Greg picked up the child's name as the Leader spoke. Later, he thought, maybe we can parse out the sounds.
"We have to think about getting back," Wayne said. "The longer we're here, the more chance we have to be observed."
Ullnii moved close to Carol, then sat on the beach next to her. She drew Carol's arm around herself and leaned against her. Carol held the child gently, looking up at the grandfather.
"Tell him, Greg, tell him I am... honored, if there is such a word...that she would come and sit with me this way."
"I don't know, Carol. How about I just tell him you're happy?"
"Close enough."
The Seeker, as careful an observer of behavior as any of the humans present, was not surprised when Greg pointed to Carol, then to the 'happy' sign.
"We still need to get back!" Wayne repeated.
Greg typed, "Must now leave. We short future go home. We future return."
The Seeker waved his left hand, then wrote.
New friends welcome future return.
Then he wrote New friends future help you go home and touched his forehead.
Greg looked at the words with some sadness. "Admiral, he wants to know if we can help them go back home."
"I can't promise that. Tell him we will try."
Greg found the words "Hope future try help. Now must find hard faces."
The Seeker understood that.
Greg had one last question. He pointed to himself and said, 'Greg,' then pointed to Carol and said, 'Carol.' Then he pointed to the Seeker and touched his forehead.
"Eaagher."
"Eaagher," Greg repeated, and the Seeker raised his left hand.
"They are leaving, Ullnii. They must go home to their own world."
"What about the hard faces?"
"They are looking for the hard faces, I think to fight them."
"As my great-grandfather did?"
"Yes, Ullnii, as he did. But they are strong. Stronger, I think, than the hard faces. It is time to go."
Greg picked up the word signs he had made, but instead of packing them away as he had planned, he handed them over to Eaagher. If someone else came here, those might come in handy.
Eaagher seemed to understand, waved his left hand, and stepped back from the table. Ullnii gently pulled away from Carol to stand with him. They turned and walked back through the brush to the cave entrance. After a moment, the eight guards also filed back down the hidden path and were gone.
The humans stood for a long moment, in awe of what had just happened. Finally, they picked up the rest of their gear and walked to the shuttle.
"I will never see this place the same again," Carol said as she strapped into the co-pilot seat.
Jack, sitting left-seat for the return trip, nodded his agreement.
"None of us will, Carol. This is not just a planet anymore, it's the home of people we know."
Checklist complete, Jack pulled the door closed, and the shuttle rose silently away from the beach, climbing rapidly on its course back to Antares. No one spoke until they were back aboard and had cleared the decontamination facility.
Before dinner in the wardroom, Carol took a few minutes in her quarters. She thought about how the day had gone, the sound of Ullnii's voice, how she related to her grandfather, so much like a human relationship. After a moment, she pulled out her journal and picked up a pen.
David —
You would have been proud of me today. We met the Seekers face to face and they were as we'd hoped. Cordero is a confirmed genius, by the way. How he and the Seeker leader held a conversation starting from zero was something incredible to watch. I guess maybe when you really want to have a conversation, you'll figure out how?
There was a child at the meeting — a little girl. The leader's granddaughter, Ullnii. She was strangely strong but still so innocent and vulnerable. Sooo beautiful — I got a good pic off my body cam feed I'll show you when you read this.
I talked to her — best I could — and it was such an emotional experience. How do we connect so easily with a species so different? Something transcendent about it.
Will we have a little girl someday? If we do, I want her to know Ullnii. Something very beautiful about her.
Love always,
Carol
Antares
Big Blue
Wednesday, October 19, 2078, 0930 UTC
The contact team spent an hour reviewing the meeting with the Seekers. They began by replaying Greg's body-cam footage.
Ron Harris had been quiet throughout the conversation. "Is there something we can give them? Is there a...a... gift we could leave with them?"
"What did you have in mind?" Terri Michael asked.
"I don't know...just something to help them out somehow."
"The best thing we could give them," said Jack, "would be a SLIP transmitter. If they could somehow contact us if the 'hard faces' come back, that would be good."
"Yeah, but we don't have a portable SLIP system. Maybe someday," Comm officer Lori Rodgers said sadly.
Carol drummed her fingers on the table. "You know, it's a long shot, but if we could give them a hand-held radio, then put a Sentinel in orbit with the right alert criteria. That would do the same thing..."
"Ohh, not bad, Hansen, not bad at all," Kathy Stewart commented.
"But that presumes we can get a Sentinel here."
"Not a problem," Harris said easily. "But it'll take time."
"We'd need a hand-held that would be easy for them to use. Plus, we would not be able to understand them."
"Well, we might be able to manage that."
"How, Greg, would we do that?" Terri asked.
"Let's get Eaagher to read us some words. Something like 'need help' or 'hard faces' or whatever."
"Hmmm..." Harris sounded skeptical.
"Or give him a list of numbered messages, and all he has to do is say the numbers."
Kathy's initial enthusiasm was fading. "I think this could work, but it's an awfully complicated solution. How is he going to keep the handheld powered? When will the Sentinel be in a position to hear him? There's a lot of questions we can't answer right now."
Carol rejoined the conversation. "I agree with Kathy that this is all a little premature. It makes no sense to give them a handheld unless there's a Sentinel in orbit to listen for it." She paused for a second. "I still think another visit to tell them we're leaving would be good. And we can tell them that others might be coming, and later we'll give them a way to call us."
"What about giving him a book?" Gabrielle asked.
"A book?" Terri responded, skeptical.
"Sure. We learned all about them from their books. Is there something in the ship's library that we could print out — a real, physical copy — and leave with him?"
"Well," James George offered, "we have the whole digitized Library of Congress aboard. We should be able to find something."
"What would you want to show them?" Harris asked.
"Nothing political, nothing historical, just us, our planet maybe, the animals on our world, that kind of thing."
"Hmmm. I like it," Carol said. "But there's something else."
"Yes?" Terri asked, inviting her subordinate to continue.
"I think we should go back, and maybe some of us from the first trip should go, so they recognize us."
"Oh," Terri asked, curious, "and who else would you take?"
"Except for Greg, the rest of us who went are all the same, Commander - white kids. I didn't think about it until just now when Gabe brought up the picture book. If we go back, I'd like to also take XO George and someone like my tech Fujimoto Yui."
"A racially diverse group?" Harris asked.
"Yes, sir. We need to show them that there is a wide variation in our appearance. If Commander George were to appear on that beach unannounced, I can't be sure they'd understand he's one of us!"
XO George shifted in his seat. "An interesting thought, Lieutenant. I never wanted to be th
e token but, in this case, I think what you say makes sense. If they are as homogeneous as they seem, the concept of a wide variety in physical appearance within a species would not be part of their experience."
"I agree, it's a demonstration we should probably make," Harris said.
"OK, so," Terri spoke in her best 'time to wrap this up' tone, "Tomorrow at the expected time we'll visit the Seekers again, as Carol has described. Gabe, I will leave it to you and the rest of the surface team to find an appropriate book to take to them. I would think some kind of children's book would work. Greg, you may want to add some annotations in their language to help them along."
"Yes, Captain, good idea."
"Very well. We're adjourned."
Central Council Chamber
The Preeminent Home World
Earth Equivalent Date: October 24, 2078
The Revered First stood at the narrow end of the long Council table. The reports from the monitoring station on the moon in the scholars' System 849 lay on the table. His eyes moved from side to side, moving around the table, reflecting his irritation with the current situation.
"The Vermin have found System 849."
"Yes, Revered First," Jaf Seen Toft, the Respected Second, said quietly.
"And yet we have not found where these despicables come from?"
"We have not, Revered First."
"Are we not the Preeminent?"
"We are, Revered First," they all said in unison.
"The monitor reports that they landed and walked the ground where those clueless scholars lived."
"Yes, Revered First."
They waited in fear as the Revered First looked around the table at his counselors. His eye finally came to rest on one near the far end of the table, one who seemed to be leaning back, almost to conceal himself from The First's view behind the others.
"Ashil Kiker, it was you who found such fault with Hess Tse Sim. Take a quarter cohort and go see what these disgusting creatures have found."
"Yes, Revered First. We will see what they saw, and we will prevail."
"We are the Preeminent," the First repeated.
"We are the Preeminent," they echoed.
Kiker was one who rose from obscurity through careful political maneuvering, not through conquest. Nevertheless, he was confident that he could easily crush any feeble opposition from this new invasive species in their small, dark ships. They had a sting, that much he knew, but they were only small insects to be eradicated. An inconvenience, no more.
System 849 was nearby; they would be there in twenty rotations.
Antares
Big Blue
Tuesday, October 25, 2078, 0830 UTC
Once again, Carol set the shuttle down on the wide beach. After a few moments finishing the post-landing checklist, she got out and followed Admiral Harris, Greg, Gabe, and James George to the point where Eaagher had talked to them. Weapons Technician Yui followed her, feeling some uncertainty, as meeting with aliens was not part of her usual job description.
"CALLOL!" she heard a small voice call, followed quickly by its owner bursting out of the brush. She stopped when she saw the others with Carol. She looked at Greg, and spoke a decent version of 'Greg,' but she was surprised at the others.
She finally came to Carol and reached out her hand. Carol took it, and Ullnii led her along the beach. Carol went along, uncertain of what Ullnii had in mind since they could not hold a conversation about anything beyond their names.
Eaagher appeared shortly after Ullnii, carrying the word signs.
"Greg," he managed.
"Eaagher," Greg responded.
Eaagher looked at the others with Greg and touched his forehead.
Greg pulled the 'friends' sign and showed it to Eaagher. He didn't say yes, or no, but looked at Yui and XO George. Finally, he wrote: Different.
"He gets it, sir. He understands." Greg waved his hand at all of them, then again held up 'Friends.'
Eaagher waved his left hand. Ron Harris came to stand next to Greg.
"Eaagher," he said, then pointed to himself and said, "Ron."
"Ron."
Greg picked the 'Leader' word and showed it to Eaagher, who waved his left hand and touched his forehead.
"What was that?" Ron asked.
"I take it like we would say 'really?' or 'is that so?' — that kind of thing."
Ron waved his left hand. "Yes, really."
Eaagher wrote Wise leader past send good teacher first. Respect welcome friend leader.
"I want to say 'thank you' but is that a concept they understand?"
"Not really, sir, that I can see. Just respond with a 'yes.'"
Ron waved his left hand, which Eaagher returned. Eaagher looked at James George, said 'Eaagher' and touched his forehead.
'James," he said.
"Yamz," Eaagher replied.
"James," XO George said again, more slowly.
"Yames," Eaagher tried again, then wrote, Friend names hard speak.
Then he wrote again, Friends look different all same?
Greg waved his left hand, then wrote: "Friends home world many more numbers. Much difference in appearance still all Friends."
Eaagher read that, then wrote again, What Friends name selves?
"What do you think, sir? Human? Terran? People? Earthlings?"
Fujimoto Yui laughed at the question. Eaagher looked at her, circled his hand next to his head and then touched his forehead.
"What was that? What did I do?" she asked, suddenly a little alarmed.
"You laughed. When we were here before, we thought that hand movement was laughter. Tell him yes."
"Yes?"
"Yeah, lift your left hand and wave it a little."
Harris leaned in to speak quietly to Cordero. "Go with human, Greg."
"Human," Greg said, looking at Eaagher.
"Oomahn," Eaagher said.
"Close enough."
As they finished, Carol and Ullnii came walking back to the group.
"So, Greg, you should spend more time with Ullnii. Her name means 'sky', by the way." Hansen had that sly smile on that told everyone she'd found something interesting.
"Oh, and what else?" Harris asked.
"Sand is 'deez.' The beach is 'lideez.' Water is 'kel.'"
"And so ocean is...'likel'?"
"Yup."
"That follows what I see in the written language — pretty regular suffixes and prefixes, but I couldn't know what they sound like."
Eaagher followed much of this exchange, then spoke to Ullnii.
"I hear her speaking our language, Ullnii. Did Callol tell you their words for these things?"
"Yes, Grandfather."
"Show me!"
The girl pointed to the sky and said 'sky' so clear that the humans' heads snapped around as one. She picked up a handful of sand and said, 'Sandh.' She pointed to the beach and said, 'beachk.' Finally, she looked at the ocean and said, 'uceeanh.'
"Amazing," Greg said quietly, then started typing out a new message for Eaagher.
"We must go home short future. We bring a gift."
Eaagher waited as Harris drew the book from his backpack and handed it to Eaagher.
"Simple book to help learn Friends world," Greg typed.
Eaagher opened the book, looking first at the paper, thinner and whiter than he was used to. It was a children's picture book, a first dictionary of sorts, with many different people, places, and animals. Where he could find correlations, Greg had added the Seekerish word to the page. He also added simple explanations where he could work them out.
Eaagher knelt down and looked at the first few pages with Ullnii. He rose and wrote, Will study Friends book.
Greg typed out "Simple child book to start. Future learn more together."
Yes.
Greg kept typing. "Future bring device to call Friends."
Long future?
"Yes. thirty suns possibly more."
Sad.
"Time to g
o, Greg," Carol said.
He turned to her abruptly. "I'm getting really tired of hearing that sentence, Carol."
"I know, Greg, I know. Me, too."
Greg looked at her for another second, then turned back to Eaagher, who was writing. Friends future come when?
"I don't know, Eaagher." He said out loud as he typed "No knowledge," then "Hope short future but more than thirty suns."
Eaagher waved his left hand, then turned and walked with Ullnii back to the cave.
It was a somber Bridge as Terri Michael gave the command to turn the ship towards home. They were at the limit of their supplies, and for only a three-week visit, they'd made incredible progress. Greg's translation engine kept digging at the language, picking out a few new meanings every day. Joe Bowles was mapping the battlefield in precise detail, his attention more focused, more immediate, knowing now that there were survivors to defend. Gabe looked at her results, the complex, rich culture they had before the enemy appeared. They could rebuild it, she knew. Everything was there for them, they just needed to know it was safe.
ISC Fleet HQ Intel Section
Ft. Eustis, VA
Thursday, October 26, 2078, 0830 EDT (1230 UTC)
Don Curtis had the TDOA review task this morning, Frances Wilson taking a rare day off with her husband. Kristin Hayes sat nearby, looking through the computer analysis of the message patterns of the last few days. The alarm turned both their heads to the display.
"Beta Hydri?" Don said quietly. He dug into the details of the intercept, looking at the signal quality and the stations that had reported it. It was a solid report, no question about what or where.
"When?" Kristin asked.
"1433 on the twenty-second."
"But Antares would have still been there."
"Yes. But they should have left yesterday."
Roger Cox came into the office. "Did you see the Beta Hydri hit?"
"Yes, just talking about it." Kristin answered.
"Well, it's strange we haven't heard from Antares. If they'd seen anything, we should have heard from them by now."
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