The Cause Of The Communication Problem

The isolated Nikeans had stopped talking about doing business with friends and had come to speak instead of "changing" (goods and services) with "camarados."

Human beings speaking another dialect of Anglic landed, plundered, raped, tortured, burned, sacked a major city, destroyed it with missiles and described themselves as friends doing business. Their phraseology was sarcastic, contemptuous or hypocritical or possibly resulted from some other linguistic change.

Roan Tom, needing help and prepared to pay for it, arrives, describes himself as a friend and offers to do business...

He is threatened with tommics, which he understands as "nukes," and ordered to land. To compound the problem, he is also ordered to "slave" himself, another word that has changed its meaning.

The Tower of Babel revisited...