Hellspark (40 page)

Curling the fingers of her right hand very loosely, she circled Sunchild’s beak. Her left hand she brought to the level of its larynx, an inch away from the feathery surface length of its throat.

“You must not,” she began—as it tried to echo her the opening beak touched her encircling fingertips; simultaneously, she pressed the feathers over its larynx—“speak aloud.” The sprookje, surprised at the contact, snapped its beak shut, leaving her sentence unfinished.

As slowly as she had raised them, she drew her hands away. “Don’t speak,” she repeated. It started to but she raised her hands as if to circle and press again and the sprookje closed its beak with an audible snap. “Got that?” This time it made no attempt to mimic her words and she smiled in satisfaction.

“Yes, I see you have.”

Turning to Om im, she said, “I wonder if it’s all or nothing.—Say something, Om im.”

He grinned up at her. “I’m humbled before you, Ish shan,” he said, his words belied by the cock of

his head and the tilt of his brow.

The sprookje remained silent.

“Good,” said Tocohl. She turned back to face the sprookje. “Now all I have to do is convince you you’ve got to shout to make me understand.”

“Shout?” said van Zoveel.

“Figuratively speaking,” said Tocohl, still absorbed in the task. “Om im, I need your help.”

“Name it.”

“If Sunchild follows me, I want you to come along too.” At his thumbs-out agreement, she said again to the sprookje, “Let’s try this. You understood this before.” Once again she held out an imaginary length of cloak. Once again the sprookje reached for the nonexistent other end.

When Tocohl walked the few steps toward the cot where Alfvaen lay sleeping, Sunchild followed with Om im at its heels. Tocohl stopped, turned her thumbs out.

Om im turned his own out in jubilant approval.

The sprookje stared, first at one, then at the other. Then, slowly, as if questioningly, it too turned its thumbs out. Tocohl jabbed hers out a second time, hardly able to constrain her excitement.

“Yes! Om im, tell it yes!” Om im laughed and jabbed his thumbs out a second time as well.

The sprookje mimicked the gesture, this time with ruffling feathers and the same flamboyance Om im brought to it.

Now Tocohl “extended the cloak” and both followed her until she stood over Alfvaen.

Remembering the bright warning tongue the sprookje had used to indicate danger, she touched Alfvaen’s shoulder and stuck out her tongue.

Layli-layli calulan moved closer, to watch the sprookje’s reaction.

But there was none that Tocohl could see. She tried again: this time lifting one hand to her face to mimic the puffing of cheek-feathers as she touched Alfvaen’s shoulder. The sprookje’s
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cheek-feathers fluffed. It leaned forward, glancing from Alfvaen to Tocohl, and nipped Alfvaen’s hand.

When it straightened, its cheek-feathers subsided. Reaching across to Tocohl, it stroked wrist reassuringly until Tocohl drew her hand from her face. “It’s not worried about Alfvaen, layli-layli

,”

Tocohl said, “at least, I think not.”

“Ask about the filaments, if you can.”

“I can try.” Tocohl tucked her fingers gently beneath the long gray threads that covered Alfvaen’s shoulder and raised them slightly. Once again she mimed sprookje-alarm.

The sprookje turned out its thumbs with authority.

Startled, Tocohl commented, “Oh, I guess it means ‘I understand.’”

The sprookje bent again to Alfvaen. Using both hands, it began to stroke Alfvaen’s shoulders briskly.

The gray filaments crumbled beneath its fingers, and the sprookje held out a handful of fragments to

Tocohl.

She cupped her hands to receive and the sprookje tipped the fragments onto her palms. In turn, she offered them to layli-layli calulan

. “Now you know as much as I do,” she said.

Layli-layli calulan smiled. “More. The plants are dying, Tocohl. It means that when the alcohol is gone from Alfvaen’s system, the plants die. They intended that to restore Alfvaen to what they considered human-normal.” The shaman looked across at the sprookje and, very deliberately, turned her thumbs out. “I understand,” she said, “thank you.”

The sprookje stared at layli-layli calulan as if seeing her for the first time, then it turned its thumbs out—at layli-layli

, at Om im, at Tocohl. Om im returned the gesture just as vigorously; layli-layli

, smiling, did the same. Tocohl brushed the crumbled fragments from her palms and tipped her own thumbs out jauntily.

“Yes,” Tocohl said, reinforcing each word with a jab, “yes, we understand. You understand.”

“I

don’t understand.” Van Zoveel, silent all this time, pushed toward the little group. “It mimicked our gestures before, but never as if it understood them!”

“Because it didn’t understand them. Right now, it understands less than a handful: ‘follow’—”

She demonstrated by leading the sprookje away from Alfvaen with her imaginary cloak. “I wonder if that includes ‘follow suit’?” Pulling up a chair, she sat, grateful for the moment’s respite, and repeated the

gesture. It worked: the sprookje followed suit—pulling up a chair and sitting, albeit somewhat uncomfortably, to face her. Tocohl thumbed approval. “You too, van Zoveel,” she said, making the same gesture at him, “follow suit.”

He hesitated, and Tocohl said patiently, “Thumbs out to show you understand, then follow suit.” This time he obeyed.

The sprookje enthusiastically jabbed its thumbs for him as well.

“How…?” said van Zoveel.

“The answer’s been staring us in the face all this time. Om im was the only one who saw it.”

Om im, standing blade right of her chair, jerked his head to stare at her with surprise. “Me?” he demanded.

“You. How did you know I was Hellspark?”

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He shrugged, shoulders high, hands drawn back in fists. “I don’t know. As I said, you looked

Hellspark.”

“And each sprookje looked individual to you—like the team member it mimicked.” She settled back, to find a position which lessened the ache in her side. Across from her, the sprookje shifted as well, seeking its own comfort in a chair unsuited to its physique. Tocohl thumbed approval at it and it thumbed back.

“To tell it from the beginning,” Tocohl went on, “I should have seen it in your tapes of the so-called

‘wild sprookjes.’

They haven’t any larynxes—but our feathered friend here has a very visible one.”

Van Zoveel’s ribbons fluttered as he leaned toward the sprookje, as if to check. The sprookje’s larynx obligingly bobbed. “The wild sprookjes simply have no visible larynxes, Tocohl. Yours is scarcely apparent, after all. I do—I

did see the difference at the time the brown sprookjes moved into camp—but it’s as insignificant as the crests and colored yokes.”

“I’m sorry, but you’re wrong. It’s not a matter of visible or hidden. The wild sprookjes have no larynxes.”

“Oh, but they must!” van Zoveel said, glaring sidelong at the sprookje. “How else could they talk?”

“They don’t. Not audibly.” Tocohl grinned. “You try to talk in a stand of lightning rods with a storm directly over your head. That’s where the sprookjes go during a storm, swift-Kalat—”

“Yes, so I would deduce from what Buntec and Om im told me of your experiences,”

swift-Kalat said.

“Sunchild didn’t even react to the thunder. She’s got ears but I’ll bet she shuts them down for the length of the storm. Why waste a perfectly good social occasion simply because you can’t hear one another?”

Swift-Kalat moved closer to the sprookje, bending down to examine the side of its head. The sprookje turned to watch him, making the examination impossible. Straightening, swift-Kalat said, “The only simple test I can devise at the moment requires loud noises. I’d rather not frighten it, unless…”

“I’d rather you didn’t either,” Tocohl said.

Swift-Kalat stepped back, letting the sprookje settle again, and Tocohl went on, “Now, about two years after you got bitten by the first wild sprookje, van Zoveel, the camp sprookjes showed up. I

theorize that it took them that long to analyze your gene pattern, to compromise between it and the sprookje’s pattern, and to give the sprookjes what they felt they lacked—a larynx, for example.”

“Get serious, Tocohl,” Buntec interrupted. “That’s too much credit! You’re sayin’ they can muck around with their genes just for the hell of it?”

“For swift-Kalat’s sake, I posit it as a theory. But—look at what we’ve seen them do, Buntec.

Swift-Kalat’s sprookje nipped Alfvaen and, in the space of a few moments, analyzed the sample, judged it abnormal, and prepared a living antidote, which it then injected.”

Buntec whistled. The sprookje turned its head to stare at her. “Yeah, Sunchild, I’m impressed,”

Buntec told it. To Tocohl she added, “We’re talking smart cookies here.”

“Smart enough,” Tocohl said, “to have decided that you were sentient long before you so much as suspected they were.”

“None of which explains the parroting,” van Zoveel said.

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“I’m coming to that. The compromise sprookjes arrive in camp—bear in mind that they may never have heard audible speech before!—and they look over the survey team, and what do they find? Every member of the survey team speaks a different language!”

“We all speak GalLing’,” van Zoveel said.

“Audibly, yes,” Tocohl said, “visually, no. Your pardon, van Zoveel, but no matter what language you speak audibly, your body speaks Zoveelian—every gesture, every stance you take, even the way you position yourself to speak is Zoveelian.” Swift-Kalat made a sharp questioning noise and Tocohl cocked her head at him. “Yes, that’s why you feel uncomfortable around van Zoveel. He may speak

Jenji without an accent, but his movements are wrong. Wrong only in the sense that they are not Jenjin, which is quite sufficient to disconcert you unless he’s sitting down.”

The arachne straightened to full height. “Proxemics and kinesics!” Maggy said.

Tocohl grinned at it. “Right you are. The moment I danced Maldeneantine at Sunchild, Sunchild saw me. From then on, I could get her to notice anyone else simply by switching from the proxemics and kinesics of one language to another in mid-sentence.”

“So if Alfvaen learned her lessons right, swift-Kalat’s sprookje will echo her!” The arachne stepped closer to the sprookje. “But why did Sunchild echo me, Tocohl?”

Tocohl grinned. “For the same reason Buntec threatened to give you lumps… I’d gotten Sunchild to see van Zoveel, and you imitated him by rocking the arachne. That was apparently sufficient evidence of your sentience for Sunchild to follow up.”

“Oh.” The arachne pricked delicately forward, its every step watched closely by the sprookje.

When it was directly in front of Sunchild, Maggy had the arachne extrude both adaptors, twisting them outward in awkward imitation of the thumbs-out Tocohl had used.

It was good enough for Sunchild, who thumbed back at the arachne enthusiastically. A crow of delight—obviously adapted from Buntec’s—came from the arachne’s vocoder. Then Maggy added, “I

think it’s going to be tough to talk to her, Tocohl, for me anyhow.”

“Not just for you,” Tocohl said, “for now I’ll settle for a pidgin. I think she’s finally getting the idea that she has to shout—make broad gestures—to make me understand. I suspect her language is all in the position of the feathers. I’m no more equipped for that than you are.”

“Proxemics and kinesics,” van Zoveel said slowly. “The schools I studied in never gave more than a theoretical course in either.” He glanced sharply at swift-Kalat. “Is that really why you always seem so uncomfortable when we speak Jenji? Because I move wrong?” He slapped his hands despairingly together. “I am a dangerous fool, Tocohl—”

“Don’t castigate yourself, van Zoveel. I fell into the same trap. If I hadn’t been automatically compromising my movements and stance to accommodate a mixed group of languages, to avoid offending anyone, one of those sprookjes would have parroted me the first time I opened my mouth to speak Jenji or Siveyn or Bluesippan.”

Van Zoveel frowned. “What about layli-layli calulan and—your pardon, layli-layli

—Oloitokitok?

Oh!” His shoulders relaxed and he went on to answer his own question, “Then the Yn must have different proxemics and kinesics for male and female, just as they have different spoken dialects for male and female.”

“Exactly,” Tocohl said, “likewise your two Sheveschkemen: one from the south, one from the north.

Two different languages in all aspects.” She glanced down at the arachne. “As Maggy said though, swift-Kalat’s sprookje would have echoed Alfvaen the first time she got her Jenji right in front of it. She would have too, and fairly soon. That makes me feel a little better: I had her serendipity for backup if I

blew it.”

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She shifted again, made more uncomfortable by the thought than by her injury, and finished,

“I’m looking for it, van Zoveel, and all I’ve caught so far is the cheek-puffing business! Om im’s been seeing it all along without knowing what it was he saw, so I think we’d both better apply to him for assistance.”

“You keep saying that, Ish shan, but I haven’t the vaguest idea what you’re talking about.”

“You said I looked like a Hellspark. I’m betting you watched me come into the common room and greet three people in three different languages.”

“Yes, but I couldn’t hear you over that crowd.”

“You said ‘looked like’—when I greet someone for the first time, I do stick to that culture’s kinesics and proxemics. It makes a better first impression. You saw the shift, just as you can see the different stance each sprookje takes to accommodate the language of its respective human. I’ll bet your twin friends held themselves differently, moved differently, Om im. You never saw it consciously but you saw it.”