Enigma (25 page)

“After today, you still think they’re going to be of any help with the colony problem?”

“We’re far from finished,” said Neale, and Thackery realized that the impatient Neale of an hour ago was gone. “We’ll stick to the CIP. But Merry—I do appreciate the way you’re staying on top of this.” Neale’s smile was pleasant but empty, and Thackery, realizing he was being dismissed, took his leave.

But each succeeding session with the Sennifi seemed to chip away at Neale’s determined patience. “We’re getting answers—but are we getting information?” she asked after one concluded. The question was rhetorical, for everyone within earshot knew the answer was no.

It was Koi who finally identified the problem, seventeen days after their arrival and thirty-one sessions into the CIP. “We’ve all been asking, ‘What’s happening here? Why are we getting so little new information?’ It’s almost as if we’re talking to ourselves.

“And that is exactly the problem. We’re getting our own language thrown back at us—our concepts, our schema. Z’lin fits the best available Standard English expression to a unique Sennifi thought, and we get an answer which makes sense but has been filed smooth. We learn nothing, and I can’t interpolate, because the subtleties are lost in translation.”

“Are they doing this deliberately?”

“They can’t help but do it, as long as the sessions are conducted in English. They’re answering all our questions, and the answers are self-consistent. For instance, their lack of histories was a major disappointment. But their science has a similar present-focus, to the point that the cause-effect relationship is blurred. They see change as the result of a loop of forces, where an effect can be a cause, like a snake swallowing itself tail-first.”

“So they’re not hiding anything.”

“Unless they asked for our language data exactly for this reason. The best way to find out is to ask them to teach us their language.”

The question was put to Z’lin Ton Drull that afternoon. “We would be pleased to teach you our languages. However, you should realize what such a task entails,” said Z’lin. “The language in which you first hailed us is called
haarit
. It is a language used for formal communications, and mastering its inflections takes a Chen seven years. Then there is Paston’s Language, the
semm, K’nau
—all of which are scholar’s languages, all of which are more difficult than
haarit
. Our common language, which you might well learn quickly, cannot express many ideas of interest to us both.”

A sad expression touched Z’lin’s features, a first. “It was to honor your language’s creator and to avoid this problem that I took for myself the challenge of mastering your language. But it is clear my mastery is flawed. I have failed to express myself to your satisfaction. My inadequacy—”

“No,” Neale said quickly. “You’ve given no offense. Your skill with our language is considerable, and the creator is honored. Those who come after us will return the honor by studying all your languages. But we will not concern ourselves with that here.” She smiled reassuringly, and let the matter drop.

That session was a turning point in Neale’s attitude, and her interest commenced a steady decline. She shortened pre—and post-interview conferences by arriving late and leaving early. Eventually she stopped coming at all, depending on Thackery to keep her on track in the CIP and on Koi for file summaries of the results and analysis.

Before long, she complained that the summaries were too lengthy, too tedious—and Koi reluctantly shortened them. Eventually even the sessions with the Sennifi were affected. Neale canceled one with no explanation, and ended another an hour early. True to the pattern they had set in the first meeting, the Sennifi did not ask why.

The farther Neale retreated from the proceedings, the angrier Koi became with her.

“Is she so set on the colony problem to the exclusion of everything else that she can’t see the other questions that need answering here?” she demanded of Thackery.

“Yes,” he said simply. “The issue here is the Sennifi themselves—why they’re the way they are. Everything else is ordinary.”

“You’re preaching to the converted,” Thackery said, and gave a shrug that said
it’s out of our hands
.

And more and more, the crew of
Tycho
began to talk not of Sennifi, but of the rendezvous with
Descartes
and of moving on.

On the twenty-sixth day at Sennifi, the Kleine transmitter came alive, and so did Neale.

The dispatch told of the spanking-new ship
Eiriksson
and its discovery, on its first craze, of a tenth colony on a planet orbiting 2 Triangulum Australis. The colony was extinct and the ruins crumbling, but there were pictures which showed that the inhabitants had been human. There were also writings, an entire library full of fragile ancient documents. The figure being tossed around was 100,000 years—twice as far back as the Mannheim hypothesis placed the First Colonization. If the date were confirmed, it would mean a lot of rethinking was in order, even if the writings were never translated.

In less than twenty minutes, everyone on
Munin
knew the gist of the lengthy dispatch—except the Sennifi, secure in their cocoon of cabins aft. Within the hour, Neale summoned Thackery and Koi to her cabin.

“Exciting, isn’t it?” Neale gushed, waggling a fax of the dispatch. “Especially for
Eiriksson
,” Thackery said carefully, nursing a suspicion of what was coming next.

“Worth a dozen Sennifis,” Neale said. “The most exciting find since the Jouma colony. Unfortunately, I’m stuck here, playing word games with these sterile-brained—.” Words failed her, but her frustration was evident. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t put in some time on this. So there’s going to be a little shuffling of assignments. Merry, you’ll take over as our chief representative. My position. I’ve already cleared the change with the Sennifi.”

Thackery nodded, unsurprised.

Neale went on, “Amelia, while the interpolation work’s still thin, you should be able to back Merry up.”

“Yes, Commander.”

“How long is this change for?” Thackery asked.

“I expect until we reach a good stopping point and leave here. Which reminds me, I want you both to give me your estimates of how long it’s going to take to complete the CIP. It strikes me that with the language problem we’re facing, a lot of what’s left might better wait until a permanent liaison is established. I think we should start steering things in that direction.”

“Are you thinking of cutting short our stay?” A faint hint of criticism crept into Thackery’s tone.

“It’s a possibility I’m considering. This assignment may not be the most efficient use of this ship or its personnel.” She turned toward the controls of her projector. “Get back to me with those estimates by this time tomorrow.”

Before they reached the doorway, Thackery and Koi were surrounded by stars—only this time, there were ten little green pinpoints.

“Fry her and her hurry,” Koi fumed as she descended the climbway toward her quarters. “She can’t take us away from here now.”

“Sure she can,” said Thackery, struggling to keep us. “She wants to go home. With the craze, by the time we get back, ten years’ work will have been done on the
Eiriksson
find.”

“Fry the
Eiriksson
find, too.”

“She’s not the first to get caught up in the colony problem,” Thackery said. “It’s the intellectual challenge of the millenium. I sometimes think that anyone
not
caught up in it—myself included—betrays by that their lack of genius.”

“You’re quite the apologist, aren’t you?”

“I manage.”

“So you’re not upset by this at all?”

“No. I’m glad the dispatch came.”

They reached the crew quarters level and swung off the climbway. “Glad!” she exclaimed.

“Yes, glad—because Neale’s been keeping us away from the questions that matter, and now she’s out of the way. I’ve been sitting there watching those two session after session and biting my tongue so hard I think sometimes I’m going to start bleeding from the mouth, because I didn’t dare raise anything not in the CIP. There’s been something wrong from the first day, and I told you about it then. It’s not what the Sennifi’ve done. It’s something they haven’t done. From the beginning, something’s been missing.
Curiosity
. They give every appearance of having none of their own, and they’ve done everything possible to extinguish ours.”

“What are you getting at?”

“This,” Thackery said, opening his cabin door. “The Sennifi have no intention of giving us anything. They have no interest in what we know or in us. They’re simply waiting for us to get tired of this and leave. And now Neale has as much as told them that they’re very close to succeeding.

“That much I’m sure of. The only thing I want to know now is why. They’re hiding something. And I think it’s time we started looking in the closets.”

READY.

The word appeared silently on Thackery’s slate, lying angled on his lap so that only he could read it. It was Koi, two decks upship in the library, speaking into her netlink. Thackery was alone in the conference hall, waiting for the Sennifi. He had insisted on meeting them alone, and Koi had not fought him.

The Sennifi filed in and sat down across the table: first Z’lin Ton Drull, wearing the familiar green robe, and J’ten Ron Tize at his heels.

“Good morning,” Thackery said.

“Good morning,” replied the Drull. As Thackery expected, there were no questions about the empty chair to Thackery’s right. Z’lin simply waited for the first question.

“We’ve met here forty-six times now, over one hundred fifty hours,” Thackery said soberly. “We’ve asked you hundreds of questions, and you’ve answered every one. My first question for you today is this: Why should we believe any of your answers?”

WATCH IT appeared on the slate almost immediately, followed by MAKE NICE. YOU STILL NEED A RIDE HOME.

“Whether our answers are sufficiently congruent with your preconceptions to be marked as truth is outside our concerns,” the Drull said, his answer as immediate as if it had been rehearsed—a possibility Thackery was still toying with. “But a scholar prides himself on his scholarship, and true scholarship requires answers without error or deception.”

“Would you lie to us if you saw us as a danger to you?”

“You cannot endanger us,” the Drull said without bravado.

NON ANSWER. FOLLOW UP.

“Then why are you afraid of us?” Thackery demanded, leaning forward. “We are not afraid of you.” There was no more expression in Z’tin’s face or voice than there had been for a discussion of mineral classification ten days earlier. Koi noticed as well, EITHER THEY CARRY A GENE FOR POKER FACEDNESS OR ??? WHAT THE HELL LET’S FIND OUT. STEP ON THEIR FEET SOME MORE—BUT GENTLY.

Inwardly, Thackery smiled. Outside, he was rigid. Where Neale had approached the sessions as though they were audiences with a king or pope, Thackery’s demeanor was more akin to a prosecutor quizzing a defendant. “When our first ship,
Tycho
, reached here, you evacuated Rijala to avoid meeting with the contact team. How was that done?”

“The people of Rijala left by the tubes.” To Thackery’s surprise, Z’lin deferred to J’ten for the rest of his answer. “I know only the means, not the principle. Perhaps J’ten can provide the details you require.”

AMBUSHED. HE WAS WAITING FOR THAT QUESTION.

J’ten could and did, launching into a description of an ambitious system of subterranean tunnels carrying magnetically levitated cars and linking the sixty-eight Sennifi cities.

DAMN DAMN DAMN, Koi expostulated. I HATE SURPRISES. A few minutes later she came back with, FOUND CONFIRMATION IN TYCHO DATA. THEY’RE THERE, APPARENTLY QUITE DEEP AND OBVIOUSLY NOT OFTEN USED, SINCE WE HAVEN’T SEEN THE SAME TRANSIENTS IN THE MAGNETOMETRY. STILL CHECKING SOME THINGS. STALL, WILL YOU?

Thackery let J’ten go on, offering more detail than he had use for but providing Koi with the time she wanted. Before long the slate lit up again, and Thackery read it in oblique glances that, although quick, did not escape the Drull’s attentive eyes.

PAYOFF AT LAST! TAKING POPULATION OF RIJALA, ESTIMATED TUBE CAPACITY, AND TIME AVAILABLE, EVACUATION COULD NOT BE ACCOMPLISHED EVEN IF THEY STARTED THE MOMENT LAMM DECIDED ON LANDING. SIC EM.

Thackery pounced on the brief pause at the end of J’ten’s next sentence. “We detected your Tubes with our instruments some time ago,” he said, directing his words to Z’lin. “They could not have emptied Rijala in the time you had available.”

“Your work contains errors,” Z’lin said, undisturbed.

I THINK WE’VE BEEN INSULTED. STAND PAT. WE’RE ONTO SOMETHING.

“Our work is without peer,” Thackery said tartly but could not immediately decide where to go from there. “There is another problem,” he said finally. “Why did you do it?”

“Your intent was unknown. We did not immediately realize that you were scholars. You have since shown both a dedication to knowledge and a willingness to share it freely. Those are the marks of scholars everywhere.”

THAT’S A BULLSHIT ANSWER. BUT HOW CAN YOU ARGUE THEIR MOTIVES?

Round to him
, Thackery thought. “We’re pleased that you recognized those qualities in us,” Thackery said. “We’ve had difficulty with some of the things you’ve told us, though.”

“I’m sorry that my explanations have been inadequate.”

“There’s still time.” Thackery hesitated, collecting his thoughts. “You could begin by explaining on what units your system of measurement is based.”

SWEETEST! I THOUGHT YOU’D FORGOTTEN.

“I am happy to repeat what I have said before. The basic unit of time is the
z’su
and of length the
z’von
,” said Z’lin. “Surely—”

BEING INSULTED AGAIN.

“Yes, yes, we understand that much. But on what is the
z’su
based?”

“All valid systems of measurement are based on fundamental physical constants.”

GET HIM! GET HIM!

“Yes, of course,” said Thackery agreeably. “What constants?”

“I am sorry,” the Drull said. “As with the Tubes, I can use these units without knowing the ways in which they are specified by our more technically minded scholars. I will provide answers at our next meeting.”