He had something else to ask and didn’t think it would come through in dumbshow, so he excused himself after secondmeal break and went in search of Znereda, leaving Todd to finish up the test fitting. The language teacher had a class, but came to the door when Peters gestured. “I’m very busy,” said the older Grallt with a frown. “What do you want?”
Peters shrugged. “Sorry, I didn’t know who else to ask. How do we reserve the suit practice room? I got two hundred sailors needin’ some pointers before too long.”
Znereda rolled his eyes up. “I can’t help you. You need to talk to the ship operations people.”
“Yeah. Two problems,” Peters told him. “I dunno where to find the ship operations people, and I bet they ain’t gonna care too much for me wavin’ my arms around tryin’ to explain what I want. I ain’t exactly fluent, you know.”
“You’re making remarkable progress, Mr. Peters, but you’re right, you probably couldn’t do that very well yet.” Znereda wrinkled his forehead. “I can’t go, but there’s someone who can help you. Just a moment. Se’en,” he said to the room in general, “Would you mind helping Mr. Peters? He needs a translator to talk to the zerkre.”
Se’en stood up. “I don’t mind,” she said. “Will I need to repeat this class?”
“It will count as practical experience,” Znereda said benevolently. “You have a head start on the rest of the class anyway.” Se’en looked a bit puzzled. “Oh, you don’t have that idiom yet, do you? It means an advantage, because you began before the others.”
“Yes, I had a little experience,” Se’en said as she came up. “What do you need, Mr. Peters?”
“Need to reserve the kathir suit practice room for two hundred sailors,” Peters told her. “Don’t call me Mister, you’re gonna be dealin’ with officers and they’re likely to get bent outa shape if they hear you.”
Se’en looked at Znereda. “I understood part of that,” she said. “He needs to speak to the zerkre.”
Znereda looked benevolent again. “Mr. Peters has a strong accent, in the idiom of his home region. It’s quite understandable if you listen closely, and it will be good practice for you. He objects to your saying ‘mister’ to him, on the ground that his superiors will not like to hear it applied to him as well as themselves.”
“That is what I think—thought he said,” Se’en agreed. “Thank you for explaining.”
Peters flushed. “I’ll try to smooth it out a little,” he assured her. “I can generally make myself understood if I try.”
“Thank you,” Se’en murmured.
They parted from Znereda, the little language master peering around the door like a grinning elf before pushing it to with a snap. Se’en gestured toward the bow, and they set off in search of ‘ship people.’
Chapter Fourteen
‘Ship people’ were to be found higher up and farther forward in the structure than Peters had been before. The stairwells were worn but clean, and there was no trash or dust; the corridor they came out in after a long climb was pale blue, floored with something resilient, and very quiet. Se’en led him forward to the end of the corridor and rapped sharply on the double doors that closed it off.
A girl in the four-part blue-and-whites he’d seen on the engineers opened the door and held a short conversation with Se’en, ending by gesturing go-ahead and nodding. She looked at Peters with interest as they walked in but didn’t follow, instead seating herself at a desk near the door. Wrong species, wrong uniform; nevertheless, Peters felt a lot less alien here than he’d expected.
The passageway was narrower, and doors led off it to right and left. Most of the doors were open, and Grallt in blue-and-white kathir suits occupied desks, shuffling papers and doing incomprehensible things. A watchstander with his suit divided eight ways, like the senior engineer they’d met briefly, was seated at a desk outside another set of double doors. He chatted with Se’en for a moment, then presented a book and indicated a blank line. Se’en bent to write something with a pen the—officer?—gave her, and suddenly Peters was homesick for the first time since coming aboard.
That feeling doubled on the other side of the doors. The space wasn’t big; it had windows on three sides, with stars visible through them. Earth wasn’t in view, but the Moon shone through the portside windows. In the middle of the room was a pipe or post with gadgets attached to it, one of them a larger version of the blunt arrowhead Gell used to drive the dli, with vertical handles at the wide part. A Grallt in a four-way suit sat on a little round pad behind the binnacle; beside him a girl, wearing a suit colored white above the waist and blue below, was looking at a book. The helmsman—had to be!—was explaining something in low tones. Another apprentice, male, looked on from the side.
All the way forward was a sloping counter with larger versions of the white-cross instruments. Two Grallt, male and female, stood in front of it, the woman looking off into space through a pair of ordinary-looking binoculars. To port, another sloping desk had buttons and levers, with a male Grallt seated at it and a female apprentice looking on. To starboard, the counter had only one instrument, a complex circular device thirty centimeters across; the Grallt seated at that, in a comfortable-looking armchair, was portly and white-haired, and wore a suit whose pattern was cut so many ways it was like a checked tablecloth. Another guess confirmed; the Captain did indeed look like a checkerboard.
Everyone but the woman with the binoculars looked around as they came in; two of the apprentices stared. The woman’s companion tapped her on the shoulder, and she looked around, put the glasses in a holder, and came over. “Pleasant greetings,” she said briskly, not hostile but questioning. “What do you want?”
Peters understood, but waited for Se’en to respond. “Greetings,” she said. “We are from the babble department. Peters—” she gestured at the sailor, “—needs to babble the suit practice room for babble his people.”
The officer looked him up and down. “You are a human,” she said.
“Yes,” Peters agreed when Se’en didn’t answer.
“You understand the language,” the officer commented. Her eyebrows went up.
“A little,” Peters said cautiously. He was uncomfortable; his Grallt didn’t include the equivalents of “sir” and “ma’am”. “I learn slowly.”
“I have not met humans before. You have a good babble,” she told him. “You will learn quickly.”
“Thank you,” Peters replied.
“How many people need babble?”
That word had to be training. Peters thought for a moment, then tried modifying the verb: “We need to train eight and three squares of people,” he tried.
“Ach! That is many.”
“It will not take too long,” Se’en put in. “If they are all as babble as Peters and his babble, they will learn quickly.”
Peters thought he got that, and flushed as the officer looked him up and down again. “Good,” she said. “Follow me.”
She led them off the bridge, stopping to let Se’en make a note in the book, and took them to an office a few doors down. The officer inside looked up, and their escort said without preamble: “The practice room is needed. Has anyone babble it for the next few llor?”
“No,” said the other. “How long will it be needed?”