Damocles (8 page)

“Captain, bring up the screen.”

Over the machinery, over the shouted orders and crash of barricade shields being repositioned, Loul heard the voice. It rang out high and soft, and again he thought of the waterbirds calling
across the lake in the cool season when the Green Sun sat fat and far on the horizon. It had touched him. It had traced its feather-like fingers over his hands so quickly he hadn’t had time to react. He wished he’d turned his hand over, opened his pads so he could have really felt the skin. He wanted it to come back to him, to look at him again, but Loul saw its attention was on the leader.

Once again the leader maneuvered its hands around its wrists, only this time, the fingers didn’t wrap around the wrist. Instead they pinched the long, tapered ends together and pulled away, dragging a translucent film into the air from the band on its wrist. Loul squinted, the light striking the film at an oblique angle, and he saw that the film wasn’t a film at all. It was merely light, a prism-like effect that distorted the red sunlight, creating a three-dimensional panel of light. Without thinking, he stepped closer to the leader, within an arm span of the second figure in the chevron, but oblivious to all but the flat panel of light.

They spoke again, the tones quick and clipped, the leader’s deeper and easier to hear than the one who had touched him. Loul glanced over his shoulder at that one, who he started to think of as his contact. He saw it too was focusing and touching a band on its wrist. Loul turned back to the leader and saw from the corner of his eye General Ada raising the bullhorn once more. Loul held up his hand to silence him, and surprisingly, the general put the horn down.

The leader moved the light plane before him so the generals could plainly see its surface. Almost faster than his eyes could follow, Loul watched the long fingers flit over the back of the translucent plane as if tickling it or scratching it. From where he stood, red sunlight obscured what the generals must have seen because another collective gasp sounded around the barricade. As Loul stepped around to see what they saw, the leader tapped
his wrist again and another series of recorded sounds issued forth.

“This isn’t.”

“Doing for.”

“There are.”

Again, Loul thought, three different voices. Three separate recordings. Before he could think of what that might mean, he saw the image on the front of the light plane. Didet. A brilliant, full-color, three-dimensional image of their planet, clearer than any image ever captured by the extra-atmosphere satellite. Oblivious to the hubbub behind him and deaf to the hissed warnings to step away, Loul stepped closer to the screen. The voices sounded out again.

“This isn’t.”

“Doing for.”

“There are.”

The rough voice of an MP broke into his consciousness. “Pell! What the hell are you doing out there? Get back here!”

Loul turned to the generals, who were conferring with flushed and stern-looking soldiers. He recognized the charts the soldiers held—the military weapons sites. To effectively monitor satellite information, everyone in the Telemetry Administration had to know the general location of weapons sites to account for any interference their security systems might produce. That the talk had turned to weapons made all the hair on his body stand on end.

“Why are you pulling weapons charts?” He knew he didn’t have the clearance or the authority to ask such a question and certainly not with such a demanding tone, but Loul had seen enough sci-fi movies to know where this scenario was headed.

“Step away, Pell.” General Ada didn’t look up as he spoke. “They have intel on our planet. We have to assume—”

“Of course they have intel on our planet. They just landed here.” When nobody looked up, Loul pressed on. “They’re making contact.”

“They’re making a threat,” General Famma said, her voice tight with determination. “They said ‘this isn’t’ and then produced a satellite image of Didet. I suggest you step away, Mr. Pell, or we cannot be responsible for your safety.”

Loul turned back toward the chevron of aliens. He saw the leader and his contact exchange rapid glances and heard the bell-like sounds of their voices ringing softly between them. “This isn’t doing for there are.” That’s what the recorded voices had said. And repeated them twice just like before. He said the words aloud but under his breath. “This isn’t doing for there are.” How was it possible that a race advanced enough to travel through space and create images like that one of Didet on a screen of light would sound like Loul himself when he was fumbling through one of his many mortifying attempts at asking Reno Dado out on a date?

Fumbling.

“They don’t know our language.”

It was so obvious. No longer concerned with the group behind the barricade, Loul stepped closer to the leader, his eyes moving from the brilliant image of Didet to the leader’s smooth brown face. The leader was even taller than the one who had touched him, and its skin was darker although just as smooth. The eyes were the same wet, wide brown, and for the first time Loul could begin to distinguish between the figures before him. This close, he could see distinct differences in their shading and shapes, although every one of them towered over him.

The leader fixed its eyes on him, and a glance to his left told him his contact watched as well. The other three kept their gazes on the assembly behind him, and Loul noticed that those who
watched the generals kept their long fingers near the sides of their legs. Where the fingers brushed against their space suits, he could see hard shapes underneath. Weapons. They may not know the language but they understood danger. Loul figured he had nothing to lose.

He stepped even closer to the leader and pointed at the image of Didet. The leader glanced to the contact, who tipped its head in a quick, birdlike nod. The leader tapped its wrist once more. “This isn’t. Doing for. There are.”

Loul pointed to the image of his planet. “This is Didet.”

His contact made a breathy sound and the leader tapped its wrist again. Loul heard his own voice coming from the leader’s chest. “This is Didet.” A few quick scrabbles of the long brown fingers and another image appeared on the screen beside Didet. Another planet, smaller and colored in shades of blue and green.

“This is…” Loul heard his own voice again then a pause in the sound. He glanced up at the leader’s face as the mouth moved, the sound soft but deep. He looked back at the screen.

The image of Didet lit up, and Loul heard his recorded voice say, “This is Didet.” The image of the blue planet lit up, and he heard his recorded voice say, “This is.” Then he heard the sound the leader had made amplified by the machinery they were using.

“Urf.”

Loul smiled. “That is Urf.”

Meg broke ranks. She didn’t think. She didn’t weigh the decision. She let out a high cry of joy and sprinted to the captain’s side. Cho nearly shot her as she passed him, surprised by her sudden movement, but Meg only had eyes for the squat man speaking into the
drag screen. Part of her was vaguely aware of the ever-increasing rumbling and shouting from the group at the barricade and she was pretty sure Prader had her weapon drawn. Wagner tried to maintain a semblance of calm, keeping his movements small as he gripped her by the elbow, asking her what the hell she thought she was doing.

The only person who didn’t seem surprised by her leap to the front was her new friend. He turned to her and his narrow mouth widened as she grinned at him. She knew she could be projecting. She knew she might not only be jumping the gun but using that gun to shoot the entire mission in the foot, but for a linguist, a translator, a diplomat, that first “aha” moment felt like falling in love and bungee jumping and being set on fire all at the same time. And to have that moment in the situation they currently faced, with no context, no background, no shared culture of any type, reduced Meg to a wiggling, squealing mess of breathy grins.

People thought languages were just substitution puzzles, like the old pony texts she’d used in grade school to learn Latin. One side of the book had been written in Latin, the opposing page had the translation in English, and the students were supposed to break down the language visually, word for word, phrase for phrase. It worked with a parent language, a root language. It worked for most Earth languages as a whole, but it didn’t work because languages were easy. It worked because the people who had written the languages in the first place had already struggled through the growth pains of transcribing thoughts to words to writing. Everyone accepted, without it being explained, that enormous amounts of cultural communication and accord had already been achieved before the first scribble had been made.

But now here she stood face-to-face, well, chest-to-face with someone who got it. Or seemed to get it, she reminded herself. Someone who seemed willing to try to get it, to go with his gut
and make the sounds that might bridge the gap between their two worlds. Someone who might instinctively understand how enormous that gap was but still be willing to reach across. Despite all the mission preparation, despite the hours of bored conversation during the days and weeks of travel before their final launch, she knew the rest of the
Damocles
crew didn’t really understand what her job was, any more than she really understood what Cho faced in classifying an entirely new range of life-forms. She knew that they were waiting for the chance to say to her, “Tell them we need electricity. Ask them about their transportation. Put me in touch with their presidents and scientists and engineers.”

She knew they would get impatient with her and be bewildered by her transportation into ecstasy at the simple point-and-speak statement she had just heard. If they knew, if they truly understood how rudimentary the starting point was in bridging this language gap, they would probably collapse under the staggering amount of work that lay ahead. Well, she figured, dropping to her knees at the feet of the squat smiling figure before her, they had better get ready to stagger, because she was starting with the most basic of basics.

She activated the drag screen from her data pack, drawing the flat plane of light out parallel to the ground. She hadn’t liked the way the sunlight tampered with the image when Wagner had dragged his screen out before him, and with all the work she was preparing to do, she wanted a nice, crisp visual. Screen open, text boxes open and ready to be activated, she looked up at the Didet man before her. She didn’t have to bother motioning or pantomiming to him to join her. He dropped into a deep squat beside her before she had fully raised her head. Meg really hoped showing her teeth wasn’t a social taboo because she couldn’t have stopped grinning at that moment if she’d been hit with a board.

A text box opened with the same images Wagner had shown, only now the image took up a much smaller part of the ProLingLang program screen. Beneath the pictures of the two planets were touch buttons to replay the assigned audio. Meg touched the button beneath the larger, yellow planet, and her companion’s voice came through the speakers.

“This is Didet.”

The man shifted in his crouch, the knuckles of his thick fists bumping together. Meg pushed the button beneath the picture of Earth, activating the combined audio of the crouching man and Captain Wagner.

“This is…Earth.”

His knuckles knocked once more and Meg relaxed about the showing-the-teeth thing. He looked up at her and revealed a smile that seemed to be made up of nothing but brownish molars. It was the most beautiful smile she had ever seen. Taking a deep breath, she brought up a few prompts and prepared for the next step.

She lifted her hand, making sure he saw her movement, and tapped the ground beside her. She let her fingers dig a bit into the dirt and then pounded the ground more firmly with her palm. His eyes moved from her hand back to her face and she touched the screen once more.

“This is Didet.” She pounded the ground again and then pointed to the image of the yellow planet. “Didet.”

“Didet.” He spoke the word, his knuckles shaking where he had them pressed together, as if they were doing the heavy lifting of his struggle to understand. Meg watched him for any and all body signals and she prepared to make the next leap. She pointed to the yellow planet again and pushed a different command.

“This is…Earth.”

The smile faltered and she could feel the hooded gray eyes staring into her with a silent plea to understand. He didn’t move any more, so she repeated herself, pointing to Didet and playing the “This is…Earth.”

His fists fell away from each other. “Didet.” Meg bit her lip and pointed to the yellow planet. She pushed the audio button.

“Didet.”

His knuckles bumped together once more and Meg felt all the breath rush from her lungs. If she was right, if they could make this connection, the first and biggest wall would come down.

She pointed to the yellow planet and held her hands up before her face. She made fists and turned them toward each other, pushing the knuckles together. Dropping one hand quickly, she pressed the audio button and drew her fists back together.

“Didet.” She bumped her knuckles together. “Yes,” she said loud enough for the program to record her. She bumped her hands together again. “Yes.”

Willing him to stay focused on her, she dropped her hand again and pointed to the yellow planet. Then she pushed the alternate audio button. As the words “This is…Earth” played, she pulled her knuckles apart.

“No,” she said, pulling her knuckles apart again.

With the patience that only came from the deepest need for knowledge, she repeated the process again. Point to Didet, play the Earth audio, pull her knuckles apart, and say “No.” And then she waited.

His eyes flitted over her face, over her hands, down to the screen, down to the marks she had left on the ground, and back again. His eyes were so different from hers, so deeply set in thick folds of coarse skin, that skin ringed in coarser hair, his blinks punctuated by a milky film that rose like a cat’s inner lid from
the bottom. They looked so different from hers, so alien, but she knew the moment he understood. She saw it in his eyes.