City of Ruins

FIFTY-TWO



Coop wanted to run to the airlock and find out exactly what had happened, but he knew better. He waited on the bridge and watched the outsiders.

The woman gazed wistfully at the Ivoire’s door. Then she nodded to her people. She put a hand on the arm of the man who had done much of the speaking and talked to him for a moment.

The three who had their pistols out holstered them. And then the group headed to the door.

The woman looked at the consoles, stopped, and held up a hand. She stared at the far console again, the one showing that space station. Coop frowned. She knew something about that, or it disturbed her in some way. Coop couldn’t tell which it was, and he wasn’t going to know, not for a while.

The others looked at her; she tilted her head slightly, as if she were saying something self-deprecating, and then they left the repair room.

He wondered if he would have stayed. Would he have investigated those consoles as the woman was clearly tempted to do? Or would he leave, worried about what the people on the ship were thinking?

He didn’t know, partly because he didn’t know what their mission was. If the outsiders hadn’t known what the room was, or what the ship was, they might have stayed. Or maybe not. Maybe they were worried about a greater force, the clear military bent of the people on the ship.

“Captain?” Perkins spoke from behind him. “Do you want me to brief the entire bridge crew?”

Coop turned. A few nanobits glistened in her hair. A few more rested on her sleeves and shoulders.

“Just me,” he said, and led her into the conference room. He kept the screens off. He pulled out a chair for her, so that she would be comfortable as they spoke, but she didn’t sit down.

Instead, she paced, filled with an energy he hadn’t seen in her before.

He didn’t sit, either.

“I captured a lot of their speech patterns,” she said. “They spoke to each other quite a bit, and I captured that, which is good.”

Coop had forgotten this about her. Perkins never gave a report in a linear manner.

“They don’t speak Standard, then,” he said.

She paused and looked at him. Then she gave him a rueful smile. “Oh, yeah. Sorry. You weren’t listening in. I’m not sure what they speak. It sounded familiar when the woman started talking to us, but I couldn’t understand her. I thought at first that she was speaking Standard, but pronouncing it differently, so differently that I had trouble processing it. Then I realized that the words sounded familiar but weren’t familiar.”

“Which means what?” Coop asked.

“Which means they might be speaking a mangled form of Standard or some kind of pidgin language. It might also be a related language with similar sounds. I already have the computer working on it, and I expect to have results before our next meeting with them, which I’m hoping will be tomorrow.”

“Did you set that up with them?”

She shrugged. “As best I could. They seemed pretty startled by us. They seemed even more shocked that we had trouble communicating.”

He wasn’t surprised. He had encountered many different languages on his travels, some of which were so different that it took months to get as far as Perkins had gotten today. Basic introductions were difficult, and from what he saw, she had gotten through those.

“Did you understand anything they said?” he asked.

“I think so, but I’m not sure.”

Coop frowned. She had never given him that response before. “What do you mean?”

“It’s that soundlike thing I mentioned,” Perkins said. “I gave the woman my name. The woman did the same thing, but I think she gave me her rank.’

“Which is?”

“She’s their leader.”

“That’s clear,” Coop said.

“But I’m not sure that’s what she said,” Perkins said. “I thought we were doing pretty well. I said my name, she responded with her title, and then I asked her where we were. The man stepped forward and introduced himself.

“I noticed that,” Coop said.

“His name sounded very different. She spoke a one-syllable word, short and curt. His name was smooth, filled with ‘ah’ sounds that blended into one another. I couldn’t tell how many syllables he used, and I’m not sure, when I repeated it back, whether or not I said it right.”

She clasped her hands behind her back and walked alongside the table, talking to herself as much as to him.

“Names are tricky,” she said. “Because they work off several traditions. Names often have a family history and go through time, all the way back to the beginning of the family. If you do a family tree, you might find that name runs through hundreds of generations. If, of course, you can trace the family back that far.”

“You think that’s the case with his name?” Coop wasn’t sure how she got that from the short conversation.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Names are the trickiest part of language because names aren’t fixed. You’re the captain. You’re Captain Cooper. You’re Jonathon Cooper. And you’re Coop. You might also be Captain Coop Cooper—”

“I get your point,” he said dryly.

“And Coop is a word. Captain is a title, a name, and a rank. Jonathon is one of the oldest names we have, going all the way back to Earth, and Earth documents centuries before space flight use that name.”

“I see,” he said, trying to move her along. “How is this tied to the woman?”

“I think the man introduced himself. And then, I think he said ‘she’s our leader.’ But he might also have just given me her name. I don’t know. What I understood is this. Imagine if you were her. You tapped herself, and said ‘Captain.’ I repeated it, not quite understanding, and gave my name. Then the man came over and introduced himself, followed by, ‘And he’s our captain.’ Or he might have said, ‘and he’s captain,’ and that was a name, not a title.”

“All right.” Coop reached out to put a hand on her shoulder, to calm the pacing. It didn’t work. She didn’t look up. “I want you to consult with Mae.”

“I plan to,” Perkins said. “I’m going to get as much help on this as possible because so far as I can tell, time is of the essence, right?”

He looked at her, feeling the irony.

“Yes,” he said. And considering that she knew that, considering how the meeting went, he asked, “Why did you leave after less than half an hour?”

First contacts could go as long as six hours, if the linguists and diplomats felt they were making progress.

Perkins looked at him, a frown creasing her brow. “The name thing. I got so confused that I wasn’t sure what I was doing. If I was truly misunderstanding everything, then I was just making the situation worse.”

He had never heard her say anything like that before. Perkins had been his most fearless linguist, one Mae worried about because she was afraid that Perkins might inject a misunderstanding into a conversation, due to arrogance.

“You’re thinking of the Quurzod, aren’t you?” he asked.

“If someone like Mae can make a mistake that big, one that would lead to them firing on us, imagine what I can do here.”

Coop shook his head. “What happened with the Quurzod was much more complicated than translations gone wrong. When we get back to the Fleet, I’m going to talk with the command center. I think the Xenth set us up. I think the error occurred long before Mae and her team embedded themselves in that Quurzod village.”

“But you don’t know, do you, sir?” Perkins said, suddenly sounding formal.

“I know enough to know that the problem was not with the linguists,” he said. “The problem was with the diplomats. We’re not even to that stage here. I need you to talk with the outsiders. I need you to figure out who the outsiders are.”

“So we can get back to the Fleet,” Perkins said.

“So that we can try,” he said.

He sighed for a moment, thinking of all the difficulties he had left behind. If he never returned to the Fleet, they would move on, and the problems with the Quurzod would evolve into a full-scale war, one he could actually prevent. Tiny details, important details.

He felt a sudden urgency, and then tamped it down. He couldn’t focus on that. He had to think of his own crew, his own timeline, his own future.

“When do you think I can talk to them?” he asked.

Perkins looked at him, surprise all over her face. He had never before asked to speak to a first contact before the language issues were sorted out.

But this wasn’t about the language. It wasn’t even, really, about a proper first contact. If things worked out right, he would never see these people again

“Sir,” she said, speaking slowly, as if to keep her surprise under control, “this could take weeks.”

“Not if the language is related.”

She bit her lip and tilted her head in an acknowledgment that could mean yes or could mean no.

Finally she said with a firmness she had never used before, “I said I’m guessing.”

He felt a touch of color warm his cheeks. He had vowed he wasn’t going to let the crew know about his impatience, and then he had revealed it to Perkins. “The sooner we can question them about substantive things, the better off we are.”

“I know, sir,” she said, “but it’s better to understand them than to guess, don’t you think?”

He nodded, reluctantly. He wanted that conversation, and he wanted it soon. Just like he wanted the ship repaired. Just like he wanted to know when they were.

“Good work,” he said to Perkins. “Let me know when you have enough of the language to act as a translator.” “I will, sir,” she said.

I hope it’s soon, he almost said, but didn’t. I really, really hope it’s soon.

* * * *