by Nancy Fulda
Through all of it, I started to get an unsettling feeling. Not that it could be put-my-finger on precisely, but it all seemed just a little too easy. Of course, when I tried to explain this, nobody listened to me.
“Easy? ” Anna asked incredulously. “You think this is easy? I suppose you think they write their software in C! I’m flying blind here; I can’t even work out what kind of machine code they are using. You think figuring out a system just by picking options at random is easy?”
Don just laughed when I said the same thing. “This is an alien culture, Jono. It’s nothing like our own. It’s amazing.”
And Chinue, halfway into her list of tentative nouns, verbs, and particles, simply ignored me.
Garth, surprisingly, was the only one who listened to me.
“The technology bothers me,” he said. “I don’t think this was accidental.”
My heart hammered. “What do you mean?”
“Well, this.” He knocked the wall. “For one thing. The whole spaceship seems so similar to what we have right now, it’s eerie. It was built much like we build things, and it doesn’t have any real comforts and luxuries. It has no drive other than basic impulse either, for another thing. It was built for use inside a solar system.”
“Could it be from our future?” I wondered out loud.
Garth laughed. “Einstein disproved that. Communication to the past might eventually be possible, but not sending back a whole spaceship.”
“Besides, that doesn’t explain the linguistics,” I murmured, looking back at the corridor where Chinue was working. “The bug-eyed alien video files could be faked, but I find it hard to believe anyone could build a language built so differently from ours that it would take Chinue weeks to analyze it. No known analogs at all in our languages, she says. All the artificially-created languages on Earth were built on something—be it Spanish, German, Gaelic, or Old English . . .”
Garth nodded. “Yes. There’s that, too.”
Still, the technology so eerily like our own continued to bother me. Until the day that Anna discovered what she thought was a communications protocol.
“Look at this, look at this, look at this, look at this!” she shrieked, running down the corridor and jabbing her finger back the way she came. “Everybody! I think I’ve found the way they communicated! And it’s talking!”
Of course we all dropped everything and booked it. My game of Solitaire forgotten, Garth’s nap, even Don’s notes back home about the apparent color that meant danger to their people (yellow, where red would have been the human equivalent).
Breathless, Don panted and waited. Chinue’s face looked impassive, but her knuckles gripped the seat before her so hard they had turned white. And then Anna turned on the machine.
There was loud static for a moment. Then palpable silence. We waited, our hope matched only by our terror. And then the voice came back again.
“What it is saying?! What is it saying?! What is it saying?!” Don shouted.
“Shut up! Let me analyze it!” Chinue snapped, recording it to run through the program Anna had written for her. The voice kept talking in clicks and snarls, talking and talking, and repeating itself in a pattern. She sighed in frustration after several minutes. “We don’t know enough yet. I think it might be saying something that means ‘spaceship’—or perhaps ‘people aboard the spaceship.’ I don’t know yet whether we’ve triggered a distress beacon, it’s just a pre-recorded message, or if this is actually somebody speaking.”
“That’s all we need—an outer space ‘out of service area’ message,” Don quipped.
Anna laughed tightly.
“Hello?” Garth asked, taking what looked like the microphone. “We can’t understand your language. Not yet. If any of you have better linguists than we do, we speak a language called English. Um. We could send you samples if you need . . .” He trailed off, looking at us. “Think that’s a stupid idea?”
“Better than nothing,” Chinue said.
Anna turned on her voice recorder and played back several of her reports. The voice on the other end went silent. It kept on going. We waited for almost an hour, but even after Anna shut it off, the voice was silent.
“I think that’s it for the day,” Anna said finally. “Tell you what—I’ll keep it turned on, and I’ll call you if I hear anything.”
“Keep the voice recorder going,” Chinue said tightly.
“Do I look stupid?” Anna retorted. “Of course I’m going to keep it going.”
It was several days before we heard the alien voice again.
The next few weeks, Chinue and Anna were at the communications center almost constantly. Don forwarded reports to Earth at least every day, and Garth spent his time trying to triangulate where the signal came from.
“That’s where the problem is coming,” he explained. “I can’t find that signal anyplace. We’re five weeks out of communications range from Earth, so we can’t ask for advice yet—they haven’t even heard the news that we have alien contact yet. No doubt they’ll be sending other experts out to meet us, but in the meantime . . .”
“. . . We’re stuck on our own,” I finished.
After awhile, it seemed Chinue and the alien speaker had gotten some real understanding going. Within a week, Chinue was speaking in bits and pieces of its language, while it conversed with us in broken English.
“Those aliens must be real language savants,” I said, impressed.
“Don’t be an idiot,” Chinue said without looking up. “I’m speaking to one of their experts, not common folk, and we’re both using technological aid.”
“It’s basically Babelfish,” Anna put in, bouncing in her chair. “It’s simple enough that I barely had to tweak it. Basically, just had to fix the way they refer to things indirectly instead of directly, so most of their stuff comes out in a passive voice equivalent, and their subject-object terminology, which has six extra divisions ours doesn’t. There’s self-as-social-group-perceives-it, for instance, or outsider-as-self-perceives-it, inanimate-object-that-doesn’t-perceive, inanimate-object-that-does-somehow-perceive things—”
“Hush up,” Chinue said tightly. “We’re talking.”
“—Five world,” the microphone said, then a series of growls and clicks. Chinue tapped through her dictionary for a moment, then carefully repeated half of what he said, ending with the slightly-louder inflection that indicated a question.
There was another loud alien burst of static, then more monologuing. Chinue scrutinized her tablet for a minute, made several notes, asked another question, and then sat back, stunned.
“He’s trying to open trade negotiations,” she said.
We rocked back on our heels. Trade negotiations. We weren’t qualified for this sort of thing.
“Don’t promise anything,” Don said immediately. “We’ll wait until the experts can do it. Explain to them we need to wait until we understand each others’ languages better. We can’t negotiate anything without UN authority.”
Chinue nodded. There was another back and forth for several breathless minutes. Then her face got even paler.
“He said, in his people, to refuse a trade negotiation is seen as act of aggression. If we don’t want to offend the superiors, and perhaps spark a war, we need to start hammering out something now.”
I let out my breath in an explosive exhale. Nobody had sent a diplomat here. Then I realized everyone was looking at me.
“What?” I asked nervously.
“You,” Don said. “You’re the one who’s good with people. You’re the closest thing we have to a politician here. You negotiate.”
I stared at him, arms tightening in horror. “You can’t be serious. I’m not remotely qualified for—”
“He says he wants Jupiter,” Chinue said, looking up from her screen. “‘You’ve taken our technology. You can have it, if you wish. In return, we want possession of fifth planet.’ I believe that’s what he’s saying.”
“That’
s fair, isn’t it?” Anna asked. “We can’t use it for anything. Here, let’s say yes—”
“No! ” I shouted.
Heads turned to me.
“One junk-heap spaceship for an entire planet?” I asked through grated teeth. “You must be crazy. Tell him we will lease some portion of the planet in exchange for equivalent technology. We will need blueprints of this communications system he is using, to begin with.”
Chinue nodded and went back to talking. There was back and forth for several minutes.
“The concept of ‘lease’ is unfamiliar,” she reported. “Or I do not understand the terminology. I think ‘use, not keep’ is understandable, however. He agreed to it.”
I rubbed my forehead, which was tense with fear. I couldn’t believe this had been left to me. “Okay. We need . . . we need . . . what else do we need?”
“We need blueprints of this spaceship,” Garth said immediately.
“Information about their society and history,” Don added.
“We probably want some kind of dictionary of their languages, both spoken and verbal,” I said.
“A manual of their programming languages,” Anna put in.
“And information about this alloy.” Garth knocked his fist against the wall of the ship. “I haven’t seen anything like it.”
Chinue nodded and began speaking into the microphone again.
“Do you really think we’re going to get it?” Don wondered out loud.
“In exchange for Jupiter?” I retorted. “We’d better.”
There was a lot more back and forth.
“Tentative agreement,” Chinue said finally. “We will pick up the negotiations again in the morning. It is now their rest period.”
We all let out sighs of exhaustion and relief.
As we were heading back towards our own ship, Garth was pondering.
“You know . . . I’ve been thinking . . .” he said.
“About the negotiations?” I asked.
He nodded. “Yeah. About the convenience of it.”
“You think they sent the spaceship here to force us into negotiating?” I asked. “Same thought had occurred to me.”
“Don’t know why they want Jupiter, of course,” he said.
“No.” I shook my head. “Which is why I’m so worried. I don’t know what we’re bargaining away. I’m afraid what we’re asking for is glass beads.”
“Glass beads.” He looked questioning.
“There’s a myth about my people that they sold the island of Manhattan for a handful of glass beads,” I said tightly. “It’s not really verified by history. But it does illustrate what I fear we’re doing.”
“Trading something without knowing how much value it has,” he said.
I nodded. “Or the value of what we seek.”
“And yet, the invaders have the upper hand.” He rubbed his beard, looking troubled. “We can’t refuse to negotiate, or they’ll just take what they want by force anyway.”
“Exactly.”
He frowned and pondered for a moment. “Well, I’m glad you said ‘lease,’” he said finally. “If nothing else, we’ll get it back eventually.”
“And I’ll try very hard,” I said grimly, “not to trade our land for glass beads.”
Sweetly the Dragon Dreams
David Farland
Life finds a way. We dropped planet-killers on Mursadoni, scorching all three continents, and when I returned forty-two years later, the land was covered with green ferns that provided food for clouds of lightning moths.
So I searched the heavens further. On Remiseas, nine hundred years after its immolation, I found forests and birds and lizards—all which should have been decimated—and I discovered new life-forms rising from the ashes of the old.
On Danai, the infestation was much worse. A few of the higher life forms were gone, but after six thousand years, I found wide variations in the flora and fauna. Included among the survivors is a thriving population of humans led by a hive of skraals. My supply of planet-killers and sunbusters has been exhausted. I will drop flash-heads into the hive with the hope that the resultant nuclear contamination will wipe out the skraals’ queen. Further steps will be required to eradicate the biological contaminations.
—final transmission from the cycor drone ship Death’s Head
In the dry days on Danai, the moons lure the damselfly nymphs from the slow-flowing waters. Soft of flesh they come, minute hunters from the marsh, climbing ashen stalks of cattails or perchance some slender green reed.
At the rising of the sun, they settle at the base of a frond, letting the light take them and transform them, until their old bones crack and their new form breaks free.
For a moment they will hesitate, poised, their new wings still wet, waxen and thrumming, as they examine their own glory.
Soft new carapaces shine in the sunlight—glimmering like cinnabar or rubies, or the green of dappled leaves.
That is how young Tallori found them that summer morning as she waded along the shores of the marsh. The rising sun hung like a golden shield upon the shoulders of the world, and the young damselflies just seemed to be waiting for her to pluck them from their perches.
She had caught nearly a hundred in a dozen different hues, placing them in a reed basket. She felt happy to be catching them. Tallori would be paid one silver penny for every five damselflies. She could make a small fortune in a few weeks.
Tallori was a bright child, but not bright enough. She had not been found worthy of schooling. She was a mere human, and thus far inferior to skraals that ruled Danai.
The damselflies were to be food for the Holy Maiden Seramasia, and Tallori felt grateful to be of service. Not only would she make more than she had ever dreamed, she would also be assisting a goddess.
Tallori was large for an eight-year-old girl. Her hair was yellow sunlight, and her eyes, set deep beneath her brow, were greener than the sea. She sang a rhyme as she picked the damselflies from the stalks:
A blue one to ease my lady’s cares,
A red one to make her grow.
A white one to match her skin so fair,
A gold one to make her glow!
That is when she found the monster.
Tallori tiptoed over a break in the cattails, a space less than ten yards across, when she noticed how rough the ground felt beneath her feet. The dark water was as brown as her father’s beer, and she could not see through it, yet at times she could feel clams in the mud with her toes, or find small freshwater crabs to eat. The rough surface made her wonder.
She stopped to pick a scab from her knee and eat it. That’s when she looked down. A vast eye stared up at her. She screamed.
“Over here!” Tallori shouted, dragging her father, Angar, to the edge of the wide river. At the child’s insistence, he’d brought a huge ax. He stopped, unwilling to muddy his sandals.
He suspected this was all some plot on his wife’s part to get him to do some work. When Tallori had come with her story about a monster in the bog, Angar’s wife had said in a businesslike tone, “Bring back some reeds, and I’ll weave some baskets.”
So he was skeptical of Tallori’s motives in bringing him. He was a fat man with fondness for strong drink. Rather than wade off into the mud, he squatted in some reeds and rubbed his temple, wishing the sunlight did not aggravate his hangover so much.
“Come quick!” Tallori shouted. “The monster is over here. You can see its big teeth!”
Only when Tallori tugged his arm and became frantic did Angar pull off his sandals of woven reeds and bother to step into the mud.
Twenty feet from shore, he saw it there, beneath four inches of tawny water: an eye as large as a platter, reflecting the golden sun. It was set in a serpentine head that looked to be some nine feet long and four feet tall. The whole of it lay in the water, staring out.
Mankind had been living on Danai for over a hundred thousand years. From time to time, something odd turned up in the bog—
petrified men or ancient tools.
But this was too good to be true. “I know what this is,” Angar said, trying to convince himself of his fortune. “It’s a dragon!”
A dragon was a flying reptile, one of the first biologically advanced beings that mankind met when they had first ventured to the stars. In some ways, the dragons were even superior to the godlike skraals, and had been friends and counselors to the skraals back in the days of Bliss—before the cycor began their great war and turned the heart of the galaxy into a great void.
The last dragon had been expunged more than six thousand years ago in an attack that had left Danai a wasteland.
Angar inspected the remains. Last winter’s flood must have stripped mud from the banks of the river, uncovering the creature.
“My, look at those teeth,” Angar said. The beast had great teeth as long as his hand. Each was stained yellow from millennia in the mud, and the cutting edges were serrated.
“I’ll bet folks would pay nicely for one of those,” he mused. Maybe even the holy maiden. He seemed to remember hearing that even now, the goddesses took a peculiar interest in the remains of dragons.
Yet he had to wonder. Three months earlier, a cycor scout ship had come to Danai and rained flash-heads upon the capitol. The supreme mother had been killed, the holy maiden wounded, and though the scout ship was destroyed, it was only a matter of time before the enemy returned with greater weapons. Now Holy Maiden Seramasia had gone into hiding, preparing to meet the cycor threat.
Yet Angar suspected he could find her: all he had to do was send a message through the boy who was buying the damselflies.
That night, deep in a forest called Shadowfest, a twelve-year-old boy named Anduval inched along the limb of a boa tree covered in white spirit fungus. The tree was large so close to the ground, perhaps four feet in diameter. Boa saplings tended to snake along the forest floor, rising and dipping at random, until they sensed a hole in the canopy high above. Then the trunk would twist upward, seeking the heavens. Thus, for long stretches, the trees sometimes formed a path above the forest floor.