Analog SFF, April 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "I guess we can't sell them music players, can we?"

  "This is serious,” said Duncan.

  Roger nodded. “Art show,” he said, more to himself than to Duncan. “I guess that makes sense. With their limited range of hearing, I'd assume the visual arts would play a disproportionately large part in their culture. Who knows? Maybe we could sell them art reproductions?"

  "Who knows?"

  As Roger and Duncan walked into the art reception, a Chuff ran up to them. “Hi, Duncan,” he said. “Oh, man, it's nice to see you again.” Then the Chuff turned to Roger. “Hi. My ear-name is Fwem. I'm the just-for-now explainer for how we Chuff do things."

  Duncan made a momentary adjustment to Roger's microphone boom. “That means Acting Cultural liaison, as far as I can make out.” Duncan gave a tolerant smile. “Your counterpart."

  Roger wondered how Duncan could tell the Chuff apart. I guess diplomats have to be good at that kind of stuff.

  "If you have questions,” said Fwem, “just ask me. I know stuff."

  "Thank you. And my name's Roger."

  "You can eat and drink,” said Fwem. “The cook says he thinks everything is safe for Terrans."

  "I'm . . . I'm not very hungry,” said Roger.

  "Okay,” said Fwem, turning away. “Well, bye-bye, then. Have fun."

  Roger, following Fwem with his eyes, widened his gaze to take in the reception as a whole. The gathering looked like just about any haute culture reception on Earth—if that look was suitably blurred by alcohol. Unnatural looking people in unnatural looking clothes milled about, snagged hors d'oeuvres and drinks from passing trays, and occasionally looked at things hung on the walls.

  As he wandered, Roger's attention was drawn to two Chuff glaring at each other, their eyes flashing. By their bearing, Roger could tell they were important personages. One of them caught Roger staring at him, and he stared back with flickering eyes. After a couple of seconds, he pointed to the other Chuff and said, “He started it. He said my review was stinky."

  "No I didn't,” said the other. "You started it. You said my story was really dumb and yucky. You're just mean."

  The first Chuff drew himself to his full height. "You're mean!” he said. “And you started it. Just because I loved that picture, you had to hate it."

  "Liar!"

  "Stinky face!"

  Just then, a Chuff came by carrying a tray of finger food. “Eat some of these,” he said to the two angry Chuff. “They'll make your tummies happy."

  Roger threw a “help me” glance to his boss halfway across the room. Duncan came over. “We're going to look at some of the pretty pictures,” he said, dragging Roger off toward a wall.

  "They are a childlike people,” said Duncan.

  "I wonder,” said Roger. “Can they really be childish and sophisticated at the same time?” He stared up at a painting that seemed to be just a featureless rectangle painted in some dull, uniform color.

  "Apparently.” Duncan peered in at the painting. “Can you see anything in this painting?” he said with an all but imperceptible shake of his head. “Or for that matter, in any of the paintings?"

  "I'm surmising the hues are mostly in the ultraviolet."

  "Indeed,” said Duncan, coolly. “I wonder if that explains Terran modern art as well."

  A Chuff meandered up to them. “Do you like this painting?” he asked.

  "It's . . . interesting,” said Duncan.

  "Yes,” said Roger. “Very . . . interesting."

  "Oh, goody,” said the Chuff. “I'm happy you think so.” He wandered away.

  "I wonder,” said Roger. “Are they really childlike, or is it just an artifact of the translators?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Maybe we think of them as children because of the translator baby talk,” said Roger. “And maybe they think of us the same way for the same reason."

  Duncan gave a mirthless chuckle. “An interstellar trade summit with toddlers doing the translations. God, I hope not."

  Roger looked away at a Chuff. “Boy, I wish I knew what those flickering eyes were all about."

  "The instructions with the translator say voice is the primary mode of information transfer and the eyes are the secondary method.” Duncan nodded across the room. “It looks as if the just-for-now explainer is coming our way—to explain something, perhaps."

  "Good,” said Roger with a smile. “I could do with some explanations."

  Fwem approached. “Because you are our important guests,” he said, “it is time for you to paint a picture now."

  "Excuse me?” said Duncan.

  The Chuff put one trisectioned arm closely around Duncan's shoulder and another around Roger's. “Come on.” He maneuvered the Terrans toward a large canvas, as featureless as were most of the others. A crowd awaited them. Another Chuff stepped forward and, with a show of ceremony, held forth a small, rectangular box, opened it, and presented Duncan with something like a thick artist's brush, but with sliders on it. Fwem sidled up and explained that the sliders controlled the brush-tip thickness, and selected the colors.

  "Thank you,” said Duncan to the Chuff holding the box, “but my associate here is the artist.” He handed the brush to Roger.

  "What? Me?” said Roger as Duncan forced the brush into his hand. “I haven't any idea how—"

  "Paint!” said Duncan.

  "Okay, okay.” Roger regarded the brush. One of the sliders clearly indicated hue. Next to that slider was a band of color starting at green and merging to blue and then dark blue. Most of the slider seemed to be black. “Must be ultraviolet,” said Roger. “This confirms it: most of their vision has to be in the UV.” Well, that rules out our selling them vid-players.

  Roger looked up. The Chuff were staring at him with expressions that seemed to be eager anticipation.

  "Paint,” said Duncan, this time softly but with a sense of urgency.

  "Why?"

  "To understand us,” said Fwem, “you have to understand our—beep!"

  Damn translators! Roger smiled sweetly. “I should very much like to,” he said. Then he made a few pseudo-random movements of the sliders and, at the lower left corner of the screen, made a kid's simple drawing of a bunny rabbit in deep blue.

  "Sweet!” said a Chuff.

  "Pretty!” said another.

  "Do more!” said yet another.

  Roger exchanged a glance with Duncan and then, with a flourish and the brush set wide, he made a bold, diagonal blue gash of color across the canvas.

  Gasps came from the assembled Chuff, and one of them said “Aw, man!"

  Roger smiled to himself and raised his arm for another stroke of artistry. But before the brush contacted the canvas, Fwem grabbed his wrist.

  "No!” cried Fwem. “You have made doo-doo on the painting of one of our best and most expensive picture-painters. Pretty please don't paint any more."

  "What? Wait a minute. I didn't know.” Roger glanced to Duncan for moral support but didn't receive any. “I mean, I just thought—"

  "I think you'd better go now.” Fwem glanced around. “It looks like some of the painter's friends might want to beat you up."

  "Look. I can explain. Let me think.” Roger realized he really couldn't explain—not without admitting that all the paintings looked essentially featureless.

  "Tell me tonight at the music doing,” said Fwem. “Not now. Please go away now."

  "Wait,” said Roger as Duncan pulled him away toward the door. “I'm sorry."

  "Yeah, right,” said one of the nearby Chuff.

  As they waited on the roof for a taxi, Duncan let out a sigh. “I'm afraid we blew it,” he said. “We'll get one more chance tonight. If we can't impress them with our basic wonderfulness, then I shudder to think where the Agency'll post us next."

  Roger did shudder. “I don't understand it. After I drew the rabbit, I thought—"

  "Don't think about it. Concentrate on tonight's mission."

  Suddenly Fwem's word
s registered. “Did he say music doing?"

  "Fwem invited us—more like a command, actually.” Duncan glanced up at the arriving air-cab. “Here. At sunset. A concert, I think."

  "Concert? But they have a hearing range of one note.” Roger gave a frenzied little laugh. “They say music is the universal language, but not in this part of the universe.” Roger pulled himself together and tried to sound professional. “I doubt if it'll be music. I'd expect something more like cadenced poetry."

  "The translator used the word music,” said Duncan.

  "Nrrilgan translators have been known to be wrong.” Roger smiled. “Music. What will it be—a lot of Chuff humming their single note for an hour or so?"

  "You've got the rest of the day to find out what it will be—and to come up with a plan to impress them.” The taxi's side irised open and Duncan climbed in. “We've got to get that lutetium contract."

  "Sure. Great. Fine.” Roger followed his boss into the taxi. “Coming up to speed on an alien culture from a standing start—in the rest of the day."

  "The good news is that you have more time than you might think. The Chuff day is about thirty-eight hours long."

  * * * *

  Roger unpacked his travel bag in the compartment provided for him in the Jupiter-class spaceship, which served as the Terran Embassy. Then he went for a walk. Maybe if he observed some Chuff doing what Chuff do, he might be able to come up with an idea or two. And his presence shouldn't skew his observations; it was a capital city. Aliens probably wouldn't be a rarity.

  Strolling the broad walkways of the city, Roger noted the similarity to many other capital cities he'd been posted to: alive and crowded, groups of humanoids walking quickly in and out of high-rise buildings, a profusion of surface-level stores and eating places.

  Aside from the monotone from his headphones, it was eerily quiet. During his walk, he'd heard only a few isolated words spoken. But there were a lot of flickering eyes to be seen. I wonder if the Nrrilgans were actually right. Is voice really the primary mode of communication?

  As he meandered, he began to realize that the Chuff were indeed technologically advanced—perhaps even as advanced as Earth. What could we possibly sell them that they couldn't produce more efficiently themselves? He shook his head. Selling wasn't the primary issue—being simpatico was.

  The absence of voices began to wear on him. Silence. He'd become almost oblivious to the pervasive monotone. He doubted if the Chuff heard it at all anymore. But then, as his amble took him to the periphery of a park, he did hear voices.

  Roger stopped short and wrinkled his nose in confusion. The voices were higher pitched than the Chuff he'd heard. That's impossible! Then he noted that the voices were an octave higher. He rushed into the park and saw a group of small Chuff playing on a sort of jungle gym. Roger smiled. It was beginning to make sense. Chuff heard sound only in a narrow range of fundamental frequencies. But they also could hear the harmonics of those frequencies. Roger looked at the Chuff at play. These must be Chuff kids. And at some point in their growth, their voices must change—by dropping exactly a full octave.

  Roger marveled at the great variety of what must be toys—and he speculated that novelty might be important to the Chuff. Just like Earth, where toy technology is only second to military technology. Roger bit his lip and thought. Maybe that's the beginning of an idea.

  Many of the alien kids were swinging on the gym, while others were engaged in a game—and those Chuff were chanting in cadence as they skipped and cavorted. Hey! I wonder. Roger got an idea. Maybe Chuff music is made up of one note on the scale, but played at differing octaves.

  Roger felt pleased with himself and turned to leave, eager to tell Duncan his idea. But then again . . . he stood stock-still. The chanting: the pitch wasn't constant. The kids were chanting in perfect unison, but the pitch changed, though not by much: less than two semi-tones spread over a dozen or more distinct pitches. Could it actually be singing? Roger walked to a park bench, sat, and observed. There were bigger Chuff sitting on benches. Parents, probably. After a few minutes of listening, Roger was convinced that the small Chuff were actually singing—and the ‘singing’ was actually beginning to sound to him like music.

  Then a Chuff child ran up to a big Chuff. Roger was pleased to hear actual conversation between the two.

  "Can I have a—beep?” asked the child.

  "Not now,” said the bigger Chuff. “Dinner is soon."

  "But . . . but I want it."

  "I said no."

  Roger noticed that there was no flickering of eyes. He glanced at the kids playing. They talked, but their eyes didn't flicker. Then Roger looked at the parents. Lots of flickering eyes.

  Then came the revelation. The instructions with the Nrrilgan translators were wrong—a mistranslation. Speech wasn't the primary mode of communication. “Primary” should have been primal—or maybe basic. Roger gave a small nod of his head. It seemed so obvious now. Kids learned speech first, and only later learned how to flicker. And that meant that adults used speech only to speak to kids or to get someone's attention. Poopyhead was the clue—and I missed it.

  Roger jumped from the bench and, with the help of enthusiasm as well as a relatively low surface gravity, sprinted back toward the embassy to tell Duncan. And that also explains why their writing system isn't alphabet-based.

  * * * *

  "Very interesting, I'm sure.” Duncan, sitting in a plush chair in the embassy lounge, looked up at Roger with a blasé expression. “But how will this help us at the concert tonight?"

  "Well . . .” Roger, feeling suddenly deflated, plopped down on the facing chair. “I don't know. Maybe I'm totally wrong. I'm not really even sure the Chuff kids were making music. Maybe it was as much music as a bee dance is a dance. Maybe it was just some ritual of shared humanity, alienality, whatever."

  "Focus!” Duncan moved forward in his chair and looked hard at Roger. Then he chuckled. “A shared ritual of alienality. Fine. We'll take that as a provisional definition of music—Chuff music. Now, how can we use that to our advantage tonight?"

  Roger, elbows on knees, cupped his head in his hands. After a few seconds, he looked up. “If we were expected to paint at an art show, maybe we'll be expected to make music at the concert. Maybe the concert'll be something like a jam session."

  "Can we?” said Duncan. “Make music, I mean."

  "The translator stored the last few hours of source sound, of course,” said Roger, thinking as he talked. “So I can listen to the Chuff singing. But there's no way I'd be able to actually sing those microtones myself, not without months of practice, if then."

  "Perhaps we could cobble together an audio file of the microtones, somehow,” said Duncan with an eager, hopeful expression. “And play it for the Chuff at the concert."

  "That would take days.” Roger looked off into space. “You know,” he said in a distant voice, “bassoons have thick walls."

  "What?"

  "Low bassoon notes would require fingering holes that are too far apart for fingers to cover them. So holes are drilled at an angle—closer together on the outside and wider apart at the inside of the instrument."

  "Have you lost your mind?” said Duncan.

  "I was just thinking. You could drill holes angled the other way—close together at the inside—to produce microtones."

  "Ah.” Duncan narrowed his eyes. “Do you really think you could make a bassoon play those tones?"

  "Yeah. It would be pretty simple to calculate where to drill the holes."

  "Then do it.” Duncan snapped to his feet. “It's our last chance. And maybe the Chuff will give us an A for effort."

  "Hey, wait a minute.” Roger rolled to his feet. “I was only hypothesizing. My bassoon is a valuable and rare instrument."

  "The agency will buy you a new one."

  Roger scowled. “I rather imagine bassoons are very scarce in this part of the galaxy."

  "So are jobs for Anglo-Terran junior cultura
l liaison officers."

  * * * *

  Smiling in spite of his suppressed anger, Roger stalked into the music-playing place. He carried his once beautiful bassoon, now disfigured by a slew of new holes and duct tape covering the old holes as well as some of the keys.

  Roger had expected to see musicians up front and listeners sitting in rows of seats. But it was rather more like the art reception. There were no rows of seats, and Roger saw no objects that could have been musical instruments. It seemed a safe assumption that he was about to hear adult Chuff singing the type of music he'd heard from kids in the park. Again Roger smiled, this time in anticipation. Bassoons, even mangled ones, made awesome sounds. He was sure the Chuff would be impressed.

  A Chuff announced the start of the music-making, and a group of a dozen or so gathered at the front of the room while the rest congregated at the back, standing. Chuff seem to do a lot of standing. Now it looked something more like a concert to Roger—a conductor and a choir.

  The “singing” began and within moments, Roger stood spellbound. The music was not the simple microtonal sounds of the playground. Instead, the singing consisted of one note and many harmonics of that note. Roger was sure he couldn't even hear some of those harmonics. One-note polyphony: the note stayed the same, but the timbre changed. And the rhythms were incomprehensibly complex. At several points, each chorister sang a different rhythm pattern, which resulted in syncopations that spread like a wave through the chorus.

  Roger found the sound very interesting and even musical, though beyond his comprehension. He felt about it the way he felt about Chinese classical music: impressive but not something he'd like to listen to for long stretches of time. Roger realized he'd guessed wrong, horribly wrong, about the nature of Chuff music. It was more harmonic than microtonal. He suddenly felt embarrassed about his bassoon—about how the Chuff would take his microtonal imitations of Chuff kid sounds. But maybe here, unlike at the art show, the audience won't be expected to participate.

  The music stopped and the choir director faced the audience. “Before the second half of the music starts,” he said, looking at Duncan, “I invite our guest of honor to do some music."