Universal Language Page 6

  "The overthrow of the great tyrants." Oric barely paused by a patch of glowing purple blossoms. "Two thousand years ago."

  On the fly, Jalila scanned the air he sampled, trying to identify the nature of the signals he was interpreting. Though there were many differences between samples, she could find no factors that varied consistently and predictably, producing patterns that could be associated with coded language.

  So how was he doing it?

  "We're getting closer." Oric took a whiff near a fall of what looked like crimson Spanish moss with a million twinkling gold blossoms laced through it. "The start of the Age of Science, five hundred years ago."

  He had to be homing in on some characteristic of the floral scents that Jalila was missing...but what? If the secret did not lie in the molecular composition of the scent-producing esters, what other variable could serve as the basis for data storage and retrieval?

  It occurred to Jalila that perhaps she should think smaller.

  "Four hundred years ago," said Oric, a little further along the winding path. "The Child Wars and Silent Times."

  Perhaps, as unlikely as it seemed, the key existed at an atomic level...or even subatomic.

  Oric led Jalila down an offshoot of the main path that ended in a secluded thicket. He stopped and breathed deeply, then nodded. "Here we are. Three hundred years ago."

  Pocketing the scanner, Jalila typed on the Voicebox. "Where does the story begin?"

  Oric drew another breath and let it out slowly. "On the fourth night of the month of Utan in the year of Tolera Vosh, golden orbs came down from the stars. They landed near the capital city of Comu and did not open until morning."

  Jalila typed, and the Voicebox spoke. "I meant what scent begins the story. Show me the flower that tells you the very beginning."

  Oric bent down and reached for a white-cupped blossom, like a lily with glittering purple petal tips. "This one. The om radla, or year flower."

  "When you listen to this flower," Jalila said through the Voicebox, "what word or words do you hear?"

  "I hear the words 'Tolera Vosh,'" said Oric. "'Year 7430.'"

  "Can you find another year flower?" said Jalila. "For another year?"

  Wrinkling his furry snout, Oric sniffed. He stepped to one side and touched a blossom that was identical to the first, but with emerald petal tips. "This one says 'Culan Vosh' and 'year 7431.'"

  Crouching, Jalila aimed the scanner at the first year flower, analyzing the invisible ester vapors wafting from the scent glands in its petals. After logging the molecular composition of the vapor, she went further, probing the structures of the atoms that made up the molecules...and the particles that made up the atoms.

  Then, Jalila moved to the second year flower pointed out by Oric and performed identical scans, from the molecular level to the subatomic. When the scanner's memory held complete data for the ester molecules of both flowers, Jalila ran a point-by-point comparison of their properties.

  There was no difference between the esters of the two flowers at the molecular level. Each was composed of the same number of the same types of atoms in exactly the same formation. However, continued analysis revealed divergence at the subatomic level.

  Within the nuclei of otherwise identical atoms, the quark particles that made up the protons and neutrons had unexpected color charges. Whereas protons and neutrons in most ordinary matter contained one quark of each color--red, green, and blue--Jalila found protons and neutrons with two quarks of one color and one of another, or three quarks of the same color. For example, oxygen atoms in the first flower's ester contained protons with two green quarks and one blue quark; otherwise identical atoms from the second flower contained one green quark and two blue quarks.

  As hard as it was to believe, it seemed the Vox had not only learned to control the properties of subatomic particles via gardening, but had developed olfactory senses sophisticated enough to detect differences in color charge between quarks.

  Just as all data in a computer was reduced to ones and zeroes, the data in the Garden of Yesterday was represented by different combinations of red, green, and blue quarks...a trinary instead of a binary system. By determining which combinations were assigned to which numerical and phonemic values, Jalila could finally tap into the information flowing through the air around her.

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  Chapter 15

  Jalila figured out the numerical values first. They were simplest, since only a single digit separated the date coded in the first flower's ester from the date supplied by the second flower.

  Jalila located quarks with abnormal color charge configurations in chains of carbon atoms in the ester molecules...specifically, atoms of carbon-12, an isotope with six protons and twelve neutrons, each containing three quarks. In the first carbon-12 atom in each chain, seven of the protons and neutrons contained trios of quarks with identical red color charges; this matched the first digit of the date, seven. The next carbon-12 atom included four trios of red quarks, matching the second digit of the date.

  The third atom in the chain had three trios of red quarks...but the difference between the scent molecules from the two flowers appeared in the fourth atom in the chain. In molecules from the second flower, the fourth carbon-12 atom had one trio of red quarks; the same atom in molecules from the first flower had one trio of blue quarks...which Jalila took to represent zero.

  Looking at the results of her analysis, she could clearly see that the scent of the first flower was tagged with the number 7430, and the scent of the second flower with 7431.

  Jalila felt a rush of pride and elation. Finally, she had found the key to the Garden of Yesterday.

  Now, the question was, would she be able to use it in time?

  Though numbers were coded in a relatively simple way, applying the trinary system to language phonemes would be more complicated. At least Jalila had a place to start: the names of the years--Tolera Vosh and Culan Vosh--shared multiple phonemes. By comparing the two in trinary code, she would quickly be able to spot the differences between them and assign consonants and vowels to specific quark color combinations.

  With Oric's help, Jalila would then identify Vox phonemes in the scent molecules of other flowers. Once she'd assigned quark values to each basic unit of the Vox language, she would construct a conversion matrix that would enable her to read and record data from any flower in the garden.

  So she had a plan of attack...and in that regard, was light-years ahead of where she'd been before...but it would take time to execute. Jalila didn't know how much time she had to do the work, but she worried it wouldn't be enough. She worried that the situation on the planet's surface had already deteriorated past the point of no return, and by the time she'd get back to Major al-Aziz, he would be as dead as Folcrum.

  The fate of the world was in Jalila's hands...and time was racing away from her.

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  Chapter 16

  "You want the truth? Here it is!" Those were Major al-Aziz's words when Jalila threw open the doors of the ministry building.

  For a moment, Jalila stood in the doorway, flanked by Oric and Giza. They'd just raced back from the Garden of Yesterday, and her heart was pounding.

  Jalila looked around at the scene in front of her, trying to piece together what had happened while she'd been in the Garden. Though she'd caught glimpses through the ministry's see-through tinted walls while running toward the place, only now did she have enough of a close-up view to get the full picture.

  al-Aziz and Farouk stood in the middle of the vast hall. They were surrounded by Vox, including Regent Ieria, the ministers, and armed soldiers. What drew Jalila's attention most forcefully, though, was not at ground-level.

  Alien creatures floated above everyone, rippling in midair. They looked like New Mecca's ocean-dwelling manta rays, except for the tiny arms on their bellies.

  Like rays, the beings were delicate, rubbery wedges with gracefully undulating wings. From wingtip to wingtip, they measured b
etween three and four meters. The dorsal surface of each invader's body was steel gray; the underside, visible with each ripple of a wing, was the color of cream. Each creature had a long, prehensile tail with a forked tip, and each tail was wrapped around a rod with a glowing golden sphere on either end.

  One of the manta-like beings reared back with its wings spread wide. The creature's belly was covered with elaborate designs, a mix of swirls and lines and polygons. Were they some kind of ritual markings, like the Vox's tattoos?

  Or...

  Jalila gasped.

  Or were they characters? Were they some kind of language?

  "Jalila!" al-Aziz marched toward her, waving. "We've been expecting you!"

  On a wall, Jalila saw the same characters, projected and enlarged. Rearranged, too, and changed. Some were completely different from the ones on the manta's wings, yet clearly in the same linguistic family.

  "Meet the Mazeesh," said al-Aziz.

  Jalila typed on her Voicebox, and the device spoke her words. "You're communicating with them?"

  "Yes we are," said al-Aziz. "As you can see, they use a biologically generated written language. We've been scanning it into a Voicebox, using the Voicebox to translate, then translating our own speech into their written language. We cobbled together a projector using gear from the barque, then hardwired a Voicebox into it so we could put the text on the wall for them to read."

  "You make it sound easy," said Jalila.

  al-Aziz winked one piercing green eye. "Sure it was."

  Jalila typed on her Voicebox. "Where do we stand?"

  "Let's just say you couldn't have come at a better time." al-Aziz bowed and gestured for her to come with him. "We need airtight evidence of what really happened here. Absolute truth."

  "I'll do my best," said Jalila.

  al-Aziz walked her to the middle of the room. "Fellow beings!" He put a hand on her shoulder. "Allow me to introduce Corporal Jalila bint Farooq bin Abdul Al-Fulani. She is a bringer of truth."

  Ieria did not look happy to see Jalila. As for the Mazeesh, Jalila still found them unreadable.

  One swooped down to hover in front of her. At first, she could see no eyes on it, just a snout consisting of a comb of tightly packed fibers between two horn-like knobs. Then, the creature reared up.

  From a few centimeters below the snout, two tiny obsidian eyes stared back at Jalila. Twin arcs of what looked like breathing holes were arranged below them like halves of a necklace. Two spindly limbs flexed from the creature's belly, ending in fragile-looking three-fingered hands.

  As Jalila watched, dark threads flowed over the creamy surface of the creature's underside, mixing and fluxing and separating...resolving into patterns. Among the patterns, Jalila saw discrete groupings of symbols that might be words; in some places, the text seemed hopelessly jumbled, but in others, she could make out what she thought were divisions of lines and breaks in phrasing.

  She thought it was completely amazing.

  Farouk, who was standing nearby, scanned the symbols on the Mazeesh's wings with the Voicebox, which produced an audio translation. "What truth does she bring?"

  "The truth about what happened during your first visit," said al-Aziz, "and which of your peoples has the right to rule this world."

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  Chapter 17

  The patterns on the wings of the Mazeesh shifted. Farouk continued to scan and translate the creature's words with the Voicebox. "As we have said, our people came here long ago in peace. The savages of this world hunted, killed, and devoured them."

  "And as we have said," said Ieria, speaking through al-Aziz's Voicebox, "these monsters murdered us! They cracked open our skulls and ate our brains! They named us mazeesh--filth, excrement, lowest of the low!"

  al-Aziz gave Jalila a sideways look. "We seem to have reached an impasse."

  "We have returned to eradicate this menace forever," said the Mazeesh.

  "We will fight to the last Vox to destroy you!" said Ieria. "Better to die with the truth in our hearts than live with a lie on our tongues!"

  al-Aziz squeezed Jalila's shoulder. "So now you know where we stand. No video or audio recordings exist of the events in question. Since the Vox don't have a written language, they have no hard-copy historical records. Which is where you come in."

  Jalila nodded and typed on the Voicebox. "I understand."

  "Are you ready for this?" said al-Aziz.

  "Yes," said Jalila.

  al-Aziz smiled. He radiated confidence, not doubt, as he met her gaze. "I know you are." al-Aziz turned to the Vox. "Guess what?" He spoke into his Voicebox, and his words came out in Vox multi-language. "Your people have historical records after all."

  "I don't know what you're talking about," said Ieria.

  "Your records are kept in the form of scent signals in a secret garden," said al-Aziz. "A garden tended by Lexicons."

  "I've never heard of it," said Ieria.

  "It exists, all right," said al-Aziz. "For centuries, the Lexicons have stored your history there...and now Jalila has tapped into it." He glanced at Jalila, and she gave him a quick nod of confirmation. "She has brought back the story of the first coming of the Mazeesh, as told and recorded by the Vox people themselves."

  "Not possible," said Ieria. "The spoken word is our only record of the past!"

  "As masters of the spoken word, we Lexicons recognized it was not enough," said Oric. "We started the garden to document our own persecution, to ensure it would not be forgotten or revised."

  "What do these supposed records say?" said a dark-furred minister.

  "We'll let you hear for yourselves," said al-Aziz.

  "We also have samples of the original scent signals," Jalila said through her Voicebox. "With your advanced sense of smell, you'll be able to translate and verify the records yourselves."

  Impressed with her thoroughness, al-Aziz smiled and nodded. "We'll simultaneously translate for the Mazeesh," he said, "so everyone's on the same page."

  Ieria waved a hand dismissively. "We don't need to hear these so-called records," she said. "We already know what happened."

  "Then what can it hurt?" said al-Aziz. "Unless you're in a hurry to sacrifice your lives and finalize the destruction of your planet."

  Ieria glared at him. "All right," she said coldly. "We will listen to your trickery."

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  Chapter 18

  As the Vox leaders listened to the translated account of the first coming of the Mazeesh, Jalila noticed that their reactions followed a pattern.

  At first, every one of them seemed skeptical and impatient...but as the story progressed, they listened with increasing interest. When the account diverged from their accepted view of history, they grew irritated and muttered to one another; further on, when the tale implicated their species as the true authors of the atrocities, annoyance turned to disbelief and outrage.

  But after a while, as the extent of the Vox's crimes was recounted in gruesome detail, they settled into a pensive silence. Some of the ministers looked around at the hovering Mazeesh with fear and regret; others hung their heads and stared at the floor.

  Except for Ieria. She stood stiffly throughout the playback, the expression on her face a rigid scowl of disgust.

  After playing the recording, Jalila described the technique she'd used to decode the information...and no one asked questions. She offered to let the Vox test the scent samples she'd brought, but no one took her up on it. Everyone seemed to accept the truth of what they'd heard...except Ieria.

  "How ridiculous," she said. "What a sham."

  "We've presented you with proof," said al-Aziz, "documented by your own people. I think it speaks for itself."

  "You can make that device say whatever you want it to," said Ieria.

  "But we didn't," said al-Aziz. "You're welcome to go to the Garden and examine the original records yourself."

  "Anyone could have created those records. We only know when they were created and by whom b
ecause the records themselves tell us these things."

  "As Lexicons, Giza and I vouch for the authenticity of the records," said Oric.

  Ieria snorted. "As revised, discarded Lexicons, your word is meaningless."

  At that moment, one of the Mazeesh caught Jalila's attention, floating toward her with a fresh message on the underside of its wings. Farouk scanned and translated the new text with the Mazeesh-attuned Voicebox.

  "You and your people are free to go," said the Mazeesh. "You have presented the facts fairly, and we are satisfied that you are not complicit in the Vox's crimes."

  al-Aziz stepped in to answer. "We would like to stay. We want to help you resolve this crisis."

  "Unnecessary," said the Mazeesh. "There is no crisis."

  "We would like to help the Vox make amends for their past mistakes," said al-Aziz. "And we would like to help the Mazeesh find an alternative to genocide."

  "The Vox are a disease," said the Mazeesh.

  "The Vox are a sentient species," said al-Aziz, "and not one of them who participated in those acts is alive today."

  "It must never happen again," said the Mazeesh, "to our species or any other."

  "Agreed," said al-Aziz, "but isn't that what will happen if you eradicate the Vox? Isn't the genocide of billions of beings a greater crime than what they've done?"

  After a long moment, new symbols appeared on the Mazeesh's wings. "They must be punished."

  "Why not benefit from that punishment," said al-Aziz, "instead of putting the deaths of billions of sentient beings on your conscience?"

  The symbols on the Mazeesh's wings shifted. "What do you have in mind?"

  al-Aziz turned to Jalila, raising his eyebrows. "Any ideas, Corporal?"