The Ephemera Read Online Free PDF Page B

"Look there are plants not a million miles away from this in the northern archipelagos. Similar, but not the same. The plants that grow on Ghessareen wouldn't survive our alkali soil, let alone flourish like this. This is totally new." He looked at Sneijder to see if he had caught the subtext.
    The Dutchman arched a bushy brow, lowered his voice. "Mutation?"
    "Almost certainly."
    "Natural or engineered."
    "I'm not a botanist, Clarence, but given the source of the naming assignation that we used on Ghessareen..."
    "I'm not going to like this, am I?"
    "Peloquin."
    "Fuck," Sneijder spat. "Fuck, fuck, fuck! I thought they were pretty quick to get out here."
    "Exactly." This time Sneijder sighed with him.
    "I'm going to have to get guidance from the diplomats on this," he said at length. "I shouldn't do this because of your involvement, but none of the others can get here sooner than a week, so I'm officially appointing you the case euonymist. But do me a favour. Don't go making any promises until you hear from me."
    "No fear on that score," Calum said. "I'm going back to bed."
    ~
    It turned out to be the best thing he could have done. Not only did it give him the chance to rest, but it also insulated him from having to actually interact with the various Bloc representatives who were still crowding the house. He didn't sleep, just lay there in the darkened room, staring at what had been his childhood bedroom walls. Beside the closet there had been an RSPB poster showing a montage of British garden birds, and he had memorised every one of them by the age of ten, spellbound by the names. Finches: chaffinch, bullfinch, goldfinch, greenfinch, crossbill, linnet, yellowhammer... Yellowhammer . There was a euonym if ever there was one. Surrounded by names like those it was little wonder that he'd found himself suited to a career in euonymy. If only there had turned out to be more naming and less strenuous diplomacy involved in the job, it would have been perfect.
    Calum engaged his translator implant and listened in to the discussions still going on in the kitchen. Not surprisingly, the Peloquin pair were trying every trick in the book to get an audience with him, but the liaison Sneijder had left behind did a fine job of stonewalling. Eventually it was his mother who brought peace to the house by turfing them all out.
    A quiet knock on the bedroom door.
    "Can I come in?" It reminded him of when he was a teenager, made him smile.
    "Of course," he said.
    His mother sat on the end of the bed. "Is it always like this in your job?"
    He nodded, shrugged. "Can be," he said. "Cultural imperialism is a big deal. There's a lot of prestige awarded when one race's languages are used for naming over another and it can all get a bit heated. There have been wars fought over the naming of a new planet, civilisations wiped out. In fact it's one of the reasons the Bloc exists. It was originally set up to ensure fairness, and encourage harmony and trade, but in lieu of conflict the various races have developed internecine oneupmanship to a fine art. My job is to ensure that all of the languages in the Lexicon are represented equally while at the same time apportioning a name that is apt."
    "Sounds like a bit of a juggling act," his mother said.
    "Mostly, it's close to impossible," he replied. "There's so much diplomatic bartering involved that your newly discovered planetary system ends up with a nomenclature comprising a hundred different languages. It's a mess."
    "How do you decide which languages to use then?"
    "We cross reference terrain, flora, fauna, weather types—a whole bunch of criteria—and derive the names from the things that we already have names for. The Lexicon provides a ballpark and we go with that. The races whose languages are used gain a little extra cultural clout in the world in question." He sighed. "Which is why discovering a plant on Earth that resembles a species we have just named using a Peloquin language is a