The low form

Cecily picked up the piece of paper using a pair of tweezers, and shook it at Martin.  “Where did you get this?  Exactly?”  She laid it down on her desk again, a large wooden bench with a laptop at one end and a set of labelled petri dishes pushed to the back.  This was her laboratory, which she shared with five other scientists, none of whom had fewer than two Ph.Ds.  Martin, perched on an uncomfortable lab stood, swallowed hard and looked at her.  His hearing was still a little fuzzy and his ears ached in any temperature below 25C.  He was carrying a pair of ear-warmers in his hands, having taken them off when he came into the lab.

“The Tailor put it in front of me after he turned the radio on,” he said.  The memories were hazy as though someone had spilled acid over them and they’d been partly eaten away.  He could remember the Tailor turning the radio on, and then the next thing he remembered was a smile full of yellowed teeth and the piece of paper.  Then there was a kind of greyness when he knew he was there and hurting, and after that there were people around him again, talking to him in ways that didn’t make him want to curl up and die.  He remembered flashing lights, but he couldn’t remember if there’d been an ambulance or not.  He remembered a fast, bumpy journey while he was lying down, but not where he’d been while he was lying.  His first memories that felt like his again were of waking up in a narrow, hard bed with pristine white sheets and seeing a middle-aged woman with curlers in her hair sat at the end of the bed, watching him.

“Did he say anything to you about it?”

“I couldn’t hear him, the radio was on,” said Martin.  He shuddered; he could remember the first words, if that was really the right word to describe the noise, that had come out of the radio, and he really wished he couldn’t.  No-one should have to vomit a language out of their throat to get rid of it.

“Before he turned the radio on, did he say anything to you about this paper?  About Odnose B?”

Martin flinched so hard he fell off the stool and landed on the floor; the stool caught in his legs as he fell and ended up on top of him.  Cecily raised an eyebrow, and waited to him to untangle himself and get back up.

“You can stand if you wish,” she said.  Martin shook his head, and sat back on the stool, positioning it so he could lean on one arm on her bench.  She frowned but said nothing.

“He said… he said something about the intent of the number station,” he said.  “He said… he said I should ask what the intent of the numbers station was.  I think.  The memories are, I don’t know how to describe it.  Like when you drop a mirror.”

“Crazed,” said Cecily nodding.  “Yes, Odnose B does very strange things to the mind.  It wouldn’t be surprising if your memories were all hazed and cracked like a mirror really.  The agents say you were in there with the radio on for at least six minutes.”

“Was it that short?”  Martin looked astonished when Cecily laughed.  It was a modest chuckle at first that turned into a full roar of laughter as she saw his expression.

“Didn’t anyone–?  Really?  Oh.  Well, in our animal experiments the rabbits and mice die after about 90 seconds, and the primates don’t do a whole lot better.  We’re trying to get hold of a gorilla but it’s not easy.  It might be easier now we can show that human subjects have lasted six minutes without death though.  Six minutes of Odnose B is a fairly accurate description of eternity as I understand it.

Look Martin, did you read this note?  Do you know who wrote it?  It says here that there are high and low forms of Odnose B and that what you were listening to is the low form, and that’s why you’re here.  I really, really want to know everything you know about this note.”

Martin swallowed.  “Look, I think the Tailor wrote it, and I can remember a smile, it might have been his.  I don’t know anything else about it though, he just put the note in front of me and I had to really concentrate to try and read it.”

“The agents said it was clenched so tightly in your hands that they had to give you a muscle relaxant to get it away from you,” said Cecily.  “It sounds like you knew it was important at least; did the Tailor say anything to make you realise that?”

“I don’t think so,” said Martin.  He blinked, his eyes slightly unfocused.  “No, he didn’t say anything about the note being important.  I think he just left.”

“How?”

“Huh?”

“No-one saw him leave the building, Martin.  We don’t know where he went, or how he got out.”

“But we had it surrounded!”

Cecily said nothing, but put the note into a little plastic sleeve using her tweezers.

“We’ve suspected that there’s something odd about Odnose B for a while,” she said.  “The texts we have disagree in places where we think we understand what’s being said, and there are substitutions that aren’t regular or maintained.  If there really are two forms of the language, then that might help us work out which is which.  But, and it’s big but for us, why are there two forms?”

“Two different kinds of speakers?” said Martin.  “I dunno, posh people talking and common people?”

“Speaking a language that kills the speakers and the people who hear it?”

Martin stared at her.

“We can’t even figure out how this language developed,” said Cecily.  “Or rather, our answers so far are almost as disturbing as the wretched language itself.”

Hegatonic

Hegatonic is what they called the language of the Eidolons.  There was an ancient book, its stitching rotted away and its pages yellowed and crumbling, that was kept in a small box filled with inert gas that was the original dictionary.  The front-page contained one word: Hegaton, and so the language had been given its name.  There were scholars, a small minority, who argued that a Hegaton was actually a measurement, the amount of explosive required to kill an Eidolon.  Since no-one had ever succeeded in killing an Eidolon though this theory was largely ignored.

The classroom where Hegatonic was taught was dark and hot.  The room itself was a cube, four metres to a side, buried inside a grain silo and accessed from an underground tunnel.  There was a single electric light bulb that contributed to the heat, an elaborate ventilation system that sourced air from three different directions in case any were blocked, and a pneumatic tube down which incriminating material could be flushed in the event of discovery.  The walls were plain steel, though there was a chart of basic letters taped up on one of them.  The chart was made from tissue paper and there was a bucket of water nearby to dissolve it in if needed.  There were four desks and seven chairs, and several solid-state sonjeu with white earphone cords.  Three people occupied some of the chairs, and a fourth, Milady Beth-Rachel was standing at the chart, her fingers pressed against her throat as she practised making the sounds that the letters represented.

Serjeant Thomas removed earphones from his ears and touched the sonjeu, a palm-sized black plastic device.  The front of it lit up, showing icons for recording, playback, pause and stop at the bottom, and a list of audio tracks above them.  He pressed stop and the screen went black again.

“I hakegh gha,” he said, and stopped and coughed.  His fingers massages his throat before he tried again.  “I hate this language,” he said, his voice a little scratchy from repeating sentences in Hegatonic.

“We all do,” said Milady Beth-Rachel.  “But we have to learn it, Tom.  You have to learn it.  There’s no other way for us to know what the Eidolons are up to.”

“They tell us what they’re up to.  That’s what Court is for, that’s what the newspapers report!”

“Hah.”  There was no amusement there, just a strong sarcasm.  “No, Tom.  Court and the newspapers tell us what the Eidolons want us to believe and do.  They are instruments of the state.  The Eidolonic state.  What the Eidolons say to their instars is what they are actually thinking and doing, what they say to each other when they talk is what they are thinking and doing.  That is why we learn their language.”

“Instars?”

Milady Beth-Rachel looked at him now, her hand falling from her throat to her side.  “You don’t know what an Instar is?”

“Never heard of them.”  Serjeant Thomas shook his head to emphasise his words.  He’s dark hair tousled up immediately and Milady Beth-Rachel thought he looked like he’d just got out of bed.

“They’re related to the Eidolon, I think,” she said, suddenly realising that there was a lot she took for granted about the Instars but didn’t actually have any supporting evidence for.  “They’re not children exactly, but they kind of fill that role.  If an Eidolon dies then an Instar will grow into a new Eidolon.  I think.”

“When has an Eidolon ever died?  And what happens if an Instar starts to grow before an Eidolon dies?”

“I don’t know, and Eidolons die occasionally.  There was a war, decades ago, because an Eidolon died and another Eidolon tried to take over from it.  There’s a book somewhere that tells about it.”  Milady Beth-Rachel wiped her forehead, feeling the heat of the room intently.  She didn’t like talking about things she wasn’t complete certain of.  Serjeant Thomas looked interested now though and had put the sonjeu down on the table while he talked to her.

“There was an Eidolon war?  Then we know how to kill an Eidolon?”

“I don’t know, really Thomas.  I only know what I read, and that was a few years ago.”

“Oh.”  He looked downcast, and his fingers started tugging at a little scab on his wrist.  Then he looked up again.  “Have you still got the book?”

“It wasn’t mine.”

“Oh.”  He worried at the scab again.  “I suppose I’d better get back to practising then,” he said.

“Well… look, I think I remember who I borrowed the book from.  I can ask them if they’ve still got it,” she said.  She wiped her forehead again; she thought she knew who had had the book, but she didn’t like the risk involved in asking for it.  Learning Hegatonic was illegal enough, and there were always people who preferred the rule of the Eidolons, but actively seeking out ways to kill Eidolons was probably the highest treason.

“That’d be fantastic!”  Serjeant Thomas was smiling broadly at her, and she could see the gaps where he’d lost teeth.  It was ridiculous that they had had all this medical technology and science, and now the Eidolons made them suppress it and live like it was the Middle Ages.  Thomas definitely wasn’t her type, but even she could see how stupid it was that he had to lose teeth when they could be regrown; why they had to worry about every cut and scratch when they could have applied healpax.  Why they had to do everything the Eidolons said instead of living their own lives for themselves.

Arriving on Höllenstein

Carlos Dészegerégy was a plain man, perhaps 5'8 in his stockinged feet, and he was indeed the kind of man to wear stockings rather than socks.  He had a slightly pointy chin and slightly pointy ears, and cruel people made remarks about leprechauns in his hearing if he forgot himself and wore the green tunic his mother had given him before he left home.  His hair was usually tousled but was jet black; so black in fact that more than one lover had asked him when he found time to dye it.  On his left hand he wore his Linguist ring, the ring awarded only to postgraduates of the Royal Academy of Linguistics.  His right hand was slightly claw-like, due to a near permanent writer's cramp.  He only smiled when he thought of something funny, which seemed to happen less and less.
He was frowning at the moment as he read through the notes his colleague, Irina Novosibirsk, had left for him.  He'd arrived on the world of Höllenstein twelve days earlier and she'd crashed into him as he came out of the arrivals lounge.  He'd barely had time to recognise that the silver-haired screaming woman was Irina before she'd recovered herself, thrust her satchel into his arms, pushed him over, and run off again, still screaming.  A kindly couple nearby offered him a hand to help him up, which he gratefully declined as they were old enough to be his grandparents, and when he was finally on his feet and dusting off his trousers, he thought to look around for Irina.  A brief walk in the direction she'd taken brought him to the departures lounge, and the pasty-faced guard stopped eating a beignet for long enough to tell him that a screaming woman had indeed gone through as she had a ticket valid for travel.  Which Carlos did not, for another six months.
Outside the travel-port, which had the impressive name of President Harkos II the Illuminated Travel-Port for the Nation and the less-impressive building standards of an agricultural shelter, there was a taxi-rank and a bus-stop.  Without stopping to think, Carlos joined the queue for the bus and started listening.
Two minutes later he realised his mistake: everyone coming from the Travel-port was a tourist, and so they were speaking a multitude of langauges, and all of them were complaining about the expense of the taxis.  Carlos left the queue and join the (much shorter) queue for a taxi, and within five minutes was being driven to the Queen Agnetha Embassy.  The taxi driver was talkative and appeared not to speak any Anglo, so Carlos listened attentively, his right-hand cramping slightly as he tried to control his urge to take out his notebook and start making notes about the use of the language by native speakers.  He contented himself with singling out the most useful observations and trying to memorise them to write them down later.
"Here then we are, goodman," said the taxi-driver, slowing the taxi as they approached the Embassy.  "Soldiermen shots not good are, taxi new is but.  Here then descend you. "  The taxi stopped, and Carlos asked the driver to repeat himself again, intrigued that the driver appeared to adding a suffix to the verb when he moved it out of its traditional place in the sentence structure.  The taxi driver looked at him as though he were simple, repeated what he'd said, and looked even more surprised when Carlos added an extra ten to the tip by way of gratitude.
As the taxi-driver pulled his taxi away, Carlos noticed that the soldiers at the gates of the Embassy were taking aim at him with their guns.  He pulled his passport out of his pocket and held it in front of him like a shield as he walked to them, his heart racing and his breathing suddenly ragged.
A shot rang out, and he fell to the ground, hurting himself on the square corners and hard edges of the books inside Irina's satchel.  He lay there, wondering how he'd know if he'd been shot, and if they were going to keep on shooting, but silence filled the air until a boot kicked him in the ribs and he grunted as the air rushed out of his lungs.
"Get up," said the soldier in accented Anglo.  "What do you want?"
"I belong here," said Carlos, not getting up but holding his passport up instead.  "See?  I'm expected at the Embassy."
He felt the passport being pulled from his fingers, and risked looking up.  The soldier's lips were moving as he scrutinised the passport, and finally it was dropped on Carlos's upturned face.
"Fine," said the soldier.  "Another funny language man, great.  You're not as cute as your colleague, you know."
Carlos got to his feet, wondering how worried he should feel about the implications of that statement, and traipsed after the soldier.  Höllenstein seemed quite different to all of his other postings so far.