“Certainly, nandi,” Narani said—with Bindanda, helping with the cuffs.
He would not have chosen formal dress at the moment, except that time came in such unpredictable parcels, and one could hardly go visiting in one’s bathrobe.
Speaking of which—“One hesitates even to mention it, but what progress with clothes for our guest to wear?”
“Jeladi is assisting him, nandi,” Bindanda said. “Our guest indicated a preference for a blue and mauve brocade—we had three materials in sufficient supply. The green seemed an alternate choice. The gray and black he did emphatically reject for the coat. For the trousers, we used a medium weight blue wool. With a cream silk shirt that seems, by Jeladi’s report, to please him.”
Three choices. Trust his staff to have had the resources, and the sensitivity to offer a choice and report the outcome.
“Excellent,” he said. His staff finished their hasty preparation and he stood ready, immaculate as they could make him.
Not, immediately, for a foray onto the ship. He had a critical job to do before that, and hoped meanwhile that Jase kept Sabin at arm’s length.
“Jeladi reports our guest ready, nandi,” Narani said, one of those snippets of staff intelligence that let coincidences happen so smoothly.
“Excellent, Rani-ji.”
He secured a notebook and pen from the bedside and strolled out into the corridor. Indeed, Jeladi was just bringing their guest out in—Bindanda should be proud—a very elegant coat, with abundant lace on the shirt. For the feet—unatevi and broad—in that essential detail, Bindanda had worked a wonder, an ankle-high boot with lacings that even looked comfortable. Nothing like good footwear to convince a man he was in good hands.
And Prakuyo, seeing him in his court splendor, looked, well—judging any expression on that broad face was difficult—excited, at least. Prakuyo made a nice little bow. He reciprocated with good grace.
“Come,” he said, “nadi-ji. Come sit.”
Prakuyo seemed amenable, though a little disappointed. Ah, Bren thought: Prakuyo had hoped they were going straight to the ship. And still the working of hydraulics went on, the lift system racing to deliver cars to the airlock and passengers to four-deck, just over their heads… crew had to be scrambling, too, on last-moment needs and adjustments.
All of which might persuade an anxious guest that those sounds might include a docking in progress.
They went to the dining hall, sat down at a corner of the large table, and he immediately sketched out themselves, the station, an approaching ship with a directional arrow.
“Prakuyo’s ship is coming,” he said in Ragi. Measured with his fingers a very small distance. “Close.”
“Close.” Prakuyo was attentive and cooperative, though rubbing his face in the way of a man with too little sleep. “Close.” Measure of two thick fingers, fingers with nails so broad and thick they wrapped half the end of the digit—nails that, when they first dealt with him, had been broken and rough. Now they were manicured, filed short. “Good. Good.”
Bren started naming bits of his sketch. And then asked, “Prakuyo talk.”
It got only puzzlement. His request wasn’t expected, he thought. Six years, and maybe nobody had ever asked Prakuyo to use his own language.
“Table,” Bren said. Then said the same in Ragi, and indicated Prakuyo. He did the same for chair, then: “Prakuyo talk.”
“Akankh.” Prakuyo muttered. Then pointed at the table. “Noph.” The language had a difficult popping consonant.
Bren tried it. Prakuyo repeated it three times. There might be a fine distinction on the popping sound—a language with several similar consonants, it might be, and Bren made his utmost effort. “Noph.”
Prakuyo gave him, in short order, pen, paper or notebook, floor, ceiling—demonstrable words. Ship. Station, available in the picture.
“Sit,” Bren said, and Prakuyo gave him that word. Words they had established, they could call up. Sit and stand. Walk. Give and take. They had fourteen words. With three hundred—a body could get through his entire day, fluently.
Fourteen, however, didn’t all apply to what they had to discuss. He had his mental list of vocabulary he wanted. Station, stationer, go. And a frightening decision to take on oneself—but he conceived of very little chance Prakuyo’s folk wouldn’t cross paths again with atevi, and best try to define that inevitable meeting, set a purpose, try to establish a protocol…
Trade. Trade was a concept he illustrated by a human and an atevi figure facing a Prakuyo-like figure, with directional signs and representative goods changing hands. Beads on a string. A shirt. A pitcher. A plate of food. He exhausted his artistic skill with those items, and he wasn’t sure he had gotten the right words. There were horridly complicated alteratives: tribute, marriage-gifts. God knew whether Prakuyo had understood that human-atevi concept and given him the right word back.
But he kept trying, concentratedly. In all the universe there was only this. In all the wide universe, there was only this one necessity—to engage Prakuyo’s equally exhausted wits and to get some sort of communication in three hours before that ship arrived. It didn’t matter what Ginny and Sabin were doing; it didn’t matter what exchanges Jase was making with Sabin via courier and whether the whole situation was about to blow up. If that happened, the new situation was going to need vocabulary, understanding, negotiation; and this was the safest, fastest way to get it. Down here, things took as long as they took, and the good will of this tired, perhaps questionably sane stranger was all-important.
His notebook disassociated into sheets of paper. He made diagrams of spatial relationships: to, from, toward, away from, off, over, under. He formed hypotheses and rudimentary sentences in this new language in which verb-forms seemed simple and directional elements seemed ungodly complex. Prakuyo, with his newly-refined fingers and a pen delicately held, drew stick figures of his own—not skinny, one-line beings, but beings of substance, rounded beings, beings with U’s for legs and arms and heft to the outlines… was it surprising?
“Human,” Bren said of his own skinny short ones. “Atevi,” of the skinny tall ones. He tapped one of Prakuyo’s. Twice.
“Kyo,” Prakuyo called them. They had not ironed out singular, dual, or plural. His species seemed to be that. Or it was simply the word for man, intelligent being, or us.
Kyo . So was Prakuyo, then, a personal name, or a rank, or a species distinction? Was there a concept of individuality? One thought so, since Prakuyo identified him and the dowager by name quite accurately.
Bindanda brought a tray and provided fruit juice. They gained the words for cold and hot. Ice and water; juice, or fluid.
“Banichi and Jago are awake, nandi,” Bindanda informed him, with the tray. “The dowager likewise.”
He was not surprised, then, when Banichi and Jago turned up in the dining hall, their arrival noted, but not interrupting the flow. They listened—sitting at the end of the table, though their habit was to stand. They knew what he was attempting. They knew—the national experience of atevi and Mospheirans—how desperately risky it was, this speaking to strangers. They remained unobtrusive.
Bren drew pictures, trying to make structure, and pushed for new words, pushed while Prakuyo was still willing. He had by now more than a hundred new words jostling around in his head. A hundred words could be an hour’s conversation. Unfortunately one had to know the useful words, the ones attached to their personal situation. They hadn’t yet communicated trust, or don’t blow up our ship, please-thank-you, or, you can have the station; we don’t want it any more.
Negatives, God, the negatives, the not’s and no’s and neither’s and nor’s and other rejections. They were an unexpected headache, with distinctions that just didn’t make sense—a sort of subjunctive of negativity, related—he decided—to degree of reality. There was not, really not, and no way in hell possible; but there was also future-not, and past-not. And—one began to get the nightmarish picture—there were similar distinctions on various other modifiers.
God help him. More to the point, God help the people he represented. He began, for the first time, to believe he’d undertaken the humanly impossible.