Analog SFF, April 2010 (16 page)

"I think you'd better go now.” Fwem glanced around. “It looks like some of the painter's friends might want to beat you up."

"Look. I can explain. Let me think.” Roger realized he really couldn't explain—not without admitting that all the paintings looked essentially featureless.

"Tell me tonight at the music doing,” said Fwem. “Not now. Please go away now."

"Wait,” said Roger as Duncan pulled him away toward the door. “I'm sorry."

"Yeah, right,” said one of the nearby Chuff.

As they waited on the roof for a taxi, Duncan let out a sigh. “I'm afraid we blew it,” he said. “We'll get one more chance tonight. If we can't impress them with our basic wonderfulness, then I shudder to think where the Agency'll post us next."

Roger did shudder. “I don't understand it. After I drew the rabbit, I thought—"

"Don't think about it. Concentrate on tonight's mission."

Suddenly Fwem's words registered. “Did he say
music
doing?"

"Fwem invited us—more like a command, actually.” Duncan glanced up at the arriving air-cab. “Here. At sunset. A concert, I think."

"Concert? But they have a hearing range of one note.” Roger gave a frenzied little laugh. “They say music is the universal language, but not in this part of the universe.” Roger pulled himself together and tried to sound professional. “I doubt if it'll be music. I'd expect something more like cadenced poetry."

"The translator used the word music,” said Duncan.

"Nrrilgan translators have been known to be wrong.” Roger smiled. “Music. What will it be—a lot of Chuff humming their single note for an hour or so?"

"You've got the rest of the day to find out what it will be—and to come up with a plan to impress them.” The taxi's side irised open and Duncan climbed in. “We've
got
to get that lutetium contract."

"Sure. Great. Fine.” Roger followed his boss into the taxi. “Coming up to speed on an alien culture from a standing start—in the
rest of the day."

"The
good
news is that you have more time than you might think. The Chuff day is about thirty-eight hours long."

Roger unpacked his travel bag in the compartment provided for him in the Jupiter-class spaceship, which served as the Terran Embassy. Then he went for a walk. Maybe if he observed some Chuff doing what Chuff do, he might be able to come up with an idea or two. And his presence shouldn't skew his observations; it was a capital city. Aliens probably wouldn't be a rarity.

Strolling the broad walkways of the city, Roger noted the similarity to many other capital cities he'd been posted to: alive and crowded, groups of humanoids walking quickly in and out of high-rise buildings, a profusion of surface-level stores and eating places.

Aside from the monotone from his headphones, it was eerily quiet. During his walk, he'd heard only a few isolated words spoken. But there were a lot of flickering eyes to be seen.
I wonder if the Nrrilgans were actually right. Is voice really the primary mode of communication?

As he meandered, he began to realize that the Chuff were indeed technologically advanced—perhaps even as advanced as Earth.
What could we possibly sell them that they couldn't produce more efficiently themselves?
He shook his head. Selling wasn't the primary issue—being
simpatico
was.

The absence of voices began to wear on him. Silence. He'd become almost oblivious to the pervasive monotone. He doubted if the Chuff heard it at all anymore. But then, as his amble took him to the periphery of a park, he did hear voices.

Roger stopped short and wrinkled his nose in confusion. The voices were higher pitched than the Chuff he'd heard.
That's impossible!
Then he noted that the voices were an
octave
higher. He rushed into the park and saw a group of small Chuff playing on a sort of jungle gym. Roger smiled. It was beginning to make sense. Chuff heard sound only in a narrow range of fundamental frequencies. But they also could hear the harmonics of those frequencies. Roger looked at the Chuff at play.
These must be Chuff kids.
And at some point in their growth, their voices must change—by dropping exactly a full octave.

Roger marveled at the great variety of what must be toys—and he speculated that novelty might be important to the Chuff.
Just like Earth, where toy technology is only second to military technology.
Roger bit his lip and thought.
Maybe that's the beginning of an idea.

Many of the alien kids were swinging on the gym, while others were engaged in a game—and those Chuff were chanting in cadence as they skipped and cavorted.
Hey! I wonder.
Roger got an idea.
Maybe Chuff music is made up of one note on the scale, but played at differing octaves.

Roger felt pleased with himself and turned to leave, eager to tell Duncan his idea. But then again . . . he stood stock-still. The chanting: the pitch wasn't constant. The kids were chanting in perfect unison, but the pitch changed, though not by much: less than two semi-tones spread over a dozen or more distinct pitches.
Could it actually be singing?
Roger walked to a park bench, sat, and observed. There were bigger Chuff sitting on benches.
Parents, probably.
After a few minutes of listening, Roger was convinced that the small Chuff were actually singing—and the ‘singing’ was actually beginning to sound to him like music.

Then a Chuff child ran up to a big Chuff. Roger was pleased to hear actual conversation between the two.

"Can I have a—beep?” asked the child.

"Not now,” said the bigger Chuff. “Dinner is soon."

"But . . . but I want it."

"I said no."

Roger noticed that there was no flickering of eyes. He glanced at the kids playing. They talked, but their eyes didn't flicker. Then Roger looked at the parents.
Lots of flickering eyes.

Then came the revelation. The instructions with the Nrrilgan translators were wrong—a mistranslation. Speech wasn't the
primary
mode of communication. “Primary” should have been primal—or maybe basic. Roger gave a small nod of his head. It seemed so obvious now. Kids learned speech first, and only later learned how to flicker. And that meant that adults used speech only to speak to kids or to get someone's attention.
Poopyhead was the clue—and I missed it.

Roger jumped from the bench and, with the help of enthusiasm as well as a relatively low surface gravity, sprinted back toward the embassy to tell Duncan.
And that also explains why their writing system isn't alphabet-based.

"Very interesting, I'm sure.” Duncan, sitting in a plush chair in the embassy lounge, looked up at Roger with a blasé expression. “But how will this help us at the concert tonight?"

"Well . . .” Roger, feeling suddenly deflated, plopped down on the facing chair. “I don't know. Maybe I'm totally wrong. I'm not really even sure the Chuff kids
were
making music. Maybe it was as much music as a bee dance is a dance. Maybe it was just some ritual of shared humanity, alienality, whatever."

"Focus!” Duncan moved forward in his chair and looked hard at Roger. Then he chuckled. “A shared ritual of alienality. Fine. We'll take that as a provisional definition of music—Chuff music. Now, how can we use that to our advantage tonight?"

Roger, elbows on knees, cupped his head in his hands. After a few seconds, he looked up. “If we were expected to paint at an art show, maybe we'll be expected to make music at the concert. Maybe the concert'll be something like a jam session."

"Can we?” said Duncan. “Make music, I mean."

"The translator stored the last few hours of source sound, of course,” said Roger, thinking as he talked. “So I can listen to the Chuff singing. But there's no way I'd be able to actually sing those microtones myself, not without months of practice, if then."

"Perhaps we could cobble together an audio file of the microtones, somehow,” said Duncan with an eager, hopeful expression. “And play it for the Chuff at the concert."

"That would take days.” Roger looked off into space. “You know,” he said in a distant voice, “bassoons have thick walls."

"What?"

"Low bassoon notes would require fingering holes that are too far apart for fingers to cover them. So holes are drilled at an angle—closer together on the outside and wider apart at the inside of the instrument."

"Have you lost your mind?” said Duncan.

"I was just thinking. You could drill holes angled the other way—close together at the inside—to produce microtones."

"Ah.” Duncan narrowed his eyes. “Do you really think you could make a bassoon play those tones?"

"Yeah. It would be pretty simple to calculate where to drill the holes."

"Then do it.” Duncan snapped to his feet. “It's our last chance. And maybe the Chuff will give us an A for effort."

"Hey, wait a minute.” Roger rolled to his feet. “I was only hypothesizing. My bassoon is a valuable and rare instrument."

"The agency will buy you a new one."

Roger scowled. “I rather imagine bassoons are very scarce in this part of the galaxy."

"So are jobs for Anglo-Terran junior cultural liaison officers."

Smiling in spite of his suppressed anger, Roger stalked into the music-playing place. He carried his once beautiful bassoon, now disfigured by a slew of new holes and duct tape covering the old holes as well as some of the keys.

Roger had expected to see musicians up front and listeners sitting in rows of seats. But it was rather more like the art reception. There were no rows of seats, and Roger saw no objects that could have been musical instruments. It seemed a safe assumption that he was about to hear adult Chuff singing the type of music he'd heard from kids in the park. Again Roger smiled, this time in anticipation. Bassoons, even mangled ones, made awesome sounds. He was sure the Chuff would be impressed.

A Chuff announced the start of the music-making, and a group of a dozen or so gathered at the front of the room while the rest congregated at the back, standing.
Chuff seem to do a lot of standing.
Now it looked something more like a concert to Roger—a conductor and a choir.

The “singing” began and within moments, Roger stood spellbound. The music was not the simple microtonal sounds of the playground. Instead, the singing consisted of one note and many harmonics of that note. Roger was sure he couldn't even hear some of those harmonics. One-note polyphony: the note stayed the same, but the timbre changed. And the rhythms were incomprehensibly complex. At several points, each chorister sang a different rhythm pattern, which resulted in syncopations that spread like a wave through the chorus.

Roger found the sound very interesting and even musical, though beyond his comprehension. He felt about it the way he felt about Chinese classical music: impressive but not something he'd like to listen to for long stretches of time. Roger realized he'd guessed wrong, horribly wrong, about the nature of Chuff music. It was more harmonic than microtonal. He suddenly felt embarrassed about his bassoon—about how the Chuff would take his microtonal imitations of Chuff kid sounds.
But maybe here, unlike at the art show, the audience won't be expected to participate.

The music stopped and the choir director faced the audience. “Before the second half of the music starts,” he said, looking at Duncan, “I invite our guest of honor to do some music."

"Thank you for the privilege.” Duncan put an avuncular arm around Roger's shoulder. “But my colleague Roger has asked that he be allowed to, uh, do music.” Duncan smiled, genially. “That is, if it is acceptable to you."

"Cool!” said the choir director.

Roger forced a smile and picked up his bassoon.
At least they should appreciate the rich harmonic structure of this prince of the woodwinds
. Roger closed his eyes and, as his hands caressed his familiar instrument, his fingers sought the unfamiliar holes. Tentatively, he began to play. Then, basking in the rich reedy woodwind tones, his playing grew more assured.
This is actually pretty good. The Chuff should appreciate this.
Roger's confidence rose.
Even though microtonal, this is real music.

While playing, he eased open his eyes and stole a glance at the listeners. The Chuff showed expressions much like those he'd seen when he'd savaged the painting. He knew now it bespoke intense emotion, but in this case it certainly had to be one of intense pleasure.
No one could possibly call this kid stuff.

As Roger put down his bassoon, a Chuff ran up to him. “That was very childish,” he said.

"Hey!” That was it. Roger had taken enough. “Who you calling childish?” he said, clenching his fists.

"Roger!” Duncan admonished. “Remember the lutetium."

"What? Oh, yeah."

The Chuff glanced around and then leaned in toward Roger. “Let's go and talk where there are no other people around,” he said at a loud whisper.

"I'll come with you,” said Fwem.

"Mine!” said the other Chuff. He put an arm around Roger's shoulder. “Take your music maker."

Roger hefted his bassoon, then looked imploringly at his boss. “Duncan. I don't like this."

"Don't worry,” said Duncan, making calming motions with his hands. “I've never seen the Chuff to be violent."

"Yeah. Right. That's probably why they're taking me somewhere out of sight."

"Don't be silly,” said Duncan with a smile. “And anyway, fear not. The agency is protecting you with a very generous insurance policy."

"Thanks much."

"Look,” said Fwem. “I think I should come too."

"Neener-neener-foo-foo,” said the other Chuff as he maneuvered Roger toward the door."

With a pasted smile covering his disquiet, Duncan watched as Roger and the unknown Chuff went through the door. Then he noticed the other Chuff at the concert. Their eyes were flickering wildly. Something had happened—clearly something major. Duncan leaned in toward Fwem. “Who was that taking Roger away?"

"Big chief music judge,” said Fwem, his eyes on the just closed door.