She did, and she said it for him.
“Again, please.”
She said it again.
“That first cluster…”
She repeated it slowly, tipping her chin so that he could see clearly the position of her tongue against her teeth.
“Oh, I perceive. Like that… All right, here we go. Listen to me, please — will they understand?”
Nazareth would have winced at the mangled stream of sound that represented Shannontry’s oral skill at REM34, but that would have been as bad manners as those the Jeelods were exhibiting. She bit her lip, instead, and he laughed.
“That bad? Here… brace yourself, Mrs. Adiness, and I’ll try it again.”
Better. Not much, but better.
“Yes,” she said. “They’ll understand that, even if they don’t like it very much. And it’s time, I think — yes, they’re turning around. Perhaps if you felt willing to go ahead before the man from the Department gets back…”
“Absolutely,” he said, apparently not offended by the hint of a suggestion of action. “I’ll be right back.”
Nazareth would never have dared leave the interpreter’s booth and march right over to the Alien delegation, and she doubted that many men would have, but Jordan Shannontry seemed as comfortable as if he’d been in his own Household. She watched, as delighted as if it had been an entertainment especially for her benefit, while he faced the Jeelod women, bowed first to the left and then to the right — which showed that he had studied the culture, for all his shortcomings with the pronunciation of the language — and just said it right out. Twice. Slowly. And then again, to be absolutely certain that they had heard and understood.
The American negotiators didn’t like it one little bit, and as Shannontry made his way back across the room they caught at his sleeve and made desperate “What’s going on?” faces at him, but he was magnificent. He shook them off as if they were tiny children, and he did not stoop to explain one thing to them. Marvelous, thought Nazareth, marvelous! To be so certain of yourself… to be so controlled! To dare to behave like that…
He was with her in half a minute, and he touched her wrist politely, not sitting down.
“I suggest we leave at once, Mrs. Adiness,” he said. “Before our federal friends can create any additional commotion. Come — I’ll get you out of here, and then I will come back and explain the situation.”
She was afraid to do that, but he was firm, overruling her objections and moving her briskly out of the booth and into the corridor, gathering up her work materials for her as they went so that she didn’t have to bother with them. Only when they were safely outside the conference room and she was seated in the cubicle reserved for the linguists’ use during breaks and delays did he say anything more.
“You’re not to worry,” he said. “Not at all. Whatever happens, I’ll explain that you behaved precisely as you should have behaved and that there is no reason for anyone to be annoyed with you in even the slightest degree. If they want to complain, let them complain about me — you did nothing but comply with my instructions, and if there was an error it was my error. Now you just relax, dear, and wait, while I go see what can be done about all this. I assume they will send a team of men?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Yes, of course. They are as anxious to get the tariff established — in their favor, naturally — as we are to have it firmly established in ours. This was just a — a tactic.”
“Worked very well, too, didn’t it?”
Nazareth ducked her head to hide her face, and agreed that it surely had.
“Well… we’ll get it settled. And a decent Jeelod team at the table. And then, my dear, I will send someone to bring you back to the booth, and not until.”
And he was gone, leaving her entirely bemused. She was not only impressed, she was astonished… she tried to imagine Aaron, in such a situation, and she laughed aloud. He would not have been there in the first place, not Aaron. He would work if a woman were there acting as his backup. He would even condescend to work on a multilingual negotiation with a woman serving as interpreter for one of the other languages. But act as backup for a woman himself? He would have gone to any lengths, made up any excuse, before he would have done such a thing.
It crossed her mind then, oddly, that it must be miserable to be Aaron Adiness and have to live in constant terror of your own ego. It had never before occurred to her.
Poor Aaron. That was a new thought. Poor Aaron.
Chapter Sixteen
Q: What do you see, Nils? Can you tell me?
A: (LAUGHTER)
Q: Try… it’s very important. What do you see? What is it, that you’re looking at?
A: It. No. Not it.
Q: Go ahead, Nils… call what you see ‘it.’ Pretend that ‘it’ will do. What do you see?
A: (LAUGHTER)
Q: Nils, you’re not trying! You promised you would try, for the sake of science, and for my sake. Please, try, man…
A: It’s not a thing. It’s not a not-thing. It’s not an idea. It’s not a non-idea. It’s not a part of reality. It’s not a not-part of reality. It’s not a not-part of a not-part of not-reality.
Q: Nils, that’s not a hell of a lot of help to us.
A: (LAUGHTER)
Somehow Brooks Showard had taken it for granted there would be no more of the experiments that combined babies and hallucinogenic drugs. It had been hell, watching the tubies fail one after another, when they’d started with such high hopes. And it had been a good idea, by God… Beau St. Clair was suffering a kind of soul-destroying guilt now, that the effing med-Sammys didn’t seem to be able to do much about — not and keep him conscious enough for duty, at any rate — but it had been a fine idea. An excellent idea, that could have been the breakthrough they’d been praying for. Except that it hadn’t worked.
And considering how it turned out, considering what they had to send off to the orphanage in Arlington, Brooks took it for granted that that was the end of it. He and Beau and Lanky had agreed, too, that whatever the next move was going to be, it was up to Arnold Dolbe. Lanky’d done his share; endless variations with the computers. And Beau and Brooks had done theirs. Now it was up to Arnold.
Who surprised them. They stared at him, shocked speechless.
“Well? Why the funny looks?” Dolbe said belligerently.
When they still said nothing he turned bright red and repeated himself. “I said, why the funny looks?”
Showard cleared his throat and tried to speak for all of them.
“We thought… we thought it had been pretty conclusively demonstrated that the hallucinogen idea didn’t work, Arnold. A good idea. A damn good idea — but it didn’t work.”
“I don’t agree,” said Dolbe.
“Hey!”
“I don’t. I don’t agree.” Dolbe spoke doggedly, staring at them with the stubborn expression that had carried him through many a situation when he knew nothing about what he was doing. He expected it to carry him through this time, when he had at least one or two facts at his command. “I think it worked rather well.”
“Dolbe, you are clean out of your pitiful mind,” said Lanky Pugh. “And I believe I speak for all of us when I say that. Clear out of your pitiful mind and flying off into the never-nevers. You need total rewiring, Dolbe.”