The fact that the Institute of the Libraries had been forced to ask for human help in programming those machines, after those first disastrous attempts just after Contact, was a source of some small satisfaction. Used to translating for species whose languages all derived from the same general Tradition, the E.T.’s had been boggled, at first, by the “flighty and imprecise” structure of all human languages.
They had moaned (or chirped or zithered or flapped) in despair at the extent to which English, in particular, had declined into a state of sublime, contextually discursive, disorder. Latin, or even better, late Neolithic Indo-European, with its highly organized structure of declensions, and cases, would have been preferred. Humans obstinately refused to change their lingua franca for the sake of the Library, (though both Skins and Shirts began studying Indo-European for fun — each for their own reasons) and instead sent their brightest mels and fems to help the helpful aliens adjust.
The Pring serve in the cities and farms of nearly all Pil planets, except for the home planet, Pila. The sun of Pila, an F3 dwarf, is apparently too bright for this generation of uplifted Pring. (The Pring sun is F7.) This is the reason given for continuing genetic research on the Pring visual system by the Pila, long after their Uplift license would normally have expired…
… have only allowed the Pring to colonize class A worlds, devoid of life and requiring terraforming, but free of use restrictions by the Institutes of Tradition and Migration. Having taken leadership in several Jihads, the Pila apparently don’t wish to have their Clients in a position to embarrass them by mishandling an older, living world…
The data on Culla’s race spoke volumes about Galactic Civilization. It was fascinating, but the manipulation it told of made him uncomfortable. Inexplicably, he felt personally responsible.
It was at this stage in the re-reading that the summons to Dr. Kepler’s long awaited talk arrived.
Now he sat in the viewing room, and wondered when the man would get to the point. What were the magnetovores? And what did people mean when they mentioned a “second type” of Solarian… that played tag with Sunships and made threatening gestures to their crews in anthropomorphic shapes?
Jacob looked back at the holo-tank.
The filament Kepler chose had grown to fill the tank and then expanded until the viewer felt himself visually immersed in the feathery, fiery mass. Details became clearer — twisted clumps that meant a tightening of magnetic field lines, wisps that came and went like vapor as movement dopplered the hot gasses into and out of the camera’s visible band, and clusters of bright pinpoints that danced at the distant edge of vision.
Kepler kept up a running monologue, sometimes getting too technical for Jacob, but always returning to simple metaphors. His voice had become firm and confident, and he clearly enjoyed giving the show.
Kepler gestured at one of the nearby plasma streamers: a thick, twisted strand of dark red, coiling around a few painfully bright pinpoints.
“These were first thought to be your usual compressional hot spots,” he said. “Until we took a second look at them. Then we found that the spectrum was all wrong.”
Kepler used a control at the base of his pointer to zoom in on the center of the sub-filament.
The bright points grew. Smaller dots became visible as the image expanded.
“Now you’ll recall,” Kepler said, “that the hot spots we saw earlier still looked red, albeit a very bright red. That’s because the ship’s filters, at the time these pix were taken, were tuned only to let in a very narrow spectral band, centered on hydrogen alpha. You can see, even now, the thing that caught our interest.” Indeed I do, Jacob thought. The bright points were a brilliant shade of green! They nickered like blinkers and they had the color of emeralds.
“Now there are a couple of bands in the green and blue that are cut out less efficiently than most, by the filter. But the alpha line usually washes these out entirely with distance. Besides, this green isn’t even one of those bands!
“You can imagine our consternation, of course. No thermal light source could have sent that color through these screens. In order to get through, the light from these objects had to be not only incredibly bright, but totally monochromatic as well, with a brightness temperature of millions of degrees!”
Jacob straightened up from the slumped posture he had assumed during the talk, interested at last.
“In other words,” Kepler went on. “They had to be lasers.”
“There are ways in which lasing action can occur naturally in a star,” Kepler said. “But no one had ever seen it happen in our Sun before, so we went in to investigate. And what we found was the most incredible form of life anyone could imagine!”
The scientist twisted the control on his pointer and the field of view began to shift.
A soft chime sounded from the front row of the audience. Helene deSilva could be seen picking up a telephone receiver. She spoke softly into the instrument.
Kepler concentrated on his demonstration. Slowly the bright points grew in the tank until they resolved into tiny rings of light, still too small to make out in detail.
Suddenly Jacob could make out the murmur of deSilva’s voice as she spoke into the phone.
Even Kepler stopped what he was doing and waited as she shot hushed questions to the person on the other end.
She put the phone down, then, her face frozen in a mask of steel control. Jacob watched her rise and walk to where Kepler stood, nervously twisting his baton in his hands. The woman bent over slightly to whisper in Kepler’s ear, and the Sundiver director’s eyes closed once. When they reopened his expression was totally blank.
Suddenly everyone was talking at once. Culla left his seat in the front row to join deSilva. Jacob felt air rush by as Dr. Martine sped down the aisle to Kepler’s side.
Jacob rose to his feet and turned to Fagin, who stood in the aisle nearby. “Fagin, I’m going to find out what’s going on. Why don’t you wait here.”
“That will not be necessary,” the Kanten philosopher fluted.
“What do you mean?”
“I could overhear what was said to Commandant Human Helene deSilva over the telephone, Friend-Jacob. It is not good news.”
Jacob shouted inside. Always deadpan, you damn leafy eggplant egghead, of course it’s not good news!
“So what the hell is happening!” he asked.
“I grieve most sincerely, Friend-Jacob. It appears that Scientist-Chimpanzee Jeffrey’s Sunship has been destroyed in the chromosphere of your Sun!”
11. TURBULENCE
In the ochre light of the holo-tank, Dr. Martine stood by Kepler’s side, speaking his name over and over and passing her hand in front of his empty eyes. The audience milled onto the stage, jabbering. The alien Culla stood alone, facing Kepler, his great round head rolling slightly on his slender shoulders.
Jacob spoke to him.
“Culla…” The Pring didn’t seem to hear him. The huge eyes were dull and Jacob could hear a buzzing sound, like teeth chattering coming from behind Culla’s thick lips.
Jacob frowned at the grim red light pouring out of the holo-tank. He went to where Kepler stood in shock, to pry the controller rod gently from the man’s hands. Martine took no notice of him as she vainly tried to get Kepler’s attention.
After a couple of tentative twists on the controller, Jacob got the image to fade and brought the room lights back on. The situation seemed much easier to deal with now. The others must have sensed this as well, because the cacophony of voices subsided.