“And, Thariinye?”
Maam?
“I shall expect a personal and confidential report of your findings in my quarters as soon as you have finished.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He signed off, shaking his head in frustration.
It was a good thing Liriili couldn’t see Thariinye’s face, Maati thought. He gave the most awful grimace and bared his teeth something fierce.
“You probably should go back and sleep,” Thariinye told her pompously. “I’ll be too busy to baby-sit you while I have duties to perform.”
You want me to leave? In this stuff?” she asked, nodding to the weather, which seemed to grow wilder by the moment. -No way! I am not bailing out just when something interesting 18 anally happening. Let’s have a look.”
I don’t think this material is fit for children,” he argued.
“If the Khieevi are in it-I have seen them in action. Trust me. They’ll give a youngling like you nightmares.”
“Aari said ‘urgent! Thariinye. Don’t you think you should stop arguing with me and get to -work?” she asked.
“Are you sure Liriili isn’t grooming you to be the next viizaarl” he grumbled. “You’re very bossy for a youngling.”
“The/wi//?” she pointed to the com screen, tension twanging through her body so hard she thought she’d snap. It worked. Thariinye turned back to the console. She watched the visuals and listened to the Niriian voice speaking as Thariinye began the painstaking work of translating and transcribing the Niriian broadcast from the beginning. Of course, he brought up a computer translation of the broadcast on screen almost immediately. But verifying the translation and interpreting the nuances of the broadcast took time and concentration. He listened to the alien -words while watching the accompanying visuals and the streaming machine translation on the corn screen. Sometimes he would amend the machine translation, and other times he let it proceed unchanged. Because he was working with a recording, he could halt the broadcast and back it up when he needed to. He was a lot better than she expected him to be at the work, actually. He didn’t have to stop very often, and it was clear he took it quite seriously.
When he got to the shots of the escape pod lying in the greenery by the makeshift shelter, Maati got a funny feeling in her stomach. As the shot went by, she felt as if a part of her was still there, with the pod, wherever it had landed.
She was almost sure she knew? those markings. In fact, the whole pod looked familiar, though it was hustling by on the screen too fast to be sure. Even though she didn’t make a sound, Thariinye hit the stop button on the broadcast and turned to her.
“What was that?” Thariinye said and then she knew for sure that he was reading her.
“The pod,” she said. “Whose pod was that?”
“I don’t know. And I’ll need that information for my report. Go look it up for me, will you? There’s no one at the other computer.” He gestured to the opposite wall. All Linyaari ships were unique, and it -was a simple matter to match the markings to the master list of ships. She also wanted a listing of the people aboard the ship on the date that the Niriian broadcast indicated the shot had been taken. Lists of crews and passengers, projected and actual itineraries, manufacturing and maintenance records-in short, anything that affected the ships throughout their time in the Linyaari fleet could be found in the government computers.
So compelling was her feeling of connection with the pod that she didn’t even wait to see what else was on the pdyi, but did as Thariinye asked and opened the flight records.
She started scrolling through the files, after telling the computer to check the most current entries first. Surely, she thought, the pod belonged to one of the ships whose crew? had been attacked by the criminals Khornya and her friends had freed the space travelers from. But the computer didn’t list the pod as being registered to any of the ships now in active service and currently in space. That was odd.
She expanded the boundaries of her search. And kept digging, listening to the thunder crash and crack outside while inside the Niriian monologue mumbled away, and now and then Thanmye would say, “To the-sanctuary? No. Hiding place? lhats not it either-” as he tried to find the proper Linyaari translation.