“Yeah, we sure have,” Lanky had agreed. “Damn sure we have.”
“And then let’s just set aside the other matter. Let’s just ignore, for now, the fact that the linguists know a solution to the problem that they’re unwilling to let us in on. The hell with them, gentlemen! The government of the United States has for chrissakes got savvy enough, and technology enough, and everything else enough, to either figure out what it is that the linguists know or to find some other way around the problem.”
“Damn right,” said Lanky. “Way to tell ’em.”
“Now what it boils down to is this… what we need, men, is a brain that’s just a little bit less humanoid and just a little bit more Alien. A kind of bridge between the two, don’t you see?”
Lanky didn’t know whether he saw or not, but the professors had all seemed to follow what was going on without any difficulty. They trusted him with the computers; he trusted them with their tools. And it sounded just about as crazy, no more and no less so, than any of the rest of the G.W. projects.
The idea was to use genetic engineering, and the government’s overflowing tanks full of tubies, and gradually, one step at a time, alter the brains and the perception systems of the tubies to make them alien. Or Alien, as the case might be.
The Pentagon man had felt obliged to caution them.
“We can’t move fast,” he’d said. “We don’t dare move fast, because we don’t know exactly what it is that we’re after. But we have thousands of tubies for you gentlemen to work with, to modify in whatever way you care to — and if you run out, well, there’s plenty more where those came from. You just let us know what you need.”
The professors sat with microscopes and nearly invisible messes on slides and in Petri dishes, and they made their slow changes. Lanky didn’t know how they did that. Whether they poked the little embryos with the scientific equivalent of pins, or blasted them with lasers, or ran currents through them, or what. He most emphatically did not want to know. He knew enough about G.W. projects to last him all the rest of his life. He stayed carefully away from the profs, he ran the data they gave him without allowing any of it to register in his memory — that’s what you have computers for, so you don’t have to put stuff in your own memory — and that was all he did. Just doing his job, thank you very much.
He had asked one question. He had asked, “What are you going to call it?”
“Call what?”
“Well… you’re down here to fool around with the embryos till you get something we can Interface. Something that’s not quite human and not quite humanoid and not quite Alien either. I believe you’ll get it… don’t see why not. But what are you going to call it?”
“Mr. Pugh,” the eggdome had said, looking at him just exactly the way he looked at the stuff under his microscope, “please go away and let me work.”
All right. Lanky had gone away as requested. It didn’t hurt his feelings, being talked to like that. After what Lanky Pugh had been through, he didn’t have any feelings left to hurt. He gave the professor one wave to acknowledge the message and went on up to watch the whales swim around.
One of the things he planned to do, before he left this fancy hell, was figure out how to get into the Interface and go for a swim with those whales in that beautiful blue water. Round and round and round, in a lovely endless loop.
Appendix
From: A First Dictionary and Grammar of Láadan
As is true in the translation from any language into another, many words of Láadan cannot be translated into English except by lengthy definitions. A miscellaneous sampling is given here to illustrate the situation; it consists mainly of samples from the “ra-” prefixing forms of the language.
doóledosh: pain or loss which comes as a relief by virtue of ending the anticipation of its coming
doroledim: This word has no English equivalent whatsoever. Say you have an average woman. She has no control over her life. She has little or nothing in the way of a resource for being good to herself, even when it is necessary. She has family and animals and friends and associates that depend on her for sustenance of all kinds. She rarely has adequate sleep or rest; she has no time for herself, no space of her own, little or no money to buy things for herself, no opportunity to consider her own emotional needs. She is at the beck and call of others, because she has these responsibilities and obligations and does not choose to (or cannot) abandon them. For such a woman, the one and only thing she is likely to have a little control over for indulging her own self is FOOD. When such a woman overeats, the verb for that is “doroledim”. (And then she feels guilty, because there are women whose children are starving and who do not have even THAT option for self-indulgence…)
lowitheláad: to feel, as if directly, another’s pain/grief/surprise/joy/anger
núháam: to feel oneself cherished, cared for, nurtured by someone; to feel loving-kindness
óothanúthuclass="underline" spiritual orphanhood; being utterly without a spiritual community or family
ráahedethi: to be unable to feel lowitheláad, above; to be empathically impaired
ráahedethilh: 1) to be unwilling to feel lowitheláad, above; to be empathically impaired 2) to be musically or euphonically deprived
radama: to non-touch, to actively refrain from touching
radamalh: to non-touch with evil intent
radéela: non-garden, a place that has much flash and glitter and ornament, but no beauty
radíidin: non-holiday, a time allegedly a holiday but actually so much a burden because of work and preparations that it is a dreaded occasion; especially when there are too many guests and none of them help
radodelh: non-interface, a situation which has not one single point in common on which to base interaction, often used of personal relationships
raduth: to non-use, to deliberately deprive someone of any useful function in the world, as in enforced retirement or when a human being is kept as a plaything or pet
rahéena: non-heart-sibling, one so entirely incompatible with another that there is no hope of ever achieving any kind of understanding or anything more than a truce, and no hope of ever making such a one understand why… does not mean “enemy”
rahobeth: non-neighbor, one who lives nearby but does not fulfill a neighbor’s role; not necessarily pejorative
rahom: to non-teach, to deliberately fill students’ minds with empty data or false information; can be used only of persons in a teacher/student relationship
ralaheb: something utterly spiceless, “like warm spit,” repulsively bland and blah
ralée-: non-meta (a prefix), something absurdly or dangerously narrow in scope or range
ralith: to deliberately refrain from thinking about something, to wall it off in one’s mind by deliberate act
ralorolo: non-thunder, much talk and commotion from one (or more) with no real knowledge of what they’re talking about or trying to do, something like “hot air” but more so
ramime: to refrain from asking, out of courtesy or kindness
ramimelh: to refrain from asking, with evil intent; especially when it is clear that someone badly wants the other to ask