CHAPTER FIVE  March, 2116  Guardian Contact Base on Surface of Outpost

The day dawned as most of them did in this clearing, with a mist-shrouded sun easing its way through the knotted, roiling clouds and the tangled limbs of the surrounding forest. Two camps, one human, one Outposter, stirred and began their morning routines as the sun burned off the mist and the clouds and the dew dripped off the plant life.

C'astille opened her eyes, uncurled her legs from beneath her long body, flexed her tail, and stepped out of her field shelter into the clearing. She sucked in the fresh morning air through her blowhole. The morning air smelled good, invigorating. She stretched her arms and flexed her long fingers. It would be another good day. She went to the camp kitchen in search of breakfast.

On the far side of the clearing, inside one of the humans' pressurized huts, Lucy Calder slapped at the alarm clock with somewhat less enthusiasm for the day. With the dim thought of a shower and coffee, she stumbled out of bed. She had been up late again the night before, working on her notes. And Outpost's day was only nineteen hours long. It took getting used to. And C'astille would beat her to the Crystal Palace, as usual. She had given up trying to be early for their meetings—C'astille would simply be earlier still the next day. Calder liked her counterpart, and even felt in some strange way that she had something in common with her, but a little less enthusiasm for early morning work wouldn't be amiss. Coffee. That was the main thing.

Neither side was consciously aware of it, of course, but each had done the same thing, or had at least arrived at the same result: Young, open-minded, highly intelligent, and quite expendable individuals represented both species.

The Guardians hadn't made any immediate, deliberate decisions to put Johnson Gustav or Lucy Calder on Ariadne at the moment of First Contact. However, human traditions of exploration and military service, formed by decisions made and lessons learned over thousands of years, favored the practice of using young, still-flexible personnel, people with few immediate dependents to lead expeditions to the unknown or the unpredictable. It seemed to be what worked best: More explorers and soldiers came back when the leaders were young and smart and had few attachments to the outside world. Given that tradition, persons like Gustav and Calder were the most likely to be thrown into situations where a First Contact might occur: for example, on board a station orbiting a largely unexplored world. If humans had found that older left-handers who lacked a sense of humor did better in hazardous situations, the Outposters would have faced some aged and stern-faced southpaws instead of Gustav and Calder.

But fresh, sharp, and flexible minds did work best, and not just for humans. C'astille's mind fit that description just as well. C'astille's people had no concept corresponding to that of a military, though hers was not a particularly peaceful race. She knew what exploring was, though, and had dreamed of being the finder of a new thing. As a youth, she had at times worried that the world was too well known, that there would be no discoveries or explorations or new things to learn. All that had changed now, of course, and certainly there were now to be strange new things to fill more than a lifetime.

She found the humans themselves the most interesting. Even now, long after she had first set eyes on them, the sight of humans, especially walking in their bizarre bipedal gait, fascinated her. The sight both mesmerized and repelled practically any Outposter not used to it. A human parallel to this reaction could be found in the unpleasant, creepy thrill some humans got out of touching a snake. A nastier, more accurate, and more compelling analogy might be the giddy, horrified, stomach-knotting reaction humans often have when they see a member of their own species, unfortunate enough to have both legs amputated, forced to walk on hands instead of feet.

To the Outposters, the humans looked mutilated, a front half of a creature chopped from the whole. Given the cultural and biological background of the Outposters, the very sight of a human brought a whole constellation of unpleasant things to mind.

It took a flexible, educated psyche like C'astille's to accept the fact that these were natural, whole, and healthy creatures—probably evolved in a process similar to that which produced C'astille herself—and not monsters.

Calder and the other humans had an advantage without realizing it: They were used to the idea of seeing a creature that walked on four legs, and even had the comfortable, familiar, and not unpleasant legend of the centaur to help them get used to the shape and movements of the Outposters. The Outposters had no such comforting images. To C'astille and her fellow Low Assistances, the humans did not bring to mind a more-or-less friendly sort of mythical beast. A very mild analogy to what humans reminded them of would be the front half of Frankenstein's monster lurching off the laboratory slab.

Humans took some getting used to, and the older Outposters happily left direct contact with the halfwalkers to the younger set.

Her meal quickly finished, C'astille cantered across the clearing from the Outposter camp to the Talking House. The halfwalkers had built their part of it first, not long after C'astille had first met the human Calder. The human techniques of building had puzzled the Outposters. The methods seemed highly inefficient, but the human structures went up quickly enough.

A Guardian Army engineer's platoon had poured a concrete slab foundation, assembled a rather large prefab hut and simply bolted it to the slab. The hut was meant to keep the rain off and nothing else, and the slab to keep the hut from sinking into the soggy ground. A quiet-running portable generator was installed and lights were hung. No effort was made to make the hut airtight, but inside it, a more sophisticated structure went up. The artificers assembled a room-sized box of very tough and transparent plastic. It took up about a third of the interior of the prefab hut and was airlocked. The artificers added a few conveniences outside on the slab: racks to hold equipment, a hose-down station to get the mud off a suit before entering the airlock. The whole interior of the box was always visible from the outside, except for a portable toilet which could be hidden behind a screen when in use. Calder quickly named the plastic box the Crystal Palace, and was delighted to have it. Learning and teaching a wholly novel language was rough enough without having to stand in the middle of a soggy field in a pressure suit to do it. Gestures, expressions, movement were essential to learning, and all were infinitely easier out of a suit.

Of course, there was no practical limit to how long a pressure suit could be worn if survival was the only criterion. But the suits were heavy, tiring, restricting, they limited vision, and the speakers and mikes were only so good.

In the Palace she could relax, pace, even take a nap or go to the head between language sessions, grab a snack from the compact refrigerator or make a cup of coffee. Far more important, she could see and be seen. Pantomime was often vital to making sure she understood what a word meant, and it was a hell of a lot easier to have the props of language-learning—a drawing board, objects you wanted the names of, notepads and recorders and so on—safely under weatherproof conditions, and it was a double pleasure not to have to handle a pencil through a pressure suit's gloves.

C'astille understood the advantages of getting in out of the rain as well as anyone, and once she had gotten an accidental whiff of what the humans breathed for air she understand why they needed to stay in a suit or a glass box. Unlike humans, the Outposters could smell and taste carbon dioxide and nitrogen. Human air had too little for the former and too much of the latter. She too was glad to get her drawing and writing and recording things out of the rain, and even took the human lead in making the Outposter half of the Talking House as comfortable as possible. She and the other Low Assistances brought in work tables, lights, rest couches, and their own food stores and portable power sources.

As the language lessons went on, it became clear to both sides it would be wise to concentrate on teaching the humans C'astille's language. Things simply weren't working going the other way.

The Outposters had so much trouble learning English that at first Lucy Calder thought they were "hard-wired," as she put it. It seemed possible that Outposters inherited their language genetically, and were no more capable of learning an alternative to the sense of smell. Calder would have been pleased if that idea had been correct; it would have meant one language would be usable across Outpost.

But the Outposters weren't the problem; English was. The Outposters just couldn't seem to get the hang of it. Calder concluded the problem lay in the structure of English, the parts that tone and sound played in meaning. She had a hunch that the 'Posters would do better learning Chinese, but there was little point in teaching them a language no one else in the star system besides Cynthia

Wu understood. Might as well teach them one of the Australians aborigine dialects. Come to think of it, Calder had a feeling C'astille would do pretty well at the abo languages. But not at English.

So Lucy did the learning, slowly, gradually. More of it today, and she had some questions to ask. Dressed in a lightweight pressure suit, she walked the paved path from the human camp to the Crystal Palace. C'astille was there, her tail flicking with eagerness to begin. Calder grinned and waved. Every morning it was the same; the moment she saw the young Outposter, she was caught up in the other's unflagging enthusiasm for their work. She hurried through the lock cycle, stripped her suit off, and sat down at the field desk inside the Palace. She cleared her throat and forced her voice into the odd resonances of C'astille's tongue. "Your presence is sensed, C'astille." It made as much sense as  hello," and meant as much.

"And yours is sensed as well. Talk starts?"

"Talk starts. But word-learning remains deferred," Calder said. It was the passivity of the language that was the most difficult and bewildering. It was hard for her, and hard for her human students of the language, to bear in mind that action must be placed away from the speaker, or better still, removed entirely and the verb used to describe a state of being rather than an action. "Absence of knowledge continues for my Guidances. And yet word-learning and word-puzzlement are at its center. A thing is pointed to—this structure, my clothes, our vehicles, our path to the Talking House—and the humans say they got there by being made, or built. Sometimes the Outposters have things pointed to and it is said they are grown. Your recorders, your structures, your couch are called 'grown.' Is it that verbs 'grow' and 'make' or 'build' are the same, or are so many of your things formed from live things?"

" 'Grow' is not 'build.' My couch is grown, my house is built from walls and other parts of a material grown in sheets. But walls not precisely grown. Never living, but made by living things not of my species. Species are caused by my people, and these species are makers of much of our things.'

That was tangled, but Calder thought she had the gist. "And the new species that are caused. How many—" Lucy quickly checked her dictionary. No, she didn't have the word for "generation." "How many cycles from parent to offspring between the old species and a perfected new owner

C'astille pulled her head back on its long neck, an involuntary gesture of surprise. "Why, none... or perhaps accurately one. The old form is taken, the changes are made on its—again, the word is not yet given to you. It is lasut. Do you have the concept of small structures that are controllers of what a live thing is?"

"Humans have known of this concept long years."

"Here they are called lasut." Calder noted its phonetics down, had C'astille repeat it so she could record it and practice it later, and the conversation went on. Both were used to such circumlocutions and pauses by now.

C'astille continued. "The genes are changed, and the next thing to come from them is what is wanted."

"That is not our way," Lucy said. "Human skill with changing these genes exists, but I have suspicions it is quite modest when compared to yours. Much time, many tried, many cycles of parent and offspring between first effort and success. Also, humans seek not to bring forth a wall-growing life form, but just a stronger animal, a plant that will give more food."

"So are all your things made, as has been seen?"

"Highly close to true. A human is the maker, or the maker of a machine that is the maker of nearly all our things."

"Even your secu werystlon?"

A tricky term. Literally, it translated as "outer memories," and seemed to cover both sound and sight recorders, computers, perhaps some other gadgets, perhaps even pencil and paper. It occurred to Lucy that the term was a Dad fit. It was their name for a class of things that had some equivalence to computers, and recorders. "Yes, if I understand with precision," Lucy said carefully. "These are not grown, but are themselves machines."

"Many of ours live."

Lucy had the sudden and ghastly vision of a disembodied brain inside a glass jar, hooked up to wires. No, it wouldn't be like that. But the image wouldn't fade. You learn something new every day, she thought, and the two of them got on with the language lesson.

The days passed, and both sides learned.

Gustav pounded away stolidly at the keyboard.

Alien Contact Status and Action Report 137

General Summary: Once again, no major changes since last report. CI Lucy Calder continues to make gradual progress on Outposter-l language. The Outposters have confirmed her earlier understanding that there are any number of different languages spoken by the Outposters, many of them mutually unintelligible. Previous theories to the contrary must be abandoned. Orbital examination and mapping of the surface continues to be hampered by cloud cover, but orbital work has located about 100 probable city sites on the planet, in widely scattered locations. Recent low-altitude atmospheric overflights, launched from Orbital Station Ariadne, of many of these sites have located definite small settlements. Many appear to be abandoned. The largest of these seems about as large as a human village of a few thousand. We at Contact Headquarters once again urgently request that these overflights be suspended, as they must be disconcerting to the locals. We do not wish to adversely affect relations with Outposter groups we have not yet met, and these overflights can tell us little more than they already have: that the Outposters have very many small settlements.

Specific Summaries:

Language: Calder has done excellent work, and has now established a reliable basic vocabulary of Outposter-l. At my instruction, she now divides her time between learning more O-l and teaching what she has learned already to the trainees sent from Capital. These trainees are already capable of some conversation with the locals. She is also involved in the effort to get a computer to serve as a translating device. All of these efforts will eventually succeed: Comer will become more fluent in O-l and she expects to be able to talk in related dialects; the trainees will learn the language as well; and the auto-translator device will be perfected. However, I must emphasize once again that all of these projects involve the most gradual and painstaking effort. By the very nature of the work—in large part patient trial-and-error-breakthrough simply are not possible. With all due respect, the work cannot be rushed, and I can assure everyone involved that we at Contact HQ are as eager for more results as anyone. But patience is required. We will be learning the subtle points of O-l for the next generation at least. Colder deserves nothing but praise for her efforts.

Culture and Technology: I am forced to make the same report I have made so many times before. The level of culture and technology is undetermined but high, and probably higher than thought at the time of my last report a few days ago, particularly in the biological sciences. Apparently, the Outposters can "custom-tailor" the local equivalent of chromosomes on a rapid and routine basis. What would seem a staggeringly difficult job of genetic engineering to us, they can do with casual ease.

At this point, I feel compelled to repeat a caution I have made many times before: It would be a great mistake to assume the Outposters are primitive because we locate no huge cities from orbit, or because they appear semi-nomadic, or because we do not detect powerful radio or electric power generation. We have by no means begun to understand these beings, but I can at least offer a theory. Humans have always assumed that cities, preferably large cities, are the centers of culture, and humans have always assumed that cities are permanent. The Outposters make neither assumption. 1 believe this is a key dividing point

in the development of our differing cultures. Insofar as the connection between culture and technology, I submit a statement that should have been obvious before we found the Outposters: There is no such connection. To cite but one example: The ancient Greeks certainly had a lower technology than many subsequent civilizations, but certainly they had a higher culture than most. . . .

There was a muffled thud, thud on the bulkhead, which was what passed for a knock at the door of a pressurized prefab hut. Gustav, glad of the break, hit the lock cycle button and spent the next two minutes straightening up the papers on his desk. One nice thing about airlocks—it was just about impossible for anyone to barge into his office.

A long series of thumps, clumps, and bumps further heralded the arrival of a visitor. "Hey, Johnson," Lucy said, her voice muffled by the breathing helmet, as she came into the room.

"Hi, Luce. How's the day so far?"

"Good," she said, pulling off her helmet. "I get two kinds of days—the kind where I wonder why it has taken us so long to get so little, and the kind where I'm amazed at how much progress we've made in so short a time. Today," she said with a grin, "is a Type Two day. The Outposter voice-recognition program seems to have most of the bugs out of it, finally, and that's progress. Making out the next report?"

"Yup. The top brass still want us to hand them a perfect auto-translator instantly, and can't believe we can't just pull it down from the shelf. I'm sticking my neck out to explain why it can't be done in slightly firmer and less oblique language this time."

"Damn bureaucrats. Yours are the same as ours."

Gustav grunted and said nothing. Lucy was still like that, probably always would be. She could not or would not identify herself as a Guardian. Even wrapped in all the excitement and challenge of this wonderful chance find, even granted all the privileges and freedom she needed to do the job the Guardians wanted of her, she refused to forget she was a prisoner.

It made things tough for Gustav because it threw both their motives into question. In his soul, he knew himself to be just as much a prisoner of the Central Guardians and their endless, desperate ambition. When, as he frequently did, he asked himself why Lucy went on, he was forced to ask at the same time why he went on.

Because it's an incredible opportunity, not to be refused. Because the dream of meeting the alien is what makes kids join the Navy in the first place. Because we're doing it for our species, not for whatever grubby party goons are living in Capital Palace at the moment. Because to say no would be suicide. Because someone else would do it for them anyway, if not as well. . . . And from there on down the reasons got less convincing, more uncomfortable. Though Gustav couldn't answer why he went on, he thought that Calder might be able to. Which meant there was a limit to how far he could trust her. Gustav didn't like that, because Calder had become what no intelligence officer could afford, even an ex-Intelligence officer: a friend in the enemy ranks.

Gustav broke the silence at last with some comment about his report. They chatted about the routine affairs of the camps, and the progress of various language trainees, and the need to shut down the overflights that damn fool Romero insisted on making. At last they found themselves, as always, coming back to the central and endlessly exciting topic: the Outposters.

"I like them, C'astille especially," Calder said. "Using that damn language is like trying to wrestle wet noodles, but she and I can communicate, and either I'm getting better or she's learning to explain better."

"What does the language itself tell you?" Gustav asked. "I mean about the Outposters?"

Calder just shrugged. "I'm no xeno-psychiatrist. Fm not an ethnologist, or even a real linguist. The two glaring differences are the sound structure and the bias toward making passive statements. You've seen my translations. They are awkward because 0-1 is clumsy for statements of action. English is clumsy for passive statements. Where we'd say 'she came through the door,' they might say—" Lucy shifted to the local tongue and said a few words. "Now that can be translated to English as, The door was at the location passed through by the person,' and that's a mess. But the way of stating that very passive concept is very direct and succinct in O-l. The verb form is all one word with the proper prefix and suffix and intonation to give just that meaning. To state it in the typically very active voice used in English or most human tongues is very close to impossible.'

"And you don t think that says anything about our local friends?'

"It does, I'm sure of it, but I simply don't know what it says. It would be real easy to hand out some guff about they're being 'at one with their world' and not divided out from it. Some of the kids back home make that distinction between the aborigines and the Europeans. Mom's the abo and Dad's the Brit—they both laughed at that one. I have the distinct feeling the Outposters manipulate their environment for their own convenience just as much as we do. But their needs and methods are both different from ours."

"That's a long-winded way of saying, 'I don't know.' "

Lucy Calder grinned. "Or, to translate from O-l, 'The absence of knowledge is retained in my mind.' "

"Oh, shut up. Let's get some dinner."