasn’t sure he’d actually do it. If he did, it would nearly destroy her. But Tom was her husband, and Campbell was her son. She might lose them both in the end. But if she could spare her son the pain and prejudice she’d gone through, she would.
Hayley and Campbell were in the exam room now for their second appointment, sitting on cold, hard, beige plastic chairs. The lights were half-turned down as they watched a translated projection on neural implants. Hayley’d already seen it, and Campbell didn’t understand it. He fidgeted in her lap and finally abandoned her for the bead track in the corner, crowing “Boom!” every time a bead slid down the wire and cracked into another bead. That was a word he’d keep. Words for sounds, especially animal sounds, were almost the only ones thoughtful people used. Words like “quack.”
Hayley returned her attention to the projection. The doctor was using models to show how the neural implant worked, turning them this way and that with silent waves of his hands. She looked away when the projection came to the graphic images of the surgery itself, but looked back when the translation track started talking about life after the implant.
A tiny girl appeared; she looked to be no more than two, maybe younger. The doctor lifted a handful of her many short spiral braids to reveal a coin-sized shaved patch, the scar at its center an exclamation mark against the girl’s dark skin. “When Keisha’s hair grows long enough, no one will even know the implant’s there,” said the translator. “Now Dr. Woods is going to ask Keisha to do some things.” Words appeared on the screen: Clap hands. Get duck.
Dr. Woods leaned over the little girl, smiling, his hands on his knees and his head cocked to one side in inquiry. Keisha’s face lit up; she giggled, clapped her hands, and ran across the room to a toy chest. She dug through it for a moment, found what she was looking for, and ran back to the doctor, clutching a bright yellow stuffed duck. Hayley wondered if the translator had told Dr. Woods how offensive ducks were in word-bound culture, or if the doctor cared. The doctor was there to fix the word-bound, not understand them, Hayley figured.
The projection ended, the dimmed lights came up, and the physician’s assistant came in, translator in tow. “Hi, Hayley. Hi, Campbell,” said the translator. “I’m James, Dr. Liu’s assistant, and this is my translator, Andrea.” Andrea stood at James’s shoulder, facing Hayley; she acted as his disembodied voice. When she said “I,” she meant James, not herself.
This was something Hayley took in stride, like all the word-bound; she kept her eyes on James and did her best to ignore Andrea’s presence. She briefly wondered if Campbell would some day be as confused as most thoughtful people were the few times they dealt with translators. Maybe Campbell would grow up to be a translator. No, you had to use thoughts really well to be a translator.
Hayley put the squirming Campbell up on the exam table. James listened to his heart, looked in his ears and eyes, and took his temperature. When he was through, he lifted Campbell down off the table, and the boy returned to the bead toy.
James sat down on the rolling stool next to Hayley; Andrea continued standing just to one side. “So you’re going to go through with the surgery?” asked James/Andrea.
Hayley nodded, uncomfortable speaking even here, but shrugs and head shakes wouldn’t get her answers. “I need to ask a few questions, though.”
James smiled. “Of course.”
“Does it hurt?” she said.
James’s smile grew flatter and wider. “Well, it’s surgery. We do everything we can to make the children comfortable, but of course we can’t take all the pain away. He’ll be up and around in a couple of days, you’ll need to keep him quiet for a month or so, and he’ll be completely healed in about eight weeks.”
“No,” said Hayley, “I meant does the implant hurt just being there? Will he always feel it?”
James’s smile dimmed. “It depends on the child. Sometimes they do. Often when we first turn it on, a child may interpret the new sense as pain until they go through therapy, but not always.” He glanced at the little boy in the corner, murmuring in a sing-song to himself as he zoomed the beads along the twisting wire. “It’s not going to be an easy transition. Four is older than we like. We prefer to do it before they fall into the habit of speaking aloud.” Hayley suppressed a frown; speaking aloud was not a habit. “Is there a reason you didn’t bring him in earlier, when it became clear he was word-bound?” said James/Andrea.
“His father—my husband—doesn’t think this is the right decision,” she said.
James nodded knowingly; Andrea the translator’s face remained carefully blank. “Well, you’re doing the right thing. His life will be better this way.” James got up to leave. “I’m going to my next appointment. Andrea’s
going to stay here and translate when Dr. Liu comes in.”
Hayley started in alarm; she’d wanted the time by herself to think. “Oh, but don’t you need her?”
“Almost none of the parents we see here need translators. It’s okay, you’re not inconveniencing us at all.” James walked out with a wave at Campbell, who ignored him in favor of the beads.
Alone in the room with Andrea, Hayley fidgeted. She wasn’t sure what to do. Do you talk with a translator when she’s not translating? The woman seemed friendly enough. When the moments stretched to minutes, and Dr. Liu still had not appeared, Hayley found it harder to ignore the translator without feeling rude. “So… I imagine learning to translate all the medical terms was difficult,” she faltered.
“Not really,” said Andrea. “Doctors use standard terminology. A medulla oblongata is a medulla oblongata whoever you are.”
“I feel wrong asking questions, I just—I’ve never spoken with a translator one-on-one, as themselves.” She’d never been able to afford one.
Andrea relaxed her straight stance and leaned against the exam table. “No, that’s okay, ask me anything.”
“I don’t even know where to begin. I’ve never been able to hear more than really loud emotions, and I’ve never been able to say anything at all. I don’t understand what hearing thoughts is like, or talking that way.” Hayley furrowed her brow and sorted through all her questions and curiosities. “What happens if the word-bound person you’re translating for speaks something other than English?”
“We call in a translator over projection,” said Andrea. “The other way round—when the word-bound person speaks English and the thoughtful person is from a different culture—is easier, usually, but in medical situations it can be a problem.”
Hayley paused in surprise. “I thought you people understood one another no matter what culture you’re from.”
“For everyday communication, sure, but what we do here isn’t everyday. Medical terminology is just memorization, but you have to be really exact in translating everything around the terminology. That’s true even when you’re translating for someone from our own culture. I don’t have to know spoken Chinese to interpret for Dr. Liu, but she thinks differently than Dr. Woods, or Dr. Bhatra—it’s called cultural thought syntax. I need to understand those differences, especially since in medical fields our personnel come from all over the world. It doesn’t come up often in casual conversation, because usually you’re talking with people who share the same culture. And when it does come up, those differences don’t mean as much. And you wouldn’t know this, but sometimes people think in written words.”
Hayley knew very well that people sometimes thought in written words; she did it herself. But she kept a polite face.
“If a person’s written language is, say, Chinese or Hindi,” continued Andrea, “I sometimes have to ask them to try again.”
“Why did you choose English? I mean, spoken English.”
Andrea turned softer, quieter. “My sister was word-bound. I had to learn it if I was going to communicate with her, and I love her, so I learned. And it turned out I really love the language, too. It’s so musical. It can say so much even within its limits. Maybe because of its limits. It’s nuanced in a different way than thought, and its very slowness contributes to that.”
Hayley glanced at the door. Speaking with Andrea had been just what she needed, to her surprise. How much time did she have before the surgeon came? “Why didn’t your sister get an implant?”
“She did.” Andrea paused. “She had it removed when she became an adult.” Hayley clasped her hands and choked on a sharp breath. “You need to understand that it was decades ago,” Andrea continued. “She was too old—she was twelve—and the tech was really new. It’s different now, especially if children get it as babies, but it’s even effective in older children like Campbell.”
Hayley pressed her lips together against tears: Campbell was four. “We waited too long,” she muttered to herself.
“Hey, it’s all right. It’s okay.” Andrea sat down on the stool, rolled it to Hayley, and took her hands. “It’s going to be okay. You don’t have to do this, but it will be easier for him if you do. The tech has come a long way since my sister was implanted—that was almost forty years ago. We know so much more now.”
“His father says he’ll lose his language. His culture.”
Andrea squeezed her hands. “It happens. Usually it’s because the child is word-bound but the parents aren’t. They want their child to be thoughtful. They take him out of word-bound culture and pretend he’s just like everyone else even though he’ll never be like everyone else. The implant doesn’t ‘cure’ the word-bound, it just helps them function more easily. They can hear and talk at least enough to get by. For some, it’s close to a hundred percent, but for most it’s less. Sometimes far less.”
“What about Campbell?”
Andrea released Hayley’s hands and rested her own on her knees. “I’m not a doctor. I can’t say. But I can say this: it’s to his advantage that you and your husband are both word-bound. You understand the challenges he faces. You understand he’s never going to be like everyone else. And it’s up to you whether he loses his language. Your husband’s right. They used to do terrible things to force children to use their new implants. We weren’t allowed to speak to my sister, and they wanted us to ignore her if she spoke to us. My mother… my mother even taped her mouth shut sometimes.” Andrea’s hands drew up in fists. “It was so, so cruel. It’s the real reason I became a translator. Campbell will be in intensive thought therapy for years, but these days no one will ever tell you to keep him from speaking. We don’t do that anymore. Well, you’ve seen all the projections. I won’t talk down to you.”
“You’re not talking down to me,” said Hayley, wiping her eyes.
“Do you still want to go through with it?” said Andrea.
Hayley realized they’d been left alone for a reason. “I want what’s best for him.”
“This is best, believe me. I’ll go get Dr. Liu.” Andrea smiled, rose up from the wheeled stool, and left the room. Campbell jumped up and threw himself belly-down on the stool’s padded seat, using his toes to scoot himself squeaking around the room.
Hayley wanted to be reassured. She wanted to believe what Andrea was saying. But that was the problem with spoken language, one of the reasons no one ever trusted the word-bound: unlike thoughts, words could lie.
* * *
“Words lie,” said Tom that night. Campbell was asleep in bed, and his parents were arguing in their tiny living room.
Hayley crossed her arms and leaned back against the sofa cushions. “Yes, and everyone will use that exact thought against him, just as they use it against you and me.”
“Why do you think I stick to other word-bound?”
“Campbell can’t live his whole life in a chatty little bubble, Tom. Even you have to deal with non-speakers.”
“It’s why I don’t want him becoming one.”
Hayley rubbed her temples. Why was he making this so difficult? “He doesn’t have to, not if you stay and help me.”
Tom checked the words he’d been intending to say. “I still can’t believe you bought that translator’s spiel.”
“It wasn’t a spiel. Think about what you’ve gone through. Do you want that for Cammy?”
“I went through what I went through because of people like Andrea’s parents. People like the Butler Institute. People who think they know what’s best for us. Why do you think I haven’t seen or spoken to my family in twenty years? Her sister got her mouth taped shut? Boo-effing-hoo.”
Tom’s face was dangerously flushed beneath three days’ growth of blond beard; his eyes were more bloodshot than Hayley had realized. She knew he hadn’t been sleeping, but she hadn’t looked at him closely in the last day or two. She uncrossed her arms and tried to soothe him. “I know you went through a lot. Terrible things. I’m lucky my family’s always been s
upportive. But you know what I went through outside my family, what we all still go through every day. It doesn’t have to happen to Campbell. He’ll never truly be thoughtful, but he can have more than we did. And that’s good. It’s good, Tom.”
Tom grasped her arms; from another man, the gesture would be frightening, violent, but from him, it felt more like a plea. “Hayley, you’re all I have. You’re my best friend, my lover, my wife, the mother of my beautiful baby boy. Without you, I’m nothing. I’m just… I’m nothing.”
He released her arms, and she put her hands on his shoulders. “No one’s making you go. If you go, it’s because you want to.”
Tom searched her face and withdrew. He nodded once, then again. “Okay. Okay. My only option is to take you to court, and they’ll side with you. I can’t stop you, but I won’t be a party to this.” He got up from the sofa and crossed to the bedroom door.
Hayley followed him inside. She put her back against the dresser as he dug through their closet. “Sometimes,” she murmured, “I wish we weren’t word-bound. We’d understand one another better.”
“Oh, I understand you fine,” he said. “I just disagree.”
“I want you to understand this is your choice. I don’t want you to leave.”
Tom stacked his shirts and pants in angry piles on the bed. “Then don’t let them drill into Cam’s brain.”
Hayley let her tears fall. She was tired of fighting, and tired of holding back. “You’re saying if you’d gotten the implant—if the tech had been as good as it is now when we were babies—that it wouldn’t have made a positive difference in your life? You’re saying that your life now is just as good as it would have been if you could talk and hear like everyone else?”
Tom stuffed his clothes into a duffel bag and lifted it over his shoulder. “I’m saying it’s different. It’s what I want for myself, and it’s what I want for Campbell. You want something different for him—everyone does. Well, I’m not ‘everyone.’ ‘Everyone’ doesn’t speak.”
