But first he had to own that property. He had to really own it, to protect himself from the bleeding-hearts Congressmen and the soft-on-aliens newsmen who always started an investigation whenever Earth took charge of another planet.
To provide a legal basis for conquest—that was what the contactors were for.
“Jackson,” Jackson said to himself, “you gonna git yourself that li’l ole bromicaine factory tomorrow and you gonna own it without let or hindrance. You heah me, boy? I mean it sincerely.”
On the morrow, shortly before noon, Jackson was back in the city. Several hours of intensive study and a long consultation with his tutor had sufficed to show him where he had gone wrong.
It was simple enough. He had merely been a trifle hasty in assuming an extreme and invariant isolating technique in the Hon use of radicals. He had thought, on the basis of his early studies, that word meaning and word order were the only significant factors required for an understanding of the language. But that wasn’t so. Upon further examination, Jackson found that the Hon language had some unexpected resources: affixation, for example, and an elementary form of reduplication. Yesterday he hadn’t even been prepared for any morphological inconsistencies; when they had occurred, he had found himself in semantic difficulties.
The new forms were easy enough to learn. The trouble was, they were thoroughly illogical and contrary to the entire spirit of Hon.
One word produced by one sound and bearing one meaning—that was the rule he had previously deduced. But now he discovered eighteen important exceptions—compounds produced by a variety of techniques, each of them with a list of modifying suffixes. For Jackson, this was as odd as stumbling across a grove of palm trees in Antarctica.
He learned the eighteen exceptions, and thought about the article he would write when he finally got home.
And the next day, wiser and warier, Jackson strode meaningfully back to the city.
4
In Erum’s office, he filled out the Government forms with ease. That first question—“Have you, now or at any past time, elikated mushkies forsically?”—he could now answer with an honest no. The plural “mushkies” in its primary meaning, represented in this context the singular “woman.” (The singular “mushkies” used similarly would denote an uncorporeal state of femininity.)
Elikation was, of course, the role of sexual termination, unless one employed the modifier “forsically.” If one did, this quiet term took on a charged meaning in this particular context, tantamount to edematous polysexual advocation.
Thus, Jackson could honestly write that, as he was not a Naian, he had never had that particular urge.
It was as simple as that. Jackson was annoyed at himself for not having figured it out on his own.
He filled in the rest of the questions without difficulty, and handed the paper back to Erum.
“That’s really quite skoe,” Erum said. “Now, there are just a few more simple items for us to complete. The first we can do immediately. After that, I will arrange a brief official ceremony for the Property Transferral Act, and that will be followed by several other small bits of business. All of it should take no more than a day or so, and then the property will be all yours.”
“Sure, kid, that’s great,” Jackson said. He wasn’t bothered by the delays. Quite the contrary, he had expected many more of them. On most planets, the locals caught on quickly to what was happening. It took no great reasoning power to figure out that Earth wanted what she wanted, but wanted it in a legalistic manner.
As for why she wanted it that way—that wasn’t too hard to fathom, either. A great majority of Terrans were idealists, and they believed fervently in concepts such as truth, justice, mercy, and the like. And not only did they believe, they also let those noble concepts guide their actions—except when it would be inconvenient or unprofitable. When that happened, they acted expediently, but continued to talk moralistically. This meant that they were “hypocrites” —a term which every race has its counterpart of.
Terrans wanted what they wanted, but they also wanted that what they wanted should look nice. This was a lot to expect sometimes, especially when what they wanted was ownership of someone else’s planet. But in one way or another, they usually got it.
Most alien races realized that overt resistance was impossible and so resorted to various stalling tactics.
Sometimes they refused to sell, or they required an infinite multiplicity of forms or the approval of some local official who was always absent. But for each ploy the contactor always had a suitable counterploy.
Did they refuse to sell property on racial grounds? The laws of Earth specifically forbade such practices, and the Declaration of Sentient Rights stated the freedom of all sentients to live and work wherever they pleased. This was a freedom that Terra would fight for, if anyone forced her to.
Were they stalling? The Terran Doctrine of Temporal Propriety would not allow it.
Was the necessary official absent? The Uniform Earth Code Against Implicit Sequestration in Acts of Omission expressly forbade such a practice. And so on and so on. It was a game of wits Earth invariably won, for the strongest is usually judged the cleverest.
But the Naians weren’t even trying to fight back. Jackson considered that downright despicable.
The exchange of Naian currency for Terran platinum was completed, and Jackson was given his change in crisp fifty-Vrso bills. Erum beamed with pleasure and said, “Now, Mr. Jackson, we can complete today’s business if you will kindly trombramcthulanchierir in the usual manner.”
Jackson turned, his eyes narrowed, and his mouth compressed into a bloodless downward-curving line.
“What did you say?”
“I merely asked you to—”
“I know what you asked! But what does it mean?”
“Well, it means—it means—’ Erum laughed weakly. “It means exactly what it says. That is to say—ethybolically speaking—”
Jackson said in a low, dangerous voice, “Give me a synonym.”
“There is no synonym,” Erum said.
“Baby, you better come up with one anyhow,” Jackson said, his hand closing over Erum’s throat.
“Stop! Wait! Ulp!” Erum cried. “Mr. Jackson, I beg of you! How can there be a synonym when there is one and only one term for the thing expressed—if I may so express it?”
“You’re putting me on!” Jackson howled. “And you better quit it, on account of we got laws against willful obfuscation, intentional obstructionism, implicit superimposition, and other stuff like you’re doing. You hear me?”
“I hear you.” Erum trembled.
“Then hear this: stop agglutinating, you devious dog! You’ve got a perfectly ordinary run-of-the-mill analytical-type language, distinguished only by its extreme isolating tendency. And when you got a language like that, man, then you simply don’t agglutinate a lot of big messy compounds. Get me?”
“Yes, yes,” Erum cried. “But believe me, I don’t intend to numniscaterate in the slightest! Not noniskakkekaki, and you really must debruchili that!”
Jackson drew back his fist, but got himself under control in time. It was unwise to hit aliens if there was any possibility that they were telling the truth. Folks on Terra didn’t like it. His pay could be docked; and if, by some unlucky chance, he killed Erum, he could be slapped with a six-month jail sentence.
But still ...
“I’ll find out if you’re lying or not!” Jackson screamed, and stormed out of the office.
He walked for nearly an hour, mingling with the crowds in the slum quarters of Grath-Eth, below the gray, evil-smelling Ungperdis. No one paid any attention to him. To all outward appearances, he could have been a Naian, just as any Naian could have been a Terran.