John Dalmas - The Regiment 01 by The Regiment

Author:The Regiment
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-12-14T21:06:31+00:00

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CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Konni wiped sweat from her forehead. “Do you understand these people?” she asked. “The people themselves, I mean, not the language.”

They were eight days out from Kettle, with thirteen more to go before they reached the Oven-Tyss. She had copied Colonel Voker’s Tyspi cubes, and with Varlik’s help had been doing a cram course on the language. The warpship Hedanik was Iryalan but leased by the T’swa, and her operations crew as well as medical and housekeeping staffs, plus thirty-seven of her thirty-nine casualties, were T’swa. So the temperature was kept at a constant, and to T’swa pleasant, 95 degrees Fahrenheit. Not that the T’swa required high temperatures: They simply had an easy physiological and psychological tolerance of them. T’swa regiments had more than once fought in snow and ice.

“Understand the T’swa?” Varlik looked at her question; he’d never explicitly thought about it before. ” I guess I don’t. But I don’t think I really understand Iryalans, either; I’m just used to them. And I suppose I’m getting pretty used to the T’swa now. Why do you ask?”

“I’ve listened to all the cubes you’ve loaned me of your conversations with T’swa. The ones where you were speaking Standard, that is. And some of their attitudes and responses-I don’t believe I could ever understand them. I wondered if it’s the same for you.”

“I suppose it is. I just don’t notice it so much anymore-I take it for granted.

“I’ll tell you something, though. When the T’swa talk Tyspi to me, I usually understand everything they say. I’m a quick study, with excellent recall. But sometimes when two of them talk to each other, I hardly understand anything at all. Sometimes too many of the words are unfamiliar, but at other times I know the words and still don’t know what they’re talking about. So I guess I don’t understand the T’swa all that well. But it’s never seemed very important; it’s as if I understand them well enough.”

Varlik got up stiffly. “I’m hurting. Let’s go to physical therapy for a bit.”

“You go,” Konni said. “What I need is a nap.”

They left the small reading room, Konni turning right toward her room, Varlik hobbling left toward the therapy section. As he passed an open office door, he glanced in and saw a T’swa medic named Usu. On an impulse he stopped.

“Usu, may I interrupt you?”

The T’swi looked up from his papers and nodded, gesturing to a chair. “How can I help you?”

Varlik entered and sat, groping for an answer. “It’s nothing really important, I guess, but … Well, there are a lot of things I don’t understand about the T’swa.”

“Oh?” The T’swi said nothing more then, waiting.

“For example, sometimes two T’swa will be talking and I don’t understand at all what they’re saying-even when I understand the words.”

Usu nodded, eyeing Varlik thoughtfully. “I can see the difficulty. Let me make a few comments that may help. In the Confederation, not only most of your activities but also much of your reality are deeply constrained by the compulsion for and environment of Standardness.

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