Explorer

by C. J. Cherryh

  “Can’t assume an alien behavior,” Bren said.

  “Can’t assume an alien machine is set the way we’d set it, either. The thing could do any damn thing.”

  “There is that,” Bren muttered. “But it’s signalled us. Machine or not, it had that pre-set in its routines.”

  Flick-flick-flick of the reply window numbers.

  Into the negative. Ten, fifteen seconds. Thirty. Forty-odd.

  “Signal from the alien,” someone said, audible in Bren’s earpiece.

  Sabin and Jase moved to the nearest consoles. Bren, Banichi and Jago a massive shadow behind him, watched over Jase’s shoulder, hearing the details. The signal was a series of six lights—was there significance in six?—mirroring their action.

  It made an analog of their signal, it mirrored what they sent, and it didn’t need to slow down, just point its bow their way.

  Then a steady central flash. One light. Blink. Blink. Blink.

  “It’s coming toward us,” Sabin said quietly. “We’re now mutually approaching, Mr. Cameron. One could say a leisurely near-collision course. It’s moving toward us.”

  There were numbers involved on one of the screens. One assumed they had something to do with that movement. Bren held his breath, then decided oxygen was useful.

  Deeper breath.

  “I think I’ll go have a cup of tea,” he said, “and get my wits online.”

  Sabin stared ice at him. Then, curiously, gave an accepting nod. “You go do that, Mr. Cameron. If the ship out there doesn’t blow us to hell, we may need your services in what you’ve gotten us into.”

  “I’d advise a pause,” he said, “a conversation at convenient distance.”

  “If it won’t interfere with your tea break.”

  “I’ll manage, captain. I don’t want to push the body-space issue with them. Just a mostly conversational distance. This is ours to set.”

  “We’re not a dock runabout, Mr. Cameron. We don’t jitter about with any ease. And we don’t pick the interval, now. They’re enroute to us.”

  “Yes, ma’am. But we signal when we’d like to. With luck, they’ll do the same.”

  Sabin just stared at him. Then: “Takehold in forty-five minutes, Mr. Cameron, given they don’t fire or accelerate. Go have your tea.”

  He had outraged Sabin. He hoped not to do the same for the crew. He gathered his bodyguard and walked back to the executive corridor, straightening his coat and cuffs, asking himself did he need a new shirt run up—the brain was, oddly, going into court-mode, and Shejidan’s instincts rose up, ridiculous as some of them might be. He became nand’ paidhi again. He worried about his wardrobe. And with it, the signals they might be sending. It wasn’t just a tea break. It was a way of life.

  He rapped gently at the dowager’s door, and discovered the dowager, in the most comfortable chair, held court with a fruit drink in hand, and Cajeiri sat on a mattress beside Gin Kroger. They’d taken the cabin apart and put it back together in a more felicitous configuration, Ilisidi sitting centermost, Cenedi and his men occupying the corner, standing.

  Bren bowed. “Aiji-ma. We have now issued a set of signals which the foreign ship is mirroring. The current course will bring us to conversational distance and the ship will maneuver briefly and slow down, although the possibility of violent evasion exists. Please be prepared for quick action. In the meanwhile, I shall retire to my cabin to think.”

  “Pish,” Ilisidi said with a careless wave of her hand. “This is a mattress. That is a wall. We do as we can, nandi.”

  “One observes so, aiji-ma.” He made a little bow. “I have secured Sabin-aiji’s cooperation and seen felicitous numbers on the bridge. One hopes for a little time, yet, aiji-ma. Do take care.”

  “If you need help up there—” Gin. Dr. Gin Kroger, who understood machines. In Shejidan that move intervening in the dowager’s conversation would have had hands reaching for sidearms, and Cajeiri looked up, mouth open.

  Ilisidi simply waved an indulgent hand. “Tea, one believes the paidhi-aiji requested.”

  Oh, someone understood more ship-speak than they routinely admitted. Someone closely monitoring his doings on the bridge. Nothing was news to the dowager.

  “Go refresh yourself, nand’ paidhi. Tea will arrive here, at your convenience.”

  “One is honored.” He bowed, turned and went to his own makeshift cabin, more fortunate than Jase, more fortunate than Sabin, whose code was endurance and who never understood the loyalty of her crew.

  His staff’s solution to impending disaster was to set their lords at a problem, which meant assuring themselves their lords had their wits about them—and meant that the lords had ultimately to make a return on the investment and perform a miracle. He’d thought of having time to himself—but now he did draw an easier breath, it seemed to him that a little space in familiar context was what he did need.

  He returned in due course, paid his quiet courtesies. And with the dowager, with Gin, Cajeiri advised to non-participance and silence—he sipped a cup of tea, how gotten, whether it was part of the picnic supplies, he neither knew nor cared. It was enough to be here, with Banichi, with Jago close at hand. With all the strong, quiet surety of their Guild, very different than the human one that opposed them.

  “So,” Ilisidi said, “have we thought of an answer to this conundrum?”

  “Several things have become clear, aiji-ma—that while this ship was absent, the aliens returned. That Ramirez may have earned his Guild’s distrust and disapproval in seeking out contact with foreigners. Third—that the stationmaster refuses to take Sabin-aiji’s orders.”

  Why was he going through the list of new information? The job involved only the foreign ship.

  But did it?

  Something bothered him, beyond the obvious detail of goings-on in their absence, Ramirez’s subterfuges, the Guild’s historic autocracy. He wasn’t sure what nagged at him.

  But the dowager listened, waiting for him to put it all together. And he—

  He sipped his tea and looked from the dowager to Gin, the third leg of the homeworld tripod, met a sober, on-party-manners look: and the thought of Gin and the colony the ship abandoned—troubled him.

  Why should it?

  His job was the ship out there. The ship now moving toward them and them toward it.

  And what was he going to say, that he could say? Hail them in ship-speak as if they were supposed to understand? Continue with the blink-code?

  Sitting out here six years meant observation or a stubborn ship’s captain.

  Or damage.

  “One learns, aiji-ma, that the ship has sat quietly out here, they claim for six years, doing nothing. Station thinks it may be robotic.” He rendered that in Mosphei’, for Gin, who looked as if he’d posed her a personal question. “With control at some remove off in the dark peripheries of the solar system. Which is a very large place.”

  “So,” Ilisidi said. “And what shall we do if it is robotic?”

  He translated that for Gin, too.

  “Or it might be stuck, without fuel,” was Gin’s instant assessment. “If it’s a robot, either the other side lost track of it and it’s out of instructions, or they know it’s here and it’s doing a job. If it is a robot. Personally, I wouldn’t wholly trust a robot to avoid a war. I think they’d be outright stupid to leave diplomacy to a machine, and to leave a weapon sitting out here ready to explode isn’t the way a smart government would carry on, is it? We could be some very powerful non-participant.”

  Another translation.

  And a thought. It might be sitting there waiting, as robots did so well, for input. And they could well be that input, couldn’t they?

  Or if it might be doing a job—what job, beyond observing? Communicating?

  Gin was right. Robots weren’t outstanding at avoiding hostilities or at finessing interspecies communication.

  He sipped his tea, thinking, it came here, hit the station, and it parked. Odd behavior. B
ehavior that, however alien, didn’t seem to have a constructive outcome—unless there was some piece of information missing.

  “Ramirez arrived,” he said slowly. “And left.” Translation. “Perhaps it waits for the ship.” Translation. “And here we are.” Translation. Grim, cold thought.

  “These are not reasonable people,” Ilisidi said, “to fire on persons who have not fired on them.”

  “Would a wise and civilized entity fire without more provocation than that? One hardly knows, aiji-ma. Within the possibilities of truly alien behavior—it might.” Translation.

  Another sip of tea.

  One fired—if.

  If one’s culture was to fire on strangers.

  If fired upon. That was a big if.

  Sip of tea. Very basic thought. One fired to stop an attack. Or what one construed as an attack.

  Then one ran for one’s life. If fear was the guiding principle.

  Primary mistake to make any third species behave like humans or atevi. But a third point, a third species, could close a geometric figure, make an enclosure, bend lines back to intersect everyone’s positions, over and over and over. Three points could close a circle. Two points might be part of that circle—but one had to guess where the third might land.

  Primary mistake to expect them to behave the same. Primary mistake to think there was no logic—that their behavior didn’t make sense within their culture. Give them the same set of circumstances and they’d always do the same thing. Chaos and chaotic response didn’t get a species out of the swamp and into a space program. There was logic in the behavior. That there was any willingness to signal at all was a fair indication that they expected response in kind.

  He drew a breath. “One is grateful, aiji-ma.—Thank you, Gin-aiji.”

  Nods from both. To that extent, Gin had taken in the adjacent culture. And both understood the value of a tea break.

  “Takehold, takehold minor, takehold, three minute warning.”

  He stood up quickly, turned over his teacup—bowed, and with Banichi and Jago, headed back to his borrowed quarters.

  Braking. What the senior captain called a gentle braking. One hoped the teacups were safely put away.

  7

  The bridge was calm when he arrived, the captains momentarily converged at the edge of the corridor. “It’s braked,” Jase reported. “It’s braked, we’ve braked.”

  “Excellent news.” It was. Thank God, he thought.

  “Our courses are not head-on. Closest approach in three hours fourteen minutes. We signaled with all lights, then braked. They mirrored all actions.”

  “Good. Very good.”

  “Glad you approve,” Sabin said dryly.

  “It was the right answer, captain,” Bren said, deliberately oblivious. Then: “Is the station armed, captain?”

  Sabin gave him an odd look. “Yes. I would be, wouldn’t you?”

  “We’re human. We’re both human. I can say atevi would be, too. We don’t know what it expected. What would Reunion have done, back then, if something like this just showed up and came close?”

  Small silence. “I frankly don’t know.”

  “They could have fired?”

  “I have no way to know.”

  “They’re human. They could have fired.”

  “Not ours to estimate, Mr. Cameron.”

  Near white-out of thought. It was possible. “We have to be careful not to give that impression, captain. My advice—last thing we want to do,” Bren said, watching that central monitor, “is send anything substantial outside our hull. If, on the other hand, they do it—don’t shoot at it. Evade.” He had no desire to divert any energy into a debate with Sabin. He had more faith Jase was on his side—if sides there were. The train of actions from the alien craft so far mirrored theirs, all the way. Now they paused. Waiting, both ships careening along a converging diagonal, facing one another.

  They had to do something before someone made a frightening move, something one side or the other might misinterpret.

  “Blink lights one and eight,” Bren said. “Any possible confusion of communications with attack, if we try to talk to them in a voice transmission?”

  “At low energy,” Jase said. “Not likely.”

  “I take it that it still hasn’t transmitted.” He heard traffic via the earpiece: blink sent. And very quickly answered. They were that close.

  “Negative,” Sabin said.

  “They’ve been sitting here for six years. I’d think they’d have learned something about our communications. At least our frequencies.”

  He didn’t know the capabilities of the equipment.

  “Nandi,” Banichi said. “Our line is thus far infelicitous eight. Multiply by felicitous nine. One has television.”

  “Television, nadi?” Line by line transmission. Black and white, yes/no. Blank space off. Object area on. Or reverse.

  Damn. Yes.

  “I have a proposition,” he said to Sabin. “Banichi suggests a matrix. Line by line. Like television.”

  Jase had already heard. Now Sabin listened, frowning intensely.

  “Tell it to C1,” Sabin said, and he went to that console and made his request, not even betting the alien’s hearing was compatible. Light was. Bright dark. They had a matrix of eight by eight, and a black line. Then a new image.

  He made a block of eight by eight, image of a man.

  “Transmit,” Jase said.

  A delay. A delay that stretched on into seconds. Half a minute.

  Flashes came back. Image of a man.

  “Do you suppose they get it?” Jase asked.

  There was no way they could do a matrix entire. It had to be assembled to be read.

  “Try sound,” Bren said. “Can we transmit a series of beeps, imitating the lights? Eight by eight? Simultaneous with the lights?”

  C1 looked at Sabin, who nodded.

  They transmitted.

  Beep.

  “Again,” Bren said.

  They beeped. It beeped. Series of eight.

  “Long beep. Short beep.”

  It mirrored.

  “One long. Forty-nine fast and short. Do that three times.” He didn’t wait for confirmation. “Give me our ship and their ship in pixels. Nothing fancy. Forty-nine wide by forty-nine high.” Felicitous numbers. Entirely arbitrary. His choice. And he hoped to God the opposition didn’t have the atevi’s obsession with numbers.

  “C2,” Jase said. “Create an image.”

  “Yes, sir.” The next man keyed up. A real image appeared—broke up into largish pixels, became a shape.

  “S3,” Jase said. “Alien ship image to C2. Stat. C2, form the image.”

  Bren drew a deep breath. Banichi and Jago were near him, Jago in low and quiet tones informing Banichi and their other listeners the gist of what they were doing. Sabin watched as they created their pixel-image. Couldn’t rely on perspective-sense, not on anything fancy. Step by step and no assumptions.

  “Transmit?” Bren asked. Sabin nodded.

  It went. It came back. The alien mirrored their transmission.

  “There was a bird called a parrot,” Bren said quietly. “It mimicked. Didn’t understand all it repeated. I don’t know if they’ll understand us. Transmit: one short, forty-nine long. We see if they figure this. Get me a station image.”

  “What when we’ve got it?” Sabin asked. “Attach labels?”

  “We’re going to animate our image,” Bren said. “Old-fashioned television. We give them our version of history. We see what they have to say.”

  “Do it,” Sabin said, and for a worrisome few minutes, with a flurry of instructions and corrections, several stations scrambled to produce their images. Reunion Station appeared, a simple ring. An alien ship approached. A jagged dotted line went out from the alien craft. Station showed damaged. Alien ship went off and parked.

  Their ship arrived.

  Diverted to confront the alien ship.

  Now what? Bren asked himsel
f. It was his script. They reached present-time. They were real-time with events. He had to script the next move. And he was petrified.

  “Nadiin-ji. How shall we address these strangers? Shall I offer to go to their ship?”

  “By no means,” Banichi said. “By no means, Bren-ji. But we would go with you.”

  By all means they would. And could they look unwarlike?

  “Invite one of them aboard,” Jago suggested.

  “We have no knowledge even what they breathe,” he said, sweating, resisting the impulse, uncourtly like, to mop his brow. “We should tell them what we intend,” he said. “We should propose our actions to them.”

  “Reasonable,” Jase said.

  “Do you mind,” Sabin asked, “to conduct the affairs of this ship in some recognizable language?”

  “Pardon,” Bren murmured—bowed, his mind racing on the problem. “I need to sketch.”

  “Sketch.”

  “If you please.”

  He’d puzzled Sabin. The ship had no paper, to speak of. Didn’t work in pen and pencil. Jago came up with a notepad, from an inside pocket, and he never asked what was on its other pages, just sketched a rapid series of images and tore the paper free. “This,” he said to C2. “Can you render this sequence? That’s a ship. That’s the station.”

  “Yes, sir,” C2 said with a misgiving glance toward Sabin for permission: C2 produced the figures: the two ships. Phoenix left the alien ship for the station.

  Arrived. Established a link. And a line of human figures appeared one by one, moving from station to ship.

  The last human marched aboard. Phoenix sucked up its connection. Dotted lines came out from Phoenix. The station exploded in a series of traveling parts. Phoenix then exited the screen, leaving the alien.

  “This is dangerous,” Jase muttered, in Ragi. “This is very dangerous, is it not, nadi?”

  “One can hardly assume anything, nadi-ji.” He remembered the senior captain’s requirement and changed to ship-speak. “Dangerous, yes, assuming that they’re assembling our images instead of trying to decode. At least I don’t think they can put them together wrong.”

  Sabin shrugged. “Can’t be worse than sitting here mute. Transmit.”