However this was not an ancient communication protocol or language by his people as far as Fraternity could tell, since there was not even the slightest pattern match with any of the ancient dialects as far as records go.
That left Harmony with more questions than answers. For one he knew exactly where their being's planet of origin was, and this signal was coming from nowhere near that sector. It was coming from almost the opposite end of the origin planet sector.
Second they knew of all of the other systems that had been populated by his beings, but this was not coming from any of those directions. It seems to be coming from the bright star Kalshuk itself!
Third if it was a new settlement by his beings, then it made no sense at all. Why would the seers of his world not be told about it? The seers’ council of all worlds exchanged messages many times every cycle over things however minor they may be, and the settlement of a new world is as momentous an event as possible.
Even if it was a new settlement, why would they use ancient un-encoded transmission in a language not recognized by his beings? However much Harmony wrestled with this problem, he could not come up with a fourth alternative but the obvious... KA!
For the next cycle all Harmony did was stay in his nest in as much of a suspended animation as his disturbed mind would allow, avoiding the taste or odors of any other being. He had to wait till the next cycle for the appointed audience with his favorite seer.
He hoped against hope that he was not bringing terrible tidings for all of his beings. He hoped that somehow the seer in his wisdom, would be able to give a perfectly logical explanation for the anomaly, without this ever having to go to the council of seers. Somehow he doubted that though.
On the appointed hour, seer Taste of Light appeared on Harmony's tasting station. After so many eons of his beings using tasting stations for long distance communication, it was hard to believe that they had not been able to perfect it to such an extent, that it should appear real. The taste and odor appeared so artificial. Intellectually he understood that his beings had the technology to make the tastes and odor appear so real that no one will be able to make out the difference.
The reason was primarily etiquette and practicality. It would be impolite and dishonest to make oneself appear real to touch, taste and odor when one is not present physically. The other reason was cost of communication equipment and bandwidth. In some cases, as when communicating through the void with outposts or other worlds, it would not even be possible given bandwidth constraints.
The seer’s gentle virtual touch and taste jolted Harmony out of those wandering thoughts. Immediately Harmony was aware of the strong odors of fear that were emanating out of him despite his best efforts at self-control. The seer sent out soothing electrical tastes in gentle waves to calm down one of the youngest and his favorite nest younglings.
Having calmed down a bit, Harmony sent out a swift taste signal requesting that they switch the communication to data mode from the current default emotion mode. This was a technical signal to his tasting station to enable him to interleave data from the memory banks of his work place, as well as any raw data required from the communal memory banks, or the caste memory banks including the recordings of his interactions with Fraternity.
He expertly guided the seer through his findings as well as the supporting raw data where needed, finally arriving at his terrifying conclusion. Data mode is fast in transmitting information one way as it converts data into dense taste packets, which his beings were evolutionarily adapted to assimilate very fast. The whole data presentation to the seer appeared to take no time at all.
Data transmission mode is however painfully slow for a two way exchange. One person can only transmit at a time and the ideas and concepts cannot be packed into a dense taste packet for quick transmission or assimilation. The line must wait in half duplex as one beings thoughts and ideas are transmitted as they are formed one concept symbol at a time, something akin to human speech.
That is why transmission defaults to emotion mode, where the tasting stations sample the skin slime and directly transmit it for the other to taste. This way both the parties are talking simultaneously and making their emotional states known, even though the concepts and thoughts have not yet clearly been articulated in the mind. This is as close to telepathy as his beings can get.
Despite this, Harmony noted that the seer kept the mode locked in data mode rather than switch to emotion mode. This forced them to actually have a conversation, rather than taste each other's emotion. Taste of Light was a seer, and one of the eldest at that. Seers did everything on deliberated reasons, never on a whim.
There could be only one reason that Harmony could think, why the seer would use such an inefficient means of conversation. The seer did not want Harmony to taste his current emotions. That scared Harmony like nothing before. If the seer was so scared that he had to hide his emotions, then this must be the worst case scenario!
"You were always meant for a special purpose in our beings’ history Harmony. I could feel that the moment I squeezed you out of your spawn and tasted your slime. I know you wonder why we named you Harmony when all you do is question everything and perhaps upset existing order."
The seer gave out an odor that would be the human equivalent of a wry smile followed by a sigh. "You have the burden and responsibility of tremendous curiosity. Perhaps more so than most of your curious caste. It is beings like you who have time and again warned, prevented and protected our beings from the terrible ravages of Ka. Most of the times we have succeeded, unfortunately not always, as we all know from the terrifying sagas of the seers about the desolation of Ka."
The odor emanated from the seer this time smelt hopeful. "I feel a good omen in the fact that you are named Harmony. Perhaps you were destined to bring harmony to our beings from this terrible new threat from Ka". The seer did not relinquish the line but paused, indicating he had more to say.
"This is too big for even me to handle alone. This will have to go to the council. What I have in my powers and is also my duty, is to immediately constitute a committee to independently validate your findings and conclusions. I do not doubt your report in the least, and I agree with your conclusions.
This has to be done as a matter of process before we can make such a terrifying presentation to the council. This committee will consist of members of your caste with the requisite specialization, but who have no connection to your work."
As the seer continued, the taste of his thoughts seemed to be far away rather than just transmitting to Harmony, as if already anticipating the intrigue and battles ahead in the council. "I know you took many cycles to do this work, but I will give the committee 3 cycles to complete their validation. It will take me about the same amount of time to prepare a strategy and a plan to present this to the council.
It is fortuitous that I am here at the nest-of-nests and the 64 cycle planning session is to get underway from the next cycle. That way when I am ready to present this terrible findings after 3 cycles, the session will be on its last cycle and would have gotten most of its business out of the way. Business which till a few moments ago seemed so important, but now looks so trivial".
As the seer gave another odor of sigh, he continued. "Here is what I want you to do Scent of Harmony..." Addressing him by his formal name to indicate that he was no longer talking to a favored mentor, but was being commanded by a seer of the council of seers.
"Use the rest of the cycle to formalize the technical part of the report with annotations and citations such that it is worthy of a presentation to the council. I want you here next cycle with your finalized presentation. Do not copy your presentation on the communal or caste memory banks. Carry it with you. Please be available to me for consultation, the moment you arrive here.
I know you have never been here to the nest-of-nests, not many have, but you should have no problems following my scent trail to my nesting place. Plan your journey well for you may be here for a long time.
" The seer relinquished the link for Harmony to speak as a courtesy, though his odor indicated that the conversation was over unless he had something terribly important to say.
Taking the hint Harmony replied "It shall be as you command my seer", and with that he signaled the tasting station that he was ready to terminate the link. Technical protocol required both side need to signal link termination before the link actually terminated. Such was also the social protocol and etiquette of his beings. They had no goodbyes or farewells.
The moment the link terminated, he was glad he was in a privacy chamber containing the tasting station, for he was an explosion of odors, most of which would have been embarrassing in public. While a tasting station is private even in the open, unless someone breaches all etiquette and touches the tasting station or your skin slime, odors are a different matter altogether.
In the end he was able to carry out the seer's instructions without any further incident, although the presentation was a harrowing exercise, as the enormity and terror of his discovery started sinking in further.
His beings did not need or have any personal possessions, except in rare cases where a prosthetic was required for assisting biological function. So there was nothing to pack except his presentation, which he had been instructed to carry on him.
That did not mean the seer's advice to plan for a long trip was unfounded. He had access to data on caste memories which could only be accessed from the nest. Some data was accessible only to him in his nest. So he had to leave his scent & odor proxies that would enable him to access data remotely.
He was able to board transport to the opposite side of the world after verification that seer had left permission for him to enter the nest-of-nests. He found the seer by his scent trail without a hitch. Since there are no greetings amongst his beings’ society, just like no goodbyes, the instinctive acknowledgment of each other's odor implied he had reported for duty.
He was not really required for the seer’s preparations, and was not consulted much for the next two cycles. He found himself continually drifting towards hibernation, as is the nature of his beings.
The next real event happened at the end of the 3rd cycle when the validation committee submitted its report, embedded with the odor signatures of all the members. Very traditional and very archaic. Taste signatures are far more secure & reliable, but council only does things the traditional way.
The committee validated all his raw data as well as data analysis. That was a relief as well as expected. The real shocker were in the conclusions. It was not as if they disagreed with any of Harmony's conclusions. Far from it. The shock was in the amount of leap in speculation and suppositions the committee had made.
For one they concluded that they can say with 57 out of 64 certainty that the data is encrypted in combat mode, hence they cannot understand it. While this is a possibility he had considered, there is no evidence supporting this theory. Admitted there is nothing disproving the theory either.
The committee seemed to be going by the doctrine of his beings... If something is unknown, consider it hostile. Still 57 out of 64 seems arbitrary... Why not 64 out of 64 if you are following doctrine? They seem to forget the credo of the curious caste – ‘Say something with indisputable proof, or say it not at all’.
The second conclusion was even more shocking violation of the credo. They concluded that the signal was aimed at somewhere near the edge of our system or at the icy cold bodies beyond the edge of the system. That is the reason, they concluded that the signals are weak since they are simply leakages of a signal pointed and directed at someone else. After all the frequency used is such that it cannot be sharply focused unlike light.
This seems to be complete proof less conclusion. There were many other possibilities equally likely. It could be an omnidirectional signal for example. If it was directed at someone, why use a frequency that cannot be focused well? Why not use a light? Light can be coherently focused on a very tiny area without any leakages for others to eavesdrop?
It seemed that the committee had taken advantage of the fact that none of these conclusions could be disproved either, and once again chosen to steer in the direction of the most alarming possibility. They insinuated the possibility that this was an intercepted signal to a hostile force.
There seemed to be no attempt to explain the mystery of why the signals were not encoded in 0 and 1. Why would anyone use methods of communication discarded in antiquity? To Harmony this was the key to solving the mystery. The committee seemed to have glossed this over by concluding that anything was possible in combat encryption, disregarding the fact that even in combat encryption, it made no sense in terms of error correction or efficiency of communication.
Harmony was still recovering from the shock of committee's report, when he noticed something strange in the reaction of the seer, who has also just finished assimilating the report. It was rather the lack of any reaction that bothered him.
This Seer had risen from the very best of the curious caste. If there was anyone who should be able to detect and be dismayed by the distortion of the curious credo in the report, it should be seer Taste of Light. Yet he seemed unmoved. He gave no odor, his skin had no flash of color and his skin slime felt the same as before.
The seer sensed the disturbance in Harmony immediately. He touched harmony's skin slime and confirmed the reason for his disconcert. "Bright as you are young Harmony, there is lot for you to learn in the ways of the council and the manner in which it functions.
We need to present clear and immediate threats to the council, to ensure it acts swiftly to face the danger of Ka. I feel one day you will be an illustrious seer, but before that, you have to learn how frustratingly indecisive and deadlocked the council can be. It is our duty to all our beings to swiftly react to the threat of Ka. We have to give the council a clear path for them to act".
At that moment Harmony realized with a shock that the seer had arranged for the report to be the way it was presented. The independent verification committee was not so independent after all, and the pure credence of his caste was not so pure after all!
Tasting and smelling the shock of Harmony, the seer gave a wistful odor of sadness. "Aah… The pure innocence of the young! How I long for that phase in my life. Unfortunately we only move forward in time. In a short time we present to the council. Stick to the letter of your presentation when called forward, and give short precise answers if asked. Pay attention and learn the machinations of the council. You have a lot to learn here."
When Harmony was finally ushered into the council, seer Taste of Light was already in his assigned niche in the council finishing off business he vaguely recognized as something to do with nest maintenance. He brushed against the taste of someone he instantly recognized and was pleasantly surprised.
Scent of Fraternity was equally happy to taste him. They had instantly and instinctively liked each other as kindred spirit, erudite and honest to the credo. He smelt and tasted a few others in the visitor niches, but recognized none of them. Each niche had its own tasting station, so the entire council chamber could communicate without having to mingle.
When seer Taste of Light started the opening presentation of the meeting, Harmony could not help but marvel at his mastery and fluidity of communication. Even while the facts and conclusions were being conveyed, the intensity and richness of emotions flowing through the tastes as chemical and electrical signals was unprecedented as never before experienced by Harmony in his young life. He was now getting a glimpse of what it took to be a seer.
By the time seer Taste of Light had finished, a sense of dread and urgency was left hanging in the chamber. When Harmony started his follow up technical presentation, it seemed prosaic by contrast. The council cross questioned Harmony, Fraternity and other visitors to the council, who Harmony learnt were members of the verification committee.
Scent of Persistence, the leader of the committee gave a dramatic and scary presentation very much in line with hi
s report. With that all the visitors were ushered out of the chamber, as the council continued its deliberations in private.
In the end the deliberations of the council lasted for more than two cycles, during which time seers and elders of the builder and warrior castes were summoned by the council for consultation. It was at the end of the third cycle after Harmony's presentation to the council, that seer Taste of Light returned back to his nesting site where Harmony was waiting for him eagerly.
The seer tasted of both satisfaction and dis-satisfaction, which confused Harmony initially. He soon realized that the source of his dissatisfaction was the state of preparedness of the warrior caste and their void vessels. After many hundreds of thousands of cycles of respite from Ka, he felt the warriors had gone soft.
He was equally peeved with the builder caste for neglecting the void and its requirements in terms of vessels, tasting equipment, weapons and gears of migration. This was actually understandable, since it was nearly a million cycles since the last migration. That explanation did not satisfy the seer apparently.
What satisfied the peer was that he had convinced the council to mobilize completely to meet this new threat of Ka. All of the world's non-essential activities would be curtailed and the resources mobilized for this effort. New migration vessels would be commissioned. Massive new spawning has been sanctioned most of them initially for builders and then for warriors.
All curious caste effort is also directed towards migration effort, especially towards studying the bright star system Kalshuk and adapting the spawning and migration gears accordingly.
An intimation will be immediately dispatched to all the other settled worlds of their beings detailing all they had found, their conclusions and the actions they intended to take. It would take almost a hundred cycles for the message to reach the furthest worlds and an equal time for their response to arrive back. Hence the actions of the other worlds did not matter in the short term. For now their world was on its own.
The Battle of Titan Page 2