“Well, I’ll be damned,” Thomas declared.
“No doubt, brother, no doubt,” Adam said, with a foolish smirk on his face. Adam had had too much bourbon.
At the next table Andrew St. Syrus raised a hand and said, “Let me just take a poll, Thomas… all right? Tell me, all of you — how long has it been since you sat and listened to a woman nag? Or watched one sit and blather endlessly about something that no one in his right mind could possible have any interest in? Or blubber for hours over nothing at all? How long?”
There was a murmur, and some consultation, and then they agreed. It had to be at least six months. Perhaps longer. They had only begun to notice it recently, but it must have been going on quite a long time.
“But that’s amazing!” said Thomas.
“Isn’t it? And wonderful. And all in time for your seventieth!” And up came the bourbon glasses in a toast.
“Oh, and those tiny ones,” said someone across the room. “Oh, to be fifty years younger!”
A roar of laughter went around the room, with the usual jeers about dirty old men, but there was support from the other tables.
“They are so incredibly sweet, those tiny tiny girls,” mused the fellow who’d brought it up. A Hashihawa, he was; Thomas could not remember his first name. “And they have the most charming concepts. Chornyak, perceive this, would you? I have a granddaughter — hell, I have two or three dozen granddaughters — but this one in particular, she’s an adorable little thing, name of Shawna, I think. At any rate, I heard her just the other day, talking to one of the other little girls, and she was explaining so gravely how it was, that what she felt for her little brother was not ‘love’ qua ‘love’, you know, it was… I don’t remember the word exactly, but it meant ‘love for the sibling of one’s body but not of one’s heart.’ Charming! Just the kind of silly distinction a female would make, of course, but charming. Ah, it’ll be a lucky man of a lucky Line that beds my little Shawna, Thomas!”
“What language was she speaking?”
The man shrugged. “I don’t know… who can keep track? Whatever she Interfaced for, I suppose.”
And then the examples began coming from others. The charming examples. The so endearing examples. Just to add to the conversation and explain to Thomas, who clearly had not noticed what was going on around him lately. Not a lot of examples, because the subject went rather quickly to the more interesting question of the next Republican candidate for president of the United States. But at least a dozen.
Thomas sat there, forgetting his bourbon, something tugging at him. Adam was staring blearily at him, accusing him of thinking of business instead of celebrating like he was supposed to do. But he wasn’t thinking of business. Not at all. He was thinking about a dozen examples, a dozen “charming” and “endearing” concepts, from nearly as many different Households. That should have meant roughly a dozen different Alien languages for the examples to have come from. But it didn’t sound that way. Few of the men had remembered the actual surface shapes of the words, but Thomas had been a linguist all his life; he didn’t need all the words to be able to perceive the patterns. They were all, every one of them, from the same language. He would have staked his life on it.
And that could mean only one thing.
“Sweet jesus christ on a donkey in the shade of a lilac tree,” said Thomas out loud, stunned.
“Drink up,” Adam directed. “Do you good. You’re not half drunk enough.”
He was not drunk at all, he was stone cold sober. And a whole bottle of bourbon would not have made him drunk at that moment.
It could only mean one thing.
Because there was no way that the little girls of all those different Households could all be acquiring a single Alien language, all at the same time. No way.
And it began to fall together for him. Things he had half noticed, without being aware that he noticed them. Things he had seen from the corner of his eye, heard from the corner of his ear — things he had sensed.
He looked at the men of his blood, the men of the Lines, laughing and hearty and slightly tipsy and contented, surfeited with the rare pleasure of the evening and one another’s good company. And all he could think was: FOOLS. ALL OF YOU, FOOLS. AND I AM THE BIGGEST FOOL AMONG YOU. Because he was Head not of just Chornyak Household, but of all the Households, and that was supposed to mean something. That was supposed to mean that he always knew what was going on in the Lines, before it could go farther than it ought to go.
How could it have happened? Where could his mind have been?
He said nothing to the others, because of course he could be wrong. There could be some other explanation. There could be some cluster of related Alien languages spread out among the Lines by coincidence, something of that sort. Or he could be imagining the patterns, distracted by the liquor he so rarely drank. He put it aside and concentrated on fulfilling his role as host for the rest of the evening, because it was his duty to do so and because he would not spoil this for everyone else when he might be mistaken.
It dragged on, interminably, all the pleasure gone from it for him. Adam passed out and had to be carried to a cubbyhole in the dorms reserved for just such undignified accidents. Adam could not control his women, and he could not handle his liquor, and no doubt it was unpleasant for him to have to always compare himself with Thomas, and so he drank until he could compare no longer. It seemed to Thomas that this celebration, that had become a mockery, would never end.
When at last it was over, as had to happen despite his distorted time perceptions, Thomas was weak with a mixture of relief and dread. And glad that he could get away now to his office, where no one would dare go at night without his express invitation, and where Michaela Landry would be waiting for him as he had instructed her to be. He had expected to be in an unusually good mood at the end of this evening, and he had wanted her to be there, to talk to.
He still wanted her to be there, frantic as he felt. Not for her body — he had no interest in her body tonight. But for her blessed skill at listening with her whole heart and her whole mind. And for the fact that he could trust her absolutely.
He felt that if he could not have talked to someone about this he would have gone mad. He could talk to Michaela, bless her.
“Michaela, do you understand what I’m telling you? Do you follow what I’m saying?”
“I’m not sure,” she said carefully. “I’m not a linguist, my darling… I know nothing about these things. Perhaps if you would not mind explaining it to me again, I might understand.”
He badly needed to say it all again, that was clear to her. And for once she badly needed to hear it again. To be sure that he was saying what she thought he was saying, and to learn what he had learned. Because the women had not told her, of course, any more than they would have told any other woman who had to live among the men. Not even Nazareth. And Michaela had not guessed.
“Michaela,” said Thomas sternly, “if you would pay attention, you wouldn’t have any problem — it’s not beyond you to understand this.”
“Of course, Thomas. Forgive me — I will listen very very carefully this time.”
“Now you know about the Encoding Project, Michaela; you’re in and out of Barren House constantly, you couldn’t possibly not know. For generations our women have been playing at that game… constructing a ‘woman’s language’ called Langlish. You must have at least heard them speak of it.”