Alien Tongues Read online

  "From all that experience, how do you feel?" Alice asked.

  Phyllis frowned in thought. "You may know that we Filipinos are Catholics and I know it is a mortal sin to be involved in such criminal activity. I have confessed my sins many times but I still wonder if they have been forgiven. If not, I will go to Hell for Eternity, I know that. But it's for my kids, you understand that? If my children now have a decent life, whatever happens to me will be worth it. Anyway, I pray every day to the Blessed Virgin because I think maybe she will understand and put in a good word for me with Jesus. What do you think?"

  The three others sat, lost for words for the moment. Finally Séamus said, "Talking as a fellow Roman Catholic, Phyllis, I wouldn't have any doubt about it. It's what they always taught us."

  She grinned at him with genuine reassurance. "Other than that," she said, "I have been extremely lucky, of course. Who could have imagined a village girl from East Samar could afford her own nanny? Now this opportunity – it's all like a dream. My children will go to university! They're both very smart, you know."

  The Professor gave the final of his four descriptions of the project to Phyllis. When talking about creoles, he added, "Actually, Phyllis, I think you already know a couple of authentic creoles, as well as several languages we call code-switching which are often mistaken for creoles."

  Phyllis frowned as a polite way of inviting more explanation.

  "Your national language, Tagalog," Wilkie continued. "How much English do you normally mix with it?"

  She laughed. "Depends a lot on whom I'm talking with. A Manila shop assistant, maybe five percent. A well-dressed business customer at dinner, maybe up to forty percent."

  "Well we sometimes call that Tag-lish. Like a creole, it follows a perfect set of grammar rules. But unlike a creole it's not designed to bridge two speakers of different languages. Since users typically are fluent in both Tagalog and English, you just pick the words you like best. That's different from Chavacano, which I know you speak and is a true creole, developed when native Filipinos mixed with Spanish speakers."

  "Ah," Phyllis smiled. "So that's why I picked up Spanish so quickly!" She shook her head. "Did a lot of Filipinos go to work in Spain?" Wilkie explained about the Spanish occupation of the Philippines for over three centuries. "Oh, yes, I think we did that in school. Oops!" She pulled a face of exaggerated shame towards Séamus. "But I do know about the Americans."

  When asked if she had any questions, she said, "I'd like to know more about this brain-scan equipment. Are you certain it's safe? I mean, they thought X-rays were safe at one time, didn't they? And my mother died of cancer."

  "That you don't have to worry about," Wilkie said. "It's just measuring output from your brain – tiny electronic impulses that occur in it every moment. We want to measure what parts of your brain you are using, and at what intensity. If we're really lucky, we'll get new insight into how the brain combines memory and genetic structure to both create and use a language."

  "What do you mean, genetic structure?" Phyllis asked.

  The Professor gave a small chuckle. "It's sharp of you to question that expression and I have to say, we don't really know what we mean by it! Just that we have established beyond any reasonable doubt that part of our brain, right at birth, is already equipped in vital ways to learn a language – any language it hears. Somehow, it listens to the grammar embedded in the sentences of people around it, and seems able to slot them into some internal rule-book from which it can then construct an infinite number of other sentences, all correctly. It's a bit like watching your father take apart the engine of his old truck, then deducing from that how to repair any engine on any vehicle. It seems crazy, I know. But any other theory would be worse than crazy – it would be unscientific."

  "Let me explain it the way I think about it," Alice added. "It's like we have a computer program inside our head. Let's say instead of language, it designs dress patterns. You feed it with a few thousand dress patterns as "samples." From those, it works out all the rules for dress patterns. It can then make you any dress pattern you need – all you need to do is give it an idea, and it works out all the rest."

  Séamus wondered if the dress-pattern analogy might be viewed as condescending, but Phyllis nodded respectfully. "It sort of makes sense to me. Of course, we never know how we learn our native language because we're too young to remember what we were listening to. But the other languages I learned since a teenager – often I ask myself, 'how did I ever learn to say an expression like that?' I then ask the native speaker I'm talking to if it's correct and they say yes, how did I get so good at it?"

  "Once into their teenage," the Professor added, "Almost everyone is not good at it. It's as if, for all but a handful of people like you, the more our brain learns to reason for itself, the less it manages to copy language. The computer program develops an increasing number of bugs, you might say."

  When he took her back to her room, Phyllis asked Séamus if he could stay for a quick cup of coffee, which he accepted.

  "I hope I didn't scare you too much when we met," she told him as they sat at her kitchen counter. "I have a tendency to joke around when I'm a bit nervous."

  He grinned. "I don't scare easily and I suspect you are not really the nervous type. I think it's just your style to challenge people. See what they're made of. I'm sorry if I came across a bit wooden, but my excuse is that this is my job. Hopefully my career."

  "So what is that, exactly? Some kind of bodyguard?"

  He measured the size of his biceps. "Bodyguards are typically bigger men than me, aren't they? I know some self-defense, of course, that's basic training. When they hired me, they were looking for someone who could do some intelligence work. You know, detect something suspicious and act on it in good time."

  As he spoke, Séamus recalled Alice's ex-boyfriend. He had included the event in his report that morning, but had not given it much priority. He had made some inquiries about potential organized crime in the area. If he was worthy of his job, he would make sure that nothing about any local syndicate might jeopardize his mission. In all other respects, whatever crimes were taking place on his doorstep were wholly irrelevant to him. Any investigation, beyond relevance to current mission, was strongly discouraged. He was not law enforcement, and his job had absolutely nothing to do with justice. That was the first lesson they drilled into you.

  "I'm a big martial arts fan," Phyllis said with enthusiasm. "While we're here, how about practicing some together?"

  Séamus frowned. "I don't know. Mine isn't quite of the Gungfu, Wushu, Knights-of-the-Middle-Kingdom variety. Its purpose is to stop the guy killing you or your subject. A hundred-Euro note might be your best weapon. Your back-up might be a corkscrew or razorblade. That's where it becomes difficult to disentangle from intelligence."

  Phyllis was not to be deterred. "Well, then maybe I can teach you some stuff! Come on, Mr FitzGerald, we're going to have a long, cold, lonely winter. I for one am not stepping outside this building until Summer. I'm used to hot and humid all year round. So unless you got plans to take me to a sauna, you're going to have to help me break a sweat here."

  "There's a gym downstairs. I think it even has a small sauna."

  She moved her head close to him, deliberately looking upwards at him. "Let's get sweaty down there, then, Mister. I've got a mother's tummy and I need the exercise or it gets slack." She took his hand and ran it over her stomach, which felt muscular enough to Séamus.

  As he returned to his own room, he thought of Tina's remarks about touching. Was touch communication? If so, could people lie with their bodies as easily as with their mouths? Given the hardship and even trauma of these girls' lives, could they really put any trust in touch, or even trust their own touch? Maybe we simply choose to put trust in touch for that moment we can get it, Séamus thought, like massage. Maybe it's enough that we have power over that touch, and the girls had realized their power over him. That power was a fair exchange for their coop
eration to get the job done, because they sensed the vital importance to him of a successful completion. Perhaps they now relished their new, dominant role in the world market for their services.

  Pouring himself tea, Séamus found his thoughts returning to Sheryl. If they did get married, what was the exchange? Access to a beautiful woman in return for fidelity and mowing the lawn? Of course, they talked often about love and there did seem something very special. But was love simply the amount of good feeling needed to make such an enormous and semi-permanent exchange? Could he seriously elevate his motives, or even Sheryl's motives, above those of the girls?

  He was able to catch the cafeteria open for dinner. The dining area was pleasant, and he took a table next to the glass wall where he could just make out the moon rising. He messaged Alice and she joined him. As they ate from trays, he asked her if she and Wilkie had been satisfied with the day.

  "Yes, very," she replied. "We're all set for tomorrow morning. I feel the girls have a very good grasp of what we're expecting."

  Séamus chewed for a moment in silence and then said, "You mentioned yesterday not to judge them for their criminal convictions. Now I am going to offer a preliminary judgment – these girls are saints, doing whatever it takes to help their families. I don't know whether to conclude they come from cultures where women are particularly selfless, or families which are particularly demanding."

  Alice frowned. "A little bit of both, perhaps. But also, three out of four are from poor backgrounds where sufficient medicine or education can be out of reach. In Tina's case, she was just unlucky with her family's fortunes. I agree, these girls are not sinners – at least, no more than you or I."

  "Do we Westerners believe so much in sin?" He recalled his parish priest. Endless booze and cigarettes had probably managed to control his sex drive. And exactly for what purpose?

  "Séamus FitzGerald," Alice chided him playfully. "Are you arguing that, to the pure-hearted, all things is pure?"

  He grinned. "It doesn't sound a bad philosophy to me." Sipping from a mug of tea, he added, "Going back to the demands on those girls, not much was said about how much time we expect them to spend in the lab each day. Was that deliberate?"

  "Yes, because we have no idea and want to keep it completely flexible. Maybe after two hours they will be exhausted. Maybe after eight hours we can't stop them talking. There's only two controls over time. One is how many have gone inactive – we need at least two girls talking at the same time. The second is the advancement of sign language. We're happy with any amount of pidgin signing. We just won't let them turn the signing into a creole."

  "You mean, they can invent as many sign words as they like, they just can't build a grammar round it. That's because you want them to save all their grammar efforts for the number language."

  Alice pointed at him with a sly smile. "Séamus, My Boy, you're becoming an expert in this."

  "No," he told her, "I'm becoming really dangerous with a little knowledge. You have all this managed by some amazing software, correct? It can read their signing and figure out what's grammar and what's not?"

  "Wish we had. The signing is fed to a team of signing experts somewhere in the world and they figure it out. There are hundreds of sign languages so this is not going to be an exact science. But signing grammar, like verbal grammar, tends to follow certain rules in general. The whole point, though it sounds cruel, is to frustrate the girls. We want them to get very interested in each others' life stories through the signing. For example, Girl A tells Girl B that she met a guy in a bar. Girl B learns enough through pidgin to be intrigued, but she can't really know what happened or how Girl A felt about it until they can break into a creole together. Even if these girls didn't all share half a dozen languages already, they would rapidly develop such a creole through signing or voice. But we have no idea if it's possible when faced with ten digits."

  It was time, Séamus thought. "Alice, I have to ask, even if you're going to have to lie to me. Do you know what this numerical creole is going to be used for?"

  "Séamus, I have no information on the matter, and I swear to you that's the honest truth."

  What a strange expression that is, he thought. What other type of truth exists? "It's probably wrong for me to ask anyway," he commented.

  Alice placed a hand on his forearm, rested on the table. Ah, that touch, he mused. Suddenly he was becoming very self-conscious about it, though it didn't seem to lessen the pleasure. "Don't say that, please." Her voice was surprisingly emotional. "I told you I love this job and I do. But I feel very alone here. Wilkie is a sweetie but he's the typical professor type. He is his work and his work is him. This could be the end of the world and he would still keep chatting about unscientific theories like they were the ultimate danger. I really needed someone on my wavelength with whom I can do sanity checks on all this. I want you to really feel you can trust me, and I'm very ready to trust you, Séamus." She had kept her hand on his arm, and now gave it a small squeeze. 'I promise you that, if I know more about the project, I will tell you that fact, even if I'm not allowed to tell you what it is I know."

  He looked at her closely. "Is there anything about this project that is worrying you? Something you haven't yet mentioned?"

  She gazed back, shaking her head. "Nothing, other than fear that we won't succeed. I get a feeling that so much depends upon our success."

  "Since you're the cryptographer," he said slowly, "At least let me ask you this. Could it be some code-breaking exercise? I mean, the girls are doing something all the computers in the world aren't able to do yet?"

  Alice's eyes darted briefly either side of her. The cafeteria was now empty except for them. "It couldn't be a code for an existing language – there's nothing the girls could add to our machine capabilities. So let me give you my best guess. We know terrorists are not going to talk directly about bombs and the like in emails that are read by the government. They'll invent elaborate stories around business trips or vacations or even fun with their families. Buried in hundreds of millions of messages, this stuff would normally just wash through our computer filters. But suppose there was a pattern of talk around such matters which didn't match the innocence of the topic? Just because we're talking about some critical scheme like the 911 attacks, our approach to grammar may shift. Perhaps we get more precise, or we use certain constructions more often. Maybe we are developing the ultimate national-security, big-data tool."

  Séamus nodded. In theory, he thought, that sounded quite plausible. In practice, however, he knew enough about the politics of current intelligence to strongly doubt its correctness. At the best of times, the ROI on big-data intelligence investments was slow to materialize, and just then they were still living in the aftermath of public outrage over what many perceived as excessive surveillance. As one of his colleagues has put it, Joe Public was telling the government, "You'd better keep us safe and if that means bombing foreign cities, OK. But don't you dare go checking the length of my phone-calls. Don't you understand fundamental human rights?" He couldn't see a big-data tool, especially one this uncertain of success, getting the funding, let alone qualifying for a full-time agent for up to a year. The reason had to be much more specific, but what? He decided not to sow further doubt into Alice's mind, and kept this thought to himself.

  After dinner he went to visit each of the girls. His main question was about their mental preparedness for the next day's work. He told them that it could be a long time before they made progress, and it was vital that they maintained their patience and not get frustrated. Each girl, in her own way, had a very positive response which reflected the personalities he was beginning to understand. Jenny saw it as simply fate, and was prepared to embrace any outcome. Chrissy felt no desire to speed up the experiment, content in what she saw as her new-found freedom to be alone. Tina felt that anything exceptional they achieved would, by its nature, not be easy and she herself would be suspicious of fast results. Phyllis said her only care was that her chi
ldren were safe and she was earning adequate money for their future.

  This time round he did not feel any particular challenge. Jenny asked him to read a poem to her from a book. When he told Chrissy that shoulder massages were back on offer, she said she would save it up for when she felt the strong need, just in case he got cold feet after trying one. Most of the chat was simply pleasant and fun, lively people from different worlds sharing perfect English to ask questions or offer comments. At some point, each girl touched his face, ran a hand through his hair, gave him a squeeze or playfully boxed him. He left each room with the memory of a gaze, some provocative body movement, and the feeling of a hand on him.

  He went down to the gym and ran for most of an hour on a machine, then lifted a few weights. He returned to his room, showered then, wearing a dressing-gown, sat down at his PC. There was a message from his boss to call her. He tried her direct ID and her video image appeared on his screen. She was obviously in her home office, and it must have been very warm that cold night – her thin blouse had a deep-V neckline. It gave the impression she wasn't wearing a bra. Séamus quickly looked down at his dressing-gown, adjusted it slightly to cover the hair on his chest, then pressed his own cam button. No reason to be too coy. He got her usual smile when she saw him, and they exchanged quick pleasantries.