I already know all of them.
“Okay, give me a minute to put the program together.”
He sits with me at the desk to work, and symbols start flying across the wallscreen in front of us. His fingers are confident as they tap out words too quickly for me to follow.
Something’s familiar in the intent focus of his eyes. It reminds me of Fabin when he’s working. Or any of my brothers, really.
Too much reminds me of my brothers. Sitting here not doing anything makes me twitchy, but so does not being able to explain anything. I need to communicate. I’ll have to be patient, so I
wait while Tiav works.
It shouldn’t be a super-complicated program, but there are a few things he’ll have to cover. Telling the computer to stop reading once I choose a symbol. Giving the option to start
from the beginning again if I think I missed what I wanted. Piping the sound for the symbols just into the earpiece, but to read the finished words in the queue to the whole room.
For all that, Tiav finishes way too soon. He must have forgotten some things.
But no. As he hands me the earpiece and walks me through the process, pointing out the new symbols on the keypad for engaging the subroutines, I realize he thought of everything I did, and a few
other things I didn’t. Like creating a “word bank” where I can store words I might need later. That’ll only do me so much good once I have more than a few words in there,
but he even included a feature for me to draw an icon for each word, helping me remember what it’s supposed to be.
He already stored his name and drew a cartoony little face for the icon. All in a very few short minutes.
Maybe
he
should go back to Sampati and take over JTI.
“What’s wrong?”
I shake off the feeling. The silly icon he drew hardly looks like him, with exaggerated ears and a zigzag of spikes for hair. It makes me want to smile, so I do.
“All right, let’s try it out. I’m always asking you questions. Why don’t you ask me one?”
The first question that comes to mind is a random one, but I
am
curious about it, and I think I can ask in three one-syllable words, so I go for it. Tiav’s program works well,
reading the symbols into my earpiece and lighting up each in turn. It takes a few minutes because I have a hard time finding the right sound for the last word—the computer predictably has a
Ferinne accent—but finally I get it.
“Tock saym wye?”
“Why do we speak the same language? That’s on purpose. Our linguists monitor the broadcasts from the Lost Points just enough to keep our language mostly in line.”
I delete the first two words and repeat the last. Why?
“A couple of reasons. Back when we cut off contact with your worlds, we hoped it wouldn’t be forever. If we ever reestablish the link, we want to be able to talk to your people. Then
with the Agnac, Haleians, Crimna, and Izim around, we knew our language might change really quickly if we didn’t keep an eye on it. All the alien races said they wanted to speak a
‘clean’ form of our language in case they ever run into people from the Lost Points.”
There’s a lot of information in there, not least the idea that Ferinne cut off contact with the rest of us, and I tuck it away in my mind. Tiav’s answer about the language makes
sense, I guess. If they have access to our broadcasts, though, they might know things about my family or the company. I dig back into the symbols and take a little longer for my next question.
“Liss-en con-tent?”
“No, I don’t think so. Not for a long time now. The linguists have computer programs that monitor linguistic patterns and alert them when they start to veer too far from
ours.”
Too bad. No shortcuts to explaining about the Jantzen family situation, then.
Tiav coincidentally follows the same track for his own question. “So, can you tell me why you left Sampati to come here, or
how
you did?”
I start to look for the symbols, then freeze. I’m pretty sure
“Okay, give me a minute to put the program together.”
He sits with me at the desk to work, and symbols start flying across the wallscreen in front of us. His fingers are confident as they tap out words too quickly for me to follow.
Something’s familiar in the intent focus of his eyes. It reminds me of Fabin when he’s working. Or any of my brothers, really.
Too much reminds me of my brothers. Sitting here not doing anything makes me twitchy, but so does not being able to explain anything. I need to communicate. I’ll have to be patient, so I
wait while Tiav works.
It shouldn’t be a super-complicated program, but there are a few things he’ll have to cover. Telling the computer to stop reading once I choose a symbol. Giving the option to start
from the beginning again if I think I missed what I wanted. Piping the sound for the symbols just into the earpiece, but to read the finished words in the queue to the whole room.
For all that, Tiav finishes way too soon. He must have forgotten some things.
But no. As he hands me the earpiece and walks me through the process, pointing out the new symbols on the keypad for engaging the subroutines, I realize he thought of everything I did, and a few
other things I didn’t. Like creating a “word bank” where I can store words I might need later. That’ll only do me so much good once I have more than a few words in there,
but he even included a feature for me to draw an icon for each word, helping me remember what it’s supposed to be.
He already stored his name and drew a cartoony little face for the icon. All in a very few short minutes.
Maybe
he
should go back to Sampati and take over JTI.
“What’s wrong?”
I shake off the feeling. The silly icon he drew hardly looks like him, with exaggerated ears and a zigzag of spikes for hair. It makes me want to smile, so I do.
“All right, let’s try it out. I’m always asking you questions. Why don’t you ask me one?”
The first question that comes to mind is a random one, but I
am
curious about it, and I think I can ask in three one-syllable words, so I go for it. Tiav’s program works well,
reading the symbols into my earpiece and lighting up each in turn. It takes a few minutes because I have a hard time finding the right sound for the last word—the computer predictably has a
Ferinne accent—but finally I get it.
“Tock saym wye?”
“Why do we speak the same language? That’s on purpose. Our linguists monitor the broadcasts from the Lost Points just enough to keep our language mostly in line.”
I delete the first two words and repeat the last. Why?
“A couple of reasons. Back when we cut off contact with your worlds, we hoped it wouldn’t be forever. If we ever reestablish the link, we want to be able to talk to your people. Then
with the Agnac, Haleians, Crimna, and Izim around, we knew our language might change really quickly if we didn’t keep an eye on it. All the alien races said they wanted to speak a
‘clean’ form of our language in case they ever run into people from the Lost Points.”
There’s a lot of information in there, not least the idea that Ferinne cut off contact with the rest of us, and I tuck it away in my mind. Tiav’s answer about the language makes
sense, I guess. If they have access to our broadcasts, though, they might know things about my family or the company. I dig back into the symbols and take a little longer for my next question.
“Liss-en con-tent?”
“No, I don’t think so. Not for a long time now. The linguists have computer programs that monitor linguistic patterns and alert them when they start to veer too far from
ours.”
Too bad. No shortcuts to explaining about the Jantzen family situation, then.
Tiav coincidentally follows the same track for his own question. “So, can you tell me why you left Sampati to come here, or
how
you did?”
I start to look for the symbols, then freeze. I’m pretty sure
Similar Books
