Thor nodded. “Of course we are,” she said. “But you can keep your eyes off ours.”
He laughed with good humor. “Somehow I knew you’d feel that way, Caryl,” he said. “But I assure you, at this stage, I have no designs on what you consider to be yours.”
Alander took little comfort from that statement, and he knew Hatzis wouldn’t, either. “The rest of the mission was a success, I gather?” he said, moving the subject on. “You have the data?”
“I have some data.” Axford’s expression became serious. “The easiest to access is the language. Mercury—or should I call it Mercury-squared?—can act as a translator between our species. But there’s still a long way to go with the translations. I mean, the words are okay, but the meanings are complicated. It’s difficult to tell what’s telemetry report and what’s a history text, you know? Do the Roaches create and read fiction? I don’t know yet.” He shook his head. “There’s a lot of information to sift through, and I’ve put my best minds on it.”
Alander smiled at the intended joke.
“What about math?” he asked. “There must be some overlap there, surely?”
“Naturally,” said Axford. “But that tells me little more than I already knew. Their operational techniques are much more advanced and use divergent philosophies. They grasped quantum gravity much sooner than we did.” He shrugged again. “I don’t know, maybe their fundamental symmetry gives them an intuitive grip on the concept of superposition. It’s hard to say for certain.”
“So why don’t you just ask them?” said Hatzis. “Now that you know their language, why speculate?”
“They’re not terribly communicative,” he answered. “You’ll understand that when you speak to them.”
“And what has Charlie’s response been to the new arrivals?” asked Alander.
“Charlie died,” said Axford. From his expression, Alander could have sworn the man was actually upset by this. “There was nothing I could do about it. He weakened dramatically since you saw him, and the trauma of the maneuver finished him off. I haven’t mentioned this to the others yet, and I suggest you refrain from doing so, too. We have no idea how they might react.”
“And what did you learn from him?” asked Alander. “I’m assuming you conducted an autopsy and didn’t just dump him out the airlock?”
“Of course, and I found a great diversity of genetic material, which could mean he was biomodified, as I originally thought.”
“Or it could mean that you simply don’t understand how their genetic analogue works yet,” put in Hatzis.
Axford smiled at her cynicism. “Very possibly,” he conceded. “The structure of his nervous system was fascinating. I’ll be working on that for some time to come yet. It does appear that it had suffered from severe plaque formation. There were signs of repair in many places, however, which I took to mean that he was quite old.”
“How old?” asked Hatzis.
“Any estimates will be exceedingly rough at this point,” replied Axford evasively.
“Then give me a rough estimate,” Hatzis persisted.
Axford met her stare evenly. “Possibly centuries. But like I said, at this stage it’s all hypothetical.”
“Better than nothing.”
“But not as good as meeting the real thing. Speaking of which...” He turned to face the wall behind him, which immediately peeled away to reveal an adjoining chamber of roughly the same size. It was separated from the cockpit by an invisible boundary, made visible only by a yellowish tinge to the air on the far side. The aliens, two of them, sat with their backs to each other on a saddlelike couch, their long legs bent at disconcertingly sharp angles. Their faces moved differently from how Alander had imagined after seeing the recording of Charlie in action: instead of flexing like rubber masks, sections of their skin appeared to slide in and out of view, changing the symmetrical patterns dramatically when they spoke. No doubt the changing patterns expressed emotions of some sort, as did their postures and oddly graceful gestures, but it was all lost on him.
“Can they hear us?” asked Hatzis in a hushed tone.
“Not yet,” said Axford. “Nor can they see us. I thought I’d give you time to adjust first.”
“What did they evolve from?” Alander asked, fascinated by the shoulder plates hugging their spines. “Lizards? Insects? Birds?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” Axford shrugged. “Without knowing more about their original environment, it’s hard to be sure.”
“So you haven’t translated that part of the information yet?”
“Not even close, I’m afraid.”
Alander wondered how true this was. The knowledge had little strategic value, certainly, but he wouldn’t put it past the ex-general to be automatically guarded when it came to data of this nature.
“Shall we begin, then?” he suggested.
“Caryl?” Axford asked.
Hatzis was staring fixedly at the aliens from a point very close to the invisible boundary, her eyes following their every movement. She took a deep breath as she nodded faintly. “Okay. Let’s do it.”
The sound of the aliens’ voices came over the cockpit’s sound system. Alander tried not to make subjective judgments, but it was hard to avoid an automatic wince. Each of the aliens simultaneously emitted two series of piercing whistles chopped into fragments with recognizable intonations. Thankfully, at least, there was none of the screeching he’d heard during the attack. The pitch of each whistle was close to the other, so that the beating between the two frequencies conveyed additional information. That was all very well, Alander thought, but what he heard was a sequence of irritating dissonances, as though two flautists were arguing over who could play the highest note. Even at a low volume, it was an almost painful sound that could have been specifically designed to irritate a human ear.
One of the aliens looked up, its vestigial wings flexing. It raised a bony arm, and the conversation between the two of them ceased. Both heads turned to face the humans. Black, unblinking eyes regarded them closely. The patterns on their faces assumed almost identical expressions. The shoulder plates of first one and then the other rose slightly, perhaps in a reflex action to make them look larger.
“Can you hear us?” Hatzis began the interrogation cautiously, uncertainly.
The alien on the left uttered two strings of syllables at once, its mouth making strange, triangular shapes.
“We you hear sound you strange,” came the translation from the Mercury. Clearly only one had responded, but two message streams were coming through simultaneously, causing whatever the alien had said to come out as gibberish. One of the vocal streams was softer than the other, almost as if it were the less important of the two statements.
“Can we avoid the overlap?” she whispered to Axford.
He nodded. “Mercury, allow a time lag whenever the aliens issue more than one statement at a time. Try to keep the vocal streams separate.” To Hatzis he said: “Have another go.”
She turned back to the aliens and said: “My name is Caryl Hatzis.” She placed a hand on her body’s broad chest. “And this is Peter Alander.”
A string of alien speech mimicked her own inside the alien’s chamber. To Alander it sounded like two harpies having a shouting match in the house next door.
“There is no telling you apart/our eyes see nothing,” the same alien responded. The hole ship gave the alien a female voice, a contralto rich with exotic undertones. Alander wondered if it had based the gender on biological information they hadn’t been privy to; to him, this alien looked no different than Charlie, who Axford had suggested was male.
“We are having the same problem,” Hatzis said. “We’re not getting the visual clues we’re used to.”
The aliens didn’t respond in any obvious way. Their expressions didn’t change; their eyes could have been looking anywhere.
“How should we address you?” she asked. “Do you have names?”
“We are—” I
nstead of a human word, the hole ship inserted a modified version of the double syllable uttered by the alien.
Alander shook his head. “I’m never going to get my tongue around that.”
“I’ve isolated the phonetic components,” said Axford. “The first is yuhl, a syllable that has no translation. The second is goel, which translates, as near as I can make out, to mean predator. I think it might be some sort of rank or class title, although they seem to use it as a general term for the species, as well.”
“They certainly don’t look like predators,” Hatzis mumbled under her breath. “No claws, no canines—”
“But their eyes are forward-facing, and their legs are strong,” said Alander. “So don’t be too quick to judge.”
“We’ve lost our claws, don’t forget,” added Axford. “That doesn’t mean we’re not dangerous.”
“They can’t hear us now?” Alander had noted the absence of a translation in the alien’s chamber.
“Only when you address them directly.”
Alander stepped forward. The heads of the aliens turned to face him.
“We’d like to learn about your species.” He spoke slowly, stupidly believing that this might somehow make him less threatening and more affable. “Has Axford—” He indicated the ex-general. “—asked you where you come from?”
The same alien whistled something in reply.
“I have no clear analogue for that expression,” said Mercury.
“Display what you can translate, then.”
A string of Roman characters appeared on the screen:
WE DO NOT TALK TO THE [UNKNOWN].
“The word breaks down into two components,” said Axford. “One means bodiless, the other prey.”
“Is he talking about us in general or you in particular?” asked Hatzis, glancing at Axford’s conSense illusion.
“The latter, I suspect,” replied Axford. “The boundary separating you from them is providing an illusion of my presence. I made the mistake of explaining that it was just an illusion, and they immediately stopped talking.”
Alander chuckled. “How unfortunate.”
“It’s only a temporary setback,” the ex-general defended. “I’m working on a body as we speak. In the meantime, you’ll have to talk to them for me.”
Alander kept his eyes on the alien who had last spoken. “I am flesh and blood, like you, and I have no intention of being anyone’s prey. Can we speak as equals—as intelligent beings seeking common understanding?”
“Why?/We do not understand.”
Both vocalizations came out at the same volume, which Alander assumed to mean that both utterances were of equal emphasis.
“To broaden our minds, of course,” he said. “To learn how to understand each other.”
The alien spoke. “To you we have nothing to say/are different.”
“Yes, we’re different,” said Alander, “but I still think there are many things we can tell each other. For instance, my species has never had the chance to compare its ethical codes with those of another. The same with religious beliefs, artistic tastes, modes of thought, and scientific methods. Our culture is still very much defined by primitive urges such as consumption, reproduction, and death. It colors the way we think and act on almost every level. Is your culture the same, or have you found a way around this problem?”
The first alien stared blankly back at him while the other remained as silent as before.
“To hell with this, Peter,” Hatzis said, shaking her head. “They don’t give a damn about this shit, and neither do I.” She roughly shouldered her way in front of him. “Tell us why you’re attacking our colonies—and what you know about the Spinners. If you call yourselves predators, then why are you behaving like scavengers?”
The alien closest to her turned its head to face her, but it was still the other one that spoke. “We are the Yuhl/Goel.”
“Spare me that crap,” said Hatzis angrily. “Give me a straight answer, or I swear I’ll hand you back to the bodiless prey, here. I’m sure he’d love another specimen to dissect.”
The alien’s wing sheaths flicked upward momentarily. “We will lose nothing you can do.”
Hatzis narrowed her eyes as if this might help her to understand what the alien was talking about. “What?”
“They have nothing to lose?” suggested Alander. “There’s nothing we can do?”
“Our culture is dead/has died,” the alien said. “We are the Yuhl/Goel.”
“When it said ‘our culture,’ “ Alander said, “I thought I heard that yuhl syllable again.”
Axford’s eyes drifted as he consulted the hole ship’s translation programs. “That’s right.”
“That must be their name,” said Alander. “The Yuhl.” “And perhaps the goel addition indicates a subculture.”
Axford nodded. “I think you’re spot on.”
“Open the line again.” He faced the aliens. “If your culture was called the Yuhl, and you are the Yuhl-slash-goel—” He heard the hole ship insert the correct pronunciation in the final version. “—then who are we? If our culture was called humanity, what will you call us?”
“You are—” Buried in a dissonant alien whistle was a rough approximation of the English word he had used.
“We are humanity-slash-riil,” interpreted Axford with a shrug. “That’s the same word they used for prey before.”
“Predators and prey,” Hatzis sneered. “They’re stuck in a stratified worldview. If that’s so,” she said, addressing the captives, “where do the Starfish and the Spinners fit in? Are you trying to become them? Or maybe even beat them at their own game?”
The alien addressing them stood and stepped forward. Its mottled orange skin (or was it a bodysuit? Alander still couldn’t tell) gleamed under the thin membrane of an I-suit. It was very tall, standing almost a meter higher than Alander’s and Hatzis’s artificial bodies. The sides of its chest expanded, leaving a depression in the center large enough for a human fist, and the pigmentation on its face and upper body faded to a brown yellow.
“We are the Yuhl/Goel,” it said. “That is all you need to know/all you will learn from us. Release us/kill us. It makes no difference to the Yuhl/Goel or to you. Your fate is already decided.”
“What does that mean?” asked Hatzis.
“You are humanity/riil. You are already/dead.”
The alien sat down again, folding its enormous legs back up to its chest and turning away. It was a clear message: their discussion had ended.
“Well, they’ve got guts, I’ll give them that,” said Hatzis. “They’re not exactly in the best position to be threatening anyone at the moment.”
“I don’t think he needs to be,” said Axford. He seemed uncharacteristically worried.
“What do you mean?” asked Alander.
“I question Mercury’s translation of that last word,” he said. “I don’t believe that dead is quite what our friend here meant to say.”
“What, then?” asked Hatzis.
“I think the word Mercury was looking for was extinct.”
1.2.3
Extinct.
The word echoed dully in Thor’s mind. It struck deep, at the heart of her uncertainty, as well as her fear. If humanity really was extinct, then what would happen to Sol’s dreams and aspirations? What of immortality? What of ascending to the technological heights of the Spinners or the Starfish? What of becoming...?
She let the thought go, suddenly angered by the alien that had turned its back on her. She refused to let the argument end there; refused to allow these scavengers to dictate when the discussion had finished. They were her prisoners, for fuck’s sake!
“What the hell do you know about us?” she said angrily. “Who are you to tell us that we have no hope? Extinct? You bastards will go before we do!”
The alien didn’t respond. Its wing sheaths remained upraised, as though blocking her out, which only angered her more.
“Look at me, you
fucker!” She pounded on the invisible barrier with both her fists.
A hand touched her shoulder, gently pulling her back.
“Take it easy, Caryl,” said Alander. There was a hint of amusement in his voice that didn’t do anything for her temper.
She wheeled on him. “These fucking parasites have been stealing our resources and destroying our colonies,” she yelled in his face. “Don’t tell me to take it easy! If we die, it’ll be because they—”
“Hey, can it, Caryl,” said Axford. She was about to turn on him as well until she saw him staring at the aliens. “Look.”
She looked to where he was pointing and saw the second alien raise its hands and press them to its temples. It spoke for the first time, keening a long phrase in its piercingly dissonant language. Its eyes might have looked at her, but she couldn’t tell. They were black, bottomless pools staring out of a fractured face.
“What’s it saying?” she demanded.
“I have no clear analogue for that expression,” said Mercury.
“Display it, then,” said Axford.
Words appeared on the screen to Hatzis’s left.
THE SINGING OF THE already/dead HURTS MY EARS.
STRIKE THEM NOW, [UNKNOWN], AND SPARE THEM THEIR [UNKNOWN].
Hatzis faced Axford. “Well? Any ideas?”
“Bear with us, Caryl,” he scolded. “This isn’t easy. It’s like decoding two languages at once.” He thought for a moment. “The third term combines concepts of mourning or despair and anticipation; grief-in-advance, perhaps?” He shrugged. “I’m guessing the second term is a name, comprising perhaps both benefactor and malefactor. If I had to pick a human term, it would be Ambivalence.”
“The Ambivalence?” Hatzis scowled. The phrase sounded ridiculous.
“It’s the closest I can get.”
“ ‘The singing of the already-dead hurts my ears,’ “ Alander repeated.
“ ‘Strike them now, Ambivalence,’ “ Axford went on, “ ‘and spare them their grief-in-advance.’ “
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