Soldiers

Chapter 60

Strange Message

"Blessed Buddha!" Foster Peixoto barely breathed the oath, while Chang Lung-Chi watched and listened silently. The screen showed only Ramesh lying in trance, but the words!

For many months, Annika Pedersen had channeled faithfully. And presumably accurately, Terran as Terran, and Wyzhnynyc as Wyzhnynyc. All seemingly without knowing what she did, or that she did anything at all. David MacDonald and Yukiko Gavaldon always spoke in Terran, except for a few, infrequent Wyzhnynyc interjections. While Qonits' words… Seemingly they'd been channeled as faithfully as Ramesh's vocal apparatus allowed, whether slurred Terran from Qonits' lipless mouth, or Wyzhnynyc muttered to his throat mike or spoken to his guards.

But now Annika and Yukiko were clearly in very different surroundings. David was either absent or silent, while Yukiko murmured only occasional soothing words to the savant. Everything else was in an incomprehensible mixture of Terran and Wyzhnynyc, in Wyzhnyny voices that differed in pitch, tone, and personality.

But the numerous intermixed Terran words included the labial phonemes, all properly sounded! A Wyzhnyny could not have pronounced them that way. It was as if Annika was mentally translating from Wyzhnynyc into Terran, live, so far as her mental database allowed. And what she could not translate, sent in the original Wyzhnynyc! At least that's how it struck the president, and the prime minister agreed.

The proceedings seemed to be a legal hearing of some kind.

Peixoto and Chang were listening for the second time. When the chamber was cleared again by the-judge?-and Yukiko and Annika had been sent to their cell, Peixoto turned off the recorder/player. "This is incredible!" he said. "Unimaginable!" Then switched on his desk comm. "Gisella, connect me with the university. This is urgent!"

A page interrupted Professor Pelle Clough in class, with a murmured, "The president and prime minister want to speak with you at once." Puzzled and only half believing, the professor took the call. It was brief, but extremely exciting. After dismissing his students, he was picked up on the roof by a security floater, and taken to the Palace of Worlds.

Linguistics was a modest department in the Institute of Antiquities, but within his specialty, Pelle Clough was prominent worldwide. He taught and had written fascinating books on the history and evolution of languages, was reputedly expert in a dozen, and competent in perhaps a dozen more. Which implied a rare, intuitive sense of language.

He had, of course, never heard Wyzhnynyc. But he and the two leaders played and replayed the cube, and with the help of the PM's artificial intelligence, wrung as much understanding as they could from it. They quickly agreed it was a courtroom proceeding, and Peixoto was a lawyer with courtroom experience. Before they were done, they'd gotten the sense of it. It seemed that Grand Admiral Quanshuk was being tried for malfeasance, or treason, or both.

And what seemed almost certain-he'd sent an envoy, Chief Scholar Qonits, as a negotiator to the Commonwealth, apparently with David MacDonald as an aide. The thought first dumbfounded, then excited the two statesmen.

They'd hardly finished-Clough hadn't left yet-when they were interrupted by Burhan Gokhale with another recorded channeling. This one was ugly, shocking, and very short. An apparent question was barked, repeatedly. Seemingly in Terran, but unintelligible, as if by someone who'd never tried to speak it before. Perhaps getting the words from the Wyzhnyny's shipsmind via an ear button.

Clearly Yukiko understood it. She cried out as if in pain. "I don't know! God help me I don't!… Please don't hurt her! She's harmless! She can't… "

Abruptly the recording ended, leaving the eavesdroppers with no doubt at all. Annika was dead, and Yukiko either was or soon would be.

Ramesh had been deeply disturbed by what he'd channeled, though as always he remembered none of it. Afterward he sat at his piano and played somber music, until Burhan initiated a shallow trance-the attendant called them "healing reveries"-and put him to bed.

Then Burhan went to the prime minister's apartment, where the two leaders sat waiting.

"How," Peixoto asked, "could Annika have translated like that?"

"Sir, how do savants do any of what they do? We only know what, not how. But Annika was present at all the language lessons. She heard everything any of the others heard. And it all registered, perfectly and permanently. Somewhere in her mind it all registered.

"And how did she communicate to us over all those months? Instantly, in real time, from how many light years away? She simply did it, in the same way little Esko Rautasjaure can look at a star chart and tell you the travel time to anyplace you'd care to go. Or not go, including a supernova in Andromeda."

Listening, Chang marveled at this young man-no savant and with only an ordinary education. But his intelligence was obvious, and his humanity beautiful. The president was glad to belong to the same species.

Then Burhan Gokhale said something else. "Sirs, Charley Gordon may have useful comments on the courtroom material."

A savant in trance cannot ask or answer questions. He can only channel. Thus Charley heard the cube of Annika's courtroom account via Ramesh, through Admiral Soong's new savant. When it was over, the prime minister added: "We cannot expect anything further from Annika, and we very much want some idea of what to expect. Can you help us?"

"Sir," Charley said, "this brings two vectors to mind. I'd felt them both, but they were too vague to articulate. This clarifies them. I feel quite confident of them now. The Wyzhnyny armada will postpone further colonization, and advance much more rapidly. Expect them among the Core Worlds in weeks instead of months, to destroy cities, industries, the entire infrastructure. And our fleet if they can pin it down. They particularly want to raze Terra. After that they will have all the time they need to root out the colonies. Decades. Centuries if necessary.

"Also, the Wyzhnyny envoy will arrive at the Sol System somewhat sooner than the armada. He will have no diversions, and only astrogational stops. The Admiralty can approximate his arrival time for you, from his departure time from Shakti. Obviously his diplomatic accreditation is no longer in force, but he will have valuable knowledge.

"As for Annika and Yukiko-I agree, they are dead. The Wyzhnyny commander wanted help in finding Terra, and Yukiko could not or would not help him."

It was the president who asked the final question: "Is there, then, any hope at all?"

"Oh yes, Mr. President, there is hope. But there is not much time."

When they'd finished, Peixoto gave himself a moment to recover, then looked at the president. "Whew! When I asked what to expect, I didn't imagine such detail. Now we have less time than ever." Keying his desk comm, he had his secretary call War House.