Here Comes Civilization: The Complete Science Fiction of William Tenn Volume II by William Tenn Page B
Authors: William Tenn
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I'm afraid." Trowson turned away with a sigh from peering over my shoulder. "At least, I deduce that from the unhappy way Mainzer bubbles into his soup spoon at lunch. Conversation between subsections originating in different offices on the departmental level is officially discouraged, you know. But I remember Mainzer from the university cafeteria. He bubbled into his soup the very same way when he was stuck on his solar refraction engine."
"Think Andy and Dandy are afraid we're too young to play with matches? Or maybe apelike creatures are too unpleasant-looking to be allowed to circulate in their refined and esthetic civilization?"
"I don't know , Dick." The prof ambled back to his desk and leafed irritably through his sociological notes. "If anything like that is true, why would they give us free run of their ship? Why would they reply so gravely and courteously to every question? If only their answers weren't so vague in our terms! But they are such complex and artistically minded creatures, so chockful of poetic sentiment and good manners that it's impossible to make mathematical or even verbal sense out of their vast and circumlocutory explanations. Sometimes, when I think of their highly polished manners and their seeming lack of interest in the structure of their society, when I put that together with their spaceship which looks like one of those tiny jade carvings that took a lifetime to accomplish..."
He trailed off and began riffling the pages like a Mississippi steamboat gambler going over somebody else's deck of cards.
"Isn't it possible we just don't have enough stuff as yet to understand them?"
"Yes. In fact, that's what we always come back to. Warbury points to the tremendous development in our language since the advent of technical vocabularies. He says that this process, just beginning with us, already affects our conceptual approach as well as our words. And, naturally, in a race so much further along—But if we could only find a science of theirs which bears a faint resemblance to one of ours!"
I felt sorry for him, standing there blinking futilely out of gentle, academic eyes.
"Cheer up, prof. Maybe by the time old Suckfoot and his pal come back from the Grand Tour, you'll have unsnarled a sophistry and we'll be off this 'Me, friend; you come from across sea in great bird with many wings' basis that we seemed to have wandered into."
And there you are, Alvarez; a cheap, advertising small brain like me, and I was that close. I should have said something then. Bet you wouldn't have nodded at me heavily and said, "I hope so, Dick. I desperately hope so." But, come to think of it, not only Trowson was trotting up that path. So was Warbury. So were Lopez, Vinthe and Mainzer. So was I, among others.
I had a chance to relax when Andy and Dandy went abroad. My job wasn't exactly over, but the Public Relations end was meshing right along, with me needed only once in a while to give a supervisory spin. Chiefly, I maintained close contact with my opposite number in various other sovereign states, giving out with experienced advice on how to sell the Boys from Betelgeuse. They had to adjust it to their own mass phobias and popular myths; but they were a little happier about it than I had been, without any clear idea of what public behavior to expect of our visitors.
Remember, when I'd started, I hadn't even been sure those snails were housebroken.
I followed them in the newspapers. I pasted the pictures of the Mikado receiving them next to their nice comments on the Taj Mahal. They weren't nearly so nice to the Akhund of Swat; but, then, when you think of what the Akhund said about them—
They tended to do that everywhere, giving just a little better than they got. For example, when they were presented with those newly created decorations in Red Square (Dandy got The Order of Extraterrestrial Friends of Soviet Labor, while, for some abstruse reason, The Order of Heroic Interstellar Champion of the Soviet
"Think Andy and Dandy are afraid we're too young to play with matches? Or maybe apelike creatures are too unpleasant-looking to be allowed to circulate in their refined and esthetic civilization?"
"I don't know , Dick." The prof ambled back to his desk and leafed irritably through his sociological notes. "If anything like that is true, why would they give us free run of their ship? Why would they reply so gravely and courteously to every question? If only their answers weren't so vague in our terms! But they are such complex and artistically minded creatures, so chockful of poetic sentiment and good manners that it's impossible to make mathematical or even verbal sense out of their vast and circumlocutory explanations. Sometimes, when I think of their highly polished manners and their seeming lack of interest in the structure of their society, when I put that together with their spaceship which looks like one of those tiny jade carvings that took a lifetime to accomplish..."
He trailed off and began riffling the pages like a Mississippi steamboat gambler going over somebody else's deck of cards.
"Isn't it possible we just don't have enough stuff as yet to understand them?"
"Yes. In fact, that's what we always come back to. Warbury points to the tremendous development in our language since the advent of technical vocabularies. He says that this process, just beginning with us, already affects our conceptual approach as well as our words. And, naturally, in a race so much further along—But if we could only find a science of theirs which bears a faint resemblance to one of ours!"
I felt sorry for him, standing there blinking futilely out of gentle, academic eyes.
"Cheer up, prof. Maybe by the time old Suckfoot and his pal come back from the Grand Tour, you'll have unsnarled a sophistry and we'll be off this 'Me, friend; you come from across sea in great bird with many wings' basis that we seemed to have wandered into."
And there you are, Alvarez; a cheap, advertising small brain like me, and I was that close. I should have said something then. Bet you wouldn't have nodded at me heavily and said, "I hope so, Dick. I desperately hope so." But, come to think of it, not only Trowson was trotting up that path. So was Warbury. So were Lopez, Vinthe and Mainzer. So was I, among others.
I had a chance to relax when Andy and Dandy went abroad. My job wasn't exactly over, but the Public Relations end was meshing right along, with me needed only once in a while to give a supervisory spin. Chiefly, I maintained close contact with my opposite number in various other sovereign states, giving out with experienced advice on how to sell the Boys from Betelgeuse. They had to adjust it to their own mass phobias and popular myths; but they were a little happier about it than I had been, without any clear idea of what public behavior to expect of our visitors.
Remember, when I'd started, I hadn't even been sure those snails were housebroken.
I followed them in the newspapers. I pasted the pictures of the Mikado receiving them next to their nice comments on the Taj Mahal. They weren't nearly so nice to the Akhund of Swat; but, then, when you think of what the Akhund said about them—
They tended to do that everywhere, giving just a little better than they got. For example, when they were presented with those newly created decorations in Red Square (Dandy got The Order of Extraterrestrial Friends of Soviet Labor, while, for some abstruse reason, The Order of Heroic Interstellar Champion of the Soviet
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