Betty waved as I crunched to a halt, then jumped down.
“Hi,” I choked, unwinding my scarf and shaking out a pound and a half of grit.
“Like, where do I go and who do I see?”
She permitted herself a brief Germanic giggle—more at my starting a sentence with “like” than at my discomfort—then she started talking.
(She is a top linguist, so a word from the Village Idiom still tickles her!)
I appreciate her precise, furry talk; informational, and all that.
I had enough in the way of social pleasantries before me to last at least the rest of my life. I looked at her chocolate-bar eyes and perfect teeth, at her sun-bleached hair, close-cropped to the head (I hate blondes!), and decided that she was in love with me.
“Mr. Gallinger, the Matriarch is waiting inside for you to be introduced. She has consented to open the Temple records for your study.” She paused here to pat her hair and squirm a little. Did my gaze make her nervous?
“They are religious documents, as well as their only history,” she continued, “sort of like the Mahabharata. She expects you to observe certain rituals in handling them, like repeating the sacred words when you turn pages—she will teach you the system.”
I nodded quickly, several times.
“Fine, let’s go in.”
“Uh—” She paused. “Do not forget their Eleven Forms of Politeness and Degree.
They take matters of form quite seriously—and do not get into any discussions over the equality of the sexes—”
“I know all about their taboos,” I broke in. “Don’t worry. I’ve lived in the Orient, remember?”
She dropped her eyes and seized my hand. I almost jerked it away.
“It will look better if I enter leading you.”
I swallowed my comments, and followed her, like Samson in Gaza.
Inside, my last thought met with a strange correspondence. The Matriarch’s quarters were a rather abstract version of what I might imagine the tents of the tribes of Israel to have been like.
Abstract, I say, because it was all frescoed brick, peaked like a huge tent, with animal-skin representations like gray-blue scars, that looked as if they had been laid on the walls with a palette knife.
The Matriarch, M’Cwyie, was short, white-haired, fifty-ish, and dressed like a queen. With her rainbow of voluminous skirts she looked like an inverted punch bowl set atop a cushion.
Accepting my obeisances, she regarded me as an owl might a rabbit.
The lids of those blank, black eyes jumped upwards as she discovered my perfect accent. —The tape recorder Betty had carried on her interviews had done its part, and I knew the language reports from the first two expeditions, verbatim.
I’m all hell when it comes to picking up accents.
“You are the poet?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“Recite one of your poems, please.”
“I’m sorry, but nothing short of a thorough translating job would do justice to your language and my poetry, and I don’t know enough of your language yet.”
“Oh?”
“But I’ve been making such translations for my own amusement, as an exercise in grammar,” I continued. “I’d be honored to bring a few of them along one of the times that I come here.”
“Yes. Do so.”
Score one for me!
She turned to Betty.
“You may go now.”
Betty muttered the parting formalities, gave me a strange sideways look, and was gone. She apparently had expected to stay and “assist” me. She wanted a piece of the glory, like everyone else. But I was the Schliemann at this Troy, and there would be only one name on the Association report!
M’Cwyie rose, and I noticed that she gained very little height by standing. But then I’m six-six and look like a poplar in October; thin, bright red on top, and towering above everyone else.
“Our records are very, very old,” she began. “Betty says that your word for that age is `millennia.`”
I nodded appreciatively.
“I’m very anxious to see them.”
“They are not here. We will have to go into the Temple—they may not be removed.”
I was suddenly wary.
“You have no objections to my copying them, do you?”
“No. I see that you respect them, or your desire would not be so great.”
“Excellent.”
She seemed amused. I asked her what was so funny.
“The High Tongue may not be so easy for a foreigner to learn.”
It came through fast.
No one on the first expedition had gotten this close. I had had no way of knowing that this was a double-language deal—a classical as well as a vulgar. I knew some of their Prakrit, now I had to learn all their Sanskrit.
“Ouch, and damn!”
“Pardon, please?”
“It’s non-translatable, M’Cwyie. But imagine yourself having to learn the High Tongue in a hurry, and you can guess at the sentiment.”
She seemed amused again, and told me to remove my shoes.
She guided me through an alcove...
...and into a burst of Byzantine brilliance!
No Earthman had ever been in this room before, or I would have heard about it.
Carter, the first expedition’s linguist, with the help of one Mary Allen, M.D., had learned all the grammar and vocabulary that I knew while sitting cross-legged in the antechamber.
We had had no idea this existed. Greedily, I cast my eyes about.
A highly sophisticated system of esthetics lay behind the decor. We would have to revise our entire estimation of Martian culture.
For one thing, the ceiling was vaulted and corbeled; for another, there were side-columns with reverse flutings; for another—oh hell!
The place was big. Posh. You could never have guessed it from the shaggy outsides.
I bent forward to study the gilt filigree on a ceremonial table.
M’Cwyie seemed a bit smug at my intentness, but I’d still have hated to play poker with her.
The table was loaded with books.
With my toe, I traced a mosaic on the floor.
“Is your entire city within this one building?”
“Yes, it goes far back into the mountain.”
“I see,” I said, seeing nothing.
I couldn’t ask her for a conducted tour, yet.
She moved to a small stool by the table.
“Shall we begin your friendship with the High Tongue?”
I was trying to photograph the hall with my eyes, knowing I would have to get a camera in here, somehow, sooner or later. I tore my gaze from a statuette and nodded, hard.
“Yes, introduce me.”
I sat down.
For the next three weeks alphabet-bugs chased each other behind my eyelids whenever I tried to sleep. The sky was an unclouded pool of turquoise that rippled calligraphies whenever I swept my eyes across it. I drank quarts of coffee while I worked and mixed cocktails of Benzedrine and champagne for my coffee breaks.
M’Cwyie tutored me two hours every morning, and occasionally for another two in the evening. I spent an additional fourteen hours a day on my own, once I had gotten up sufficient momentum to go ahead alone.
And at night the elevator of time dropped me to its bottom floors...
I was six again, learning my Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Aramaic. I was ten, sneaking peeks at the Iliad. When Daddy wasn’t spreading hellfire brimstone, and brotherly love, he was teaching me to dig the Word, like in the original.
Lord! There are so many originals and so many words! When I was twelve I started pointing out the little differences between what he was preaching and what I was reading.
The fundamentalist vigor of his reply brooked no debate. It was worse than any beating. I kept my mouth shut after that and learned to appreciate Old Testament poetry.