Canticle Blue

65. Missives

After the meeting, the translation team had a list of questions for Mr. Erenn. Havilan and Grahmen were extremely tired, but were almost too excited to notice. Since they wanted to continue communications, they agreed to work together on messages for two hours. After that, one of them would sleep while the other continued. With no need for sleep, Ip's translation skills and cultural knowledge would be invaluable. All correspondence to and from the Per'sa would also be sent to the C-link at Nantis. After a series of personal introductions, Havilan sent the first message.

Havilan: We are very grateful to you for responding. We have one damaged ship and have lost a cargo module, but temporary repairs are nearly complete as I write.

Our people live in a floating colony above Nantis. We came to search for your signal, but had no idea you were Per'sa. Please excuse any mishandling of your language in these messages, especially if any of them will be audio. We have a translation team here, but, under the circumstances, we are beginners. From our perspective, Per'sa is a dormant language, and we have little knowledge of vocalizations.

Amdahl: Thank you for your interest in preserving our language. We anticipated some of the difficulties. Our first ship to arrive there will have an extensive lexicon of our current language compared to earlier forms and to other common languages on Havel. It will also include vocalizations, including examples of spoken sentences.

Since I seem to be the only "ambassador" the Per'sa have ever had, I am a beginner too.

Grahmen: Besides Havilan and myself, the other member of our translation team is Ip. She is an exotic-matter entity of a type called the Middi and will probably be the first one in our group to attempt modern Per'sa speech. Other Middi with us have also expressed interest in your language. We certainly look forward to meeting you and to the arrival of your lexicon.

Amdahl: I hope it won't disturb you to know that we are aware of your colony, your previous stewardship of Per'sa Island, your salvage of the Terreska, and even the Middi. If you like, I will be glad to explain. But, I want to assure you that the gathering of this knowledge was not the result of mistrust, at least not of your people.

Havilan: Do you still live within the solar system? It's no longer possible to live on Havel, of course.

Amdahl: Yes and no. We still have a few scientific outposts in remote areas of the system, like this region of cometary bodies. But the vast majority of our people now live, as you do, suspended above a planet. In our case, it is adrift in interstellar space. One of our earliest manned spacecraft found it while we were still living on Per'sa Island, and the crew half-jokingly called it "Shoriel," after one of them remarked, "Well, this is a lonely place, but God is here too."

Grahmen: There were quite a few things left behind on Per'sa Island. We recovered everything we could and brought it to Nantis.

Havilan: Including windows and doors...

Amdahl: Your remarks have sparked considerable excitement among the historians on this ship! I think you may have to elect a spokesman to talk to them. There is still much that is unknown about the time when the island was abandoned. The thing is—and you may not know this—the island was honeycombed with tunnels and chambers at one time. Much of what was in them was moved to Shoriel as it was being built, and then their entrances were sealed. The city, craters, and waterwheel chamber were all that remained. A time came when there would be no freighter spacecraft available for a long while. So the craters and some of the tunnels were filled in.

We have only a few accounts of why the "End-stone" was started; and we can only speculate about why it stopped. We know that the crew of a small spacecraft had been left behind to watch the island. As they were listening to mainland radio traffic one night, they intercepted a very strong radio transmission, as if someone else were on the island. Possibly the atmospheric conditions were just right for that sort of thing. The content of the message was such that they panicked, started the stone, and fled the island. The drilling was supposed to initiate a lava-flow that would seal the northwest access to the city—the process had already been used to close other tunnels. Later observations of the island seemed to confirm that this had happened. Reportedly, there was much more steam rising from the central island and the sea access point.

Havilan: The waterwheel was damaged when we found it. Pieces of it had fallen into the channel, and our way was blocked by steam. We will have images of the wheel and the End-Stone to share with you.

The supply ship will be here soon. How do we dock with it?

Also, our Middi pilot, Pa'Keh wants me to tell you that his ship, the Castel is not really an ice maker. He wanted to avoid confusion when your ship arrives. We never imagined that we would have to make such a distinction.

Amdahl: I wish you could know how hard I'm laughing right now. Please tell Pa'Keh thank you for the 'clarification.'

If you have docking lights around your main airlock, simply turn them on. The supply ship will do the rest. Also, feel free to make use of the ship, even to take it back to Nantis, if you like. Its piloting features are very intuitive, if you choose not to use the automated modes. There are also tutorials aboard.

Grahmen: Can you tell us anything about the galactic projection displayed earlier?

Amdahl: It's not really a projection, but not a galaxy either, of course. It would be easier to show it to you than to explain it. But it is the "sky" over the floating cities of Shoriel.

Havilan: We saw a "blue ghost" more than once on the island...

Amdahl: My late brother would have been so amused to hear it called that. He created it.