Objects were the easiest to classify. The main database already held hundreds of thousands of images that could be labeled in Dideto by any member of the crew. With a little luck Wagner might even find a way to interface with whatever passed for a computer system on this planet. He had even asked her about that long before the mission parameters had been set. He and Prader had argued that if a civilization used any type of mathematics and/or a binary system for their communication devices, the language gap could be bridged. To them, numbers were a universal constant exceeding the limitations of language. After all, a great deal of the ancient message that had incited this entire expedition had been mathematically based. But after the numbers had stopped rolling in and the coordinates and engineering aspects had been calculated, there had remained within the transmission a message that would not compute as numerical language. That was when Meg had been called in. That’s when the argument for language and protocol had begun, and that was when Meg had truly believed she would finally be leaving Earth for good.
She’d had to fight hard for respect from Wagner and others on the mission committee who still didn’t completely understand what purpose she served. Like so many people, the word
protocol
evoked thoughts of properly folded napkins, diplomatic niceties, and the fine-tuned formalities of political maneuvering. Cho had backed her authority and not, as some had suggested, simply because they had become lovers on the last mission to
the Werthery Colonies. He had seen her in action. Plague had broken out on an isolated moon and all attempts at contact had been met with aggression. As a bioscientist, Cho wanted to be on the ground, to see firsthand what had gone wrong in the terraforming chain to create such a deadly pestilence. He and more than two dozen other aid workers had hovered in the atmosphere listening as Meg, accompanied by only one armed guard, shuttled to the planet’s surface, met with the military leader, and created a language and protocol bond that finally allowed her to reassure the president that the aid workers’ intentions were honorable. Thousands of lives had been saved on that mission and research into the genetic malfunction had broken new ground. The rescue workers and medical staff had been hailed as heroes, but every one of them had attested before the International Space Commission on the finesse of her diplomacy. They had all seen and heard the delicate give-and-take, the patience and instinct Meg had brought to the incendiary situation.
During a break in the aid campaign, after the worst of the crisis had abated, she and Cho had lain together in a shuttle bunk too small for two people. Both exhausted, they had been able to do little more than rest against each other in pale-blue night-shift lights. Cho had been working around the clock stabilizing inoculations; Meg had spent six tense hours smoothing over an unintentional affront to the president’s mother that had led to a lot of guns being pointed at a lot of people all at once, she in the middle trying to remember the symbolic hand gestures of mediation she’d been absorbing like oxygen since arriving. Her nerves were frayed to the point of physical pain, and when Cho slid a warm, calloused hand up her spine, she nearly wept.
“How do you know?” He whispered into her hair. “How do you know how to give them what they want? How to talk them down?”
She pressed her face into the privacy of his neck, breathing in the smell of him. “How did you know to rub your hand like that up my back? How did you know how much I needed to feel that, to feel you close like this?” She pressed her lips into his throat. “You know because you care. And you care enough to take the chance of being wrong.”
“Am I wrong? Do you want me to stop?”
She shifted her body, throwing a thigh across his hips. “You can’t be that bad at reading body language.”
And so Cho had testified on her behalf to the selection committee. Their relationship had come under scrutiny during the psychological profiling sessions, and through it all Meg had stood her ground. She refused repeatedly to rise to the bait of justifying her skills or bragging about her achievements. She knew, just as she had known when she and her team had cracked the internal deep-space message, that if this mission involved putting human beings in an unprecedented situation, it would involve more than math. It would involve language and protocol. New situations almost invariably invoked fear in human beings, and the only remedy to fear was communication. Without language, without communication, all the numbers in the world would be useless. Without language, fear became deadly. Meg knew this all too well.
It didn’t surprise her in the least, therefore, that now that the mission had hit a critical snag, now that they were on the ground months if not years before they were prepared to make contact, it was Cho who stepped forward to stand beside her. She had already broken at least a dozen of her own rules of interaction, had contradicted the orders she had set in place, and yet she could feel Cho’s confidence in her. She could sense the way he followed her lead and she could see the way he checked her movements from the corner of his eye even as he bonded with the scientists
in front of him. And with a crew as varied and hardened as that of the
Damocles
, the tacit approval of a hard-ass like Elliot Cho carried a lot of weight. That and the fact that without Meg, they would all be standing with their proverbial dicks in their hands, a fact she was more than prepared to point out if necessary.
“The generals aren’t going to let them stay out here forever.” The scientist beside him kept her eye on the aliens while she reached for a sample jar. “They’re talking about moving them by force if necessary.”
“We can’t do that.” Loul watched as Meg’s fingers whipped around the light screen. “We don’t know how they’ll react. We’ve got to tell the generals that.”
“That’s exactly what we’ve been doing.” The other scientist spoke up. “We’re trying to convince them that maybe this terrain is unique for them, that they need this exact location to be able to breathe. We’re saying it’s the combination of the sand, limestone, and salt air.”
“Really?” Loul looked around. The uniqueness of the locale hadn’t occurred to him.
“Do you mean ‘really that’s what we’re telling them’ or ‘really that’s what we think’?”
Loul looked up at the two women, who were biting back smiles. “Uh…”
The one closest to him laughed first. “We’ve got them mostly convinced that there’s something unique about the Roana Temple, some way their ship is interacting with the minerals that’s either keeping them alive or keeping them calm. We’re sort of playing both stories at the same time.”
“Do you believe that?”
“No.” The second woman lowered her voice even though it would be impossible for anyone behind the barricade to hear them. “But if they believe it, they’ll keep the soldiers back. For a while, at least. That gives us time to study them. If the military gets them back to the base, who knows what science team they’ll bring in.”
“They’ll bring you in, though, won’t they?” The woman next to him looked at him with a shy smile. “You’re Loul Pell, aren’t you? I’ve read your report a thousand times. It’s really brilliant work. I couldn’t believe you weren’t in the science academy. Especially now. I mean, look at them. Your anatomy predictions were really close.”
Loul could only blink at the two wide-eyed scientists staring at him. According to the badges clipped to their overshirts, they were part of one of the highest-ranking science teams in Cartar, and they thought he was someone to be admired. Him. A midlevel weather watcher. Loul worried that maybe the unreality of this day would eventually melt his brain.
The woman next to him bumped him with her shoulder. “I’m Effan. This is my work partner, Effan.”
“You’re both named Effan?”
“Yeah.” Effan Two shrugged. “You get used to it. It’s really an honor to meet you, Mr. Pell. Do you, uh, do you think you could introduce us to…” She rocked on her heels in Meg’s direction.
The shock of being admired by the high-ranking scientists had momentarily eclipsed the presence of Meg and her companion, of the aliens and their ship and their strange and beautiful sounds and light screens and filmy shelters. He felt thankful he had gotten his drop in, but his rest had done little to wrap his mind around the situation. If anything, it all felt more surreal. But when he turned back to Meg, he knew she and her partner
were discussing him. Effan One had told him his dropping out had agitated her for some reason. All that pride, all that sense of being special dimmed in light of the enormity of the gap between them and the aliens.
Meg and her partner stopped talking for a moment when he looked at them and then resumed their discussion. At least he thought they were speaking. He could see their thin throats working and their wide mouths moving but any sounds they made disappeared on the Ketter wind. Finally, they turned back to him and Meg’s partner tapped his chest.
“Cho.” His voice was deeper than Meg’s and thus easier to hear, but Loul could still see the effort he took in projecting the sound. He tapped his chest again. “Cho.” Then he tapped Meg. “Meg.” Meg fiddled with the light screen, and the sound of a combined recording came from her speaker.
“This is…Cho.”
The scientists laughed and tapped knuckles. The one closest to him giggled. “Their voices sound like wind whistles.”
“What should we do?” The other Effan looked from Loul to the aliens.
“Do what he did.” Even as he said this, Loul knew the confusion that would arise. Effan was a very common name in Cartar. He had two cousins with the name but he didn’t know if names worked the same way with the Urfers. Effan Two tapped her chest.
“Effan.”
Meg and her partner, Cho, showed their glassine teeth, tapping knuckles as they worked to make the sound. Cho got it first to a great round of knuckle bumping and a breathy bell-like sound from Meg. “Effan,” they said together, bumping their hands against the woman’s. With a nod from Loul, Effan One tapped her chest.
“Effan.” She smiled large when she spoke but Loul saw Meg’s already wide eyes widen farther. Her glance moved from Effan Two to Effan One to Loul and back, and her head tilted in the way he recognized as meaning confusion. Her partner tilted his head toward her, his mouth moving with small tremors, only the faintest hint of sound escaping. Effan Two’s smile faded. “What’s wrong? Did I do something wrong?”
Meg held up her hands and, like Loul, the Effans were helpless to look away from the long, flexible digits. She swept her hand over the women and tapped the screen. A recorded sound issued forth. “Yes is this Effan.” She pointed to a symbol on the screen, a slender curl that looked like a hook. “Yes is this Effan,” the recording repeated.
Beside him the women peppered him with worried questions. “Is there something wrong? Have we offended them? What’s the matter?” He ignored them, instead watching Meg’s eyes watching him, seeing again that longing to understand something he couldn’t explain. As the women talked, Loul noticed small flashes of light appearing and disappearing around the edges of the screen. Meg’s eyes occasionally flitted to them, seeming to make a note of them, but always returning to Loul.
He had to stick with the basics. Moving his hand from one woman to the next, he said. “Effan. Effan.”
Meg and her partner watched him, speaking to each other too quietly to be heard. She pointed to each of the women. “Effan. Effan.” Loul tapped his knuckles. She then pointed to the portable science lab opened between them. “Effan. Yes is this Effan.” Her long finger rested on the curved symbol on the screen.
He could feel comprehension circling his mind, nipping and teasing but not showing itself. He thought he knew what she was asking. It was the same as when he’d told her his name and she’d waved her hands over the crowd behind him, wanting to know if
Loul was a group name or his alone. Did the Urfers name themselves after the equipment they worked with? Maybe Meg was not just her name but also a term to refer to the light panel she worked on. So then would the leader also be Meg? And what was the symbol she pointed to?
He ground his teeth in frustration at the question in her eyes. This was impossible. Surely there was somebody behind the barricade with more experience in translating foreign languages than him. He checked himself. Not foreign. Alien. This wasn’t some exchange student from Ton struggling to read off the menu. These were aliens, extraterrestrials, the very creatures he had incorrectly assumed he’d thrown his whole career away over. They were right in front of him, she was right in front of him, and she was looking to him for answers.
He could do this. He had done this already. He was the only one so far the Urfers had spoken to in any sort of conversational way. Waving a hand toward the two women beside him, he spoke clearly. “Effan. Effan.” Then he pointed to the opened testing kit between them, debating on the simplest way to explain it. “Lab.” It seemed the shortest word to use. Meg and Cho communicated in that silent way of theirs, Meg’s eyes occasionally flitting down to the screen, where lights and symbols continued to light up and disappear. The one symbol she had pointed to earlier remained illuminated.
The little hook symbol pulled at him like a real hook, tugging at a recalcitrant corner of his mind that simply would not make the connection. He had no idea how this screen thing worked. For all he knew it could launch codes for missiles or turn on the ship’s engine. Hell, it could be tied in with the Urfers’ life-support systems, but since what he was doing now—nothing—was getting him exactly nowhere, Loul decided to take a chance.
He pointed the tip of his blunt finger at the hooked symbol, slowly lowering his hand closer to the screen, giving Meg
plenty of time to react if he was committing a no-no. She watched his hand, her eyes widening, and just as his finger broke the light plane, it occurred to Loul that this could be a really stupid idea. The light plane could burn him or cut the tip of his finger off or capture him. It could explode or shatter or send a jolt through his nervous system that would leave him paralyzed and drooling for the rest of his life. A million increasingly miserable possibilities raced through his mind as his finger slipped into the space of the little illuminated hook; but all that happened was a flashing red light and the faintest pinging sound.