Caretaker Read online

  When the door to the cooling room slid soundlessly open, all Ethan could see of Kaia was her legs. The rest of her was inside the silver paneling about halfway up the wall. He cleared his throat.

  “Good morning, sleepyhead,” she said without coming out. Her voice sounded more melodic than he remembered it.

  “Up early burrowing in the walls, eh?” He leaned against the panel she was in.

  “Just checking out the cooling system. Having the stasis fluid at the proper temperature is fairly important to our passengers.”

  At that, Ethan remembered her story about the Persephone. He felt a pang of anxiety as Aria’s sleeping form flashed through his mind. “Is everything okay?”

  “Everything looks great,” she replied. “Back on Earth, though, we were having some trouble with these bearings. They would wear unevenly and cause fluid to leak from the cooling system, which would then result in the system overheating . . .” her voice trailed off, and she sat up, pulling her shoulders and head out of the wall. “It looks like we solved it, though. I see no evidence of wear.”

  She sat in the wall, smiling and dangling her feet. She had a smudge of grease on her left cheekbone. Ethan couldn’t help but think she looked childlike.

  “So,” she said, “Ready for another engineering lesson?”

  He looked at her with mock seriousness. “I’m telling you again: I failed physics.”

  She sighed and shook her head. “I’ll try to make it simple. Come here.” She waved him over as she leaned back inside the wall. “Look up there. See those tanks? That’s where the stasis fluid started out when it was first pumped onto the ship in the docking station back on Earth.”

  Ethan looked up and tried to focus. He spent the next hour leaning beside her into the wall, asking questions about what he saw there. Then they moved out of the wall and started on the equipment in the cooling room itself.

  * * *

  As they found their way back to the hold that evening, Kaia said, “Well, you know what I do. Tell me about this dead alien language you know so much about.”

  “Xardn?” Ethan shrugged. “What would you like to know? Etymology? Vocabulary? History?”

  “Yes.” Kaia smiled up at him.

  He was still adjusting to his responsibility to respond to her facial expressions. He had gone so long without any reason to communicate that way. But this time he remembered and smiled back.

  He thought about Xardn, his life’s work. “Well, let’s start with a little history. We know that there is life out there, but it’s mostly beyond our reach. We have bits and pieces of civilizations: a few tools found on Zenepha, some symbols scratched into the rocks of Thelonius, an object here, a painting there, enough to know something about the others who are out there. But we had never found anything significant until about fifty years ago, when we were looking for planets to colonize, and something led a simple cartographer—Zhang Hai—into a cave on a planet called HD 126c where he made the most important linguistic discovery since the Rosetta Stone. The entire cave was filled with records chronicling the rise and fall of the Klaryt civilization. From those records, we were able to decipher Xardn.

  “We found that it’s historically written and spoken in the Circinus galaxy. As the primary inhabitants of that galaxy, the Klaryt civilization, colonized other galaxies, Xardn grew in use. It became the intergalactic language of commerce, science, religion, and academia. This went on until the Klaryt empire became too huge to control anymore. It fragmented, and Xardn was incorporated into local, cultural languages. We recognize it in the bits of other languages we have, like Trapzn, Ikastn, Chardch—”

  He glanced up, suddenly aware that he was getting too technical. “Anyway, many alien languages come from Xardn, and we’ve connected it to most of the fragments of alien languages we’ve discovered. However, the records detailed that after the fall of the Klaryts to the Aolians, Xardn fell into disfavor. The Aolians were a brutal race and punished severely anyone foolish enough to use Xardn. That, it is speculated, is when the spoken language died.”

  She was nodding, taking in the information hungrily.

  “We don’t really know how it was spoken, though we have guessed at it. The real study lies in the written language. That’s all we really have to go on.”

  “Show me,” she said as they reached the door to the hold. “Say something in Xardn.”

  Ethan smiled. “Mnradak.”

  Her eyes shone. “I like the way it sounds. What does it mean?”

  “It means the generic object. Something. You asked me to say ‘something’ in Xardn.”

  She swatted him playfully on the arm. “You knew what I meant!”

  “Okay, how about this: grnathrak minscn scth?” He raised his eyebrows expectantly.

  “It’s a question? You want me to respond?”

  “Yes or no.”

  “Well, I have no idea what you said! Maybe you’re asking if I want to run around the ship five times! How do I know what to answer?”

  “I asked if you’re hungry.”

  “Then the answer is yes.”

  “No,” he said, “the answer is rnmak. Rnmak is the positive reply.”

  “Rnmak? Are you making all this up? That sounds weird.”

  “I told you that the spoken language is just our best guess. I could only vouch for anything I wrote to you.”

  “Well, then, write “yes” and I’ll see if it looks like rnmak to me.”

  “It won’t.”

  “Let’s just see.”

  Ethan rolled his eyes, something he hadn’t done in a long time. He stood and walked to the shelves where he kept the few things that were important to him and retrieved a leather-bound book and a brown case a little smaller than the journal. He returned to the couch, and then opened the book to a blank page. Next, he opened the case, revealing his glyphtol, the instrument he used to write Xardn. It was not much larger than a pen, fitted with a series of interlocking wheels. He slid his fingers down the center shaft. It was made with smooth wood and shining metal and had the precision of a surgical tool and the style of a fine musical instrument. He squinted at the small dials near the top of the glyphtol, set them to particular numbers, and then scrawled:

  Kaia looked at him. “Are you kidding?” she asked. “That looks nothing like re—ran— whatever you said 'yes' was.”

  “I told you it wouldn’t. You just had to see for yourself.” Ethan liked the feeling of knowing something she didn’t.

  “Alright. Let’s pretend that that circle does mean yes. How do you get that pronunciation from it?”

  “Good question. The symbol is like our letters. There is nothing about the word ‘chair’ that looks like a chair. We just accept that those symbols stand for the objects and concepts in our world. As for pronunciation, we could go into the whole system, or I could just tell you that we have extrapolated the pronunciation of each symbol from the various pieces of Circinic languages. Based on the remnants of Xardn left in those languages, we can guess at how these things were originally pronounced. But nobody claims that we’re absolutely sure.”

  Kaia looked thoughtful. “So do the symbols correlate to our letters?”

  “More to our words. Yes, no, names of animals, people, gods, places, emotions, experiences. They seem to have corresponding symbols. Up until recently, Xenolinguists have spent most of their time cataloguing the words we can decipher from the texts we’ve found. But that’s mostly done now.” It felt wonderful to talk about his work again. “The exciting thing about studying Xardn right now is that the real discoveries have yet to be made.”

  “What was your research?” she asked.

  Ethan brightened. “Well,” he said, “when my project got shut down I was just about to reveal that I’ve discovered patterns in the language that everyone has insisted was completely random.”

  “Wow,” she said. “What kind of patterns?”

  “Visual patterns—patterns you can see and use to categorize Xardn symb
ols into the basic parts of language: nouns, verbs, adjectives, all those.”

  “And no one has seen these patterns yet?”

  “They’ve had their hands full with translation.” He sketched another symbol.

  “What’s that?” She leaned close to him and ran a finger lightly over the curves on the paper.

  “It’s the symbol for water. Pop quiz: what part of speech is the word ‘water’?”

  “A . . . noun?”

  Ethan nodded. “It’s a trick question, really, because in our language it can be either a noun or a verb. But in Xardn it’s only a noun, and this is the noun: water.” He tapped the symbol. “And I’ve discovered that nouns in Xardn have certain characteristics in common.”

  “What are they? So I can tell when I see a noun.”

  “Nouns have cusps or curves on the outside edge instead of a perfect circle. They’re made with multiple rotations of the glyphtol, so you see lots of lines instead of just a few, and they are symmetrical across the y axis.”

  Kaia was nodding. “Okay. I can see two of those. I’m still a little unclear on the rotations.”

  Ethan sketched again.

  “Here’s a comparison. This is ‘brave.’ It’s created exactly like ‘water,’ but only a single rotation of the glyphtol. See the difference?”

  Kaia’s eyes were shining. “I do!” She looked at the page again. “So, what does a sentence look like?”

  “That’s a little trickier.” Ethan sketched again:

  Kaia watched the wheels turn as he spun the instrument to inscribe the paper with symbols.

  He looked at her. “Any guesses?”

  “Well, that one looks kind of like yes, but not really.”

  “Let’s start with the important stuff.” Ethan traced the first symbol. “This is the pronoun used for anyone that is not the self: ‘you,’ essentially.” He skipped the second symbol and his finger moved to the third. “This is ‘eat’ or ‘ate’ or ‘will eat’ depending on the time marker—-we’ll get to that in a minute.” He touched the symbol below it. “This is the symbol for the self: 'me' or 'I.' And that time marker I told you about? This one—” he pointed to the last symbol on the second line. “This one happens to be “now.” So, can you translate it?”

  “You’re going to eat me now?” Kaia said doubtfully. “That does sound like an alien language.”

  Ethan laughed. “Oh, yeah. Prepositions. This symbol,” he pointed to the symbol he had skipped, “is the preposition ‘with’. ‘You with me.’”

  Her eyes lit up. “Oh. Okay, then.” She traced the symbols as she spoke: “Will you . . . eat . . . WITH me now?” She immediately looked at him for confirmation. He smiled.

  “Perfect! And you even got the interrogative form! Nicely done! Literally, it says: ‘You with me eat now?’ In translation, I’d probably say, ‘Will you have dinner with me?'“

  “Absolutely.” Kaia said. Ethan set the glyphtol back in its case and offered her his hand. Though he didn’t want to, he let go once she was on her feet.

  “That’s amazing!” she said as they crossed the hold. “What’s for dinner?”

  “Whatever the materializer can whip up,” he said.

  She grimaced. “You can’t keep calling it that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it sounds dumb. It’s like calling a refrigerator a ‘coldifier.’ That’s just a made-up word. The 3000 is an Atomic Assembly Unit.”

  “Now, see, that’s why nobody can talk to you people.”

  “Us people?” She looked at him with raised eyebrows.

  “Engineers, tech people in general. You use so much jargon that your language becomes impractical. Nobody is going to walk into an electronics hub and say, ‘Pardon me, but do you have the latest Universal Electronics Atomic Assembly Unit?’ No couch potato husband is going to call out, ‘Hey Baby Doll, grab me a cold one from the Atomic Assembly Unit.’ No child is going to gaze up at his mommy and say, ‘I wan’ a tweet fum da Atomic Assembly Unit.’ No—”

  “Okay, you can call it whatever you want! Just stop giving me examples!”

  “But do you see my point? It’s an impractical name. It’s too long and too technical for everyday communication. You can’t tell me that when you were assembling the ship you said, “I need to order an—”

  “I said no more examples!” She threw her hands over her ears and started to hum.

  Ethan couldn’t help but grin. “Okay. No more examples.” He pretended to zip his mouth.

  They stood staring at each other. Slowly, she lowered her hands. “Can we eat now?”

  Ethan gestured at his mouth, mumbled, and then threw his hands up.

  “Oh, that’s right. The linguist’s lips are zipped.” She considered a moment. “This could be nice. A little peace and quiet in the hold for a change . . .”

  “Mmree mmrrmrng,” he said.

  “And maybe if you weren’t always talking, you would learn a thing or two as well. Like the fact that ‘we people’ already thought of the little linguistic problem that you were so concerned about, and we shortened the name ourselves. In the trade we call it an AAU. So there. Short, succinct, descriptive, and intelligent-sounding.”

  “Mmmnhnmgnt hmng,” he repeated.

  “So there. Maybe I’ll just leave your lips zipped.” She looked up at him with a hint of a smile. “But, then again . . . the computer isn’t that fun to talk to . . . and I don’t know all I want to know about this Xardn business . . . and he does occasionally make a good point. I guess I’ll unzip his lips and see if he can keep his engineer-bashing under control.”

  She leaned close to him, reached up, and drew her fingers across his lips. At her touch, his smile froze and the playfulness disappeared from his eyes. Her touch was like fire. Her fingertips lingered at the corner of his mouth for a heartbeat, two, before she pulled her hand back and turned toward the AAU.

  Her voice was shaky when she said, “Computer, preprogrammed meal seventeen.” A tray appeared. On it was a juicy hamburger, fries, and a chocolate shake.

  Ethan was jarred out of his frozen state. “What? Preprogrammed meals? I had no idea! I’ve been spending five minutes every meal explaining to the computer what I want, how much of it, how I want it cooked! How many are there?”

  Kaia spoke over her shoulder. “About 6,000.”

  “6,000? I could have eaten a different meal every time and not gone through them all!”

  “Some of them you wouldn’t like much.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Like what?”

  “Hmmm. Like meal number forty six thirty: Supu. It’s a Tanzanian dish—like a stew—made with goat lungs, heart, and liver and cow stomach, intestines, and tongue. If you’re really lucky, you might also get some of the goat heads, cow hooves, and cow tails in your bowl.” She couldn’t help but shoot a wrinkle-nosed face at him.

  “Why don’t they just say goat and cow stew? It sounds like all the parts are in there.”

  “All but the meat.”

  “Okay. You’re right. I wouldn’t like that much. How do you know it’s number? Have you requested it often?”

  “We had to read through them all. The really weird ones kind of stick with you.”

  “What else?”

  “I”m not going over every disgusting dish in the galaxy. Especially right now, when I’m starving and my burger’s getting cold.”

  “Okay. But we’re revisiting this topic.” Ethan stepped up to the AAU. “Is there a preprogrammed number for a shrimp dinner?”

  “Sixty-three. It comes with—”

  “No, don’t tell me! After five years, I could use a surprise. Computer, preprogrammed meal sixty-three.” Ethan grinned as a tray appeared with coconut shrimp, scampi, butterflied shrimp, broccoli, garlic mashed potatoes, and cola on it. “Fantastic!”

  They sat on the couch, trays on the low chest in front of them, and ate in silence for a few minutes. He wondered if he’d ever get used to sharing a meal with someone again.
The comfort of it always surprised him.

  He glanced up at Kaia, wondering if she’d been as shaken as he a moment ago. He spoke to chase the thought from his mind: “So, what else could I have this AAU whip up?”

  “Anything you like.”

  “Really? Anything? Like new clothes?” He was a bit tired of the caretaker’s uniforms, all a little too big, that he’d been wearing.

  She laughed. “No, not anything. I should have said, anything you want to eat.”

  He was a bit disappointed. “Just food?”

  “Hey, that’s quite an amazing feat: just food. Do you have any idea how complex it is to reassemble organic material?”

  “No. But I have some idea of how complex it is to not make you mad.”

  She glared at him and then caved into a smile. “I’m not mad.”

  “I know. But you sure are fun to tease.”

  “That’s what David used to say, too.” Her eyes dropped and she pushed some food around on her plate.

  Ethan looked at her. “How are you doing, Kaia?”

  “I’m fine.” She sounded stronger than her face looked. “I’m fine. It’s fine. It’s not like he’s really gone.”

  Ethan shot her a puzzled look.

  “Well, you know.” Her cheeks colored slightly. “I was thinking, there could be a way, maybe, if his system was just shocked by the aneurysm, maybe you thought he was dead, but he wasn’t really. Maybe he’s in a kind of stasis . . .”

  Ethan swallowed hard, all the flavor gone from his meal. Her irrationality surprised him.

  She rushed on. “It’s okay. We can talk about it later. I just was thinking about it.”

  Chapter 6

  Kaia had been awake for ten days, and they were now up to the second deck. This was where the engines were, and the days passed with amazing speed as Kaia explained the engines, the artificial gravity system, and how the Castovian uranium that powered the ship eliminated the need for huge fuel tanks. In the evenings, they sat on the wide couch in the Caretaker’s hold and studied Xardn. He had explained most of the basics of grammar and she could recognize about fifteen symbols.