Canticle Blue

23. Signals

As the rest of the group prepared to return to the city, Tor called Havilan back to the Lillith to ask about a symbol on a control pad above the piloting area. "I know this isn't a word, but we were wondering if you might have some idea of what it means."

After studying the pad and its surroundings, he answered, "I would say it's a symbol for 'Speak.'" He added, with a quizzical smile, "I'm not sure to what."

"Okay; thanks, Havilan. We thought that might be the case. I'm going to see if I can catch Shei on the radio while she's still in the upper part of the city." He chuckled. "I guess I'll just talk to the whole panel."

Shei was just leaving the fourth terrace when she was shocked to hear Tor's voice coming from, not one, but both of the airships on pallets.

"Shei, if you can hear this, please respond with your hand-set."

For a moment she didn't know whether to laugh or faint. Intrigued and amused, she answered, "So, you decided to press the button, did you? That's the best act of voice-throwing I've ever heard. At the moment I can't get into either ship. but I can hear your words pretty clearly—albeit with a slight echo."

He replied, "That's great to hear...no pun intended!"

Then she asked, "What are you using for a microphone?"

"I think the square plate near the control pad doubles as a microphone and
speaker. I'm going to try it one more time before heading back."

After a short wait, she responded. "I didn't hear anything that time, Tor."

He called her back on his hand-set, "Okay, I was curious about that. The 'speak' pad toggles the radio off and on. Once on, it's voice activated. See you in a few minutes, then."

When Havilan reached the city, he joined several other team members in the Book Room to discuss a Per'sa document that Grahmen Ravi was piecing together.  As he passed around the first translated pages, Havilan told them, "So, I think we have a good rendering of the title now. It is, as strange as it may seem, 'Inanimate Life.' At first Grahmen thought the treatise was a spiritual text, but its subtitle translates as 'Possible Indications of Awareness and Volition In Matter.' It's quite lengthy and will take some time to fully translate. Cian and I have already studied parts of it."

Cian elaborated. "Much of what we've seen so far describes physics experiments that show responses by sub-atomic particles to changes in their environments which shouldn't effect them. I've seen a few experiments of this type at the Institute. We didn't get as far as what this document seems to show. But we did see indications of what looked like awareness. It was as if the particles knew they were being observed and tried to give us the outcome we were looking for.

"Annibet and I have been studying the newest translations. It looks like the Per'sa were trying to integrate these behaviors into quantum-level software platforms."

The evening meeting was more of a conversation. Shei and Tor did most of the talking. Shei directed most of her ideas at Geddes and Syl, but they were intended for everyone. "I think we could use the Lillith as a sky-crane to lift rocks from the craters. The airships were probably intended to be able to handle that sort of thing anyway. Tor thinks a sheet-metal scoop he found in a warehouse complex might have been used to fill the smaller craters in the first place. Three mooring lines would be used to suspend it. Two would be fixed length, and the winch line would be the third. We could start with the elevator platform, if you guys decide to try it."

Geddes replied, "I certainly like the idea, but I wouldn't want anyone standing on top of the platform the way it is now."

Shei answered, "We could run safety lines from the ship to anyone standing on top of the platform, in case it gave way."

Syl asked, "I'm no expert, but how would you handle the buoyancy changes?"

Shei smiled. "You guys would have be our ballast again. That would be the quickest way. We would need volunteers who like to take short rides in airships. Then we could use the engines to 'hop' from one place to another."

Syl raised her hand and said, "I volunteer, but I don't think my weight would do much to hold the ship down. Maybe I could just stay onboard the whole time."

Geddes quipped, "We could fill your canteen with ice tea so you wouldn't get dehydrated up there."

Shei said, "Well, the human ballast thing wouldn't work quite that way. You're going to have to leave the ship from time to time. But you can still take your tea with you."

Tor wanted to talk about the airship radios. "As you know by now, all three airships have working radios. I had previously mentioned the low frequencies or harmonics associated with the Canticle Blue phenomenon, and I'm pretty sure that is what the ships use. Compared to the energy radiated as light, the lower frequencies would probably be a lot weaker. But they still must be adequate."

Syl asked, "Will we be able to hear the ships on our hand-sets?"

"I doubt it," he answered. "But that could work to our advantage in the long run. To the extent that we want to keep what we've found secret—and hopefully the Bryn will see a need for that too—these could be secure transmissions."

Cian spoke briefly, "We're hoping to find out tomorrow. I'm going to stand near the ships on the terrace, and Shei is going to call me from the Lillith. I'll be scanning with my hand-set to see if it picks up anything. If it does, I can at least find the frequency. If I can't, we should have test equipment that can give us a look at the waveform."

Geddes closed with, "I seem to say the same thing every night, but I always mean it. Thank you all for your hard work today. We now have an airship and, in terms of possibilities for future exploration, a means to much more. We will be working on Shei's sky-crane idea in the days ahead. In the meantime, she and Tor will be taking practice flights in the Lillith and will be glad to carry passengers."