Alpha 1472 (9 page)

“Well it seems that we have the same colour blood”

She said, and the man smiled at her almost as if he understood. Anne Homer agreed. Travis’s voice came into her ear telling her that the computer needed more conversation. Mary tried to assist as much as she could by talking to the man. Feeling a little stupid she pointed to herself and said ‘Mary’. She then patted her chest and repeated her name. The man looked at her a little confused and shrugged his shoulders. She was not going to give up and so she repeated the action of patting her chest and repeating her name, each time she did so, she pointed at him using a questioning gesture, and asking his name. after about five or six times the man finally realized what Mary was asking and a look of realisation spread across his face, he then said that his name was Aaron and found great pleasure in the fact that, albeit for one word, they had been able to communicate. He then lifted the water container and offered it to Mary and gestured that she should take a drink. Not wanting to offend her new friend she accepted and thanked him. The more that he spoke to Mary, the more the computers were finding translatable words, and each word that the computers thought was recognisable was highlighted on the screen highlighting usable words in orange. These words would take their place in the dictionary that would eventually become the main means of communication with these people. The words on the screen were only computer guesses and were subject to change at any time. Once the computer was satisfied that a particular word was an exact translation the orange light would immediately turned to green and would be locked into the memory. There was no way of knowing when they would have a fully working language bank to refer to, and so, it was imperative that they sample as much conversation as possible.

After he had finished bathing her wound and they had had their fill of the water, Aaron rose to his feet from where he had been sitting, next to Mary. He held out his hand to her and beckoned her to follow him; she stood up and spoke,

“I think he wants me to go with him what should I do”

As she spoke Aaron half nodded, half bowed his head and held out his hand in front of him beckoning some more.

In her ear she could hear Travis telling her to stand by for further instructions. This was a decision he had not got the authority to make, and so he pressed the button that opened the ship wide communication channel.

“Captain, this is Travis, you might want to get in here we have a situation that requires your immediate attention”

Within seconds the captains’ voice came through the speakers.

“I’m on my way”

As Captain Daniels walked into the cockpit he could see the image on the screen of the stranger trying to beckon Mary to follow him somewhere. Quickly Travis briefed Daniels on what had happened and told him that Mary needed a decision. “Mary, this is Captain Daniels. Do you feel that this man means you any harm?”

“No sir, he has
been tending the wound that I received when I fell and he has been talking to me for ages. He seems genuine enough, he isn’t armed and in any case if he was going to do anything I think he would have done it by now”

As she spoke to the captain, the man looked around to see who it was that she was talking to. He seemed a little confused as he listened to Mary’s conversation; he felt that she was talking to someone, but to whom? He knew that it wasn’t himself, and the more she spoke, the more he looked around.

“I think that this could be an invaluable opportunity for us, I don’t believe that we should waste this chance sir”

Daniels thought for a second,

“Ok Mary but if you get into any trouble we will get DeVie to you as soon as we can”

Mary thanked the captain and assured him that she would be careful. She then turned to Aaron and said,

“Ok then Aaron, let’s go”

He seemed quite pleased that Mary had accepted his invitation and they started walking along the rough path that had obviously been etched into the ground by the feet of countless goats over countless years. As they walked Mary listened to Aaron talk, he had a soft, warm, welcoming voice that did not seem to fit his rough exterior. She felt comfortable with the whole situation. It was as if for some reason she belonged in this primitive hot environment. Although it seemed that she was not paying any attention to him she was listening carefully to see if she could find any part of his language that sounded familiar to her. But this language base was far too difficult for her to even try to understand, she would have to wait for the computers to decipher and translate it into their own.

Although he had been talking for ages, and it was obvious to him that Mary had understood nothing of what he had been saying, Aaron continued, probably in the hope that she may understand something and that they would be able to communicate, he was patient and the way in which he spoke was slow and methodical, and Mary was very attentive to his words.

“Ok Mary here we go”

Watkins said in her ear.

“the computer hasn’t yet managed to come up with a complete language base we need much, much more for that but we have a few basic words that we think may just fit the bill. So, if you are ready I want you to say this, and repeat everything I say syllable for syllable, we don’t want any confusion that may get you into trouble are you ready”

Mary said that she was and cleared her throat. “Right, as far as we can make out this should say ‘could I have some more water please’. So here we go”

Watkins then repeated the line in the foreign tongue.

“Could I have some more water please?”

Mary cleared her throat once again and said the line as clearly and as slowly as she could.

“Please, some more water I could have”

Aaron suddenly stopped, said something, smiled and reached for the water container and offered it to Mary. The translation was grammatically incorrect but it had the desired effect and in her ear she could hear people congratulating each other and herself. After she had taken a drink she handed the water back to Aaron and they continued on their way. Mary, on behalf of the whole mission had a feeling of excitement and achievement and a general sense that they had made an important breakthrough and the more that the computers heard the better the communication between this race and theirs would become. J.D. had been listening to the conversation between Mary and the ship, and as he approached the village he did so with a slight smile on his lips. He stood for a while on the outskirts of the town, there were only a few houses here, roughly built structures of mud and clay which consisted of a downstairs level and one more level built on top. There seemed to be no specific design to these houses, every one was as individual as the next. Every one exhibited a difference in the building technique that could only have come from the person or persons who constructed them. For the moment he could see no one around, it was quiet and peaceful, and he doubted for the moment that this part of the town was inhabited.

Beyond the outskirts he could clearly see the rest of the town which was built on a hill, and now that he was nearer he observed that the higher up the hill one looked, the better constructed the buildings were. The entire town seemed to be crowned by one impressive looking structure, its design and construction was far superior to the ones further down the hill and it was far more opulent than any he could see in the town. He started to approach and as he did so the solitary figure of a man appeared from one of the dwellings. On the monitors the crew had spotted him and had decided to let J.D. exercise his prowess in the native language.
“Ok John, something simple, try this ‘Good Morning’ and don’t forget get it exact”

J.D waved at the man and said
“Good morning”

The man yawned, waved back and repeated exactly what J.D. had said. Everyone felt that they were making progress.

They seemed to fit in well, their clothes and their general demeanour did not seem to cause any adverse reactions from the local inhabitants and they had started to feel quite comfortable being here amongst them. J.D. had been wandering around the town for a couple of hours generally observing the people going about their day to day business, it was almost like being an unseen observer allowing him to sit and watch lives revolve around himself as he casually mingled among them.

Occ
asionally he would nod his head towards someone and greet them with the ‘good morning’ phrase which was always returned. And other times he would just walk right past a person and look over his shoulder as they passed him content simply to let that person walk away oblivious to who he really was.

At the end of the street he now found himself on he could see that
there was a small gathering of people walking purposefully in one direction, he decided that this was something he should investigate and so he followed the throng as they walked towards the large building at the top of the town. As the procession continued more and more people seemed to join and soon the gathering had turned into a crowd. The reason for this behaviour soon became apparent as he turned the last corner and found himself standing at the entrance to quite a fair sized market gathering. The hustle and bustle was really quite amazing; it seemed that every inhabitant of the town was here in this one place. It was vibrant and noisy the air was filled with people eagerly bartering with the stallholders for the best price they could get to purchase the wares. This was the ideal opportunity for the computers to absorb as much of the local language as it could in one easy session. As he walked deeper into the market he was surprised at the speed of life here it was a complete contrast to anything he had seen that morning, people seemed passionate to the point of fighting to get exactly what they needed for the day. At the centre of the market there stood a stone trough filled with water, around this trough some asses were tethered and were drinking, totally untroubled by what was happening around them. J.D. sat on the ground near the animals and leaned against the cool stone. And there he sat and watched for hours. As he observed and listened, so did the computers, and on board the shuttle the main screen flashed orange and green as more and more words were being recognised. Just as he had started to tire of sitting in one place for so long a man kicked his leg and asked how much he wanted for his animals, before he could get a translation from the shuttle another man had intervened quite angrily and started to shout quickly and irately in his language John was caught in the middle of an unpleasant exchange and was being shoved from side to side, this scuffle had not gone unnoticed by the people who were within the vicinity. The shuttle was feverishly trying to translate what was happening to J.D. and advised him to get out of there as soon as he could. They told him to use the word ‘sorry’ as often as he could and make his exit as fast as was possible. He did so but not without more abuse and pushing. Eventually he did escape and moved himself to another part of the market. From where he now was he could still see the furore of the argument and by now it had attracted the attention of some different people, people he had not encountered until now. These men were dressed totally different to anyone he had seen up until now. They wore red, short, lightweight robes under a metal breastplate, on their feet they had sandals which were held in place with leather thongs crisscrossing up their calves. On their heads they wore metal helmets topped with a black feather crest and hanging at their sides were short swords, whilst some of their number carried long sharpened poles. As the men approached the unrest two of them drew their swords from out of their scabbards and almost instantaneously the argument was quelled. This was a new and unexpected development for the crew and J.D. was advised to leave the market and find somewhere quieter to continue his observations.

As he walked briskly out of the market and back along the same street by which he made he entrance earlier he said out loud,

“Will someone please tell me what just happened back there and who the hell were those weird guys with all of the hardware”
Travis answered him,

“Ok don’t say anything just carry on walking and I will try to explain. It seems that the big guy who kicked you wanted to buy your animals and the other guy must have thought that you were trying to make a quick buck by selling something that wasn’t yours. That seemed to start the argument, from what we could see here, you got out just in time because the other guys looked like they were the law in town and from the reaction of the people around they are not someone you want to mess with. The strange thing is though, the guys in the uniforms don’t seem to have the same facial structure as the rest of the people here,
and it’s almost as if they are an entirely different breed. We really don’t know what’s going on yet, but if you see any more of these guys keep well away. To date they seem to be the only threat here. For now take a break and get yourself together we will replay the video we got and see if we can come up with anything else”

J.D. agreed and found himself a stone bench in the shade of a building and sat down.

“Are you alright”

It was Mary. He assured her that he was f
ine and then described to her what the armed men were wearing and told her to be on her guard.

The day had grown hot and he was thirsty. Through the open window near where he was sitting he could hear voices laughing and jeering. He could not understand any of what was being said, but it did not seem to be the normal jovial banter of friends. It was almost as if someone was being belittled, or ridiculed. He tried to pay no attention, he was quite happy to relax and let the computers do all of the listening for him. He was idly running his foot through the dry sand on the floor when he noticed a small disc of metal. He bent down, picked it up and examined it closer. It was a coin, roughly made; it bore the head of a person on one side and on the other was the complete figure of another each image was circled with strange writings. It was not a perfect disc it seemed to have been pressed or cast with a circle in mind but the finished product fell well short of the aim. As he looked at the coin a man came out of the building where he was sitting and said something to him. The shuttle spoke to J.D.