Analog SFF, January-February 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

That little speech seemed to rattle around in my head for a minute before it dropped into the comprehension chute. “Have you been able to communicate with her at all?"

  "You are uptight that you may be in a first-contact situation rather than a therapeutic one, where we have no basis of communication?"

  "Well, yes.” Deal understood me better than I'd expected.

  He waved a leg expressively, or at least gracefully since I had no idea what the gesture expressed. “Chill out, Doctor, although in another of your cases your fears may just possibly have merit. We have deciphered this patient's language—logically, it must be hers—by the usual means, and have had similar success with the third patient you will see, but neither has been willing or able to speak with us. This is one reason we suspected emotional impairment in both cases, likely due to trauma, which impelled my superiors to request human assistance.” The tone implied, “Bad idea."

  Deal's clacking quieted as though turning confidential. I had to concentrate to catch the translation, which also grew quieter. “Your species reputedly suffers an astonishing array of such impairments, so our Council of Masters foolishly believes you must be the galaxy's foremost experts in the field. No offense projected."

  I fought back a grin. “None taken. But what is the usual means for figuring out an alien language?"

  "You don't know?"

  The superior tone galled me. “It's not the sort of problem we've had to deal with yet."

  "So primitive, and yet I am here to answer your every question. The technique involves activating and studying an instructional protocol imbedded in the alien vessel's data-management system. Of course we rely on our own data controller for initial deciphering."

  "Huh. Why would anyone put language lessons on their own ship's computer?"

  Deal tapped one leg against the floor, I'd bet impatiently. “Most starfaring species capable of even rudimentary foresight will anticipate spacecraft failures and possible rescue by helpful but unknown aliens. Therefore they make it easy to open communications."

  I shook my head. “Easy? How's it even possible?"

  Deal's tapping sped up. “If I must educate you, such instruction, usually visual, is typically activated when the potential rescuer demonstrates ignorance of the damaged vessel's operating systems."

  "You mean when someone starts pushing buttons at random?"

  "If you mean ‘buttons’ in a figurative sense, Doctor. Instruction most often commences with simple counting of objects to reveal the numeration symbols and number base involved. Then the mathematical operators are defined through their operations, again demonstrated visually, which leads to an array of prepositions and predicates. From there, context supplies an expanding field of comprehension with ever more complex axioms. Often live actors or animations of living beings act out various—"

  My patient emitted a particularly loud screech and began chewing on her own tail. I lost track of Deal's spiel although I'd already gotten the gist, but I noticed when he wound down.

  "So to get back to my question, you haven't been able—"

  "To communicate with her, no. Our exchanges have been limited to one success: by offering a variety of nutritional substances, solid and liquid, we have learned to feed her.” I got the impression Deal was embarrassed by their failure to do more. “Likewise, we have not yet found sufficient navigational cues in her starship's data array to identify her home world."

  "Hmm. Maybe they don't necessarily want strangers knowing where they live."

  "Spot on, although obvious. I have also been ordered to mention that this one has recently begun displaying an attribute we've never encountered before. My superiors think it best for you to see this for yourself and draw your own conclusions before we offer our more sophisticated ones."

  "Okay. What I need to take a stab at this job is some idea of what constitutes normal behavior for this species. If you found language lessons in movie format on her spacecraft, did you find any other visual recordings?"

  Deal rubbed three legs together. “Gnarly logic, I must admit, and the answer is yes. A series of such recordings await you in your stateroom, frequency-shifted for the limited human optical range. Would you care to go there now, or would you prefer misunderstanding another of your patients?"

  Mainly, I wanted to stop seeing patient one. She scared me. “Let's move on to the next. I'd like an overview."

  "Righteous. But I must warn you, as you demanded, that a therapeutic gravity bump is due in one minute."

  I nodded and lay down on my self-propelled furniture. “Thanks.” Now I'd find out just how therapeutic my acceleration couch was. I gazed at my Data Manager icon and muttered an activation phrase. The luminous ring uncurled and floated upward, expanding into a virtual touchscreen displaying a fisheye view of the area. My two flanking Traders neglected to gasp or at least click in wonder at this demonstration of human technology. But then, they couldn't see it. I reached up and pushed the target cursor onto the distorted image of Deal then poked a finger through the impalpable enter button. It was a relief to let my hand drop since my arm was getting very heavy.

  "Lead on, please,” I said as my weight relentlessly increased. I ignored the prompt for continuance and after a moment the touchscreen shrank, curled, and resumed its post around my ring finger. “This contraption will follow you now.” So I hoped. The new CPU element of my Data Manager was far more advanced than any upgrade you'd find at Electronics-R-Us, and its increased features gave it more scope for errors.

  Deal backed away, and, glory be, my craft rolled along behind him. Without turning, the Trader moved in a dead straight line down the middle of the hallway, a trickier feat for someone without a ring of eyes. My back support, which had felt delightfully comfortable when I lay down, morphing to match my contours, felt harder every second.

  The smartsuit tightened around my legs and I helped by tensing my leg muscles; the brain, like Dracula, needs its blood. But everything was starting to ache. And I had nearly five minutes of weighing over 1,000 pounds to go.

  "Do you remain in vibrant health?” Deal asked, the tone sounding bored.

  "Yes,” I lied in a choked voice. It's hard to breathe in high-g, let alone talk; the diaphragm tends to clench as part of an overall Support-the-Spine-At-All-Costs instinct, a kind of hyper-Valsalva effort. I imagine one could experience something similar by lying supine with a hundred-pound Olympic weight or three on one's tummy. How, I wondered, did those rare unfortunates on the far end of the obese bell-curve manage? I've heard of cases where people weighed more than I did right now.

  "Sadly for you, our science isn't yet capable of isolating individuals from the surrounding gravity without limiting their spatial movements."

  "I just ... wish ... we could ... control ... gravity ... at all."

  "Do you? Then why didn't your government require that information as payment for your ... expertise?” The translator did a fine job of expressing sarcasm.

  I would've let my jaw drop except I wasn't sure I could close it again. “You'd ... trade—"

  "Trading is what we do. Goods, services, information, anything. If you can deliver, and even you must know how probable that is. But bide! Look behind you. Your first patient is performing the unique maneuver I mentioned."

  "Walk back, please. Can't turn my head."

  "You are tragically weak.” Deal stepped around me and returned to the transparent shield. My go-cart spun around and followed. When it stopped, I ordered my DM to put the couch into voice-controlled mode. Although by then, I didn't have much voice to work with.

  "Turn. Clockwise. Don't mean you, Deal. Stop. Still not you, Deal. Raise head."

  After all this hassle, I saw no change in my punk tiger at first. Then, slowly, its coloration intensified and kept getting increasingly vivid. The claws and spikes turned luminous, and the golden eyes blazed enough to resemble searchlights.

  "What?” I croaked.

  "Keep your peepers peeled, Doctor. Truly, I've never seen
her perform this feat nearly so powerfully. She keeps improving at this and doubtless even a primitive will find the results totally rad."

  Rad? Short for radish? Or radium? And nothing happened except I began losing my battle to stay calm, and on two fronts. One was my growing irritation with Deal. The other and more immediate concern was air. I kept assuring myself that I was getting enough but didn't find me convincing. And sure enough, just then my peripheral vision flickered and went out and the blindness gradually crept its way inward. Which is why I thought my eyes were playing tricks when my patient became a ghostly shape, losing all color and most of her solidity. I could see right through her.

  "There!” the Trader announced, clicking with extra force. “Isn't that special?"

  "What—ah! That feels good." One point five g was easy now. My chest hurt, but it was lovely to breathe again. The tiger reappeared, but cloaked in no more than her initial glory. “What happened?"

  "We resumed operating gravity."

  "I mean, what happened to my patient?"

  "Consider that for yourself while we mosey to your next appointment."

  I hadn't a clue, and that statement applied to this entire fiasco. What the hell was I doing? I hated to admit that Deal was right, but I really was useless here. And still, my pride wouldn't let me call it quits. When I got home, I'd be sure to buy The Complete Idiot's Guide To Idiocy, if such a book existed. It's not that I wasn't doing splendidly on my own, but it's always good to sharpen one's game.

  * * * *

  We didn't have to “mosey” far, which was nice since my leg muscles trembled when I got off my couch and stood up. Patient two appeared comfortingly simian if you overlooked trivial details such as six arms, two thick legs in front and a scrawny one in back, mottled turquoise hair, and two pairs of surplus eyes. I guessed this one was male, judging by the way its tunic-like wrapping bulged in the front crotch area, and Deal agreed to use the masculine gender but grumbled that appearances among aliens not only could be deceptive, but usually were. At least I was no longer the only clothed person in this nudist colony.

  I couldn't begin to interpret the ape's behavior. He stood calmly as he stared at us with the top two eyes, the brown and green one, while all six of his hands moved incessantly, flicking sideways as if pushing aside some little nuisance or flipping up and down at random. If this was some form of sign language, why didn't he stop and wait for some return gestures? And if the only signs were those of desperation, why was he obviously more focused on his hands than on us? The constant motion reminded me of water flowing down a steep streambed, cascading over the larger rocks. It also reminded me of something else I'd seen. I couldn't say what....

  "This being is the one we found on an otherwise uninhabited planet and whose language we have been unable to unfurl through no fault of our own,” Deal said. His clicking had a stiffer and more precise cadence than usual, reminiscent of marching band snare rhythms. “The only spacecraft we could find was a miniature spiraling lander such as many alien voyagers use in emergencies.” Voyagers, I thought, who didn't get dizzy.

  "No Berlitz lessons available, I take it?"

  "Minimal electronics, but a sizable cache of consumables."

  "Does he stop gesturing when he eats?"

  "No, but if you insist on hassling me with irrelevant questions, his paw motions diminish by one third because he requires two paws to handle his nourishment. And he constantly rotates the pair he uses."

  I observed the castaway for a few more minutes but learned nothing except that his gesturing became hypnotic after a while. I was surprised the Traders, with their super technology, hadn't been able to spot the starship he'd evidently had to abandon, assuming it was orbiting the world where he'd been rescued. Then again, without knowing the starship's shape, albedo, composition, or orbital distance, perhaps it wouldn't be easy to find.

  Where had I seen hand movements like that before?

  "Will I have time to see my next patient before the next gravity change?” I asked.

  "Surely. Follow me."

  Deal's body posture had changed the instant I mentioned visiting patient three, and when I glanced over at Best-offer, he'd changed similarly. Both Tsf had pulled their legs in closer to their gondolas and stood taller. Their new positions struck me as defensive, but I didn't have quite enough arrogance to trust my ability to decipher an extraterrestrial body language.

  * * * *

  Still, something about my final patient clearly had a big impact on my tour guides. It—and we agreed that “it” was the bon mot in this case—sure had an impact on me. The two previous rescued souls had seemed highly exotic, but alike enough to terrestrial life so that I could compare them to Earth animals. I could relate. This new one was something else. Alien in the spookiest sense.

  For one thing, it was flat enough to ooze out from under a door or a rock, practically two-dimensional. Talk about your flat affect. For another, it was unbelievably slow, creeping across the room with all the haste of a tired slug. It wasn't nearly as pretty as a slug, not with all those translucent, twisted protrusions placed seemingly at random on that nearly shadow-thin gray body; not with so many rotten-cucumber-green claws or hooks, most scattered over the protrusions, some projecting directly from its torso, the universe's ugliest picture hangers. Small discolorations that could've been sensory organs or ulcers completed the ensemble, and I'm embarrassed to admit that the sight of my patient left me nauseated.

  On impulse, I decided to take a chance and turned toward Deal. “What makes this specimen more important to you than the others?"

  The Trader went rigid. If I'd guessed right, this might help my reputation here, which just might prevent my stock from plummeting to zero point nothing when—not if—I failed at my main job. But Deal wasn't clicking and I started worrying. Then Best-offer spoke up, which startled me since he hadn't thrown a word in my direction until now.

  "As my esteemed associate remains muted from his shock and disappointment, I will assume his diplomatic duties on the basis of a brief stewardship.” The translator device used a deep, raspy tone for Best-offer's voice. “Is that hunky-dory with you?"

  "Um. Sure. Why's he shocked and disappointed?"

  "I am honor bound not to spill the beans. Unless you have something worthwhile to trade for the legumes in question?"

  At least I was consistent: I didn't understand anyone or anything on this station. But I had the feeling I'd just missed something significant. “I—just tell me about this alien."

  "Super. We found the dude adrift on the galactic attenuation adjacent to your planetary system. His ship, an organic-electronic, had been trashed by a collision and most of its atmosphere had flown the co-op."

  "The coop?"

  "Whatever. The surviving data organisms, after some sweet-talkin', provided language instruction and some general information, but were too whacked to do their thing with navigation, life support, propulsion, and repair. We checked out the traces of atmosphere. Unique."

  "How so?"

  "No trace of water vapor. Every intelligent life form we had previously encountered in our travels requires some amount of dihydrogen monoxide. There may be clever crystals or sentient flames hangin’ out somewhere, but we have never consciously crossed their paths."

  "So I imagine you're keeping my patient dry in there?"

  "Duh. Water is almost certainly toxic for an entity adapted to such an arid atmosphere."

  Interesting, but were my hosts evading my original question? “And the importance of this species?"

  Best-offer didn't go mute, but he spoke slowly as though weighing each click. “The ship's data organisms were royally screwed, Doctor. Aside from the abstract visual patterns automatically generated when we triggered the language lesson sequence, we could glom on to only one distinct image: a star map with a heap of color-coded connecting lines."

  "I don't—wait. You figure you've stumbled onto some galactic empire?"

  "Not close and n
o cigar. We doubt it's coincidental that we use very similar maps."

  "Oh. Another species of traders?"

  On my other side, Deal returned to life. “From the map and the starship's cargo,” he said, “we are confident they operate much as we do."

  "A rival."

  "Conceivably. But frankly, dear Doctor, we don't give a damn because that's not the big deal. Will you bite?"

  "Will I what?"

  "Are you hearing, language, or attention impaired? To rephrase, are you interested?"

  Couldn't help it, I laughed. “Okay, I'll bite."

  "Their star map, however rotated, didn't match the configurations of our galaxy. Our guest, we believe, is a visitor from another.” Now his clicks came fast and loud. “I doubt you have the capacity to understand, but the trading possibilities are awesome. And a ship from even a relatively near island universe, perforce, likely utilizes propulsion techniques far in advance of ours and perhaps communication techniques equally advanced, although these issues are uncertain considering the time scale commensurate with your patient's movements."

  Strange to think of the Tsf faster-than-light drive being second rate to anyone's. My NASA advisors would've chewed off their own legs for a practical near light-speed drive.

  I gazed at my patient with new eyes. How could a creature that moved like cold syrup, however technologically advanced, do business with faster folks? At least it wouldn't make any hasty bargains. “Do you know which galaxy the map shows?"

  "We are working on that, but the project is complex since the image is limited and the map supplies no directional cues such as the position of what you humans call the Great Attractor."

  I had a thought. “It must've taken forever for the language instruction sequence to finish."

  "Hardly, the program was interactive. The student set the pace, and our student, this station's data controller, is a quick study."

  Damn. If it weren't for that interactivity, I'd have some notion of how fast this fellow should be operating. Still, I saw another possible angle. “Did the instruction include audio?"

  Deal lifted several legs in sequence, another gesture that was lost on me. “You wish to know if we can produce the creature's actual speech."