Native Tongue Read online

  He didn’t understand it. Because he was a man of taste and intelligence and sophistication, and he really worked hard at being a raconteur, at shaping and polishing his narratives until they were works of oral art. It seemed to him that if people were too stupid to realize that and appreciate the skill with which he used language, it was their fault, not his . . . he more than did his part, and it was his considered opinion that he did it very very well indeed. Nevertheless, it frustrated him that people didn’t want to listen to him talk; it was their fault, but he was the one who paid.

  Except for Michaela. If Michaela thought he was boring and pompous and interminable and a windballoon, no tiniest flicker of that judgment had ever showed on her face or in her body or in her words. Even when he was talking about the injustice of a man such as he was being afflicted with seemingly innumerable allergies—and Ned was willing to admit that his allergies were probably not the most gripping conversational topic of the season, he just needed to talk about them sometimes—even then, Michaela always looked interested. She didn’t have to answer him, because he didn’t have any desire for conversation, he just wanted to be listened to, attended to; but when she did answer, her voice never carried any of that taint of impatience and boredom that so irritated him in others.

  Michaela listened. And she laughed at the lines that he considered funny. And her eyes brightened at just the places where he meant the tension to build. And she never, not once, in three years of marriage, said, “Could you get to the point, please?” Not once. Sometimes, before he really got a new story worked out, or when he was just bullshitting along about the morning and hadn’t had time to make stories out of it, he would realize that he had maybe wandered off his subject a little, or said something more than once . . . but Michaela never showed any awareness of that. She hung on his words. As he wanted them hung on—not slavishly, but tastefully. That was the difference. He could have paid some female to listen slavishly, at so many credits the hour, sure. But you’d know. You’d know she was only listening because of the money, like some kind of a meter running. It wouldn’t be the same. Penny for your words, Mr. Landry? Sure . . .

  Michaela was different, she was a woman with genuine class, and there was nothing slavish about the attention she gave him. It was careful attention, it was intense, it was total; it was not slavish. And it fed him. When he got through talking to Michaela, somewhere into the down slope of the afternoon, and was at last ready to do something else, he was in a state of satisfaction that wiped away the rebuffs he got from others as if they’d never happened. At that point Ned believed that he really was one of those irresistible talkers, one of those men that anyone would feel privileged to sit down and listen to for hours, as it seemed to him that he ought to be. He knew his stories were as good as anybody else’s . . . hell, he knew they were better. One hell of a lot better! People were just stupid, that’s all; and Michaela made that trivial.

  It was that particular thing that the baby ruined for him, when it came. He could have put up with all the other stuff. Having Michaela look tired in the morning instead of showing her usual fresh perfection was annoying; having her attention distracted during lovemaking because the baby was crying was irritating; twice he’d had to point out to her that the vases of flowers needed to be seen to, and once she had even let him run out of Scotch. (That did get to him, considering that all she had to do was push one button on the comset to get it delivered . . . but still, he could have put up with it.)

  He understood all these things. It was her first baby, and she wasn’t getting as much sleep as she wanted; he was a reasonable man, and he understood. She had a lot of things to do that she wasn’t used to doing, it was hard on her, sure. Everybody knew you had to coddle new mothers, like you had to coddle pregnant women. He was willing. He was confident that she would be able to get herself straightened out and back to normal in a month or two, and he didn’t mind giving her all the time she needed. He had no respect at all for a man that didn’t treat his woman fairly, and he wasn’t that kind of man.

  But it had never entered his head that the baby wold interfere with the time of talking to Michaela! Jeezus, if it had, he would’ve had her sterilized before he even married her. There were brothers to carry on his family line, and nephews all over the place for him to adopt at a suitable age if he wanted somebody to carry on the “son” role under his roof.

  He’d no more than get started telling her how that goddam wimpoe of a technician had come up with yet one more stupid change in procedures, no more than get through a couple of sentences, when that effing baby would begin to squawl. He’d be right at a point in a story that he was starting to get perfect, one he’d only been telling a while but was beginning to see shaping up just right, just at a point where it was crucial for a person not to miss even one of the words he was saying, and the effing baby would start up!

  It happened over and over again. And it made no difference whether he ordered her to go shut the brat up or ordered her to let it squawk—in either case, although of course she did exactly as he told her, he did not have her attention any longer. She wasn’t listening to him, not really listening; her mind was on that little goddam tyrant of a puking kid. This was a possibility that he had never considered, something nobody had ever mentioned to him, something he hadn’t been prepared for. And it was something Ned would not tolerate. Oh, no! Michaela’s full attention was a major factor in his wellbeing, and he was bygod going to have it. He was making no compromises on that one.

  The fact that he could pick up a ten thousand credit fee for the kid when he volunteered it, plus a guaranteed percentage if it worked out—with the money coming in quarterly for the rest of his life, mind—that was a pleasant little extra. There were things he wanted to buy, and the tenthou was going to be handy. He didn’t mind it. He could afford to put a chunk of it into something pretty for Michaela, since in a way it was her kid too. But he would have volunteered the little effer for Government Work even if he’d had to pay them instead of getting a nice bonus to his account, because he wasn’t about to have his life spoiled by a creature that weighed less than fifteen pounds and didn’t even have teeth yet. No sir. This was his household, and he paid for it and for everything in it and for its upkeep, and he was bygod going to have his life as he had arranged for it to be. Anybody who doubted that just hadn’t taken a look at his track record.

  There was also the appeal of what it would be like to have his kid be the very first one ever to crack a nonhumanoid language . . . that, now, would be very nice. He didn’t see any reason why it shouldn’t happen; it was going to happen sometime, why not with his kid? It made sense. And he could imagine it, how he’d feel, being the one responsible for having finally broken the choke hold the effing Lingoes had on the taxpayers of this country! God damn, but that would feel good! People would suddenly find his conversation pure gold, if it turned out like that. Yeah. Ned could have really gotten to like it, if it happened.

  You didn’t tell a woman you were going to do something she might be silly about, of course. You did it, that’s all; and afterward, you told her. Right away, so you could get the crap over with, her bawling and all that shit. Or you waited as long as you could put it off, so you didn’t have to put up with the crap. Depending. This was one of the do-it-now times, since there wasn’t anything Ned could use as a plausible explanation for the baby not being there when Michaela got back from the party at her sister’s that he’d given her permission to go to.

  She’d been surprised when he said she could go. It wasn’t like him. He didn’t approve of her being away from the house at night without him, especially now when it was important for her to get all her strength back so she could go back to her morning job at the hospital. The money she made as a nurse was useful to him, it went into a special account that he had big plans for, and every week that there wasn’t any credit on his account for her services caused him a pretty good twinge. It bruised him, losing that money.

 
; But the party had been a lucky break this time, and he’d done a really great job of telling her how she’d earned some fun and she could stay until midnight if she wanted to. It had gotten her away long enough for the fellow from G.W. to bring over the papers to be signed—and that very handsome transfer of credits—and for Ned to turn over the baby along with all its clothes and toys and stuff. He’d been scrupulously careful that there was nothing left to remind her of the kid, even though that meant he’d had to go up and check out its room personally, and he was allergic as hell to the No-Toxin spray they used in there, it made him cough and choke and swell up like a toad. He wanted to be absolutely certain all the kid’s stuff was gone.

  He suspected that Michaela had a holo of the baby somewhere on her person, maybe in that locket she wore all the time, and he’d have to get that later when she was asleep. No point in going through a scene about it and having her get herself all upset about it, that wasn’t the way to handle a woman. And except for the hologram, there was nothing at all. The records he’d need if Government Work ever tried to renege on something were all in his computers, backed up with his accountant’s computers, and a hard copy in a lockbox at his lawyer’s. There was nothing for her to see, nothing to smell, he’d fixed it like there’d never been any baby. As there never should have been. He’d been guilty of poor planning, not seeing that; he was willing to admit that. He could have avoided all this hassle, if he’d just given it some thought.

  And he was proud of her, because she took it like the true lady he knew her to be. He’d been prepared for a scene, and was ready to put up with quite a lot of female hysterics and nonsense, considering. She didn’t say a word. Her eyes, dark blue eyes just like cornflowers, he loved her eyes—her eyes had gotten big; and he’d seen her give a kind of jerk, like she’d been punched and the wind knocked out of her. But she didn’t say anything. When he told her she had to go down to the clinic in the morning and have a sterilization done before it happened again, god forbid, she only paled a little bit, and got that cute look she had sometimes when she was scared.

  She’d asked him a few questions, and he gave her easy answers that didn’t tell her any more than she needed to know. He’d signed the baby over, and that was the end of it. He reminded her that it was something any right-thinking American would be proud to do, because it was a heroic sacrifice for the sake of the United States of America and all of Earth and all of Earth’s colonies, for chrissakes. He explained to her carefully that as long as the Lingoes wouldn’t do their godgiven duty and put their babies to work on the nonhumanoid languages, as long as they kept on with their effing treason, it was up to normal people to step in and show them that bygod we could do it ourselves without their help, and to hell with them. Everybody knew that the Lingoes knew how to get the nonhumanoid languages, if they didn’t get such a jolly out of keeping it a secret . . . he spent quite a bit of time making it clear to Michaela that all of this was the fault of the linguists. And he told her how the President would probably send them a personal note of thanks—no specifics, of course, since the official line was that the government had no connection with G.W.—but they could get away with telling a couple of close friends.

  It was going to make a hell of a story, especially if the President called, and they’d told Ned that sometimes he did; he already knew how he was going to start it. When Michaela told him she didn’t understand why the agency was called Government Work if the government wasn’t supposed to have anything to do with it, he realized that that would be a nice touch to the story, too, and he patted her fondly on her little butt and explained about the old saying. “Good enough for government work,” they used to say. Whatever that had meant.

  He didn’t tell her about the money, because he didn’t want her getting any ideas, and women always did get ideas. He could just imagine her, talking about the fountain that his shit of a brother-in-law had let Michaela’s sister wheedle him into putting in their front hall, maybe saying that with ten thousand credits he ought to be able to get her one like it. Nah. He was going to get her something nice, but he’d get her something she ought to have, not some piece of junk she just thought she wanted because some other woman had one. And he’d let it slip, toward the end of their discussion, that he might be planning something a little special for her. You had to hand it to her, after all; for a woman, she was pretty goddam sensible.

  “You know, Mikey,” he said, feeling expansive about it all, and so damn proud of her for not carrying on, “for a woman, you’re pretty damn sensible. I mean that.”

  She smiled at him, and he admired the lovely curl of the corners of her lips—he had specified a smile like that, when he was still looking. “Thank you, darling,” she said, pure sugar, pure sweet sugar, not even a pout because he’d called her “Mikey” and she hated that. Hell, it was cute, “Mikey” was! He didn’t mind saying “MiKAYluh” in front of company, he’d humor her about that most of the time, but he liked calling her “Mikey,” it suited her. Thinking about it, he said it again, and reached over to pull the hairpins out of her hair so she’d have to put it up again. She looked distressed, and he chuckled. God she was cute when she was upset . . . he was a very lucky man, and he’d see to it that she got something really special this time.

  “Let me tell you what happened today at the goddam meeting,” he began, watching the swift movements of her fingers repairing the havoc he’d wreaked in the silken hair. “Wait till you hear, sweetheart, it was just about the dumbest goddam piece of puke MetaComp has tried to pull yet, if you know what I mean . . . and you always do know what I mean, don’t you, sweet lady? Let me tell you—this is a good one. We were all sitting there—”

  He stopped, and he took a long leisurely drag on his cigarette, letting her wait for him to go on, enjoying it. He let the blue streams of smoke curl from his nostrils, grinning at her, holding it, holding it . . . and then, when he was ready, he went on and told her how it had been. And she listened, with her full attention, just like the way it had been before the baby, not a word about it being three o’clock in the morning or any of that stuff. God, it was good to have his home back again, his home, the way it was meant to be! He felt so good he made it through four glasses of Scotch, and he knew he wasn’t going to be awake for the special Saturday breakfast he always had her order for them. Ham and eggs and waffles and strawberries, bygod, and if the strawberries gave him hives, well they gave him hives. He was entitled. But he wasn’t going to be awake for all that, not this morning.

  It didn’t matter. Whenever he decided to wake up, she’d have that breakfast ready for him, no matter what time it was. He could count on her. Life was just purely great.

  Michaela was solicitous the next day, bringing him the Null-Alk capsules before he lifted his head from the pillow, and admitting at once that it was her fault he hadn’t taken them before he went to sleep the night before. Sitting there beside him murmuring her sympathy until the pills took hold and he felt like himself again. There were lots of advantages to having a wife that was a trained nurse, besides the money it brought in. When you didn’t feel good, it was gratifying to know there was somebody there that knew what to do, or knew when it was time to call somebody else because it was more than a woman could deal with. It was a comfort.

  “I love you, honey,” he said from the pile of pillows she’d fluffed for him. Women liked to hear that. And he felt like indulging her this morning, just knowing that he had the whole day—hell, the whole rest of his life—to look forward to now, without the effing baby.

  He was just lying there, beaming at her and getting ready to have her bring him the special breakfast—with double strawberries—when he heard the noise.

  “What the hell is that?” he demanded. It sounded like it was coming from his dressingroom.

  “What, darling? Do you hear something?”

  “Yeah . . . yeah, there it goes again. Don’t you hear it?”

  “Ned, darling,” she said, “you know my ears aren’
t sharp like yours are . . . I don’t hear a thing. It’s a good thing you’re around to take care of me.”

  Damn right it was. Ned stubbed out the cigarette and took a swig of the coffee she’d brought him right after the pills, laced with Scotch the way he liked it. “I’ll go check it out,” he said.

  “You could just tell me where to look, Ned,” she suggested, but he shook his head and threw back the covers.

  “Naah. I’d better go see for myself. Probably a monitor that’s gone bad. I’ll be right back.”

  It wasn’t until he was inside his dressingroom and had closed the door behind him that he saw the wasps. Four of them, goddam it, angry ones, furious bastards, buzzing and buzzing in there! He reached behind him for the door, he had to get out of there fast . . . shit, they were as big as effing hummingbirds! He’d seen them before outside, meant to mention them to Michaela and have her see to them, but how the fuck did they get in here? And it was not until he knew they were going to get to him no matter how carefully he moved that he realized something was wrong with the door, oh jeezus there was something wrong with the door, the plate that you pushed to open it from the inside wasn’t there, there was oh jeezus just an empty fucking space there where it was supposed to be!

  He started yelling for Michaela then, thanking god reverently and sincerely that she had never, not once, kept him waiting for anything!

  Michaela surprised him. She kept him waiting a very long time. Long enough to be certain. Long enough to put the insects down the vaporizer. Long enough to fix the door assembly so that it opened the way it always had, from either side, and wipe everything clean of her fingerprints. Long enough to see that there were fingerprints of his on everything they should have been on. It was often useful, being a nurse; you had to know lots of things that women weren’t usually taught anything about. Lots of things that were going to come in handy from now on; oh, yes.