His focus changed halfway through the second day, when he found a pile of printed telemetry sent by the satellites during the fatal experiment. Maybe he would find something new in this.
The pile stood two feet high. Trying to make something of that, one page at a time, would be a waste of time and effort. That's what computers were for.
An hour later he had a scanner unboxed and attached to Leegh's computer. All of the raw data printed on the yellowed pages used the same base sixty-four numbers he had become accustomed to. The scanner read the pages as images. He needed an optical character-recognition program capable of converting the characters imbedded in those images to something he could work with. Digging through the pallets of software in his warehouse uncovered a program that would pattern match to a specified TrueType font and convert character by character to some other character set. With the font he had created for Valin and his team of translators, he had what he needed.
The next morning, stinking of two days work in the same clothes, no bath, and little sleep, he went to his lord's quarters to see Sisle.
"You said you want to learn something about computers?"
"Yes."
"I can't promise you'd learn much, but I need some help, and you would be working at a computer. Will you help me?"
"You're asking me?"
"Yes, asking, not telling."
"Of course, I'll help you," she caught a whiff of his sour body odor. "Excuse me, Tommy," she said with a smile, "but you told me to take a bath once. Do you mind if I tell you the same in return?"
A bath did help and not just with the smell. He was more alert and back at work in Leegh's chamber an hour later with Sisle beside him, feeding telemetry pages into the scanner while he wrote a program to graphically display the data.
By the time Sisle had scanned all the pages, he had written a program that subtracted the light speed interval from each satellite to My Flowing Streams and displayed the telemetry as lines on his computer screen.
He started as he felt Sisle close behind him. “What do the lines mean?” she asked.
Her warm, slightly musky aroma washed over him. He looked up at her, then back at the screen. “The lines?” he stammered.
He could see her reflection on the face of the monitor, her head cocked to the side. Her arm extended over his shoulder, brushing his face as she pointed. “They look like the contour maps we studied as part of our military training.”
For a moment, his tongue glued itself to the roof of his mouth, and he realized he was holding his breath. I wonder if she knows what she does to me? He took a breath. “That’s actually a very good analogy, but instead of showing the steepness of the slope, the lines show the strength of the gravity field in that area.”
“So, where gravity is stronger, the lines are closer together?” she asked.
He turned his chair to face her. Something in his expression made her take a step back. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing’s wrong, but are the other women like you?”
She shrugged and smiled. “Taller, but you know that. I don’t know, otherwise. Why?”
“If they are,” he said, “the women’s talents are being wasted on this ship.”
He pulled Leegh’s chair, high backed with the seat near the floor, beside him next to the computer. “Sit down,” he said.
She hesitated. “I shouldn’t be sitting in a Nesu chair.”
He patted the chair cushion. “Sit down,” he repeated.
He turned back toward the computer and typed on the keyboard. “This is the telemetry from the satellite closest to the moon,” he said as the data from one of the satellites displayed in real time on the screen.
“Why are the lines moving?” she asked.
“You said that where the lines are closer, gravity is stronger?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“So?”
“Gravity is changing where the lines are moving?” she asked.
“Exactly. Now let’s overlay the other satellites’ telemetry on top of the first and start over.” His fingers flew over the keyboard. A grid appeared where nearly parallel lines had been before.
A striped pattern emerged in one part of the grid. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing at the dispersed moiré on the screen.
Tommy checked the coordinates that had been recorded with the data. “That’s the moon where the experiments were being conducted.”
“And that?” Her finger left a smudge on his screen.
Even as he was looking at the notes that had been left with the telemetry, the tiny shimmering moiré under her fingerprint disappeared and reappeared, almost instantly, on another part of the screen.
“That has to be My Flowing Streams transiting from its original location to its position at the beginning of the experiment,” Tommy answered. “Nothing else fits the data.” He checked the scale shown on his monitor. “The ship moved over a million kilometers.” He turned to look at her. “Those satellites had to be part of the experiment. The sensors detected and instantly reported a ship’s drive moving over a million kilometers.”
Sisle remained focused on the screen. “Does this mean anything?” she asked, pointing to a dim moiré that had appeared approximately halfway between the moon and My Flowing Streams.
Again, Tommy checked the notes written by Lant, over two thousand years before. “That’s the experiment. They created a gravity field!”
Five minutes later, a bright, shimmering moiré appeared next to the moon. Thirty seconds later, the first moiré faded until it became identical with the pattern shown by the drive of My Flowing Streams.
“Is that the Kadiil ship?” asked Sisle.
Tommy’s voice was grim. “I don’t know what else it could be.”
A new moiré pattern, different from either the drive or the Kadiil arrival pattern emerged where the Kadiil ship had been. Five seconds later, bright, shimmering stripes covered where the moon had been. The new moiré again covered the Kadiil ship, and the left side of the screen flashed again and again.
“Stream?” Sisle’s voice was a whisper.
“Yes.”
Still another moiré pattern covered the location of the Kadiil, and, five seconds later, the ship’s drive pattern disappeared. Thirty seconds after that, the telemetry ended.
He leaned back in his chair. “Well, now I know how to detect a Kadiil ship before its arrival, and how to track Kadiil drive-equipped ships from at least several light seconds distance.” He paused. "And I know how to detect an artificial black hole, or I would if I had one of the satellite sensors the Nesu used in this experiment.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Sisle.
“I’m going to talk to Leegh. Maybe she has some answers.”
# # #
That one of the satellites still existed after two thousand years was too much to hope for, but he asked Leegh anyway.
"All were destroyed when Stream was destroyed," Leegh told him, "but the plans are buried somewhere in the stack in my chambers. We would need many specialized components, though. Why do you ask?"
"I think I have found something in the data you may have overlooked, if I may show you?"
An hour later he had convinced Leegh.
"The Kadiil did hide more advanced technology from us.” She voiced a grinding, low pitched whistle. “And from everyone who accepted their drives. They hid how to create tunnels through the other dimensions. They gave us the transit but denied us near instantaneous travel."
Her back curved until her eyes looked straight into Tommy’s face. “We must locate those plans!”
When the plans were found, Leegh called in two of her close relatives who were also familiar with their foremother's work. Some of the People on My Flowing Streams hadn't all fallen into the same trade and travel routine as those on The People's Hand. None of them called it work, however. To each of them, and to their peers, their interest was a hobby. At Tommy's insistence and after Ull's interve
ntion, three artisans of the Communications Guild also attended the meeting. The parts needed to build the detector might be on the ship, and that was something only the artisans would know.
Rather than meeting in the water, as they usually did, they sat in chairs in front of a white board and computer screen, both obtained from Earth.
The artisans' knowledge proved to be critical. At various times, pieces of what was needed had been on the ship as trade goods. None were on the ship now, but could be obtained at Toblepas.
Leegh's tail twitched rapidly from side to side behind her chair. "We can do this!” she said. “We can reproduce the science of our foremothers. We can even extend it!"
"But should we," said Leenh, one of her relatives.
"This science caused the destruction of everything they knew,” said Leesh, the other relative. “It could do the same to us."
"No!" Leegh said. "Your thinking is flawed. Our foremothers did not cause their destruction. The Kadiil caused their destruction."
"As they will cause ours," Leenh said.
"We know much more now," Leegh said, "and we have the wizardry of this feral human to aid us. Doing this will be dangerous, but we must end two thousand years of ignorance. The science of The People must be restored. With it will be restored our honor, and, perhaps, a home for all of us."
Tommy decided to enter the argument. "This feral human wizard would like to ask what you are thinking of doing. Are you expecting to defeat the Kadiil somehow? How could you?"
"No, we cannot defeat them," Leegh said. "We are too few, even if we knew what other weapons they might have. But with dimensional tunneling we could go anywhere! Somewhere in this galaxy or some other, we can escape the Kadiil!
"We have wasted enough time at Baugh. I will call a meeting of the council."
In spite of the warmth of Leegh's chamber, Tommy shivered as he watched her leave. His curiosity and his concern about Earth were driving them all either to a confrontation with the Kadiil or to a leap into the unknown. Either way, he might never go home again.
Leenh and Leesh
Leenh and Leesh remained in Leegh’s chamber after the human left.
“Surely, the council won’t allow this,” said Leesh.
“You are wrong,” said Leenh. “Ull controls the council and she is besotted with the feral human. He shows her something new and Ull insists that we do it. Leegh’s support will make building the sensors even more certain.”
“The Kadiil will detect these sensors as soon as we turn them on,” said Leesh.
“And, according to the telemetry, Stream was destroyed less than ten minutes after the satellite sensors began operating,” Leenh responded
Leesh began softly whistling a mournful tune. After the first few notes, Leenh joined in harmony, her whistle weaving around Leesh’s basic melody. They finished together, the last note echoing around Leegh’s chamber.
“We last sang that song together after the raiders disabled our ship,” said Leenh. “We survived that.”
“Raiders are not the Kadiil,” responded Leesh. “The Kadiil will show no mercy.”
Chapter Seventeen: Shopping
After the meeting with Leegh and her relatives, Tommy returned to his artisan quarters and gathered Potter and a change of clothes. When the elevator door closed behind them, Tommy looked down at his cat then squatted and sighed. "Well Potter, I may have done something to get us both killed. Again. Enjoy yourself while you can.” He scratched behind the cat’s ears. “I bet I know what you’d like. You haven't been on a good mouse hunt for a long time. How about I drop you off for a while at Jack's stable? I bet they've had a population explosion since you were there last."
In his lord's quarters, he put Potter down and called for Sisle. She answered in a shout from across the pond, "I'm up here, taking a bath."
"Have you eaten yet?" he shouted back.
"No. I'll be right down."
He settled down on the flat rock with his back to the top of the hill. I really need to put a chair over here. This rock is uncomfortable.
Her voice came from behind him. "Why don’t you ever look at me? Am I ugly?"
"What?” he stuttered. I... I--." He turned to find her standing behind him, dressed in an unbelted tunic and barefoot, her wet hair wrapped in a towel. "I don't know what you mean," he continued.
She tilted her head to the side and a hint of a frown pulled at the side of her face. "You never look at me. You're always looking off to the side, or down at my feet, never directly at my face. What is it about me you don't like?"
"You're not ugly. Can we not talk about this?"
"Yes, Lord Tommy," she said in a neutral tone.
"There. You're doing it again."
"What, Lord Tommy." She tilted her head again.
"If you don't like what I am doing or saying, you go back to calling me Lord Tommy and acting cold."
The frown became a defiant glare. "What should I do when you put me in my place, Lord Tommy. You told me not to talk."
"That's not what I said. I asked you if we could not talk about why I won't look at you."
"If you say so, Lord Tommy."
Tommy took a deep breath. "If I tell you, will you stop calling me Lord Tommy? Not just for now. Never again?"
"Never?"
"Never."
"It must be something terrible," she said.
She sat down beside him on the rock and dangled her feet in the water with her shoulder almost touching his.
The scent of perfumed soap, brought from Earth, pulled him toward her. He gripped the edge of the rock with both hands and forced himself to sit upright. Let’s get this over with. Through clenched teeth he said, "I can't be friendly with you as long as you're wearing that metal collar.” He turned to look at her. “Are you satisfied?"
Her hand went to her neck. "The collar?"
"As long as you're wearing that collar, I could force you to do anything I want." He stood and looked down at her. "That's what the lords use it for, and I can't. I won't. But I can't expect you to be truthful with me, either, as long as that collar is controlling you. You're not with me because you want to be. You made that obvious in the beginning."
Her voice was almost inaudible. "So, you won't look at me because...?"
"I don't think you're ugly. I think you're beautiful. If I look at you too much, I might do something I'd regret. And as long as you're wearing that damn collar, I don't trust you wouldn't let me do it."
She swirled her feet in the water, then looked up at him over her shoulder. "Would that be so bad?"
"No, not if I knew you meant it. But how could I know that?”
He started up the hill. "I'm taking a quick bath, and then I'm taking you someplace you haven't been to eat. I promised Potter a treat, too.”
She almost couldn’t hear his final response. “I hope I answered your question."
# # #
The elevator door opened to a darkened Commons. After his eyes adjusted, Tommy used the faint glow from the dimmed "moon" lights at the top of the center column to find his way to the stable. Sisle hadn't spoken since Tommy had climbed the hill for his bath. Tommy's only words had been a curt "Let's go" when he picked up Potter and started for the bank of elevators.
At the stable, Tommy opened the door and stepped inside. The familiar smells of horse manure and hay filled his nostrils. A horse whinnied. From the rafters came the meows of several cats. Straw rustled near his feet. Potter's claws dug in, and he jumped from Tommy's arms.
He rubbed his arm. "I should’ve expected that."
"What?" Sisle said from the dark behind him.
"Getting scratched. Potter heard a mouse. That's what I brought him for."
"What is this place?"
"A horse stable. I worked here for many months."
"What's a horse?"
"A work animal. Humans have used them on Earth for centuries."
She was quiet for a while. "Something like us, you mean. Like the hu
mans on the lords' ships."
"Yes, exactly," he said.
"May we sit for a minute?" she asked.
Using the dim light from the open door, he led her to a hay bale.
"I've been thinking about what you told me," Sisle said, "and I understand."
The hay shook under him, and he heard her sobbing.
"You're right, and I think you're wonderful for saying so, and for the way you've been treating me. It's just, for as long as I can remember, I've been told I'm too short, and I'm funny looking."
He wanted to put his arm around her. The darkness and her crying made him want to, but he didn't. "I told you, I think you're beautiful. From my height, it's everyone else who is funny looking. I just can't get past that metal necklace."
"I do understand," she said. She touched his hand gently. "I might hate you if you tried."
"I'm not going to try," he promised her. Until you're not wearing it, he wanted to add, but he couldn't give either of them that kind of hope.
"Now, if you'll stop crying, we'll go to dinner and leave Potter to his hunting."
When they opened the door to the meal room, the men yelled "Tommy, Tommy," leaped from their tables, and rushed toward them.
Sisle jumped in front of Tommy and moved into a fighting stance.
“I’m in no danger, Sisle,” Tommy said, pulling her back to his side.
As they reached him, each man reached out to touch his clothes, and then stepped respectfully back. The women and children stood on chairs behind the men to see him.
"We're here to eat our meal with you, if you'll have us," Tommy said when he could be heard above the noise.
The first Jack pushed to the front. "We'd be honored, Lord Tommy."
"Please. I'll tell you what I told the other humans on this ship. Unless a lord is present, call me Tommy or Master Tommy. I am a human, not a lord."
He pulled Sisle to the front. "This is Sisle. She will be eating with me. I would be happy if you would treat her as you treat me."
From the crowd came murmurs. One came loud enough for Tommy to distinguish the words: "A warrior woman. He brings a warrior woman to our meal room."
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