Can You
Hear What I See?
Since I didn't want this (this is also a
story in my book People First,
IUniverse, 2004) to be a wheelchair-only collection,
this is one of three stories with a sensory disability-focus -- in this case, a
doctor who is deaf. For other samples, see http://www.netreach.net/~abrejcha/dispub.htm
. This piece was originally published in the August 1993 issue of Analog Science
Fiction and Fact, (see http://www.analogsf.com
) and was written while I was serving as
an officer of the West Chester Borough Disability Commission in
In considering ways of making the noisy
world around us more accessible to those unable to hear it, I came up with the
idea for the adaptive hardware that my character uses to listen to the
world. It may not exist now, but sound
and voice recognition is getting better and better, as is the supporting
hardware, and it won't be long until we can build something just as good as the
Ears my character uses. And after
inventing the system, I couldn't help thinking that a device useful for
bridging one kind of gap might also be useful for bridging an even wider one... And that made me think of the alien in this
story who is getting very frustrated by our denseness...
* * *
Can You
Hear What I See?
by
F. Alexander Brejcha
An unseen space-based laser system fired on
his shuttle, triggering evasive actions to the accompaniment
of a non-stop barrage of surrounding alarms.
The automatic controls went off-line, and Ahthossio
fought the sluggish manual back-ups. How
could he have missed the old defensive satellites? His briefing had warned him of the remaining
obsolete anti-missile systems. Now he
would have to return to his base ship and face his crewmates' teasing.
Then a one-in-a-million cascade error
caused by the laser attack shut down his main computer system. And his engines!
Main power out, his vector and attitude
sent him spiraling out of orbit, into the upper reaches of the atmosphere.
He tried the main engines again. No good.
Attitude thrusters... he tried to regain control and turn the heat
shield to face the planet...
Gradually the shuttle started to respond,
and the ride smoothed out. But then, as
a ragged mountain range came into view, a damaged stabilizer tore free, and the
shuttle started to tumble. The crash
systems activated to flood the craft with rapidly solidifying foam...
...falling, tumbling...
...dropping...
A numbing impact,
and he heard the sounds of tearing metal as pain flooded up and he blacked
out...
*
* *
¶
"Steve?"
The letters scrolled by on the LCD
display hanging above his right eye.
"Oh, Doctor Davney?"
He closed his eyes.
A gentle but firm finger tapped him
insistently on the shoulder. Opening his
eyes, he sighed as he saw crisp white slacks confronting him. He looked up to meet
He tried to look contrite. "What?"
"Three patients, Steve," her
hands signed rapidly, bypassing his electronic Ears. "Then you ignore me." Her cloud of flame-red hair bounced from the
demanding 'words', even if a smile took the edge off.
But she was right, and he threw his hands
up with a laugh. "I should have
known better than to hire my wife as office nurse."
"Hey, you need me." She grinned.
"And I need this job to save up for medical school." Her lips and hands combined forces to fill in
words. "You're not going to pay my
way. You can't afford it yet." And with that, she slipped out of the office
before he could respond.
He wished the day was over and sighed as
he stared absently at the morning newspaper lying in front of him on the
desk. Anything to
stall just one more moment.
"SPACE SHIP CRASHES -- SCIENTISTS
TRY TO COMMUNICATE WITH INJURED ALIEN."
The bold headlines screamed at him as his eyes eventually focused.
He snorted. "Good luck! We have enough trouble communicating with
each other!"
But he couldn't repress a renewed surge
of excitement, even if had read the piece a dozen times. An alien space ship! It had come down out of nowhere to crash in
the
What he wouldn't give to be in with that
medical team!
But he wasn't. He was running late on a more plebeian and
overloaded patient schedule. Fortunately
he had
At the expected moment, the door opened
and
"Tom Bragg's ready in exam room
1."
"Thanks." He got up and headed for the side door that
led to the exam rooms of the office suite he shared with the three other
physicians in the practice.
In room 1 he found his sixty-eight year
old patient sitting uncomfortably on the exam table. Tom looked totally ridiculous in the faded
blue gown that revealed his knobby knees and scrawny, liver-spotted legs. But his clenched jaw and controlled posture
betrayed new pain.
Steve closed the door behind him. "Howdy, Tom. What's wrong?"
"It's the chest again, doc. I don't know if it's my heart, or my lungs,
or what. It's hurtin'."
The voice stress analysis scrolled by
under the words and he could see how agitated and scared Tom was. He looked over the chart
"Did you stop
smoking yet?" he asked, already knowing the answer.
"What was ‑‑"
"You understood me," Steve
interrupted. "My speech is as good
as anyone else's now that I can practice with my Ears. Now, did you stop smoking?"
"Sure, doc ‑‑"
"You're lying." The speech pattern was unmistakable.
Tom frowned. "You usin' the box again?"
Steve nodded. "Of course. Since I can't hear you -- only read what you
say to me -- I need to know how you sound.
For that I need the stress analyzer.
Don't you want me to know how you feel?"
"Yea," Tom grumbled, "but
I don't like a doctor who listens to me with a lie detector!"
"It's not a lie detector. Just a stress analyzer. Now drop the gown please... and hold still."
While Tom untied the straps behind his
neck, Steve plugged his stethoscope into the jack on the side of the
micro-computer he wore strapped to his belt.
After warming the bell, he placed it against Tom's bony back. He wanted to hear the lungs for himself.
"Breathe in... and out..., cough...,
breathe..." The graphic display of
Tom's breath sounds as he moved the stethoscope from point to point showed the
unmistakable rales and ronchi
of severely congested lungs. Then Steve
moved the bell around to the front to check out the heart beat display. He didn't like either picture.
"Okay, lie down on your side,
please." He went on with his
standard exam, step by step, and found exactly what he had expected.
"Okay Tom, all done." He waited as Tom pulled up the gown and tied
the drawstrings loosely behind his neck.
Then he squatted on a step-stool in front of the exam table and looked
up.
"I'm going to tell you again, and
I'm not bull-shitting: you've got to
stop smoking! I want you to have a
pulmonary function test, and to see a friend of mine who is a heart specialist,
but it's pretty obvious what's happening.
To put it bluntly, you're in deep shit!
And it's nothing new. I told you
what was happening the last time, and it's just getting worse."
"You got a hell of a bedside manner,
doc!" Tom glared down at him.
Steve shrugged. "Blame yourself. The last time I tried to break things to you
politely and sensitively, you reamed me for not being straight with you. Now make up your mind." He matched Tom glare for glare, and after a
moment the older man nodded.
"Yeah, I suppose I did, at
that. I guess that... thing," he
nodded at the Ears on Steve's belt, "just makes me uneasy. It's weird havin' a deaf man tell me what he can hear in me."
"I'm sorry, Tom, but I have a
responsibility to be the best doctor I can be, and that includes knowing how
you feel. Believe me: I don't mean to make you uncomfortable. I just want to help you."
"Yeah, I know. Now get out of here and send that cute nurse
back in."
Steve got up and shook his head. Every time it was the same battle: Tom bitched and moaned about the invasion of
privacy, then, when told what to do, he kept ignoring the advice. And every time he came in, he was sicker.
It was going to happen again. Tom had been scared, and he had put in his
obligatory visit. Now he felt in control
again and would blow off the advice until he felt even worse.
The pattern had been repeated often
enough.
He sighed and left Tom to get dressed.
Moving on to the next exam room, he
scanned the chart tucked into the basket on the door and closed his eyes when
he saw that it was Debbie Zylecki's. He was going from the dangerously ill to a
first class hypochondriac. For a moment
he just stood there holding Zylecki's chart, trying
to summon the strength to go in. Then he
forced a smile onto his face and opened the door.
"Mrs. Zylecki! And what seems to be the problem
today..."
*
* *
¶
Ahthossio felt himself gasping in the thin and foul-smelling
air that surrounded him and he cringed from the unbelievable pain his frantic
breathing caused. He felt himself hover
on the edge of unconsciousness and strained to see through the crusting film on
his eyes. He was lying down... in a
vaguely familiar chamber... The
lounge! He was lying on the 'sunning'
ledge in the shuttle's lounge. But the
sunning lamps were off and the only light was a harsh blue-white glare from
unfamiliar, alien fixtures that cast ugly shadows over the normally relaxing
cabin.
Other strange equipment surrounded him,
and he shifted to look around. As he
did, he realized that something was restraining him. But the movement brought another wave of pain
and he felt the room spiral into oblivion again...
*
* *
¶
Steve glared at the pile of equipment on
the coffee table. The largest component
of his Ears, a microcomputer he normally wore strapped to his belt, was no
bigger than a paper-back dictionary and weighed less than three pounds. Plugged into it, he normally wore a small
microphone on his collar which picked up spoken words and turned them into rows
of marching letters to be displayed on the tiny headband-mounted LCD screen
that lay next to the computer. When he
wore the display, it hung above his right eye so that he could read what others
said. His Ears also converted sounds
such as sirens, car horns, dog barks, and other programmed input into displayed
icons to alert him -- icons accompanied by a small warning shock from his
watch-band. In addition, the computer
translated heart rhythms as well as lung and bowel sounds into graphic displays
that were easy to read and interpret.
The system even included a stress analysis routine so that he could gauge
a speaker's frame of mind. Essential for proper diagnosis.
Everything sat in an untidy pile waiting
for him to put it on: the results of
collective efforts to mainstream the deaf and hard of hearing.
Mentally, he picked up a sledge hammer
and smashed it all into expensive junk.
Sometimes he wished he didn't have any of it. Then he would be able to live in blissful
ignorance of the noise around him and do something, anything, else to make a
living.
"If you break it, vocational rehab
won't pay for another one."
Apparently reading his mind, she dropped onto the couch next to
him. "What's wrong? The whole way home, you were totally
quiet. I was starting to wonder who was the deaf one in this marriage."
Her hands moved in a fluid, teasing dance,
but he couldn't manage a smile or answer as letters mixed with symbols to try
to draw him out.
"I know what you need," she
added as she leaned over and then dug in with skilled fingers to massage his
tension-knotted neck muscles. Despite
himself, he started to relax and leaned into her powerful kneading with a moan
of pleasured relief. Then she moved into
his view and spoke clearly so he could read her lips.
"If you could purr, I think you
would right now." She smiled and
kissed him quickly and then let go, leaving him to collapse backwards. He was finally starting to feel human again.
"Thanks, hon. You're right.
I'm not exactly on top of the world right now."
"So, are you going to tell me what's
wrong?" She curled up in the corner.
"It's the damn practice," he
growled. "Every day it's the
same. On the one hand I have patients
like Mrs. Zylecki with her imaginary problems that I
have to cater to because the almighty Dr. Alan Brown wants to keep milking them
for every penny possible. Then there are
people like Tom Bragg who won't take the advice I give them. And as for the kids... no, actually, they're
okay," he admitted. "In fact,
they're probably the best part. But the
parents! Always questioning my judgement and 'tolerating' me because I'm the only one who
will see their kids on short notice. I'd
like to take a few of them and..."
He ran down and closed his eyes, his back knotting up again.
A finger tapped him and he opened his
eyes.
"So what do you want?"
He stared, and after a moment,
nodded. "Yeah. Is that crazy? I can't help it. I want to stop working for Brown."
Alice's eyes dropped briefly,
and she seemed to inspect her left foot very carefully. Then:
"Burnout, huh? I thought I
saw it coming. You have been taking a
real heavy load of patients."
"Because Brown insists he can't
afford to add another doctor to the practice now. He's full of shit. He can afford it. Saul and I are both getting burned out while he's
loafing. His load is workable."
He felt bad about dumping on
Her eyes had dropped again, having
rediscovered her left foot. She shifted,
trying to move it as far under herself as possible.
He leaned over and put a finger under her
resisting chin, trying to try to make her to look at him.
"Okay hon,
what's up?" he asked. "Yoga
isn't your thing."
Finally she met his eyes. "Quit the practice."
"You're crazy! How will we live? I have to pay on my loans, and we have to pay
for your medical school starting next year.
I still want to start our own family practice. Just the two of us."
He started to answer, but she put a hand
on his mouth and then signed rapidly, her lips filling out her urgent signing.
"No, listen. Quit Brown's practice and start your
own. The money we have saved so far will
be enough if I hold off on med school. I
was accepted once, I can re-apply. I'll
continue as your nurse and keep saving.
Then, in a couple of years, when your loans are paid off, I'll take out
my own and start school. Then we'll hire
another nurse. I've already had all the
pre-med courses, so it will just means waiting a few
more years for our joint practice. I can
wait. We're young. I hate seeing you like this!" Her hands were shouting at him all at
once: "It's not you!"
He grabbed her hands and kissed them
softly.
"Are you sure?"
She nodded and freed her hands.
"Just don't kid yourself,"
she warned him. "It will probably
mean even more work for you ‑‑"
"But it will be work for me! For us!
Not Brown." He grabbed her
and pulled her close, whispering in her ear.
"I love you!"
*
* *
¶
The pain was as bad as before, but the
air seemed denser, even if it still smelled bad. Nictitating membranes blinked automatically to
clear his eyes, but as he started to look around, a surge of pain stopped
him. Bending carefully, he saw that
solid white material of some sort coated and imprisoned one leg and both
arms. Were they broken? Finely woven material of some sort was also
wrapped around other areas of his body, unhealthily sealing away probable
injuries.
He remembered the crash. Tumbling, spinning... the numbing impact and
blackness... The natives must have found
the wreck. Remembering pictures of how
injured natives were treated, he would almost have thought that they were
trying to help him... No... That was
totally illogical.
Every contact scenario had indicated a
hostile reception if these people were to be contacted without extensive
preparation. Their television broadcast
material made that amply clear. On the
other hand, the situation he found himself in coincided unpleasantly well with
other media images: images of torture
and interrogation. He tried to shift on
the ledge, but the pain stopped him again.
Broken in the crash? Or to immobilize him? Further pain from his chest as he breathed
warned him that he had broken ribs as well.
Short of shackles, he could hardly have been more effectively restrained. The control room, with its communications and
control gear, might as well have been back on the base ship.
He had a rush of embarrassment as
pressure from his bladder built to the point of release without warning. His pain had distracted him, and he waited,
mortified, for the betraying wetness; but felt nothing.
Then he heard a slight trickling sound
and managed to look down to see a tube extending up from a container to
disappear under a concealing cloth draped over his mid-section. They had anticipated the problem. Gratitude overcame fear. At least he would keep some measure of
dignity.
Of course, they had probably done it to
make things easier for themselves.
He looked around again and saw that the
doorway had been replaced with a bulky airlock.
That did not bode well for the fate of the shuttle. If the aliens had resorted to maintaining
pressure only in this room, the shuttle had either been severely damaged in the
crash, or it was in the process of being dismantled and examined. Either way, he was trapped. It made sense, though. In their place, he would have experts from a
dozen different fields crawling all over the shuttle to analyze propulsion,
computer, and all other systems to learn as much as possible.
Sounds from the back of the room caught
his attention and he looked up...
*
* *
¶
As Steve turned on the Tri-V, the
text-caption on the evening's world news explained that "Scientists are
continuing to study the crashed alien space ship, trying to determine how it
flies."
"Not very well," Steve
commented as he finished connecting his Ears.
"Hush! Your sister will never forgive you if we're
late for her surprise birthday party."
She reached for the remote, but Steve stopped her as the picture on the
LCD wall screen changed.
"Wait! This is new!"
"...and now here,
with our first live pictures of the alien itself -- LIVE, from the
spaceship!" The stress pattern on his display showed the
announcer's excitement and Steve sat down on the arm of the couch to
watch. He felt
The three-dimensional image of the
recumbent alien seemed to be right in the room, and Steve imagined that he
could smell a sharp metallic tang in the air.
A measuring rod was superimposed on the bottom of the picture and
showing that the alien was half again the size of a human. It looked vaguely reptilian.
'Tyrannosaurus Rex', was Steve's first impression
-- except that the arms were proportionately larger, even disregarding the bulk
of the plaster casts that held both arms and a leg immobile. The head was also different. The skull proportions were odd, the snout
much shorter, and the mouth lacked the fierce dental armament of the
Tyrannosaurs. He grabbed the remote
control and zoomed the picture on the flat, grinding teeth, realizing this
'dinosaur' was a herbivore. He cancelled the zoom and looked at the whole
creature again.
Shimmering and scaly cobalt blue skin
covered the naked body lying on its side on a shelf of some sort in a strange,
almost cave-like room. A large, heavy
tail lay in a limp line behind it. Much
of the exposed skin was dull, flaky, and looked bruised, and above the sheet-draped
mid-section, the abdominal area was covered with large bandages.
This was one hurting alien!
As he watched, two pressure-suited people
came into the picture: a man and a
woman. The difference in size to the
alien was immediately apparent as they nervously approached the reclining
figure.
The blue head swiveled, and two black
eyes stared out curiously.
Steve couldn't know the alien's feelings,
of course, but curiosity seemed logical.
A member of an advanced species; a crash and obvious
attempts to help? Curiosity would
only be natural.
As the massive head moved, Steve
blinked. The announcer was continuing to
describe the being, but as he spoke, Steve's display filled with dithering
symbols and an occasional letter in a different typeface from the default one
assigned to the announcer.
"
"Who, the
announcer? Sure, can't you 'hear' him?"
"No, I mean yes. I can see what he's saying. But the alien: is it saying anything?"
"You didn't hear anything?"
"No." She crossed her heart.
"Well, someone else is
talking." He turned up the volume,
stopping when
Two complete words stood out from the
rest: "...hear me..."
"It's speaking English!" Steve turned to
The alien's head dropped and the large
eyes closed.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes! I'm not imagining it."
"I don't know. It's not like I can just call the United
Nations up on the phone and tell them I can 'hear' the alien. They would just hang up on me."
"So find out who's in charge and FAX
them on your office letterhead." As
always,
*
* *
¶
Ahthossio swallowed nervously as he looked at the two
natives. They wore pressure suits, of course,
but through their clear face masks he could see ugly, flat faces with
meat-tearing teeth flashing behind fleshy ridges. At least he was safe from their carnivorous
habits since his flesh would be poisonous to Humans. He threw himself into Zhuito-ssne
consciousness and focused on the language lessons he had absorbed before
launch. He was not supposed to have been
the contact person, only a final scout before contact, but he had still learned
the primary languages of the planet.
He forced his mouth to form the difficult
and ugly-sounding words.
"I am Ahthossio, I come in peace
to meet with your people. Can you
understand me?" He began with
English. No response. He tried Spanish. Still no reaction. He tried again and again with the primary
languages he had absorbed. But each time
the natives ignored him. They merely
stayed at a distance and continued pointing instruments at him. In the background, he saw a large
multi-faceted lens aimed at him; a small red indicator light burning above
it. Video
surveillance, too. He was not to
have either privacy or freedom, it seemed.
Frustrated, he tried again in
English. Shouting: "Can you hear me?"
The room started spiraling from his
efforts and he felt consciousness slip away.
*
* *
¶
"Explain it again,
please." Leah Barry from the U.N.
held his FAX in her hand as she sat down again behind her desk. "And have a seat."
Steve placed his notebook computer on the
desk and opened it so that the LCD panel was visible to everyone. "Do you have a recording of the scene
that was played during the news broadcast?"
Barry nodded but didn't move.
Steve booted the notebook and then pulled
out a duplex cord and switched connections on his belt-mounted Ears, plugging
one end of the duplex cord into his heads-up display and the other to the
serial port of the notebook.
"Now, if you'll notice, what I say
shows up on here." The words
dutifully marched across the LCD panel of the computer.
"Well," he explained, "the
day before yesterday, during the broadcast, random letter combinations,
scrambled signals and a couple of words ‑‑"
"-- showed up," Barry
interrupted. "Yes, you wrote that
you saw the words 'hear me'." She
looked doubtful. "We tried the same
test with another set of Sound-Tech's Digi-Ears and
got absolutely nothing."
"An off-the-shelf
system?"
"Of course."
"Well, that's why!" Steve was relieved. "My set was extensively modified. I'm a doctor, and I
had mine reprogrammed and refined for pattern recognition, stress analysis, diagnostic
functions... a whole range of enhancements.
Sound-Tech had to add a stethoscope input and upgrade to a whole new
processor to handle the wider frequency response I needed for everything. They used an off-the-shelf scientific
microphone and sound-processing board to save money. Overkill, but it was the easiest way to give
me the frequency headroom I needed."
He indicated the larger than normal microphone he wore on his
lapel. "It cut the battery time in
half, but it's worth it."
Barry brightened and turned, picking up a
small Hush-Mic to speak quickly. In response, the wide screen behind her lit
up and they were once again looking in on the alien spaceship. The volume scale on his display showed a low
level and Steve asked Barry to turn it up until it was as loud as back at their
apartment. Then he waited in
anticipation as Barry and
"Sorry," he offered absently as
his eyes scanned the LCD panel anxiously.
"Any moment... There!"
On the screen, seemingly random letter
combinations appeared, mixed with null characters...
"...ah... sio...
...ese... ...eep...
...and..." Over and over; strange
and teasing blocks, then, right on cue, "...hear me?" A definite question. An inflection rise had triggered a question
mark.
He gestured, and the image froze into
silence to the obvious relief of Barry and Alice.
"Well," he challenged. "Now what do you say?"
Barry was cautious. "I didn't hear anything, but I saw what
you expected. Assuming this isn't
something you've programmed in."
She held up a hand. "I'm not
accusing you, but I have to accept the possibility. Assuming we can duplicate it, we owe you a
definite debt of gratitude ‑‑"
"More than
that." His earlier feelings crystallized. "I want in on it. I'm a doctor, and I'm used to looking at
things from an unconventional angle. I
want to be part of the team studying and trying to contact the
alien!" He felt his heart racing in
excitement. THIS was what he
wanted. He saw
Barry started to look a little
nervous. "I don't know if there's
anything I can do about that. The
military is still in charge, and the research teams are totally out of my
purview ‑‑"
"So call someone," he
interrupted. "I have some ideas of
what's happening and why. I'll be happy
to share them... if I get to be part of the project."
"I don't know ‑‑"
"Wouldn't it be a little
embarrassing if I figure it out in front of the world?" he
interrupted. "Before your research
team does? It would make a hell of a
news story."
Barry looked faintly ill as she reached
for a phone.
Steve couldn't resist continuing. "Oh, and I'll need my wife as assistant
and back-up interpreter. She's an
experienced nurse."
"It'll probably pay better than
being a nurse in a start-up practice," he signed quickly.
"You're impossible! That's blackmail. But don't let me stop you."
He forced a serious look onto his face as
he settled back to watch Barry talking rapidly behind her telephone
Hush-Screen. He quickly gave up trying
to read her lips since her mouth was hidden half the time and she was talking
too quickly.
Alice's hand snuck up to squeeze his and
he saw that her eyes were sparkling as she leaning forward, obviously trying not
to look expectant. But she failed
miserably.
Barry hung up the phone and turned back
to them.
*
* *
¶
Ahthossio didn't know how much time had passed, but now
there was only one of the natives: the
smaller female. He remembered his
anatomy briefings, and the differences between the sexes was
obvious in most cases, even if mostly hidden under pressure suits. And it was not merely a matter of anatomy,
but also longer fur and the use of artificial pigments for decoration.
"Can you hear me?" he tried
again. He called out twice, with
increasing volume but then stopped, embarrassed. He had just remembered that the natives'
auditory spectrum was below his unaltered speech and that his frequency reducer
was in the control room! They couldn't
hear him.
The second native from
before returned to the lounge followed by a new one; another female. He
strained his ears as he saw their mouths moving. After a moment, the newcomer approached. As he saw her mouth move, Ahthossio realized that what he had taken to be mechanical
and background noises were in fact words.
He couldn't really understand them, but they were real.
Unable to think of some way of
communicating, he felt like roaring with frustration. If only his arms had been usable, he could
have found some way of writing a message, even if his writing skills were
poor. Since he was just a scout, he had
not been given more than basic training in Human writing. But there had to be some way to make contact!
Then he remembered his clutchling days and the secret language his clutch had
devised. They had trained themselves to
lower their voices and inverting the word structure. It had been useful in their secret raids to
paint marks on unhatched eggs in the nursery. It had also been useful later, when two of
his clutchmates had been in the same Intermediate Learning class in pilot training. The female trainees were housed in a
different complex, and planning raids there had been even more entertaining.
Of course, the punishment when they had
been caught had literally been painful.
But those old tricks of lowering his
speech frequency might be might be useful here, he decided. Dropping into Zhuito-ssne
again, he concentrated on altering his voice as much as possible. He forced his throat and larynx to try to
duplicate the low-speech phrasings, twisted even more by the alien language.
"Can you understand me?" he
tried.
The female who had approached him cocked
her head and spoke rapidly to the others who nodded.
Did they understand him? He couldn't make out what they were saying.
He tried again. "I am Ahthossio. I am here on a peaceful mission. Can you hear me? Just write your answers down. I can't hear you."
*
* *
¶
"Well," Barry said
reluctantly. "It seems that you two
are now part of the Alien Task-Force."
The words seemed to taste bad to her.
Steve leaned forward.
"Thank you." He held out a hand. "Can we start over? I'm sorry about bulling my way onto your
team, but I'm proud to be part of it and I'm looking forward to working with
you."
Barry hesitated and then took his hand.
"Let me guess. You've been a science fiction fan for years
and this was just too good a chance to pass up?" She chuckled as she saw him nod. "Well, I guess I can understand it. Now what's your idea?"
"Just this," Steve began. "One of the ways my Ears were modified
was to extend the frequency range and sensitivity in order to be able to pick
up and distinguish the various sounds I need to hear. Actually, a great deal more than I really
need. But it gives me some
advantages. For one thing, I don't need
a doppler to hear really faint pulses because the
combination of my stethoscope and Ears is just as sensitive."
He indicated the still-frozen image on
the wall screen behind Barry.
"What I want to do is run this tape
through a spectrum analyzer. I have a
feeling that the alien's speech is either very high frequency or very low
frequency. Whatever. My guess is that it's outside our audible
spectrum and just borderline for my improved Ears." He stopped for a moment, getting excited as
he thought of another possibility.
"Or, it could be that my Ears are good enough but that the
recording isn't."
He tried to keep calm. "We need to test the Ears live!"
Barry was nodding. "Makes sense. The alien's been drifting in and out of
consciousness, but once when he woke up, Joan -- Dr. Morris, that is, who heads
the medical team -- reported that he made some very high, squealing noises. It was nothing they could understand, but it
was the first sound they had heard him make.
Dr. Morris is there with him now, along with an assistant and one of our
contact people, and I'm sure they'll be happy to get
your help. She's frustrated because the
military won't let in a full-fledged research team. Apparently the big brass are still worried
about the alien holding us responsible for the crash and any massive research
presence scaring him... or provoking him.
We don't know if he might have some weapons access we're not aware
of..." Barry's voice trailed off
and she held up a hand: "I
know: it's ridiculous. But let me make a few calls."
*
* *
¶
Ahthossio felt like roaring. The aliens who were keeping him captive must
be incredible stupid! He had tried the
most basic way of establishing contact possible, but nothing had worked. He was limited in what he could do since they
couldn't hear him, but if they had any brains at all, surely they would have been
able to figure out the numerical progression of prime numbers he had worn
himself out tapping with his uninjured leg.
Actually, it had made him roar. In pain. The movements had aggravated his
injuries. And made him
angry.
Where were the scientists he had expected
to come across?
*
* *
¶
The alien shuttle had been sealed off
from prying eyes by twenty-meter high fencing and forbidding armed guards. Inside the fence, Steve got his first look at
the vessel and he marvelled that the pilot was still
alive. The shuttle's bow and belly were
badly gashed and ripped open from the crash-landing, but the upper part of it
was relatively undamaged -- and that was where the rescue teams had found the
pilot. From the outside, the ship seemed
normal-looking enough, but as he entered the craft behind Alice and Maria
Canova, the U.N. contact person, Steve felt as if he was ten years old again.
Everything was scaled to someone
considerably larger, and he looked up and around in awe. The color scheme, odd-looking signs scattered
around, and larger scale, all served to remind him that this was an alien
ship. Alice held his hand tightly,
craning her head as she looked around with a wide grin on her face.
"Look at all this," her hands
flashed as she released him for a moment.
"It's incredible!"
Steve reclaimed her hand and squeezed in
agreement as Canova looked back at them.
"Ms. Barry told us about your
theory, and Doctor Morris and Doctor Schindler are looking forward to seeing a
demonstration. The alien seems to be
healing well, but he is getting more and more agitated. He's probably trying to contact us somehow,
but we can't understand him. And because
both of his arms are broken, he can't activate whatever computer systems he
might need to communicate with us."
"Well," Steve responded. "Let's see if my idea works."
As they headed deeper into the shuttle,
he noticed
He called out to Canova. "What do you think about the
engraving... hell, just the look of the ship?"
Canova looked surprised for a
moment. "Not quite, but you know,
more acute eye-sight makes sense."
She turned and hurried on down the corridor. "Come on."
Steve grinned as he grabbed
"Determined to earn your keep,
aren't you?"
"Damn right! I have a feeling this is going to be real
interesting... I wonder if he likes Mozart?"
He stared. "Who?"
"The pilot,
dummy." She smiled.
"Well, soft colors, delicate engravings. Hardly seems like the heavy metal music type,
does he?"
He laughed. "No, I guess not."
Canova had stopped and Steve saw a short,
blond woman in her late forties come out of an open doorway.
"Welcome aboard, Dr. Davney, Mrs. Davney. I can't wait to see what you have
planned." She
paused a little uncertainly, seemingly unsure of who to address.
Steve smiled. "Thanks, but I hear you fine thanks to
this." He indicated his
headset. "That's why I'm
here."
Her face reddened and he laughed.
"Relax. I'm Steve and this is
"Hi.
I'm Joan. Karl is in with our
visitor right now, trying to get him to eat." She eyed the headset and the device on his
belt. "Ms. Barry told me a little
about your Ears, but would you mind running through it yourself?"
"Sure." He gave her his well-rehearsed and often
repeated speech on how the Ears worked, and how he hoped to use them to hear
the alien speaking. And, with a smile, how
he had gotten assigned to the team.
Joan chuckled. "Don't feel bad. My ex-husband is on the appropriations board,
and I more or less blackmailed him into forcing me onto the project. Seems like we went to the
same school of persuasive speaking."
"Right down there." Joan pointed down the long central corridor
of the shuttle towards a bulky airlock added over the last doorway. "It's the only part of the ship still
pressurized with its native atmosphere."
She looked at their anxious expressions and grinned. "I have a feeling you folks are
ready!"
"More than
ready!" Steve and Alice burst
out simultaneously.
"Well, in that case, let's get
suited up and in there."
*
* *
¶
Hunger was starting to compete with pain,
and obviously that had been on the minds of the Humans too. Even if they had not found the shuttle's
regular food stores, they had started to bring out a selection of plants from
the supplemental hydroponics tanks. One
after another, the single male observer from before had been offering them for Ahthossio's inspection.
So far, the plants offered were still from the medical section, but he
could see food plants waiting in line.
Their proximity was incredibly frustrating.
As a gastric relief plant was removed,
four natives entered the now-crowded lounge, two by two, through the
airlock. The females
from before, a new female and a new male. The latter had a strange looking-device of
some sort strapped to his helmet over one eye and another device strapped to
his belt. He lifted a small rod up
towards Ahthossio.
A weapon? Ahthossio fought a brief flash of panic, but then he
noticed that the same type of cord that connected the rod to the belt-mounted
box, also connected the box to the device over the Human's eye. Could the rod be a microphone and the box
some sort of translator? Another attempt to communicate? Perhaps they had heard his earlier
greeting. He repeated it again.
"I am Ahthossio, I come in peace
to meet with your people. Can you
understand me?"
The male with the device turned to the
others and Ahthossio heard a rush of low-frequency
rumbling. Had they finally heard
him? The man moved closer, making some
adjustments on the box he wore and then waved as if motioning Ahthossio closer.
Did he want Ahthossio to speak again?
In case that was what the Human wanted, Ahthossio repeated his greeting again, speaking as clearly
as possible -- and with a growing sense of hope. Perhaps they were more intelligent than he
had thought?
The male's eyes were wide as he dropped
the microphone and turned to the others, speaking rapidly.
Impulsively, Ahthossio
tried something else.
"I am extremely hungry. These plants you have been offering are
medicinal. The food plants are the six
at the end."
Did they understand him?
The Human with the microphone clipped it
onto the box at his waist and went over to the food plants. He grabbed a couple of them, brought them
with him and put them right in front of Ahthossio. Then he started to back away but stopped and
moved close again. Carefully, he
extended his gloved right hand and held it out to Ahthossio.
Remembering the video records of human
social interaction that he had viewed, he forced himself to ignore his pain and
moved his cast-covered arm forward so that his hand was closer to the Human's.
Skinny, gloved fingers reached out after
a moment and closed briefly over Ahthossio's hand to
squeeze lightly before letting go.
Ahthossio fought dizziness from the pained exertion to
say: "Thank you."
Behind the transparent face-mask, the
Human's face twisted to reveal teeth briefly, but this time Ahthossio
wasn't worried. He knew that it was a
smile.
-
end -