Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume Two

by Short Story Anthology

  But there was one more option. Denali Eu was an educated man, and he knew the history of the bird ships. He also knew Nerissa’s story. And because of this knowledge, and despite this knowledge, he made the final, fateful decision that set a legend in motion.

  He spent a long time sitting on the log, his head in his hands, but he could think of no other alternative. Then he stood and walked back to his mother’s house. There, as the sun set, he told Nerissa and Leona of his decision. His mother cried and shouted and beat her hands upon the kitchen table; Nerissa sat upon a chair with her head bowed, but did not speak. Neither of them could change his mind.

  The next day Nerissa and Leona took Denali Eu for a walk in the forest. He listened to the birds and the rustling of the leaves, and he felt the cool wind brush gently against his skin. He smelled the green of the leaves and the damp of the earth, and as many flowers as they could find. In the evening they prepared for him a fine meal, with pungent spices and fresh vegetables, and succulent fruits new-gathered and sweet. Nerissa massaged his back with her strong warm fingers, and his mother cried as she brushed his cheek with pieces of silk and fur.

  On the following morning he went into the city and gave himself to the doctors. He told them what he wanted, and he swore three times that this was his will.

  And so they killed him, and they took his brain and welded it to the keel of the Crocus . For the techniques of Doctor Jay were legal, as long as the donation was voluntary and sworn to three times, and the organs of a young man in the best of health could be sold for enough money to pacify the chandler.

  The operation was every bit as painful as Nerissa had said. But Denali found sailing the stars was even more delightful than dancing in the moonlight: a symphony of colors and textures beyond his human experience. And this ship was equipped with eyes and ears and hands within its hull as well as without.

  The ship, renamed the Golden Eagle, became a hugely successful trader. Denali Eu’s knowledge and skill, combined with Nerissa Zeebnen-Fearsig’s beauty and charm, were something no seller or buyer could resist and no other trader could surpass. The ship with a human mind and a metal captain was famed in song and story, and when after many years Leona Eu died she left one of the greatest fortunes in the Consensus.

  Denali Eu and Nerissa the Silver Captain have not been seen for many, many years. Some say they sought new challenges in the Magellanic Clouds or even beyond. Some say they settled down to a contented existence on an obscure planet. But no one doubts that, wherever they are, they are together still.

  Written on the Wind, by David D. Levine

  Thuren Nektopk peered down at Luulianni from above his massive desk. “I suspect you know why I’ve called you to speak with me in person.” He spoke in his native language, Ptopku Dominant, using the form of address for a subordinate or a child. It was a constant reminder that the Ptopku had built and largely staffed this station, and was one of the most powerful species in the Consortium.

  “Yes, Supervisor,” Luulianni replied in the same language, knotting her tentacles.

  “And that would be…?”

  “Because of my side project.”

  “Yes.” Nektopk suddenly released the bar from which he hung, caught himself on another handhold, and with two swift strokes of his arms swung down to where his six slitted eyes were level with Luulianni’s. “Your little side project.”

  Luulianni cringed. “I don’t understand why it’s so much of a problem.” She straightened and tried to meet his gaze. “I put in my full quota of time every day.”

  “Yes, you do, and not one moment more. But I know you are capable of so much more than that. Any work you do on this pointless little side project of yours constitutes theft of resources from the Section — from the whole Project!”

  “Theft?” she squeaked. Angry at herself for the loss of control, she brought her voice down. “Theft of resources? But I don’t use any data storage space, or any other Section resources! I write my notes on the backs of old printouts.” She did not mention how much more natural it felt to work on paper.

  “You are stealing the most valuable resource of all!” Nektopk pointed at her with one limber foot. “Your own time and attention!”

  “But it’s my time!”

  “You have been sent here by your people — at considerable expense, I might add — to assist in the Project, to learn the ways of the Consortium, and to demonstrate your species’ unique skills.” He leaned closer to her. His smell was bitter. “And if I find that your species, as represented by yourself, does not demonstrate any unique skills, your application for Consortium membership could very well be denied.” He swung himself up to the edge of his desk, the better to glare down at her. “Therefore, your time is not your own. You owe it to the Section, to the Project, and to your own people to put every bit of available time into your assigned task.”

  Luulianni hung her head. “Yes, Supervisor.”

  “You may return to your work.”

  “Thank you, Supervisor.”

  #

  Luulianni’s scales prickled with anger as she made her way back to her workspace. If she was to demonstrate her unique skills, why did he not listen to her ideas? And if her time was so valuable, why did Nektopk insist that she come to his office, halfway across the station, rather than using the screen?

  She straightened her shoulders and forced herself to walk down the middle of the corridor. The Muuli were a burrowing species; her instinct was to cling to the wall, to hide from the harsh, bluish light and the Ptopku swinging from handhold to handhold far above. Luulianni consoled herself that some day her people would build their own stations in space, with low ceilings and narrow corridors. They would be dark, and warm, and smell of dirt and of many long-nosed Muuli.

  But that day was a long time away. And if she didn’t prove herself here, it might never come.

  She knew she was one of the best linguists of her species. Her work had been invaluable in establishing communication with the many races of the Consortium when they had arrived on her world. Jun Dal-Nieri, the highly respected head of the Contact Team, had insisted she join the Eight Degrees Project — said her skills would be invaluable in decoding the Message that was the riddle of the age.

  But when she had arrived at the station, she found herself a lowly Second-Level Linguist in the Language Three Section, working for a rigid, procedure-bound, manipulative…

  “Eek!” she squeaked, her head pulling back against her shoulders as she nearly slammed into a wall of hard white skin.

  “Sorry, Luu! I thought you saw me.”

  Geeni Rount was an imposing figure — over twice Luulianni’s height, roughly tetrahedral, with a flexible limb at each of the four corners and an eye in the center of each of the four sides. His species, the Turundi, had rebuilt themselves for work in space. At the moment he was deeply involved with an open maintenance panel.

  “My fault. I was kind of distracted.” She spoke in Consortium Trade Language. She had been studying Turundi Modal, but at the moment she didn’t feel up to the challenge of conversing in it. It was a complicated language, with inflections for such things as sincerity and direction.

  “Thinking about Language Eight again?”

  “Not any more. Nektopk has told me to focus all my attentions on my assigned task.” She waggled her tongue over her shoulder in the direction of his office, a gesture of disrespect that always made Geeni laugh. But this time he didn’t even smile. “What’s wrong?”

  “My government has withdrawn our representative from the Consortium Grand Council.”

  “What?”

  “My President says there’s no point trying to negotiate with the Ptopku any further. If they don’t back down, he’ll send our fleet to englobe the Ptopku homeworld.”

  “But that’s against the law!”

  Geeni rocked in sad acknowledgment. “There hasn’t been a war within the Consortium for centuries. But the President says the Ptopku need to be stopped befo
re they can complete construction of this ‘super weapon.’ The Ptopku deny everything, of course.”

  “This must be very hard for you.”

  “Well, you know what they say — a Turundi always has multiple viewpoints. As a member of the Project, I trust the people I work with… besides, if someone really had found plans for a weapon in the Message, I’m sure we would have heard rumors. But as a Turundi, I know that’s just the kind of secret the Ptopku would do anything to keep. And as a citizen of the Consortium, I just wish both governments would stop this scary nonsense.”

  “I may be just a provisional citizen, but I wish the same thing.”

  They said their good-byes and moved off in opposite directions.

  #

  Arriving at her workspace, Luulianni climbed awkwardly into the tall chair that brought her up to the screen. Even with threats of war in the air, she still had to do her job. Her species was counting on her.

  But her official assignment was deathly dull. She tried to remind herself that comparing the character frequencies in the Message against all known languages might provide some hints at its structure, or at least directions for study, but it didn’t help. Her mind kept drifting to the problem of Language Eight.

  Consortium astronomers had known for centuries about the cosmic background radiation, eight standard degrees above absolute zero, that was the visible remnant of the hot compressed state of the universe over three billion standard years ago. Slight fluctuations had been observed in this radiation for over a century, but it was just thirty-one years ago that the great Puhst astrophysicist Shimustli had recognized a definite and complex pattern — a Message that dated from the very beginning of the universe.

  Many people felt this must be a message from the Creator; many others believed it to be technological or philosophical information from an enormously advanced and ancient species. It could be the plans for a source of limitless energy, or an ultimate weapon, or the key to universal happiness — there was no way of knowing, but surely a Message embedded in the structure of the universe itself must be of vital importance. So the Consortium created the enormous Eight Degrees Project, administered by the Ptopku, to study the Message and work towards a translation.

  Great progress had been made in the first few years. The Message consisted of just over two billion binary digits, grouped into “cells” of sixteen digits each. It was divided into seven sections, each with a different data pattern, labeled Language One through Language Seven. Each language section was in turn divided into three subsections.

  And there the work had stalled for over twenty years. The problem of decoding an alien language with no common referents had been faced and overcome again and again in the history of the Consortium, but always there were living users of the language, or related languages, or associated artifacts, or some other clues to provide context and hint at meanings. Here there was nothing — just the single Message itself.

  Billions of trade credits had been poured into the problem. Astronomers looked for similar messages from other points in the cosmos. Archaeologists searched for artifacts on the planets of the oldest stars. Statisticians sifted the digits of the Message for clues. Linguists attempted to reconstruct the first languages in the galaxy from evidence in the oldest known languages. None of these had had any success.

  Finally, just a few months ago, a breakthrough had been made: a group of religious statisticians on Wufung Elirundi determined that there were blocks of a distinct statistical pattern embedded in the first two sections of all seven languages. This pattern had become known as Language Eight.

  Luulianni was fascinated by this new language, as was every other linguist, statistician, archaeologist, and crackpot in the Consortium. She made charts of its patterns and trends. She talked about it long into the night with the other linguists. She even dreamed about it — rows and columns of symbols sliding back and forth, now blocking her view, now revealing glimpses of meaning that, frustratingly, slipped away when she awoke.

  And now she had been barred from this work, condemned to slog through thousands of statistical comparisons of Language Three with known languages. Even more frustrating, this work had all been done before — but it had to be repeated with the blocks of Language Eight removed. It was like measuring the holes in a shuuliuntu cheese, ignoring the cheese itself that she would love to nibble.

  Luulianni tapped and scratched the screen with her tentacle-tips, running one comparison after another. She knew that others, such as Geeni, could write complex instructions so that the screen itself could perform repetitive tasks like this, but she didn’t know how — and, besides, Geeni had told her that the data was too inconsistent for the comparisons to be completely automated. So the afternoon passed in repetitive drudgery.

  Finally the time displayed in one corner of the screen caught up with her stomach — days here were longer than on her home world — and she climbed slowly down from her chair.

  #

  Luulianni fixed herself a simple dinner of grubs. The angry Ptopku and Turundi faces on her screen made her lose her appetite, so she canceled the news and called up the Message data in its place. As she ate, she scribbled on a piece of paper. Surely my meal time is my own, she thought.

  With the blocks of Language Eight removed from the other seven languages, it became obvious that the numerical cell values of all the others clustered in the low end of the range of possible values, while the values of Language Eight were scattered all over the range. It wasn’t video or audio data, but to Luulianni it didn’t smell like a natural language either. What else could it be?

  One of the frustrations of working with the screen was that all work had to be done in the alphabet of the Consortium Trade Language, each cell value being represented by an arbitrary and unpronounceable triplet of letters. But on her own, on paper, Luulianni used notations of her own invention. She had developed a different writing system for each language, constantly revising each to reflect her growing understanding of its shape and smell. Language Five, for example, used over a thousand different cell values — it seemed to be a pictographic language, so she had developed an enormous library of pictograms for it. She knew the little symbols she drew had no relation to the actual meanings of the cells, but staring at them was more natural, more intuitive, than staring at letter triplets.

  For Language Eight, which used tens of thousands of cell values, she was currently using a notation based on the sixteen binary digits of each cell. She drew a grid of lines on her paper, mentally divided each square into four by four, and placed a dot or a line in each location corresponding to the zero or one value of the corresponding digit. It was tedious work, but by doing it with a pen held in her own two tentacle-tips she felt connected to the language in a way the screen could never allow.

  Her cup of grubs sat half-eaten on the table beside her as she reached the bottom of the sheet and started on another one. One of the grubs made it to the edge of the cup and fell with a small, soft sound to the tabletop; absently she slurped it up with a flick of her tongue and kept writing. As long as I haven’t finished my dinner, she thought, I can keep working on this.

  A long time later, well after she should have gone to sleep, three grubs lay forgotten in the cup. But when she reached for another sheet, there wasn’t one. She had exhausted her pile of used printouts.

  Frustrated, she flipped her current sheet over, but the other side was already densely covered with print. She looked on the backs of some previous sheets — the same. Finally she came across one that had an unmarked strip running down one side. She drew a grid of tall narrow rectangles, instead of squares, in the empty space, so there would be the same number of cells in each line as before. But when she found her four-by-four arrangement of dots and lines was illegible in that space, she switched to a simple linear arrangement, writing the dots and lines vertically for each cell.

  She was halfway down the page when she saw something peculiar out of the corner of her eye. She blinke
d and sat up from where she had been crouched, nose to the page.

  It looked like a circle. A loose, ragged circle of lines in a field of dots. She squinted a little and it became clearer.

  There was another circle. But this one had a line across its center. And over there, a triangle.

  She sat stunned. A grub crawled across the page; her tongue snatched it up without tasting it.

  Pictures. Crude, simplistic, but recognizable.

  Language Eight was pictures!

  #

  Early the next morning a haggard, rheumy-eyed Luulianni stood at the foot of Nektopk’s desk. Scattered on the floor around her was an assortment of old printouts, flattened boxes, paper wipes, and even her Letter of Commendation, pulled from its frame on the wall — all covered with dots and lines in a variety of colors.

  “But don’t you see?” she wailed. “This could be the key to all seven languages!” She swayed a bit on her feet, and she realized she had accidentally addressed Nektopk as an equal.

  “You’re simply misleading yourself,” he replied, stressing the pronoun that indicated her status. “These little pictures are the product of selective reasoning, wishful thinking, and lack of sleep. A few apparent patterns here and there are only to be expected in any data set of this size.”

  “But look at this circle! And here’s another one, with a dot in the center! And here, and here, and look, here’s a very clear cross!”

  “Yes, but what about the tens of thousands of cells that do not display such clear pictures?”

  “They may be in a more complex notation. The simple pictures could point the way to decoding the rest of them.”

  Nektopk lowered himself gently to the floor next to Luulianni and took her lower set of tentacles in his feet. They were warm and rough. “Dear child, surely something so obvious would have been discovered by other researchers before this?”

  “Maybe they did, then dismissed it like you just did. Maybe they missed it because it was too obvious. But it needs to be studied, not just discarded!”