Siren Singers

 

ROBYN TRACEY

 

 

LL-tyu looked at his friend and sang:

 



 

What he said was, “Good
morning. Is your wife feeling better this morning?"

 

LL-tyułs name
contained the only two sounds, in the linguistic sense, as opposed to notes, in
the language. The vocal range of his people covered about four of our octaves,
and each note was a word or syllable. That is to say, just as “ant" in English
can be a word in its own right, or a suffix, as in “dependant", so what would
be one note to us might have a meaning of its own, but also might join with
others to form an entirely different polysyllabic word.

 

Through aeons of
constant use LL-tyułs people had developed a sense of hearing capable of
detecting quarter-tones, and finer variations of length than ourshalf of a
demisemiquaver was clearly distinguishable. Since the meaning of the note
changed with its length, this gave, allowing for the possibility of what we
would call dotted notes, a basic vocabulary of 49,664 monosyllabic words,
before one even touched the compounds.

 

Still, the
vocabulary was severely limited by the nature of the language. For one thing,
intonation could not be used to indicate an interrogative or exclamation, since
raising or lowering the pitch of the voice simply changed the notes, and hence
the words. A form of Victor BorgeÅ‚s “phonetic punctuation" had to be employed,
which meant setting aside certain lengths of certain notes for the purpose. For
example, was, in fact a vocal question mark. Furthermore, more punctuation
was needed than in English, to cover expression, such as alarm, that we
communicate by intonation. Again, raising onełs voice several octaves in the
best paperback-thriller tradition would hardly have the desired effect.

 

The language was
synthetic; indeed, in view of the limitations on vocabulary it could hardly
afford to be otherwise. That is to say, nouns declined and verbs conjugated, as
in German, or Old English, or Latin. This meant that instead of taking up note
lengths for such words as “by", “with" or “from", and “to" or “for", they would
all be covered by adding the ablative or dative case suffix to the noun in
question. In the case of a verb, “will have come" for example, would be
indicated by the verb “come", with
the future perfect suffix,

 

Another function of
the limitation on the number of words was that the language was more compact
and less rich in synonyms than English. This meant that each word encompassed
more shades of meaning than in English. Furthermore, the same limit on
vocabulary necessitated far more homonyms than in a language based on sounds
rather than notes.

 

In English, for
example, the word “can" means both “is able to" and “tin". Or, to take a better
analogy, disregarding spelling, the sound represented by “bale" or “bail" has six
distinct meanings: a “bale" of hay or cotton; “bail", a cattle stall; “bail",
the verb, meaning to “bail" water out of a boat or to “bail" someone out of
gaol; “bail", the money lodged as a surety for a prisoner released from gaol;
and “bail", the horizontal piece of wood on top of the stumps in a cricket
wicketseven if you count the archaic word which now appears only in the
compound “baleful". In LL-tyuÅ‚s language, on the other hand, what would be our
Middle C as a crotchet not only stood for “good", “prosperous", “beneficial", “beautiful"
and a host of other nouns with similar connotations, plus their related verbs
such as “benefit" and “beautify", but had also come to mean “goods", “property"
and “possessions" by much the same process of association by which “good"
became “goods" in English. As a quaver it was used as a suffix indicating the
genitive case. The semantic process which led to this is equally easy to
follow: “house of so-and-so" is not very far from “house for the good of
so-and-so". Prom an extension of this it meant either “for the use of or “useful
for", or, by a further extension, simply “use", the noun, so that “the use of
this object" would be “the good of this object", again not so very far from the
English. By extension yet again it meant the verbs “to use" and “to utilise".
As a crotchet again it covered all the adjectives and adverbs related to the
nouns, with the comparatives and superlatives rendered by Middle C as a minim
and semibreve respectively. The process behind this is again fairly clear: by
adding substance to the sound one amplified the strength of the meaning, just
as if one said “lo-o-ong" instead of “longer". Finally, for reasons known only
to the etymologist, Middle C as a crotchet meant the rough equivalent of a
beer-bottle. Perhaps a brand-name had caught on some time in the distant past.

 

To complicate
matters even more, from the point of view of an English-speaking person, the
language economised still further by the use of contractions. For example, “yours",
or rather the genitive case of the second person pronoun, stood for “your
wife" in a context such as the sentence quoted above from LL-tyu. The situation
was somewhat analogous to that in the toast, “HereÅ‚s to you and yours", where “yours"
means the whole family.

 

Perhaps the one
saving grace of the language, from the human point of view, was the flexibility
of the word order. In an analytic language like English, word order is
paramount it makes a great deal of difference whether you say “the man bites
the dog" or “the dog bites the man". In an inflectional language, however, the
case of the nouns makes the meaning clear: it makes no difference whether you
say “the dog (nominative case) bites the man (accusative case)" or “the man
(accusative case) bites the dog (nominative case)." Consequently words could be
strung together in the order most pleasing to the speakerłs ear. What would be
rhetoric to them would be musical composition to us. Concertos were composed every
time a politician addressed a meeting of potential voters.

 

LL-tyułs friend
looked sadly into the distance and replied, “No, IÅ‚m worried about her, my
friend, she seems to grow worse and worse. The doctors say that she just doesnłt
want to get well. They canłt do anything more for her unless she co-operates.
Ever since the baby died, you know. . . ."

 

LL-tyu put his arm
around his friendÅ‚s shoulder. “Come," he said. “We will go to the temple and
pray for her. Perhaps the Blessed God will teach her heart to find the joy of
life again."

 

They walked
together through the streets to where the temple stood, gleaming white in the
red sunlight. There were more people than usual gathered around the outside of
the low stone circle, for these were troubled times. As always, no one, not
even the priests, crossed the parapet into the empty enclosure, for it was here
that the invisible god dwelt, a god seen differently by each of his devotees,
according to the individual idea of supreme beauty, when they went into a holy
ecstasy at the festival of the epiphany.

 

* * * *

 

David Harrison hesitated over the manual
controls of the module. He hadnłt long to decide. He had intended to land
unseen in an uninhabited area and observe the people of this new planet without
making his presence known. But that goddam computer had pulled another of its
fluffshełd really have to tear it down this time, no more jury-rig repairs.

 

Anyway, he was
coming down right in the middle of the city. No chance of hiding nowhe would
have been spotted already. Have to brazen it out. Make a grandstand entrance. “Me
friend. Take me to your leader."

 

Where to land? It
sure wouldnłt help to crash into a building or squash a few of the locals. Go
for broke. Right in the middle of the town square. Or circle would be closer by
the look of it.

 

Gently he set the
module down in the open space. From what he could see through the viewing port
the crowd outside was frozen with shock. Well, you could hardly blame them.
They looked humanoid, though, or near enough.

 

Hełd get out and
show them he was the same sort of person as they were. Not some bug-eyed
monster out of a sci-fi comic, if they had that sort of stuff here. But very,
very carefully.

 

Cautiously he
opened the door and climbed awkwardly down the ladder, one hand on his sidearm,
all the time facing the crowd. As soon as he appeared a change came over the
people and a buzz of sound rose from them.

 

Gingerly he stepped
from the bottom of the ladder, reluctant to put any distance between himself
and his means of escape. But then he quickened his pace, moving towards the
nearest of the crowd.

 

There could be
nothing to fear from these fair-haired, violet-eyed people who pressed forward
to welcome him, singing in unison. Singing? No! trilling like a thousand birds
whołd simultaneously discovered that it was spring. It was what hełd always
imagined nightingales would sound like, until the reality disappointed him.

 

As he broke into a
run more voices joined the choir, swelling the sound of the beautiful lilting
runs until they blocked out every other thought in his mind:

 



 

As he was dragged
across the parapet and thrown under the trampling feet, he remembered, too
late, that the song of the nightingale is often its battle-cry.