Among themselves they did not bother to speak aloud; after so many months of travel, the small crew were all perfectly attuned to one another’s thought-patterns, so that the rudimentary short-distance telepathic communication of their kind was even less effort than speaking.
(That pod was marked with the names of Feriila and Vaanye.) That was Neeva, Feriila’s sister, one of the two senior members of the envoy team. The hope that some member of her family might have survived had overpowered her emotions; her golden eyes were narrowed to vertical slits, and the gilt tendrils other mane quivered in the still air of the ship.
(But we know they destroyed their ship rather than be captured by the Khieevi. How could one of the survival pods have come so far, to be in the possession of these barbarians?) Thariinye, young and beautiful and arrogantly male, prided himself on his unemotional analytical reasoning.
The thought-streams of the whole crew blended, coalescing and separating like partial conversations at a very crowded party.
(We don’t know they are barbarians. They may be perfectly civilized people.) The thought-shape that accompanied this concept was of a group of hornless unicorns with flimsy, soft hands and feet. If Khaari had been speaking, the words that went with this thought-shape would have been “people like us.” (Then why won’t they treat with us? Anyway, they look like carnivores to me. Did you see those pointy side teeth?)
(We still don’t know all the properties of the device Vaanye used to destroy the ship; his research notes went with him. But we can postulate it was developed as an offshoot of his research into space topology and transportation.)
(Who cares about the research! I want to find Feriila’s child!)
(Neeva, calm yourself. That they have a vid does not prove that they have the child, only that there has been some previous contact with our kind. The vid was of a young girl; its been three ghaanyi since the explosion; if Feriila’s youngling had lived, she would be fully grown by now.)
(My point about the research was, Vaanye said the new weapon worked by folding space to make two distant points contiguous, but there were still a few minor problems to be solved.)
(So?)
(So maybe what he meant by “a few minor problems” was that objects close to the fold might be unpredictably transported to an unknown distant point. Physicists think like that, you know. And when he used his experimental weapon to blow up his ship and the Khieevi attackers, maybe as a side effect, the youngling’s escape pod was transported into this sector.)
(A lot of “maybes” there.)
(Okay, you explain how they got hold of a pod from a ship that was supposed to have been destroyed down to the molecular level three ghaanyi ago.)
(I’m sure she survived. I’m sure of it. The barbarian was holding his hand up to show us how much she’d grown. And that word he kept saying-“Acorna”-that must be what they called her.)
(“Acorna”? That word was in the transmission that was sent just before the Shield closed down. It was the only signal I picked up clearly. But it was enough to send that neighboring ship out of orbit.)
(Can we follow it?)
(Of course we can, if Melireenya will give me details of the ship’s signal. I didn’t get this for nothing.) Khaari tapped the crescent-shaped silver medal that proclaimed her a senior tutor in the Navigators’ Guild.
(Might as well do so, then. It certainly doesn’t look as if we’re going to get any more out of this lot of barbarians. Why did you have to scare them with those vids of Khieevi tortures, Melireenya?)
(Me? I like that! It was your idea to start with vids instead of first collecting enough samples of the language to run the LAANYE, Thariinye!)
(Well, they’re scared now, no matter whose idea it was,) Neeva interposed pacifically. (We’d better cloak the ship; if this one notices us following, he might think we have hostile intentions toward him.)
(Why don’t we just capture him for our language sample?)
(Thariinye. I. Want. To. See. Where. He. Goes. All right?)
Thariinye s handsome young face flushed dark, and his silvery pupils narrowed to slits at Neeva’s scolding tone, but he realized the justice in it. His attempt at first contact with the barbarians had failed miserably. In the democratic fashion of the Linyaari, it was now Neeva’s turn to take the lead, and he was obliged to support whatever decisions she made in her own attempt to initiate contact-even if those decisions did seem to him, as now, to be excessively guided by personal concerns.