The Memory of Earth Page 0,34

comfortably in the air in front of his computer display. It was layered about thirty pages deep, but each page had only a few words on it, so he could see almost everything at once. Like a game of solitaire, in which Issib was simply moving fragments from place to place.

The fragments were all words in weird languages. The ones Nafai recognized were very old.

"What language is th a t?" Nafai asked, pointing to one.

Issib sighed. "I'm so glad you're not interrupting me."

"What is it, some ancient form of Vijati?"

"Very good. It's Slucajan, which came from Obilazati, the original form of Vijati. It's dead now."

"I read Vijati, you know."

" Idon't,"

"Oh, so you're specializing in ancient, obscure languages that nobody speaks anymore, including you?"

"I'm not learning these languages, I'm researching lost words."

"If the whole language is dead, then all the words are lost."

"Words that used to have meanings, but that died out or survived only in idiomatic expressions. Like 'dancing bear.' What's a bear^ do you know?"

"I don't know. I always thought it was some kind of graceful bird."

"Wrong. It's an ancient mammal. Known only on Earth, I think, and not brought here. Or it died out soon. It was bigger than a man, very powerful. A predator."

"And it danced ?"

"The expression used to mean something absurdly clumsy. Like a dog walking on its hind legs."

"And now it means the opposite. That's weird. How could it change?"

"Because there aren't any bears. The meaning used to be obvious, because everybody knew what a bear was and how clumsy it would look, dancing. But when the bears were gone, the meaning could go anywhere. Now we use it for a person who's extremely deft in getting out of an embarrassing social situation. It's the only case where we use the word bear anymore. And you see a lot of people misspelling it, too."

"Great stuff. You doing a linguistics project?"

"No."

"What's this for, then?"

"Me."

"Just collecting old idioms."

"Lost words."

"Like bear? The word isn't lost, Issya. It's the bears that are gone."

"Very good, Nyef. You get full credit for the assignment. Go away now."

"You're not researching lost words. You're researching words that have lost their meanings because the thing they refer to doesn't exist anymore."

Issya slowly turned his head to look at Nafai. "You mean that you've actually developed a brain?"

Nafai pointed at the screen. "Kolesnisha. That's a word in Kunic. You've got the meaning right there - war wagon. Kunic hasn't been spoken in ten million years. It's just a written language now. And yet they had a word for war wagon. Which was only just invented. Which means that there used to be war wagons a long time ago."

Issib laughed. A low chuckle, but it went on and on.

"What, am I wrong?"

"It just kills me, that's all. How obvious it is. Even you can just walk up to a computer display and see the whole thing at once. So why hasn't anybody noticed this before? Why hasn't anybody noticed the fact that we had the word wagon already, and we all knew what it meant, and yet as far as we know there have never been any wagons anywhere in the world ever?

"That's really weird, isn't it?"

"It isn't weird, it's scary. Look at what the Wetheads are doing with their war wagons - their kolesnishety. It gives them a vital advantage in war. They're building a real empire, not just a system of alliances, but actual control over nations that are six days' travel, away from their city. Now, if war wagons can do that, and people used to have them millions of years ago, how did we ever forget what they were? "

Nafai thought about that for a while. "You'd have to be really stupid," he said. "I mean, people don't forget things like that. Even if you had peace for a thousand years, you'd still have pictures in the library."

"No pictures of war wagons," said Issib.

"I mean, that's stupid," said Nafai.

"And this word," said Issib.

"Zrakoplov? said Nafai. "That's definitely an Obilazati word."

"Right."

"What does it mean? 'Air ' something."

"Broken down and loosely translated, yes, it means 'air swimmer.'"

Nafai thought about this for a while. He conjured up a picture in his mind-a fish moving through the air. "A flying fish?"

"It's a machine," said Issib.

"A really fast ship?"

"Listen to yourself, Nafai. It should be obvious to you. And yet you keep resisting the plain meaning of it."'

"An underwater boat?"

"How would that be an air swimmer, Nyef?"

"I don't know." Nafai felt silly. "I forgot about the