Sam Boone and the Thermal Couple

by Bud Sparhawk

Illustration by Kelly Freas

In 2172 Earth managed to get one cranky and primitive starship a single light-year from home where, coincidence of coincidences, it managed to get itself rammed by a Stellar class cruise ship which was far outside its approved lanes.

The Greebnean owner of the ship was so anxious to avoid the galactic Hegemony’s court system that it gave the human crew a replacement ship from the inventory as payment. “Never to speak of this event,” it had pleaded desperately as it clamped the viewer for the ship’s instruction manual over the captain’s arm, thinking that appendage was the human’s primary sense organ, much like its own. “Never to make a claim,” it said in closing as it sent the remains of the ruptured Earth ship, the pinnacle of humanity’s scientific and engineering genius, into the furnace of a local sun. It wanted no evidence of its transgressions hanging about.

Earth was ecstatic when the crew returned in their new ship, just three weeks later. The gift that had been placed in their hands provided enough engineering and scientific data to build an entire fleet of workable starships. Humanity could start to explore “local” space quickly and economically. Humanity could finally enter the galactic community and fulfill its destiny among the stars.

Much to its chagrin, humanity also discovered that far from being unique, intelligent life was quite common. Nearly all of the niches of life were already filled, as were more habitable planets (and quite a few that were only marginally so, like the Earth.)

The Galaxy was literally brimming with life in its manifold forms. The only thing that had prevented that knowledge from becoming apparent to mankind centuries before was humanity’s strange methods of using electromagnetic radiation for communications, something most of their local races had abandoned early on because of the problem of static and the inverse square law. Besides, there were so many other obvious and cheaper methods, such as the phloomb-driven ansible.

Lacking any places to settle and exploit, and lacking capital to enter the markets of the Hegemony, human explorers and entrepreneurs flailed about for years trying to find a niche where they could earn credits and become a part of interstellar commerce, the market in primitive human gewgaws and souvenirs notwithstanding. After all, how many Mickey Mouse hats (the Hegemony’s favorite item) could the galactic community absorb?

Finally Earth discovered its single marketable and very human, talent of negotiation—and began to earn valuable trade credits by sending arbitrators among the galactic community.

Sam Boone was one of the first of these.

Sam lay on his back in the lounge of the starship Perlieu with a cool bottle within reach on one side and a warm blonde on the other. Before him the immense sweep of the Milky Way arched like a brilliant sparkling rainbow across the velvet background of extragalactic space. The luxuriousness of the lounge and view were his very personal reward for the miserable months he’d had to spend on the fetid and overheated Scrofulous Five.

Even Ahbbbb, his supervisor, should have been happy. After all, Sam had finished the job nearly on time; normal for him and the reason he had become Ahbbbb’s key negotiator in the Periglena arm, which is to say, the only human around for about a jillion or so cubic light-years. Sam regretted that she hadn’t assigned him to some better venue, closer to home, closer to occasional human companionship. But life out here in the outer reaches of the Hegemony wasn’t too bad: Ahbbbb could charge whatever she damn well pleased for his services and squeeze every centime from each transaction. His fee usually included the normal cash in advance, a cut of which went into humanity’s trade account, some to Ahbbbb, and the rest to his personal account that she managed for him.

Usually all of Sam’s accommodations and travel were taken care of in a non-revocable advance, with an occasional luxury or two thrown in for his trouble; which was why he was enjoying the cool bottle, the warm blonde, and the spectacular view. There were a few drawbacks to interstellar travel, however.

His ears popped as one of those drawbacks became reality. The sudden increase in pressure signaled the ship’s arrival at his next assignment. He sighed deeply, squeezed the blonde one last time, took a swig from the bottle, glanced at the magnificent view, shook himself, and disconnected the leads at his temples. With a sad sigh of resignation he watched the rough, gray-speckled ceiling appear just a meter overhead as Milky Way, blonde, and bottle faded away from all of his senses. Little illusions like those were one aspect of Hegemony technology that made these trips in alien ships so bearable. Briefly, he wondered how long it would take before he became addicted—and then wondered if he really gave a damn: That had really been a nice blonde!

He wormed himself over to the annunciator, trying to keep his head from coming into contact with the rough surface of the ceiling, pulled a long pink tube from the wall, put it over his mouth, and blew hard four times in quick succession. He hdped that his lung capacity was equal to the task of depressing the tympanum of his steward, or whatever it called itself, at the other end of the communications device to alert it to the fact that he was ready to debark.

It would be a relief to finally get out of this terribly cramped compartment. The suite was luxuriously wide and roomy by the standards of the Needke, who were only one meter high and three across. Since he lacked the assortment of legs, tentacles, cilia or whatever they were that the Needke used for locomotion, Sam had been forced to crawl on his belly to get around the suite for the entire trip. He’d also grown extremely tired of eating out of his spartan and limited travel kit, a cuisine forced on him by his inability to digest the rock-like creatures that appeared to be the Needkes’s sole food supply.

He’d also discovered to his dismay that the small dusty depression in the floor that possibly served as a Needke bed was of no use to him. Instead he’d used a soft pad he’d found in a compartment, and whose real purpose he had never discovered, as a bed roll.

The Needke toilets had been the worst part of the trip.

Soon enough the narrow entrance to the stateroom slid open and one of the Needke huffed a modulated puff of musty smelling breath toward him. Since Sam’s ears weren’t the half meter wide tympani that could convert the light breeze into anything with a semblance of meaning he assumed that the steward was informing him that it was time to debark. In eager response he grabbed the handle of his kit and dragged it out into the hallway, a narrow chute that he hoped would lead to someplace where he could finally stand erect. It would probably take weeks to work out some of the kinks that the long voyage had created.

The Ja’aar station where he emerged from the chute was a huge, compartmented helix of pearlescent hues. The Ja’aar had developed spaceships from the gas-filled creatures of their world. These not only had skins capable of surviving the vacuum of near space but used the production of various biological gases for propulsion. Some, such as this station, grew hard bony shells that could be used as permanent housing.

Every Ja’aar around him was twittering and chirping and trilling in a nearly unbearable cacophony of sound that echoed back from the smooth walls. Sam found himself confronted by a vaguely bird-like character with a twittering voice that endlessly repeated the same song, “La-la-la” over and over and over and… He recalled from the prep tapes that these Ja’aar communicated by varying the tone and volume of their individual songs, the melody being each Ja’aar’s individual signature while the overtones carried the information. As a matter of fact, he recalled from Ahbbbb’s briefing that the last portion of each Ja’aar’s name was the key of its unique song.

At the moment Sam could not understand any of the information this particular Ja’aar in front of him was trying to convey and looked about for the translator that was supposed to be waiting for him. He waved his arms in what he hoped was a clear signal of his confusion. Perhaps it knew where his translator could be?

The Ja’aar stopped its song, cocked its head to one side and silently observed the antics of the strange human creature for a few seconds. After a few moments of consideration it shrugged in an almost human way and began trilling the “La-la-la” welcome song once again.

Sam put his hands on his hips and glared at the warbling birdbrain before him. Finally, unable to stand that damned “La-la-la” tune any more he put his hands over his ears to shut it out. The Ja’aar leaped back and lifted its own tiny appendages to the sides of its own head and stared at Sam. The two stood thus for several moments until Sam, unable to bear it any longer, opened his pouch and extracted his certificates, which he thrust at the Ja’aar.

The tall creature peered at the papers as if unable to understand this turn of events. Finally it seemed to grasp Sam’s meaning, extended a grasping limb, and looked over the documents, glancing every once in a while at the waiting human.

“La-la-la,” it announced very slowly while indicating itself. Sam considered for a moment and then decided it was attempting an introduction; this one must be Ja’aar’la-la-la. “Sam Boone, human,” he announced and stuck out his hand.

The Ja’aar leaped back as if struck. Quickly it looked around as if seeking help from the officious Ja’aar racing toward them, tweeting at the top of his voice. Sam dropped his hand to his side as a tough-looking Ja’aar with a black band on its leg and holding what appeared to be a weapon of some sort, grabbed the papers from the trembling Ja’aar’la-la-la who was continuing to chirp at a furious rate; “La-la-la, la-la-la, la-la-la…”

“Tweety-twee-tweet,” the police-being trilled as its small translator repeated for Sam’s benefit, in barely understandable Glax, “Why you threat to Ja’aar’aaa? You his responsibility.” Sam assumed that Ja’aar’aaa was the name of his greeter: Sure, “la-la-la” must be “aaa.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Sam protested with a shrug, taking care not to point at anyone in particular. “I’m just trying to find out where I’m supposed to go and who I am to meet.”

“Tweety-twee-tweet,” the police-being replied to Ja’aar’aaa. “Take it to its quarters, stupid,” and threw the papers back.

Sam knew that his escort felt comfortable when it returned the documents to him with a little bow of the legs, turned its back on him, and began to lead the way out of the arrival chamber. Still, the Ja’aar looked back frequently to ensure that Sam was keeping a proper, non-threatening distance away. It appeared that a Ja’aar could never be too careful with aliens.

Sam was relieved to see the promised translator hanging on the wall in his compartment. It even had a decent set of human-shaped earphones attached. Clearly someone here had figured out what he required, unlike those other cretins who had arranged his ship accommodations and sent Ja’aar’aaa to meet him without the translator in hand, er, wing. He clamped the earphones on quickly to understand what his escort had been saying.

“This room is the very, extreme best we could arrange,” twittered the translation of Ja’aar’aaa’s chirping over the earphones. “We have furnished it with every luxury we could afford.” It hopped over to a large teeshaped artifact and stoked it with one appendage. “Oh wonderful. This is one of the finest perches that I, Ja’aar’aaa, have ever seen. How I envy the rest, honorable Ear’t negotiator,” he prattled in an endless repetition of that same damn song, “La-la-la, la-la-la,… and on and on and on…

“And here is your drinking vessel,” it chirped with a sweep of one flexible wing at the incredibly cut crystal water bowl hanging from the wall at its own chin level, about a meter above the top of Sam’s head. Well, thought Sam, maybe I’ll find something to dip a drink with whenever I’m thirsty, and cursed the diversity and insularity of the interstellar community that made accommodations so chancy. In vain he looked around for something he could use as a chair to reach the water bowl.

He wondered, with apprehension after another glance at those long legs, what a Ja’aar toilet would be like.

Ahbbbb, his supervisor, had made the assignment sound so simple. “Travel to the Ja’aar station and negotiate an agreement between the Suture and the Gunny-sacks, or some names like that,” Ahbbbb had hummed with ill-concealed glee at sending Sam ever farther from Earth, probably in retaliation for the worry he’d caused her over the past years. “It’ll be a simple matter, really. They just want the cachet of an Earth negotiator, is all. Shouldn’t take you more than a month, two at most. We’ll make a healthy profit on this!” Sam knew, all too well, that thoughts of such profits were what made his supervisor so jolly. Ahbbbb had frequently flensed Sam’s expenses to the bone to squeeze some profit from his previous “nearly-on-time” ventures, which made him suspect that she possessed a heart only somewhat larger than the end of this sentence.

But a brief explanation of the facts showed that she was not far from the truth, even if she did have the names royally screwed up. This appeared to be a really trivial matter. More importantly, both races had paid handsomely. “Every confidence in the Earth-thing to work its wisdom and powers,” had been the flattering words the Ja’aar intermediaries had sent along with his advance for six months of effort, with more promised if a protracted stay was required. Hah, he thought, Even he wouldn’t need any longer than that. Ahbbbb had promised that if he could somehow manage to wind this one up on time for a change he could walk away with a healthy profit, enough to get back to Earth and find a real bottle and blonde to replace the illusions.

“Who can translate for the delegates?” he asked and was startled to hear his words emerge from the translator as his catchy little signature tune; “Bum-da-bum-bum-da-dah, da-dah.”

“Er, no one,” came the alien’s terse reply through Sam’s earphones. “There are some, uh, difficulties.”

The seeds of suspicion that this assignment might not be so straightforward were suddenly planted in Sam’s head. “What do you mean? The Ja’aar are supposed to be the intermediaries for them! You are taking care of them. Certainly someone must be able to talk with them.”

Ja’aar’aaa hopped from one leg to the other as its head bobbed up and down. “Most difficult to do. We feed them. We bring health. We try.” The bird-like being’s song dropped dramatically in volume; “But talk we cannot. There is not means.”

Sam’s suspicions were now growing quickly. “You have not communicated with either of the races involved. Surely you have the translators—”

“Not the means, not the words. None can do it. We are without the means.”

The seeds of suspicion were now starting to flower. “Take me to see the delegates,” he demanded. BUM-da-BUM-BUM-da-dah, da-DAH!, his translator repeated.

The walls of the Gunny-sacks a.k.a. the Ginnungagup delegates’ containment tank stretched upwards into the dark recesses of the vast chamber near the outer ring of the station. The condensation on the outside of the container’s thick walls belied the chill temperatures and high pressures within. “Methane breathers they are,” chirped Ja’aar’aaa. “Large things who float inside. They boom loud and monotonous. We can hear but not understand.”

Now that it had been brought to Sam’s attention he noticed the steady vibration coming from the tank—a low-frequency drone that went on and on. It was even more boring than the twittering of the Ja’aar.

On the other side of the chamber, sitting isolated and alone, was a tiny, reddish box-like affair. Sam started to approach it when Ja’aar’aaa touched him on the arm and chirped a warning. “Not to go close to the Sutr, respected Ear’t.” Sam shrugged off the touch and continued. How the hell was he supposed to be a negotiator if he couldn’t approach his clients?

The heat hit him in the face when he was still twenty meters from the box. With each step closer the temperature increased further, making sweat break out on his forehead. Apparently the box’s reddish hue was due to radiation, not coloration.

What sort of beings could possibly live in such an environment, he wondered as he stared at the radiating compartment? He looked back at the huge tank booming at his back and then again at the small box; The living conditions of the two races had so little in common that physical confrontation would be impossible. What could two races such as this possibly have in common that would be the basis for an accord?

His suspicions that this would be no trivial job were now in full bloom. He might have to ask Ahbbbb for that extension of time after all, and suffer the consequences as well.

The facts surrounding the accord were simple. Apparently the Sutr had established a settlement on the innermost planet of “their” system and were developing it as quickly as they could, spending much hard-won credit to extract the rich lodes of minerals the tidal pressures and broiling temperatures brought to the surface.

The Ginnungagup, on the other hand, had found a nice cold planet in the outer fringes of the same system. Their planet’s temperatures were so low that water ice was as hard as steel. They too had spent a large fortune to develop the resources of “their” place and establish their own settlement.

The expenditures of both races on their respective planetary development had been small by galactic standards, where kindling of new stars was considered to be a minor, local construction project.

Soon after they had invested heavily they had both discovered, much to their surprise, their next-door neighbors. Not only that, but those neighbors had turned out to be hideous, horrible, ugly aliens who inhabited each other’s version of hell!

The situation was intolerable. A brief war ensued in which the Sutr and the Ginnungapup steered comets and various debris at each other, posted glims of ligitous (whatever the hell they were) with the region’s races, and blocked each other’s shipping routes.

The squabble had expanded to include a few nearby systems, with the Sutr and Ginnungagup fleets firing upon each other and attempting to deny the other any possible base of operations. This latter had a definite effect upon real estate values, which was not looked upon kindly by the indigenous races. Clearly, the dispute was in danger of coming into the awareness of the Court, a possibility that sent fear through every race in the area. On the brighter side, many of those races thought, perhaps one would destroy the other and end the matter gracefully and painlessly, as far as the rest were concerned.

In the end the court did intervene and a Dre’t, the court’s enforcer, was sent to pacify the disputants until the court could rule. Luckily significant numbers of both races survived the Dre’t’s intervention.

And damage to nearby systems was minimal.

The court promised that the case was going to get a speedy trial in light of the urgency of the matter. In fact, the court had graciously moved the date to the earliest spot on the docket—a mere four hundred Earth years hence! It was no wonder that the local races wanted a settlement.

Two forces made Sam’s mediation talent so valuable. The first was the Hegemony’s millennial court backlog, which averaged about seven solar centuries or so before the initiation of adjudication, and usually another five for the actual proceedings. The only thing that kept this backlog so short was the limited lifespans of most of the plaintiffs, which often resulted in evaporation of cases long before they ever reached the judges themselves. Rather than wait for the courts, some parties just wrote off their problems and went on with their situation as best they could. The concept of lawyers had been the one blessing that the rest of the Galaxy had been spared.

The other forces that made Sam’s arbitration talent so important was the fact that the court often found in favor of the Hegemony, meaning that both parties lost claim to the item under dispute—and had to pay enormous fees to boot! After all, twelve to fifteen centuries of court costs can add up even at low hourly rates.

And low hourly rates had never been approved by the court.

It didn’t take much convincing for the other races to agree on transporting a few members of both the Sutr and the Ginnungagup to a neutral system for a speedy Earth-mediated accord.

Nobody knew what the Sutr and the Ginnungagup thought about the matter.

As Ja’aar’aaa explained in an endless chirping monotony, the Ja’aar had no translation mechanisms in common with the Ginnungagup since they had never had trade links. “La-la-la, la-la-la,…” Ja’aar’aaa trilled in apology; “We have requested that an Imperial, another nearby race, deal with the translation. The Ginnungagup have had trade with them.”

But that wasn’t the only problem, Sam learned soon after the Imperial’s arrival. The Sutr had also been incommunicado since their arrival. Ja’aar’aaa hadn’t bothered to mention that the superheated beings could not communicate in any of the local modes. It appeared that they used plasma exchange as their communication medium, a feature that would incinerate anyone trying to use the standard translators. Sam began to understand why the galactics wanted a “neutral” meeting place; either planet would be intolerable to the other.

Sam patiently spoke to his supervisor over the ansible, explaining just why he needed a slight extension of time to settle this simple matter. He could see his profits shrinking and his hardships growing as her voice lost the merry humming overtones. “I’m sure that you will be certain to find a way to make a profit on this, won’t you?” she demanded with a small hint of menace in her chilly closing.

“Of course I will,” Sam replied. “Trust me.”

It turned out that a Rix engineering team just happened to be at a nearby system and could be diverted to help out, for a slight fee, as their leader Sslivira had chirped with enthusiasm in answer to Sam’s inquiry. They had considerable experience in dealing with extremely high-temperature environments and could easily construct an appropriate interface for the Sutr. Naturally, the Rix clicked over the ansible, they would have to cancel some very lucrative work to aid the effort, compensation that it was certain that the Earth-thing would willingly provide. With a groan at their quoted price Sam agreed to fund their assistance. They assured him that they would be there within the week.

The Rix proved equal to their promises and constructed the interface in short order. Four days after they finished Sam gathered the principals of the three races around him in the conference chamber, an opaline room of small dimensions near the center of the station. To his right was Ja’aar’aaa, perched on a small conference tee that brought its head level with Sam’s. Across the table, squatting on the floor so that its “head” was even with the others, was Sallow Yellow Orange, an Imperial. That delegate’s visual organ continually scanned the room as his communication organ blinked lazily in its listening mode.

On his left, and standing on the table, was Sslivira, the tiny Rix chief, its mouth parts moving continually as it chirped and mumbled to itself.

“All right, let’s go over the problem one more time,” Sam said to the members of the three races. He waited for the collection of translators before him to finish; “bum-da-bum-bum-da-dah, da-dah, clickety-clickety, click, click, click, blink, blink blinkedy blink.” Clearly he would be having a very hard time keeping up with the conversation if it got any more complicated, Sam thought as he waited for the devices to finish.

“Now, have we established the necessary links between the two parties so that I can begin the negotiations?” he asked with a short prayer under his breath.

“Blinkedy, blink, blink…” went the Imperial. “Unfortunate. We have difficulty with communication. Cannot understand meanings of the words from the Ginnungagup’s tank when they confer and discuss with me. Conceptual difficulties at high levels.”

“Perhaps it is a matter of cultural referents and not simply language,” Sam suggested. “We are all atmosphere-breathing, very two-dimensional creatures.” Ja’aar’aaa fluffed its feathers angrily as he continued; “and these Ginnungagup beings are clearly three-dimensional swimmers. Perhaps we need to bring in someone with similar characteristics?”

“Excellent suggestion,” Sallow Yellow Orange blinked. “I knew the Earth-thing’s genius would find the solution.” It rose on all six elephantine legs and shuffled from the room to find out where their group could obtain such a intermediary for the project. Somehow Sam knew that there would be a cost attached to whatever it came up with.

The Sutr were more of a problem. The creatures inside the hot box lived on the thermal boundary between plasma and gas. Sufficient organization existed in portions of the swirling interior that could be defined as individuals, although, on occasion, small portions of each would break away and be captured by another. Was this another means of communication, he wondered, and what would that method of communication mean in terms of concepts and world view? Could any beings use the exchange of portions of themselves to actually serve as an effective method of communication? With a shudder he recalled the feast of the Scrofulosians as they ate their chief negotiator at the end of each day to gain its knowledge and insights. He acknowledged the possibility.

“Click. Click-click, clickety…” Sslivira, the Rix cut in on Sam’s thoughts. “Every attempt on my part to converse has brought no reaction from the Sutr delegates. They have been unable to gain any sort of meaning from our attempts.” Its wing cases drooped despondently as it concluded. “Nor we from theirs.”

Sslivira agreed that communicating on the conceptual level might be a problem. “Have built a device to speak with them,” it clicked, “but cannot understand their language. Must find other translator.” After a few more moments of syncopated discussion Sslivira leaped off the table and skittered from the room to research possible races that just might have a language and concepts in common with the Sutr, and which might just be affordable, even with the normal Rix markup!

Sallow Yellow Orange arranged to divert a ship of Gamerians that was passing within a few light-years of Ja’aar to serve as possible intermediaries. The Gamerians were, he assured the growing negotiating team with a display of dazzling color, the huge and hairy inhabitants of an ocean world and would undoubtedly share many conceptual views with the Ginnungagups.

Sslivira meanwhile was still searching for some reference to creatures who might have a language in common with the Sutr. The best she could come up with were the Resnicca; gaseous windbags who eternally orbited Gruenbrgg, their primary.

“They spit at one another?” Sam’s translator clicked in amazement as she explained how they communicated.

The Rix spread her vestigial wings in reply, which meant yes. “Is termed venting. Necessity in near vacuums at outer fringes of their atmosphere.”

“How would the translator handle spitting?” Sam asked incredulously. “No, don’t tell me. I really don’t want to know!” He decided that he was definitely going to request still another extension from Ahbbbb no matter how mad it made her.

Still, the fact that these Resnicca also lived in a three-dimensional environment was an added plus. Perhaps that would allow them to even translate some of the Ginnungagup’s concepts more successfully.

Sslivira set her engineers to busily modifying the interface as Ja’aar’aaa arranged to bring the Resnicca from distant Gruenbrgg.

The Gamerians arrived in a ship so huge that it nearly matched the station in size. At the center of the ship was a vast globe of water, held in place by a skeleton of spars and arcs that glittered and glowed. “Field effects holds liquid in place,” Ja’aar’aaa warbled knowledgeably as it and Sam observed the ship’s stately docking. A day later Sam watched in amazement as one of the vaguely whale-like creatures gracefully manipulated its bulk along the liquid passage they had extruded to the face of the Ginnungagups’s tank.

Within moments of the Gamerian’s arrival the interface began to boom loudly. Immediately the Ginnungagups responded, sending wave after wave of pressure back toward the interface. The deck shuddered with the vibrations of the conversation as the dialogue went back and forth. “Hot damn,” shouted Sam, “Now we’re getting someplace!” It had been worth the month’s wait for the Garnerians to arrive. Maybe he could still bring this in on time after all.

“La-la-la, la-la-la, la-la-… Honored Ear’t, we have small problem,” were the first words that Ja’aaa’aaa brought to him the next morning.

“What do you mean?”

“Is Gar-ner-ans. Did not know that Rix was part of this. Sorry to be here, they are.”

Sam sighed “What’s the problem? They don’t even have to speak to the damned crickets, er, I mean Rix—Bum-da-BUM-da.”

“Is that they look so bad,” Ja’aar’aaa said plaintively. “They offend the purity of the world.”

Sam felt like screaming. “But the Gamerians are ocean dwellers! They aren’t even connected to the damn life support systems on this station, for Pete’s sake!”

Ja’aar’aaa drooped visibly. “Is wrong words? They ask if we do not smell the Rix so horrible?”

Sam was puzzled by the Ja’aar’s response. “How could they smell the—Wait a minute!” He thought that if the Gamerians communicated by sound, just as the Ginnungagup did, they would have a highly developed sonar sense. Sure, light wouldn’t penetrate very deeply into their atmosphere so they would use sound to both “see” and hear. Now, if they heard the Rix chirping wouldn’t they interpret it as a “visual” image?

“Tell the Rix to cut themselves out of the Gamerian’s translation circuit,” he directed. “Tell them that they will have to work through me.”

Ja’aar’aaa brightened visibly. “La—” it began.

“Just do it!” Sam yelled and covered his ears to block the song that was becoming all too familiar.

Ja’aar’aaa returned later that day with even worse news. “My attempts to bring the honored Resnicca to our humble station have not been exactly successful,” it chirped woefully. “There is no transport available to bring them the seventy light-years from their planet.”

“Then set up an ansible link!” Sam responded instantly, before thinking of what that would cost him. Clearly, with the Hegemony’s nearly instantaneous phloomb-based communications such a link was possible, but whether it could be used for continuous translation was a question that he’d never considered. The Ja’aar raced to do his bidding with Sam’s charge chip in hand.

“Are you sure that your interface can be hooked to an ansible?” his translator chirped plaintively to Sslivira later that day, hoping that the Rix and Ja’aar engineers were up to the effort. “Click, clickety, click, da-da-da, da-da-da” the two agreed: “It is possible.”

He had time later to wonder what in the world the interface at Gruenbrgg would be like. Maybe, he thought with a shudder, he’d rather not know.

Sam fumed as the days dragged on. All of this damned positioning and increase in team size was eating up his profit as well as ruining his disposition. To make matters worse, he still couldn’t use the Ja’aar toilet in his suite, luxurious though it might be. Ever since he had arrived he’d had to use the transit facilities in the nearest common chamber, which was damned inconvenient, not to mention crowded with other inconvenienced aliens. His periodic trips to the facility must have been confusing to the Ja’aar, who could easily conclude that humans had some very strange social habits to go with their weird appearance. He occasionally considered asking Rix engineers to construct a human toilet for him without letting his hosts know, but dismissed the idea since he was sure that he would be around that much longer.

Then again, maybe he should reconsider.

The Ja’aar engineers grew an insulating shell about the Sutr’s habitat and brought the temperature nearby down below the boiling point. Within this shell the Rix team had placed a confusing array of lights, pipes, tubes, and other apparatus that Sam couldn’t hope to describe adequately. A small furnace and smelter appeared to be hooked up to a thick torus that was pressed tightly against a wall festooned with a variety of various sized tanks and containers.

“Is analyzer and fabricator,” explained Sslivira in her rhythmic clicking speech. “We capture, we analyze, we transmit. The Resnicca’s exhalations return and we blend the response from the supply attached. Awkward, but possible to work.”

Maybe it would and maybe it wouldn’t, Sam thought as he sketched out the tortuous chain of translation that would take place with each bit of dialogue: To speak to the Ginnungagup he had to first translate his speech into Glax, by now almost a second language for him, so that the translator would work—humans didn’t comprise enough of a population to make it worthwhile programming their languages into it. The translator would convert his Glax to the blinking lights that Sallow Yellow Orange could understand. The Imperial would then somehow transmit(?) its version to the Gamerians who, after consultation on the meaning, would boom their understanding of the transaction through the interface of the Ginnungagup. A response would follow the same tortuous chain back to him, with Sallow Yellow Orange and the Gamerian trying to figure out what had been said and how to translate that into something that the tiny human brain could grasp.

How in the hell had he expected this to work? It had proven to be like those old games of his youth where you would whisper a story to the person beside you and have that person pass it on. By the time it went through four or five parties the story would have changed beyond belief. If the same principle applied here then what hope did he have of achieving understanding between the two? Where the story passers at least had common language and culture, this cobbled-up arrangement had none.

Sam recalled their first attempt at a dialogue. “What are your objectives?” he had said in Glax so that the translator could turn it into clicks and blinks. After that he watched in wonder as Sslivira and Sallow Yellow Orange started to work on their sides of the path. His translator gave him some hint of each interface as the two consulted with their conceptual helpers.

According to his translator the Im-pedal had flashed to the Gamerian “[?]… spectrum of… [?]… with brilliance… [?]” The Gamerian pondered these words for a moment and boomed a reply at a frequency just far enough below Sam’s level of hearing to give him an enormous headache. Several more interchanges of confusing dialogue took place before the Gamerian finally activated the interface and boomed out something to the Ginnungagup that rattled everything in the station.

Moments passed before the thundering reply began, which the Garnerians immediately rephrased for the Imperial who had turned to Sam and blinked sadly, “Cows are wettest in the Spring tides.”

He shuddered when he thought of what had come from the other side where gasbags and plasmas engaged in a long-range spitting contest. Their nonsensical reply had been etched into his mind. “Sweet rides the death of flavor.”

From such modest beginnings grew a dialogue that, despite massive nonsense and setbacks, occasionally began to make some sense. They had, for example, established identification of each other’s names and Sam’s role in the matter.

There it seemed to stop for days on end as the giants boomed and shook the station with their exchange and the spitting, fuming cage flashed and sent out blasts of heat. It appeared that anything beyond very basic exchanges of facts between the two races quickly grew into a mass of misunderstandings and miscommunica-tions. It was almost as if some unseen force was bent on frustrating and confounding the efforts of one poor human negotiator to wring an agreement from the pair.

Needless to say, Ahbbbb was growing very displeased with his progress.

A week later, and considerably further into his profit margin, Sam was even more frustrated. After the latest blast of the toms into the chamber as a result of a Resnicca exhalation light-years away, the Sutr glittered briefly as bits and pieces were thrown back and forth among themselves. From their reply to his latest query he could tell that Lattice 5^12, the leader of the Sutr, wasn’t able to understand the concept of compromise. From what he understood of what Lattice 5^12 was saying, the hateful aliens could not be trusted to keep any agreement. “Cold without salt,” was the metaphorical translation. A promise from the Ginnungagup to schlep around the outer fringes while the Sutr basked in the photosphere of the sun mattered little to them.

Nor had Sloosh, that frozen blimp who represented the Ginnungagup, seemed to grasp the idea of sharing the system with the Sutr. “Holding the warmth of my God,” he had boomed through the translation chain in a surprising burst of near clarity that startled Sam and gave fragile rise to hope that there had been a communications breakthrough of some sort.

That clear statement at least made some sort of sense; implying that the cold creatures had a religion. Only later did he come to realize that it was not a Ginnungagup translation at all. It had been the intermediary Gameri-an’s request to be excused to go to the (bathroom?).

Sam wondered for the hundredth time in as many days what he had gotten himself into. It was starting to appear as if even the extension grudgingly won from his supervisor wouldn’t give him enough time to complete this assignment. “Why the hell can’t we find some basis for a dialogue?” he clicked, chirped, and flashed to his multiracial helpers.

The flashing, clicking, chirping response was almost too much for his tiny translation machine to handle, but the sum of their statements ran like this. “Conveying information is more than simply ensuring that the words are correctly spoken. It is also necessary that the proper concepts be conveyed by those words.”

“Apparently neither of the parties have any metaphors in common,” blinked the closing phrase from Sallow Yellow Orange.

Sam considered this with some skepticism. Every civilized life form had the same six basic needs: nourishment, protection, reproduction capability, socialization, acquisitive greed, and a trip to Disneyland on Earth. In every dispute he had ever mediated one of those had been the basis for achieving agreement between something entirely new in the Universe, he should be able to find the common ground for agreement in at least one of these areas.

But which one would it be? Habitat was out, as was nourishment, for anything that the Ginnungagup could eat would be destroyed by the temperatures of the Sutr’s environment. Likewise nothing the Sutr ate (absorbed?) would be recognizable to a Ginnungagup. It was entirely logical to him that the two could share the system without ever impacting on each other. The inner planet had an orbit that carried it practically through the photosphere of the sun and baked its residents at temperatures where even basalt flowed like water. He tried to picture Lattice 5^12 and his buddies going to the edge of a sea of boiling iron, spreading out their plasmoid blankets and getting a nice rosy glow to the plasma shell when the temperatures were right. Could be a great market for sunscreen, he guessed. But, of course, it would have to have an SPF of forty billion or more, he mused.

The choices left to him were sex, socialization, greed and The Trip. Briefly he thought of the flaming embrace that would ensue should sex or dancing be attempted between the two and then dismissed it. Sex was out, which left only three choices.

Of course the big Gee was the thing on which they disagreed, at least the Sutr disagreed; the Ginnungagup were more agreeable, or so he suspected from what he could make of their oblique communiques.

So the basis for compromise lay with socialization. Somehow he must establish a bond between them, a reason for cooperating and sharing the system.

“I think I have something,” he clicked to Sslivira. “Ask them what is the most valuable aspect of their society.” If nothing else the question should establish some benchmarks for their social values.

The Rix wiggled its wing cases in a pleasure movement at finally having something meaningful to do, even if it didn’t understand the relevance to this issue. She clicked excitedly at the link to the distant Resnicca. Sam’s translator could pick up a few fragments of what she was saying, “…Hold above the sun… holding… the essence…” Although the words made some sort of weird sense he could not grasp the concepts implied within. A gas-filled bag, floating in space around a gas giant couldn’t possibly have any artifacts save its own skin. Clearly the Rix was converting his inquiry to something the Resnicca could grasp.

Presently a whisper of a sigh returned over the link and the Rix brightened considerably. It activated the array that had been set up within the Sutr’s environment and watched as the oven and torus pulsed a glittering stream of ionization at Lattice 5^12.

Some sort of response must have been affected, for the Sutr began sparkling and shining among themselves as if someone had turned on the dance lights in a darkened ballroom. The analyzer spun into activity as a reply was formulated back to Gruenbrgg and the waiting Resnicca. A few moments later there was a burst from the ansible and Sslivira brightened. Turning to Sam she clicked the translation; “Brightness falls short of the just. Bring a spectacle to the party.”

The Ginnungagup’s answer was more direct. “Soft music in the [?].”

After another week of probing exchanges Sam had learned more about the mating and procreational habits of the Ginnungagup than he knew about his own species. Meaningful information regarding the matter at hand was severely lacking, however, as was progress in getting them to state basis for settlement. There seemed no arrangement of trade or commerce that was acceptable to them. It seemed that they could not “deal with the devil.” That last translation was the best Sam could understand it.

The Sutr were similarly forthright. Their preferences for feeding were explored in exquisite detail. Sam recalled the four-hour session where they learned the seven hundred nuances of a mercury mist, the twelve hundred distinct flavors of monatomic hydrogen-with, and the degrees of basting required to extract the maximum pleasure from gaseous carbon. They, too, refused to consider any sort of compromise or interface with their unspeakable hideous and untrustworthy neighbors.

None of which helped him in the slightest. It looked like the court was going to be their only chance, which meant that bonus, profit, bottle, and blonde were all equally unobtainable.

Ja’aar’aaa hopped into Sam’s suite excitedly, chirping its song so rapidly that Sam didn’t recognize it until he had the translator firmly in place. “La-la-la, la-la-la,” it said; “Great news, Ear’tman, one of your kind will coming to us for help!”

“Another human?” Sam asked as he rubbed sleep from his eyes.

“Yes, yes. One of the Ear’t kind coming to help. She arrive tomorrow.”

Sam’s heart raced as he considered the news. It had been years since he’d seen another human that wasn’t one of his illusions. “Wait a minute,” he said as he suddenly realized the full force of Ja’aar’aaa’s words. “Did you say ‘she’ is coming?”

The bird-like head nodded vigorously in a very human fashion. LA-LA-LA; “Yes. She, indeed. Have seen pictures of human female. Most certain a she person!”

Visions of feminine beauty filled Sam’s mind. Would she be a brunette, dark and sultry? Or a redhead, all fire and storm? Or (oh hope springs eternal) was it possible that she could be (please, please) a… a… a blonde?

He leaped up and looked at his face in the mirror, wondering if he should shave off the beard or leave it on. Maybe a haircut would help reduce the gray a little. And he’d have to find some better clothing, maybe even some that was clean. Wouldn’t want to look like some slovenly Earthman gone to seed in the hinterlands, would he? No, he had to make a decent impression. He started whistling to himself as he laid out the plans for entertaining his guest—by God, another human! At last!

“Her name,” chirped Ja’aar’aaa gleefully, happy that the Ear’t negotiator appeared to be so overjoyed at its news, “is Ahbbbb.”

Sam’s Pequodista supervisor perched on the edge of the table. Only a muddleheaded, birdbrained, alien idiot would mistake the rippled, ridged, and gray-skinned Peq for a human, Sam thought as he stared at Ahbbbb’s alien form. Nor had any human in memory ever had the bladders she’d inflated on the sides of her neck.

The writhing mass of worm-like appendages on her head strummed those air-filled bladders as she hummed to Sam. “Hmmmmmmm mmmmmm mmhmmmmhh muuuu-ummmmmmmph, hHrummmmh?” which translated as “What the hell have you been doing with our money all this time, Sam?”

Sam stood his ground and answered her. “There have been some difficulties with the translations,” he said, wondering why she had bothered to personally come all of this way to investigate a relatively minor matter. “Hmmmmm mm dhmmmmmr—However, we are making progress.”

-The Pequodista glared at Sam with her three compound eyes. “I do not consider the expense of five races, an open ansible link to Gruenbrgg, and the cost of your luxurious personal quarters trivial. Already this project, not to mention my involvement, has eaten up nearly all of your share of the profits.”

As Sam mulled over her strange business math she continued, “Now I am fed up with these delays. I want this matter closed within a fortnight. Ahmmmmm fhmmmm yhmmmmm! Do you understand?”

“Ahmmm,” Sam replied, seeing the blonde and the bottle disappear like Ginnungagups trying to tryst with the Sutr.

“Remember,” Ahbbbb hummed as she walked out of the chamber toward her suite. “Two weeks: No more!” Hmmmmmt, hmmmm. Nhmmmm!

“Pleasant being, I think?” twittered Ja’aar’aaa as the hatch swung shut behind her. “Not nasty as you told us.”

“Yesss,” clicked Sslivira. “Most gracious to give you so much leeway.”

“Do you want me to find out when the next ship leaves?” blinked the dour Sallow Yellow Orange.

One week into the deadline and Sam was no closer to the heart of the matter than he had been before. No matter how he phrased it neither of the races seemed to trust the other to keep any agreement that they might make. How could two star-faring races be so obtuse when it came to a simple matter of understanding that they had no basis whatsoever for conflict; no reason for their silly war? How could the matter of simple possession of a system be so important that it overlooked the facts of each race’s differing environmental needs? Was their stupid alien symbolism sp important that it overrode all other considerations? How was he expected to find the middle ground on which the two could agree?

He stopped cold. What was that thought? “Middle ground?” Something was suddenly making itself felt among the few remaining cells on his overworked brain. Maybe how had never been the question; perhaps the real question he should have been asking himself was why!

And once he knew what the question must be the rest fell immediately into place.

“Bum-da-bum-bum-da-dah, da-dah, clickety click clickety click click, orange, green, green, blue, purple, white—Yahoo!” he yelled and leaped from his perch onto the table. Sslivira dodged away from his dancing feet and scurried to the opposite end.

“Listen to me,” Sam said to the astounded aliens, who must have thought that he had taken leave of his senses. “I know what we have to say to them!”

Hours later the team was in place with all three of the team members looking expectantly in his direction. Even Ahbbbb had come to the chamber to see what her agent had up his sleeve.

Sam looked around to make sure that everything was in order; this was no time for a screw-up. He cleared his throat and spoke very softly into the translator, pausing periodically for the clicking, chirping, flashing machine to finish before he continued. A further pause was required while he waited for the long translation path to be completed through the Gamerians and the Resnicca to the waiting Ginnungagup and the Sutr. It was an arduous and exhausting way to work but it had to be done precisely if he was to have any chance of success.

“On the shore is a rock,” he began. “When the tide is in, the ocean possesses the rock and holds it dear.” He paused as the translation proceeded. The Sutr, if his guess was right, would conceive of the sea as the sun that blasted their world’s surface with its blazing photosphere. The analog of the tide would be that world’s periodic bath in the fiery heat.

At the same time he hoped that the Ginnungagup’s world had a shore and a primary that gave some semblance of tides. Certainly they had some sort of periodic ebb and flow that would make the metaphor work. The last rattling bellow from the Gamerian translator finished just as the torus over at the Sutr habitat stopped its spurting.

“But when the tide goes out,” he continued, “the land owns the rock and does as it will with it.” He waited until the tortuous translation of the replies finished.

“We understand,” was the reply. Actually the words were more like, “The taste is pleasant,” and “We share a womb,” respectively. Sam waited a long while to give them time to consider his words.

“Mhmmmm! Hhhmmmhm mmh! Well, dummy, finish the story!” Ahbbbb drummed with impatience.

Sam looked at her and smiled. “It will cost you,” he said slyly as the translator hummed away.

Ahbbbb turned an even darker shade of gray. “All right,” she said finally. “Even share of the profits!”

“Excellent offer,” Sam responded and turned to his team. “Now translate this as precisely as you can,” he instructed, and waited while the three prepared their links. Ahbbbb fidgeted even more as a menacing hum began to build from her bladders.

“There is no rock!” he declared simply.

Pandemonium reigned as the translation rocked along the line, with each translator instantly understanding the metaphor in their own environment. The thundering from the large container and the sparkling and glistening inside the smaller one showed that his point had been scored. The responses came back quickly. “A bland taste is none,” the Sutr acknowledged. “The cow is absent,” the other boomed.

They would ignore each other’s existence. The dispute was over.

Ahbbbb drummed her bladders in satisfaction as she waited with Sam by the embarkation chamber for their respective transports to arrive. “Hhmmm, mmmmhm, mummmm. A most salutary solution to the problem posed by the aliens. You are well worth the outrageous sums we demand, Sam. I am continually amazed at how you manage to win success from absolute failure and cheat me of my profits.”

Sam scuffled his feet in embarrassment. Since the final breakthrough he had been subjected to a constant barrage of congratulations from every alien within the station: The Ja’aar turned their backs on him whenever he passed as a gesture of respect and trust; Sallow Yellow Orange flashed a blinding litany of praise; and even reticent Sslivira clicked a constant cacophony of respect.

It was nice to be appreciated, but what he really longed for was some distance from these ubiquitous alien presences. He longed for the company of his own kind—even if they were illusions. Not to put too fine a point on it, but even Ahbbbb was starting to look pretty good to him after all of these other exotic forms.

“But what made you think of it?” she hummed. “How did you grasp on the precise metaphor that they would both understand?”

“Oh,” Sam said with a hint of modesty. “Let’s just say that it was a littoral translation.”

“I still don’t understand why you felt that you had to come out here to deal with me directly,” Sam hummed to Ahbbbb. “An ansible link would have been a lot cheaper, and you wouldn’t have to lose so much time from the office.”

Ahbbbb’s bladders fluttered with embarrassment as her appendages drummed out a stuttering reply. “This was not the reason I had for coming here. There is a problem that needs your special attention.” She paused for a moment. “I needed to come out here to finalize the matter. It is the biggest commission we’ve ever seen; far larger than you can imagine. It is such an honor for you to be selected, not to mention costing me a fortune in bribes and contributions. And all you have to do is accompany the ship to help them with whatever they may encounter.”

Sam whistled when he heard the outrageous sum she mentioned. “So where is it I have to go this time?” he asked. “The other side of the Galaxy?”

Ahbbbb’s bladders fluttered nervously as she drummed her reply. “Not the other side of our Galaxy, Sam.” Pause. “This is a local trip.”

“I insist on decent accommodations,” Sam declared, trying to keep himself from getting screwed this time around. He wanted to prevent her from booking him on some cheap liner for a long trip as punishment for tricking her out of “her” rightful take of the profits.

Yeah, and he didn’t want to wait until he returned to see any of his share. “Cash advance as well?” he insisted arid smiled when she agreed readily, counting out the credits from her pouch into his sweating hands. This was more cash than he had ever seen before. He stuffed it into his pockets before it vanished. Maybe things were starting to turn around.

The ship she had arranged for him was a monster, far larger than anything he had ever seen before. He was astounded by the accommodations of his quarters once he was aboard. Not only was there a decent Earth toilet and bed, but a full complement of liquor and delicacies that he had not seen in years.

“I… trust… that… every… thing… is… agreeable?” the slow-moving, vaguely reptilian steward groaned slowly through its blow-hole. Sam had unpacked his bag and settled on the soft bed in the time the alien took to state the brief sentence. If that was the speed of speech for the crew this would be a long trip, no matter how “local” Ahbbbb said that it was.

“Yes, is fine,” he responded with a smile and opened his star guide while the translator ever so slowly croaked out his words to the waiting steward. In the distance he heard the great hatches close to signal their departure. But Sam didn’t care. He had finally gotten the best of Ahbbbb. There was no way she was going to screw him this time. This was one fine suite indeed.

Now, he wondered as he turned the pages of the guide, where the hell was this Andromeda place, anyway?

Content

Sam Boone and the Thermal Couple
by Bud Sparhawk