At the moment Sam could not understand any of the information this particular Ja’aar in front of him was trying to convey and looked about for the translator that was supposed to be waiting for him. He waved his arms in what he hoped was a clear signal of his confusion. Perhaps it knew where his translator could be?
The Ja’aar stopped its song, cocked its head to one side and silently observed the antics of the strange human creature for a few seconds. After a few moments of consideration it shrugged in an almost human way and began trilling the “La-la-la” welcome song once again.
Sam put his hands on his hips and glared at the warbling birdbrain before him. Finally, unable to stand that damned “La-la-la” tune any more he put his hands over his ears to shut it out. The Ja’aar leaped back and lifted its own tiny appendages to the sides of its own head and stared at Sam. The two stood thus for several moments until Sam, unable to bear it any longer, opened his pouch and extracted his certificates, which he thrust at the Ja’aar.
The tall creature peered at the papers as if unable to understand this turn of events. Finally it seemed to grasp Sam’s meaning, extended a grasping limb, and looked over the documents, glancing every once in a while at the waiting human.
“La-la-la,” it announced very slowly while indicating itself. Sam considered for a moment and then decided it was attempting an introduction; this one must be Ja’aar’la-la-la. “Sam Boone, human,” he announced and stuck out his hand.
The Ja’aar leaped back as if struck. Quickly it looked around as if seeking help from the officious Ja’aar racing toward them, tweeting at the top of his voice. Sam dropped his hand to his side as a tough-looking Ja’aar with a black band on its leg and holding what appeared to be a weapon of some sort, grabbed the papers from the trembling Ja’aar’la-la-la who was continuing to chirp at a furious rate; “La-la-la, la-la-la, la-la-la…”
“Tweety-twee-tweet,” the police-being trilled as its small translator repeated for Sam’s benefit, in barely understandable Glax, “Why you threat to Ja’aar’aaa? You his responsibility.” Sam assumed that Ja’aar’aaa was the name of his greeter: Sure, “la-la-la” must be “aaa.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Sam protested with a shrug, taking care not to point at anyone in particular. “I’m just trying to find out where I’m supposed to go and who I am to meet.”
“Tweety-twee-tweet,” the police-being replied to Ja’aar’aaa. “Take it to its quarters, stupid,” and threw the papers back.
Sam knew that his escort felt comfortable when it returned the documents to him with a little bow of the legs, turned its back on him, and began to lead the way out of the arrival chamber. Still, the Ja’aar looked back frequently to ensure that Sam was keeping a proper, non-threatening distance away. It appeared that a Ja’aar could never be too careful with aliens.
Sam was relieved to see the promised translator hanging on the wall in his compartment. It even had a decent set of human-shaped earphones attached. Clearly someone here had figured out what he required, unlike those other cretins who had arranged his ship accommodations and sent Ja’aar’aaa to meet him without the translator in hand, er, wing. He clamped the earphones on quickly to understand what his escort had been saying.
“This room is the very, extreme best we could arrange,” twittered the translation of Ja’aar’aaa’s chirping over the earphones. “We have furnished it with every luxury we could afford.” It hopped over to a large teeshaped artifact and stoked it with one appendage. “Oh wonderful. This is one of the finest perches that I, Ja’aar’aaa, have ever seen. How I envy the rest, honorable Ear’t negotiator,” he prattled in an endless repetition of that same damn song, “La-la-la, la-la-la,… and on and on and on…
“And here is your drinking vessel,” it chirped with a sweep of one flexible wing at the incredibly cut crystal water bowl hanging from the wall at its own chin level, about a meter above the top of Sam’s head. Well, thought Sam, maybe I’ll find something to dip a drink with whenever I’m thirsty, and cursed the diversity and insularity of the interstellar community that made accommodations so chancy. In vain he looked around for something he could use as a chair to reach the water bowl.
He wondered, with apprehension after another glance at those long legs, what a Ja’aar toilet would be like.
Ahbbbb, his supervisor, had made the assignment sound so simple. “Travel to the Ja’aar station and negotiate an agreement between the Suture and the Gunny-sacks, or some names like that,” Ahbbbb had hummed with ill-concealed glee at sending Sam ever farther from Earth, probably in retaliation for the worry he’d caused her over the past years. “It’ll be a simple matter, really. They just want the cachet of an Earth negotiator, is all. Shouldn’t take you more than a month, two at most. We’ll make a healthy profit on this!” Sam knew, all too well, that thoughts of such profits were what made his supervisor so jolly. Ahbbbb had frequently flensed Sam’s expenses to the bone to squeeze some profit from his previous “nearly-on-time” ventures, which made him suspect that she possessed a heart only somewhat larger than the end of this sentence.
But a brief explanation of the facts showed that she was not far from the truth, even if she did have the names royally screwed up. This appeared to be a really trivial matter. More importantly, both races had paid handsomely. “Every confidence in the Earth-thing to work its wisdom and powers,” had been the flattering words the Ja’aar intermediaries had sent along with his advance for six months of effort, with more promised if a protracted stay was required. Hah, he thought, Even he wouldn’t need any longer than that. Ahbbbb had promised that if he could somehow manage to wind this one up on time for a change he could walk away with a healthy profit, enough to get back to Earth and find a real bottle and blonde to replace the illusions.
“Who can translate for the delegates?” he asked and was startled to hear his words emerge from the translator as his catchy little signature tune; “Bum-da-bum-bum-da-dah, da-dah.”
“Er, no one,” came the alien’s terse reply through Sam’s earphones. “There are some, uh, difficulties.”
The seeds of suspicion that this assignment might not be so straightforward were suddenly planted in Sam’s head. “What do you mean? The Ja’aar are supposed to be the intermediaries for them! You are taking care of them. Certainly someone must be able to talk with them.”
Ja’aar’aaa hopped from one leg to the other as its head bobbed up and down. “Most difficult to do. We feed them. We bring health. We try.” The bird-like being’s song dropped dramatically in volume; “But talk we cannot. There is not means.”
Sam’s suspicions were now growing quickly. “You have not communicated with either of the races involved. Surely you have the translators—”
“Not the means, not the words. None can do it. We are without the means.”
The seeds of suspicion were now starting to flower. “Take me to see the delegates,” he demanded. BUM-da-BUM-BUM-da-dah, da-DAH!, his translator repeated.
The walls of the Gunny-sacks a.k.a. the Ginnungagup delegates’ containment tank stretched upwards into the dark recesses of the vast chamber near the outer ring of the station. The condensation on the outside of the container’s thick walls belied the chill temperatures and high pressures within. “Methane breathers they are,” chirped Ja’aar’aaa. “Large things who float inside. They boom loud and monotonous. We can hear but not understand.”