Alien Tongues Read online

  "But the bigger challenge is restricting you to using numbers only. It's never been tried before. We've designed a room where we think you'll have the best tools to do it, but to be honest none of us are sure it can actually be done. And we don't know how to instruct you on it, except tell you to go with your own instincts. You and the other girls are the real experts, not us."

  The girl nodded thoughtfully. "My mother told me she'd received your first payment, thank you," she said to all of them. "I understand the guaranteed payments, and the bonus if this project succeeds. So I suppose that success is developing this number language so it can work like any other language. And it might take us a few months, or more than a year?"

  "We've no idea," Wilkie said. "If it's looking hopeless after twelve months, for certain we'll abandon it. But even as you're struggling to get the language working, there's a good chance we'll be getting something useful out of you – isn't there, Alice?"

  Alice smiled. "Now at last we are in my area of competence. My computer programs will be analyzing all your efforts. We're hoping we can work out clues to how your brain processes language. If we see enough useful patterns, we may even be able to leap ahead of you and complete the job. On the other hand, it's possible you may have reached a working language and we just need you to keep going on for quite a while, simply because we need to shake out more patterns. But by that time, you'll have earned your bonus. Any extra time we require you to stay on, we'll be paying you more on top of that."

  Jenny giggled a little. "In that case, you can have me as long as you need me. At this rate, I'll have my parents off my back and be set for life."

  The conversation continued another half-hour, then Séamus showed Jenny back to her room. As she stepped inside, she asked, "Can you and I go for a walk a bit later? I would like to see more of the countryside here." Surprised, Séamus said he was sure there would be no problem with that, and would fetch her as soon as he was free.

  He then walked further down the hall to a door marked with a C, unlocked it and knocked. He was invited in to see a tall, Chinese girl standing at the window. Her build was athletic, with broad shoulders and narrow hips. Her black hair was long but tied back. She had a strong face, quite angular compared with Jenny, and her skin was much whiter – in fact, whiter than his own skin which he found surprising. He repeated the introduction he had given Jenny and led Chrissy downstairs.

  "I'm 24 and I've never been outside China before," she said in response to Wilkie's invitation to introduce herself. "In fact I have rarely been far from Beijing. I learned many Chinese dialects from talking to people who came to Beijing from other parts of China. I would sit in restaurants and parks and be fascinated by the way they talked, so I'd start by listening to them and trying to guess what they were saying. Later I would introduce myself and try talking with them. They'd usually be happy that someone would take an interest in their dialect, and often I would teach them Beijing words they weren't familiar with. I learned other languages from movies and TV shows, or finding foreigners to talk to. Then Mum got very sick and Dad introduced me to a man who gave me a job, chatting to men in a club who came from around China and other countries. It was very good money for what I did, and it rescued the family. It really improved my language skills."

  She seemed to hesitate. The Professor interjected, "Please be as explicit as you wish about the work. It really helps us to understand what you've gone through up until now, and how best to help you. Remember, no one is judging you here. And we will all share success or failure in this enterprise."

  Chrissy nodded, reassured. "Some of the men belonged to gangs. They said I could make a lot more money doing jobs for them. It was all illegal – shaking down foreigners, providing a diversion while they looted warehouses – stuff like that. I did quite a lot of bad stuff – we had huge hospital bills. I got caught once and did a couple of months in jail. Now Dad's sick too, and he also owes money from his failed business. This job you've given me is a gift from Heaven."

  She listened to the description of the project intently. "If you say this could work," she commented when Wilkie paused, "I promise you I will give it my very best efforts. You know I didn't get the chance of a college education, so it's amazing to me that I can be helping this way."

  "I should tell you about the restrictions on your movements, and ask you if they create any concerns for you," Wilkie told her. "A critical feature of the process is that your only contact with the other girls is in the lab. And even there, you will never share any spoken words. This is likely to make you feel very isolated, since the only people you will be talking to for the duration of the experiment are the three of us – and in fact I won't be here most of the time so it's really just Séamus and Alice. We have to impose this condition so rigorously that, for most of the time you are not in the lab, you will be locked in your room. Alice and Séamus – especially Séamus – can take you for walks and occasional drives to stop you from going crazy. You have an endless number of TV and movie channels and open internet access, with the exception that any connection with the other girls is blocked. We will be monitoring everything, and that includes cams in your living room. More than twenty minutes in the bathroom and we will check on you. All this is as much for your own safety as anything else, as the strain may get very great. How does all that sound to you?"

  Chrissy took a deep breath. "To be honest, right now it sounds very good to me. I was looking out of the windows just now at your countryside. It's very beautiful here, not like China. I feel like I just escaped from a prison, not gone into one. I mean, how often in Beijing can I be where I want to be? Always I'm meeting people I am paid to meet, and putting on a character to suit them. Now I can just be who I am. If you can take me for a few walks around here, why else would I want to leave my room? Seems I have everything I need there."

  "I know the work you had to do must have been awful for you…" Alice ventured.

  "Actually, Alice, I can't give that excuse." Chrissy pulled an ironic grin. "In my book there are far worse jobs. Most of the people I spent my time with were very nice to me. But the fact was, I was always tied to my family, always worrying about how I would get the money they needed. You know, I'm still young and want to learn so many things. Maybe I'm too selfish, but this is my one chance to make enough to finally earn my freedom from everyone."

  There was a silence as her unexpected words were digested. Wilkie finally said, "I'd like to think you will learn from us, Chrissy. But I am also sure we will learn from you."

  When Séamus finally took her back to her room, he said. "Don't worry, Chrissy, I will respect your privacy. You just tell me when you need company, if you ever do."

  She walked to the window, her back to him. "Whenever you're ready, Séamus. Take me somewhere, anywhere you like." She unfastened her hair and shook it out, still staring away from him. The hair appeared very thick and formed a huge, wavy black mass across her shoulders, above a back which tapered sharply to a small posterior and long-legged jeans.

  He froze a moment, then said, "Sure, Chrissy, OK," and left the room.

  The team was taking a break now, the other two girls not due to arrive for another couple of hours. Since he had made the first offer to Jenny, Séamus looked into her room and asked if she would now like the walk. Without replying she pulled on a thick coat, gloves and scarf. They took an exit from the facility that became a stone path across a hedged-in lawn, which in turn took them into a wooded area.

  The pale sun was already low in the sky. There was a faint smell of wood burning from somewhere, and the sound of an occasional crow that had not migrated. Their steps rustled through an otherwise undisturbed carpet of dead leaves.

  "Séamus, do you believe in this number language?" Jenny said eventually.

  "I believe in our two professors," he replied. "It was as new to me this morning as to you. But I know they will have very good reason to think this will work. My job is to try and remove any problem that might prevent yo
u from doing your best."

  In a child-like manner, Jenny jogged a number of steps ahead of him then turned to look at him, walking backwards.

  "Do you speak another language, Séamus?"

  "One. Gaelic."

  "Oh, what's that?" Now she was skipping a little among the leaves.

  He laughed. "It's a dead Irish language. The English heavily controlled Ireland 300 years ago and made English necessary for good jobs. Slowly the Irish gave up speaking Irish. When Ireland won self-rule almost a century ago, the nationalists tried hard to bring it back, but it's really not useful any more. It's a bit like using steam engines instead of petrol because you think they have more character. You pay too heavy a price for the aesthetic satisfaction."

  Jenny stretched out her arms and circled a tree. "So why then, Mr FitzGerald Sir, did you bother to learn to speak this moldy old Gaelic?"

  Séamus grinned and shrugged. "I suppose I was prepared to pay the price. Actually, I learned it easily up to the age of ten, to please my father. After that it became a sort of hobby, so I could read contemporary, self-indulgent, Irish literature."

  "Do you love your Dad, Séamus?"

  "He's dead. I guess I did."

  "Your Mum?"

  "She disappeared – I haven't heard from her for a few years."

  "Oh, wow. Actually, I don't know why but I'm not surprised." She walked up to him, put her arms round his waist and rested her head against his chest. "Do you think we're your family now, Séamus?"

  He had no idea where to put his hands. He decided to keep them at his sides. "You four girls, you mean?"

  "Five. Don't forget Alice."

  He laughed. "Where do you get all this from?"

  Still holding him, she looked up at his face, her chin now digging into his chest. It felt quite sharp. "Séamus, you know we're all freaks, whatever Mr Wilkie says. I can tell you for sure that, like my parents, the other girls' parents have always seen them as freaks. I'm Buddhist, or at least something like that, you know. This whole project is karma, isn't it? On the plane journey here, I just thought about it for ten hours – nothing else. I knew my destiny was here. Then I saw you come into my room. Everything felt so clear then."

  She stepped back from him, held her arms out wide again and rotated slowly. It might have been a child's dance, or one of spirituality.

  "Jenny, you know I'm just doing the job I've been given to do."

  "Of course you are, Séamus. We are your job. That is what will keep us so safe."

  He could not understand why Jenny was talking this way, but maybe it was less strange than it appeared. After all, what could be stranger than the work that had just been described to Jenny and Chrissy? They had far more reason to claim that the Westerners had gone weird. If Jenny had chosen to process it as karma, in order to accept it and give it her best, then she was to be congratulated for creativity.

  Jenny bent her knees as she circled and finally sat down in the leaves. She picked up a handful and held them to her face, breathing in their aroma. Then she said, "OK, Séamus, you can take me back to my room now. I think you should spend a little time with Chrissy before the other girls come."

  Séamus did as she suggested. He found Chrissy sitting backwards on a dining chair, again staring out of the window. He asked if everything was OK. She did not turn when she spoke.

  "Yes, thank you, Séamus. I watched you walking down there with Jenny. She's a pretty girl. I always envied tiny girls. They have a much larger range of men to choose from."

  "I don't think you'd find that much of a limitation here in the West," he replied.

  "Oh, really? But am I attractive to Western men? Am I attractive to you, for example?"

  The tests keep coming, he thought. Was there an appropriate response? He decided just to be honest. "I don't know you yet, Chrissy. Physically, you're very attractive to me."

  She turned to look at him with an expression which may have contained a smile, but he couldn't be sure. Then she turned back to look at the view. "I'm sure you're lying, Séamus, but thank you."

  "I wondered if you would like a walk now?" he asked.

  Chrissy, her arms folded on the chair-back, rested the side of her face on them. "What, Séamus? Are you taking each of your little poodles out for walks?"

  Trial after trial! "You know I didn't mean it like that."

  "Of course you didn't. I'm sorry for sounding so bitchy. It's just like, that's how it would feel for me. My turn for a walk. I want something else. Something just for me."

  "What would that be?"

  "Give me a shoulder massage."

  He instinctively looked at the upper corners of the room for the cameras. Of course none was visible, but he was equally certain that anything he did would be recorded. Was there anything wrong in a shoulder massage, since she had asked for one? By itself, surely not. But suppose the video was separate from the audio. It would show her facing the window for a long time, him standing behind her, then finally approaching and putting his hands on her shoulders. Used in the wrong way, it could have him fired.

  "OK, but let's do it like this," he told her. "You go to the bed, then I will draw this chair up beside it, and massage you from there."

  She nodded, still turned away. Then she stood up and faced him. At first her look said, we'll do it your way. The she pulled her tee-shirt over her head, revealing a blue, clearly padded bra. For a second she continued to look at him, then went to the bed and lay face-down on it. She put her hands behind her back and unhooked her bra straps. A pure white, muscular back was revealed.

  OMG, thought Séamus, I have been outplayed. "Chrissy, you know I can't do that," he told her.

  "Why? Because your government's dirty little cameras are watching me undress?" she said without moving.

  "You can change for bed in the bathroom," he suggested.

  Chrissy sat up, clutching her bra to her chest, and rested against the bed pillows. "And I am supposed to feel confident no one installed a camera in there?" She gave a humorless laugh. "Séamus, Dear Boy, I know you really have the best motives, but do you actually know the type of people who are pulling your strings? I mean, it's funny, don't you think? They deliberately choose four convicts for this work, and you're worried they'll fire you for giving one of them a back rub. I bet your boss is banging his secretary."

  "My boss is a woman."

  "Oh, I stand corrected. I bet your boss is banging her secretary. Or perhaps she's banging you, Séamus?"

  "I don't think she has enough respect for me to want to do that."

  "Ah, Séimi!" Chrissy grinned widely, leaned forward and hooked up her bra again. She bounced off the bed and walked up to him. He had the impression that the bra was all padding. "Yes," she said, reading his mind. "My chest is flat. But don't worry, I'm not a ladyboy. I wear this padding so that my nipples don't poke through my tee-shirt like filter-tips. Have you ever seen large Asian nipples when they're cold, Séamus? You can use them to erase canceled dates in your diary."

  She walked over to the fridge and poured herself a glass of juice. "Why do you think your boss needs to respect you to bang you? I never saw the connection between respect and sexual intercourse myself." Going back to the chair again, she turned it round and straddled it, leaning on the back to face him. She sipped her juice. "So your boss is a woman. The devil. Now I know why you were chosen for this job. Your boss is as clever as she is evil."

  "You'd have to explain that to me, Chrissy. I'm just having my strings pulled, remember?"

  She laughed. "I'm being so bad to you, aren't I? Well, I'm sure you were warned we girls would be a handful. But I don't want to get off on the wrong foot with you, Séamus. That's the right expression, isn't it? We can be friends, right? Learn to trust each other?"

  He took a step closer, then lowered himself to his haunches so he was looking up at her. "I'm really happy to be friends, Chrissy. I don't want to sound trite, but we really are in this together. Either we'll both win or we'll both lose
. I'm not stupid enough to believe that all the people on my side are pure in heart, but I do believe the big decision-makers try to be fair in their own imperfect way. You also have my assurance that I will do everything I can to get you what you deserve. Is that good enough?"

  Chrissy reached out and placed a hand on his cheek, her fingers slipping lightly around his ear. "More than enough, Baby," she said. "Come and see me again tomorrow when we're both free, will you?"

  "Of course." He straightened up, looked at her a moment, then left the room. Though he had resisted every natural impulse, why did he feel so thoroughly seduced? He returned to his room. He thought he should compose a quick message to Sheryl, but his mind kept going blank. Or rather, it kept filling with an image of a white female back.

  Instead, he forced himself to read an Agency report his boss had recommended to him. It went into great detail about when and where an agent could be expected to use physical force, and what type of force was appropriate. He wondered if it were possible to apply the complex decision-tree laid out when faced with a split-second choice. Who wrote this? Probably some retired agent who had managed to get through his entire career without serious confrontation.

  At some point during his reading, he dozed off in the armchair. He was awoken by the sound of footsteps passing his door. That must be the next girl arriving in her room. His phone vibrated in his pocket. A message from Wilkie asked him to come down to his office in ten minutes.

  When he joined Alice and the Professor, he wondered if they could read anything on his face from his recent experiences. "First impressions?" Wilkie asked him.