Vinium (The Silver Ships Book 10)
Page 5
Growing impatient of the wait for the progenitors to instigate contact, Scarlet Mandator decided to enjoy a trip on a tram. The tram wouldn’t journey too far from the mesa, but it would present the mandator with an opportunity to absorb the brightness and relish the quiet. No sooner had the mandator reached the tram station than the Ollassa heard the hail of a tasker.
“Mandator, the progenitors are landing,” the tasker said.
“On the mesa top?” the mandator asked.
“Unknown, Mandator. A group of vessels, much in appearance to the seedling, have left the progenitor ships. They’re organized and descending.”
“Back to Mesa Control,” the mandator ordered, having recognized the tasker as working there.
The two Ollassa hurried to the elevator and rode it up to the command center, which was set deep under the mesa top to protect it from a shuttle accident, which had been known to happen, although not recently. Mesa Control’s main corridor was alive with the movement of monitors and taskers, who stepped aside when they spotted Scarlet Mandator.
“Mandator,” Indigo Executor said, greeting the center’s guest.
“What more is there to report?” Scarlet Mandator asked.
“A group of small ships descended from the progenitors’ ships. They took up positions high above and remain there. Only one descended.”
“Remain there? Explain?” the mandator questioned.
“That’s all that one can express, Mandator. The ships spread into a circular pattern, appearing like petals on a giant bloom.”
“What of exhausts or gases from their rear?” the mandator asked, recalling the words of his ship’s monitor.
“None, Mandator. The ships hover in place effortlessly with no sense of fuels being consumed.”
“Extraordinary,” Scarlet Mandator commented. “By the Light, we should possess these capabilities if the progenitors would share. What of the last ship … the one that left the group?”
“We believe it waits for you, Mandator. It floats at treetop level at the meadow’s edge at the site of the Scarlet Life Giver.”
Mandator’s bloom faced the executor, and Indigo Executor tipped a bloom in commiseration.
“Order an express tram,” Mandator requested, hurrying from Mesa Control, making way to the elevator, and descending to the tram station level. Scarlet Mandator was disappointed to see three other mandators standing in two of the tram’s cars and a third car’s bubble open and waiting. When Scarlet Mandator’s bubble was closed, a tasker slid the tram out of the station and, soon, bright light shone through the clear sky.
The thought occurred to Scarlet Mandator that hurrying to meet an alien species with whom no conversation could take place was a fruitless venture. Equally troubling was the presence of the three mandators who traveled in the trailing cars. Reviewing the Life Giver’s sparse words, Scarlet Mandator was unsure whether the conversation to take place with the progenitors was meant to be exclusive or could include others. Either way, Scarlet Mandator was determined to ensure hierarchy among the mandators, for the event was clearly understood.
Hours later, the tram slowed to a stop, and the tasker hurried to open the three passenger cars. When the mandators were assembled, Scarlet Mandator addressed the other three.
“The words of the Life Giver are unclear to me as to whether the greeting of the progenitors should be mine exclusively or whether you should accompany me. It must be noted that I visited this very Life Giver on the cycle that I landed on the mesa top. Now, the progenitors are above this spot, awaiting a greeting. Is this a momentous coincidence? I don’t believe so. Consider that their seedling ships float in the sky without effort. We are dealing with a species far advanced above us. In the name of peace, I will not object to your accompanying me, but I will speak for us until it’s time to bring the progenitors to the Life Giver. Do you agree?”
Scarlet Mandator received the assent of the others, and the mandators made their way from the tram tracks through the path to the clearing. The small transport was bypassed. It was designed to carry a single Ollassa.
When the mandators reached the meadow, three of them stopped, and Scarlet Mandator stepped gingerly farther along the path, keeping the bloom tilted upward toward the seedling ship.
* * *
Snapping awake, Alex accessed the controller’s output. His movement disturbed Renée, who woke and did the same thing.
“That’s something you don’t see every day,” Renée quipped. “The flower is rather pretty … like a big, beautiful scarlet sunflower. Did anyone notice that the face, if that’s what it is, matches the color of the pods on this great tree?”
“But not the three waiting at the tree line,” Miranda said.
Alex and Renée shifted their viewpoint to observe the three aliens they had missed.
“They appear to be similar except for the color of their flowers or faces or whatever,” Alex said. “I wonder if the colors represent a hierarchy.”
“Doubtful, Alex,” Julien said. “The great trees that we observed during our searches displayed a range of pod colors. It would be logical that the face colors are a distinction of subspecies. I would surmise that capabilities that we can’t yet observe define their societal structure.”
“Well, first things first,” Alex said, rising and stretching, popping out heavy muscles in his shoulders and back. “We need a vocabulary, and that will take an intermediary … namely you, Julien.”
“Where are Cordelia and Mutter when you need them?” Julien commented.
“Nonsense, Julien,” Renée shot back. “You needed Alex and three SADEs the first time because the Swei Swee represented your first alien language challenge. But Willem, Ginny, and Keira cracked the Dischnya language based on their work with the aliens, and that was one SADE and two humans.”
“However, Julien isn’t going to get far stepping off this traveler and looking like that,” Alex said. “We need a disguise.”
“Oh, how fun,” Miranda enthused. She supplied a model of Julien’s avatar and began decorating it, and Renée joined her, playing with an assortment of leaves, branches, and flowers.
Renée would glance at Alex, who was observing the progress in his implant and who often frowned at their efforts. She would laugh and remove the most recent additions.
Finally, Alex said, “Stop. This is going in the wrong direction. I don’t want Julien to look like the Vinians. He should appear as a superior individual that, in some manner, would be acceptable to this species.”
Miranda stripped the avatar’s image, and Renée and she started over again. It was Renée’s great store of vids that she had collected, especially the fantasies, which enabled the avatar’s final version. Julien’s body was clothed in small, dark, pointed leaves but laid in a reptilian pattern that resembled scales.
The SADE was crowned with a pair of antlers that were textured like branches. That was Miranda’s idea, who thought Julien should have some sort of adornment above his head to signify a lofty position. Julien completed the body by texturing his hands and feet the same as the antlers, but he chose to leave his face unadorned.
“You can’t leave your face flesh-colored, Julien,” Alex argued.
Immediately, the face of the avatar’s image became a deep blue, which morphed to green and continued to shift through a human’s visible spectrum of light.
“That, I like,” Renée said.
“I borrowed it from Cordelia’s presentation, as the Haraken queen on meeting the Dischnya queen, Nyslara,” Julien admitted.
“Who got the idea from Trixie,” Alex added.
Julien rose and made his way to the back of the shuttle. As he walked, he communed with the other two SADEs to help him program his kernel’s display application, which was capable of projecting the image they had created. Only Julien and Cordelia had designed avatars that could project clothing, not that they always did. Jul
ien’s special synth-skin enabled his favorite manner of expressing his emotion by projecting some sort of hat or adornment on his head.
Miranda and Z rose and blocked the view of Julien from the human passengers, not that they had any intention of turning around. It’s not that SADEs were modest, quite the contrary; it’s that SADEs worked to preserve a similarity to human appearance. Few humans knew their entire secrets, as did Alex.
Julien stripped out of his clothes and, as the programs were completed, he added them to his application and projected the pieces from his synth-skin. When he was ready, he signaled Miranda and Z, who eased aside to allow him to pass.
“May I present your Vinian envoy, Sers?” Julien announced.
Renée stood and applauded.
Alex took in the measure of his friend, and said, “Now, I would be humbled before that image, if I were a Vinian.”
“Let’s hope so,” Julien said.
“No security?” Alain asked.
“We can’t disguise the two of you,” Alex said, addressing the twins, “and those bubbles that the SADEs identified make me think that fauna, or, more precisely said, animals, aren’t appreciated.”
“Ready, Julien?” Alex asked.
The SADE reached into a small equipment bag and pulled out a portable holo-vid. He strapped on a power supply to his forearm and plugged it into the holo-vid. Then he let his eyes take on a faraway look, turned on his face colors, and said in a warm, rich tone, “I am prepared to greet the aliens.”
Alex laughed and said, “Go forth and project or whatever, my friend. Good fortune.” He signaled Franz, Alex added an image of Julien, and he could hear Franz’s laughter from the pilot’s cabin.
Franz linked with Julien to convey his idea for the landing and received Julien’s assent. The SADEs cleared the hatchway so that the Vinians would only observe Julien exiting the craft.
Franz swiftly dropped the traveler. As he did, Julien signaled the hatch open. When the traveler halted its descent, gently touching the tips of the meadow grass, the SADE stepped through the hatch and dropped 2 meters to the ground. With the avatar’s power, Julien landed so lightly as to appear to have taken a single step forward.
Immediately, Franz lifted the traveler to the treetops, closing the hatch as he ascended. Everyone aboard was linked to the controller to watch the proceedings on the ground.
Julien allowed the Vinians time to absorb him. They appeared frozen in place. The individual with the bright red face was closer than the group, which waited at the meadow’s edge, and Julien singled out that individual. The SADE turned toward the alien, raised the holo-vid, and switched it on. With his free hand, Julien gestured the Vinian forward.
* * *
Scarlet Mandator watched in awe as the seedling ship descended but failed to complete its landing before the alien stepped from the floating vessel. Do these entities ignore the pull of the worlds in everything they do? the mandator wondered.
The mandator wanted to look at the other Ollassa, who waited at the meadow’s fringe, and seek their advice, but the opportunity was stolen when the progenitor beckoned. Frightened to move forward and yet frightened to disobey the Life Giver, the mandator finally persuaded the stalks to move.
Edging slowly closer to the progenitor, the mandator stopped two lengths away. If it wasn’t for the progenitor’s leafy covering and the texture of bark, Scarlet Mandator might have suspected the progenitor was an animal, which sent a shiver through the fronds. But, the cascade of color across the face of the entity announced a superior species. The mandator found the rich kaleidoscope of color mesmerizing.
When the mandator approached the progenitor no closer, the alien held up a stalk that ended in five pads, but only one was extended. The confusion as to what the alien was requesting was quickly dispelled when the stalk displayed two pads and then three pads.
Responding to the request, Scarlet Mandator counted one, two, and three, hoping it met the alien’s need. When the progenitor continued extending pads, the mandator joined in and kept counting for the alien, overjoyed to have understood the process so quickly. It was unknown how the progenitor would communicate to Scarlet Mandator, but the first part was obvious. The mandator realized the alien must be taught the Ollassa language.
While the red-bloomed Vinian counted out numbers, Julien detected the ultrasonic waves the alien used to communicate. Every signal frequency the alien sent was linked to a human word or phrase, which built the lexicon the SADEs could use for translations.
When Julien was ready, he held up a hand to the mandator, who unsure of the meaning of the gesture, nonetheless, stopped counting. Julien pointed to the holo-vid.
Unexpectedly, the mandator saw a light emanate from the progenitor’s device, and it displayed a simple image. Scarlet Mandator responded by naming it. The alien continued to show more and more images. Eventually, the images became more complex, and Scarlet Mandator struggled to name them with a single word. Rather than be daunted by the challenge, the mandator chose to trust in the progenitor’s abilities and decided to discourse on the subjects.
Eventually, the images displayed motion of one sort or the other, and the mandator proceeded to explain the subjects in depth. Eventually, the mandator forgot that this was a teaching session and jabbered away, as a new seedling was wont to do.
It was the soft chill of shade from the trees and the fading of the Light that abruptly ended the mandator in mid-sentence. Fronds shivered, and Scarlet Mandator grew apprehensive of the dark. The mandator was unaware of how to explain to the progenitor the imperative to return to the safety of the tram for the night and was concerned about irritating the alien.
However, the progenitor’s light from the device winked off, and a single pad was extended from the other stalk, which pointed down the path toward the tram. The mandator tipped a bloom in acknowledgment and hurried after the others, who had already deserted the meadow to seek shelter aboard the tram.
Aboard the traveler, Z and Miranda joined Julien in cataloguing the language he’d recorded.
-5-
Life Giver
Scarlet Mandator struggled awake when the beneficence of the Light seeped through the trees to stroke fronds. There was a desire to sip from a mineral bath, but there was none available. Deciding not to wait for the waking of the others, whose tram cars remained in deep shade, the mandator slipped quietly from the car. The tasker tipped a bloom, as the mandator passed.
Stalks responded sluggishly as the mandator entered the shaded path that led to the meadow beyond. Fronds closed tightly awaiting the return of the Light. Breaking through the trees to enter the meadow, which was bathed in the Light of the morning, the mandator paused, while fronds opened and stalks limbered.
Refreshed, Scarlet Mandator swung a bloom to look for the progenitor, surprised to find the alien standing in the same spot and gesturing as it did the cycle before. The mandator hurried to do as bidden, gazing eagerly at the device for the next image.
Instead, Scarlet Mandator was frozen by the image of the giant orb that had attacked the Worlds of Light. To add to the shock, the mandator heard the progenitor speak, saying, “We seek this ship.”
Julien had opened his mouth and left it open, as he generated the ultrasonic frequencies to communicate with the Ollassa.
Glancing from the device to the progenitor’s face and back, the mandator was unsure how to reply and fought to order conflicting thoughts. “Predator of progenitors?” Scarlet Mandator asked.
“Yes,” Julien replied. “I am Julien, Scarlet Mandator,” the SADE added, pointing to himself.
The mandator politely waited for the full name, but that was all the progenitor said. The Ollassa repeated the single word, in case he misunderstood, but the progenitor’s confirmation indicated he hadn’t. The conundrum for the mandator was that sharing information about the orb would fall under the Life Giver’s purview. The mandator didn’t have permission to discuss this well-protected subject with Julien.
“More images?” Mandator asked, pointing to the device on Julien’s arm.