cuts him off from feel-thinking; he can thinklogically instead of sensually."
He sipped his cocktail and continued: "I can understand why thevillage is mounded up, too. I realized that while I was watchingDave's gang bury the pump house. I'd been bothered by that, and bythe absence of granaries for all the grain they raise, and by thenumber of people for so few and such small houses. I think thevillage is mostly underground, and the houses are just entrances,soundproofed, to shelter them from uncomfortable naturalnoises--thunderstorms, for instance."
The horn was braying in the snooper-screen speaker; somebodywondered what it was for. Gofredo laughed.
"I thought, at first, that it was a war-horn. It isn't. It's apeace-horn," he said. "Public tranquilizer. The first day, theybrought it out and blew it at us to make us peaceable."
"Now I see why Sonny is rejected and persecuted," Anna was saying."He must make all sorts of horrible noises that he can't hear ...that's not the word; we have none for it ... and nobody but hismother can stand being near him."
"Like me," Lillian said. "Now I understand. Just think of the mostrevolting thing that could be done to you physically; that's what Ido to them every time I speak. And I always thought I had a nicevoice," she added, pathetically.
"You have, for Terrans," Ayesha said. "For Svants, you'll justhave to change it."
"But how--?"
"Use an analyzer; train it. That was why I took up sonics, inthe first place. I had a voice like a crow with a sore throat,but by practicing with an analyzer, an hour a day, I gave myselfan entirely different voice in a couple of months. Just try toget some pump-sound frequencies into it, like Luis'."
"But why? I'm no use here. I'm a linguist, and these people haven'tany language that I could ever learn, and they couldn't even learnours. They couldn't learn to make sounds, as sounds."
"You've been doing very good work with Mom on those ideographs,"Meillard said. "Keep it up till you've taught her the Lingua TerraBasic vocabulary, and with her help we can train a few more. Theycan be our interpreters; we can write what we want them to say tothe others. It'll be clumsy, but it will work, and it's about theonly thing I can think of that will."
"And it will improve in time," Ayesha added. "And we can makevocoders and visibilizers. Paul, you have authority to requisitionpersonnel from the ship's company. Draft me; I'll stay here andwork on it."
The rumpus in the village plaza was getting worse. The Lord Mayorand his adherents were being out-shouted by the opposition.
"Better do something about that in a hurry, Paul, if you don't wanta lot of Svants shot," Gofredo said. "Give that another half hourand we'll have visitors, with bows and spears."
"Ayesha, you have a recording of the pump," Meillard said. "Load arecord-player onto a jeep and fly over the village and play it forthem. Do it right away. Anna, get Mom in here. We want to get her totell that gang that from now on, at noon and for a couple of hoursafter sunset, when the work's done, there will be free publicpump-concerts, over the village plaza."
* * * * *
Ayesha and her warrant-officer helper and a Marine lieutenantwent out hastily. Everybody else faced the screen to watch. Infifteen minutes, an airjeep was coming in on the village. As itcircled low, a new sound, the steady _thugg-thugg, thugg-thugg_of the pump, began.
The yelling and twittering and the blaring of the peace-horn died outalmost at once. As the jeep circled down to housetop level, the twocontending faction-clumps broke apart; their component individualsmoved into the center of the plaza and squatted, staring up, lettingthe delicious waves of sound caress them.
"Do we have to send a detail in a jeep to do that twice a day?"Gofredo asked. "We keep a snooper over the village; fit it witha loud-speaker and a timer; it can give them their _thugg-thugg_,on schedule, automatically."
"We might give the Lord Mayor a recording and a player and let himdecide when the people ought to listen--if that's the word--to it,"Dorver said. "Then it would be something of their own."
"No!" He spoke so vehemently that the others started. "You knowwhat would happen? Nobody would be able to turn it off; they'dall be hypnotized, or doped, or whatever it is. They'd just sitin a circle around it till they starved to death, and when thepower-unit gave out, the record-player would be surrounded bya ring of skeletons. We'll just have to keep on playing it forthem ourselves. Terrans' Burden."
"That'll give us a sanction over them," Gofredo observed. "Extra_thugg-thugg_ if they're very good; shut it off on them if they actnasty. And find out what Lillian has in her voice that the rest ofus don't have, and make a good loud recording of that, and stash itaway along with the rest of the heavy-weapons ammunition. You know,you're not going to have any trouble at all, when we go down-countryto talk to the king or whatever. This is better than fire-water everwas."
"We must never misuse our advantage, Luis," Meillard said seriously."We must use it only for their good."
He really meant it. Only--You had to know some general history tostudy technological history, and it seemed to him that that piousassertion had been made a few times before. Some of the others whohad made it had really meant it, too, but that had made littledifference in the long run.
Fayon and Anna were talking enthusiastically about the work ahead ofthem.
"I don't know where your subject ends and mine begins," Anna wassaying. "We'll just have to handle it between us. What are we goingto call it? We certainly can't call it hearing."
"Nonauditory sonic sense is the only thing I can think of," Fayonsaid. "And that's such a clumsy term."
"Mark; you thought of it first," Anna said. "What do you think?"
"Nonauditory sonic sense. It isn't any worse than DomesticatedType C, and that got cut down to size. _Naudsonce._"
* * * * *
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