Oliver Johnson, the semantician who had charge of developing a common language, found his immediate task made absurdly easy by the channel of communication through Hans Weatheral. “Of course,” he explained to Slayton Ford and to Lazarus, “Hans isn’t exactly a genius; he just misses being a moron. That limits the words I can translate through him to ideas he can understand. But it does give me a basic vocabulary to build on.”
“Isn’t that enough?” asked Ford. “It seems to me that – I have heard that eight hundred words will do to convey any idea.”
“There’s some truth in that,” admitted Johnson. “Less than a thousand words will cover all ordinary situations. I have selected not quite seven hundred of their terms, operationals and substantives, to give us a working lingua franca. But subtle distinctions and fine discriminations will have to wait until we know them better and understand them. A short vocabulary cannot handle high abstractions.”
“Shucks,” said Lazarus, “seven hundred words ought to be enough. Me, I don’t intend to make love to ’em, or try to discuss poetry.”
This opinion seemed to be justified; most of the members picked up basic Jockairan in two weeks to a month after being ferried down and chattered in it with their hosts as if they had talked it all their lives. All of the Earthmen had had the usual sound grounding in mnemonics and semantics; a short-vocabulary auxiliary language was quickly learned under the stimulus of need and the circumstance of plenty of chance to practice-except, of course, by the usual percentage of unshakable provincials who felt that it was up to “the natives” to learn English.
The Jockaira did not learn English. In the first place not one of them showed the slightest interest. Nor was it reasonable to expect their millions to learn the language of a few thousand. But in any case the split upper lip of a Jockaira could not cope with “m,” “p,” and “b,” whereas the gutturals, sibilants, dentals, and clicks they did use could be approximated by the human throat.
Lazarus was forced to revise his early bad impression of the Jockaira. It was impossible not to like them once the strangeness of their appearance had worn off. They were so hospitable, so generous, so friendly, so anxious to please. He became particularly attached to Kreei Sarloo, who acted as a sort of liaison officer between the Families and the Jockaira. Sarloo held a position among his own people which could be trans1ated roughly as “chief,” “father,” “priest,” or “leader” of the Kreel family or tribe. He invited Lazarus to visit him in the Jockaira city nearest the colony. “My people will like to see you and smell your skin,” he said. “It will be a happymaking thing. The gods will be pleased.”
Sarloo seemed almost unable to form a sentence without making reference to his gods. Lazarus did not mind; to another’s religion he was tolerantly indifferent. “I will come, Sarloo, old bean. It will be a happy-making thing for me, too.”
Sarloo took him in the common vehicle of the Jockaira, a wheelless wain shaped much like a soup bowl, which moved quietly and rapidly over the ground, skimming the surface in apparent contact. Lazarus squatted on the floor of the vessel while Sarloo caused it to speed along at a rate that made Lazarus’ eyes water.
“Sasloo,” Lazarus asked, shouting to make himself heard against the wind, “how does this thing work? What moves it?’
“The gods breathe on the-” Sarloo used a word not in their common language. “-and cause it to need to change its place.”
Lazarus started to ask for a fuller explanation, then shut up. There had been something familiar about that answer and he now placed it; he had once given a very similar answer to one of the water people of Venus when he was asked to explain the diesel engine used in an early type of swamp tractor. Lazarus had not meant to be mysterious; he had simply been tongue-tied by inadequate common language. Well, there was a way to get around that- “Sarloo, I want to see pictures of what happens inside,” Lazarus persisted, pointing. “You have pictures?”