Universal Language
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About this ebook
One mistake by space linguist Jalila could cost an alien species their lives. The crew of the starship Ibn Battuta has 24 hours to prepare the people of planet Vox to face an approaching invasion fleet. But when Jalila mistakenly uses a forbidden slur, the Vox locals attack their supposed saviors. Drawn into a violent revolution, a “war of words” to decide language dominance, Jalila must rely on other resources when deprived of communication technology and even the power of speech. As revolution and invasion collide, only Jalila can save her shipmates and the planet Vox by revealing the secret behind the slur that started it all, the dark secret linking Vox and invaders in an ancient cycle of slavery, suffering, lies, and death.
Award-winning science fiction author Robert T. Jeschonek has written Star Trek, Doctor Who, and futuristic stories for books, magazines, websites, and podcasts around the world. He won the national grand prize in the Strange New Worlds writing contest from Pocket Books. He is one of a handful of authors chosen to write stories in the Star Trek: New Frontier universe. Mike Resnick, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of the Starship series, says that Robert "sees the world like no one else sees it, and makes incredibly witty, incisive stories out of that skewed worldview." Now Robert invites you to explore the thrilling new adventures of Jalila and the daring crew of the starship Ibn Battuta.
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Universal Language - Robert Jeschonek
1
Corporal Jalila bint Farooq bin Abdul Al-Fulani had had this nightmare before.
She was on the surface of an alien world with her captain and crewmates from the Ibn Battuta. They all turned to her for help, for understanding. Lives depended on her making sense of an alien language she'd never heard before, which should not have been a big deal, because alien linguistics was her specialty...
...but she found herself drowning in a sea of gibberish.
A tide of babble washed over her, a wave of seemingly disconnected sounds from a mob of creatures. Billions of phonemes, the smallest units of language, crashed together, mixing with millions of clicks and lip-smacks that could themselves be part of a language or just random biological noise.
The tide swelled and swirled and Jalila felt herself going under. Again and again, she grabbed at the current but could never make sense of it.
The display on the Voicebox interpreter device she carried blinked with indecipherable nonsense.
She had had this nightmare before. The only problem was, this time, she was wide awake.
Jalila's heart raced. She looked around at the crowd of beings who surrounded her, sleek-furred and slender like otters, and a chill shot down her spine.
Then, she felt Major al-Aziz touch her arm.
Jalila?
He stared at her with his piercing green eyes, voice laden with concern.
She took a deep breath and gathered herself up. Enough of this.
She was on the surface of the planet Vox with Major al-Aziz and Colonel Farouk. The three of them had landed an hour ago in a scout barque jettisoned from the deep space exploration ship Ibn Battuta (named after the renowned Old Earth Arab explorer and scholar). It was up to them to warn the inhabitants of Vox about an approaching invasion fleet...the same fleet that had crippled and cast adrift the Ibn Battuta.
So it was time to start acting like a professional. Jalila had to forget her fears and nightmares. She had to forget that the stakes were so high, with so many lives in the balance.
And she had to forget that this was her final mission as linguist on the Ibn Battuta.
Jalila was being drummed out of the service. In fact, she would have been drummed out and sent home by now if the Ibn Battuta had not encountered the invasion fleet.
It was all because she'd mistranslated a message two weeks ago and gotten someone killed--a diplomat negotiating the end of a civil war on planet Pyrrhus VII. Jalila had made a mistake translating the complex Pyrrhic language, leading both sides in the war to believe the diplomat was working against them. They'd killed him, and the armistice had collapsed.
So here was Jalila, career over, confidence shot...and her shipmates needed her one more time. Somehow, she had to pull herself together and get the job done. All she really wanted to do was go home and languish in disgrace, but she had to hang on by her fingernails and do this one last thing.
Nodding to al-Aziz, Jalila smoothed the light gray jumpsuit uniform over her slender hips. She tucked her shoulder-length black hair behind her ears, then took a deep breath and turned to the crowd.
Quiet!
she shouted, as loud as she could, her voice rising over the tumult.
She got her message across. Suddenly, the chaos of noise and chatter subsided. The gleaming black pearl eyes of the dozens of Vox in the city square all slid around to focus on her.
Jalila cleared her throat and took a step forward, fixing her attention on a single brown-furred being. Hi.
She mustered a smile.
The brown-furred Vox rattled off a stream of incomprehensible syllables, at the same time gesturing, clicking, and smacking at a furious pace.
For a moment, Jalila listened and watched the Vox's four-clawed hands flutter and weave. Then, she closed her eyes, blocking out the movement and letting the flurry of sounds rush through her.
Pared down from dozens of voices to one, reduced further from sound and motion to sound alone, the communication seemed less overwhelmingly chaotic. As Jalila absorbed it, she realized it could be simplified even further.
Opening her eyes, she interrupted the Vox by raising both hands, palms flattened toward him. Only this,
she said slowly, pointing to her lips.
Then, pronouncing each letter with slowness and clarity, she recited the Arabic alphabet. She hoped the Vox would get the idea: she wanted to hear pulmonic sounds only, those created with an air stream from the lungs...sounds like the vowels and consonants of the alphabet. All the clicking and smacking was getting in the way.
When she was done, she raised her hands toward the Vox, palms up, indicating it was his turn. (She guessed the Vox was a male because it was bulkier and had a deeper voice than others in the crowd.)
Message received. This time, the Vox's speech was slower and free of clicks and smacks. Finally, Jalila could pick out distinct syllables arranged in patterns. She had isolated a spoken language, one using pulmonic vowels and consonants alone.
Not that the other sounds and hand signs weren't part of a language themselves. Jalila was sure they were, which had been the problem. The pulmonic syllables formed one language. The clicks and smacks comprised a second language. A third language consisted of hand signs.
The Vox people had three different languages, she realized, and they used them all at once. They carried on three conversations at the same time, or one conversation with three levels.
No wonder Jalila and the Voicebox had been stumped. Neither was wired to process so much simultaneous multilingual input.
As the Vox spoke, Jalila's Voicebox took in everything, identifying repeated patterns and relationships between sounds...comparing them to language models in its database...constructing a rudimentary vocabulary and a framework of syntax on which to hang it.
Before long, the chicken scratch on the Voicebox's display became readable output--lines of text representing the alien's words, printed phonetically, laid out alongside an Arabic translation of those words.
At about the same time that the Voicebox kicked in, Jalila started to put it together herself. Her heart beat fast, this time with the familiar thrill of making sense of what had once seemed an indecipherable puzzle.
Listening and studying the Voicebox display for a few moments more, she collected her thoughts. Touching keys on the device, she accessed the newly created vocabulary database for the Vox tongue, clarifying the choice of words she would use.
Then, she interrupted the brown-furred creature (who seemed willing and able to carry on an endless monologue) and rattled off a sentence.
The Vox reared