B009NFP2OW EBOK (20 page)

The thing looked a little like a terrestrial jellyfish, but far more substantial and massive. The skin—more like a rubbery hide—was a dark slate-gray, and the movements of the peripheral tentacles suggested tremendous strength.

“Okay, let me see it through its way of seeing things,” Gray told the AI.

The being in front of him blurred, then shifted into the other way of seeing, a painting in harsh blue light. Letting his gaze move into the creature, Gray saw closely packed internal organs, but there was no way of telling what was what. Five muscular lumps each the size of a human head were spaced in a ring around the body’s central core, and these were pulsing in a way analogous to a human heart . . . but more slowly, and in succession.

He didn’t see any legs beneath the fleshy skirt. The Slan glided about on a single large, muscular “foot,” like a terrestrial gastropod.

Presumably, the Slan was now looking at Gray through its own sonar sense. It, at least, Gray thought, had already had the chance to see a human that way . . . the prisoner rescued yesterday from their headquarters ship.

Lieutenant Megan Connor was on board
America
, now, and was still being debriefed on her experiences. Her initial descriptions of the strangeness of the Slan had been the factor that had led Gray to suggest this visual swap in the first place, a means of literally stepping into each other’s shoes.

Okay, the Slan didn’t wear shoes, or anything else, for that matter. But the metaphor still worked.

The AI referred to the being as it, apparently a direct translation of how they thought of themselves.
America
’s xenobiology department believed that the Slan were either hermaphroditic or, as with terrestrial ants and bees, that only a few members of the species could reproduce, that most individuals were of the neuter caste.

“!kt’kt’!’kt’cht’!k,”
sounded in Gray’s mind, a rapid rattle of clicks and pops and clucking sounds. The Slan was speaking.

“I thought we had the translation program working,” Gray said, annoyed. “What’s with that noise?”

“Some concepts,” the AI reminded him, “simply cannot be translated. That might have been a greeting, or an exclamation. Or both.”

Great
, Gray thought. Then he gave an inward shrug. How many expressions in English were little more than polite noise? Or depended on cultural or even biological context to make sense?
On the other hand
made sense only if you knew what a hand was . . . and knew that a person had only two of them.

“I am Captain Gray,” he said in his mind. The AI would pick up his unvoiced thoughts and translate them for the Slan. “I hope we can arrive at a mutual understanding.”

“Affirmation,” a voice replied in his mind. “Too many have crossed into light, a terrible waste of resources.”

“I agree. What is your name? How should we call you?”

“This one is Clear Chiming Bell, of the third caste of holding the mellifluous harmonies.”

Gray wasn’t sure if what he’d just heard was a military rank or a job description. Perhaps it was both. “And why did your forces attack us here in this star system?”

There was a long hesitation. “We are not sure what you mean by ‘star system.’ ”

“The world we are orbiting now. We call it Arianrhod. It has been one of our colonies for one hundred forty-two of our years.”

There was another delay. “What’s the problem?” Gray asked the AI on the private channel. The ship’s AI was closely monitoring both the virtual environment and the exchange of communications.

“The Slan is consulting its computer databases,” the AI replied. “It is having difficulty with some physical concepts, apparently, such as ‘year’ and ‘planet.’ ”

But how was that even possible? The Slan were space farers. They had starships, very
good
starships, with better drive systems than humans. How the hell could you leave your world if you didn’t know what a world was?

“Are you getting good information from them?” Gray asked. Each time the Slan looked into its own computer database,
America
’s AI could look with it, look over its metaphorical shoulder, and uncover more data.

“I am. We are downloading data on Slan biology, on their relationship with the Sh’daar, and much else.”

“And they’re getting the same sort of stuff on us?”

“Almost certainly.”

Good. Certain information in
America
’s memory would be carefully blocked from Slan probes, and the Slan computers no doubt employed similar blocks. But just a few moments of computer exchanges like this could tell both species a great deal about each other, information that normal, non-enhanced communication might never reveal.

“Are you having any trouble matching with their system?”

The AI hesitated. “No major difficulties. Their computer system is similar to our old DNA computers. Their biology does not employ DNA, however. They appear to use TNA instead—threose nucleic acid.”

Gray nodded understanding. On Earth, enzymes and DNA had first been used in the very early twenty-first century to create a molecular computer more than 100,000 times faster than the best personal computers at the time. TNA was an organic polymer like DNA or RNA, but with a different chemical backbone. Though it had never been known to evolve naturally on Earth, when humans began encountering extrasolar life, they found that DNA was only one way among many of encoding genetic information. TNA, among others, ran the genetics of several extrasolar ecologies as an analogue of terrestrial DNA.

Evidently, the Slan had discovered molecular computing with their own version of organic chemistry. The interesting point from Gray’s perspective was that they were
still
using molecular computing. On Earth, molecular computing had been a short-lived sideshow in the development of ever faster computers, a system rapidly superseded by even faster and more powerful quantum computers.

It was an interesting difference between human technology and the Slan, but there was nothing yet that Gray could use to his advantage.

“We were told,” the translated Slan voice said after a moment, “that humans are
k’!k’t!’cht’!k’!kt’!!!k
. Our AIs see no evidence that this is true, however.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The term
k’!k’t!’cht’!k’!kt’!!!k
does not appear to translate into Agletsch Trade Pidgin,”
America
’s AI said.

“Interesting. Who was telling them about us? The Sh’daar?”

“Presumably so.”

“That term you just used did not translate,” Gray said.

“The terms ‘beg’ and ‘pardon’ did not translate,” the Slan replied.

“What were you told about us?”

“This one regrets the . . . translation difficulty,” Clear Chiming Bell said after another moment. “This is . . . important. Do humans . . . it is difficult to say, difficult to make it make sense . . . pollute . . . contaminate . . . interfere with the sonic background environment in . . . in immoral ways?”

“I don’t quite understand,” Gray said. “What does that mean?”

He could almost feel the Slan struggling with alien concepts. “Making a clear understanding of one’s surroundings . . . opaque. As if robbing the air. With sonic emissions?”

Gray struggled to suppress an outburst of laughter. On the face of it, the Slan appeared to be asking if humans
farted
. . . if they created noise contamination that interfered with the sonic “view.”

But he didn’t reply immediately because he had the feeling that the Slan meant something else, something much more serous than random gas emissions from the lower digestive tract.

“I’m sorry,” Gray replied carefully. “I still can’t make out what you’re saying. Can you give me examples?”

“There are among us,” Clear Chiming Bell said, “those who deliberately emit vibrations . . . sound energy in such a way as to . . . obscure our sonar picture of our surroundings. They violate the . . . guiding spirit of the Tunnels. Of the Community. They are . . . unsane. They are
k’!k’t!’cht’!k’!kt’!!!k
. They are sent into the light.”

Gray considered this. Okay . . . maybe he
could
see something in what the lumpish alien was saying. Tunnels . . . community. He glanced at a sidebar window running within his in-head, looking at the information
America
’s AI was garnering from the Slan THA computers during the conversation. The data coming back on their evolutionary biology suggested that they lived underground . . . possibly in hives, again like ants or bees. They didn’t seem to possess the so-called hive mind usually attributed to such species, but if you packed a large number of individuals into narrow tunnels like the virtual one he was standing in now, there would be some pretty strong social rules governing how you acted, what you did, and how you did it.

They are sent into the light
. Among some human religions, going to the light could be understood as a metaphor for death, and perhaps that was why the phrase had translated easily. So, among the Slan, some individuals so interfered with how the community saw their surroundings that they were killed, or, as another interpretation might have it, they were exiled from the community.

For the Slan sonic equivalent of passing gas?

Or for being different in a society that demanded uniformity, that enforced a harsh compliance to social custom or regulations.

But . . . was human society all that different? Gray smiled in a grim, humorless way. The major background culture claimed to be open and accepting, and yet for them the outsiders, the inhabitants of the Periphery, were . . . different. Immorally so in the way they clung to old traditions of monogamy and marriage.

Unsane.

Maybe in this one regard, human and Slan weren’t that different from one another after all.

“The translation program is now substituting the word
sin
for the Slan term
k’!k’t!’cht’!k’!kt’!!!k
,” the AI whispered.

Sin
was a loaded term, of course, one that carried a lot of unwanted religious baggage in English, but it felt right. What was sinful for a human follower of one religion or another would have nothing to do with what the Slan thought of as sinful, but they might see it in much the same way.

Lieutenant Connor had mentioned something pertinent in her report. When the atmospheric pressure dropped inside the Slan headquarters ship, the Slan had not been able to “see.” Connor had said that individual Slan had seemed panicky, as well as completely disoriented.

Well, that made sense, didn’t it? Render a large group of humans temporarily deaf, and they would have some initial trouble communicating, but they would figure things out and use sign language or gesture. But
blind
them, and they would be all but helpless. Vision was naturally the primary sense for humans, but for the Slan it was hearing.

For humans, deception often meant making things look different from what they truly were . . . a human donning a disguise, for instance. For Slan, deception might involve using sound to make a room, a tunnel, an individual seem different.

“I think,” Gray told the being, “that I’m beginning to understand.”

“An exchange, then,” the Slan said. “Answer for this one a question.”

“If I can.”

“I observe within this simulation that you, Captain Gray, though human, do not possess your species’ form of
!k’ch’t’t
. Are you, in fact, blind?”

“What the hell?” Gray said.

“Wait one moment,” the AI told him. “I am examining their biology files.” Seconds dragged past. “The translation program is substituting the term
sonar projectors
for the Slan term
‘!k’ch’t’t.’
”

“Humans don’t
have
sonar projectors,” he replied.

“I am examining the records they made during their interrogation of Lieutenant Connor.” There was another uncomfortable pause. “It is possible, Captain, that the Slan believe that female breasts are sonar projectors.”

And, this time, Gray burst out laughing.

Chapter Seventeen

13 November 2424

Conference Room

TC/USNA CVS
America

Low Orbit, 36 Ophiuchi AIII

1115 hours, TFT

The virtuinteractive unfolded in their minds like a movie, one in which the men and women linked into the system experienced as if they were actually present within the scene. From their perspective, they seemed to be floating above a world. Swirls of cloud showed the presence of atmosphere, but the data assembled so far was painting the image of a world very unlike Earth.

The images were computer-generated, but were closely based on the data storage of the Slan headquarters ship. The Slan didn’t have visual records, of course. Their equivalent was stored as sonic maps, and
America
’s AI was still learning how to translate that data into visual imagery.

From what Gray was seeing on his in-head, the AI was doing a pretty good job.

He’d called a meeting for all department heads on board all of the USNA ships, a total of more than two hundred men and women, plus a number of AIs. Planetary data appeared within side windows in their in-heads, confirming the alienness of the place.

Planetary Data Download

Thadek’ha*

S
TAR:
Unknown

S
PECTRAL TYPE:
K2 V

M
ASS:
0.70 Sol;
R
ADIUS:
0.69 Sol;
L
UMINOSITY:
0.28 Sol

T
EMPERATURE:
~5,800o K;
A
GE:
~5.1 Gyr

P
LANET:
Planet unknown

N
AME:
Thadek’ha, roughly “Community” in Agletsch Trade Pidgin

C
OORDINATES:
Unknown

T
YPE:
Terrestrial/rocky superEarth; oxidizing atmosphere

M
EAN ORBITAL RADIUS:
0.47 AU; Orbital period: 140d 15h 20m 52s

R
OTATIONAL PERIOD:
140D 15h 20m 52s, tidally locked with parent star

M
ASS:
6.78 Earth
;
E
QUATORIAL DIAMETER:
~23960 km = 1.8 Earth

M
EAN PLANETARY DENSITY:
5.60 g/cc = 1.01 Earth

S
URFACE GRAVITY:
1.92 G

H
YDROSPHERE PERCENTAGE:
12.4%;
C
LOUD COVER:
Unknown;
A
LBEDO
(day side): ~0.20

S
URFACE TEMPERATURE RANGE:
~30°C to ~80°C

S
URFACE ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE:
~5.15 atmospheres

P
ERCENTAGE COMPOSITION:
N
2
54.5; O
2
27.8; CO
2
5.3; NH
4
4.11; H
2
S 2.9; SO
3
2.8; CH3 2.2; Ar 0.3; others <500 ppm

A
GE:
5.1 billion years

B
IOLOGY:
C
,
N
,
H
,
S
8
,
O
,
Se
,
H
2
O
,
CS
2
; mobile, subsurface heterotrophs in symbiotic relationship with nonmotile chemosynthetic autotrophs and subsurface lithovores

D
OMINANT SPECIES:
“Slan”*

*Terms transliterated from Agletsch Trade Pidgin. “Slan” derives from the Agletschi
Slan’k’thred’n
, meaning, approximately, “Dwellers in Night
.
”

A lot of the data was still guesswork, but
America
’s AI was confident that most of it was fairly solid. There were no guesses, of course, as to where in the sky Thadek’ha might be located, or how distant it might be. That would be information very carefully guarded indeed by the Slan, who would fear warlike aliens like humans showing up in the skies of their world with mass drivers and orbit-to-surface nukes.

The point of view for the linked-in personnel descended toward the planet, angling toward the so-called twilight zone between the day and night sides. Thadek’ha, a massive world nearly twice the diameter of Earth and with nearly twice the surface gravity, had long ago become tidally locked with its orange-star primary. Why this should be was not yet understood; the star and its planetary system were half a billion years older than Sol and its retinue of planets, but Thadek’ha was far enough from its somewhat smaller-than-Sol primary that tidal locking was not likely, as it was for worlds so close to their primary that they circled it in a matter of a few days.

If Gray had learned one thing about the cosmos, however, in twenty-some years of star-faring, it was that the universe always came up with surprises, exceptions, and truly
alien
ways of doing things.

Normally a world gravitationally locked to its primary had a day side baking under an eternal noonday heat, while the night-side temperatures plunged far below zero. If the world had a fairly thick atmosphere, however, temperatures tended to be averaged out over the entire planet. Venus, in Earth’s solar system, was a good example. Thadek’ha, though nowhere nearly as hellish as Venus, was still unpleasantly hot from the human perspective; even the native Slan, apparently, avoided the day-lit side, where temperatures were too high even for them.

Their corporate point of view descended over the world’s twilight zone, revealing deep blue vegetation—much of it something like moss, a springy, exuberantly spreading ground cover. Chains of small seas linked by winding rivers steamed beneath an orange sun balanced on one horizon. Presumably, libration—the tendency of a tide-locked world to nod back and forth, like Earth’s moon—caused the sun to rise, set, and rise again in the same spot over the course of weeks or months. At the moment, the sun was bisected by gently rounded mountain peaks on the horizon. White fliers—not birds, not insects, but something of both, with long, curling ribbons for tails—rose in teeming swarms from the shores of a large lake.

The panorama was spectacularly beautiful—blue vegetation, green water reflecting a green-tinted sky, and orange clouds. It was hard to keep in mind that had the humans actually been present over that pastoral scene, they would have died in seconds in the hot, poisonous atmosphere.

And the point of view continued to descend, moving now through the blanket of blue moss, through dirt and rock, and emerging in the darkness of a low and smooth-walled tunnel. The tunnel was filled with movement.

America
’s AI gave the scene light enough for the humans to see by. The Slan filling that tunnel were so closely packed together that each pressed against its neighbors, fringe tentacles touching, even caressing the bodies of those ahead and behind. They traveled single file, with each tunnel strictly one-way. Gray could not tell what the purpose for all of the activity was, but he was forcibly reminded of human red blood cells surging through a narrow capillary. Perhaps what he was seeing was analogous—individual Slan carrying out some sort of metabolic function for the hive as a whole. The activity appeared to be automatic—mindlessly robotic.

“The scene represented here,” the AI informed them, “represents life on the Slan homeworld thirty million years ago, before the Slan evolved intelligence.”

“Before!”
Villanova, the intel officer on the
Inchon
, exclaimed.

“These might be termed proto-Slan,” the AI continued. “They appear to operate on a purely instinctive level, like termites.”

The point of view drew back, pulling out of the tunnel and again surveying the planet’s surface from the air. The surface was different, now. Black bubbles with an iridescent sheen, hundreds of them, rose in tight clusters and in geometric patterns from the blue moss. The sun was lower now, hidden behind the mountains, the sky ablaze with orange and green light.

“This simulates a more recent time,” the AI said. “We’re not sure how recent, but certainly within the last few thousand years. At an unspecified time within the past thirty million years, the Slan evolved intelligence, developed an advanced culture, and spread out across the surface of their world.”

America
’s AI went on to describe a civilization shaped primarily by the biology of Thadek’ha’s inhabitants. Blind to color, they didn’t share human notions of beauty, and were unaware of the blue of the moss, the orange of the sun or, indeed, of the sun at all through their sonar sense. Their optical organ, positioned high on the central dome of their body and eternally looking up, likely had evolved to warn the proto-Slan if they wandered out of a tunnel and onto open ground. If the sun was too high in the sky, apparently, the hive-burrowers would swiftly die, fried by solar radiation.

“Our single biggest question,”
America
’s AI said, “was how the Slan could ever discover astronomy. Those living within their world’s twilight zone might be aware of their sun, but they would never know the stars. According to references within their database, however, they became aware of the stars when they learned of something they refer to as The Mystery.”

The simulation grew darker, the viewpoint moving farther around into the dark side of the planet. Stars appeared.

“Any way we can get an ID on that cluster?” Gray asked.

At the zenith, stars were tumbled together in a blaze of light, hundreds of them, with tangled wisps of gas and dust glowing softly against the night. Behind the cluster, a nebula glowed in raw hues of red and white.

“We are looking,” Commander Blakeslee,
America
’s navigator, said. “No matches yet with any of the astrogational files in the data banks.”

That was no surprise. There were tens of thousands of open star clusters scattered across the galaxy, most of them far beyond the tiny region known to humans. More, even a small change in the angle of view would dramatically change any cluster’s appearance.

The nebula, Gray thought, might be more easily identified; though again, which way you looked at it markedly affected its shape. If the ship’s Astrogation Department could identify that cluster, though, it might lead to the discovery of the Slan homeworld.

And that could be an extremely effective bargaining chip in any future negotiations with them.

“Slan vision, while poor by human standards, and lacking color, is still sensitive enough to see this cluster and the associated nebula in its night sky, probably as a bright, out-of-focus blob. Observation would have shown it crossing the sky with their planet’s orbit of its sun. It would be visible, of course, for half of the planet’s 140-day year. From what we’ve been able to glean from their records so far, that cluster, The Mystery, is what led them first to develop means of translating electromagnetic radiation—including visible light—into sound, which they could then see when it was displayed on their instruments. It made it possible for them to discover space, the wider universe beyond their world, and then to navigate it. By any standards, a remarkable scientific, intellectual, and technological feat.”

Another change of scene . . . and the point of view had pulled back to orbit, where a fleet of starships fell through sunlight and into shadow—Ballistas, huge and ponderous, with their distinctive green, black, and red color schemes, together with numerous, smaller red and black Sabers and a swarm of blue and black Stilettos.

Gray looked hard at those ships. Something wasn’t adding up.

“Why,” he asked after a moment, “are their ships color coded?”

There was silence from the watchers. Not even the AI responded for a long moment.

“Interesting point,” Commander Taggart said. “If the Slan are blind . . .”

“Exactly. They’re not even
aware
of color. The color slashes and patterns on those ships look random, no two alike, but the overall color is consistent among each type. Green, red, and black for the Ballistas, red and black for Sabers, blue and black for their fighters. How, if they’re color blind?”

“It seems likely,”
America
’s AI said, “that they had help in reaching space. This may be evidence that they have help in the building of their military spacecraft.”

And that made two Sh’daar client races known to have been given help in escaping their homeworlds. The H’rulka, living, communal balloons evolved in the upper atmosphere of a gas giant similar to Jupiter, were thought to have received help from outside—obvious when you considered that their homeworld had no solid surface, no way to develop fire, mining, smelting, fossil fuels, nuclear power, or any of the other developments necessary for a technic civilization. The H’rulka, in their few direct communications with humans, had revealed precious little about the species they referred to as Starborn.

This, Gray thought, might be a second line of evidence pointing to the ancient Starborn. The Department of Extraterrestrial Relations, back on Earth, had declared that making contact with the Starborn was a Class A-1 priority. It was quite possible that the species, about which nothing was known, was none other than the Sh’daar themselves, or yet another
va Sh’daar
, a Sh’daar client species.

And yet . . .

Twenty years before, in a dwarf galaxy 800 million years in the past and tens of thousands of light years distant, Humankind had learned that the original Sh’daar were, in fact, a collection of species, a kind of interstellar federation or association occupying the galaxy now known as Omega Centauri T
-0.876gy
. Those species had undergone what humans knew as the Technological Singularity and their federation had collapsed. Most of the original species, referred to now as the ur-Sh’daar, had vanished—exactly where or how was not understood. The ones left behind had become the modern Sh’daar, and they had carried with them a monstrous dread of the literally transformational power of advanced technology.