Dark Running (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 4) (36 page)

‘Mr Taerling,’ Alex put in, not unamused but recognising that the man might carry on like that indefinitely. At the firm note of his voice, the castaway broke off, responding with an alert, ‘Hello, yes?’ tip of his head and brightly enquiring look. ‘Perhaps you could give us a brief account of how you come to be here – you were aboard the Embassy III, I gather.’

Jermane nodded rapidly.

‘I was there for a year – went out with the expedition,’ he explained. ‘I’m nobody at all important, just a syntax analyst in the exolinguistics office. I’m an etymologist really but the DC usually has me on a syntax desk. My job is to help work on the TM, the translation matrix. Obviously there was nothing to do with Gidean before first contact, not one word of their language to go on, but the DC brought in other work to keep us occupied. And then of course we
made
first contact, or rather, of course,
you
did
,
though we didn’t realise that at first when their ship appeared, we thought they were responding to our probes or signals. Then they told us that they’d met you – they were talking to us in League Standard and highly colloquial League Standard at that, but when it was realised that they were basing that entirely on their encounter with you, it was felt that we needed to build the matrix ourselves. Some of the things they were saying seemed so startling, even unlikely.’ he gave a little shake of his head and gave Alex a look that held appeal for understanding, and Alex grinned, nodding agreement.

He had not taken offence when League Ambassador Jeynkins had told him that the Diplomatic Corps considered the translation matrix the Fourth had developed to be unsound, though he felt, himself, that Shion had done very well in helping the Gider to find the form of words they wanted to express themselves, however shocking some of the things were that they had wanted to say. Alex would never forget their cheerful dismissal of the deaths of more than eight hundred people as ‘no big’, on the basis that it had happened so long ago that those people would be dead by now anyway.

The Diplomatic Corps, taking a very much more cautious approach to interpreting, had recorded that as, ‘We do not feel it to be of significance to the current context’. If anyone was putting words into the Gider’s mouths, Alex felt, and
mis
interpreting what they actually meant, it was the Diplomatic Corps themselves. But he had not said so, at the time or since. He was a novice in the field, hardly more than an amateur, and they were the experts.

‘I was one of the team analysing your contact with them,’ Jermane told him. ‘And may I say, Captain,
amazing
, the level of understanding you achieved there just tremendously impressive. I felt that from the start, myself, very very impressed indeed by her grace’s interpreting skills, there, and the speed at which she was able to function, negotiating meaning to facilitate your lead discussion.’

Alex nodded. They had worked that as a team, Shion and one of the Gider having high speed discussions about syntax and idiom. The Gider had passed appropriate ‘form of words’ to his companion which had enabled him and Alex to have a remarkably smooth, well understood discussion.

‘Just how good that
was
became increasingly apparent as we developed our own matrix,’ Jermane said, ‘and found that meaning had indeed been very accurately conveyed, in yours. They really did mean ‘no big’, with all the subtext of trivialisation and indifferent dismissal that carries. They really did mean ‘get knotted’, too, when they said that to Hay-Chee.’

That, they recognised as Diplomatic Corps jargon, HE, for His Excellency the League Ambassador. Jermane saw their shocked, concerned expressions and hastened to reassure them, ‘Contact is going very well – almost
too
well, really, we’re working flat out there and just can’t even begin to keep up with all the things they say and information that they give us – gives you some insight and sympathy into how difficult it is for Solarans in dealing with
us
, really.’

The Solarans were a very slow people, inclined to sit for half an hour in contemplative silence before answering even the simplest remark, and withdrawing entirely if the conversation became too quick or confusing for them. The Gider, on the other hand, were quicksilver fast, having to slow their own communication down to crawl-speed even to make themselves understood to humans.

‘The ‘get knotted’ incident was just a little micro-hiccup, really,’ Jermane observed, ‘misunderstandings inevitable in exodiplomacy and got over with good humour and goodwill on both sides. Hay-Chee was trying to sound them out on the possibility of establishing the groundwork for a trade agreement.’

Alex was not the slightest bit surprised that the Gider had reacted to that as they had. Surely the Ambassador must have
known
that they would? Alex had had to explain the concept to them of giving gifts in expectation that the other party would reciprocate. The Gider had been as profoundly shocked by that as the humans had been by the Gider’s attitude to the Abigale disaster.

‘Anyway, that’s what I was doing there,’ Jermane said, with an air of conscientiously reminding himself that the skipper had asked for a
brief
account. ‘Till a couple of months ago – nine weeks. Seems a lot longer. Anyway I was called into Hay-Chee’s office and asked if I’d go on this ‘presidential request’ thing. He said if I accepted the assignment I’d have to leave right then, on a courier. And I accepted, obviously – I mean, who wouldn’t? Flattering to be asked for like that, for a start, and if there’s anything more important going on in exodiplomacy than developing contact with Gide, too
right
I want in on it. So I just packed my stuff and got on the courier. They took me to a rendezvous – don’t know where, way out in the wilds, to some system where the Chanticleer was waiting – the supply ship, you know.’

They did know, and Alex nodded confirmation.

‘They couldn’t tell me where we were going, or anything,’ Jermane recalled. ‘They weren’t expecting me at all, and didn’t know anything about who or what their supplies were for. We were there for four days before another courier turned up, bringing a tape that told them where to go to leave the supplies. They said they’d leave me there in a survival dome too and I realised I was going to be a castaway, an actual
castaway
, like in the movies. They did say I didn’t have to, they’d take me back with them if I couldn’t handle it, but I just couldn’t ... I mean, I thought, how hard could it really
be
, they told me I’d be perfectly safe and I thought, well, if it really is this important, I can’t bottle out. So they left me there, you know, and went.’

He shuddered, a haunted look crossing his face. ‘The longest twenty two days of my
life
. But here I am, obviously, safe and sound,
made
it. And we are, I’m told, on our way to Samart, which is just...’ he shook his head and a huge grin broke onto his face. ‘Still trying to get my head round that, but
wow
, never thought I’d see that tried in my lifetime. So, anyway, captain, here I am – don’t know why you want
me
, but here I am, ready, willing and able. So, what do you want me to do?’

Alex smiled, charmed into being quite at his ease with this garrulous civilian.

‘Well – we’re hoping that you’ll work with us on trying to figure out the Samartian language. You have, I am sure, particular expertise which the Diplomatic Corps feels will be of help to us.’

‘Well, I guess so, though I must admit I can’t think myself what that could
be
,’ he admitted. ‘The only thing I can possibly think they might have had in mind is a paper I wrote some years ago on the etymology of the four known words of Samartian having shared roots with Quarian and Prisosan – I’ve always been of the shared roots school of thought on that, you see. I believe that there are at least eighteen worlds of common cultural origin, including Quarus. But I didn’t invent that theory, my contribution was a very modest little paper, merely laying out the evidence in response to an obviously ludicrous claim that the Samartian ‘oris’ has commonality with Chevaya ‘rorokis’ and should be interpreted as ‘together’ instead of ‘immediately’. And all that of course is redundant since the GD – Gide Disclosure,’ he explained, seeing the query on Alex’s face.

‘They’re telling us so much, so fast, we can’t keep up with analysis. A lot of it hasn’t even been translated yet. They just keep coming, you see. They turn up every few hours, even just minutes between their visits sometimes, different ones every time, saying hello, and they always bring us a datapack, just anything they think we might be interested in. They download it through comms, masses,
masses
of data, yottabytes, streaming for minutes at a time. The first time they tried to down-stream it blew half the circuits on our comms array before the overload cut-out cut in. There’s just, you know,
libraries
full of information, there, no chance of even being able to read it all, all we can do is scope for key words to figure out what’s immediately important and what will have to wait.

‘The Samart data did flag up. There was a memo, we get lots of memos, it’s a joke in the office that we hardly have time to do any work for reading all the memos. But there was one about Samart, I remember.’

He looked warningly at Alex, and around at the other few officers at the datatable.

‘This may come as a bit of a shock,’ he advised. ‘I know you guys are pretty well up on exodiplomacy but some of the GD is pretty high impact. On the Samartian language, they tell us that there was, pre-Firewall, an ancient civilisation that created a number of genetically adaptive colonies known as nursery worlds – amongst them Quarus, Samart, Prisos and our own Chielle. Big stuff to get your head around, I know,’ he said, sympathetically, as they stared at him in surprise. ‘But that is supported by some of the more obscure things that the Solarans have said about those worlds – something about eggs, never understood. But it does seem that there was this ancient civilisation which created the genomes on those worlds, referred to as the Olaret.’

‘Yes, we know,’ Alex said. ‘And the reference to ‘nursery worlds’ and ‘eggs’ is in line with Pirrellothian archives describing those worlds as ‘Olaret Nestings’.’ He gave the stunned linguist a brief, deprecating smile. ‘Shion gave a talk.’

‘Oh.’ Said Jermane, understandably disconcerted to discover that the people he’d endured such a horribly uncomfortable journey to assist actually already knew about this. Then his sense of humour came to the rescue and he cracked up laughing.

Alex gave him a grin, for that. Jermane’s honest mirth was infectious, and it was a relief to see, too, that even after such a long ordeal, he still
had
that sense of humour.

‘Well, okay, I’ll be learning from
you
, then.’ Jermane conceded, but his face was lighting up with excitement as he contemplated that. ‘
What
an opportunity! We get Mindful, of course, but to actually
meet
her grace – I mean yes, obviously, I’ve met her already, but...’ he broke off as Alex had held up a hand to interrupt, looking startled.

‘Sorry?’ he queried. ‘What do you mean, you get Mindful ‘of course’?’

Mindful was their shipboard academic journal, not considered any more important by any of them than the sports or current affairs magazine. They did send copies of all three journals to the Admiralty, amongst the many hundreds of other reports and records they were required to send in monthly, or at least, to bundle into files monthly and send on as soon as they could. There was, Alex was vaguely aware, an office somewhere deep in the bowels of Admiralty HQ where they monitored the output of all the Fleet’s shipboard journals and the holochannel that the bigger ships might have. He was also aware that anything sent to the Admiralty falling under the broad heading of ‘information provided by Shion’ would be passed on to the Diplomatic Corps. As far as he was aware, though, that was only sent to a particular exodiplomacy attaché, who would disseminate any useful information to the people who needed it via XD-coded diplomatic memo.

‘Well, the journal, obviously,’ Jermane looked confused, himself, by the skipper’s own surprise. ‘We get the journal – not as often as we’d like, but then, you’re away on operations so often, it’s hard to keep up regular mail. But of course, yes, we get Mindful, always something we look forward to on the Embassy III. We have our own exodiplomacy journal, of course, a
highly
restricted mailing list as I’m sure you’d imagine, but that does tend to be rather narrow, rather dry. Mindful is far more entertaining, and informative, too. And so wonderfully eclectic, anything from history to superlight physics.’

‘Well, we enjoy it,’ Alex replied. ‘But you’re telling me, seriously, that our shipboard society journal is being distributed out there, routinely? Do you mean just to the Embassy III?’

‘Oh, no – it’s on the same mailing list as our Exomatters, I believe,’ Jermane said. ‘Goes out to all the exodiplomatic community – you didn’t know?’

‘There’s probably a memo about it somewhere that I haven’t got to, yet,’ Alex admitted, drily. He tended, these days, to only read Admiralty memos if they came in with urgent or vital priority. ‘Though I don’t know why I’m surprised,’ he commented. He had recently discovered that a policy he and Buzz had written on how to handle exodiplomacy briefings had been sent out to embassies across the League. ‘Not the first time we’ve found something we’re doing here kicked out there without our knowledge. And no harm, really, if people find it interesting. But on the subject of opportunity to talk to Shion, I do have to draw your attention to our policy, which all passengers are asked to comply with, of
not
harassing her with questions.’

‘Oh – yes, of course, captain,’ Jermane promised, hastily, putting his arms briefly in a cross-pose over his chest. ‘I don’t want to be the slightest trouble to you, and wouldn’t
dream
of annoying or offending her grace in any way. I know,’ he added, with an embarrassed look, ‘I’ve been told that people call her Shion here, and that I should do the same – but it is a little awkward for me, captain – as a member of the Diplomatic Corps I’m bound by
our
rules and protocols, really, and I can’t imagine that Hay-Chee would be happy with someone of my status first-naming her grace.’