A few minutes of flight took us southeast across a dozen miles of desert. None of us spoke as the aircar descended toward a large solitary Demon Lover cactus. Its crown was studded with enormous orange and yellow blossoms, some of which were four or five yards across. The aircar moved towards a dark opening some fifty feet below the plant’s apex and settled to a silky halt on a ledge just outside the mouth of a tunnel.
The light inside the chamber was dim, but the Bagpipe seemed to have no problem finding his way and we trotted along behind him across the room’s spongy, resilient floor. One dark tunnel led to another, and eventually we came to a small tubular shaft in the center of the plant. The Bagpipe pressed a button with one of its trunks and a chain of single-person transport disks slowly moved down inside the tube. One by one we boarded the disks and an eternity later were deposited deep within the huge succulent.
From out of the gloom two more aliens appeared and immediately began honking at their comrade. I turned to Rebona’s shadowy silhouette.
“What’re they saying?”
“I can barely figure what they’re saying when only one of them’s talking—with two or more it’s hopeless. The meaning of their communication units is contained as much in which tube emits the sound and in the accompanying gestures as it is by the sound itself. My computer pack has a neural-net visual system that I focus on the Bagpipe who’s talking. The AI uses a preloaded vocabulary to determine which of the tubes is generating the noise and making the gestures, and then it gives me a rough translation with a choice of vocabulary options.”
“Options?”
“Almost nothing but options. Most of my job consists of studying the possible alternative meanings based on the context of the conversation, then I assemble a coherent, meaningful exchange as a gestalt. There’s almost no word-for-word equivalency between the Bagpipes’ language and human speech. For now we’ll just have to wait until they decide which one’s going to speak to us before I can tell you anything about what they’re saying.”
We waited more or less patiently until one of the aliens, apparently their spokesman, moved forward. Rebona activated her computer and again inserted the plug into her ear. The alien, whom I dubbed Tall And Thin because he was both taller and thinner than either of his companions, began another of his hooting, honking monologues. When he come to a gurgling conclusion, Rebona turned to me and hesitantly began her translation.
“They seem to be… agitated by your cargo of crystals. They’ve learned about it, apparently over the net, and they say that it’s urgent, or important, or vital, something like that, that you give them up.”
“Give them up? To whom? To them? Do you mean they want to buy them?”
“I’m not really sure. It may be they want actual physical possession of them, or it may be they want the crystals put back where they originally came from.” She grimaced. “I’m afraid it’s not very clear.”
“Can’t you ask them for clarification?”
“Communicating with the Bagpipes is almost entirely a one-way process. I simply don’t have the right equipment to speak their language beyond getting across a few pidgin phrases. It’s the equivalent of trying to learn something technical from a human nullspace engineer if you limit yourself to only a vocabulary of a hundred words like ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ ‘stop,’ ‘go,’ good,’ and bad.’ ” She turned back to Tall And Thin. “I have a basic phrase for ‘I don’t understand.’ I’ll try that.”
Rebona pressed keys on her computer and its speaker issued a brief series of hoots and honks. The Bagpipes remained motionless for several seconds, then engaged in another three-way dialog. Finally Tall And Thin spoke again.
“Well?”
“I’m still not sure,” she said, shaking her head. “What I think I’m getting is something about it being forbidden or taboo or an insult or wrong or dangerous for you to have the crystals, or for the crystals to be taken off-planet, or for the crystals to be used or modified or sold; and that the crystals must be released by you, probably into their custody, to be properly disposed of, or transferred or worshipped or venerated or protected.”
I glared at the Bagpipes. “Why are they so concerned by my crystals? Are they religious artifacts, or necessary for a mating ritual, or used for medical purposes, or what?”
“I don’t know. I simply don’t have enough vocabulary to ask that kind of question. I’ll tell them again that you don’t understand, but I think they’ll just repeat what they said before.”
“Can you tell them I’ll consider their request?”
“Yes, there’s a phrase that’s roughly equivalent to ‘I need time to think.’ ”
Rebona tapped more keys, her computer emitted a desultory hoot, and then we turned and headed back to the transport tube. Neither Tall And Thin nor the others made a move to follow us. Once we were in Rebona’s aircar and on our way back to the restaurant I tried to elicit any additional information that might help make sense of all this.
“You seem to be the local expert on the Bagpipes. Where did they come from? What are they doing here?”
“I’m really not that much of an expert, I’m afraid. I’m actually an eco-biologist from the university on Granger IV. My department had heard about this planet’s genetically modified cacti and wanted to see if we could create similar biological housing units for other ecological systems. My husband wanted to do his own research, so it seemed the perfect trip to take together. I’ve been here about a year and a half now. About six months ago the Bagpipes showed up and I seemed to be the only person on the planet who took any interest in them.”
“A new alien species? And no one’s interested?”
“Well, for a while they were a minor curiosity, but when communication with them proved so difficult everyone else lost interest. You’ve got to remember that this is still pretty much a frontier world and any field of study without a practical application is discouraged or ignored. And, of course,” she added with a bitter edge to her voice, “it’s a planet almost entirely populated by petalheads. Most of the time everyone here’s too bent to see beyond the end of their nose.”
“They do seem a trifle… relaxed,” I agreed. “But you…?”
“Because of my husband, I also have something of an ethnological background. I managed to modify some of the equipment we’d brought for research and eventually I was able to communicate with the Bagpipes after a fashion. By now a professional xenologist with the right equipment would be projecting a holographic simulacrum of a Bagpipe waving precisely the right tubes in the right order as part of the translation process. But without the equipment or training, I just have to fumble along.”
“Don’t be so apologetic! I’m astonished you’ve accomplished as much as you have—communication with any other species is always extremely difficult. How many of them are there?”
“You mean here? Oh, half a dozen or so that I know of. They came in a single small ship.”
“Where do they come from? And why did they come here?”
“More mysteries. All I can gather is that they’re from somewhere way beyond HOS and that they may or may not be part of an empire. And I think they have their own way of getting around nullspace, one that’s a lot more certain than ours.”
“Really?” More and more interesting. Nullspace is peculiar. Sometimes you can go from A to C, but not from A to B, even though it lies directly between the two. To get there, you first have to go to D, then backtrack. If the Bagpipes had a new and better way of navigating nullspace…