#omnilingual

It has a female archaeologist-linguist protagonist, which, nice, and a team that’s already doing the multinational multi-ethnic space expedition trope 10 years before Star Trek. Major characters already are a German-Turkish archaeologist and a Japanese materials/preservation tech.

However, it is also a bog-standard example of the space archaeology trope I call “Extraterra Nullius”: Martian civilization fell and all Martians went extinct 50,000 years ago, and the main plot is attempting to translate their language when there are no survivors and no bilingual inscriptions, and no indication of what any of the Martian language means.

This is explicitly contrasted against Earth archaeology, where local native laborers are explicitly referenced as crucial to the work of archaeology. It's in a way that’s clearly trying to be supportive and non-racist, but in a 1950s way so it’s still kind of cringe inducing.

There’s lots of examples of Martian script, though, because Martians published periodical magazines and had university libraries exactly the same way we do. It’s kind of funny.

The main character specifically has worked at Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro… famous in the archaeological world for having a script that no one is able to read, even to this day, because there are no bilingual inscriptions and no way to guess what language they were even writing in.

This story was published five years after the breakthrough in deciphering Linear B, which is cool. H. Beam Piper was clearly interested in up-to-date archaeology because Linear B is explicitly mentioned as a comparison.

The story hypothesizes a bilingual Linear A/Linear B inscription that was discovered in 1963 (decades or longer ago in the world of the story) that broke open the ability to translate Linear A. Which is a fantastic idea, a kind of speculative archaeology of the kind I’ve never actually seen before in sci-fi. This has never happened in real life and we still can’t read Linear A.

The archaeologists break open the Martian buildings with nuclear powered jackhammers. ARCHAEOLOGY!

Omnilingualism, the superpower to speak, understand and decipher any and all languages, is an often forgotten part of the Wisdom of Solomon. Admittedly also by the champions themselves.

Sure, it is very useful when researching in the Library of Eternity (as quite a lot of books are in ancient Greek, old Arabic, Latin or some other dead language) or if there is a JL mission outside of America. But that's it.

Or is it?

See, most of the Vasquez foster children are American raised. Surrounded by English speaking people, consuming English (dubbed) media, being taught in English. Sure, Mary had taken some Spanish lessons and Freddy and Eugene watch subbed anime, but that isn't the norm.

So when out heroing, they very much default to English. Only consciously switching to another language when prompted to.

But then there was Pedro. Who was raised by his Spanish speaking grandfather before learning English at school, who watched the Spanish dub of sesame street alongside the English one. Pedro, who's mother tongue was ripped away when his grandfather lost custody and he was thrown into the foster system, and only got it somewhat back when he was placed under Rosa's care, a Spanish speaking woman herself.

Pedro knows just how much it means when someone tries to communicate in the other's mother tongue. How much more effective it is to hear that everything will be alright in your own default language.

So he tries, and it quickly became something he unconsciously did.

Whether he softly spoke to a small child or helped a confused tourist finding a destination, he would switch into their native language making the person not only feel safe, but also seen.

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