Ocean on Top

The people who had come with Bert and me had stayed farther from the board, presumably because of his orders. They watched a while what was going on, but gradually began talking to each other, judging by their hand motions. They rather reminded me of school children who have lost interest in watching the film. Once again I was reminded of the oddness in Bert’s being able to give orders, or even act as a guide.

He himself, after the first few minutes, paid no attention to the people who had come with us. He had waved to me in a gesture which I had interpreted as meaning that he’d be back later and swam out of sight. I assumed he would be and kept on with my inspection of the board.

For a good deal of the rest of the hour, the girl and her companions followed me around, though without getting as close to board and operators as I did. They seemed to be more interested in me than in the engineering. I considered this understandable in the case of the girl and supposed the men were just staying with her.

I finally decided that I had made all I could of the board and began to wonder where Bert had gone. There seemed no way to ask; he had taken the writing pad with him, and anyway the futility of that method had been established. If there had been among my satellites someone not present at the earlier experiment, I might have been tempted to try again anyway, but as it was the absence of writing gear was more of a challenge than a nuisance. This seemed to be a good time to start learning the local gesture language.

I swam away from the control panel to the farther wall, the others following, and began what I hoped would be a language lesson by the method standard in fiction. I pointed to things, and tried to get the others to use their gesture-words for them.

To say that it went badly is understating. It went so badly that I wasn’t even sure whether they had grasped what I wanted by the time Bert came back. They had made lots of hand, arm, and ringer motions, both at me and at each other, but I saw no way of telling whether any of them were the names of things I pointed at, or symbols for the verbs I acted out. Probably I was missing a lot of the subtle

motions and attitudes anyway, but I simply never detected a pattern repeated often enough to be learned. It was as frustrating an experience as I’d had since — well, for a few hours, anyway. Maybe a day or more.

When Bert did get back and saw what was going on he had another siege of near-laughter.

“I tried that, too,” he finally wrote, ‘when I first got here. I’m supposed to be a fair linguist, but I never made more than the slightest headway. I hate to seem conceited, but I really don’t think it can be done unless you start as a child.”

“You must have learned a little.”

“Yes, About fifty basic symbols — I think.”

“But you were talking to these people here. I got the impression you were telling them what to do.”

“I was, in a sloppy sort of way. My few dozen gestures include the most obvious verbs, but even those I can’t do very well. Three-quarters of the people can’t understand me at all — this girl here is one of the best. I can read them only when they make my few signs very slowly.”

“Then how in blazes are you in a position to tell any of them what to do? And how does that fact jibe with what you told me about no one here being able to tell people what to do?”

“I may have expressed myself badly. This isn’t a very authoritative government, but the Council’s advice is usualy taken, at least on matters even slightly co

“And this Council has given you some sort of authority? Why? And does that mean that Marie was right in believing you’d deserted the Board and mankind and gone over to these wasters for good?”

“One question at a time, please,” he scribbled hastily. ‘The Council didn’t exactly give me authority. I’m making my suggestions as a member.”

I took the pad and cleared it, trying to catch his eye the whole time. I finally wrote, ‘Let’s have that again? My eyes must be fooling me, too.”

He gri

“I’m not — heavily underlined — "here to stay, whatever Marie may think, and in spite of what I told you before. I’m sorry about having to lie to you. I’m here to do a job; what will happen after it’s done I don’t know. You’re in the same position, as you know perfectly well.” I had to nod agreement at that point. ‘I’m on the Council because of my linguistic skills and general background.” I was so hard put to it to make sense out of that remark that I almost failed to read the next one in time; I had to stop him as I was about to clear the board to make room for more words. ‘There’s a little more information about the place down here which I wasn’t going to bother you with, but I’ve changed my mind. I’ll let you see it, and you can decide for yourself how and whether to include it or allow for it in your job of getting Marie to make her mind up. I have my opinion on how it should be used, but you’re entitled to yours. Come on. I want you to meet the engineer in charge of maintenance development work here.”

He swam off, and I went after him with the others trailing behind. I had no urge to talk, even if it had been possible. I was still trying to figure out how someone whose mastery of the local speech represented a slow two-year-old’s vocabulary could have earned an official position on the strength of his linguistic talents.

No doubt you’ve seen it by now, since I’ve tried to tell this fairly, but it was too much for me. I was so far behind the facts that I was even startled by something else you’ve probably been expecting. We swam into a sort of office opening from the far end of the control room, and I saw floating in front of a microfilm viewer, oblivious to the people around him, my good friend Joey Elfven.

Chapter Seventeen

That sight made a change in me. Bert had been a good friend of mine for several years. I had trusted him; Marie, admittedly, had not and had tried to get me to share her feelings, but I’d felt sure she was just brooding.

A few minutes ago I had been jolted when Bert confessed to a falsehood in his earlier talk to me, but I had still been ready to listen to his excuses. I would even have been willing to believe that I had misunderstood him the first time.

But he had also told me — written it in plain words, with no possible doubt about their meaning — that he did not know about Joey’s whereabouts and that to the best of his knowledge and belief Joey had never gotten to this place.

Clearly and unarguably Bert Whelstrahl had been lying like the proverbial rug. He had known that Joey was here. He had known just where he was and what he was doing. Why should he tell such a lie to me and apparently to Marie? And having told it, why was he now bringing me face to face with the proof that he was a liar? And had Marie formed her impression by spotting some evidence I had missed?

One thing was certain in my own mind. Whatever explanation Bert gave was going to have to be supported by some pretty good independent evidence before I could accord it any weight. So was anything else he said from now on.

These thoughts were interrupted by Joey’s pulling away from his viewer and catching sight of me. The expression on his face indicated that Bert hadn’t told him about me either. He was clearly astonished, and seemed delighted. He came over and shook hands violently, and seemed as frustrated as I was by the impossibility of talking. He looked around, probably for the writing pad, but Bert was already busy with the stylus. He held his words up for both of us to read.