cowlark.com

My Diary, 2002-11-22

I wanted at the door, and as it dematerialised, Green and Black fell out.

"What the hell are you doing here at this time of the morning?" I demanded. It was barely past dawn.

Black stared at me sourly, and rolled off Green, who was underneath. I took the opportunity to put my clothes on. The room had, as usual, cleaned them during the night. I swear they were getting whiter each day.

I deliberately turned away from the two sealin, who were now arguing with each other, and wanted at the food widget. I had discovered that it was responsive to how hard I wanted, and was having a reasonable amount of success persuading it to give me snacks. I was delighted to discover that this morning it gave me a large mug of something not unlike coffee.

Green and Black had stopped arguing and were now glaring at each other.

"Well, what do you want?" I said.

Black redirected the glare towards me. Green merely glanced round, and then reached out the door and pulled in another of the sealin's patented machines-in-a-bubble. This one was quite small, merely ten centimetres or so wide, and had a large handle which Green held in its mouth. It brought it over to the central table and dropped it with a clunk.

Black said something, which Green ignored. Instead it focused intently on the machine, which lit up; a large ball of light appeared in the air above it, which swirled, and then cleared to reveal an image. It was a projector.

It seemed to be a newsreel. I saw the island, empty of buildings; vast, rectangular, silver ships floating above it; a man in a yellow uniform and a braid talking optimistically to the camera; a complicated structure in space; the man, talking less optimistically; a black-and-white sealin, also speaking to the camera; a jerky, amateurish sequence of two brilliant blue points of light falling out of the sky and striking the sea; the man again, worried now; the island, with the rectangular ships over it again... over everything, a running commentary in Builder.

It came to an end and the ball of light flicked out.

Green was looking at me expectantly. What else could I do? I made the theatrical shrug that meant I don't understand. Green sagged visibly, and Black rattled something briefly and left. The door rematerialised behind him.

I looked at Green, who was looking decidedly depressed. (At least, that's the impression I got. Applying human body language to a non-human creature? Ludicrous, and yet it did work to a certain extent. Perhaps they learnt it from the Builders.) Any vestige of fear of the sealin I had had evaporated. Oh, I realised that I was in the middle of what looked like a rather unpleasant war ---- those blue lights looked very much like a weapon ---- but the sealin didn't seem to be a mysterious, impersonal mass of unknowing and hostile creatures any more. They were people. Green's repeated attempts to communicate; Green and Black's frequent arguments, if arguments they were; even Black's short temper ---- I felt I knew them, at least a little.

I sat down, still nursing my mug of coffeeish, and offered Green the food widget. It looked at it, glanced up at me in surprise, and slowly shook its head.

We studied each other. What was Green thinking about? There was someone inside that streamlined head; it looked out at me through those slightly protruding, big black eyes. What did it see?

Eventually Green broke eye contact and fiddled with the machine again. The sphere reappeared, this time showing... a pebble. Green said a word in Builder and looked at me expectantly.

Ah. Language lessons.

The rest of the day ---- and I mean, the entire day, Green left and sunset ---- was spent exchanging words. It very quickly came obvious that Green was learning English very much faster than I was learning Builder, and by mutual agreement I stopped trying, concentrating instead on feeding vocabulary to Green.

It was uncanny. Green never forgot anything. I would say a word once. Green would repeat it; I would correct its pronunciation, and that was it. Green would just remember it. Its accent was good, too; a little hissy, and the consonants were a bit soft, but in general easier to understand than some humans.

Interestingly, Green doesn't move its mouth when it speaks. It just opens it a little, sets its tongue, and sound comes out. I wonder how it does that?

We spent a couple of hours at the point-and-say level, building nouns. Rocks, trees, birds, fish... it's more complicated than it looks. It took some time for Green to realise that the same noun referred to both suns. It took me a while to realise that when I told Green the word for `human', Green thought it referred to all intelligent creatures (I think); great for avoiding prejudice, but a little tricky when it came to comparative anthropology.

Surprise! Green is female. I think. We didn't go into much detail on sealin reproductive biology, but at one stage Green used the machine to draw a family tree, with Green and Black at the top and the little sealin coming out of Green... of course, it could mean that Green is in fact the male, and the children are considered property of the male.

Whatever. Green feels female to me. Black feels male. I'll just have to keep an eye out for reproductive equipment and adjust my pronouns accordingly.

Numbers were easy. Distinguishing between cardinal and ordinal numbers is less so. Syntax is largely non-existent, but we did the I-give-object-to-you, you-give-object-to-me routine enough times that Green has started putting subjects and objects in the right place. Plurals? Green knows about a trailing s but we're just not bothering with irregular plurals.

Here's another surprise: when we roped in Black to play he-me-you, Green wanted to use different pronouns to refer to Black and me. It took a while before it realised that English pronouns are based on sex. I wonder what its pronouns are based on? If Sealin has pronouns.

The end result? By the end of the day, we could talk. A little. We could do time and distance, and had a small vocabulary of nouns, a smaller one of verbs, and a smattering of other words to glue it all together. That we got so far in so little time is a tribute to Green's amazing linguistic skills. The magic projector was a lot of help. Green seemed able to draw anything in the sphere of light, although the pictures weren't great.

I asked some questions, and got some useful answers.

"Where builders now?" I asked. (Getting the word for 'builders' was an interesting mime.)

"Planet Shaisheala," Green replied.

Was Shaisheala a name, or a description? I didn't have the vocabulary to ask.

"When storm?" I asked.

"Three, four, five, six days," Green said.

Um.

Black relayed a question to me:

"Where ship?" Green asked.

I shrugged. Black seemed surprised.

I repeated the question to Green. Green conferred with Black, and then replied:

"Zero sealin ship."

Oh, god.

And now, if you don't mind, I need to get some sleep. I was up very early today, and I suspect that Green and Black will be back again just as early tomorrow.

[transmit]