She discovered, as she came on watch to relieve Aari, that KEN, too, had taken an interest in the broadcast.
Aari was involved in the liveliest exchange he had engaged in since they recovered the pod. He and MacKenZ were conversing in Linyaari. Acorna had programmed the android for Standard. The Linyaari was either the android’s own idea, or perhaps Aan had taught him.
“From observation,” MacKenZ was saying, nodding at a frozen frame of the Khieevi torture scene, “I have deciphered the meaning of some few of the utterances Khieevi make by rubbing their legs together, Aari,” MacKenZ was saying in a puzzled tone. “But these sounds, while they have a definite pattern and twenty-one thousand four hundred fifty-two distinct combinations which can predictably be determined to have specific meanings, are not translatable -with the use of your LAANYE device, which I find odd. Can you enlighten me as to the meanings of these clickings? Are they the only form of communication employed by these beings?”
Aan sat back in the command chair and closed his eyes, rubbing the area around the cavity where his horn once grew. He looked very, very weary. “They use thought-speak,” he told MacKenZ, sighing deeply. “I didn’t realize it at first, but they touch their antennae together and thought transference takes place. The audible communication they perform with their leg rubbings is apparently a code for more complex thoughts they are able to transmit in full by antennae contact. This is what has made it so difficult for the LAANYE to make sense of their verbal communication in the past. I suppose I am the only living being who has spent enough time with them to comprehend their mode of data transference.” He paused, then added dryly, “I suppose that dubious distinction also means I may be the only Linyaari qualified to try and program the LAANYE to decipher the Khieevi utterances.”
“So the Khieevi have to be physically present to employ such a mental means of communication,” the android said. “So they use the clickings of their legs rubbing together as an audible means of communication for longer distances, such as ship to-ship transmissions. Fascinating. What else did you learn while you were with the Khieevi?”
“How loudly I could scream. How long before my voice crave out,” Aari said. “How I could be reduced to a mass of searing pain, with no thought, no higher purpose than to make it cease.”
“And yet, clearly, from what you say, you were able to
withhold the location of narhiiVhiliinyar, as well as your brother’s hiding place. Was that not an act of will?”
“Willful memory loss perhaps,” Aari said with a very faint smile.
“What meanings did you attribute to these various click ings “
“Perhaps on my next watch we will attempt to interpret them, Maakinze. Here is Khornya, come to relieve me.”
He smiled at her, but she was looking beyond him, to the screens that were, as Becker would say, lit up like pinball machines. “Look, Aari! Signals from everywhere! And we are nearing the coordinates of the lost pod. Perhaps we should alert Captain Becker.”
“I’m right here, Mac!” Becker called out from down the corridor, his bare feet clanking as he jogged across the grated deck plating. “What’s up?”
“A diffuse sonar signal is emanating from the area around the planet where the Linyaari escape pod is located, Captain,” Mac replied.
A strange feeling came over Acorna as she looked at the thousands of tiny blinking lights spread across the sonar screen. She had seen this pattern before. “I know what that is, Captain!” she said. “It’s the sonar-blocking signal given out by cloaked Linyaari vessels. One of the technoartisans showed me how it worked recently.”
“So,” Becker said. “If it’s a cloaked Linyaari vessel, what’s that?” He pointed to a substantial and solid blip rapidly entering the sonar array.
As if in answer, the corn unit began a “Klickklack-klickklack-klick-klack” noise.
“Khieevi,” Acorna and Aari whispered, while Mac said the same word in a matter-of-fact, almost cheerful tone.
“Those guys?” Becker asked, peering at the dot as if he could make out the shape of the ship from it.