“Huh. And have you perchance gotten a name out of him amid these mistakes? His species? An indication what he comes from? A location?”
“No.”
“Well. I didn’t expect. But well done, all the same. I’ll check it out.”
“Seven hundred fifty-three words. He ran the whole first manual. Chur demonstrated changing the keyboard and the cassette and he ran it all, just like that; and got into the second book, trying to do sentences. But he can’t pronounce, aunt; it just comes out like that.”
“Mouth shape is different. Can’t say we can ever do much with his language either; like trying to talk to the tc’a or the knnn… maybe even a different hearing range, certainly not the same equipment to speak with — gods, no guaranteeing the same logic, but the latter I think we may have. Some things he does make half sense.” She lowered herself into the vacated chair, reached and livened a second screen. “Go talk Tirun out of her work down in op, imp; she’s been on duty and she shouldn’t be. I’m going to try to run a translator tape on your seven hundred fifty-three words.”
“I did that.”
“Oh, did you?”
“While I was sitting here.” Hilfy untucked her hands from behind her and hastily reached for the counter, indicated the cassette in the slot of the translator input. “I pulled the basic pattern and sorted the words in. Sentence logic too. It’s finished.”
“Does it work?”
“I don’t know, aunt. He hasn’t given me a sentence in his own language. Just words. There’s no one for him to talk his own to.”
“Ah, well, so.” Pyanfar was impressed. She ran some of the audio of the tape past, cut it, looked up at Hilfy, who looked uncommonly proud of herself. “You’re sure of the tape.”
“The master program seemed clear. I — learned the translator principles pretty thoroughly; father didn’t connect that so much with spacing. I got to start that study from the first; but / knew what I wanted it for. Like comp. I’m good at that.”
“Huh. — Why don’t we try it, then?”
Hilfy nodded, more and more self-pleased. Pyanfar rose and searched through the com board cabinets, pulled out the box of sanitary wrapped audio plugs and dropped a handful of those into Hilfy’s palm, then located a spare pager from the same source. She sat down at main com and ran the double channels of the translator through bands two and three of the pagers. She took her own plug and inserted it in her ear, tested it out linked to the Outsider’s room com for a moment, and got nothing back but bursts of white sound, which were mangled hani words that part of the schizoid translator mind refused to recognize as words. “We’re two, he’s three,” she said to Hilfy, shutting the audio down for the moment. “Bring him up here.”
“Here, aunt?”
“You and Haral. This Outsider who tries to impress us with his seven hundred fifty-three words… we find out once for all how his public manners are. Take no chances, imp. If the translator fails, don’t; if he doesn’t act stable, don’t. Go.”
“Yes, aunt.” Hilfy stuffed the audio units and the other pager into her pockets, hastened out the archway in a paroxysm of importance.
“Huh,” Pyanfar said after her, stood staring in that direction. Her ears flicked nervously, a jangling of rings. The Outsider might do anything. It had chosen their ship to invade, out of a number of more convenient choices. It. He. Hilfy and the crew seemed unshakeably convinced of the he, on analogy to hani structure; but that was still no guarantee. There were, after all, the stsho. Possibly it made the creature more tragic in their eyes.
Gods. Naked-hided, blunt-toothed and blunt-fingered… It had had little chance in hand-to-hand argument with a clutch of kif. It should be grateful for its present situation.
No, she concluded. It should not. Everyone who got hands on it would have plans for this creature, of one kind and another, and perhaps it sensed that: hence its perpetually sullen and doleful look. She had her own plans, to be sure.
He, Hilfy insisted at every opportunity. Her first voyage, a tragic (and safely unavailable) alien prince. Adolescence. Gods.
From the main section of the com board, outside transmission buzzed, whined, lapsed into a long convolute series of wails and spine-ruffling pipings. She jumped in spite of herself, sat down, keyed in the translator on com. Knnn, the screen informed her, which she already knew. Song. No recognizable identity. No numerical content. Range: insufficient input.
That kind frequented Urtur too, miners who worked without lifesupport in the methane hell of the moon Uroji and found it home. Odd folk in all senses, many-legged nests of hair, black and hating the light. They came to a station to dump ores and oddments, and to snatch furtively at whatever trade was in reach before scuttling back into the darknesses of their ships. Tc’a might understand them… and the chi, who were less rational… but no one had ever gotten a clear enough translation out of a tc’a to determine whether the tc’a in turn made any sense of the knnn. The knnn sang, irrationally, pleased with themselves; or lovelorn; or speaking a language. No one knew (but possibly the tc’a, and the tc’a never discussed any topic without wending off into a thousand other tangents before answering the central questions, proceeding in their thoughts as snake-fashioned as they did in their physical movements). No one had gotten the knnn to observe proper navigation: everyone else dodged them, having no other alternative. Generally they did give off numerical messages, which the mechanical translators had the capability to handle — but they were a code for specific situations… trade, or coming in, a blink code. There was nothing unusual in knnn presence here, a creature straying where it would, oblivious to oxygen-breather quarrels. There still came the occasional ping or clang of dust and rock against The Pride’s hull, the constant rumbling of the rotational core, the whisper of air in the ducts. The deadness of the instruments depressed her spirits. Screens stared back in the shadow of the bridge like so many blinded eyes.
And they were out here drifting with kif and rocks and a knnn who had no idea of the matters at issue. “Captain,” Tirun’s voice broke in. “Hearing you.” “Got a knnn out there.”
“Hearing that too. What are Hilfy and Haral doing about the Outsider?”
“They’ve gone after him; I’m picking that up. He’s not making any trouble.”
“Understood. They’re on their way up here. Keep your ear to the outside comflow; going to be busy up here.”
“Yes, captain.”
The link broke off. Pyanfar dialed the pager to pick up the translator channel, received the white-sound of hani words. Everything seemed quiet. Eventually she heard the lift in operation, and heard steps in the corridor leading to the bridge.
He came like an apparition against the brighter corridor light beyond, tall and angular, with two hani shapes close behind him. He walked hesitantly into the dimness of the bridge itself, clear now to the eyes… startlingly pale mane and beard, pale skin mottled with bruises and the raking streaks of his wound, sealed with gel but angry red. Someone’s blue work breeches, drawstring waisted and loose-kneed, accommodated his tall stature. He walked with his head a little bowed, under the bridge’s lower overhead — not that he had to, but that the overhead might feel a little lower than he was accustomed to — he stopped, with Hilfy and Haral behind him on either side.
“Come ahead,” Pyanfar urged him farther, and rose from her place to sit braced against the comp console, arms folded. The Outsider still had a sickly look, wobbly on his feet, but she reached back to key the lock on comp, which could only be coded free again, then looked back again at the Outsider… who was looking not at her, but about him at the bridge with an expression of longing, of — what feeling someone might have who had lately lost the freedom of such places.