“I will remain and guard you,” she said. “I must. Vaintè ordered your protection. I have been remiss once and you have been injured. I cannot permit it to happen again.”
Enge indicated begrudging agreement, then looked at the discarded gourd and the fruit tumbled on the floor. She pointed at the prostrate female.
“I’ll get the round-sweet-eating-things. Turn that one over so she can see me.”
Ysel screamed hoarsely when the cold hands grabbed her, lifted her roughly, and pushed her back against the wall. She chewed at her knuckles and sobbed as the other marag stamped towards her,, stopped, then held up an orange. Its mouth slowly opened to reveal rows of pointed white teeth. It uttered an animal’s screech as it waved the orange, scratching its claws on the floor when it did this. Ysel could only moan with fear, unaware that she had bitten into the flesh of her fingers and that blood was running down her chin.
“Fruit,” Enge said. “Round, sweet good things that you eat. Fill your stomach, make you happy. Eating makes one strong. Now do as I command.” She spoke temptingly at first, then commanding. “You will take this fruit. You will eat at once!”
Then she saw the blood where the creature had injured itself and she turned away in disgust. She put the gourd of fruit onto the floor and signaled Stallan to join her by the door.
“They have crude tools,” Enge said. “You said they had shelters of some kind, as well as large animals to serve them?” Stallan nodded. “Then they must have some degree of intelligence.”
“That doesn’t mean that they can talk.”
“A well-made point, hunter. But for the moment we shall just have to assume that they do have a language that they use to communicate with one another. I must not let a single failure stop me — look, the male is moving! It must have smelled the fruit. Masculine reactions are coarser, it cares more for its hunger than our possible threat. But it still watches us, still a wild animal. Look!” She cried out with triumph. “It is eating the fruit. A first success. We can at least feed them now. And there, see that, it is bringing fruit to the female. Altruism — that must denote intelligence.”
Stallan was not convinced. “Wild animals feed their young. I have seen them work together on the hunt. I have seen it. That is no proof.”
“Perhaps not — but I will not permit myself to be dissuaded so quickly. If boats can understand simple commands, why, then creatures like these should at least be able to do the same.”
“You will teach them then, in the same manner that boats are taught?”
“No. I considered that at first, but I want to obtain a better level of communication. Teaching boats involves positive and negative reinforcement of a few commands. An electric shock indicates a wrong action, while a bit of food rewards success. That is good for training boats, but I am not trying to train these animals. I want to talk with them, communicate with them.”
“Talking is a very difficult thing to do. Many of those who emerge from the sea never do learn.”
“You are correct, hunter, but that is a matter of degree. The young may have difficulty in talking as adults, but you must remember that all of the young talk together when they are in the sea.”
“Then teach these beasts the children’s language. They might be able to master that.”
Enge smiled. “It has been many years since you spoke as a child. Do you remember what this means?”
She raised her hand and the palm changed from green to red, then back to green again as she made a signal with her fingers. Stallan smiled.
“Squid — a lot of them.”
“You do remember. But do you notice how important the color of my hand is? What I said would be incomprehensible without that. Can these fur creatures change the color of their palms?”
“I don’t think so. I have never seen them do it. Though their bodies have red and white colors.”
“That may be an important part of their speech—”
“If they have one.”
“Agreed, if they have one. I must watch them more closely when they make their sounds again. But the greater urgency is to have them speak like Yilanè. Beginning with the simplest of expressions. They must learn the completeness of communication.”
Stallan made a gesture of incomprehension. “I do not know what that means.”
“Then I will demonstrate to make my meaning clear. Listen carefully to what I say. Ready? Now — I am warm. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I am warm, that is a statement. The completeness is made clear in the union of the parts of the statement. I now say it again even more slowly. I… am… warm… I move my thumb in this manner, looking upward a little at the same time, say warm as I lift my tail slightly. All of that, the sounds spoken aloud and the correct motions are all combined together to form the complete expression.”
“I have never considered such matters — and I find that my head hurts when I do.”
Enge laughed and indicated appreciation of the attempt at humor. “I would fare as badly in the jungle outside as you do in the jungle of language. Very few make a study of it, perhaps because it is so complex and difficult. I believe that the first step in understanding is to consider that our language recapitulates phylogeny.”
“Now my head does ache. And you think beasts like these can understand that — when even I have no idea of what you are talking about?” Stallan indicated the creatures, now quiescent against the wall, the gourd empty of its fruit, bits of skin littering the floor around them.
“I will not attempt anything that complex. What I meant was that the history of our language is matched by our development in life. When we are young and first enter the sea we do not yet speak, but we do seek the protection and comfort of the others in our efenburu who enter the water at the same time. As our intelligence grows we see older ones talking to each other. Simple motions of the hand or leg, a color change of the palm. We learn more and more as we grow older, and when we emerge from the sea we add spoken sounds to the other things that we have learned until we become Yilanè in the completeness of our communications. That brings me to my problem here. How do I teach our language to these creatures who do not share our cycle of life? Or do they? Do they pass through an aquatic period after birth?”
“My knowledge of these matters is far from complete — and you must remember that this species of ustuzou is new to us. But I doubt strongly if they were ever aquatic. I have captured and bred some of the more common and smaller wild species that abound in the jungle. They all seem to have certain things in common. They are very warm, all of the time.”
“I have noticed that. It seems quite strange.”
“Other things are equally strange. Look at that male there. You will see that he hast only a single penis that cannot be decently retracted. None of the species of ustuzou I have captured has a normal double penis. Not only that, but I have studied their mating habits and they are disgusting.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that after impregnation of the egg the females carry the young. And when they are born they still keep them close about their bodies and feed them with soft organs that grow on their torsos. You can see them, there, on the young female.”
“How very unusual. Then you believe that the young stay on land? They do not go properly into the sea?”
“That is correct. It is a trait that is common to all the different ustuzou species I have observed. Their life cycles appear to be different from ours in every way.”
“Then do you appreciate the import of your observations? If they do have a language of their own they can’t possibly learn it in the same way that we learn ours.”
Stallan signed agreement. “I appreciate that now, and thank you for the explanation. But does that not raise a most important question? If they have a language — how do they learn to speak it?”