Ancient Birthright (10 page)

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Beldon waited for Cindy after school. She strolled out with one of her friends and stopped to chat. Terrie and Sandy closed in on him and stood waiting. Cindy waved good-bye to her friend and marched up to the Dumas trio.

Why did my sisters have to choose today to walk home with me?

“Hi, Cindy, do you know my sisters Sandy and Terrie?” Beldon asked.

Beldon conducted the introductions and tried to herd the gaggle of talking girls towards his house.
Wonderful, a new world record, it only took me seventeen seconds to lose control of the situation.

“Cindy is going to help me with an English project, and she wanted to see what I’d already done. I asked her to walk home with me so I could show her my work...”

I might as well be talking to the sidewalk. No one’s paying the slightest bit of attention to me

Beldon trailed along behind the three girls walking side-by-side and chatting as if they’d been friends forever rather than only having met two minutes ago. He dropped back a few steps and studied the trio from behind. He could see from her animated conversation with his sisters, Cindy had a sparkle and openness that drew in whomever she was talking with.

I need to figure out how to redirect her attraction my way. She has outstanding...assets...and an openness that makes me want to get to know her better. I think she’s even prettier than Marcie. I hope today is one of his Dad’s good days, and he doesn’t go off at me for inviting Cindy over.

Beldon rushed ahead to get to the house first and gauge the tension level. He entered through the kitchen door and found his Dad sitting at the table dealing out a hand of solitaire, his cane hanging from the back of the chair next to him.

“Hi Dad.”

“Bel...where’re your sisters?”

“They’ll be here in a few seconds. I invited a friend over to help me with an English project. I hope you don’t mind?”

“When’s he coming?”

Beldon rocked from foot to foot, “It’s a she. Cindy Merrimen. She’s the best English student in my class, and I asked her to help me figure out how I’d teach English to someone who doesn’t speak our language.”

Duane stopped in mid deal, “Why the hell would you want to do that? You’re good with computers, not teaching English.”

Beldon rushed on, “I know but I thought that I might try developing a computer application that could be used to teach English as a second language. I need help to get across the more obscure ideas.”

“You really think something like that could be worth the time invested?”

Beldon heard the front door open and the three girls come in the house. Sandy led Cindy into the kitchen and introduced her to their Dad.

“I need to show Cindy what I’ve done already. She can’t stay long,” Beldon said, trying to usher Cindy to his room.

Duane frowned, “Slow down Bel. She just got here. Cindy, Bel tells me you’re going to help him develop a program to teach English. Sounds like a big project that could take a while.”

Cindy flashed Duane a smile that caused Beldon to drool. “We just started talking about it today, so I don’t know if I can even help him. It sounds interesting. Figuring out how to teach a language using simple pictures to create a common understanding of the basics tweaked my interest. We’ll have to see how well it works on Bel’s test subject.”

“Test subject. What test subject?” Duane looked up sharply.

Beldon patted the air and stammered, “Dad, let me explain…”

Ten minutes later Beldon closed the door of his room and turned to bang his forehead against the door.

Cindy said, “I’m sorry if I said something wrong.”

Beldon continued to press his head to the door, “No, I should have warned you about his attitude and temper. The pain and the drugs the doctors are prescribing have combined to change him. Before the accident, he was the best father anyone could ask for. He always had time for us kids and loved to go on family camping trips or help us with our school projects.”

“I remember hearing about the accident and the OSHA investigation on the news. I think everyone was shocked when Mr. Wilkins turned over all those NRAO emails from the facility director ordering him to make everyone on the upgrade team work eighteen-hour days. They fired the Director instead of Mr. Wilkins like everyone thought they would.”

Beldon turned to face her, “I’m beginning to see some signs of improvement in him. His periods of depression have diminished, and he’s walking more without his cane. I have to figure out some way to catch his interest. It’s not good for him to just sit all day and think about the pain and his next PT session. He needs something to take his mind off himself and feel he’s contributing again.”

“Is there something he could do on your English project?”

Beldon thought for several minutes, “Not on the English project directly but on the sending and receiving end. His knowledge could solve a big problem. I just don’t know if I’m willing to take the chance he’d help me.”

Chapter-12

Universe Explorer
: Transjump plus 1 year, 362 days:

Saigg paced the meeting room, frustration showing in every step as his coloration faded from deep reds to dark purple.

He shook his head, and without looking at the assembled team said, “The progress in learning the human language English has slowed to a crawl just when we need to be making progress. The team has decoded thousands of digital transmissions, but without a dictionary and the grammatical rules for the language, most of it can be jettisoned to space and be as useful. The simple picture transmissions from Beldon are adding item names to our growing list of objects, but it’s doing little to assist the linguists. We have to find a way to link sounds with the alphabet.”

Several days before, they transmitted a picture of two stick figures facing each other with wavy lines between them and an arch of letters above. The hope was that Beldon would realize the two were talking and that the letters above was the written version of their speech.

The return transmissions from Beldon were not the usual pictures he’d sent in the past. These were data files with a single alphabet character followed by strings of numbers. Saigg and his team had been pondering the data for days and could not figure out what it meant. They had tried every way that they could think of to plot the information.

“Can anyone think of something we haven’t tried?” Saigg asked as he stopped pacing and leaned on the table. No one in the crowded room spoke.

To add to his frustration, the wall mounted VH display had stopped working. The picture was fine, but the sound circuits had quit. Saigg’s call for a VH tech to work on the problem resulted in the arrival of a young luzzon female wearing an equipment belt loaded with sensors and tools.

Saigg continued with the meeting as the technician worked on the wall mounted unit behind him. “When we decode the data, we can confirm that the first character is either one or two letters from the English alphabet. The letters are followed by the number five thousand, the number one, the symbol for division then eighty-six thousand four hundred and then the word ‘day’. Everything else is a string of numbers,”

All eyes followed him as he paced across the front of the room, his stomping path altering each time he passed the working VH tech.

“The second data file is a similar string of data, at least in format, but it starts with the second letter of the alphabet. Let’s break it down into parts.”

He pointed at the VH screen. “We know the first character is a letter of the alphabet. We know that a day is the time it takes the Earth to rotate one full cycle. If we divide the length of one day by 86400 and multiply by 5000, we get 0.0575, but so what. Does anybody have an idea of what to do with it and the data that follows? Come on somebody must have something we can try?”

“Sir?” a small voice behind him said.

Saigg gave the tech a dismissive wave. “Yes, thank you for your assistance with the VH unit.”

“Ah...sir, you asked for ideas and I was wondering why you are trying to display sampled audio information as a video image.”

Saigg whirled around and stared at the VH tech. “Say that again.”

The technician backed up against the wall and flicked her eyes over the room full of senior scientists and linguists as if looking for someone to save her. “It’s a sampled audio data file, sir. I don’t know what the first character means but the five thousand is the number of samples taken on a waveform in the period designated in the next segment. Therefore, it’s specifying five thousand samples taken in 1/86400th of a day, if I understood correctly that a day is a period-of-time. The following data is the relative strength and polarity of the signal at each sample point. Our audio data loggers use the same format.”

“Of course,” Saigg said. “We asked Beldon for sounds and he sent us the wave forms for each letter in their alphabet. The files with double letters must be the sounds when he uses the letters in combination. Can you rig something that we can use to convert these files to sounds?”

“If someone can tell me the exact amount of time that is specified by 1/86400
th
of a day, I can program my audio tester to convert the numbers to sound,” the VH tech answered.

Saigg turned and asked one of the assembled team, “How long is the current Earth day?”

This started an exchange on the current length of time it now took the Earth to rotate about its axis since the rotation had slowed over time. After a few demi-beats of discussion, the team came to a consensus on the length of time specified and completed the transfer of information to the small handheld audio tester.

The technician handed the unit to Saigg and indicated the actipad that would play the file.

“Aah...aah...aah...apple...ant...and...aah...aah...aah.”

“This is it team. This is the missing link to join the audio transmissions and the written language. Why are we wasting time in this stupid meeting? Let’s get on this now.”

The room cleared after the sub-teams divided the remaining files. The only ones left in the room were Saigg and the young VH tech.

“Sir, will I get my audio tester back? It’s signed out to me, and someone took it with them,” The little VH tech said, ringing her hands.

“I’ll make sure you get it back,” Saigg said as he patted her on the shoulder. “Thank you. Thank you from every person on this ship. It could have taken us thirty-cycles to discover the method to convert these files. Have you finished repairing the VH unit?”

She returned her test equipment to her vest, “Yes, sir.”

Gesturing to the hatch, “If you have time, I’ll treat you to a cup of sweet drink and the cake of your choice as a reward.”

Saigg ushered the young soul from the meeting room and headed in the direction of his family’s quarters. He pulled in a deep breath, drawing her exotic scent fully into his lungs. She had to be about the same age as him, and if she removed her equipment harness, she would be the most beautiful luzzon he’d ever met.

“What’s your name?”

She glanced at Saigg out of the corner of her eye, “Renna, sir.”

“You don’t need to call me ‘sir’. My name’s Saigg,” he said as he drew closer to her and tried to keep his dorsal spines from snapping open, signaling his mating interest. She didn’t have a dark band of skin at the base of the neck showing she had selected a mate.

“I haven’t seen you around before.”

“My family quarters are one hundred-fifty-degrees anti-spin and about half way to the stern, so I don’t come this far forward very often.”

“When were you accepted in the VH repair crew?”

“I finished school and knowledge verification a little over sixty cycles ago and was accepted by Crew Leader Doosa and his crew thirty cycles ago,” she peeked at Saigg and took the plunge, “What about you? When did you complete school and verification?”

Saigg stopped walking, Renna continued on a couple of steps and turned to face him, “I haven’t completed school. Formally, that is. Command Prime assigned me to the position of Research Team Leader. I discovered a way to advance our efforts to learn the current languages of Earth and Command Prime removed the previous Team Leader and appointed me. He hoped that new ideas and ways of attacking problems could get the research moving again. Once these communication problems are solved, I’ll be obligated to get back into school and finish my training.” Saigg took Renna’s arm, turned her and continued to his family’s quarters.

He tried to change the subject. “Why were you assigned to come all the way to this section of the ship to work on the VH unit?”

“I’m not sure. My TL was chuckling to himself when he gave me the assignment. He and my father don’t get along very well. My father insists that Team Lead Doosa personally come to our quarters to adjust the VH units at least once a seven cycle. Father told me that a man of his position needs to have only the best, most experienced tech available service his VH units. I offered to do the adjustments, but he insists on TL Doosa.”

He touched the actiplate, next to the hatch of his family’s cabin, and Saigg followed Renna into the main room. His parents lay together on the couch sipping sweet drink.

Saigg placed his hand on Renna’s arm, “Mom, Dad, this is VH Tech Renna. She’s the genius who solved a troublesome problem we were having with the last few transmissions we’ve gotten from Earth. She’s a VH tech from mid-ship and recognized that my entire team and I were making a wrong assumption. I invited her in for a cup of sweet drink and cakes.” Saigg’s face was deep red at the tip of his nostrils and faded through amber and into a dark green at the jaw hinge, the color display of a courting male.

Saigg rushed on, “Dad do you think it would cause problems if I asked for Renna to be assigned to my team? We have all the scientists we need, and the theoretical areas are covered, but I realized, after what Renna pointed out, we don’t have any souls with practical growthware application experience.”

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Caraa and Jamz looked at each other and then at the hand Saigg kept on Renna’s arm.