FSF Magazine, June 2007 Read online

  The stranger turned his face toward Jamal. There was an aura about him that inspired awe. Get the guy to Hollywood, Jamal thought, and there'd be a fortune to be made in VR. Maybe that's what they had in mind, whoever constructed him.

  Time to get started. He indicated the table and patted the back of one of the chairs, then pantomimed sitting in it. He took the other chair and repeated the patting gesture. Aldo Glenys leaned against a wall, arms folded, watchful.

  The stranger came over to the table.

  "Sit down,” Jamal said. He made a smile—universal sign of non-threat among humans and primates and even some dogs—lips curving upward exposing teeth but not aggressively, skin at the corner of the eyes wrinkling. He hoped it truly was universal. If not, he might be very glad there were other people in the room with him.

  The visitor sat down but did not return the smile. He'd have to find something to call him besides “stranger” and “visitor,” if only to keep his own thoughts straight. “Man” was obviously not right.

  Long before they reached the stage of deep structure his dissertation had speculated about, they would have to rely on some pretty basic fieldwork stuff: Ostension, the oldest trick in the linguist's book.

  He tapped his own breast with his right index finger. “Jamal."

  Would one of those old-time fieldworkers have said “man” first, not his own name? He doubted it; that would have necessitated a distinction between man and non-man that even conversing with a lost, stone-age tribe of the Amazon wouldn't have required.

  The visitor gazed unblinking at him.

  "Jamal.” He repeated the breast-tapping gesture. “Jamal."

  "Jamal,” the visitor said clearly.

  Off to a good start, he thought. He reinforced the first lesson by repeating, “Jamal."

  "Jamal,” the visitor repeated.

  His hand rose to take the second step, pointing at the visitor to elicit his name, then he paused. What if pointing was an insult—or worse—in the visitor's experience? His own grandmother, the Tuskegee pilot's daughter, had considered it rude to point. He saw now that far from being boring, fieldwork might well have been downright dangerous. It only succeeded because humans mostly forgave cultural faux pas in the beginning of a language exchange in return for understanding. There was a hunger for language in humans, but he couldn't assume that would be true here.

  If he didn't take the risk they'd get nowhere. Careful to keep his arm relaxed, index finger loose, unthreatening, he slowly pointed at the other's breast, and waited.

  Nothing.

  Back to step one. Turning the finger toward himself, he said, “Jamal."

  "Jamal,” the visitor agreed. But no sound came from his lips when the finger was reversed.

  Leaning back in his chair, Jamal thought about this for a moment. He was aware of Glenys quietly filling plastic tumblers from the plastic water jug. The two agents were busy keying notes into small e-pads. At least they were obeying his rules.

  He needed the visitor to grasp the idea that he was supposed to furnish his own word for whatever Jamal pointed at, beginning with the one that signified personal identity. Maybe he could bypass the problem by shelving it for the moment. Language acquisition began with the naming of objects as well as self, the arbitrary signs that paired sound with image. Might as well work on vocabulary.

  He put his finger on the table top. “Table."

  "Table,” the visitor gave him back.

  The pronunciation was surprisingly flawless. He thought of his own stumbling attempts to master a few phrases in Swahili before his trip to Africa, and the amusement he'd caused the cute girl in the shop where he'd bought the defective antigrav belt.

  "Chair,” he said.

  The visitor repeated the word. Then: mirror, floor, ceiling, wall, door, eye, hand, cup, water. All were successfully mastered. After an intense hour of this, he tried pointing to the objects and waiting. The visitor passed this test too, correctly naming each object indicated. So he was intelligent as well as beautiful, learning vocabulary faster than a normal human, baby or adult. Nor did he register any sign of strain from the exercise. But when Jamal tried to elicit the visitor's own word for an object he was met with silence.

  Either he had no preexisting language—like Frankenstein's monster he was a tabula rasa— or he chose not to share his language with his teacher. And if that was the explanation for the absence of two-way communication, did it indicate something sinister? Elbows on the table, his chin leaning on his hands, Jamal gazed at the visitor. The visitor stared back. Waiting for the lesson to continue or playing some kind of game? He was frustrated by not being able to pin it down.

  They could go on like this all day, creating a vocabulary of English words for everything in this room—all week, if they ventured outside. He decided to leap ahead. Human infants learned around thirteen thousand words before they entered school, but they learned something more useful too, the rules governing how to combine and recombine the words, a generative grammar that underpinned communication. It would take numerous repetitions, but ultimately the visitor must grasp the rule of names and actions if they were to move forward, and the distinctive subject-verb-object order that English used to portray them.

  "Jamal,” he said once more, pointing to himself. Then he stood up.

  He was aware of the sudden, intense concentration of the two agents. What did they think he was going to do—attack?

  "Stand,” he said, identifying his action. He sat down again and repeated the rising action. “Stand. Jamal stand."

  The inflected, third person singular ending, dinosaur that it was, could wait for another lesson. He figured it would slip out of the language one of these days anyway.

  "Stand,” the visitor said and got to his feet.

  They followed this up with “Jamal” performing a variety of actions, sitting again, waving, clapping, drinking, all immediately understood and repeated by the visitor. Then he branched out, first reviewing the names of objects: Jamal, eye—then an action: close—finally putting one together with another for the combination of actor, action, and acted upon that was basic to English word order.

  "Jamal close eye,” he said, winking.

  The visitor gazed at him for a moment till Jamal thought he'd moved too quickly from one concept to another and was about to retreat to something a bit simpler.

  Then the visitor suddenly leaned over and seized Jamal's right hand in his own—the first time their flesh had made contact—bending the fingers down tight against the palm until they hurt.

  "Jamal close hand,” the visitor said.

  He experienced a cold rush of fear. And something else, a blinding sense of knowing.

  There was a blur of action; both agents shot to their feet. Glenys took a step forward. The visitor released Jamal's hand and Jamal waved them away, his heart racing.

  Given the size of the visitor and his unknown powers, every bone in his hand might have been crushed. But more than that was the realization he knew what he was dealing with. Whatever he was, the visitor had recognized he'd been given a pattern and had adapted it correctly on the first try. That wasn't supposed to happen. It wasn't possible he could've learned so fast—yet he just had. More disturbing was the realization the action had meaning on another, more metaphorical level. “Jamal close hand” signaled the end of the need for ostension.

  This was more than a man-made bioconstruct. He couldn't prove it, but he was convinced he was dealing with something not from Earth. An alien.

  Glenys coughed discreetly. “Everything all right so far, sir?"

  "I think we're done for the morning,” he said shakily.

  Glenys nodded and opened the door. The two agents had returned to their folding chairs.

  "This is one hell of a situation,” he began as they went outside.

  Glenys cocked his head warningly in the direction of the waiting guard.

  His nerves still buzzed with the adrenaline jolt he'd received with that co
ntact. It was freaking unbelievable, but how else to explain what he'd just experienced? It couldn't be explained—that was the point. But he knew! They were dealing with an extraterrestrial. Wang would think he was crazy if he reported that! So what? He'd already told them he didn't want to work for them. He didn't care what they thought. This was his opportunity. The professional journals would go nuts over the paper that was going to result from this experience.

  He considered the implications of what had happened. As he understood it, a linguist discovered the subject's words and translated them into the language of the major culture, opening up the native's limited experience to the scrutiny of a wider world. The linguist had the skill and the knowledge to achieve that; the subject didn't. Later, the subject might learn the dominant language, but that was not the primary purpose of the enterprise. But this visitor had just turned the situation on its head—he was learning Jamal's language, not the other way around, a profound difference. How was he going to deal with an intelligence that obviously far exceeded his own?

  "I think you might need a cup of coffee, sir,” Glenys said as they retraced their path through the maze of corridors.

  "I need something a lot stronger than coffee. And stop calling me ‘sir’ like some freaking Knight of the Round Table!"

  Glenys smiled. “I heard you didn't appreciate being called ‘Dr. Lenana’ either. I have a car outside. Maybe you'd like to get away from the compound for lunch?"

  "Damn straight!” He was still jittery with the magnitude of what had just happened and what it implied.

  They retrieved Glenys's cream-colored Mercedes Helio and headed for the gate to the compound. Guards raised the barrier and waved them through. The Maryland countryside, turning gold with the approach of autumn, slid silently by. Neither of them spoke. Glenys finally pulled into the crowded parking lot of a small roadhouse whose sign advertised softshell crabs and cocktails.

  "Civilians,” Glenys noted. “They have the leisure time to take late lunches."

  The interior was dim, wood-paneled, with appetizing, homey smells from an unseen barbecue pit. In the booth, Jamal ordered a steak sandwich from the menu pad inset into the tabletop; Glenys had the crab. They both ordered beer.

  "Farm raised these days,” Glenys commented when the server arrived with his plate of crabs. “But reasonable."

  Like the beer glasses, the plates were the new plastic type; he'd been so monastic on the Berkeley campus he hadn't kept up with the latest inventions. Better eat fast, bro, he thought, or they'd disintegrate from under his sandwich. The steak might as well have been hamburger; he didn't pay attention to the taste. If he was right, the visitor was an alien. The alien's language ability was vastly superior to that of humans—and language was what humans did best. What might that imply for the future of human/alien relations? And he'd been the first person to make contact—if that's what had actually happened between them this morning.

  "Interesting session,” Glenys said when Jamal's silence stretched to minutes, an obvious invitation to speculate.

  "What if this isn't something cooked up in a lab, Glenys?"

  Glenys gazed at him. “Tom Wang is under a lot of pressure to discover who sent him to us as fast as possible."

  "And if he isn't a bioconstruct?"

  "There's an old saying among SETI warriors: If we meet the alien on his world, then we have the edge,” Glenys observed. “But if the alien comes to us, then he's superior."

  The man's words penetrated his speeding thoughts. “You don't accept Wang's idea it's some enemy plot. You think he's an alien too."

  "I like to keep an open mind."

  Jamal absorbed this. This morning he'd been ready to feel morally superior to those who built human analogs. Now he was standing on the brink of something far more astounding—there really were aliens out there and he was supposed to communicate with one of them. “How superior must you be to come alone into hostile territory?"

  "That's what you're expected to find out."

  "What if I discover he's the scout for an invading horde from outer space?"

  "In that case,” Glenys said. “I guess Wang will order him eliminated."

  And you're the guy elected to do it, aren't you? Jamal guessed.

  Glenys ordered drink refills from the inset pad. After the server had set down the full glasses, retrieved the empties, and left again, he said, “We'll get a map of the sky. See if he'll identify home—if he's an alien."

  "He's just too goddamned perfect to be human or anything humans could come up with. But he never reacts to anything. What's with that? Couple of times, I felt like leaning over and punching him, see if that got a reaction."

  "Probably not a great idea,” Glenys said lightly.

  "I'm a theoretical linguist, Glenys. Way out of my depth."

  "If you're right, humanity's going to be out of its depth from now on."

  "Christ!” he said, swirling the lime wedge in his drink. Then he glanced up at his companion. “Sorry. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I have a feeling—"

  "Don't apologize. I started out in Geneva at a seminary, but I learned I was too worldly even for the Jesuits."

  "Quite a jump to the NSA."

  Glenys laughed. “Maybe not as far as you think."

  The alcohol slid pleasantly through his body, relaxing his tense nerves. “Wang seems to be losing it. Told me his secretary wanted the answers."

  "That's the Secretary of Defense,” Glenys said.

  On edge again, he stood up abruptly. “We need to get back."

  * * * *

  The two agents were still in the room when they got back. One hastily picked up the remains of what looked like a fast food meal, sweeping plates and cups from the interview table and stuffing them into a plastic bag that he handed out the door to the guard. Jamal wondered what the alien had eaten for lunch. He had to have eaten something; everything living had to find nourishment. Maybe the agents shared their cheeseburgers with him. With or without pickles?

  For a second he felt hysterical laughter bubbling up and forced it back down. Anytime he allowed the thought to arise that he was dealing with a real extraterrestrial, he almost lost it. He needed to stay calm, in control of the situation.

  The afternoon session proved to be no less astonishing than the morning one, and just as frustrating. The alien's ability to learn English was swift and accurate. Rarely did Jamal have to repeat a structure before the alien had it and made it his own. He had no doubt the alien understood everything he communicated to him. Yet all attempts to elicit words in the alien's own tongue were ignored. He felt the tug of competing emotions, awe, and a growing irritation. And cold fear when he thought of that moment this morning when the alien had seized his hand.

  "Jamal stands and sees mirror,” the alien said as Jamal demonstrated, proving his rapidly developing mastery of generative grammar.

  The visitor had picked up the third person singular inflection from the brief bursts of human conversation around him. Unbelievable if Jamal hadn't experienced it for himself. Jamal judged it was time for a few pointers about determiners and prepositions. “Jamal sees the mirror on the wall."

  The alien gazed at him without a flicker of expression. “The water fills the cup on the table."

  In rapid fashion, Jamal demonstrated the usefulness of in, out, up, down, with and every other preposition he could think of, plus the negatives but, not, nor. The alien mastered all of them easily and used them in new sentences. Then came pronouns, I and you. The alien pointed a finger at Jamal and said, “You.” But he made no move to use a pronoun for himself.

  Maybe they should try embedded and recursive structures next, Jamal thought. But before he could start, the door of the interrogation room opened and the guard looked in. He spoke quietly to Glenys who nodded. The door shut again. Stepping to the one-way mirror, Glenys touched the glass. The river meadow transformed itself quickly into a stargazer's map of the night sky.

  Damn, Jamal thought, I guess
we're taking this “alien” bit for real! The bizarre situation caught him by the throat every so often. You're talking to E.T., bro!

  One thing about the strange being opposite him was the almost total lack of what psychologists called “affect.” He displayed no emotional reaction to anything that happened around him, not pleasure nor excitement, and not even boredom when the lessons were repetitive, just an unwavering focus. Jamal found this cold intensity unnerving.

  But when he saw the map, the tall alien stood up and made a circling motion over the screen with his index finger.

  "What do you think he's doing?"

  Glenys shook his head. “A circle? No, a spiral. Spiral galaxy? Maybe he's saying the Milky Way is his home galaxy too. But where in the galaxy?"

  "With his language skills he ought to be able to tell us straight out."

  One of the agents bent his head to his collar and murmured into his comm unit.

  The alien turned away from the map on the screen. Whatever he'd intended to communicate, Jamal thought, he was done with it, and if humans were too dense to figure it out, that was their problem. Suddenly angered, he pushed his chair back and stood up.

  "I'm done for the day. We're getting nowhere."

  "I'll have him supplied with recorded samples of conversational English this evening,” Glenys said as they left the room. “He wouldn't be the first person to master a foreign language by watching sitcoms."

  "He's playing games with us."

  "I suspect his mission is to learn about us, not teach us about him,” Glenys said.

  * * * *

  After dinner with Tom Wang in the executive dining room—with real china for the prime rib and real crystal for the California Cabernet—he excused himself early, and made his way a little unsteadily back to his room. Wang hadn't eaten much, more interested in Jamal's report, what there was of it. Wang's questions had been probing. He'd seemed to accept the news the stranger was probably an alien, not a construct, better than Jamal had expected, and he wondered about that. Humoring me because of dear old dad and my “military family"? Wang probably figured Jamal would achieve the objective of decoding the stranger's language even if his judgment was seriously impaired.