Puzzles
The two Wyzhnyny sat in the grand admiral's office, talking. "Our progress?" the chief scholar said. "It is accelerating. We exchange limited sentences now, on a growing number of subjects."
Grand Admiral Quanshuk shu-Gorlak nodded without enthusiasm. "And what of the questions and topics I have listed?"
"I have not broached them yet. They… "
"None of them?!"
The interruption was discourteous and its tone accusatory, but Chief Scholar Qonits zu-Kitku did not lower his eyes. He was the leading scholar in their mutual and extensive tribe, and in this galaxy without a gender peer. But given certain enigmas in the operating situation, he understood the grand admiral's concern. "Your Excellency," he answered, "the subjects I am able to discuss with the aliens deal with everyday experiences, largely physical. I must have a much broader vocabulary, and refine what I already have, before I can even present the questions you ask. Let alone understand any answers.
"But each day we learn more. As you know, I now spend most of my waking time at the task." He might have added, but didn't, that he'd warned it would take time. Instead he gestured now, palms out and open. "And as I said, progress is accelerating."
Quanshuk nodded. The chief scholar's reply had been as much lecture as answer, but his own impatience had brought it on. Qonits was exalted in more than gender, and due both courtesy and high respect. Pique, impatience, and gender prejudice were inappropriate between them.
"Meanwhile," Qonits was saying, "the ship runs semantic correlations, and presents me with strategical areas to explore." He changed the subject. "It seems that among the aliens there are two parent genders, not one, each gender with fixed sexuality. You can imagine how such personal-incompleteness-might affect the individual, and that a mated pair might therefore bond very strongly.
"The two larger aliens are a mated pair. The smaller one, who does not speak, seems to be a member of their kin group, and is mentally and physically defective. It was being cared for by a servant-apparently of the nanny gender-when the marines captured it. The bond between servant and child had become profound, and killing the servant traumatized the child severely."
"Ah." This was something Admiral Quanshuk could understand. It was easy to overlook that aliens had lives and feelings of their own. It would be wise, he told himself drily, not to dwell on that.
Prior to the invasion, Prime Minister Foster Peixoto and President Chang Lung-Chi had routinely met late in the morning, in the president's office. But seldom at lunch, which they'd agreed was a time for relaxation. Government had not been as crisis-laden and stressful, nor politics as consuming and ruthless, as they'd been a millennium earlier. Society was less overwrought. Socially and psychologically, the human species had truly evolved and advanced. Stagnated, their remote ancestors would have said. Lost their fire.
But since the invasion, crisis and stress were endemic in government. The prime minister and president had met routinely for lunch and often for supper, specifically to talk business. Time was too precious for relaxed eating. Usually they met in Peixoto's office, and ate at an AG table guided in by an orderly.
Chang Lung-Chi would not have changed jobs with his prime minister for anything. The demands on Peixoto's time and energy were more stringent than Chang liked to think about.
Meanwhile, it was Chang who'd come down with the latest new viral pneumonia, quite dangerous, and been confined to the palace infirmary for twelve days. Now Peixoto was updating him on some of the less worrisome matters of interest.
"You may recall my giving Bekr the task of learning where the `messages' are coming from," the prime minister was saying. "He has it sorted out now. The Julie mentioned in their conversations can only be a sensitive named Ju-Li Hamilton-Gavle, the wife of a Dennis Bertrand. She is, or was, the attendant of her half sister, a preadolescent female savant named Annika Pedersen." He paused meaningfully, then finished: "Assigned on Maritimus. The people now looking after her-the Yukiko and David on the cube-are a marine biologist and an oceanographer, Yukiko Gavaldon and David MacDonald respectively. MacDonald was also chief of station on Maritimus. Apparently Hamilton-Gavle and Bertrand were killed by the aliens, and Gavaldon and MacDonald, not being trained sensitives, don't know how to control the savant. Bekr is convinced they don't know she's channeling. They think she's simply comatose."
Thoughtfully the president ate a spoonful of cream custard. "How," he wondered aloud, "does Bekr explain a comatose savant who channels automatically? Or could it be on her own volition, at some subconscious level?"
Frowning, the prime minister sipped thick Iranian coffee. "Bekr has said nothing about volition," he answered, "but you raise an interesting question. Each savant communicator is hypno-conditioned to react to a `psychic touch' by another communicator. Any other communicator. Or to make such a touch, directed by the savant's attendant through a hypnotically pre-installed… `switch,' Bekr calls it.
"Judging from the date that Maritimus was captured, Annika did not channel at all for some weeks afterward. Perhaps she was too deeply comatose, and began when her level of consciousness rose to some threshold… which brings up the possibility that she may stop channeling as her level of consciousness continues to climb. I need to ask Bekr about this."
The president raised another spoonful of custard. "Without an attendant to direct her, how is it her messages get to Ramesh, instead of to someone else?"
"Bekr has an explanation for that. Hamilton-Gavle reported the aliens' arrival in the Maritimus System through Ramesh and Chloe. Via Annika, of course. That much we know. Then obviously the aliens caught the mission's base ship before it could escape. Presumably when they stormed it, Annika's attendant made another contact, seemingly cut short either by her death or Annika's injury before our savants here could react. Then, when Annika recovered sufficiently, the latent contact activated. Now, in the absence of an attendant able to direct her, she channels whatever is said in her presence. At least when she is sufficiently receptive; Bekr believes that within her coma she sometimes descends below functionality." Peixoto shrugged. "A sort of sleep within a sleep."
Absently he raised a morsel of preserved pear to his mouth, to be chewed and swallowed. "I have a new savant covering Ramesh's past duties," he went on. "Bekr has set the replacement up in the Lavender Suite. Ramesh is now available only to Annika. As Chloe is at War House."
Chang Lung-Chi nodded. "And what have we learned from this connection, besides a few words in the alien tongue? And their name: the Wyzhnyny."
"Primarily we are gaining added insights into the aliens-learning what sort of beings they are, while they concentrate on learning our language. Which I, at least, find encouraging. War House's AI is working on theirs, but so far lacks a useful key. I'll inform you when we have a significant breakthrough.
"MacDonald and Gabaldon don't discuss their situation. They are undoubtedly monitored and recorded, and careful of what they say to each other. Otherwise, when the aliens have an effective translation program… " Peixoto's long expressive hands gestured vague unpleasantness.
"Bekr feels sure the MacDonalds don't realize Annika is channeling. If they suspected, they'd have informed us covertly-given us some sort of hint. I've had Burhan undertake to pass an innocuous comment through Annika, to alert the MacDonalds without attracting alien suspicion. It didn't work. Bekr believes Annika is operating as a one-way relay-them to us. Yukiko Gavaldon is clearly not a sensitive, let alone a trained attendant, so that is not really surprising."
He paused. "In fact, as you suggested, we may lose even that one-way contact. Annika no longer has to be helped to use the sanitary facility, and she holds her own drinking cup."
"Without disconnecting?"
"So far."
Hmm. Chang wondered if her present state qualified as coma. He frowned. He definitely did not want that connection lost, but there seemed nothing to be done about it.
He changed the subject. "Has Special Projects had anything to report?"
"No, Mr. President, they have not. Dosado has promised a preliminary report no later than Threeday. The know-how exists; it has for a very long time. The difficulty is, we know next to nothing about invader physiology. Which does not preclude following through, of course. It simply leaves the result very much in doubt."