The darkest gray personage hissed as it sat, turning its head slightly to its companion and making some liquid comment. The other nodded.
“Ex and Wye?” Nimisha said out of the corner of her mouth, leaning toward Jon.
Ex touched one digit to its chest and “ooool” was the sound that came out.
“Ex equals Ooool?”
Ool nodded vigorously and the mouth slit opened. The other gray clearly said, “Ooook,” pointing to itself. Then it indicated Ool and repeated that sound.
“Help, Helm,” Jon murmured.
“The true sound goes beyond human hearing, Commander. Repeat the sounds you do hear as closely as you can,” was Helm’s advice.
“Ool, ooooool?” Jon pointed to Ool. Then struggled with “Ooook.”
The two grays titled their heads from one side to another, regarding each other with black bands of eye slits wide.
“They’re too polite to laugh,” Syrona murmured. “But they have a sibilant . . . let me try my name. Sy-ron-ah.”
“Ssssooo ah,” was Ool’s attempt and it struggled with that much.
“Tim?” Tim offered, pointing to himself.
“Immmmm.” For some reason this sound was repeated not only by Ool and Ook, but by Ay, Bee, and then the audience.
“Pay dirt,” Casper remarked in a low tone.
Ool and Ook exchanged several remarks.
“If they could be kept talking,” Helm said quietly, “more sounds could be registered and there would be a better chance of isolating words within the sounds.”
“What do you call this?” Jon said, holding up the cup and pointing to it.
Ool and Ook once again exchanged glances. Ool said a quick combination of vowels.
Jon pointed into the cup. Ook replied with another set of sounds. And the audience repeated these. Then the aliens began to chant the sounds that had already been made, starting with the names of the two grays, Syrona’s name, Tim, and the word for cup and for the juice. The name “Immm” caused what must be alien laughter whenever it was repeated.
“Let’s everyone sing along,” Nimisha said softly, struggling to keep from laughing aloud. “Cup,” she said in a louder voice, holding it up. Pointing inside, she said, “Fruit juice.”
The audience came in right on cue, and that was how the rest of the morning went: each species getting a chance to point and name things in its own language while the other struggled to replicate the sounds. Occasional ululations rippled through the audience, but the overall reaction seemed to be one of enjoyment.
“Makes me think of the sounds from old Terran Africa,” Syrona remarked at one point when a warble had been musically extended.
Then Jon raised his arms for silence, a gesture understood by the aliens. He pointed to all the humans and said very clearly, “Hu—manz.” He put his thumb on his chest “Hu—man.”
“Ooooh—maaaa—zuh!” Ool said carefully.
Jon repeated the word, aspirating the “h.” “Yu-man-z.”
“Yu-ma-z,” was as close as Ool, Ook, Ay, Bee, and the crowd got. But Jon clasped both hands above his head in approbation. He gracefully turned his hand to Ool and Ook, then circled his fingers toward Ay, Bee, and the audience.
Ool gave a quick bob of its head. “Ssss-imm,” was the carefully enunciated reply, with Ool opening its mouth wide and showing the regular row of tiny pointed teeth before the lips closed on the “m” sound.
“Maybe that’s why they laughed at my name,” Tim said. “It’s something like a word of theirs after all. Ssss-immm,” he said, enunciating with lips and sound.
The hooting was widespread, and many repeated Jon’s gesture of clasping their hands above their head.
“Helm, are they saying shim or ssssh-im?” Casper asked.
“On the decibel recorder it is two separate sounds. Sh’im is closest,” Helm replied after a nanosecond’s deliberation.
“Sh’im,” Jon said, pointing to them. His thumb in his direction. “Oo-man.”
“I am picking up private conversations in the audience,” Helm said. “I am recording. They are relaxed and enjoying this.”
“Best show in town,” Casper said, rolling his eyes with amusement.
They kept on pointing at and naming things, from the dirt and stones underfoot to the shrubbery, the stools, the ruins of the old ship, the sky, sun, and moons until the sun was high in the sky.
At last Syrona admitted to a splitting headache, which allowed Nimisha to say she, too, had one. Tim had been quiet for some time, but sat quietly on his stool, watching the Sh’im leaders.
“Have you enough to work on now, Helm?” Jon asked as both Sh’im and Humans seemed to take a pause.
“Yes, Captain.”
“Good, then let’s wind up this session and thank our hosts.” He rose, bowed to Ool and Ook, and gestured to the gig. Then he pantomimed the sun going down and raised one finger.
Ool bobbed his head and held up his two fingers. Then turned his head from side to side.
“Now does that mean a bob is no and a shake is yes?” Syrona asked.
“That would be my interpretation,” Helm said.
So Jon lifted two fingers and shook his head and bowed again. Ool, Ook, Ay, and Bee rose and bowed. So did all the Sh’im in the audience, and with that the two groups separated.
“I don’t know when I’ve been more exhausted,” Nimisha said as they returned to the gig.
“That’s normal enough when trying to reach a rapport with new . . . ah . . . aliens,” Jon said. “I’m whacked.”
“Thank goodness,” Syrona muttered, but she gave Jon a quick grin to take away the sting of her comment.
“And Tim’s our star,” Jon said, putting his arms across the boy’s shoulders and then catching him as the boy stumbled. “Our tired star. I think he rates as many burgers and as much ice cream as he can eat.”
“If he doesn’t fall asleep first,” Casper said.
“You have been followed,” Helm said softly. “They do not carry arms.”
“Don’t turn around,” Jon said quickly, twisting Tim, who was about to do just that. “They would be curious about our transport.”
“Ay and Bee’d’ve told ’em,” Tim said tiredly, plodding along.
“I think seeing’s believing,” Syrona remarked, reaching out her hand to help him.
“Shouldn’t we at least wave goodbye?” Nimisha asked, keenly aware of being under surveillance.
“A bow would be safer and equally appropriate,” Jon replied.
They had reached the gig now and, when Jon murmured “about-face,” they did so as well as any drill team, bowing at the line of Sh’im who crowded the crest of the hill, some creeping up to peek through the shrubs. The hisses, hoots, and other sounds which could only have been made by Sh’im vocal equipment carried on the still midday air. Once again bows were exchanged. Then the Humans entered the gig and the hatch slid shut.
“That’s hard work,” Casper said, wiping sweat from his forehead. “Cater, something cool and tart, please. Tim, what do you fancy?”
“Anything cool,” Tim said, flouncing down in the nearest chair. “I never thought talking could be such hard work,” he added.
“Cater, please increase the cool and tart order by . . . all of us?” Nimisha looked round at Jon and Syrona, who nodded.
“My pleasure. This is a combination of tart fruity flavors, unsweetened,” Cater said in her lovely alto voice. “It should be refreshing to the entire body.”
“I agree, Tim,” Nimisha said, taking two glasses from the dispenser counter and bringing one to him.
“Using a different section of the brain,” Jon said. “Not one that ordinarily gets much exercise. But I think we did well.” He lifted his glass in a toast.
“I have acquired a great deal of phonetic information which I will now analyze. Your next session in two days’ time will be much easier. Hand units can be adapted to synthesize their words in tones they can hear and reduce theirs
to ones you will understand.” Helm paused. “Verbs would be very useful.”
“Some languages on old Earth didn’t have the verb ‘to be,’ ” Syrona commented after a thoughtful sip of her drink.
“ ‘Cogito, ergo sum,’ ” Jon said, laughing.
Nimisha regarded him with surprise.
“Latin can be very useful,” he added, and his eyes twinkled at her with humor.
“You continue to surprise me, Captain,” she said, raising her empty glass in a toast.
“More?” Jon asked, reaching for the pitcher.
“Yes, please.”
“You continue to surprise me, Lady Nimisha. I thought First Families were above normal courtesies.”
Nimisha blinked. “Not if you were raised by my mother.”
“Orders please, ma’am?”
“Oh, yes, Helm, we’ll be returning to the Fiver shortly.” She gestured to the controls. “You or me?”
Jon grinned. “Shall we give Casper a turn? He needs the practice.”
“Which means,” Casper said, rising and putting his glass down, “that your headache is worse than mine. Well, I don’t mind if I do.” He seated himself at the control panel and checked the screens to be sure there were no Sh’im lurking close enough. Just in case, he lifted vertically, very slowly.
As the gig rose above the obscuring hill, they could all see the Sh’im on their way back across the broad plain where the bird ship had carved its final path.
“Do we wait for a formal invitation to see where they live?” Nimisha asked.
“I have the feeling that that would be appropriate. I would suggest we bring the Fiver and perhaps rig an exterior screen so a vid can give them the usual out-of-this-world briefing,” Jon said.
“Hmmm. That could be very interesting,” Nimisha mused.
The invitation to visit the Sh’im settlement was issued halfway through a very productive session at the original site. The visual aids, carefully prepared by the Federated Sentient Planets Exploratory team for showing to sapients, was avidly watched—three times, in fact, after Ool and Ook asked with many bows and gestures. The tape included space views of Earth and its moon, diagrams of Sol system, the two sexes that inhabited it, and the many animals that still roamed the Wildlife Preserves. The first moon landing and the subsequent installation and the space station were included, and then the first great colony generation ship that was launched to Alpha Centauri binary system. Mathematical equations were included, since this had always been considered the best way to bridge a semantic gap. While the humans watched for signs of especial interest in the reruns of the tape, they saw none.
Many small comments were made and recorded by Helm during the replays. When the third showing finished, Tim, Jon, and Casper began to acquire action verbs by demonstration. Vocabulary increased in a quantum jump as both species could now repeat what they learned in their own way and get across meanings.
By afternoon, the Sh’im were able to indicate that they were indeed descendants of those who survived the crash. They had remained near the wreck, hoping to be rescued. The cliffs not far from the wreck were riddled with habitable caves. The survivors had explored these when such equipment as they had was still operational.
“If we’re figuring their notion of a year correctly,” Nimisha said, “that was not quite a hundred of our years ago.”
“Yes, but we can’t establish if they are from this general spatial area or if they got caught by the wormhole,” Jon said. “Helm, have you anything we can screen that looks like a wormhole?”
“Yes, Captain,” was the prompt response. “I recorded the one we came through.”
“Oh, well done, Helm,” Casper said. “We bounced around so much that we couldn’t get any sort of an accurate record.”
“I suspect it’s only because of you, Helm, and your response time that we weren’t badly damaged,” Nimisha said.
“That is why an AI Helm is superior to the fastest human reaction times,” Helm said.
Jon leaned toward Nimisha and whispered, “Do I detect a bit of condescension in that reply?” Then he nearly fell off the stool when it responded to his change of position by tilting.
Nimisha smothered a laugh. “Helm is only stating a fact,” she replied, recovering her composure.
The humans also learned that the Sh’im had two sexes, and that the darker the coat the older the being. They did not have long life spans, thirty years being an average. The female tended to have multiple births—two and three, produced every year for ten years. The male also tended the young, who matured quickly and could help in providing food for the latest arrivals by the time the next group were born. An increasing population appeared to be the main reason why the Sh’im had been searching for a suitable planet: to relieve overcrowding on their home worlds. They had three, but the humans could not grasp if these were M-type planets in separate systems or three planets in the same one.
“Three M-type planets would be most unusual in the same system,” Jon said.
“Unless they’ve terraformed or Sh’immied others in their home system,” Nimisha said. “If they could fly in that crazy bird, they might have been technologically superior in other ways.”
The Sh’im had power from windmills, laboriously constructed out of local woods, which was why there had been no metal echo on the Fiver’s screens. Over the hill and at the original town site, the windmills were busy spinning in the good breeze. The Sh’im had four towns, since they were prolific even with the number of predators on Erehwon. That was why the two-day interval was needed: to allow the leaders of the other townships to arrive, go home and report, and return for the next session. They had a form of chemo-luminescent lighting in their caves. They had blown glass artifacts, some in brilliant colors. They were able to draw water from artesian wells, and they had power to smelt and manufacture metal implements. They hunted in large groups for protection and to transport meat back to their homes. They dried and stored the meat in the large pottery containers they produced from local clay and fired in kilns. There were a few metal containers from the shipwreck, but these were rarely used, more treasured as objects to venerate. They had looms and collected fur from the huge grazers to weave into rugs for their homes and for use at night in the coldest part of the year. Otherwise they did not use clothing or footwear. They had written glyphs, and the young were taught basic lessons. In each cliff site an elder kept meticulous records of births, deaths, achievements, and a general history.
“We shan’t be breaking any FSP laws, then,” Jon said with a sigh of relief, “if we help them upgrade to a higher technology.”
“How much higher do they need to go?” Nimisha asked.
“Well, a repeller screen would keep them from the periodic attacks of the avians,” Jon said. “If Helm has sufficient parts to make them.”
“I do,” Helm replied, and Nimisha frowned.
“Why not?” Jon asked. “They’ve already shown us more edible vegetables and burrowing creatures than we were able to find. They’ve had a more balanced diet than we managed.”
“The terrain here is different,” Nimisha said.
“Not that much,” Jon said.
“It’s not that I object to offering what the Fiver has,” Nimisha began, not really sure how to present her real objection.
“I’d say it’s more the time it’ll take us to do installations, isn’t it?” Jon said, glancing sideways at her, one eyebrow raised.
“You come right to the point, don’t you?”
“I don’t see why not,” was his quick reply. He touched her arm lightly. “I do want to see what the other planets are like. Those orders remain whether or not we have the Poolbeg. In the light of what we now know, one of them might be Sh’im, and we can return them to their own civilization. Or tell their planetary leaders where they are.”
“They wanted to found a new colony. Basically, they have,” she said, almost resenting how well he read her body language.
“If their ship had landed intact, they’d’ve had more essential tools and equipment, as well as bodies, to found an efficient colony.”
“I don’t see what prevents us from giving them stuff from the freighter,” Casper said.
“Do we know they haven’t found it?” Jon asked. “They indicated that they’ve done some considerable exploring.”
“I think they would have mentioned it,” Syrona said. “Though that would have been a long way for their shorter legs to go. Most of the open pods we saw had been damaged in the drop. We didn’t see any intact ones that had been opened manually.”
“Good point,” Jon said. “More to cement good relations with them.”
“We are being candid?” Nimisha asked.
“As they have had space drive, even if none of those now alive ever flew a ship, I feel we should be as honest as possible,” Jon said. “I rather like them.”
“I do, too,” Nimisha began and then realized she had no reservations. Being open and forthright saved all the trouble of remembering what they should or should not say; or what useful technology they could give the Sh’im to improve on what they had already achieved. “Of course, we’d have to modify equipment for three-fingered hands.”
Jon grinned, and if he could read her body language, she could read his. He was relieved that she was willing to be open.
“They will need tools that give them a different leverage than we’d need,” Casper said thoughtfully. “Their body center of mass is at a different height above the ground, which requires a different lever length, and their smaller handspan means they would need smaller spans for tools.”
“Look, Nimisha,” Syrona said, “I know you’re anxious to investigate the other planets, so why don’t you and Jon go do that while Casper, Tim, and I stay here to help the Sh’im. Tim’s had so much fun with the young Sh’im . . . and I’d really like to stay here.” She glanced down at her hands, which were nervously pulling at the seams of her coverall.
Instantly Casper put a sympathetic arm about her shoulders. “Pregnant and all, I’d say that might be wiser, love.” He looked up at Jon and Nimisha, not exactly pleading but obviously siding with his mate. “And for Tim’s sake, too.”
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