Arrival: Chapter 20

  “Aset, given what happened to Blair, I want everybody on the planet to be armed at all times.  We don’t have enough shotguns and laser rifles in the armory for everybody, but they’re too unwieldy for just carrying around anyways.  Get a team together to manufacture us some small arms.  You should be able to make all of the components with the ship’s printers and material reserves.  When they’re ready load them and all of the armory’s larger weapons into one of the personnel landers and send them down to us.”

  “You really want to put all of our remaining weapons into one flaming basket?” she asked.  Wiremu paused and considered this.  She was right; it was against a general principle of the mission.

  “No,” he answered, “you’re right.  Just see to it that twenty handguns are manufactured and when they’re ready send them down to us with as many extra people as you’re able to fit into the capsule.   Other than the danger posed by the… animal life, we’ve demonstrated that it’s safe otherwise to start bringing more people down anyways.  You can leave the remaining shotguns and laser rifles on the ship for now.  Maybe we’ll send them down with other crew when they eventually descend.

  “Understood.”

  “And Aset, go ahead with bringing down the other four habitat modules we’re gonna need tonight.  Do it one at a time and in the order and placement I indicated to you earlier.  I don’t have time right now to personally go back and oversee it, but they seem to be working properly once they actually make it through the atmosphere.”

  “Understood,” she answered professionally, but despondently.

  “Were you, were you close to her?” he asked, realizing now what must be newly bothering her.

  Aset looked up with an expression which was somewhere between confusion and pain.   “I… I grew up with her.”

  “Right…   I’m sorry.”  Wiremu thought the channel closed and shut his wrist scroll.   He stood alone for a few moments, shaking his head to himself.  There was an odd comfort he thought, that at least now the things which they had planned on possibly going wrong were the things which were actually going wrong.   Crew deaths and burn ups on entry, these were unfortunate but at least they were contingencies which were expected and accounted for, but a rebel faction and dissenting colony site… well, there were no contingency plans for that and it still weighed heavily on him.   He composed himself as best as he could, and then walked back out from behind the shuttle and rejoined the group, where there appeared to be some kind of argument going on.

  “Are you aware of this man’s qualifications?” Neil was asking a brown skinned man named Nekheny, one of the crew who had come down with them.

  “I am aware of Kim In-Su’s qualifications, yes!” Nekheny retorted with an intense contempt in his dark eyes.

  “Don’t give me that,” Neil barked, “this man is Kim In-Su and then some, and given that, are you aware of In-Su’s qualifications, right!?”

  “Yes,” the man said through gritted teeth. 

  “Grand, and is there anyone else in this crew with comparable linguistic capabilities?” Neil asked.

  “No.”

  “Exactly!”

  “What are we talking about?” Wiremu asked.

  “In-Su thinks that the animals they saw in the jungle before… before Blair, were speaking a language.”

  “Really…” Wiremu said, wondering on the prospect.

  “But it’s not true.” Nekheny decidedly declared.  “It can’t be!”  Neil glared at him.

  “Why not?”   Wiremu asked.

  “Because they’re just alien animals!!  And even if it were true, how could a damned simulant, let alone a human being, be able to decide that based on just listing to the noises they were making for a few seconds at most!?”

  For the moment ignoring the aspersions cast on them as simulant, Wiremu turned to In-Su and asked: “In-Su?”

  “I’m not saying… that it was a full language… and I’m certainly not saying I could even begin to understand any of it, but I know language.  And you know, I haven’t just studied human languages, I-”

  “In-Su studied.” Nekheny tried to correct him.

  “Shut up.” Wiremu flatly commanded him.  “That’s enough out of you; you’ve made your point.  Go on In-Su.”

  “As I was saying, I haven’t just studied many human languages; my interests have led me to study more primitive animal communications as well… I wanted to understand the difference, and… try to understand what makes human language so special and how it could have emerged out of more simple direct communication.   I know what I’m talking about.”

  “We know,” Neil reassured him.  “Go on… tell Wiremu what you told me.”

  “Of course I’m only guessing based on that knowledge and experience, but from what I heard, I don’t think I heard a fully developed language or anything, but there was definitely a distinct… patternicity to it.  It sounded to me like something far more sophisticated than what you’d expect from say primates or dolphins, while still being much less sophisticated than humans.  Maybe, maybe something on the level of just simple nouns and verbs, but definitely no kind of grammar to speak of.  It really didn’t sound sophisticated or complex enough for that.”

  “Well you were wearing your PANE during the encounter weren’t you?” Neil asked him.   “You could review the recording’s audio.”

  “Yes, you’re right, of course,” In-Su answered.  “I will; I think that would be very helpful.”

  “Alright everyone, as you were,” Wiremu ordered.  “We’ll take a dinner break, and then we’ve got to get some more work done before we can call it a night.  By now the habs should be down and deployed at the town site.” 

  Sadhika had come to be standing in the back of the crowd by now, and Wiremu motioned for her to come over.  He gathered up his team and spoke to them privately.

  “Now…” he said with a somewhat pained expression, “obviously I’m not the scientist here, but based on how Sadhika described those… squiddy things, and what In-Su is saying about them now, I think it’s a safe assumption that there’s some connection between those squiddies and the underground cavern we found.”   The other three solemnly nodded.

  “How certain are you that you couldn’t detect a sophisticated language In-Su?”

  “Quite, but I could be wildly wrong of course, it’s totally alien life.”

  “I ask, because I have to imagine that any species capable of working communally to create bricks, to cut them exactly, to excavate…”

  “I see where you’re going,” In-Su offered.

  “And yet,” Sadhika noted, “things like termites and bees can create some pretty amazing structures for what they are.”

  “Sure, but… that was no termite mound Sadhika,” Neil stated.  “I mean, insects at their best tend to be able to do remarkable things with a single building material like wax or mud, you get me?   We’re talking chemistry here, tool use, far more sophisticated stuff.”

  “If we found evidence of technology, any kind of electronics…” Wiremu mused, “that would clinch it.”

  “But what about how old it seemed down there?” In-Su asked.

  “I was thinking the same thing…” Neil agreed.  “If they were intelligent and sophisticated you’d think that they’d have built something more obvious more recently, that they’d have advanced beyond that in the intervening thousands of years...”

  “Too many mysteries… not enough answers,” Wiremu said.

  “Wiremu?” Sadhika asked.  “I think we may need to adjust our priorities.  I think we have to investigate this now.  We need a lot more information here, about the squiddies, about how sophisticated they are, about what else is waiting to be found underground in those tunnels… we may have to find a new colony site.”

  “I’m inclined to agree, Sadhika.  I’m worried now about the possibility that we really have violated a principle mission parameter.  There may very well be life we recognize as intelligent here.”  The other three solemnly nodded their agreement.

  “Let’s at least hope for now,” Neil offered, “that unlike that damned panda dinosaur thing, the squiddies are far more scared of us than we are scared of or curious about them.”

  “When did we start calling them squiddies?” In-Su asked.  “Is that what we’re calling them then?”

  “Has a certain ring to it,” Neil said with a strained smile.

  “In any case,” Wiremu said, trying to keep them on topic, “there’s really nothing we can do tonight.  We need to get the town camp set up so that the crew has somewhere to sleep safely tonight.  Let’s just get set up and call it a night, and then in the morning we’ll convene an investigation team.  I can oversee a reduced but combined engineering and physical team.  In-Su with your horticultural background you should be able to oversee a reduced biological and atmospheric team while Neil and Sadhika can gather up the rest of the people we have to investigate the underground, the squiddies, and whether or not there’s any connection there.”

  “Plus,” Neil reminded them.  There’s no reason why tomorrow we can’t start the next mission phase and bring down more people to help.”

  “While that is true,” Wiremu observed, “The situation now being what it is, I don’t want to bring down any more people until we know more about the mysteries we’re going to investigate tomorrow.  I don’t want to put any more people at risk until we have a better idea of what we’re dealing with and whether or not we have to shift to an alternate site.  I’ll have a few people coming down with the weapons but that’s it.”

  The three looked up as they saw the last new habitat module sail overhead and deploy its parachutes on its way to the new town.  “You’re right of course,” Neil agreed, “we should wait until we know more before bringing more people down.”

  “What do we do with Blair?” In-Su asked.

  “Cold storage,” Sadhika said thoughtfully as she looked down at the ground.  “We’ll have to bury her later, so… in with the animal corpses for now, I’m afraid.”

  ‘Like so much meat,’ In-Su silently lamented to himself.  ‘Now she has far more in common with her lifeless killer than she does with we machines.’