First to The Stars by Rex Gordon

Author:Rex Gordon [Gordon, Rex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sci Fi & Fantasy
Publisher: Ace Books
Published: 1959-01-19T19:11:38+00:00

Chapter Twenty

An endless space of time began.

From my room in the university building in which I was a prisoner, I looked out over the city, the strange capital city of the world of Kara. From the window I looked out at the colorful buildings with their strange, organic shapes, at the flitting helicopters, and away to where I could see a river that curled across a plain. And I wondered whether I had done better or worse for Eve to hand her over to the charge of the Kara people instead of letting her the where Elvinia had died, on the naked planet.

It was the lack of a common language that had caused the disaster. Not the lack of a language alone, for that could have been overcome in quite a little time. It was the lack of those word-bases and word-forms that made the translation of human languages possible. It had been that which had bedeviled my meeting with the Elders of Kara, a meeting that had come about too soon after the Kara scientists had discovered what I was.

I could remember it still, my progress through the streets I looked at now from my window. I could remember the crowds that had collected to watch as a strange being—some said a being with intelligence—had been brought to Court. What should have been a sensible discourse under conditions of extreme difficulty had become a Roman holiday.

They had had to clear a way for the car carrying me through the excited, noisy, pointing crowds. Kara society, I could only guess, was divided into classes; and the class that formed the crowds was the least intelligent and the least educated. I could not understand all their movements, but some of them had clearly been those of fear and horror. The noise from the crowd outside the hall of Court had been such as to prejudice my chances of making proper intellectual contact with the rulers of Kara even before I arrived. If I had been a tiger being brought to Court, I thought, the stir and consternation could not have been greater.

I could not complain of the manner of my presentation. A space had been cleared before the Elders and I was set before them and allowed to speak. But what I saw around me was a sea of green, unlikely bodies, not men or beings. And the one among them who pretended to have learned my language was a courtier and a diplomat and not a scientist. He was one who judged on appearances and knew nothing of the difficulties he was confronting.

“I thank you for your hospitality,” I said. “I thank you for saving the life of my daughter.”

“It is asking for its young one,” the courtier said.

I saw the scientists who had had charge of me stirring uneasily among the curious, interested, and completely unresponsive crowd. They knew how bad the translation was, but they were technicians of a lower rank than courtiers and statesmen and could not speak unless they were called upon to do so.

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