by S. H. Jucha
“You needn’t bother, Admiral. We can sleep when we finish saving the universe, or at least this corner of it. What do you need from us?”
Alex looked at the people assembled before him, Mickey, his flight Chief, and the techs they had woken up, who wore expectant faces. He shrugged and accepted his guilt, tucking it aside. Alex sent Cordelia’s woven matrix to them, demonstrating the interplay of conversations. He explained the frequency scale with its notations for modulation of the notes that was the heart of the matrix. Alex could see by the silence that greeted the revelation that it was too much for them to absorb. No intuitive leaps were going to be forthcoming.
“People,” Alex explained, “we need to start a dialog … a dialog at the most fundamental level. First, we must get them to understand that we want to communicate and learn from them.” He looked at their faces, and it dawned on him that as a people, New Terran or Méridien, they were technicians not linguists. Worse, for each society, there had been only the one common base language.
Alex began to pace again, thinking fiercely. His people watched him pace the room and waited.
“Okay, we start with the universal language, mathematics. Mickey, I want to ping the hull with one ping, pause, two pings, pause, three pings,” Alex requested.
“Can do, Admiral,” Mickey replied, happy to have a definitive direction.
He and the techs spent a few moments setting up the process. Claude selected a clear, clean tone from Cordelia’s matrix and had Julien load it in the monitoring instrument. Meanwhile, Julien opened channels to Cordelia, Z, and Mutter to relay all future data from the silver ship. Then Claude programmed the sequence the Admiral had requested and sent it to the audio pickup on the silver ship’s hull. Moments later, the audio pickup relayed the sounds of tapping on the ship’s inner hull, repeating the sequence they had sent.
Mickey and Stan gave Alex huge grins, ecstatic with their success, but their smiles faded when they saw the frown on Alex’s face.
“Claude, send it again,” Alex ordered.
Again, they received the same tapping response. Alex waited until he thought he had made the point he wanted to make, then ordered Claude to repeat the signal. This time there was no immediate tapping. Alex held his breath, hoping he had gotten through to the aliens. Over the audio speakers, they heard three clear, different notes.
“Yes!” Alex said, punching the air. “Claude, send a set of three more pulses with four pings, pause, five pings, pause, six pings. Every time you get a successful response in audible tones, increment the pulses until you reach one hundred. Change nothing else.”
“Understood, Admiral,” Claude said, realizing what Alex had been trying to accomplish, a simple dialog.
Mutter took a brief tick to reorder her protocols that governed communication with the Admiral. Her comm protocols were now changing regularly after rarely changing in decades. She found the process invigorating, an uncommon sensation for her.
<“First,” Admiral,> Cordelia said excitedly.
Monitoring the Engineering Suite, Julien picked up a view of the Admiral and relayed it to his fellow SADEs. They saw him sit heavily in a chair, clap his hands together, and break into a huge smile. Then they watched his smile slowly fade to be replaced by a frown.
Cordelia’s idea was borne of her art.
When Alex closed his comm to direct the building of a laser projector, Julien sent a quick message to Renée that the engineering staff was building again and Alex was free of comms.
* * *
Renee woke a few people to help her deliver food and drink to the engineering team. Her message raced through the crew, waking most from their sleep, and she was surprised by the number of volunteers. Everyone wanted to watch the historic event unfold in person—humans’ first communications with aliens.
In a rare adoption of their cousins’ trait, Pia broadcast to the entire crew, except those in engineering, sending,
The SADEs kept their ships’ Directors, Captains, officers, crew, and passengers apprised of the engineering team’s progress. Tomas, Lina, and Captain Cordova were so entranced by the event that they listened on the Freedom’s bridge, as if being away from the immediate vicinity of Cordelia would lessen the event’s reality. There were two special guests on the Freedom’s bridge, as requested by Renée. Tomas had contacted the young Librans, relaying the directive,
Both had been overcome by the personage of a Co-Leader recognizing them, children of their people. Eloise had replied,
Amelia and Eloise now sat in crew members’ chairs, marveling at the enormous bridge display, a sight neither had expected to see for many years, if ever. That Ser had requested their presence still baffled them, but the manner in which they were treated made them feel special.
Eloise recalled the final words of her great-grandmother, “Keep him close.” Fiona Haraken had always been a powerful presence among the Librans, and Eloise intended to honor her great-grandmother’s final request, which she found came easy to her. She was proud of her Admiral. He had liberated her people and he had kept them close, accepting them as his responsibility. Now, even though he was frightening many of the Librans by communicating with their great enemy, it was his supposition that was being proven correct—the inhabitants of the silver ships would speak with him.
Captain Lazlo Menlo, First Mate Ahmed Durak, and Commander Sheila Reynard hovered around the Money Maker’s bridge speakers, following Mutter’s every transmission. Captain Menlo felt very proud of the role his elderly SADE was playing. Her penchant for ancient symphonic music was reaping great rewards, and every time Mutter added progress to the investigation, Lazlo playfully punched the arm of his First Mate. When Mutter equated the number “one” to the title of the fighter’s leader, which Cordelia rec
ognized as “First,” Lazlo swung his arm out only to find empty air. When he looked around, Ahmed was standing on the other side of him, smiling politely at him.
-18-
The Libran flotilla watched the events aboard the Rêveur unfold in real time, which gave Julien the idea to take the Admiral’s concept of keeping the people informed one step further. Every three hours, following the capture of the silver ship, Julien edited a summary of the events into a tight vid package and sent an FTL comm to New Terra. The first comm arrived at New Terra’s FTL station ten days later.
The SADEs aboard the Unsere Menschen, the three liners, and the freighter were the first to pick up Julien’s transmission. It had been twenty-five days since the flotilla had left for Arnos. The SADEs distributed the vids to the Director and Captains, who wasted no time approving them for broadcast to the crew and passengers. Every three hours, work on the ships would come to a halt, food utensils would be set down, and children would crowd around vid displays to watch the newest vid.
When the first vid was distributed aboard the Unsere Menschen, arriving in the middle of the work day, the New Terran contract workers were bewildered by the Librans who literally froze in mid-motion. Z, who now had many of his sensory systems in place, saw the confusion on the part of the contract workers and recalled his lessons from Julien and Cordelia. He sent the vid to every screen in the ship, and the contract workers and Libran children gathered around to watch and listen. Upon discovering that the vids would arrive continually every three hours, many of the contract workers stayed after work hours to watch the latest installments.
Making one of his most adventuresome decisions, Z contacted President Gonzalez in her office when he received the first compressed vid.
Maria smiled to herself. She was acquainted with Z and Cordelia from her communications with Julien. Z was as advertised. “Z, you’re already speaking with me,” Maria replied. She couldn’t help but enjoy each and every contact with a Méridien SADE again. She missed Julien … and Alex.
“Z, if I may interrupt, you may address me as ‘President Gonzalez’ or ‘Madam President,’” Maria replied.
“Have we lost ships, Z?” Maria asked.
“Six!” Maria exclaimed. “But Alex only took four ships.”
Maria sat back in her chair, deflated. Alex is losing, she thought. She had hoped with all her might that Alex would prevail over the silver ships. “Z, I’m not sure a vid of the loss of the Daggers would be something I would like to see, nor my people come to think about it.”
Z explained, wondering why the President would think he should have it.
“You don’t? Then what are you offering me, Z?”
Alex speaking with the aliens ... Maria processed the phrase several times before she started laughing and kept laughing until she started choking. Concerned staff rushed into her office, one carrying a glass of water. She waved them off.
“Yes, Z, send me the vid immediately and continue to send the others to me as you receive them.”
After the vid downloaded to her reader, Maria watched it, laughing and shaking her head at what she saw, even as pride threatened to burst her heart. She called two techs into her office and told them to play the vid over the screens in Government House and be ready to broadcast a download from Z in 2.35 hours.
In the meantime, Maria recorded a message for the planet’s media stations. Her short vid featured her sitting at her desk as she said, “Greetings from Government House. Attached to this message is a vid from the Admiral’s flotilla in the Arnos system. We will be receiving a second vid at 13.50 hours, and we will immediately forward it to you. Your viewers should be interested in watching Admiral Racine conversing with the aliens.”
Maria sent the message to her administrator and sat back in her carved guriel chair with a satisfied look on her face. She hadn’t felt this good since they had launched the Rêveur on its return trip to Méridien after its seventy-one-year absence.
-19-
Mickey, Stan, and the techs exited the port bay where they had set up a powerful laser projector and connected its input to the bay’s comm station. Back in the suite, the engineering team completed their equipment setup that would control the laser’s input and were about to announce to Alex their readiness when the suite’s doors hissed open and a group of Méridiens, led by Renée, walked in with food trays and drink pitchers. Alex opened his mouth to postpone the interruption but closed it quickly when he saw the expression on Renée’s face.
Terese quipped, sharing the message with Renée, Pia, Geneviève, and especially Alex.
Witnessing the blush creep up Alex’s neck in response to Terese’s remark, Pia replied privately to her, sending,
Alex was anxious to establish deeper communications with the aliens as soon as he could. But he also knew he had a bad habit of driving himself too hard and suspected he was doing the same to his engineering team. They required a break, he required a break, and they all required food. Otherwise the quality of their efforts would suffer.
Renée placed her tray in front of Alex and took his face firmly in her hands. She kissed him and felt him relax into her embrace. The crew, had they been asked, were extremely grateful for the Admiral’s distraction, even if briefly. They were all starving.
Alex sat down and plowed into his food, happy to see a plethora of trays and drink carafes spread around the tables. The engineering team had missed more than one meal.
Renée and her volunteers watched the food disappear. Several Méridiens quickly exited the suite and hurried back to the meal room.
* * *
Once the engineering crew were finished eating, everyone noticed the shift in Alex’s demeanor, and the servers hurried to collect the trays and clear the room. Only Renée lingered for a moment.
When the suite’s door hissed closed behind Renée, Alex linked all the players and sent,
Cordelia tested h
er control of the laser projector and the audio transmitter on the hull. She followed Alex’s lead, using math as the common language and projecting a horizontal row of icons—a vertical line, a plus sign, a vertical line, an equal sign, and two parallel standing lines. At the same time, Cordelia sent a series of the alien’s audible signals—one, a pause, one, a pause, and two—then waited.
In the suite, the speakers uttered a great deal of whistling, tweets, and shrill notes. The aliens’ level of excitement was obvious and so was the degree of conversation. Suddenly a single note blasted through the suite’s speakers, causing most of the engineering personnel to jump. Then they heard a series of succinct tones. The first, third, and fifth notes matched the aliens’ tones for “one”, “one”, and “two” that had been previously translated.
Alex smiled to himself at Julien’s declaration.
Now I can truly appreciate Z’s desire to be mobile, Cordelia thought, intrigued by the Admiral’s and Julien’s comments. One could wish to experience this in the human world.
