GROUND / CH. 20:EDUCATING VISITORS.

OUTSIDE THE CITY, LATE-AFTERNOON.

“Stand up,” Mick said in the local language. “Sit down.”

“You're just trying to get me tired.” Sathie grumbled.

“Turn round.”

“What, sitting down?”

“Shall we stop?”

“No!”

“Carefully pick up the red fork,” she did.

“Put the blue fork down quickly.”

“How do I do that? I'm not holding it.”

“Onto the floor.”

“Oh. Doesn't it mean put something down that I'm holding?”

“Same sentence, different context. Where is the predator?”

“There,” Sathie said, pointing at the picture.

“No, bottom left screen, see? In the ditch beside the road.”

“What's it doing so close to the city?”

“Tracking that cart, maybe?”

“Isn't that Yuth's cart?” Sathie asked, maneuvering the probe for a better view.

“I think it might be. Yes, I see our old wheels. Can you send the probe down?”

“Is that wise?”

“Well, if the predator bites the probe, then just do a full power lift and squirt the stupid thing if it doesn't let go.”

“What are you thinking of doing? Warning Yuth?”

“Not directly, that might make life dangerous for him. I was thinking of a forcefield to block the ditch.”

“Oh, good idea.”

“Maybe an audio signal too?”

“Standard siren?”

“Try something around thirty kilohertz dropping to ten kilohertz, then send morse code for 'CQ' three times.”

“Why?”

“Hearing test, and strangely enough, Morse for 'CQ' is the local equivalent for 'danger'.”

“Amplitude?”

“Normal speech.”

“OK, sixty decibels at one meter it is. And you want me to drop the probe between the predator and the cart?”

“Yes. Drop half way between them, then start the signal when you're there.”

“OK. Camera one pointing at the predator, camera two at the cart, here goes. I'll make the forcefield start if the pred gets too close. I don't want to squirt it all over the landscape just because it likes chasing silver balls. Never mind having it out of action while I try to get the teeth marks out of it.”

“Fine.”

The probe followed its assigned program precisely. The predator was a bit spooked either by its sudden arrival or its utter failure to hit the ground, and viewed it with suspicion. The ultrasonic whistle had no effect on the predator until it got into to the normal range of land-human hearing, at which point it shook its head and backed off. The traders, however, didn't react at all. Not until the Morse code started its second repeat. At that point, Refek the guard grabbed his sword and shouted “Hey, come out where I can see you!”

“Did he just say 'come out?'” Sathie asked.

“Yes.”

“Wow! Language learning does work!” She made the probe lift so Refek had a better view, and let it repeat 'danger' once more. Then, engaging the force field, she moved the probe towards the canine. It hadn't expected to meet an invisible disk as it lept to attack the strange thing, and yelped in surprise as instead of catching the probe in its teeth, it was hit in the chest by the edge of the forcefield. Winded, it fell to the ground.

“I don't think your hearing test worked very well, Mick.” Sathie observed.

“Me neither, not on the people, anyway. Oh well, the predator is now Refek's problem.”

“Going back up, then.”

They watched as the predator recovered its feet under the watchful eyes of Refek. It assessed him in turn, paying particular attention to his sword. Out in the open and facing a significant chance of death, it decided discretion was the better option, and loped away along the mainly empty road. Refek gave a strange yodel, and other wagon teams got out their weapons, repeating the call. Soon the predator realised it was on a road with swords and clubs in front and behind. It jumped the ditch and ran across the fields.

Refek looked up at the probe and said, “Assuming you can hear me, thanks for the warning, but the right one is that call I gave. There's a village that way, though, and there might be podlings playing.”

“Sathie, beloved, the pred's heading towards a village, where there might be kids at play. If I fly the probe, can you program the probe to duplicate the yodel Refek gave?”

“No problem. That's the 'there's a pred coming' call?”

“Refek said that's the signal we should have given. It might only be for carters, I've got no idea.”

“OK, I'll alternate. Who uses the Morse code thing?”

“Telegraph operators, students might use it as a sort of semaphore thing when the lecturer's coming.”

“And you're sure it doesn't mean 'help'? I'm just thinking, a telegraph operator might send 'S.O.S.' but 'danger'? When would they send danger?”

“You might be right. Lana said it meant 'danger', but, I suppose 'help' and 'danger' are related concepts.”

“I've just decided I'm not going to alternate, unless the yodel gets no response at all.”

“Your choice, beloved.”

“And if the pred starts trying to eat people, I assume you don't mind slicing it up.”

“No, I don't. Certainly not to defend kids.” He checked the second camera. “And there they are, as advertised.”

“Activating yodel.”

“Kids looking around, confused and a bit scared, and we're just about in position.”

“Good.” Sathie said, “Now I think you'd better let me take over. Because I can't speak local well enough.”

“Pardon?”

“We wanted visitors, didn't we? About fifty coming.”

----------------------------------------

OUTSIDE THE CITY, EARLY-EVENING.

“Is that the last of them?” Sathie asked.

“Yes, curiosity seems to have been satisfied, at least for the evening.”

“How many students are there at the university?”

“I'm not sure, I never asked. Maybe I'll ask tomorrow, if more show up. Thanks so much for setting up the voice-response thing, I was getting really hoarse, saying the same thing over and over.”

“No problem! It actually struck me as a perfect opportunity for some language learning. Now... can you please fill me in on what the main questions actually were?”

“Just the questions?”

“Just the questions to start with. You don't mind giving this data set to the linguists, do you?”

“Not at all, that's why I put up the notice after the first batch.”

“What does it say?”

“It says 'Anything you say may be used to help our relatives learn your language'.”

“Why 'our relatives'?”

“Because I don't want to be accused of talking about aliens.”

“Mick! I saw some of those diagrams, you were talking about space travel!”

“So? That isn't a banned subject. But everyone was very careful to avoid using the 'alien' word.”

“No one asked where you'd come from?”

“I said, 'I crashed here six years ago, and I spent most of that time healing and learning to understand your language. Now my family have found where I crashed, and with them came my clever wife who has got my ship to at least move again, but of course it's still very broken.'”

“Which question was that?”

“Number ten or twelve, I think.”

“What's question one?”

“Why are you floating up here?”

This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

“Oh bother, I want to know the answers too.”

“I don't mind. I said, 'Isn't a visitor supposed to camp outside a village, and wait to be asked who they are and what their plans are?' That led on to question two: 'What are your plans?' to which I say 'Camp up here until I get told my family officially exist, and my friends aren't in trouble.'”

“Question three?”

“'Who told you what you should do?' to which I said, 'A leader who retired a long time ago and doesn't want to come out of retirement.'”

“Well done. Question four?”

“'What's keeping this ship up?' to which I say 'We've worked out how to get gravity to ignore the ship,' To which point one of them says, 'It's not ignoring us, I still feel heavy.' and I reply 'you're not the ship' and they say 'no but I'm pushing on the ship', and I ask 'Are you? How do you know it isn't the planet you're pushing?'”

“You didn't!” Sathie said, outraged.

“Sathie, can you tell me what's happening, in nice plain Mer and then nice plain English, beyond that simplification? The Boris drive makes gravitons skip the ship, but they're still there for people the other side of the ship. Why doesn't every other force move the ship around?”

“Because even the Boris drive is doing more than cancelling gravity, it's also producing a local pinch in the curvature of space-time which effectively gives us a fixed anchor referenced to the current positions of major local gravitational masses.”

“The bulk of which is produced by the gravitational mass of the planet. Can we use a Boris drive to exert a force on the planet, or even an asteroid in an otherwise flat space-time? No, we can't, because that would be just like pulling yourself up by your own boot-laces. What we can do is move ourselves caterpillar-like relative to those fixed points. Therefore to all intents and purposes, we're effectively anchored to the centre of mass of the planet, even while we're a long way above it. That's the way Gran explained it to me when I was a kid, anyway.”

Sathie stared at him. “Your grandmother said that?”

“Yes. I know it's full of holes from a theoretical level, but in a hand-waving, horribly over-simplified way, it's what happens.”

“Horribly, horribly over-simplified. But... who am I to contradict your grandmother?”

“My wife, who I love with all my head, all my heart, all of my skin organisms, all my muscle organisms, and so on,” Mick said, with kisses for punctuation.

“Hmmmmm, you do, don't you?” Sathie said, doing some punctuation of her own.

----------------------------------------

OUTSIDE THE CITY, AFTER SUNSET.

As the evening temperatures fell, the winds increased, and clouds moved in from the sea, and it rained. The rain splashed on the crystal of the ship, ran in little rivulets under the support of their cooking fire, and drops occasionally hit the coals under their herd-beast kebabs, sending up clouds of ash and steam. It was still a warm evening by her standards, and Sathie relished the cool spots on her skin and especially the sense in her eyeballs that they were longer feeling constantly too dry. “I've decided: cooking in the rain is a fun activity.”

“Is it?” Mick asked, with a grin, turning a kebab.

“Yes. Much more fun than cooking under a forcefield dome that doesn't really let the smoke out.”

“There is the opinion here that anyone doing anything in the rain is somewhat lunatic and risking catching some awful illness.”

“Who says that? Farmers?”

“Of course not, city people. Farmers know that rain brings out the slime-creatures and it's an important time to keep the herd-beasts together. But I really doubt anyone at all will visit us in this. And it's probably going to carry on for ages.”

“That's not a problem, is it?”

“No, not a problem, it just means we won't need the predator kebabs. I presume the probe's waterproof?”

“Only to a hundred metres depth.”

“That ought to do, I don't think it's going to rain that much.”

“I should hope not,” Sathie agreed, then Mick saw her hand go to her knife. “Not students, I'd say.”

Mick turned round, and saw a small group of locals coming their way on the ground, probably ten minutes away.

Mick guessed that they weren't happy about the wet, but also that their marching in step meant they were some kind of military or police force.

“Sathie, what do you think of us using the probe's forcefield to shelter them from the rain?”

“Good idea.”

“I apologise if you are enjoying the rain, or if my sheltering you from it using this tool offends in some way,” Mick said, via the probe's speaker once it was in place, “But my mother taught me it was more polite to offer help than wait to be asked.”

“Squad halt!” said the being in the middle. “Winged officers, circle this theatrical prop and cut its wires.”

“You may, if you wish, stand on the invisible circular disk that's currently around the base of the device, and keeping the rain off you, in order to get wet and assure yourselves there are no wires above, below or around the device.” Mick said, adding. “The device is powered by something rather like unstable isotopes; so for the safety of the city, I will do what I can to prevent damage to the probe, as that might release such dangerous materials. Any motion or order that I interpret as an attempt to damage the device will result in the invisible disk disappearing and the device doing all it can to get away from you as quickly as possible. I apologise if either of those steps causes injuries, but the safety of innocent citizens must come first. If you have read the account of Jakav's encounter with my sister Magdalena, this tool is the one that reduced one predator pack-leader to a bloody mist, and the invisible disk that shelters you from rain is how it carried the injured Jakav back to his village. I further add, that if you would like to lay down your weapons and eat out of this rain, my wife and I will be very happy to make space for you at our fire, and let you cook some of the predator she killed this morning.”

“What did you say to them?” Sathie asked.

“The officer told the ones with wings to cut the probe's wires. I guess as if it were hanging from some trees. I told them they could stand on the forcefield and check for wires if they liked, but that we wouldn't tolerate them trying to damage it, because that might be dangerous. Then I invited them to roast some predator with us.”

“OK. Shall I cut some steaks?”

“I'm rather doubtful that they'll accept.”

“Huh. On the assumption they won't I'm turning on our field.”

“What about the smoke?”

Sathie grinned, “my favourite setting: air can come in, stuff can go out, stuff can't get in.”

“I thought you said you liked the rain.”

“That's fun, yes.”

“But you could have let the smoke out and not had rain?”

“Of course I could, Mick. I just said rain was much better than an impenetrable forcefield.”

“Sathie?” Mick said preparing to declare his love to her.

“You love me, don't you?”

“I don't know I'll ever understand you, though.”

“Oh good. That keeps life interesting, don't you think?”

“No wires found, Sergeant, sir!” declared one of the flying guards.

“And this invisible disk?” the sergeant asked.

“Can't see it, sir.”

“Ha!”

“But we can feel it.”

“Sathie, can you make the field glow a bit?”

“I can make it spell 'I love you' if you want.”

“Really?”

“Given enough time. Want to pick a colour?”

“Can you make it change? Rainbow-like?”

“One cycling-rainbow forcefield coming up. What does the rainbow signify here?”

“It's stopped raining. But also, God defends his people.”

“Good symbolism. Hey, they do a trinity symbol, don't they?”

“Yes.”

“Are we allowed to use it?”

“Can you put one on the dome here? Painting one on your house is fairly common as a sign that you're a believer.”

“You should have said, Mick.” Sathie chided him, “you could have used your rock-cutter and engraved one, couldn't you?”

“I guess so,” he turned back to the microphone. “We've made the disk glow, lieutenant, does that help?”

“More special effects! There's a hidden lamp somewhere.”

“They don't have projectors or televisions, do they?” Sathie asked.

“No. They have a few experimental audio-recorders, but until I explained the principle to Lara, no form of cameras at all.”

“What about I use the field as a display screen?”

“You can do that? Really?”

“Not very detailed, but yes.”

“From the camera?” Mick asked.

“Yes. Or any image, really.”

“How about showing the probe's video from a minute ago?”

“Oooh, nice. So they see themselves?”

“Are they going to be able to recognise each other?”

“Probably. But like I say, it's not going to be high definition.”

“Lieutenant,” Mick said into the microphone, “I don't think you have the technology to do this either. We can make much better pictures than you see, but not on something that can bounce cannon balls and destroy predators like the disk can.”

The lieutenant stood motionless, looking at his squad arriving, orders being given, and then fliers obviously circling the observer. After a minute or so, of watching with growing incredulity, the lieutenant started to wobble on his feet and sway, his eyes still glued to the sight above his head.

“Sathie, display off! Someone remind the lieutenant to breathe now!”

“Not possible,” the lieutenant murmured, and sat down. Mick was reassured to see him take a breath, before he repeated “What I have seen is not possible.”

Sathie took Mick's hand and thought to him, [Mick? What happened?]

[He was so engrossed in the playback that he forgot to breathe. If you distract someone who's holding their breath for some reason, say about to shout a command... then they might forget to tell their lungs to 'breathe normally', and with no autonomous systems... it has been known to be fatal, sometimes.]

“I apologise for the distraction, lieutenant.” Mick said, via the probe. “As the One is my witness, I have no desire to cause you harm, nor turmoil or panic in the city. But it would be my preference that the government see fit to rescind certain laws I have heard of, because while I do not doubt they were passed with integrity... scientists make mistakes, truth is stranger than most people knew when they were passed, and the present law hinders truthful conversation.”

“Who knew?” the Lieutenant whispered.

“Who knew what, Lieutenant? Talking through a nameless device is not ideal. I repeat my invitation to join my wife and I on what is left of the ship which she originally built, but which I bear the responsibility for crashing on this strange planet some six years ago, and which my amazing wife has now repaired enough that it can at least fly once more. We also have half a predator killed in self-defence. Since my wife and I find the taste of predator as revolting as you would find the taste of old fish, we are very happy to offer it to any who would enjoy it.”

“I wonder what happened to the other half, then,” the lieutenant commented to his nearest soldier.

“The other half I traded for some herd-beast meat.” Mick added. “A good trade; both parties left with something of far greater value to them.”

“Soldiers, pay heed!” the lieutenant ordered, then whispered, “I have no confidence in the pronouncements of a voice of a machine, nor do I feel that the eating meat offered via such a strange device is something I would recommend, let alone order. But it is nevertheless our duty to investigate this strange visitor, for if there is truth in the stories he has referred to, untold peril may await our city.”

“Lieutenant, I hate to keep on interrupting,” Mick said, “but just so you're aware, this probe has really good sound detectors, and I just can't help overhearing anything you say so close to it. I promise my wife and I will still be here tomorrow morning if you want to discuss things in private. Or I suppose I could just move the probe away, since you seem to prefer the rain.”

“We do not prefer the rain. My squad will return to the city, I will come to your strange floating habitation, I will listen to what you say.”

“I humbly suggest, lieutenant, that if — as I believe most likely to be the case — your squad contains some who have a family connection to the leaders of the Tradition party, you allow one or more of them to be your witnesses, that your conduct and speech was at all times beyond reproach. A matter confirmed by several honest witnesses is, after all, more to be believed, no matter how incredible.”

“How did you come to such a belief?” The lieutenant demanded of the probe.

“I have been told that it has been a tradition of the party of Tradition to encourage their offspring to serve in the city guard, ever since the parties were formed after the end of the third war, and furthermore, that about half the recruits now come from this source.”

“You are well informed, but I will not have any soldier among my troops who makes such connections known, as that might be a route to corruption. Thus ignoring all matters of family connections, but preferring instead the question of personal reputation, do I have four trustworthy volunteers?”

Five soldiers stepped forward. “Rek?” The lieutenant asked, “If I remember you are quite well known to the city police, and not in a favourable sense.”

“Exactly sir. I am known as someone who fights too-readily, but not as someone who tells untruth. Indeed, the police often ask me what happened, and I tell them.”

“They do not question your word?”

“Not often sir. If I say I threw the first punch, they believe me and lock me up. If it was the other guy, they tell him, 'Rek here says it wasn't him. Do you have a lot of witnesses who agree with you?' And of course he doesn't; they agree with me if they're being truthful, sir.”

“OK, Rek, you're in. Who shouldn't I pick, Rek?”

“Saneth, sir,” Rek said, naming the squad's most scholarly member.

“Oh? Saneth, do you agree with Rek?”

“I disagree with Rek on principle, sir, almost always.”

“Even when that makes you wrong?”

“How can it be right to agree with Rek? If he's right then either he's right for the wrong reasons, or it's an obvious truth and there's no point having an argument about it. What we've seen has been imagined but not done in any laboratory on Ground. The very idea of apologising for the low quality of a moving picture, a recording of vision, when such things are just fantasy... I prefer to believe in technology than magic, especially when the voice commanding it calls it technology.”

“Rek, Tatha, Ziv, Guna: follow me. The rest of you, report to the watch officer.”

“What do we say happened to you, sir?

“Say that having determined there were no wires holding up the strange device, and witnessed various powers it had that have no reasonable explanation, I accepted the invitation of the visitor to sit at his fire and listen to his tale, even though his fire is on a glass barge fifty meters above our heads, and I detest flying.”