By the time Mike and I rejoined the others, they were already going over the vid of Shelley and me versus Mr. Lizard. Shelley was narrating. When it got to the you-know-what part, I could tell she was trying not to laugh. "I know what this looks like," she said, "but Trevor insists he was just planting a bug on the the minder."
Nicolai snorted, and Toby threw me a grin and a sly thumbs-up. And I didn't miss the look of disgust that Padma sent my way.
"His technique needs a little work," was Trina's dry comment.
Mike laughed. "I suppose you'd be all set to give him lessons?"
Trina appeared to consider the idea. "That might be fun. Trevor, let us set up a training session for tonight. My room." She gave me one of her patented winks. "Dress appropriately."
I grinned among the general laughter. Yeah, I am never going to live that "groping the minder" thing down. And, you know, I had been so intent on what I was doing at the time that I hadn't even noticed what "it" felt like. At this point, I really wished I had. As it was, I was doing the time without having enjoyed the crime.
The chuckles all stopped once Wizzit played the sound clip. There's something about hearing someone sobbing their heart out that sucks all the humor out of a room. When the clip was done, the commander cleared his throat. "I have a few more questions for Trevor, but they can wait if anyone else wants to ask anything."
Padma timidly raised her hand. "This is probably stupid of me, and perhaps it is my poor English, but what is a minder?"
We all looked at Prime Commander. He usually answers these types of questions. "First of all, there's nothing wrong with your English, Padma," he said with a smile. "The monsters that Enclave sends out are often not very smart. We're not sure whether this is due to the type of recruits they get or some effect of the alteration process. And sometimes they are so altered that their speech is not understandable. So, Enclave frequently send out someone with the monster, someone who is rather less altered, who can direct the monster and make their demands known. We call these people minders." He shrugged. "I suppose it's a better term than babysitter or nanny."
"But this minder, she was not just a babysitter, as you say. She actually took part in the battle, did she not? And she did not direct the monster much."
Commander Windham nodded. "'Minder' is kind of a loose term. Sometimes a minder will fight us, sometimes not. Sometimes the minder is the major threat and the monster is just a distraction, like yesterday, but usually it's the other way around. And it appears that sometimes a minder can have her own minder."
Padma nodded, looking thoughtful.
"Trevor, what was it that she said to you right after you asked her her name in Chinese?"
I frowned at Trina's question, trying to recall the conversation. Wizzit started playing it, unbidden. After the first few seconds, I told him to stop. "What she was trying to say," I explained, "was 'ni hao', which means hello in Mandarin. It's probably the first phrase anyone would learn."
"So, her saying that doesn't mean she knows Chinese?"
I shook my head. "Not any more than my saying 'nyet' means I speak Russian."
"You don't think she knows any Chinese at all?" Commander Windham asked me. There was an odd emphasis to his question, as if he thought it was a significant point.
"No, sir, probably not. Maybe a word here and there, but nothing else." As I said that, I had a feeling that I had missed something somewhere, but couldn't quite place it.
The commander scratched his nose, which is something he does when he's puzzled. "Wizzit," he said, "jump over to last night's encounter, the one in St. Petersburg, and play that part we were talking about earlier." To the rest of us, he said, "We'll go over the whole encounter in detail later, but right now I want to replay one particular portion that I can't quite figure out. You'll see this same minder, this Lily Lee, in this video as well."
A scene came up on our viewer. I recognized it immediately. It was from my point of view. Shelley had just called Trina and Mike over to help her finish off Hose-guy. "At this point," Commander Windham was saying, "Lily has been subdued by Mike. Trevor has gone over to secure her while the others are battling the main monster."
Wizzit played the vid. We watched as I rolled her over, started to secure her wrists, then tied her ankles. I saw a couple of the others wince at the sight of her broken forearm. Most of us have had broken bones before. Wizzit's healing comas take care of them right quick, but they're still not pleasant. I rolled Lily over again, tied her wrists, watched the others, and then looked down at her one more time.
As soon as she started to speak, I realized what had been nagging at me. "Wizzit, stop the vid." I shook my head in dismay and looked at the commander. "Sorry, sir," I said. "I missed that completely."
"What language was she speaking?"
"Cantonese." Our entire conversation had been in Cantonese, and I hadn't even noticed. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
"Wait a minute," Mike broke in. "Are you telling us you were talking with her in a completely different language, and you didn't even realize it? Is that even possible?"
"Of course it's possible!" Everyone turned to look at Padma, who shrank down in her chair as if she wished she hadn't spoken. After a moment, she seemed to gather up her courage and went on, "In my neighborhood we spoke four or five different languages or dialects, and my friends and I would switch among them all the time without thinking about it." Beside her, Nicolai was nodding. He had grown up in a section of Poland that had a lot of German speakers and was fluent in both languages. I knew that because he was helping me improve my German.
The commander held up a hand. "I speak only English, so I'll take your word for all that. Can you translate it for us, Trevor?"
I shrugged. "Sure. There wasn't much to it, and I don't think she said anything important."
"That's what Wizzit thinks, too, but of course he can't tell me what it was she said."
That's a funny thing about Wizzit. We Primes had seven or eight different languages among us -- more, actually, now that Padma had joined us -- and Wizzit speaks them all fluently. Heck, he speaks better Japanese than I do. The thing is, he can't translate. He and I could have a conversation in, say, Korean, and he could report to the commander that we had the conversation, and he could even repeat the words verbatim, but for some reason he'd be unable to tell the commander, in English, what it was we said. It's weird.
So, I translated. When I was done, the commander looked thoughtful. Toby asked, "Why in the world did you say you wanted to be her friend?"
To be honest, I didn't know. I had been completely sincere about it at the time. There was something about her that . . . well, I guess I just thought she might need a friend. And I couldn't get that sound clip out of my mind. Of course, I couldn't tell the group any of that. Nobody wants to befriend Enclave minders, do they?
Shelley came to my rescue then. "You didn't see it, Toby," she said, "but Mike was having all kinds of trouble trying to subdue her. Even tied up as she was, and with a broken arm, she might have given Trevor fits trying to keep her quiet. So, would it have better to tell her he was trying to help her, or to say 'I'm your enemy and I have captured you, bwa-ha-ha!'?"
That set Toby to laughing. "Fair enough," he said. "That's pretty good thinking, Trev."
"Uh, yeah. Thanks."
Shelley caught my eye. She was giving me a look that said, "You and I both know I just saved your bacon." I kind of nodded to her, then turned to the commander. "Is there anything else, sir?"
He was still staring thoughtfully at the top of his desk. "No, I suppose not. I had been wondering why she professed ignorance of Chinese in the first encounter, but seemed to speak it quite well in the second. But if you spoke to her in Mandarin the first time, and she spoke Cantonese the second time, I guess that would explain it."
I sat back in my chair and folded my a
rms. This was something I hadn't considered. "No, sir, it wouldn't." He looked up at me, and I went on, "Mandarin and Cantonese are two different styles or dialects of the Chinese language. Some people speak only one or the other, but a lot of people speak both. When I spoke to her in Mandarin, then she should have at least recognized it, and then I'd think she would have replied in Cantonese, hoping that I would understand her." After a moment, I added, "And even if she replied in English, she certainly wouldn't have said 'I don't speak Chinese.' She would have said, 'I don't speak Mandarin.' It just doesn't make sense."
Chapter 12