Sally heard the activity as Hardy and Whitbread were conducted aboard the Motie ship, but she barely glanced around when they appeared. She had taken the time to dress properly, but grudged the necessity, and in the dim and filtered Motelight she was running her hands over the body of a Brown-and-white, bending its (her) elbow and shoulder joints and tracing the muscles, all the while dictating a running monologue into her throat mike.
“I conclude they are another subspecies, but closely related to the Browns, perhaps closely enough to breed true. This must be determined by genetic coding, when we take samples back to New Scotland where there is proper equipment. Perhaps the Moties know, but we should be careful about what we ask until we determine what taboos exist among Moties.
“There is obviously no sex discrimination such as exists in the Empire; in fact the predominance of females is remarkable. One Brown is male and cares for both pups. The pups are weaned, or at least there is no obvious sign of a nursing female—or male—aboard.
“My hypothesis is that, unlike humanity after the Secession Wars, there is no shortage of mothers or child bearers, and thus there is no cultural mechanism of overprotectiveness such as survives within the Empire. I have no theory of why there are no pups among the Brown-and-whites, although it is possible that the immature Moties I observe are the issue of Brown-and-whites and the Browns serve as child trainers. There is certainly a tendency to have the Browns do all the technical work.
“The difference in the two types is definite if not dramatic. The hands are larger and better developed in the Brown, and the forehead of the Brown slopes back more sharply. The Brown is smaller. Question: Which is better evolved as a tool user? The Brown-and-white has a slightly larger brain capacity, the Brown has better hands. So far every Brown-and-white I have seen is female, and there is one of each sex of Brown: is this accident, a clue to their culture, or something biological? Transcript ends. Welcome aboard, gentlemen.”
Whitbread said, “Any trouble?”
Her head was in a plastic hood that sealed around her neck like a Navy shower bag; she was obviously not used to nasal respirators. The bag blurred her voice slightly. “None at all. I certainly learned as much as they did from the um, er, orgy. What’s next?”
Language lessons.
There was a word: Fyunch(click). When the Chaplain pointed at himself and said “David,” the Motie he was looking at twisted her lower right arm around into the same position and said “Fyunch(click),” making the click with her tongue.”
Fine. But Sally said, “My Motie had the same name I think.”
“Do you mean you picked the same alien?”
“No, I don’t think so. And I know Fyunch(click)”—she said it carefully, making the click with her tongue then ruined the effect by giggling—”isn’t the word for Motie. I’ve tried that.”
The Chaplain frowned. “Perhaps all proper names sound alike to us. Or we may have the word for arm,” he said seriously. There was a classic story about that, so old that it probably came from preatomic days. He turned to another Motie, pointed at himself, and said, “Fyunch(click)?” His accent was nearly perfect, and he didn’t giggle.
The Motie said, “No.”
“They picked that up quickly,” said Sally.
Whitbread tried it. He swam among the Moties, pointing to himself and saying “Fyunch(click)?” He obtained four perfectly articulated No’s before an inverted Motie tapped him on the kneecap and said, “Fyunch(click) Yes.”
So: there were three Moties who would say “Fyunch(click)” to a human. Each to a different human, and not to the others. So?
“It may mean something like ‘I am assigned to you,’ ” Whitbread suggested.
“Certainly one hypothesis,” Hardy agreed. A rather good one, but there were insufficient data—had the boy made a lucky guess?
Moties crawled around them. Some of the instruments they carried might have been cameras or recorders. Some instruments made noises when the humans spoke; others extruded tape, or made wiggly orange lines on small screens. The Moties gave some attention to Hardy’s instruments, especially the male Brown mute, who disasembled Hardy’s oscilioscope and put it back together again before his eyes. The images on it seemed brighter and the persistence control worked much better, he thought. Interesting. And only the Browns did things like that.
The language lessons had become a group effort. It was a game now, this teaching of Anglic to Moties. Point and say the word, and the Moties would generally remember it. David Hardy gave thanks.
The Moties kept fiddling with the insides of their instruments, tuning them, or sometimes handing them to a Brown with a flurry of bird whistles. The range of their own voices was astonishing. Speaking Mote, they ranged from bass to treble in instants. The pitch was part of the code, Hardy guessed.
He was aware of time passing. His belly was a vast emptiness whose complaints he ignored with absentminded contempt. Chafe spots developed around his nose where the respirator fitted. His eyes smarted from Motie atmosphere that got under his goggles, and he wished he’d opted for either a helmet or a plastic sack like Sally’s. The Mote itself was a diffused bright point that moved slowly across the curved translucent wall. Dry breathing air was slowly dehydrating him.
These things he felt as passing time, and ignored. A kind of joy was in him. David Hardy was fulfilling his mission in life.
Despite the uniqueness of the situation, Hardy decided to stick to traditional linguistics. There were unprecedented problems with hand, face, ears, fingers. It developed that the dozen fingers of the right hands had one collective name, the three thick fingers of the left another. The ear had one name flat and another erect. There was no name for face, although they picked up the Anglic word immediately, and seemed to think it a worthwhile innovation.
He had thought that his muscles had adjusted to free fall; but now they bothered him. He did not put it down to exhaustion. He did not know where Sally had disappeared to, and the fact did not bother him. This was a measure of his acceptance of both Sally and the Moties as colleagues; but it was also a measure of how tired he was. Hardy considered himself enlightened, but what Sally would have called “overprotectiveness of women” was deeply ingrained in the Imperial culture—especially so in the monastic Navy.
It was only when his air gave out that the others could persuade Hardy to go back to the cutter.
Their supper was plain, and they hurried through it compare notes. Mercifully the others left him alone until he’d eaten, Horvath taking the lead in shushing everyone although he was obviously the most curious of the lot. Even though the utensils were designed for free-fall conditions, none of the others were used to long periods zero gravity, and eating took new habits that could be learned only through concentration. Finally Hardy let one of the crewmen remove his lap tray and looked up. Three eager faces telepathically beamed a million questions at him.
“They learn Anglic well enough,” David said. “I wish I could say the same for my own progress.”
“They work at it,” Whitbread wondered. “When you give them a word, they keep using it, over and over, trying it out in sentences, trying it out on everything around whatever you showed them—I never saw anything like it.”
“That’s because you didn’t watch Dr. Hardy very long,” Sally said. “We were taught that technique in school, but I’m not very good at it.”
“Young people seldom are.” Hardy stretched out to relax. That void had been filled. But it was embarrassing—the Moties were better at his job than he was. “Young people usually haven’t the patience for linguistics. In this case, though, your eagerness helps, since the Moties are directing your efforts quite professionally. By the way Jonathon, where did you go?”