“All right, let’s go over the problem one more time,” Sam said to the members of the three races. He waited for the collection of translators before him to finish; “bum-da-bum-bum-da-dah, da-dah, clickety-clickety, click, click, click, blink, blink blinkedy blink.” Clearly he would be having a very hard time keeping up with the conversation if it got any more complicated, Sam thought as he waited for the devices to finish.
“Now, have we established the necessary links between the two parties so that I can begin the negotiations?” he asked with a short prayer under his breath.
“Blinkedy, blink, blink…” went the Imperial. “Unfortunate. We have difficulty with communication. Cannot understand meanings of the words from the Ginnungagup’s tank when they confer and discuss with me. Conceptual difficulties at high levels.”
“Perhaps it is a matter of cultural referents and not simply language,” Sam suggested. “We are all atmosphere-breathing, very two-dimensional creatures.” Ja’aar’aaa fluffed its feathers angrily as he continued; “and these Ginnungagup beings are clearly three-dimensional swimmers. Perhaps we need to bring in someone with similar characteristics?”
“Excellent suggestion,” Sallow Yellow Orange blinked. “I knew the Earth-thing’s genius would find the solution.” It rose on all six elephantine legs and shuffled from the room to find out where their group could obtain such a intermediary for the project. Somehow Sam knew that there would be a cost attached to whatever it came up with.
The Sutr were more of a problem. The creatures inside the hot box lived on the thermal boundary between plasma and gas. Sufficient organization existed in portions of the swirling interior that could be defined as individuals, although, on occasion, small portions of each would break away and be captured by another. Was this another means of communication, he wondered, and what would that method of communication mean in terms of concepts and world view? Could any beings use the exchange of portions of themselves to actually serve as an effective method of communication? With a shudder he recalled the feast of the Scrofulosians as they ate their chief negotiator at the end of each day to gain its knowledge and insights. He acknowledged the possibility.
“Click. Click-click, clickety…” Sslivira, the Rix cut in on Sam’s thoughts. “Every attempt on my part to converse has brought no reaction from the Sutr delegates. They have been unable to gain any sort of meaning from our attempts.” Its wing cases drooped despondently as it concluded. “Nor we from theirs.”
Sslivira agreed that communicating on the conceptual level might be a problem. “Have built a device to speak with them,” it clicked, “but cannot understand their language. Must find other translator.” After a few more moments of syncopated discussion Sslivira leaped off the table and skittered from the room to research possible races that just might have a language and concepts in common with the Sutr, and which might just be affordable, even with the normal Rix markup!
Sallow Yellow Orange arranged to divert a ship of Gamerians that was passing within a few light-years of Ja’aar to serve as possible intermediaries. The Gamerians were, he assured the growing negotiating team with a display of dazzling color, the huge and hairy inhabitants of an ocean world and would undoubtedly share many conceptual views with the Ginnungagups.
Sslivira meanwhile was still searching for some reference to creatures who might have a language in common with the Sutr. The best she could come up with were the Resnicca; gaseous windbags who eternally orbited Gruenbrgg, their primary.
“They spit at one another?” Sam’s translator clicked in amazement as she explained how they communicated.
The Rix spread her vestigial wings in reply, which meant yes. “Is termed venting. Necessity in near vacuums at outer fringes of their atmosphere.”
“How would the translator handle spitting?” Sam asked incredulously. “No, don’t tell me. I really don’t want to know!” He decided that he was definitely going to request still another extension from Ahbbbb no matter how mad it made her.
Still, the fact that these Resnicca also lived in a three-dimensional environment was an added plus. Perhaps that would allow them to even translate some of the Ginnungagup’s concepts more successfully.
Sslivira set her engineers to busily modifying the interface as Ja’aar’aaa arranged to bring the Resnicca from distant Gruenbrgg.
The Gamerians arrived in a ship so huge that it nearly matched the station in size. At the center of the ship was a vast globe of water, held in place by a skeleton of spars and arcs that glittered and glowed. “Field effects holds liquid in place,” Ja’aar’aaa warbled knowledgeably as it and Sam observed the ship’s stately docking. A day later Sam watched in amazement as one of the vaguely whale-like creatures gracefully manipulated its bulk along the liquid passage they had extruded to the face of the Ginnungagups’s tank.
Within moments of the Gamerian’s arrival the interface began to boom loudly. Immediately the Ginnungagups responded, sending wave after wave of pressure back toward the interface. The deck shuddered with the vibrations of the conversation as the dialogue went back and forth. “Hot damn,” shouted Sam, “Now we’re getting someplace!” It had been worth the month’s wait for the Garnerians to arrive. Maybe he could still bring this in on time after all.
“La-la-la, la-la-la, la-la-… Honored Ear’t, we have small problem,” were the first words that Ja’aaa’aaa brought to him the next morning.
“What do you mean?”
“Is Gar-ner-ans. Did not know that Rix was part of this. Sorry to be here, they are.”
Sam sighed “What’s the problem? They don’t even have to speak to the damned crickets, er, I mean Rix—Bum-da-BUM-da.”
“Is that they look so bad,” Ja’aar’aaa said plaintively. “They offend the purity of the world.”
Sam felt like screaming. “But the Gamerians are ocean dwellers! They aren’t even connected to the damn life support systems on this station, for Pete’s sake!”
Ja’aar’aaa drooped visibly. “Is wrong words? They ask if we do not smell the Rix so horrible?”
Sam was puzzled by the Ja’aar’s response. “How could they smell the—Wait a minute!” He thought that if the Gamerians communicated by sound, just as the Ginnungagup did, they would have a highly developed sonar sense. Sure, light wouldn’t penetrate very deeply into their atmosphere so they would use sound to both “see” and hear. Now, if they heard the Rix chirping wouldn’t they interpret it as a “visual” image?
“Tell the Rix to cut themselves out of the Gamerian’s translation circuit,” he directed. “Tell them that they will have to work through me.”
Ja’aar’aaa brightened visibly. “La—” it began.
“Just do it!” Sam yelled and covered his ears to block the song that was becoming all too familiar.
Ja’aar’aaa returned later that day with even worse news. “My attempts to bring the honored Resnicca to our humble station have not been exactly successful,” it chirped woefully. “There is no transport available to bring them the seventy light-years from their planet.”
“Then set up an ansible link!” Sam responded instantly, before thinking of what that would cost him. Clearly, with the Hegemony’s nearly instantaneous phloomb-based communications such a link was possible, but whether it could be used for continuous translation was a question that he’d never considered. The Ja’aar raced to do his bidding with Sam’s charge chip in hand.
“Are you sure that your interface can be hooked to an ansible?” his translator chirped plaintively to Sslivira later that day, hoping that the Rix and Ja’aar engineers were up to the effort. “Click, clickety, click, da-da-da, da-da-da” the two agreed: “It is possible.”