Jackson located a cheerful saloon on the corner of Niis and Da Streets and went in.
It was quiet and masculine inside. Jackson ordered a local variety of beer. When it was served, he said to the bartender, “Funny thing happened to me the other day.”
“Yeah?” said the bartender.
“Yeah, really,” Jackson said. “I had this big business deal on, see, and then at the last minute they asked to trombramcthulanchierir in the usual manner.”
He watched the bartender’s face carefully. A faint expression of puzzlement crossed the man’s stolid features.
“So why didn’t you?” the bartender asked.
“You mean you would have?”
“Sure I would have. Hell, it’s the standard cathanpriptiaia, ain’t it?”
“Course it is,” one of the loungers at the bar said. “Unless, of course, you suspected they was trying to numniscaterate.”
“No, I don’t think they were trying anything like that,” Jackson said in a flat low, lifeless voice. He paid for his drink and started to leave.
“Hey,” the bartender called after him, “you sure they wasn’t noniskakkekaki?”
“You never know,” Jackson said, walking slump-shouldered into the street.
Jackson trusted his instincts, both with languages and with people. His instincts told him now that the Naians were straight and were not practicing an elaborate deception on him. Erum had not been inventing new words for the sake of wilful confusion. He had been really speaking the Hon language as he knew it.
But if that were true, then Na was a very strange language. In fact, it was downright eccentric. And its implications were not merely curious. They were disastrous.
5
That evening Jackson went back to work. He discovered a further class of exceptions which he had not known or even suspected. That was a group of twenty-nine multivalued potentiators. These words, meaningless in themselves, acted to elicit a complicated and discordant series of shadings from other words. Their particular type of potentiation varied according to their position in the sentence.
Thus, when Erum had asked him “to trombramcthulanchierir in the usual manner,” he had merely wanted Jackson to make an obligatory ritual obeisance. This consisted of clasping his hands behind his neck and rocking back on his heels. He was required to perform this action with an expression of definite yet modest pleasure, in accordance with the totality of the situation, and also in accord with the state of his stomach and nerves and with his religion and ethical code, and bearing in mind minor temperamental differences due to fluctuations in heat and humidity, and not forgetting the virtues of patience, similitude, and forgiveness.
It was all quite understandable. And all completely contradictory to everything Jackson had previously learned about Hon.
It was more than contradictory; it was unthinkable, impossible, and entirely out of order. It was as if, having discovered palm trees in frigid Antarctica, he had further found that the fruit of these trees was not coconuts, but muscatel grapes.
It couldn’t be—but it was.
Jackson did what was required of him. When he had finished trombramcthulanchieriring in the usual manner, he had only to get through the official ceremony and the several small requirements after it.
Erum assured him that it was all quite simple, but Jackson suspected that he might somehow have difficulties.
So, in preparation, he put in three days of hard work acquiring a real mastery of the twenty-nine exceptional potentiators, together with their most common positions and their potentiating effect in each of these positions. He finished, bone-weary and with his irritability index risen to 97.3620 on the Grafheimer scale. An impartial observer might have noticed an ominous gleam in his china-blue eyes.
Jackson had had it. He was sick of the Hon language and of all things Naian. He had the vertiginous feeling that the more he learned, the less he knew. It was downright perverse.
“Hokay,” Jackson said, to himself and to the universe a large. “I have learned the Naian language, and I have learned a set of completely inexplicable exceptions, and I have also learned a further and even more contradictory set of exceptions to the exceptions.”
Jackson paused and in a very low voice said: “I have learned an exceptional number of exceptions. Indeed, an impartial observer might think that this language is composed of nothing but exceptions.
“But that,” he continued, “is damned well impossible, unthinkable, and unacceptable. A language is by God and by definition systematic, which means it’s gotta follow some kind of rules. Otherwise, nobody can’t understand nobody. That’s the way it works, and that’s the way it’s gotta be. And if anyone thinks they can horse around linguisticwise with Fred C. Jackson—”
Here Jackson paused and drew the blaster from his holster. He checked the charge, snapped off the safety, and replaced the weapon.
“Just better no one give old Jackson no more double-talking,” old Jackson muttered. “Because the next alien who tries it is going to get a three-inch circle drilled through his lousy, cheating guts.”
So saying, Jackson marched back to the city. He was feeling decidedly lightheaded, but absolutely determined. His job was to steal this planet out from under its inhabitants in a legal manner, and in order to do that he had to make sense out of their language. Therefore, in one way or another, he was going to make sense. Either that, or he was going to make some corpses.
At this point, he didn’t much care which.
Erum was in his office, waiting for him. With him were the mayor, the president of the City Council, the borough president, two aldermen, and the director of the Board of Estimates. All of them were smiling—affably, albeit nervously. Strong spirits were present on a sideboard, and there was a subdued air of fellowship in the room.
All in all, it looked as if Jackson were being welcomed as a new and highly respected property owner, an adornment to Fakka. Aliens took it that way sometimes: made the best of a bad bargain by trying to ingratiate themselves with the Inevitable Earthman.
“Mun,” said Erum, shaking his hand enthusiastically.
“Same to you, kid,” Jackson said. He had no idea what the word meant. Nor did he care. He had plenty of other Naian words to choose among, and he had the determination to force matters to a conclusion.
“Mun!” said the mayor.
“Thanks, pop,” said Jackson.
“Mun!” declared the other officials.
“Glad you boys feel that way,” said Jackson. He turned to Erum. “Well, let’s get it over with, okay?”
“Mun-mun-mun,” Erum replied. “Mun, mun-mun.”
Jackson stared at him for several seconds. Then he said, in a low, controlled voice, “Erum, baby, just exactly what are you trying to say to me?”
“Mun, mun, mun,” Erum stated firmly. “Mun, mun mun mun. Mun mun.” He paused, and in a somewhat nervous voice asked the mayor: “Mun, mun?”
“Mun ... mun mun,” the mayor replied firmly, and the other officials nodded. They all turned to Jackson.
“Mun, mun-mun?” Erum asked him, tremulously, but with dignity.
Jackson was numbed speechless. His face turned a choleric red and a large blue vein started to pulse in his neck. But he managed to speak slowly, calmly, and with infinite menace.