In fact, the only thing both squads had done according to orders was to maintain comm silence so as not to alert the "opponents" of their position. And, since nobody had kept an eye on the emergency comm frequency, both groups were utterly unaware that Brandy had been trying to recall them for several hours before she'd given up and sent out the search party. Which, to her utter annoyance, had promptly gotten itself lost. It had taken most of the afternoon to finally get everybody found and back on base-luckily with no injuries worse than sunburn. And all this while the captain was entertaining the AEIOU team; which was snooping around the base looking for reasons to find Omega Company guilty of environmental offenses (with Barky ready to attack suspected polluters), and while trying to keep the AEIOU team from noticing the party of bigwig big-game hunters that had landed just south of camp and apparently insisted on instant VIP treatment. All this was enough to turn Brandy's mind, yet again, toward the prospect of an early retirement... and maybe, this time, Captain Jester wouldn't manage to sweet-talk her out of it. So Brandy wasn't really paying attention when an unfamiliar sophont in a Legion uniform came up to her, dropped a duffel bag, came to attention, and saluted. "Legionnaire Thumper reporting for duty, Sergeant!" it said.
Brandy looked up from the Training Progress Report she'd been in the process of deciding how to fill out. The new arrival was about a meter and, a half tall, dressed in regulation Legion black (although a good bit less stylish than the standard Omega Mob version of the uniform), and had long ears, big eyes, and a ridiculously cute wiggly pink nose. She stared for a moment, then blurted out, "Where the hell did you come from?" The legionnaire looked puzzled.
"Uh, do you mean originally, Sergeant, or just now?" Its voice was high and squeaky, though not unpleasant. And it didn't use a translator.
Brandy shook her head. "Radicate that," she said. She thought back a second and retrieved the new " legionnaire's name from memory. "Thumper, what I mean is, what are you doing here? Nobody told us there were any new troops coming."
"Sergeant, as far as I know I'm the only new member sent to this company," said Thumper. "I came with the hunting party that just landed. I understand they owed someone important a favor..."
"Huh," said Brandy. "And that meant giving you a ride. What makes you important enough to get a trip on a civilian space yacht?"
"Uh, I think it's because I got in trouble with a general," I said Thumper. He went on to tell a complex, but predictable story of showing up his buddies in basic training and being made the scapegoat for a practical joke on General Blitzkrieg. At the end, he said, "But I think maybe somebody thinks I'm all right, after all-my drill instructor said Omega Company is really one of the best in the Legion."
"The best, Legionnaire," said Brandy, proudly. She set her paperwork aside and stood up. "You are now a member of the best company in the Space Legion, and you better not forget it. But why don't you pick up that bag and follow me? I know where there's a vacant bunk. Then we can start showing you how things work in Omega. We do things a little differently around here. .." She stalked off toward an entrance to the modular base, with the new recruit close behind her. Hope sprang eternal. Maybe this one would be able to go out in the desert without getting lost...
Sushi toyed with his drink, then said, "Have you ever seen written Chinese?"
"Can't say that I have, son," said Rev. "Thought that was some kind of food, to tell you the truth."
Sushi managed not to roll his eyes. "The Chinese were an Old Earth people who spoke like seven or eight different languages," he said. "Mandarin, Cantonese, a bunch of others you don't need to know the names of..."
"Why not?" said Do-Wop, with an evil grin. "I bet you don't even know'em all" Sushi shot Do-Wop a withering glance. "Will you give a guy a break when he's trying to explain something? I think you've been hanging out with Mahatma."
"Hey, you know me, Soosh," said Do-Wop. "Ever eager for knowledge..."
"Yeah, because you've got none of it to spare," answered Sushi.
"All right, fellas, you're strayin' from the point," said Rev, raising his palm to stop them. "What were you sayin', Sushi ?"
"Anyhow, they spoke all these languages, and speaking one didn't give you more than a guess at understanding the others. But they were all written the same way. The written symbols represented the meaning of the words, not their sound, so a Mandarin speaker could pretty much read a document written by a Cantonese speaker, even if he couldn't understand the spoken language. It's sort of the opposite of the old-time European languages, where a reader could get a rough idea how a message in another language would sound, even if he didn't know what it means."
"Weird," said Do-Wop. "Why'd they do a stupid thing like that, Soosh?"
"Actually, it's not that stupid if you have a big empire with several different spoken languages," said Sushi, shrugging. "That gives you two choices-either make everybody learn one common spoken language, the way the Romans did, or have one common written language, the Chinese way."
"You left one out," said Do-Wop. "Autotranslators. You don't even need to have the same kind of ears for them to work..."
"Sure, except the ancient Romans and Chinese didn't have autotranslators," said Sushi.
"You're jivin' me, Soosh," said Do-Wop. "The Romans had everything, man. They were like Italians, only with a better army and space force..." Sushi rolled his eyes.. "I hate to tell you this, but the Romans didn't have a space force, either. .."
"What?" Do-Wop's mouth fell open. "Fangul', Soosh, you can't tell me that shit with a straight face..."
Rev raised his hands. "Gen'lemen, gen'lemen," he said, in a calming tone of voice. "We're strayin' off the point again. Sushi, you were tellin' us about how the Zenobians write, weren't you? I'd surely like to hear more about that."
"All right, here's the deal," said Sushi. "From what Qual said, it seems as if the Zenobians learn to read before they learn to speak. They're descended from predators-well, in a sense, they still are predators. So the young ones depend on their vision more than most other sophonts.
Well, maybe the Gambolts would be similar... I don't know much about their language, either, except the translator works for them."
"All right," said Rev. "So the Zenobians learn to read first. I reckon that would mean the written language ought to be pretty easy to understand, then."
"You'd think so," said Sushi, nodding. He took another pull on his beer. "But that brings me back to Chinese. I've heard people say that Chinese is actually very easy to read-that all you have to do is look at the writing as pictures, and when you see what the pictures are, you know what the writing says."
"Why, that's perfect," said Rev. "So we ought to be able to read Zenobian even without a translator."
"Yeah, sounds great, doesn't it?" said Sushi. "Except it doesn't work quite that way. The pictures are too sketchy--four lines sort of in a box might be a house, or a dog..."
"Sounds like they couldn't draw very good," said Do-Wop. "Hell, even I can draw a house and a dog so they look different, and I ain't no Michael Angelo."