“If necessary,” said Orro, “we could film the screen and then analyse the film frame by frame.”
“Not much use if we can’t read the script,” said Darvin.
“Forget the script,” said Markhan. “These diagrams we glimpse here and there might tell us much.”
Kwarive scratched Darvin’s back and moved away from behind him. She walked over and stood beside the receiver.
“What,” she asked Nollam, “was the first clear picture that came up?”
“Ah!” he said. “That map thing you drew.”
Kwarive smacked one hand onto the other. “As I thought,” she said. “What we’re seeing here is a reply. Somebody recognised the map as a communication, and sent it back as an acknowledgment, then responded with its own message: first the wingless alien, then a view of the interior of the ship, then all this data.”
“But that map wasn’t your first stab at communicating,” said Markhan.
“No,” said Kwarive, “but it was the first one they recognised. They recognised the map because it corresponded to something they’d already seen — the coastline of Seloh’s Reach, from space.”
“You’re right,” said Orro. He stalked forward and joined her. “And I’ll tell you something else: this is not a communication with us.”
“I don’t follow,” said Markhan.
“If it were,” said Orro, “I should expect, perhaps, some simple pictograms. A series of numbers, like that idea we had about stacks of stones. A diagram of the solar system, a drawing of the ship, a sketch of the aliens’ anatomy. Instead, we get what may be a greeting in the aliens’ own language, followed by screeds of text, also in their own language. It’s as if it’s addressed to somebody on Ground, all right, but somebody who understands.”
“Maybe it’s meant for the electric shittles,” said Darvin, in a tone lighter than he felt.
Orro shook his head. “No. If it were, it would be on the same etheric wavelength as the previous transmissions. This is on the same wavelength as our own telekinematography, and is evidently intended—”
“No,” said Nollam. “Same wavelength and frequency. Started coming through clear, that’s all.”
“That makes my point just as strongly. It’s not directed at the shittles. It’s directed at us, or rather, at someone or something else for which they mistake us.” Darvin felt the fur on his back prickle. “You’re saying that someone or something else is among us?”
“No,” said Orro. “Merely that the aliens think there is.”
“Perhaps,” said Kwarive, “they think others of their species, but not of their… expedition, are here?”
Orro laughed. “They may have rival powers, like us! It’s as if a ship from Seloh saw a signal from a beach in the wilder parts of the Southern Rule, and thought it came from a Gevorkian landing party, whereas in fact it was from the natives.”
“Very neat,” said Markhan. “And entirely speculative. Please watch the screen, record with as few interruptions as possible, while I confer. Let me know at once of any developments.”
He hurried out. The remaining two eights or so of people in the room stood or perched around the receiver.
“Well,” said Kwarive, after another glance at the enigmatic screen, “at least we know what they look like.”
“Or what they want us to think they look like,” said a familiar voice.
Darvin turned to see the Sight agent who’d recruited him. Bahron, he called himself. He hung around the camp and gave vague explanations about site security. Everybody knew who he was and what he did, but kept the pretence that they didn’t. Darvin hadn’t noticed him in the room earlier, and guessed he’d just arrived, or that his penchant for the shadows had kept him unseen.
“Why do you see deception everywhere?” said Orro.
“It’s my trade,” said Bahron.
“In this case, you’re letting it get in the way of… seeing,” said Kwarive. The tiny barb drew smiles from the scientists and techs, and a flicker of irritation from Bahron. “Why should the aliens wish to deceive us?”
“If they’re big ugly monsters, or little ones for that matter, they might want us to think they looked more like ourselves.”
“Then why wingless?”
Bahron shrugged. “For the very reason you raise the question. If they looked too much like us, we’d be suspicious.”
Kwarive folded her arms and steepled her wings. “Fine,” she said. “It’s your job, as you say, to look for lies. It’s ours to look for truth, and until we have more to go on, we’ll go by what we’ve got.” She looked around. “Did anyone spot how many fingers the alien had?”
“Five digits on each hand,” said Orro. “One of them opposable.”
“You’re sure?” asked Kwarive.
“Positive.”
“Good,” said Kwarive.
“We can check later,” Nollam called out. “Soon as we can play back the first tape.”
“All right. So we can guess that their number system has an eight-and-two base.”
“Awkward for arithmetic,” Orro chuckled. “For the base to divide into odd numbers.”
Kwarive laughed. “See how much we’re learning? We know they’re wingless quadrimanal bipeds, that their speech comes from their breath like ours, that they have binocular vision, poor eyesight and hearing, and that they make a sorry fist of arithmetic!”
“But possibly more dextrous than us,” someone said. “With the extra fingers.”
“Good point,” said Kwarive. “Any more ideas?”
Others began throwing in their own shaky deductions: that the deep voice showed a more resonant, and thus larger, chest cavity; that the aliens saw in the same wavelengths as humans; that from a biomechanical analysis of their gait it might be possible to work out their mass; that the same could be cross-checked against their flying machines; that they had slower reflexes than humans…
“Seeing we’re playing this game,” said Bahron, “I can tell you they’re warm-blooded, too.”
“I’d assumed they were,” said Kwarive, “but why do you say that?”
“No fur,” said Bahron. “Except on top of the head. But they wrap themselves in some kind of insulating material.”
Kwarive looked at him with a little more respect. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Tell you something else,” said Bahron. He climbed up on a rack, spread his wings, and hopped off to alight on the floor again. “They can’t do this. They can’t fly, except in machines, right? So they must be afraid of falling, and ground must matter a lot to them. I mean, you could keep them out of any patch of ground with just a fence or a wall, like grazers and trudges.” He gave an evil smile. “Or in. So what I figure from that, see, is they’re likely to be very interested in our world: in… Ground.” Another nasty grin. “See, this is my job after all.”
“Wait a moment,” said Darvin, alarmed at the drift of Bahron’s deductions. “They have an enormous vessel in which they’ve lived in space for a long time.”
“Yes,” said Bahron. “A long time. And in all that time, they’ve been spinning their vessel, to give them ground to walk on and weight to carry. Now, Orro, how long do you reckon they’ve been in space, if they did come from another star?”
“Oh, many eights-of-eights of years, at the very least.”
“Generations, then?”
“They might have very long lifespans,” said Orro.
Bahron turned to Kwarive. “You reckon that’s possible?”
She shrugged. “I wouldn’t rule it out, but it seems fanciful.”
“Words out of my mouth, lady. In any case, they’ve had plenty of time to adapt to living in space, weightless you might say, and what do they do? They live as much like on the ground as possible. They give themselves artificial weight. Now, what reason could they have for doing that, if they don’t intend to walk again on a world?”
“There could be all kinds of reasons,” said Kwarive. “Perhaps all animals need gravity for some reason we don’t know.”