Free Human to Human by Rebecca Ore Page A

three, four,” pointing to the adults.
    Karl said the Sharwanisa word for “two.”
    Marianne said, “Karl, we’re teaching them our language.”
    Hurdai said, “One, two,” pointing to the children. Marianne pointed to the sofa and gave the word for that, with its root in seating instrument and its bound morpheme for horizontally long. Then she pointed to the chair and gave the word for that. Chi’ursemisa used both words correctly, murmuring the sofa word’s terminal morpheme separately.
    After an hour, I began to get bored and went to get my own portable terminal to check on what my cadets were doing. Hurdai looked up at me when I came back and plugged into another fiber-optic cable, my terminal configured with a keyboard. He came over to see what I was doing, his fingers resting on my right shoulder.
    Instead of calling up cadet records, I had the screen show a map of our neighborhood, and rotated it, then abstracted out the floor plan of our building. He reached for one of the knobs and turned it this way and that, from more abstract schematics to graphics as detailed as fine-grain color photos.
    “Here,” he said, pointing to the room we were in. Chi’ursemisa came up and looked, too.
    I rolled the scale so that we seemed to be zooming away from the neighborhood, away from the city, off the planet. Then I paused, afraid I’d be giving away military information.
    Marianne said, “More work,” and they’d both learned that much Karst already. Chi’ursemisa curled her leg under her as she sat, fingers spread on the chair arm, and Hurdai squatted, holding his knees. They looked over and blinked at me, both pairs of eyelids falling simultaneously, as if their minds were linked.

 
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    Once Hurdai learned enough Karst One to phrase the thought, he asked, “Why not language operations? Thridai had them.”
    Why not, indeed? For about a month, the Federation task group in charge of the Karst-bound Sharwani debated whether or not to put the Sharwani captives through the operation. The various Sharwani couples, having heard about the language operations from Thridai, seemed to hope this would be done to them en masse, thus giving them time together.
    After the fifth task-group meeting, Thridai came back with me to my apartment. Smoking his herbal cigarettes, he told Chi’ursemisa, “No Sharwani government will accept any of us back.”
    Chi’ursemisa said, “We thought as much.” She leaned over, took one of his cigarettes, and lit it, her head hair flared slightly.
    So much for the Federation’s plans to use some of the captive Sharwani in prisoner trades. Did the Sharwani torture their captives? Or simply kill us as animals? I visualized a bird sapient gut-shot, flopping around in null-gravity, blood vivid red balls.
    Thridai said, “We need the language operations.” Hurdai made the thrumming rubber band sound down in his throat, very softly.
     
    We went on living together, trusting Thridai and Chi’ursemisa a bit more each day. One day, Marianne said, “Could you take Karl and Tracy swimming? I’ll be fine with them. Thridai’s coming over.”
    I said, “Don’t they have nursery group today?” Tracy was Sam and Yangchenla’s daughter. I saw Karl freeze when I looked at him. He’d been sneaking toward the harpsichord Sam left behind. He tried to play it, but would get excited and start banging, which broke the quills over the bass strings.
    “Karl and Tracy need to practice human flirting.” That sounded ultraliberal to me, but I said, “Okay.”
    Yangchenla, in a trench coat and shiny boots copied from a smuggled-off-Earth fashion magazine, brought Tracy over. Tracy, hair ironed smooth, skin the color of the bottom of a biscuit, didn’t really want to leave Yangchenla, but swimming was bribe enough. She was a lovely little girl with round black eyes shaded by a trace of epicanthic fold. Again, I thought about having another child, my option this time. Not quite yet.
    Karl came out of his