Even after narrowing it down, she was still faced with a linguistic task which would be equivalent to learning Russian and Arabic simultaneously.
And then another massive task was dropped upon her.
“They insist that I teach them to speak `ummun,’ ” she complained to Julius.
The biologist shrugged. “So?”
Indira glared. “So? This—from a man who can barely speak one language?”
Julius shrugged again, grinning. “Hey, I’m bad at languages. But I don’t need to be good at it. Most biological research is published in English. You don’t really need any other language that much, except Spanish—which I can read well enough.”
He chewed his upper lip. “Unless you want to be a dinosaur specialist. Then, of course, you have to know Chinese. Fluently.” A shudder; another grin. “Not the least of the reasons I didn’t specialize in dinosaurs.”
Indira was still glaring. “But the whole thing doesn’t make sense! There are only a handful of humans on this planet. Why should they take the time and trouble to learn our language when we’re willing to learn theirs?”
Julius stared at her. “A question like that? Coming from an historian?”
He started counting off on thick fingers.
“I can think of three reasons, right off the top of my head. One. They don’t know how many of us there are.” He held up a hand, forestalling her protest. “Oh, sure, they can see there’s only a handful of us here. Today. But where did we come from? And how many more of us might follow?”
“I have every intention of explaining where we came from and why there won’t be any more of us. Not for centuries, at the earliest.”
“And how will you convince them? The beings on this planet can’t have the faintest conception of astronomical reality. In all the time we’ve lived here, not once has the cloud cover broken. Not for even a minute. The earliest civilizations on Earth—even barbarians, for that matter—had a highly advanced empirical knowledge of astronomy. These people can’t have any whatsoever. We came from beyond the sky—that’s the most they’ll understand.”
“But—”
“But what, Indira? How can you possibly expect people at this stage of cultural development to understand the reality and the limits of an advanced technological culture like our own? You know and I know that the society was barely able to muster the resources to equip our expedition. You know and I know that it was a one-shot deal. You know and I know that humanity is still utterly preoccupied with the gigantic task of rebuilding our own planet. You know and I know that it’ll be generations—centuries, more likely—before another interstellar expedition is sent out. You know and I know that faster-than-light travel has been proven to be a complete pipe dream, and that space travel is going to remain limited to slightly above 10% of the speed of light. You know and I know that means another expedition to Tau Ceti would take over a century to get here even after it left Earth orbit. You know and I know that even then the priority would probably be to try for a new solar system altogether.”
He stopped and took a deep breath.
“When we signed up for this trip, love, the Society warned us that we couldn’t expect a follow-up expedition for at least five hundred years. Minimum. More likely a millenium. But how are you going to even explain any of that to the gukuy—in any way that they could possibly understand?
“So how do you expect them to believe you?” He held up a second finger. “Which leads me to point two. If I were in their shoes (so to speak), I would damn well want to learn as much as possible about a bunch of strange demons who landed in our midst. Sure, right now the demons seem friendly, and there ain’t many of them. But who knows? Best to learn what we can about them—and the best way to do that is to learn how to speak `demon.’ ”
He stopped. Indira was scowling up at him.
“And?”
“And what?”
“What’s the third reason, dammit? You said you could think of three, right off.”