Strange New Worlds X

by Dean Wesley Smith

  “That’s just it,” she said. “The Universal Translator is just a set of assumptions provided by us about how languages are supposed to work. It doesn’t make any determinations of its own when it encounters a new language, it just knows what speech should look and sound like. This is bound to be a pronoun, this is probably a response token, that sort of thing.” Phlox kept looking at her attentively, so she continued. “It’s just a summary of the way sentient beings tend to communicate, based on everything we’ve learned on Earth and elsewhere through centuries of linguistics.” She sat back and sighed again, throwing the Universal Translator on the table in front of her. “But these people seem to make every one of those assumptions meaningless.”

  Phlox looked down at the discarded UT, then looked back up at her and said, “In that case, perhaps you simply need to ignore the rules for a while.”

  Hoshi considered that for a moment, then got up, grabbing her equipment from the table. “Thank you, Doctor. I’ll try.” It was time to head somewhere else where she could be left to concentrate on her work—the bridge, her quarters, anywhere—for the few remaining hours she had left before Enterprise went looking for a species that was easier to talk to.

  As she headed for the door, however, Travis walked through it and smiled. “Great, just who I was looking for,” he said, taking her hand and turning back to lead her through the corridor.

  “Travis, what are you doing?” said Hoshi, struggling to keep the Universal Translator from dropping to the floor.

  “I’m taking you someplace where you can look at things a different way.”

  “I don’t think this is helping, Travis.”

  Hoshi was sitting cross-legged next to Travis on the sweet spot, looking down at the floor, and the Universal Translator she’d left there, from their inverted vantage point. She’d been to the sweet spot before, marvelling at the oddity of artificial gravity that allowed them to flip in midair and sit on the ceiling in this one part of the ship. This particular conversation with Travis, however, was doing nothing to improve her mood, or even offer a different perspective on her central problem.

  Travis seemed to give out a bit of a sigh, but his perpetually positive mood did not seem dampened. “Stop thinking about the translation and just enjoy the moment.”

  Hoshi was touched that Travis was trying to be such a good friend to her right now, but she couldn’t take her mind off the minutes that were rapidly slipping away. “I should be working right now. Everyone’s counting on me, and we’re running out of time.”

  “Sometimes, you just have to put the rules aside,” said Travis. He grinned at her and added, “Haven’t the movies taught you anything?”

  Hoshi furrowed her brow, remembering that Phlox had just told her much the same thing. It seemed to be coming up a lot, and it niggled at the edges of her mind, somehow dovetailing back to the transmission. She wanted to believe there was something to that, though the pressure was mounting.

  “When it comes to new languages, I’m the one who has to come up with the rules,” she said. “I’ve already lost track of how many alien languages I’ve had to translate during our mission. If I can get the job done when there’s a telepathic creature on the ship, or when we’re in the heat of battle with moments to spare, why can’t I do it with a simple planetary transmission?”

  Travis nodded thoughtfully, no doubt noting the tone of resignation that had crept into her voice. After a few moments, he asked, “Why do you feel like you’re the only one who could possibly solve this? You’re talking as if this language can’t be translated at all unless you’re the one to do it.”

  “I am one to do it,” she answered. “I’m the only linguist on the ship. It’s my job, and if I can’t do it—”

  “It can’t be done?” asked Travis. Hoshi had no response for that pointed question. “See, you do it so automatically, you don’t even realize it’s not necessary.”

  “What’s not necessary?”

  “Taking this whole weight upon yourself all the time.” Before Hoshi could argue the point, Travis went on. “Sometimes, a mystery is going to stay a mystery—and that includes languages, Hoshi. If you don’t figure this one out, someone else will. You can’t have the answer every single time.”

  “I should, though,” said Hoshi. “I should.” Her voice carried a note of sorrow as she began to consider the idea that she wouldn’t—not this time. She briefly wondered if she could get back her teaching position in Brazil.

  Travis turned to face her directly, offering a supportive smile and allowing his empathy for her situation to come through in the tone of his voice. “If the captain says we need to move on, Hoshi, we’ll move on, but it’s not like you’ll stop being a part of the crew because you had trouble with one problem along the way. Enterprise will still need you and your skills as much as ever.”

  Hoshi tried to offer up a smile in return, as Travis seemed to know what she’d been thinking, but it was hard enough in that moment for her to potentially admit defeat in this area, of all things.

  After a few moments of silence, Travis spoke again. “Once you stepped onto this ship and became a part of the crew, you were accepted as part of the team, no matter what happens.” He paused again, seemingly lost in a memory. “There’s this town I remember on Vega Colony. Once you’re in the city limits, you’re not on the road anymore, you’re considered a part of the town, and until you choose to leave—”

  Not.

  Hoshi held up a hand to stop him. “What did you just say?”

  “Well, you’re a part of the town until you choose to leave….”

  It was now Hoshi who was lost in thought, running new linguistic models in her head and comparing them to everything she had tried before. Could it be that simple?

  Not on the road … in the town …

  “What is it?” asked Travis.

  “I can’t believe it,” said Hoshi. “Of course, that must be how it works. Not!”

  Travis was thoroughly confused by that last outburst, but no explanation seemed to be forthcoming on Hoshi’s part. She quickly flipped down to the actual floor and picked up her Universal Translator.

  “I need to head back to my quarters. It was right there in front of me all along. I just needed to … forget the rules about what people are supposed to say.” She looked up at the ceiling. “You’re a genius, Travis!”

  As Hoshi headed back into the corridor, Travis was left alone on the sweet spot, not quite sure how he had just helped, if at all. He flipped down and began to follow after Hoshi, offering only a hesitant, “You’re welcome.”

  Less than an hour later, Hoshi was racing down the corridor from her quarters, and she managed to run into the turbolift just before it closed. Crewman Cutler and Crewman Dickison were in there with her, but she hardly noticed them as she furiously programmed new linguistic algorithms into the Universal Translator—and hummed to herself.

  Crewman Cutler made a valiant attempt at conversation by saying, “That was a close one, Ensign. On your way to the bridge?” Hoshi didn’t respond, or even acknowledge the question. “Crewman Dickison and I are just heading to the mess, but it looks like you’re … hard at … work….” Seeing that her efforts were fruitless, Cutler gave up, and an awkward silence ensued until the turbolift came to a halt.

  The doors opened to let the two crewmen out. Crewman Dickison turned back and said, “Ensign,” at that, Hoshi actually looked up, “were you just humming …‘Danke Schoen’?”

  The turbolift doors closed again before Hoshi could give her an answer.

  The same visage of that distant inhabited planet graced the viewscreen as the turbolift doors opened onto the bridge for Hoshi, but she barely glanced at it as she rushed to her station, nearly knocking over T’Pol in the process.

  “Is everything all right, Ensign Sato?” she asked.

  “Yes, yes, it’s fine,” Hoshi replied, in the most perfunctory way possible. She sat down and transferred all of the data from her Univers
al Translator to the console, watching as the newly created algorithm played itself out. After all this time of staring at her screens and listening to this transmission in vain, these last few seconds seemed more interminable than the last week had been.

  Before she could further contemplate her own impatience, a result appeared on the screen directly in front of her, and Hoshi needed to sit back and look at that screen a few more times to be sure of what she saw. Where phonetic symbols had taunted her for days, laying out a riddle as frustrating as it was unintentional, the key she now offered took those seemingly meaningless sounds and unlocked their secrets, providing her with words—English words.

  The bridge crew picked up on the fact that something was different this time, and were already turning their attention to the communications console when Hoshi laughed softly to herself and rested her head on the console. After a few moments, Captain Archer stood up from his chair and said, “It sounds like you have something, Ensign.”

  She looked up again at the faces of the bridge crew. Quiet resignation had given way to excited expectation, and she needed no sudden breakthrough to know what they were trying to tell her. Travis, in particular, was smiling at her with that toothy grin she had come to appreciate so much in the year they’d been working together on Enterprise.

  Knowing that this was the culmination of the crew’s built-up expectations, Hoshi cleared her throat dramatically.

  “You are not in space,” she began, reading directly from her console screen. “You are in the home of the Shisali, as surely as if your feet touched our soil. May our hands and our voices welcome you to all we have to offer.”

  Everyone on the bridge seemed pleased with the greeting—even T’Pol, though it was unlikely she would show much evidence of her reaction. The bridge crew were no doubt relieved, Hoshi thought, that their mission to this system was not a waste of time after all, and that she could confirm the friendliness of this species.

  “Do you think you can put something through the new translation matrix so it will make sense to these … to the Shisali?” asked Archer.

  Hoshi looked at her screen again and nodded slowly, with a renewed confidence. “I think so.”

  “Good,” he said. “Open hailing frequencies.”

  Hoshi knew that Archer felt much more in his element now—now that he had more to do than simply wait, or consider the possibility of leaving. She pressed the appropriate controls on her console and nodded to the captain once more, letting him know that he could go ahead.

  It was time to start communicating.

  “This is Captain Jonathan Archer of the Starship Enterprise. I’m glad we could leave space for a while to enter your home, and I hope we have a chance to touch your soil soon.”

  SPECULATIONS

  Time Line

  Jerry M. Wolfe

  Jerry M. Wolfe, a retired mathematics professor and longtime Star Trek fan, lives and writes at the beach in Lincoln City, Oregon, with his wife, Sawat. In addition to writing science fiction and fantasy, he makes frequent contributions to the local economy by attempting to play tournament poker at the local Indian casino. “Time Line” is his third story to appear in Strange New Worlds.

  G ary Seven frowned in concentration as he rubbed his fingers over the face of a newspaper clipping, pressing it against a page of an album, waiting for the glue to take. Behind his desk, a window air conditioner struggled against the oppressive August heat of New York City while Isis dozed happily on the couch. His shape-shifting companion seemed to enjoy the black cat form she had taken for their time on Earth, so much so that he sometimes wondered if she wasn’t really turning into a cat.

  The aroma of grilled-cheese sandwiches wafted in from the kitchen and set his stomach to growling. Too much fat in the things, but add a good pickle and a few potato chips, and he couldn’t resist them. He had first suggested to Robbie that they send out for Chinese, but she had been adamant.

  “Just because I’m an official secret agent, or whatever we are, doesn’t mean I can’t grill cheese. Besides, I enjoy cooking for you.”

  When he had given her his best skeptical arch of his eyebrows, she laughed. “Well, sometimes I do. And this is one of those times.”

  Seven smiled as he pulled his hand away from the page, listening to the spirited if slightly off key humming coming from the kitchen. Roberta Lincoln Seven. He still had trouble believing that it was all true. It seemed an eon ago that he had come to Earth, his long-range transporter beam accidentally intercepted by a time-traveling Enterprise. Yet it had been only three years since he had met Kirk and Spock. Three years since he helped stop the suicidal orbiting of nuclear weapons. Now he was married, living on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and happier than he had a right to be.

  And he was still trying to stop humanity from destroying itself.

  He read the clipping again. Famed Biologist Missing. The piece, over six years old, detailed how Doctor Charles Grayson, one of the world’s leading geneticists, had disappeared while sightseeing in northern India. No trace of the man was ever found, and he was now presumed long dead. Seven had glued the clipping next to a copy of a grainy photograph taken only days before by a CIA agent operating out of Tashkent in Uzbekistan in the Soviet Union. Tapping into intelligence sources posed few problems when Seven had his own transport chamber that could take him anywhere in the world in a blink. Every spying device that he set had an automatic recall in case it was discovered. The trick was knowing where to put them, but after three years on the job, he had all the major sources covered.

  Gary tapped his index finger at the base of the photo. One of the men in the picture was a high-ranking KGB official, Ivan Kotov, the target of the photographer, no doubt. The picture had seemed routine and relatively unimportant until the Beta 5 computer identified two of the other three men, at least to a certainty of eighty-eight point four seven percent. One was Boris Pachenko, a well-known Russian biochemist who had been reported dead in a plane crash in 1969. The other was Charles Grayson. The fourth, clearly the oldest of the group, was unknown.

  Seven had known for some time that a secret project was located about ninety kilometers from Tashkent, but until now, it had been just one of a dozen that he monitored in the Soviet Union and worth only a small portion of his album; until the photo arrived.

  Up to that point, he had assumed the Uzbekistan installation delved into biological or chemical warfare. Nasty and repugnant, but not yet a threat to mankind and hence not worthy of intervention on his part. The world was simply too large and complex for him to delve into every piece of Cold War insanity. Besides, his mission was to not intervene unless absolutely necessary for humanity’s survival. But now he couldn’t see how a geneticist fit into the picture and that made him nervous.

  “You want mayo?” Robbie called from the kitchen.

  Seven looked up and turned toward the open door. His mind warned more fat. His mouth said, “Yes, thanks.” He sighed and returned his attention to the album. Filled with pages of heavy, cream-colored paper, it was an absurdly archaic and inefficient method for storing information, even for 1971 Earth. Yet, there was something about the process—the trimming, the gluing, the arranging of reports, clippings, and photos, the feel and even the smell of the paper itself—that he found curiously satisfying and useful. It calmed and distracted his conscious mind, allowing his subconscious to operate unhindered while staying focused on his task.

  It was just one of a thousand small things, uniquely human things, that this crazy, primitive home world offered him. Things that even the advanced, nonhuman civilization that had nurtured him and sent him here could not. And working with Robbie, “Miss Lincoln” as he had first called her until something mysterious and wonderful had changed between them, had driven home an important lesson—advanced did not mean superior. The Earth that had shocked and disgusted him when he first arrived now felt as comfortable as an old chair, if one a bit soiled and worn around the edges. The place had grown incredibly dear
to him. He’d truly come home.

  Gary was still looking at the photo and worrying when a tray containing two grilled-cheese sandwiches, a mountain of potato chips, two pickles, and a glass of orange juice was suddenly plopped down on top of the album face. Then Robbie had her arms around him, kissing his cheek. Several blond strands of her hair fell across his face, and he felt the warmth of her body against his side. Seven laughed and pretended to struggle until she let him go.

  “If I’d been an evil alien intent on a quick meal, then you’d be dead meat right now, Mister Seven.”

  “And where was my trusty protector while you were sneaking up on me?” he said, giving Isis a withering glance which she ignored by going back to sleep. Whatever rivalry might have once existed between Robbie and Isis had vanished after the marriage. Now they were pals. “I think it’s a conspiracy,” he said as he wrapped an arm around her waist, then kissed her full on the lips. “If you keep spoiling me like this, I won’t ever leave the apartment.”

  “That’s my plan. You’ll cook and clean while I lie in bed and do my nails,” she said, tilting her head back and holding her hands out in front of her as if they were objects of extreme delicacy. Seven laughed and gave her a playful swat on the behind. Robbie moved the album out from under the tray and saw what he had been working on.

  “It’s Grayson and that business in Uzbekistan isn’t it?” she asked, her tone turning serious.

  Seven nodded as he dug into the sandwich. He spoke between bites. “I have a bad feeling about it. It looks like the Soviets are going to absurd lengths—even by their standards—to keep this project secret. I don’t see where Grayson fits into biological or chemical warfare, or why the Beta 5 has no photo record of this other man,” he said, pointing to the fourth man. “He’s standing with Grayson and Pachenko, and I’ll bet this wonderful sandwich that he’s a member of the project.”