Tau Ceti (an Ell Donsaii story #6) (27 page)

When she got home, her interest in the dark energy problem had returned and she worked on it until her usual
4AM
bedtime while
occasionally checking
her wall screens
which
showed
the
Teecees
huddling together under Goldy’s wings as a steady rain dripped down on them through the forest.
Maybe we can show them how to build a shelter,
she thought, surprised that they didn’t already know how
.

***

Dressed as “Belle,” Ell trotted
up the stairs of the Smith building
on
UNC’s campus. She’d opened the door when Allan, her AI, said, “You have a call from Dr. Kant Fladwami, the Presidential Science Advisor.”

Ell kept walking down the hall to the restroom
. “Yes?”

“Hello Ms. Donsaii. I’m calling at the behest of the President to see if you have any
ideas
for dealing with the greenhouse related climate change? I realize this is a little outside your area of expertise, but we had a crazy suggestion
that we
vent CO
2
into deep space
through your ports
.
I personally think
that
would be a bad idea because I don’t think we should
permanently
lose that carbon and oxygen. However, we need some out of the box thinking. I don’t expect
climate change
is something you’ve been
working on
,
but if you come up with any ideas?”

“We
actually
may have something that would have an impact but you’d have to deal with some more of t
hose dread ‘economic upheavals.’
”

“Well, we appreciate
the
slow release of your technologies
so far
. That has helped significantly with the economic disruptions
to this point
. Perhaps you’d do the same with whatever you are speaking of? What is it?”

“Oh, sorry we really aren’t even sure it will work yet. Can I get back to you in a week or two?”

“It’d sure help if I could give the President some idea what you are
thinking
. Some method to sequester CO
2
perhaps?”

“No not sequestration. Sorry, I really don’t feel comfortable
talking about it
yet, but I wi
ll get back to you.”

“OK,” Fladwami said reluctantly.

Once Allan had disconnected, Ell stepped into one of the stalls in the bathroom and began removing “Belle.” The padded pants and platinum blond wig went into
her nearly
empty backpack along with the cheek pads. She pulled out some wet wipes and wiped the thick makeup off. Stepping out of the stall, she approached the mirrors and wiped off a few smudges she’d missed.
She put on a
baseball cap
that
covered
much
of her hair and she headed back out into the hall
. She saw
Steve from her security detail fidgeting in front of a bulletin board. Putting her head down so the bill of her cap shaded her face she headed into the linguistics faculty offices. An internet search had revealed that a Dr. Kira Piscova had written a paper on translation
methodologies for
unknown languages. It was a review of various methods used by linguists over the centuries when faced with languages
that didn’t have
living translators.
Most
of the examples pertained to written languages, but it seemed that it had been a
long
time since anyone had encountered a
truly
new language and so there really
weren’t
any experts available who had actually translated a new language.

There were scads of popular fiction stories in which people learned a language by pointing to objects, saying their own word for the object, then waiting for the speaker of the other language to use their word. In the situation confronting team
Teecee
at present
,
they couldn’t point to anything
and say the word
. However,
if they could somehow substitute their new rocket for th
e old one they might be able to.
The new rocket would
arrive on TC3
next week but Ell could see no reason why they shoul
dn’t
,
to some degree get started
on
the
translation
problem
now.
After all they
already
had
some
recordings of the teecees talking.

Because
Dr. Piscova’s office hours came right after Ell’s biology class it saved her a trip to campus, only requiring her to do the change out of the “Belle” disguise. Keeping the bill of her cap as low as possible Ell looked around and finally came to an office labeled with Piscova’s name. To her relief no students were currently in the office. She knocked on the doorframe.

Piscova looked up from her screen, “Come in.” She looked curiously at the slender young woman in the door. “Hi…” The student looked familiar
,
but Piscova would
have sworn
she hadn’t seen her in class. “Are you taking a class remotely?” Students
who
took
courses
online
rarely came in to the office. If they took
the
class over the net, they tended to do everything over the net. The girl sat down in the chair that faced away from the door and took off her hat. “Oh!” Piscova covered her mouth, wide eyed. “Ms. Donsaii…”

“Yes Ma’am.”

Piscova frowned, “Are you…”
taking a class
, she’d been about to ask but it seemed ridiculous on the face of it. She turned fully in her chair. “How may I help you?”

“We need someone to translate a completely unknown language. We’re
hoping you’d like the challenge…
or know someone who would.”

Piscova narrowed her eyes. “Are you trying to say that you’ve found some unknown tribe somewhere? The world has no places untouched by civilization anymore.” Her eyes widened
as she thought about what Donsaii was known for
, “Wait, did you find an artifact out in space with writing on it?”

Donsaii shrugged, “I can’t really tell you more until you’ve signed a confidentiality agreement.”

Piscova frowned, “Wait this is some kind of secret? If I were to work on translation… what would I get out of it? It doesn’t sound like I’d even be allowed to publish?”

“Yes Ma’am, you’d be able to publish, we’d just want you to delay for up two years. We’d also be happy to pay for ‘consulting.’”

Piscova’s eye’s widened. No one had ever offered to pay
her
for
linguistics
consulting. “I’d have to check into consulting fees. Can I see the… what did you call it…? ‘Confidentiality agreement’?”

Ell left the building, hat low over her eyes again. One girl, climbing the steps when Ell came out, turned to stare but otherwise she seemed to go unrecognized. Piscova had agreed to check with her department head about
any policies regarding
consulting and call Ell that afternoon.

Dex saw
a
red glowing
spot underneath the meteorite
!
Were the spirits who
showed himrself and Syrdian how to climb the cliff sending another message and somehow it was coming out
be
neath the meteorite? Hie leaned hies head down to look closely. The red spot was on the ground beneath the meteorite, not on the meteorite itself though a
red
glow lit the underside of the meteorite.
Hie
tried to lean in to see the red spot and determine whether it was another picture but
hie
couldn’t see it because the meteorite blocked
hies
view.

Gingerly hie reached out and grasped the meteorite.
Could h
i
e move the meteorite without disturbing the glowing lines underneath it?
Hie
picked the meteorite up just a tiny bit and move
d
it farther away so
hie
could see the lines.

The glowing lines moved
with
the meteorite! It was as if they were hiding under it!
Syrdian said, “Dex, what… what is happening
?
”

Dex
shrugged hies wings as hie wondered why the lines
would hide. They had seemed bold enough the first time, appearing over a huge area on the surface of the cliff.
Hie
lifted the meteorite slowly up away from the glowing spot under it. To
hies
astonishment, the glowing red area slowly enlarged as
hie
lifted the meteorite, growing from a small red splotch to a… a drawing… A small drawing, true but obviously a drawing, similar in color, detail and style to the drawing on the cliff wall,
even though it was tiny
.

Deciding to move the meteorite completely out of the way, Dex lifted it further, turning to put it aside. Hies wings trembled as the drawing enlarged further, then swung away from
himr
as Dex
turned
the meteorite.
Hie
moved the meteorite back and the drawing came back!
Did the drawing emanate
from
his
beautiful meteorite?

Dex had never heard or seen anything like it. The closest
hie
could come to an analogous event was the casting of shadows on the wall of the cave from the sun or a small fire. Moving an object that was casting a shadow, caused the shadow to move similarly and some
dalins
were talented at casting shadows with their hands that looked like animals, kind of like the glowing drawings. Dex looked momentarily up into the air, thinking that hie might see something up there that might be casting, well, not shadows, but light down to make the drawings. There was nothing up there.

While holding the meteorite still, Dex slowly reached under it and
felt
the edge of the glowing red drawing
with a claw
.

Dex dropped the meteorite when
a
glowing red line appeared
on
hies claw!
As the meteorite fell and rolled away from
himr
, the drawing diminished in size down to a splotch, then shot away towards Dex and disappeared. Dex danced away from it
so that the red spot
didn’t touch himr.

Dex stood staring, wings extended, hearts pounding, breath pouring through
himr
and whistling out
hies
vent.
Hie
heard a rustling which
hie
distantly
recognized to be Syrdian
runn
ing into the forest.
Hie
saw a faint red glow on one of the watery clear spots on the meteorite and bent to look at it.
Hie
picked up a nearby twig and reached gingerly to touch
the clear spot with the twig. A
s
hie
did the tip of the twig flashed red also!

Dex found
himrself
a couple of wing beats away still staring at the meteorite which appeared as harmless as ever. Walking gingerly back over
hie
examined
the twig
hie
’d dropped. It appeared normal. Dex turned to
hies
own claw which had turned red and
studied
it. It also appeared unchanged. Picking up the twig again
hie
put it in front of the clear spot and watched it turn red, then backed it away, seeing it go from one bright spot to a few lines across the twig as
hie
pulled it away.

Finally
hie
reached out and picked
up
the meteorite
,
lifting it away and pointing the clear spot back at the ground. Trembling
,
hie
saw the picture zoom in from the side and appear on the ground right below the clear spot.
Hie
could tell it was showing one of
its drawn
pictures
,
but the image was distorted by pebbles, twigs and grass
. Gently
hie
set it back down
then
cleared a spot, smoothing the dirt.