Valence (Confluence Book 4)

by Jennifer Foehner Wells

Ryliuk spoke up. “He knows the location of every sentient world. They’re all at risk. Sectilius is defenseless. He may send the Swarm to finish what he started.”

  Alan huffed. “I’m sorry, dude, but there’s no comparison. The population of Earth is in the billions.”

  Jane walked over to Alan and put her hand on his arm. He bowed his head.

  Huna said, “If this Kai’Memna wants vengeance, your last known location was Pliga.”

  “Perhaps he thinks we are already dead? We did crash in the ocean,” Tinor said in a tiny voice.

  “We thought that about him,” Alan said.

  Jaross’s expression was bleak on the screen, but her mental voice remained calm. “Is the extinction of any sentient species acceptable? How can we choose one planet to protect when we do not have the ability to track the Swarm?”

  Ajaya interrupted, “Does anyone have the ability to track the Swarm?”

  Ryliuk answered stiffly and coldly, “I remember hearing a news report, before the plague, that there were sectilian ships working with other USR scientists to develop tracking technologies for an early warning system to be put in place. That was many standard years ago. Surely some progress has been made by now. We must go to Terac, as originally planned. That is your duty in this case. This information must be shared. Where you go from there is up to you. I, for one, wish to work for any resistance that may be amassed. I will leave your company on Terac if necessary.”

  The rest of the sectilians had muted reactions to that announcement, some in agreement, some in dismay.

  Jane sniffed. Her fingers felt cold. Even wrapped around Alan’s arm, they weren’t warming. “Earth has already been warned about the possibility of a Swarm attack. That was part of the packet of information I gave them when we left our solar system. Surely they will have already begun to build defenses.”

  If they’d listened to her.

  If they could master the sectilian technology, and if that would be enough to stop a Swarm pod.

  “Your world is remote. The Swarm travels slowly compared to our capabilities. There is time to do much before the threat becomes real,” Jaross reminded them.

  Alan closed his eyes. “From what I’ve read, over vast distances they can accelerate to FTL speeds. We don’t know if there are Swarm pods in the vicinity of Earth or how fast they can communicate with each other. Earth could already be under attack. They need our help.”

  Ron stood up from his Qua’dux’s chair and paced a bit. Jane followed him with her eyes until he spoke. “That seems unlikely to me. It should still take years for them to get there, probably a lot longer than that. It’s all conjecture, of course, but I’m going to guess we have at least a decade to prepare Earth. We have plenty of time to not only warn everyone, but also to develop and build defenses.”

  “If there were sectilians in the Quasador Dux positions on these vessels, we would not be indulging in this conversation,” Ryliuk said coldly.

  Jane felt anger rising in both Brai and Pio. Brai blurted out, “Perhaps not, but if it were not for the selfish practices of the Sectilius, the monster that is Kai’Memna would never have been created.”

  That statement went through the group like a shockwave.

  It clearly angered Ryliuk. “Quite the opposite. His shackles were warranted. He and every other kuboderan is a power-hungry beast when those bonds are broken. Don’t you think I would know better than anyone? I—who have trained countless of these sea creatures to navigate ships?”

  “I see no evidence of that,” Huna said quickly.

  “Enough,” Ron said firmly. “Emotions are running high, but we will not malign our fellow crew members. We’re all in this together.”

  Ryliuk rocked a bit on his feet. A retort seemed forthcoming. Then he sat and pinched his connection to the bare minimum, his face expressionless, staring at the floor of the bridge.

  Jane squeezed Alan’s arm. “The best chance for Earth is an alliance with the Unified Sentient Races. There are resources there, people ostensibly experienced in dealing with the Swarm, possible advances in knowledge and technology. The information we’re working under is decades old, from before the sectilian plague. Many things are bound to be different now. We won’t know until we get there. At Terac, we might be able to rally an armada that could make short work of any threat to Earth. That would be the best possible outcome, and the one I will do everything in my power to make happen.”

  Ron stood tall. “Does anyone have anything else to say in disagreement with Quasador Dux Jane Holloway’s statement?”

  Alan flinched, but remained silent.

  Jane let go of his arm. “We have a consensus, then? Speak up now if you disagree.”

  The mental connection was mute.

  After a few moments passed, Ron said, “Right. It’s decided.”

  Jane nodded. “Alan, Tinor, and I will take a shuttle down to the Colocallida to attempt to retrieve the data core. If we can salvage it, we might find out more about Kai’Memna’s resources and the worlds he might use as refuge, or some other vital information that could help us fight him.”

  Alan turned wide eyes on her, like he was about to protest.

  “No need,” Pio said abruptly. “I’m uploading the contents of the data core now. It’s damaged, and a good deal of the data has been corrupted, but there may be something useful. I have access.”

  Ryliuk asked, “But how? There should be codes.”

  Pio’s mental voice was icy. “They didn’t change the codes. Ei’Uba and I were on the same side at that time, after all. Until we weren’t.”

  Jane sat down in the command chair. “While Pio works on that, Brai, please plot a course for Terac. We’ll begin a jump sequence as soon as Pio finishes.”

  23

  April 17, 2018

  Seven months after Jane Holloway’s Global Announcement

  ZARA DIDN’T GET PAID, exactly.

  They called it an internship and her dad got a huge raise or something. But she did get an official badge and she went to work with her dad every day instead of going to school.

  If anyone knew that Zara was the one to set Mensententia free on the Web, no one said so, and her dad wasn’t disciplined for it. Instead everyone seemed so grateful for her expertise, she suspected they’d have overlooked that part, even if they’d known.

  At first everyone, including Zara, thought that she’d just translate the symbol cloud for them, help them figure out how it all worked together, and that would be all they’d need. The grown-ups would be learning Mensententia from the software. She’d go back to school after a few days.

  It quickly became apparent that it wasn’t as simple as that. The adults were learning the language now, but it didn’t stick in their heads the same way. They didn’t get the same burst of excitement when they learned a new word. That experience, she was sure, was the glue that stuck the language in her brain. Without that sensation, they were just memorizing. And there was only so much memorizing a person could do without getting tired of it and forgetting a lot.

  Adults seemed to learn Mensententia at the same rate they could learn any foreign language, except they also had to learn a new symbol system and a new way of thinking at the same time. It was slower and less efficient than simply asking Zara. The only adults anywhere in the world having any success comparable to teenagers were the true language prodigies, who knew dozens of languages, but there were just a handful of those on the planet and every country that had one kept them for themselves.

  Mensententia overwhelmed most adults with its hugeness, its alien nature, its complexity. They couldn’t see it as learning one word or concept at a time. They focused on how little progress they were making or how hard it was. Adults forgot things, got flustered or frustrated, and requested her assistance repeatedly, even for things she’d already explained to them. The list of requests for meetings with her was a mile long. Soon she found herself learning not just Mensententia, but the beginnings of engineering terminolo
gy and computer languages. It was fascinating and fun, and overwhelming quite often, but she never stopped learning something new.

  When it was clear that this was not going to be a short-term assignment, her mom protested, and a tutor was provided for a few hours a day so that Zara wouldn’t fall behind in any of her middle-school studies. And, of course, she studied Mensententia for a couple of hours every day as well. The days were long, but she didn’t mind. It was a relief to be useful. The people were nice. She was part of something bigger than herself and it felt good to be needed.

  She didn’t have to hide anymore. She’d been grounded for her deceit but it hardly mattered. She never went anywhere but the lab anyway, now. And they didn’t take away the laptop.

  No one at NASA pretended Jane or the Speroancora wasn’t real. But she had to promise not to talk about any of this to her friends, and she agreed immediately. It was a fair exchange.

  Zara became accustomed to sitting in on meetings, finding polite ways to correct adults when they made mistakes, and giving presentations to different groups of scientists on various parts of the download—teaching them keywords and how to interact with the symbol cloud.

  One day she was meeting with a group of computer scientists, engineers, and linguists who were working on a Mensententic keyboard that would make interacting with the symbol cloud easier. They were about to break for lunch when Dr. Sakey, her dad’s boss, came in with a stranger decked out in fancy military clothes.

  Dr. Sakey called her over. “Zara Hampton, I’d like you to meet General Gordon Bonham, the NASA administrator, as well as Deputy Administrator Marshall.”

  “So this is the wunderkind?” the general said with a smile.

  Zara shrugged shyly.

  “I think we need a few more of you. Do you know where we can find them?”

  She knew he was joking, but she decided to answer as though he were serious. “Of course I do. They’re all over the country. All over the world.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “You mean the other people learning the language from the illegal download posted online?”

  She decided to ignore the word illegal, though it made her angry. Jane had wanted all of this for everyone. He was one of the ones who’d prevented that from happening. “No, not people. Kids. Kids my age. There are lots of them. You need them.”

  “It’s best to encourage adults who already work for us, who specialize in these fields, to learn the language and get up to speed as quickly as possible,” he said dismissively and turned back to Dr. Sakey.

  She sensed he was ready to move on. That made her even madder. He wasn’t taking her seriously. Wasn’t she the expert?

  She straightened up, mimicking the general’s self-assured posture. “Come on, man—that’s not good enough.”

  He laughed like he was humoring her, but his smile didn’t go up into his eyes and make them twinkle like it had when they’d been introduced.

  She spoke over his laugh, firmly, trying to sound like a grown-up, though her heart hammered wildly. She used the biggest words she knew. “The adults can’t learn Mensententia as efficiently as adolescents. It’s too late for them. Jane told us that the language is normally learned—she used the word ‘unlocked’—at puberty. You need kids who are already interested in science, math, aeronautics, and engineering. It’s the only way to make sense of this as fast as possible. Other countries are already doing this.”

  He sobered and turned back to her. “What makes you say that?”

  “The online Mensententia community.” She looked to Dr. Sakey for help.

  Sakey bobbed a nod in affirmative. “I believe she’s right. I was planning to bring this up. We have developed a report, a plan of action, and a budget, with Zara’s help.”

  “We can’t have dozens of children handling state secrets. This is a matter of national security. And do I need to remind you that we have child labor laws in this country, Dr. Sakey?”

  “I’m aware of that, General Bonham, but I believe we can find a way.”

  Zara nodded. “You could call it an internship and provide free college tuition for participants. A lot of kids are super smart and worry about paying for college.”

  Bonham’s brows drew together. “You’ve thought about this a great deal.”

  Deputy Administrator Marshal spoke up quizzically. “Kids your age are worried about college?”

  Zara couldn’t keep the disbelief out of her voice. She was verging on sass and she didn’t care anymore. Respect for her elders wasn’t getting her anywhere. All of her fears came pouring out. “Sir, we’re worried about more than that. What if we don’t figure this all out fast enough? What did that Ukrainian astronomer see in the sky that no one wants to talk about? What if that’s the Swarm, heading to Earth? If those hungry bugs come here, they’ll make sure there’s nothing left to worry about. Are state secrets more important than that?” It was a gut punch and she knew it. But she was thirteen, for crap’s sake. If she had to bear that burden, he should own it too.

  It was probably stupid to bring up that tabloid stuff. They’d just dismiss her now. She didn’t know for sure if the Swarm was coming, but Jane had warned about it and the sectilian database was full of descriptions of death and destruction with regard to these giant bugs. It seemed like a good idea to work faster to prepare for anything, rather than drag their feet and pretend that their biggest threat was the Russians or the Chinese or whoever.

  Everything had changed. This wasn’t about little black lines on a globe anymore. It was about humanity’s survival. She knew it in her bones.

  Bonham looked her up and down like he was reevaluating her. “Show me what you’re working on.”

  She led him over to her team. “How much do you know about Mensententia?”

  “Assume I know nothing.”

  She nodded. “That’s how you have to start.” She gestured at their prototype keyboard, which was larger and more complex than a QWERTY keyboard. “The first thing you have to realize is that Mensententia doesn’t use letters. Each symbol you see is a word, not a letter—the symbols are built from component parts that tell you how it sounds and give you clues as to its meaning. That’s similar in some ways to the Korean language, Hangul, I’ve been told.”

  Zara tilted the monitor so that the general could see it better. “The software Jane sent is designed to teach you words and their components, so that as you learn each word, you’re also learning a foundation that will help to learn new words.” She started an animation on a word in the language software. “It shows you the layers as it pronounces the word. Some really complex symbols are compound words, layers of combined elements representing ideas.”

  “And what’s this?” General Bonham pointed at the keyboard.

  “This is a keyboard that we 3-D printed from plans for a sectilian keyboard that I found in the download. We’ve been trying to decide if it works for us, or whether we want to redesign it so it would be easier for a human to use. It was originally designed with a lot of different hand sizes in mind, though. So far, we think we’ll keep it as is, just maybe make the keys smaller, more the size of our keys.”

  “You found it?”

  The folks she’d been working with were nodding. Gail spoke up. “You bet she did. She’s a force to be reckoned with. Truly inspiring.”

  Zara’s face felt hot. Gail was an amazing linguist on loan from the University of Oregon. She had a daughter that was about Zara’s age, and she often went to bat for Zara when people were dismissive of her abilities. It made her feel really good to have an adult champion.

  “Show me how you type a word,” Bonham said.

  Zara leaned over and typed carefully. The symbol elements appeared on the screen, overlaying each other and reconfiguring until she hit the equivalent of the space bar. She straightened. “You all know this word.”

  Everyone squinted at the screen, humoring her, but no one spoke up.

  “It’s the name the sectilians gave to the ship that you
called the Target. Speroancora. The symbol has a dual meaning—it’s a compound word. It means to wait and to hope. Spooky, considering what Ei’Brai went through, don’t you think?”

  Bonham didn’t comment. Instead he looked at her current team members. “I assume one or more of you are linguists?”

  Gail and Carlo spoke up, saying they were. Carlo was an army cryptologic linguist who’d been called home from his station in al-Kut, Iraq, where he’d been translating captured Arabic communications to alert combat troops of danger.

  “Why do you think children are learning this language so easily compared to adults?”

  Gail said, “We don’t know any more than what Dr. Holloway said in the Global Announcement. All I can tell you is that it’s true. I’ve seen some young people learning it, my own daughter included, and their experiences are very different than my own.”

  “These children have experiences comparable to this young lady’s?” Bonham looked searchingly at both Bonnie and Carlo.

  “Yes.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And your own experience? How does it compare?”

  Carlo looked chagrined. “We’re doing better than most adults, but not faring as well as Zara, sadly. We’re devoted to the task, but as Zara says, it may be too late for us to learn it in quite the same way. The genetic component… we don’t understand how that works, and it’ll take a long time for geneticists to figure it out. By then it will probably be irrelevant.”

  Bonham narrowed his eyes. “But you’re linguists. You’re trained for this. Why would it have been so different for Dr. Holloway?”

  Zara spoke up. “Dr. Holloway had learned six languages by the time she was twelve years old. She studied Latin, Greek, and classics in her early teens in a special program through a local university. We know that somehow Latin and Mensententia are very closely related. Language wasn’t just Jane’s college major or something. Her entire life revolved around language, learning language.”

  Gail nodded. “I think that’s the difference, General. The few linguist savants on the order of Jane Holloway are working hard on this too, but there are a lot more teenagers than there are specialists of that kind. And we need more people on this, pronto.”