Naudsonce

the ladythat's known as Lou."

  That was supposed to show them that we, too, have a spoken language,to prove that their language and ours were mutually incomprehensible,and to demonstrate the need for devising a means of communication.At least that was what the book said. It demonstrated nothing ofthe sort to this crowd. It scared them. The dignitary with the stafftwittered excitedly. One of his companions agreed with him at length.Another started to reach for his knife, then remembered his manners.The bellowsman pumped a few blasts on the horn.

  "What do you think of the language?" he asked Lillian.

  "They all sound that bad, when you first hear them. Give them a fewseconds, and then we'll have Phase Two."

  When the gibbering and skreeking began to fall off, she steppedforward. Lillian was, herself, a good test of how human aliens were;this gang weren't human enough to whistle at her. She touchedherself on the breast. "Me," she said.

  The natives seemed shocked. She repeated the gesture and the word,then turned and addressed Paul Meillard. "You."

  "Me," Meillard said, pointing to himself. Then he said, "You," toLuis Gofredo. It went around the contact team; when it came to him,he returned it to point of origin.

  "I don't think they get it at all," he added in a whisper.

  "They ought to," Lillian said. "Every language has a word for selfand a word for person-addressed."

  "Well, look at them," Karl Dorver invited. "Six different opinionsabout what we mean, and now the band's starting an argument of theirown."

  "Phase Two-A," Lillian said firmly, stepping forward. She pointedto herself. "Me--Lillian Ransby. Lillian Ransby--me _name_.You--_name_?

  "_Bwoooo!_" the spokesman screamed in horror, clutching his staffas though to shield it from profanation. The others howled likea hound-pack at a full moon, except one of the short-tunic boys,who was slapping himself on the head with both hands and yodeling.The horn-crew hastily swung their piece around at the Terrans,pumping frantically.

  "What do you suppose I said?" Lillian asked.

  "Oh, something like, 'Curse your gods, death to your king, andspit in your mother's face,' I suppose."

  "Let me try it," Gofredo said.

  The little Marine major went through the same routine. At his firstword, the uproar stopped; before he was through, the natives' faceswere sagging and crumbling into expressions of utter andheartbroken grief.

  "It's not as bad as all that, is it?" he said. "You try it, Mark."

  "Me ... Mark ... Howell...." They looked bewildered.

  "Let's try objects, and play-acting," Lillian suggested. "They'refarmers; they ought to have a word for water."

  * * * * *

  They spent almost an hour at it. They poured out two gallons ofwater, pretended to be thirsty, gave each other drinks. The nativessimply couldn't agree on the word, in their own language, for water.That or else they missed the point of the whole act. They triedfire, next. The efficiency of a steel hatchet was impressive, andso was the sudden flame of a pocket-lighter, but no word for fireemerged, either.

  "Ah, to Niflheim with it!" Luis Gofredo cried in exasperation."We're getting nowhere at five times light speed. Give them theirpresents and send them home, Paul."

  "Sheath-knives; they'll have to be shown how sharp they are,"he suggested. "Red bandannas. And costume jewelry."

  "How about something to eat, Bennet?" Meillard asked Fayon.

  "Extee Three, and C-H trade candy," Fayon said. Field Ration,Extraterrestrial Service, Type Three, could be eaten by anythingwith a carbon-hydrogen metabolism, and so could the trade candy."Nothing else, though, till we have some idea what goes on insidethem."

  Dorver thought the six members of the delegation would be personsof special consequence, and should have something extra. That wasprobably so. Dorver was as quick to pick up clues to an alien socialorder as he was, himself, to deduce a culture pattern from a fewartifacts. He and Lillian went back to the landing craft to collectthe presents.

  Everybody, horn-detail, armed guard and all, got one ten-inch bowieknife and sheath, a red bandanna neckcloth, and a piece of flashyjunk jewelry. The (town council? prominent citizens? or what?) alsoreceived a colored table-spread apiece; these were draped over theirshoulders and fastened with two-inch plastic pins advertising thecandidacy of somebody for President of the Federation Member Republicof Venus a couple of elections ago. They all looked woebegone aboutit; that would be their expression of joy. Different type nerves anddifferent facial musculature, Fayon thought. As soon as they sampledthe Extee Three and candy, they looked crushed under all the sorrowsof the galaxy.

  By pantomime and pointing to the sun, Meillard managed to informthem that the next day, when the sun was in the same position, theTerrans would visit their village, bringing more gifts. The nativeswere quite agreeable, but Meillard was disgruntled that he had touse sign-talk. The natives started off toward the village on themound, munching Extee Three and trying out their new knives. Thistime tomorrow, half of them would have bandaged thumbs.

  * * * * *

  The Marine riflemen and submachine-gunners were coming in, slingingtheir weapons and lighting cigarettes. A couple of Navy technicianswere getting a snooper--a thing shaped like a short-tailed tadpole,six feet long by three at the widest, fitted with visible-lightand infra-red screen pickups and crammed with detectioninstruments--ready to relieve the combat car over the village.The contact team crowded into the Number One landing craft, whichhad been fitted out as a temporary headquarters. Prefab-hut elementswere already being unloaded from the other craft.

  Everybody felt that a drink was in order, even if it was two hoursshort of cocktail time. They carried bottles and glasses and ice tothe front of the landing craft and sat down in front of the batteryof view and communication screens. The central screen was a two-way,tuned to one in the officers' lounge aboard the _Hubert Penrose_,two hundred miles above. In it, also provided with drinks, wereCaptain Guy Vindinho and two other Navy officers, and a Marinecaptain in shipboard blues. Like Gofredo, Vindinho must have gotteninto the Service on tiptoe; he had a bald dome and a red beard, andhe always looked as though he were gloating because nobody knewthat his name was really Rumplestiltskin. He had been watchingthe contact by screen. He lifted his glass toward Meillard.

  "Over the hump, Paul?"

  Meillard raised his drink to Vindinho. "Over the first one.There's a whole string of them ahead. At least, we sent them awayhappy. I hope."

  "You're going to make permanent camp where you are now?" one ofthe other officers asked. Lieutenant-Commander Dave Questell;ground engineering and construction officer. "What do you need?"

  There were two viewscreens from pickups aboard the 2500-foot battlecruiser. One, at ten-power magnification, gave a maplike view of thebroad valley and the uplands and mountain foothills to the south. Itwas only by tracing the course of the main river and its tributariesthat they could find the tiny spot of the native village, and theycouldn't see the landing craft at all. The other, at a hundredpower, showed the oblong mound, with the village on its flat top,little dots around a circular central plaza. They could see the twoturtle-shaped landing-craft, and the combat car, that had beencircling over the mound, landing beside them, and, sometimes,a glint of sunlight from the snooper that had taken its place.

  The snooper was also transmitting in, to another screen, fromtwo hundred feet above the village. From the sound outlet came anincessant gibber of native voices. There were over a hundred houses,all small and square, with pyramidal roofs. On the end of the moundtoward the Terran camp, animals of at least four different specieswere crowded, cattle that had been herded up from the meadows atthe first alarm. The open circle in the middle of the village wascrowded, and more natives lined the low palisade along the edgeof the mound.

  "Well, we're going to stay here till we learn the language,"Meillard was saying. "This is the best place for it. It's completelyisolated, forests on both sides, and seventy miles to the n
earestother village. If we're careful, we can stay here as long as we wantto and nobody'll find out about us. Then, after we can talk withthese people, we'll go to the big town."

  * * * * *

  The big town was two hundred and fifty miles down the valley,at the forks of the main river, a veritable metropolis of almostthree thousand people. That was where the treaty would have tobe negotiated.

  "... But no two of them speak the same language!"]

  "You'll want more huts. You'll want a water tank, and a pipelineto that stream below you, and a pump," Questell said. "You thinka month?"

  Meillard looked at Lillian