Chapter Thirteen
Riordan stifled a yawn as he reached behind with his right hand for the fifth time in the past fifteen minutes; his survival rifle was still slung out of sight, yet in the handiest possible position. But he was more concerned with the rounded mechanical object upon his left hip: the Dornaani translator.
Yaargraukh was looking through the monocular telescope which could also serve as the rifle’s smart sight. The Hkh’Rkh held it at a considerable distance from his eyes; they were not well adapted to human optics. “The bipeds have discovered the end of our false trail. They will either flee because they realize they’ve been duped, or double back. If the latter, they are either highly confident or highly curious.”
Riordan nodded at the latter. If they did retrace their steps to determine where their quarry’s actual path deviated from the false one they’d followed, it meant one of two things. A fight, or a hasty first contact situation that could prove even more difficult. Caine would need to establish a common vocabulary to learn their intents and, if they were hostile, to incline them toward an outcome other than mutual slaughter. Sure, all in a day’s work.
Initially, Riordan had suggested that Eku should be the one to carry the translator, but the factotum had objected. “Commodore,” he’d said as he and several other Crewe-members were adjusting individual drop loads prior to planetfall, “your prior expertise argues otherwise. You are the only one of our group who has made amicable contact with new species.”
“He’s the only human who’s done it. Period,” Dora had muttered.
Riordan laughed. “You make it sound like I knew what I was doing.”
“And you make it sound like a great way to get eaten,” was Miles’ sotto voce quip.
Riordan grinned. “I’ve thought the same thing, Chief. And if what we find down there decides to make a snack of us without chatting first, I might not be able to get the translator to convince it otherwise. At least, not in time.”
Dora leaned forward from her seat between Ayana and Bannor. “Boss, permission to speak freely?”
When don’t you? Caine had thought as he nodded and managed not to smile.
“With all due respect, boss—that’s crazy talk! I mean, why do you think you’re in charge, here?”
Eyes had widened at the presumption behind that question, but Dora’s tone told Caine it arose from exasperation not insolence.
“No offense,” Dora continued, aware she’d stepped over the line, “but you’re not in charge for how well you fight. You’re in charge because of how you think and talk, particularly when meeting aliens.”
She jutted her chin at Rulaine. “There’s the guy for a fight—and that’s why he’s the one who’ll be landing with that Dornaani hand cannon. You? You need to have that translator. Maybe that way, we won’t have to use his hand cannon so often, yeh?”
Eku nodded. “She is correct, Commodore. If we are all separated, your familiarity with Dornaani devices and language makes you best qualified to operate the translator. But importantly, your success at prior first contacts predicts you will have more success using it than I would.”
Yaargraukh’s calm report startled him out of the memory. “They have detected where we mounted the long rock spine to backtrack without leaving prints.” He lowered the monoscope. “At least two of them are skilled trackers. They will be here within ten minutes.”
***
The five humanoids managed to close to within one hundred meters without exposing themselves again. Almost certainly, they also knew where Caine and Yaargraukh were located as well; it wasn’t serendipity which had unerringly put them behind intervening rocks and rises as they approached.
They had no doubt realized that they were not the only skilled scouts playing this game of hide-and-seek. Yaargraukh had chosen a significantly higher position with only one avenue of approach: a slowly rising apron of scree that culminated at the crest of the razorback ridge behind which they stood. The bipeds would certainly expect it to be difficult to attack but had no way of anticipating the full cost of charging upslope against Caine’s smart-scoped rifle.
After five minutes of preparing or arguing, one of their number came around the corner of the hump of dirt and dust behind which they were sheltering. After sending a reproachful glare at the ones still under cover, it advanced slowly, hands down and open.
But Caine was hardly aware of its posture or garments or weapons or tools or anything else, except for the impossible appearance of the being ascending toward them.
It was mostly orang, but there was clearly some gorilla in the mix. The proportion of the limbs suggested at least some Homo sapiens, as well. Or maybe Australopithecus, but that’s where Caine’s knowledge of prehistoric hominids ran out. Something else in its genetic code had sharpened its features, made the chin slightly more prominent, the ears slightly longer and more erect.
“I believe I have seen such creatures before,” Yaargraukh muttered sideways. “Prior to landing in Indonesia, we were shown images of various indigenous animals.”
Riordan nodded, struggling to speak around a hard, dry swallow. “Orangutans. But these are not just orangs; they’re polge.”
The Hkh’Rkh’s eyes remained on the approaching being as he asked, “I do not know this word, ‘polge.’”
“Short for polygenetic. An artificial combination of different species.”
The orang—no, it’s a being, damn it!—had stopped midway up the slope and spread its empty, very long-fingered hands to either side. It glanced from Yaargraukh to Caine: although hardly a human face, the expression was unmistakable: a blend of quizzical and wary.
Riordan turned on the translator. It could not establish correspondences immediately, but the more it heard, the sooner it would begin doing so. He called down the slope. “Hello. We mean you no harm.”
The being’s perplexity doubled. After a slight bow of its head, it replied with a long stream of utterances. Occasionally, at the end of a rising tone, it paused for a response: almost certainly a question.
The Dornaani translator’s processing light glowed serenely, but nothing emerged from the speaker.
The lack of reply increased the being’s wariness; its back foot began edging down the slope.
Well, it’s got hands, so maybe this gesture will be universal. Moving slowly, Riordan raised his own empty hand and waved that the being should approach.
More unintelligible queries, but it was no longer preparing to edge away. However, its gaze was now fixed solely upon Yaargraukh.
Riordan glanced at the two molecular machetes the Hkh’Rkh was holding, one in either hand. “Are you comfortable laying those down where our visitor can see them?”
Yaargraukh did so with a light snort, the kind that a professional boxer might have made if confronted by a grade-school bully. Ignoring the advanced ballistic cloth of his duty suit, he had nearly a full meter of height advantage, and the humanoid’s hide armor and stone mace would do little to offset the Hkh’Rkh’s speed and claws.
Before it could respond, a helmeted head peered around the dirt hump concealing the being’s comrades. A few words were exchanged. The orang hybrid turned back toward Caine and made a hands-downward gesture with both palms, then backed away slightly.
Stay there? Wait a moment? Riordan guessed, since the translator had yet to establish any correspondences.
Another of the humanoids emerged, wearing armor that resembled boiled leather. One hand was open and stretched to the side; the other held a spear, but far away from the body and with the point toward the ground. Caine noted variations in its facial features—they had a hint of chimp or gorilla—as it moved gingerly up the slope. It was also larger, and as it drew alongside the first, Riordan noticed that the spear was tipped with a dark metal: bronze, from the look of it. So, not strictly paleolithic.
The first one was clearly watching for some reaction, but when neither Caine nor Yaargraukh gave one, it called toward those who remained under cover.
As the remaining three stepped out, the leader was immediately obvious: larger still, armor more finished, and a sheathed sword. The one closest to him had a shorter blade and a self-bow. Although none were holding their weapons at the ready, they could correct that in a moment. They stopped at the base of the slope, arrayed three abreast.
Riordan extended a hand in greeting. But before he could change that into a gesture inviting their approach, the humanoids shrank back from the raised hand. A rapid exchange of looks between the upslope and downslope groups, and then they were all sinking to their knees, eyes resentful beneath lowered brows.
“That,” Yaargraukh murmured, “is a novel response.”
Caine frowned, but tried another hopefully universal gesture: he turned his palm toward the sky and raised it. Several times in quick succession.
Again, cautious looks were exchanged between the two groups, but some of the fear and resentment was fading away. As Riordan had expected, the leader was the first to stand, albeit slowly and warily.
Riordan kept gesturing upward with his palm. As the others followed their leader’s example, he waved them forward. When all five stood together, Yaargraukh asked without turning, “And now?”
“And now, we start naming things.”
***
First-contact missions had taught Caine that the easiest part of establishing a common vocabulary was to exchange words for the same objects. But there was an equally important and completely nonlinguistic factor: simply becoming familiar with each other’s appearance, motions, gestures. As they worked through sharing labels for all the weapons, tools, garments, limbs, appendages, and facial features, there was a great deal of side conversation among the humanoids. There were chortled observations, sudden remonstrations, mutters of perplexity . . . all of which the Dornaani transponder recorded and assessed, watching for lexical repetitions and patterns to build context.
Its first independent correspondence between nouns was also the first time the humanoids heard its synthetic, sexless voice. As they looked about in panic and then curiosity, Riordan held up the translator as it finished speaking. The orang-hybrids’ exchanges resumed in tones that were more awed than fearful. The one who had first ascended the slope, the youngest of the group and assistant to the leader, was pointing at the translator’s blinking light when it threw out its first modifier: “Ator. ‘Big.’ Confidence: high,” it announced.
The groups’ reactions transitioned from awe to near-terrified amazement. Again, it took a few moments before conversation resumed among them.
As it did and the name-swapping of nouns finally exhausted the available objects, Yaargraukh leaned over and spoke in his other Terran language: German. “It is surprising how rapidly they grew comfortable with us.”
Caine’s German was much rustier. He winced at the errors in his reply. “First lesson of first contact: shared tasks reduce perceptions of difference and increase appreciation of similarities.”
“They also reduce tensed muscles,” the Hkh’Rkh replied. “Except for the leader and the archer, I think they have forgotten their weapons exist.” He paused, scanning for any objects that might not have been named. “What next?”
***
Of all concepts, the “yes/no” binary opposition was the most fundamental and, when one party had no codified mathematics, it was also one of the hardest to establish. That certainly proved to be the case with the orang-hybrids. Try as they might, neither they nor Riordan could break through that barrier.
And at the rate they were going, they were not going to achieve it before they ran out of energy. To say nothing of daylight: Riordan had noticed their leader sneak occasional appraising glances at the sun, measuring its inexorable progress.
Wait: the sun!
Lifting his arm slowly, Caine extended his hand and then his index finger to point directly at the sun. “Sun,” he said.
The apparent assistant to the leader stared, then pointed similarly. “Asír.”
Caine picked up a pebble with his other hand. He held it up for them to study before raising it so that it was next to the sun. He pointed at the sun again. “Sun. Asír.” Then he presented the pebble prominently. “Sun. Asír,” he repeated.
The beings exchanged long looks, several glancing dubiously toward the leader. Probably wondering if the being in the strange armor was suffering from the heat of the very object he was now confusing with a pebble. The frowning leader’s answering gesture needed no translation: Not now, damn it!
Using the finger with which he was indicating the actual sun, Caine slowly traced its arc across the sky, finishing where it would set on the western horizon. He then returned both hands to his lap for a moment, and repeated the movement. But this time, he kept the pebble tracking right along with his pointing finger. “Sun. Asír,” he repeated.
The five pairs of simian eyes followed the strange progress with a new expression: intense interest.
Riordan drew a deep breath; Now the hard part. He repeated the track across the sky, but when he finished, he said, “Day.”
Two of the five increasingly less-alien faces brightened. “Ladsír!” the assistant exclaimed. The translator confirmed the match: “Ladsír. Day.” The assistant’s rapid commentary to his fellows was genuinely excited.
After repeating it several times to ensure that the concept was firm in their minds, Riordan drew a deep breath and started with his pointing finger and pebble not at the place where the sun rose, but to where it set in the west. Here goes.
Moving both his finger and the pebble slowly, deliberately, Caine reversed the passage of the sun “False,” he said.
The three who were perplexed became more so; the leader and his assistant frowned. Their respective expressions intensified as Riordan repeated the motion.
Caine exhaled and once again, rested his hands in his lap for a long moment. Moment of truth. He brought both his pointing finger and pebble over to the eastern horizon and repeated the motion that had been established as “day.” But this time, when the passing of the sun ended on the horizon, he said, “true.” He repeated it. The brow of the assistant began rising.
Seeing that tip toward a crucial cognitive inflection point, Riordan put his hands back in his lap, then brought them back to the western horizon and repeated the impossible progress of the sun from west to east: “False.” He repeated it. Then he switched back to the proper day cycle for two additional repetitions; he punctuated each conclusion with “true.”
The assistant leaped to his feet, excitedly shouting “Urgh! Urgh!” as he stared around at the others. A rapid combination of debate and explanation, during which the leader’s frown began to melt away. He nodded at his assistant and muttered something that sounded like permission.
The assistant picked up a pebble of his own and followed Riordan’s motions, completing the anti-day with “Urgh. False.”
“False,” Caine agreed.
The other then completed the correct circuit. “Iish. True.”
Riordan sighed in relief: the gateway to every conceptual term was now open. “True,” he agreed with a nod.
And almost laughed aloud when the assistant nodded back in an eminently human motion of agreement.
“Well,” Yaargraukh commented in a sly tone as all the orang heads began nodding, “your extraordinary labors to establish ‘yes’ versus ‘no’ may have been somewhat redundant.”
This time Riordan did smile and laugh.
And as if to further prove the further truth of Yaargraukh’s suggestion that common gestures seemed a vastly superior translational tool, the leader of the five beings returned Riordan’s smile.
This, thought Caine, might not be so hard after all.
***
The shadows were leaning markedly to the east when the leader, Arashk, leaned back, shaking his head. “Us want rest. Want food.” He began rummaging in his hide shoulder sack.
Riordan reached into his musette bag and produced one of his last Dornaani egg salad sandwich imitations. He held it up, took a bite, swallowed, cut off the part his mouth had touched, and passed it to the leader.
Arashk stared at the unfamiliar food, then produced a blackish tuber from his bag. He held it out in exchange.
They both studied the unfamiliar foods, then each other, and smiled. Ruefully. Riordan extricated the Dornaani food and blood sampler from his survival pack and held it up for Arashk’s consideration. “Tool see good food. Speaks yes, no.”
Arashk responded with a nod and slightly narrowed eyes. Caine was merely determining if he could safely eat the tuber, but the other appeared to be interpreting the device as a means of detecting intentional poisoning. However, whatever Arashk’s reservations might have been, he smiled and replied, “Here my tool for see if food good.” He clapped his assistant on the shoulder and handed over the Dornaani sandwich.
The humanoids, who called themselves h’achgai, roared with laughter: all except the assistant. As Riordan fed a thin slice of the tuber into the Dornaani sampler, that worthy eyed the sandwich warily before steeling himself to put his lipless mouth near the unfamiliar food.
The Dornaani sampler glowed green aqua: the chirality of the proteins was a match and the cellulose analogs were not toxic. There was an unsurprising array of unknown exobiotic microbes, but none were toxic or carrying parasites. Riordan took a bite: the texture was similar to an unripe pear and the flavor was both musky and salty. It reminded him of a cross between a turnip and soursop and would not take much getting used to. At all.
Meanwhile, the hapless assistant had finally nibbled at the edge of the sandwich. His first reaction was unpromising: a facial contraction that Riordan would have expected from biting into a lemon. But a moment later the young h’achgai’s face began unpuckering; interest quickly became enjoyment. Arashk patted him on the shoulder, removed the sandwich from hands that were now clearly reluctant to return it, and glanced at Caine. He pointed, mimicked the human’s chewing, and asked, “Good?”
Riordan smiled, replied “Good!” and gave a thumbs-up.
The h’achgai stared at that gesture. Their gazes eventually collected upon Arashk, whose frown was not one of displeasure but more as if he were puzzling out a conundrum.
Yaargraukh offered a muted observation. “They respond to hand gestures . . . unusually.”
Caine nodded, recalling how what he’d intended as a hand raised in greeting had been mistaken as a call for supplication. Unfortunately, they were still at such an early stage of understanding that any attempt to understand the difference could risk a disruptive, or even dangerous, gaffe.
Evidently, he was not alone in that concern. Arashk had mimicked and held the thumbs-up gesture. “This be good?” he questioned.
“Good,” Caine affirmed with a nod.
Arashk glanced at his assistant. “Hresh make question at you.”
Caine nodded toward the young h’achga. Hresh nodded his respect toward Arashk, then toward Caine. “Why you start hand up?”
It sounded as though the h’achgai were trying to puzzle out their side of that first, unsettling exchange. Caine slowly raised his hand. “This?”
Hresh shook his head. “Not same.”
Riordan looked at his hand. “Not same how?”
Hresh held his hand out to the side, spread his fingers, then pointed at Caine’s; his fingers were together.
Yaargraukh made a rumbling noise. “Slowly, Commodore. And start with your hand tilted toward the side.” The Hkh’Rkh’s tone was not so much one of understanding as recollection.
Riordan followed his friend’s advice, turning his hand sideways before spreading his fingers.
Hresh nodded at the gesture. “That no bad.”
Caine took a risk. “This bad?” he asked, and rotated his wrist until the spread fingers pointed directly at the sky.
The h’achgai not only became silent, but glum. “Bad,” Hresh agreed.
“Many bad,” Arashk grunted. “X’qai dregdo do that hand. They all bad.”
Riordan switched the translator to the interactive mode for the first time in over an hour. “X’qai dregdo: analysis.”
“Definitions: unknown,” the translator replied. “Structural analysis: x’qai is a plural noun. Dregdo is an adjective, modifier, or attribute.”
Riordan turned to the grim-faced h’achgai. “X’qai bad?”
Nods, grunts, and one sardonic laugh.
“I think we need to learn more about x’qai,” Yaargraukh murmured.
“I see your sense of humor has returned,” Riordan muttered sideways.
The Yaargraukh’s tongue whipped out before zipping back into the top nostril, as if that might undo his species’ equivalent of a chuckle.
Riordan would have smiled, but for the seriousness of his next question: “Dregdo bad?”
That elicited sighs of frustration: not with Caine but at the lack of language which kept them from explaining something they clearly felt to be very important.
Hresh stood, gesturing for Caine and Yaargraukh to remain seated before he made a respectful request of Arashk, who shrugged and stood. The leader stared and asked a sharp question; his assistant’s answer brought a slow smile to his face.
Arashk walked a few steps down the slope. Hresh prompted the others, who rose and made a row three abreast behind Arashk. Hresh turned toward Caine and pointed to Arashk. “Dregdo,” he said, placing peculiar emphasis on the last syllable.
“A leader?” Caine mused.
The translator confirmed. “Dregdo. Leader.”
But Hresh was not finished. He had all the other h’achgai sit in a circle, after which Arashk put aside his sword and helmet. “Dregdir,” Hresh announced, making a circular gesture to indicate the entire group.
“A . . . a council?” Caine wondered. He glanced at Yaargraukh as he waited for the translator to say something. Anything.
The Hkh’Rkh’s neck rose and fell slowly. “Equals, at the very least.”
Once the h’achgai had returned to their original places, Arashk pointed cautiously at Yaargraukh. “Dregdo?” he asked. Then, indicating Caine: “Dregdo?” When neither of them replied, he pointed at the two of them with a hesitant query: “Dregdir?”
It felt anticlimactic when the translator provided the now-obvious translation: “Dregdir. Equals.”
But still, Arashk gestured uncertainly between the human and the Hkh’Rkh. “Dregdo? Dregdir?”
Yaargraukh spoke before Riordan could respond. “Caution, here, Commodore. I suspect that, at this particular moment, my cultural background may be more helpful than yours. With your permission?”
Riordan nodded.
The Hkh’Rkh faced Arashk and pointed at Caine. “On fight day, he dregdo. Good dregdo.” Yaargraukh’s next gesture indicated both of them. “On no fight day, we two dregdir.”
The translator started spitting out equivalences—“war,” “peace,” “leader,” “commander”—mere seconds after a relieved babble arose from the h’achgai. Arashk nodded vigorously. “Yes. We, too.” He pointed to himself. “Fight day, I dregdo. No fight day, I dregdir.” The others were producing more food from their packs, even as they thumped Hresh in what looked like joyful hazing.
Caine nodded, hated to utter the word that might dampen the lighter spirits, but it had to be done. He cleared his throat. “Arashk, Hresh: bad word comes.”
Arashk’s face became sober.
“X’qai leaders make you bow to high hand, all fingers wide?”
Arashk’s nod was even more savage than those of the other four.
Riordan sighed, shrugged apologetically. “You tell me x’qai? Tell me all?”
With a feral smile at the two strangers’ weapons, armor, and gear, Arashk’s answer was a feral growl: “Yes. I tell you x’qai—all day, all night.”