She ran the
other three Svants' voices, each saying, presumably, "Me." Some were
mainly up in blue, others had a good deal of yellow and orange, but
they all had the little patch of green lines.
"Well, that seems to be the information," he said. "The rest is
just noise."
"Maybe one of them is saying, 'John Doe, _me_, son of Joe Blow,'
and another is saying, 'Tough guy, _me_; lick anybody in town.'"
"All in one syllable?" Then he shrugged. How did he know what these
people could pack into one syllable? He picked up the hand-phone and
said, "Fwoonk," into it. The pattern, a little deeper in color and
with longer lines, was recognizably like hers, and unlike any of
the Svants'.
* * * * *
The others came in, singly and in pairs and threes. They watched
the colors dance on the screen to picture the four Svant words
which might or might not all mean _me_. They tried to duplicate
them. Luis Gofredo and Willi Schallenmacher came closest of anybody.
Bennet Fayon was still insisting that the Svants had a perfectly
comprehensible language--to other Svants.
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