«Then, keeping my distance, I started asking them questions, putting a clear rising interrogative into my tone of voice that I had heard their young use when asking for instruction. That seemed to please them, even though they were puzzled why an obviously mature being needed what seemed to be survival information. Interspecies communication and cooperation was unknown to them.» Keff watched as Carialle skipped through the data to another event. «This was the potlatch. Before it really got started, the Beasts ate kilos of those bean-berries.»
«Keff had decided then that they couldn't be too intelligent, doing something like that to themselves. Eating foods that caused them obvious distress for pure ceremony's sake seemed downright dumb.»
«I was disappointed. Then the IT started kicking back patterns to me on the Beasts' noises. Then I felt downright dumb.» Keff had the good grace to grin at himself.
«And what happened, ah, in the end?» Simeon asked.
Keff grinned sheepishly. «Oh, Carialle was right, of course. The red berries were the key to their formal communication. I had to give points for repetition of, er, body language. So, I programmed the IT to pick up what the Blatisants meant, not just what they said, taking in all movement or sounds to analyze for meaning. It didn't always work right . . .»
«Hah!» Carialle interrupted, in triumph. «He admits it!»
». . . but soon, I was getting the sense of what they were really communicating. The verbal was little more than protective coloration. The Blatisants do have a natural gift for mimicry. The IT worked fine—well, mostly. The systems just going to require more testing, that's all.»
«It always requires more testing,» Carialle remarked in a long-suffering voice. «One day we're going to miss something we really need.»
Keff was unperturbed. «Maybe IT needs an AI element to test each set of physical movements or gestures for meaning on the spot and relay it to the running glossary. I'm going to use IT on humans next, see if I can refine the quirks that way when I already know what a being is communicating.»
«If it works,» Simeon said, with rising interest, «and you can read body language, it'll put you far beyond any means of translation that's ever been done. They'll call you a mind-reader. Softshells so seldom say what they mean—but they do express it through their attitudes and gestures. I can think of a thousand practical uses for IT right here in Central Worlds.»
«As for the Blatisants, there's no reason not to recommend further investigation to award them ISS status, since it's clear they are sentient and have an ongoing civilization, however primitive,» Keff said. «And that's what I'm going to tell the Central Committee in my report. Iricon III's got to go on the list.»
«I wish I could be a mouse in the wall,» Simeon said, chuckling with mischievous glee, «when an evaluation team has to talk with your Beasts. The whole party's going to sound like a raft of untuned engines. I know CenCom's going to be happy to hear about another race of sentients.»
«I know,» Keff said, a little sadly, «but it's not the race, you know.» To Keff and Carialle, the designation meant that most elusive of holy grails, an alien race culturally and technologically advanced enough to meet humanity on its own terms, having independently achieved computer science and space travel.
«If anyone's going to find the race, it's likely to be you two,» Simeon said with open sincerity.
Carialle closed the last kilometers to the docking bay and shut off her engines as the magnetic grapples pulled her close, and the vacuum seal snugged around the airlock.
«Home again,» she sighed.
The lights on the board started flashing as Simeon sent a burst requesting decontamination for the CK-963. Keff pushed back from the monitor panels and went back to his cabin to make certain everything personal was locked down before the decontam crew came on board.
«We're empty on everything, Simeon,» Carialle said. «Protein vats are at the low ebb, my nutrients are redlining, fuel cells down. Fill 'er up.»
«We're a bit short on some supplies at the moment,» Simeon said, «but I'll give you what I can.» There was a brief pause, and his voice returned. «I've checked for mail. Keff has two parcels. The manifests are for circuits, and for a 'Rotoflex.' What's that?»
«Hah!» said Keff, pleased. «Exercise equipment. A Rotoflex helps build chest and back muscles without strain on the intercostals.» He flattened his hands over his ribs and breathed deeply to demonstrate.
«All we need is more clang-and-bump deadware on my deck,» Carialle said with the noise that served her for a sigh.
«Where's your shipment, Carialle?» Keff asked innocently. «I thought you were sending for a body from Moto-Prosthetics.»
«Well, you thought wrong,» Carialle said, exasperated that he was bringing up their old argument. «I'm happy in my skin, thank you.»
«You'd love being mobile, lady fair,» Keff said. «All the things you miss staying in one place! You can't imagine. Tell her, Simeon.»
«She travels more than I do. Sir Galahad. Forget it.»
«Anyone else have messages for us?» Carialle asked.
«Not that I have on record, but I'll put out a query to show you're in dock.»
Keff picked his sodden tunic off the console and stood up.
«I'd better go and let the medicals have their poke at me,» he said. «Will you take care of the rest of the computer debriefing, my lady Cari, or do you want me to stay and make sure they don't poke in anywhere you don't want them?»
«Nay, good sir knight,» Carialle responded, still playing the game. «You have coursed long and far, and deserve reward.»
«The only rewards I want,» Keff said wistfully, «are a beer that hasn't been frozen for a year, and a little companionship—not that you aren't the perfect companion, lady fair'—he kissed his hand to the titanium column —'but as the prophet said, let there be spaces in your togetherness. If you'll excuse me?»
«Well, don't space yourself too far,» Carialle said. Keff grinned. Carialle followed him on her internal cameras to his cabin, where, in deference to those spaces he mentioned, she stopped. She heard the sonic-shower turn on and off, and the hiss of his closet door. He came out of the cabin pulling on a new, dry tunic, his curly hair tousled.
«Ta-ta,» Keff said. «I go to confess all and slay a beer or two.»
Before the airlock sealed, Carialle had opened up her public memory banks to Simeon, transferring full copies of their datafiles on the Iricon mission. Xeno were on line in seconds, asking her for in-depth, eyewitness commentary on their exploration. Keff, in Medical, was probably answering some of the same questions. Xeno liked subjective accounts as well as mechanical recordings.
At the same time Carialle carried on her conversation with Simeon, she oversaw the decontam crew and loading staff, and relaxed a little herself after what had been an arduous journey. A few days here, and she'd feel ready to go out and knit the galactic spiral into a sweater.
Keff's medical examination, under the capable stethoscope of Dr. Chaundra, took less than fifteen minutes, but the interview with Xeno went on for hours. By the time he had recited from memory everything he thought or observed about the Beasts Blatisant he was wrung out and dry.
«You know, Keff,» Darvi, the xenologist, said, shutting down his clipboard terminal on the Beast Blatisant file, «if I didn't know you personally, I'd have to think you were a little nuts, giving alien races silly names like that. Beasts Blatisant. Sea Nymphs. Losels—that was the last one I remember.»
«Don't you ever play Myths and Legends, Darvi?» Keff asked, eyes innocent.
«Not in years. It's a kid game, isn't it?»
«No! Nothing wrong with my mind, nyuk-nyuk,» Keff said, rubbing knuckles on his own pate and pulling a face. The xenologist looked worried for a moment, then relaxed as he realized Keff was teasing him. «Seriously, its self-defense against boredom. After fourteen years of this job, one gets fardling tired of referring to a species as 'the indigenous race' or 'the inhabitants of Zoocon I.' I'm not an AI drone, and neither is Carialle.»
«Well, the names are still silly.»
«Humankind is a silly race,» Keff said lightly. «I'm just indulging in innocent fun.»
He didn't want to get into what he and Carialle considered the serious aspects of the game, the points of
