What next? They needed to find out where that town was. They might need to defend themselves some time in the near future. Ashiban looked around to see what there might be in the car that they could use. Back behind the seats was an assortment of tools and machines that Ashiban assumed were necessary for farming on a planet. A shovel. Some rope. A number of other things she couldn’t identify.
A well between her seat and the Sovereign’s held a tangled assortment of junk. A small knife. A doll made partly from pieces of fabricator plastic and partly from what appeared to be bits of an old, worn-out shirt. Bits of twine. An empty cup. Some sort of clip with a round gray blob adhesived to it. “What’s this?” asked Ashiban aloud.
The Sovereign glanced over at Ashiban. With one hand she took the clip from Ashiban’s hand, flicked the side of it with her thumb, and held it out to Ashiban, her attention back on the way ahead of them. Said something.
“It’s a translator,” said the little blob on the clip in a quiet, tinny voice. “A lot of weevils won’t take their handheld into town because they’re afraid the constable will take it from them and use the information on it against their families. Or if you’re out working and have your hands full but think you might need to talk to a weevil.” A pause, in which the Sovereign seemed to realize what she’d said. “You’re not a weevil,” said the little blob.
“It’s not a very nice thing to say.” Though of course Ashiban had heard Raksamat use slurs against the Gidanta, at home, and not thought twice about it. Until now.
“Oh, Ancestors!” cried the Sovereign, and smacked the groundcar steering in frustration. “I always say the wrong thing. I wish Timran hadn’t died, I wish I still had an interpreter.” Tears filled her eyes, shone in the dim light from the groundcar controls.
“Why are you swearing by the Ancestors?” asked Ashiban. “You don’t believe in them. Or I thought you didn’t.” One tear escaped, rolled down the Sovereign’s cheek. Ashiban picked up the end of the old dishcloth that was currently draped over the girl’s shoulder and wiped it away.
“I didn’t swear by the Ancestors!” the Sovereign protested. “I didn’t swear by anything. I just said oh, Ancestors.” They drove in silence for a few minutes. “Wait,” said the Sovereign then. “Let me try something. Are you ready?”
“Ready for what?”
“This: Ancestors. What did I say?”
“You said Ancestors.”
“Now. Pingberries. What did I say?”
“You said pingberries.”
The Sovereign brought the groundcar to a stop, and turned to look at Ashiban. “Now. Oh, Ancestors!” as though she were angry or frustrated. “There. Do you hear? Are you listening?”
“I’m listening.” Ashiban had heard it, plain and clear. “You said oh, pingberries, but the translator said it was oh, Ancestors. How did that happen?”
“Pingberries sounds a lot like…something that isn’t polite,” the Sovereign said. “So it’s the kind of swear your old uncle would use in front of the in-laws.”
“What?” asked Ashiban, and then, realizing, “Whoever entered the data for the translator thought it was equivalent to swearing by the Ancestors.”
“It might be,” said the Sovereign, “and actually that’s really useful, that it knows when I’m talking about wanting to eat some pingberries, or when I’m frustrated and swearing. That’s good, it means the translators are working well. But Ancestors and pingberries, those aren’t exactly the same. Do you see?”
“The treaty,” Ashiban realized. “That everyone thinks the other side is translating however they want.” And probably not just the treaty.
It had been Ciwril Xidyla who had put together the first, most significant collection of linguistic data on Gidantan. It was her work that had led to the ease and usefulness of automatic translation between the two languages. Even aside from automatic translation, Ashiban suspected that her mother’s work was the basis for nearly every translation between Raksamat and Gidantan for very nearly a century. That was one reason why Ciwril Xidyla was as revered as she was, by everyone in the system. Translation devices like this little blob on a clip had made communication possible between Raksamat and Gidanta. Had made peaceful agreement possible, let people talk to each other whenever they needed it. Had probably saved lives. But. “We can’t be the first to notice this.”
The Sovereign set the groundcar moving again. “Noticing something and realizing it’s important aren’t the same thing. And maybe lots of people have noticed, but they don’t say anything because it suits them to have things as they are. We need to tell the Terraforming Council. We need to tell the Assembly. We need to tell everybody, and we need to retranslate the treaty. We need more people to actually learn both languages instead of only using that thing.” She gestured toward the translator clipped to Ashiban’s collar.
“We need the translator to be better, Sovereign. Not everyone can easily learn another language.” More people learning the two languages ought to help with that. More people with firsthand experience to correct the data. “But we need the translator to know more than what my mother learned.” Had the translations been unchanged since her mother’s time? Ashiban didn’t think that was likely. But the girl’s guess that it suited at least some of the powers that be to leave problems—perhaps certain problems—uncorrected struck Ashiban as sadly possible. “Sovereign, who’s going to listen to us?”
“I am the Sovereign of Iss!” the girl declared. “And you are the daughter of Ciwril Xidyla! They had better listen to us.”
Shortly after the sky began to lighten, they came to a real, honest-to-goodness road. The Sovereign pulled the groundcar up to its edge and then stopped. The road curved away on either side, so that they could see only the brief stretch in front of them, and trees all around. “Right or left?” asked the Sovereign. There was no signpost, no indication which way town was, or even any evidence beyond the existence of the road itself that there was a town anywhere nearby.
When Ashiban didn’t answer, the Sovereign slid out of the driver’s seat and walked out to the center of the road. Stood looking one way, and then the other.
“I think the town is to the right,” she said, when she’d gotten back in. “And I don’t think we have time to get away.”
“I don’t understand,” Ashiban protested. But then she saw lights through the trees, to the right. “Maybe they’ll drive on by.” But she remembered the young woman’s story of how a Raksamat settler had been received in the town yesterday. And she was here to begin with because of rising tensions between Gidanta and Raksamat, and whoever had shot their flier down, days ago, had fairly obviously wanted to increase those tensions, not defuse them.
And they were sitting right in the middle of the path to the nearest Raksamat farmstead. Which had no defenses beyond a few hunting guns and maybe a lock on the front door.
A half dozen groundcars came around the bend in the road. Three of them the sort made to carry loads, but the wide, flat cargo areas held people instead of cargo. Several of those people were carrying guns.