A different language is a different vision of life. – Federico Fellini
Logic is neither a science nor an art, but a dodge. – Benjamin Jowett
CHAPTER ONE
For the first time she could remember, Nyota Uhura didn't have any words. She had been standing outside of the toilets (thoughtfully identified as "Ladies," "Gents," and "Others" as they had been for centuries, as if someone had known that the ancient building would someday play host to species so diverse that two genders would be insufficient) in a dangerously crowded pub trying to puzzle out how to make her way back to her table and the rest of the Oxford Linguistics Team without acquiring some sort of intimate knowledge of every person in the place and had finally decided that trying to plan out a route ahead of time was pointless.
Old Bookbinders wasn't usually the party destination of choice for Oxford's student population, which was why she liked the place. The ancient pub was small, with the bar running along the side of a narrow, rectangular-shaped room, and the more open adjoining room housing most of the tables. Capacity was usually 40 to 60 people depending on how many people crowded around the available tables and bar. The walls were built at odd angles, tables were separated by makeshift panels of stained glass, and the ceilings low, with exposed timbers. Ephemera covered the walls, some truly noteworthy and some just strange.
Nyota's favorite display was of radio receivers from the 20th century that served as the current sound system, but she was also taken with the decorations on the ceiling, one of them a giant word puzzle, another a working miniature reproduction of an old Earth locomotive chugging its way around on its track suspended from the ceiling around the bar.
There were old-fashioned, two-dimensional photographs everywhere; an entire wall covered in drink coasters; bottles; signs; ancient newspaper clippings; and a light display made out of PADDs that flashed in time to whatever music was playing. More than one flat surface was covered in antiquated clocks, none of which displayed the correct time. None of the furniture matched, and a couple of the chairs looked like it was only a matter of time before they ate someone. The lighting was dim and comfortable, and the room was warm, making it a refuge from the mist and fog that were typical of Oxford in the middle of March. The beer was plentiful and the food, while not winning any awards, was a step above the usual pub fare.
But tonight was the exception to the rule. Tonight, the Oxford Linguistics Society hosted its unofficial welcome party for the competitors at the annual Oxford Linguistics Invitational, and the pub was filled to the rafters with students from universities all over the world. And not just human ones. At least half a dozen other species were represented that Nyota could see. Beings with a love of language and the science that went into the study of it.
She had stood at the far end of the two-room tavern just outside of the toilets, listening to the symphony of words that spun around her, temporarily transfixed by the mix of both Terran and non-Terran languages: standard Federation English, Arabic, Japanese, Vulcan, Low Orion, Andorii, and a stunningly funny attempt at Klingon rendered in a Swedish accent, as well as a couple of languages she couldn't identify.
As she stalled, basking in the conversations around her, Nyota had wondered, not for the first time, if she had made a mistake choosing to study mathematics instead of linguistics. She reminded herself that Oxford was a means to an end, and that she would have more than her fill of xenolinguistics when she began her studies at Starfleet Academy in a year and a half. A background in pure and applied mathematics would only be a benefit when she took the entrance exams. Her extracurricular activities like the linguistics society and her inclusion on the society's competition team would have to be enough until then.
But she'd never get the chance to pursue the long-term goals of deep space exploration, making first contact, and hearing and translating previously unknown languages she'd had since she was 11 if she didn't get started on her short-term objective of crossing the crowded room in front of her. The bar stretched along the room to her left, obscured by people competing for the attention of the barmen working that night. Camped out at the very end of the bar farthest away from her, Nyota saw part of the team from Starfleet Academy; their red uniforms a bright splash in the dim light.
Tables lined the wall to her right, filled with students, those without seats hovering around the perimeters. Most of the sizeable audience around the tables was due to a heated debate raging on linguistic determinism, a hypothesis that the extent of thought was bound by the limitations of a given language. The theory had long been discredited but it enjoyed renewed popularity with every new pre-warp civilization and language discovered. The crowd was passionate, with rebuttal and attack coming from all corners. From what Nyota gathered, they appeared to be having a grand time. Another table had discovered a supply of old parlor games and was engaged in a heated game involving a set of five die, proper strategy, and knowledge of probabilities.
That left a narrow strip of floor between the bar on one wall and the tables along the other leading to the more spacious seating area where Nyota was just able to see her flatmate, Sophie, through the crowd. Well, at least she had a visual.
She stepped out of the alcove where she'd been standing and into the crowd. She slipped through the press of bodies, trying to cause as little disruption as possible with her slow, careful passage across the room. To her left, a girl juggling three pints of beer sailed confidently through the sea of people, which parted to let her pass.
"Coming through!" the girl shouted, and Nyota altered her course to follow in her wake.
Her progress was much quicker drafting off the girl with the beer, who appeared to be clearing the way with little more than attitude and the fact that she was transporting alcohol. Nyota was squeezing between the red-clad contingent from the Starfleet Academy and the ever more hotly contested dice game when her luck ran out.
One of the guys playing dice leapt to his feet as his opponent rolled a seemingly impossible five of a kind with a single toss. He blindly shoved his chair behind him, causing the people standing there to scramble out of the way. In the rush, a girl who hadn't moved fast enough tripped over the moving chair, sprawled into the person next to her, and sent his drink flying, further scattering the crowd.
Despite her caution, Nyota was pushed roughly towards the bar, and she stumbled gracelessly into the nearest cadet. She was so startled, she lost her footing and would have fallen if not for the warm hands that reached out to grip her bare arms just above the elbows. The last coherent thought she had when he touched her was how hot the cadet's hands were.
And then…nothing.
The interwoven threads of language and numbers that constantly played in the back of her mind dissolved, and the world went alarmingly silent. Her breath quickened, and she jerked away from the cadet who continued to steady her, instinctively looking for a way to escape. But the young man held her in place, his fingers tightening on her arms.
"Please, calm yourself."
His voice was soft. Too soft for her to have heard easily through all the noise around her, but every word had been clearly audible, as if they were alone in a quiet room. Nyota pulled in a deep, steady breath at the sound of the cadet's voice, at the sound of his words, and slowly exhaled. She looked up and dimly registered the dark, upswept brows and pointed ears that marked the cadet as Vulcan. His eyes were softer than she would have expected and that were surprisingly human-like.
"Are you injured?" His tone was vaguely inquisitive, and to her horror, Nyota realized he expected a response. She closed her eyes and drew in another breath, willing her heart rate to slow down.
"No." She wasn't sure where the word had come from, and her voice was barely a whisper, but she was thankful she hadn't just stood there, dumb and gaping. "Thank you. Excuse me."
Nyota took another step away from the cadet, and his grip slowly relaxed, releasing her now that she was steady on her feet. She ducked her head and slipped into the crowd.
As she retreated, she glanced back over her shoulder. The Vulcan cadet was watching her as if she was the only other person in the room, and Nyota stared back, unable to look away. She had nearly convinced herself that she should go back to him, when the cadet standing next to him prodded his shoulder and distracted him. When the tall Vulcan looked over at his companion, Nyota felt whatever strange connection that had formed between them snap, a sharp stinging in the middle of her chest. She stood motionless for a moment and then picked her way through the crowd on shaking and uncertain legs. When she finally reached her table, she was torn between collapsing in her chair and gulping down the remains of her cider or grabbing her coat and running for the door.
As the host team for the competition, the Oxford linguistics team had been holding court at their table in the center of the pub. It was no surprise that her flatmate, Sophie, was surrounded by men, like bees buzzing around a flower. She was laughing and her face was tilted up to catch the light. Her skin glowed, and her pink hair was a fuzzy halo, like a dandelion on a golden, sunny afternoon.
The team's captain, Charlie Spencer, was engrossed in conversation with two of the Cambridge contingent he'd known at Eton. Charlie had introduced her to them over dinner one night the year before. Naresh and Peter, the last two members of the team were well into their often-repeated, three-drink attempt to translate a piece of nonsense poetry by Lewis Carroll from standard Federation English to Welsh and then to English again. They never quite made it through, often laughing too hard in their attempts to find suitable Welsh equivalents for nonsense words that didn't really exist.
When Sophie saw Nyota coming through the crowd, her smile melted into mock exasperation.
"Well, that took a dog's age," she said, her broad, slightly slurring tones betraying her south London upbringing. "Please tell me you were having it off with some goggy tosser you're never going to see again."
Nyota rolled her eyes and took her coat and scarf from the back of the chair where she'd abandoned them when she'd first arrived. She leaned down, her mouth next to Sophie's ear so she could be heard over the din and hoped she'd have something to say. She opened her mouth and snapped it closed when words didn't come. She gnawed at her bottom lip and then closed her eyes and exhaled slowly. "I will see you at home." Her voice was soft, but at least it was there.
"Are you alright?" Sophie asked quietly.
Nyota shrugged on her coat and wound her scarf around her neck. She offered Sophie a weak smile and yanked her hat out of her pocket.
"Tired."
She pulled her hat down over her ears and waved goodbye to Naresh and Peter. Charlie, as expected, didn't notice when she slipped back into the crowd and headed out the door.
-oOo-
The short walk from Bookbinders to the place Nyota shared with Sophie was chilly, but other than a light veil of mist, the night was mercifully dry. She climbed up to their flat on the second floor and pressed her hand to the entry sensor. Inside the door, she pulled off her coat and hat and hung them with her scarf on one of the hooks that lined the wall.
Even though Nyota had remotely activated the flat's lighting and environmental systems on the walk home, it was only slightly warmer than outside. Without her coat, she shivered, and she programmed the heat up a few more degrees from the main control panel on the wall as she considered what to do next.
Her thought processes seemed to be unaffected by her encounter with the Vulcan cadet, her mind spinning in its own form of mentalese, but she was still having trouble finding words. She paced across the living room and stopped in front of the windows that overlooked a courtyard at the back of the building. It had started raining just after she made it inside, and fat, wet drops spattered against the glass.
She closed her eyes and rubbed the spot between her eyebrows that creased when she frowned, feeling the two vertical lines that indented her skin when she was pensive or angry or frustrated. She thought about calling her parents, but it was the middle of the night at home in Kitui, and was she supposed to say? That she was having problems with words? That when she opened her mouth to speak, she wasn't sure if anything would come out? No, that wouldn't worry them at all.
She went into the kitchen and poured a glass of water from the bottle in the fridge and carried it to her room. The flat was starting to heat up, making her feel drowsy and sluggish, and she didn't feel up to tackling anything else. She stripped off her clothes and climbed into bed, still in her underwear and socks, and decided that if she wasn't herself in the morning, she'd make Sophie take her to the medical clinic.
She closed her eyes, only then realizing that the bedside lamp that had come on when she entered her room still glowed. She turned her head and stared at the offending source of light and when she couldn't think of the verbal command extinguish it, she thought about shoving it onto the floor. With a frustrated huff, Nyota rolled over and slapped the light's manual switch, and the room went dark. She collapsed back against her pillow, closed her eyes, and fell asleep to silence.
-oOo-
So, just a quick note. I've been lurking in and around fandoms and writing fanfictions for years, but this is the first story I've gotten up the nerve to publish. When I first came up with the idea, I figured it would be short, only a couple of chapters. Now, a year later, I've just started chapter 20. All in all, I think this will top out somewhere around 24 chapters and the length of a proper novel. Yikes. Anyway, I hope anyone who reads this enjoys it. I want to thank my beta reader, CB, who's been in this from the beginning. I would have never gotten this far if you hadn't convinced me this wasn't crap.
