The Journal of Alan Ledford

Birthplace of the Last Great Race, Day 251

I'm not sure how well that translated, but it's the name of Jenny's home planet. I've a fondness for her people, as everything they name translates oddly yet well. It's clear that they had some creativity. For instance, lots of species refer to themselves as "The Great Race" or some such egocentricism, but it takes quite a bit more chutzpah to call yourself the last great race. From what Jenny had herself told me, this was meant in more of a sense that, given the heights of greatness that her species would one day achieve, it would be utterly impossible for any later race to in any way compare itself. It was not, as I had first interpreted it, an announcement of intent to destroy all other races in the galaxy. Apparently this had been the case long ago - her people developed very similarly to telepathic cultures, in that they never developed a sense of empathy for anything other than themselves. After all, why would you need to internalize the feelings of another when you're experiencing them almost directly? Like many such species, first contact with the rest of the universe was violent and bloody. However, they're not actual telepaths. They talk, using voices even I can hear, their thoughts out loud. It was relatively simple, once this was figured out, to communicate to them that when they shot us, it did in fact hurt. Once a translator module was made which could understand their language, in fact, all hostilities between them and all others ceased immediately. Everyone in the universe was suddenly included in their telepathic net, and hurting another would be tantamount to harming themselves.

This is also why true telepaths make great soldiers but are not, in general, people persons. They never see their enemies as one of them.

This broadcast of everything in their minds was another facet of Jenny's people (I am not referring to them by name, as the name is long and my nickname for them is Squids, which is hardly respectful) that I liked. If she was angry with me for whatever reason, I knew it immediately. I knew precisely why. I knew exactly what I could do to make it better. Usually, the cause was me spending too much time staring at the data and too little time actually working on theory, and the solution was to write cryptic notes to myself while staring at the data.

I needed to talk to one of them directly. This was impossible via the communicator - it is so entwined with the ship's translator that it's not even possible to talk to people who speak your native tongue without a few journeys through the old translate-o-matic. So, for the first time in about a year and a half, I suited up. Full pressure suit, air supply, the works. The ship, blessed beacon of modern technology that she is, landed herself in the meantime after haggling with one of the planet-bound computers, which didn't quite get the concept that someone of my species wanted to actually land on this particular planet.

I stepped into the airlock and, as soon as it was secure, water began to pump in through the bottom. I always got a little claustrophobic when embarking on planets with liquid atmospheres, and the feeling wasn't helped by the nervousness that I felt. I'd been told by Jenny herself that this would work, but she'd been nonspecific about how long it would take. Not to mention, I'd never actually tried it.

The airlock full with a definite non-gaseous substance, I stepped out of my ship.

Jenny, when she had been on my team, had almost always been encased within a suit much like the one I wore now. Hers, of course, was powered to enable her to translate the natural swimming of her species to the comparatively awkward movement required for her to move around on land. Mine just let me breathe and protected me against the crushing pressures outside the ship. One of the Squids - sorry, I mean Jenny's people - swam up to me and I patched my translator through to the ship's computer. I'd need it to understand them, but I'd wired the suit so that I could speak without automated interference. The suit had an external speaker for exactly this purpose.

"(1) Greetings traveler, I am Nnorspnny the Greeter, Limiter, and Surveillance Squid. How may we assist you? (2) This is a very unusual visit, but I will do my best to be professional. (3) Pressure suits are so awkward looking, I am overjoyed to not have to endure one."

That's how they talk. All three parts there, among others, were spoken at once. There's no such thing as one of Jenny's people who only gives you part of his mind. I had the translator to only give me the top 3 'layers' of speech, as it were. Nnorspnny, so far as I could tell, was the Greeter's true name. As you've likely figured out, they have two names, the true name and their title. Norman's Penny, as I had now nicknamed the Greeter, didn't translate to anything, it was simply a nonsense sound he was likely assigned at birth. However, it's a sound my species can hear and reproduce, meaning it's actually possible for us to speak their language. Or it would be, if we were capable of speaking our entire minds at once. Even now, Norman was mumbling his thoughts at me, mainly second and third layer thoughts. If we spoke this way, the first layer is what you or I would actually say, the second layer would be what our mind was thinking at the time, and the third was likely to be what we actually thought about the topic. Fourth on down gets farther and farther from the topic at hand, until at about seventh or so it's an indistinguishable buzz. None of Jenny's people would ever sneak up on anyone, as they'd be at least second-layer thinking something like "I hope they can't hear me."

Names were unique in that only the first-layer thought was a valid identifier for that person. This was naturally due to the fact that the other layers would include things such as how you felt about that person and that would vary from speaker to speaker. Thus folks like me could actually learn the entire names of folks like Jenny. Or, as I said to Norman: "Jnenyfnnr kwonrennta"

I shut the translator off for that last part. You guessed that, or you figured I'd died of stroke and fallen on my panel, in which case you praised me for my surprisingly coherent journal entry.

I'd been practicing with the translator ever since I left Salient Steve to stew in his own whatever it was his species stewed in. I managed to shade in a bit of second-level meaning, but chances were good I'd never be able to duplicate the feat.

"(2) Jenny the Amazing Research Squid. (3) Need to accomplish this very badly"

The strangest thing about conversations with folks like Norman here was the way that they'd echo everything you said, one layer lower. It made sense, of course, and listening to them talk amongst themselves was an almost musical experience, but most people had a filter in their translator to catch such echoes that so not everything they heard would be things they had already heard. I'd deactivated mine to ensure that I'd actually said Jenny's name correctly. Apparently I'd done exactly that.

"(1) You come in search of someone? Yes, we can help you. (2) He knows a Squid true name! (3) He is suspiciously knowledgeable for an off-worlder.

"(1) I ask that you remain in this area or in your vessel while we conduct our search. (2) It is entirely too dangerous for him to be out here like this. (3) If he were to accidentally be killed due to his own ineptitude, I would certainly be blamed."

Like I'd said. Refreshingly honest. You knew what you were getting.

I contemplated waiting outside where I was and talking to Norman, but he didn't seem especially chatty, at least on the levels where he would be expecting me to make a reply. Instead, I turned my outgoing translator back on and informed him that I'd be heading inside. I heard a muffled "(2) Good, safety. (3) I will still be blamed if anything happens" before the airlock closed.

Back when the project was dissolved, we'd worked out ways to get ahold of each other again. Salient Steve hadn't specifically told us how we'd find him, only that we should "Look for jobs near home". He liked to think he was being clever and cryptic, but I had figured it out in about three seconds. Dr. Fallon was planning to return to the peacetime job he'd had at one of the universities, mindless of the fact that said university and its students had been in transition from our homeworld to Exile at the time. Sann just said to put a want ad out on Reil station. He wasn't of the species that ran the station, he didn't even know anyone there. I strongly suspected at the time that he'd simply picked one at random.

Jenny had told me to do what I was now doing. Go to her homeworld and, without help of a translator, speak her true name. Simply speaking her name would get her attention if she happened to be nearby one of the Squids that it'd been echoed to (which could end up being nearly the entire planet, as to her people, ten or more mind-layers were meaningful). The fact that I, an offworlder, had known that name to speak (and the fact that I'd known it and not used a translator would be obvious) would imbue it with a certain importance and urgency. Chances were good that the name would be broadcast off-world if she wasn't here. It would find her.

It was somewhat of an emergency measure. Every member of her species on the planet, and possibly beyond, would know that someone was looking for her. If she had been hiding like Steve was, chances were good that the rest of her species would side with that thought and not reveal her location. She might not even be in contact with any of them, though that seemed extremely unlikely. They are, it turns out, very social creatures, especially among each other. Their mental state seems to require conversation with their own kind, as they grow frustrated with only surface-level talk after a while. I suppose after having entire minds exposed to yours, limiting yourself in such a fashion must be annoying.

During her tenure with us, she'd not been allowed contact the others. Naturally, our work was classified, and she'd known that going in. I suppose that makes her somewhat different than the rest. While she didn't seem to mind dealing with us, she lived for those situations where the entire team be arguing some point amongst each other. She craved the presence of many voices, that much was clear. Hopefully she'd stayed in range of them.

"(1) Alan! It's great to hear from you! I'm on my way. (2) Wow, it's Alan! (3) Wow, it's Alan! Something must be happening. Something important."

I smiled. While translators tend to strip out a great deal of the speaker's individual personality, there's enough left that you can usually identify the person you're talking to if you know them well enough. That was definitely Jenny out there. She'd come through on the comm, though, so she wasn't close.

I told Jenny it was good to hear from her too. Specifically, though I didn't mention it aloud, it was a relief - I'd been worried she'd become a hermit somewhere, cut off from the rest of her society, and that I wouldn't be able to get to her. Granted, if I couldn't get to her there was no chance in hell that the authorities would, but that was only half of my problem. I wanted to put the team together again, after all. Steve wasn't important, I'd contacted him more in the hopes that he'd know a better way to get hold of the others than out of any desire to have him back. I hadn't especially wanted to rely on decade-old instructions to locate everyone, though that seemed to be exactly what I was having to do. Now that I had located her, however, I wanted to know how long it was going to take her to get here.

"(1) A few hours, I took a suborbital as soon as the message got to me. (2) I knew it was bad. (3) I'm turning into a pessimist thanks to that damn project."

Knowing she was already expecting the worst would make my news a bit easier. Knowing that I was unlikely to faze her further, I followed up that question with another - had she brought her above-water pressure suit?

"(1) I had a feeling I might need it. Yes, it's with me. And certain research data. (2) I thought that's what he was up to. (3) I missed this crazy man."

She would not, then, be opposed to taking a ride with me upon her arrival?

"(1) I'll give my family goodbyes as soon as we're done talking here. (2) It's about time I did something useful (3) I missed this whole sense of adventure.

"(1) Who else might be coming along? (2) Getting the gang back together. (3) I didn't miss Steve, though, he was too loud."

I chuckled to myself. Steve was out, I told her, as was Dr. Fallon, though I wasn't going to say why at the moment. If it hadn't become common knowledge I certainly didn't want it to become so. The only reason Salient Steve had known, likely, was that he'd been keeping tabs on all of us. Then again, Jenny did seem to suspect I might be stopping in for a visit, so perhaps she knew something I did not.

"(1) What about our mechanic? (2) He was quiet, I liked that. (3) The Doctor will not attend? This is poor news indeed."

Sann wasn't with us yet, though I planned to find him the same way I'd found her. I didn't know how reliable that would be, though. While her technique worked due to cultural phenomenon, Sann might have given up checking the postings at Reil Station a long time ago.

"(1) I look forward to finding him. (2) About time we were adventurous again! (3) Patience, patience, there will be time enough later to talk.

"(1) I will disconnect now, and be content to speak when we are in person. (2) I am altogether too talkative over the air (3) If anything happens, it's likely to be my fault. This suborbital is fast, hopefully fast enough."

I wanted to ask why everyone I spoke to on the planet seemed so worried about my welfare all the sudden, but she'd already disconnected. I'd just have to wonder myself.

I came to an uneasy conclusion - word about Dr. Fallon had likely spread beyond Salient Steve. There was nothing, officially anyway, to link the two of us, but clearly the Last Great Race suspected something big was going to happen, and probably sooner than later. When the Last Great Race suspected something, people tended to listen. It was likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy at that point. I wondered how right Steve had been when he warned me that we could be facing imminent arrest at any moment. Though he had his faults, paranoia wasn't among them. If I was right and Jenny's people did suspect, then it was all the more surprising that she was coming along. Back on the project, she'd had plenty of enthusiasm for it, but I hadn't realized that it extended this far. Then again, I, of all people, should be able to understand that the puzzle the Resonator presented had a captivating effect. Our motivation was probably a bit different, though. She wanted to understand why it worked, I simply wanted to know what it did. Her and Dr. Fallon had been big on the theory, while I was definitely an implementation nut. Sann had been even more the same - I don't even think he cared about the why or what, his drive was simply to make a working replica. It was the construction that was important to him.

"Captain Ledford, this is Eye of the Orca Station control, we've been asked to reroute you; your landing lane is needed."

It was one of Jenny's people doing the transmission, but they'd masked the rest of their thoughts, which made me instantly suspicious. When I'd first contacted the station to get a landing lane and arrange to stay there, they'd been transmitting as usual. Then again, if I wanted to be able to stick around the area, I had little choice but to do what they asked. I patched through to station navigation and the ship began to move. While I went over the pre-flight checklist I started trying to come up with a way to let Jenny know that I'd moved. It wasn't likely I'd be going far; typically when a landing lane needed to be freed up there was plenty of overflow storage for the rest of us. This appeared to not be the case this time, however; I was going back up in orbit.

I found out why in very short order: There was a very very large ship in orbit that not only wanted the spot I'd had, but the adjacent several hundred ones as well. The vast majority of non-native species which are likely to stop here aren't liquid breathers, so I supposed that's why they had few underwater landing lanes.

A cursory sensor sweep of the vessel as I ascended made my heart jump. Dnellek manufacturing was the exclusive provider of this particular kind of ship. They're huge because they serve as housing for their crew as well as transport. People stationed aboard such places typically run rotations of several months at a time; the places are usually referred to as "mission ships". Folks in it are there because they've all got one objective in mind. To top it all off, for the past thirty years, Dnellek manufacturing's one and only customer has been the tribunal. The fact that they'd recommissioned one of their mission ships boded ill for my "I certainly hope I have more time" theory. If they were here, they were likely looking for Jenny or, if not her specifically, information about her species' involvement in Archetype. I wanted to get ahold of her to let her know where I could be found, but of course if I were to try doing so then the investigators would want to know why I was so interested. Once they knew I was involved, likely they'd want a word or two with me, as well.

I couldn't just let her waltz right into the waiting arms of the authorities. I had to do something.

It did, momentarily, occur to me that perhaps I was being entirely too paranoid. While a mission ship hadn't been seen on active duty in a dozen years, it didn't necessarily mean that my cohorts and myself were being tracked across the galaxy. While Salient Steve wasn't paranoid, it did suit his personality to try to put one over on me. Even he wouldn't go through such lengths, though. Hijacking an entire Lane was far past the usual standard for practical jokes. The Last Great Race seemed to know quite a bit more than they were saying, too. Why else would Jenny have come so prepared? Unless, of course, they'd gotten to her first!

Now that would be excess paranoia. By comparison, then, I was perfectly fine. At least, that's what I'm telling myself.

As I docked with Eye of the Orca station, I did another casual sensor sweep for suborbitals. There were several, but I only saw one that was headed for the spaceport on the 'surface' where I had previously been kept. The same, naturally, that the mission ship was heading toward.

I started a very leaky communication with the station on the topic of open contracts. I feigned a poor transmitter for a number of reasons - the first being that I wanted the big hefty ship beginning its landing to be absolutely certain that I, its soon-to-be prime suspect if it even suspected I was around, was an innocent freelancer looking for a job. An innocent freelancer who couldn't afford good equipment, and therefore was probably not the person they were looking for. The second reason for being loud and conspicuous was that I wanted the aforementioned bringer of doom to know exactly where I was. Rather, I wanted the behemoth to think it knew exactly where I was.

Where I actually am, at the moment, is riding in the wake of a mission ship as it descends to the landing lanes. The tough part of this particular maneuver was making the transition between the regular atmosphere and the liquid. While my probe, which would look remarkably similar to my ship to any but a rather focused sensor sweep, chattered noisily away with Eye of the Orca, my actual ship is in one of its stealthier modes. A great deal of stealth technology isn't legal, but as I've said rules tend to vary from place to place. Jenny's people hadn't outlawed any of it, as they were convinced they could easily see through even the most sophisticated of disguises. It wasn't them I was hiding from, though. A mission ship generally had quite the sensor array, but chances were good they weren't actually using it at the moment. They'd come to find Jenny, and they didn't expect to have any trouble. I was to blame for that, but I'd had no idea they'd be following this closely. I've got more subtle ways to find people, and I'm currently spending what little mental ability that's not devoted to keeping myself hidden from the mothership yet avoiding the detrimental effects of its maneuvering jets kicking myself for attempting to use such a direct approach.

I had a very few advantages. For one, they didn't know I was here. For another, they were likely not to know that Jenny was on her way. My guess is that they were going to attempt a variation on what I had done. It'd take them longer to find her, of course, as they'd have no choice but to use a translator. Jenny seemed to suspect that something might be happening, so that could delay their search longer.

My motivation in this insane little maneuver, however, was not just to ensure that Jenny wasn't found, but to make sure she got away with me. I had a project long overdue, and from what talk we'd had so far, I was fairly sure she was also big on completing it. Delaying tactics would only work so long, after all.

The mission ship is finally powering everything down, now that it's properly docked. I'd best do the same if I don't want to be detected. Time to go see if I can't get Jenny before they do.