Translator

I hold up a finger. He returns the gesture.

I grab my duct-taped laptops and launch the waveform-analysis software on one and Excel on the other. I press them against the tunnel wall and secure them there with tape.

I pull the Popsicle-stick numbers off the divider wall. They’re as good a place to start as any. I hold up the “I” and point to it. “One,” I say. “One.”

I point to my mouth, then back to the Eridian number. “One.” Then I point to Rocky.

He points to the “I” and says “♪.”

I pause the waveform analyzer and scroll back a few seconds. “There we go…” Rocky’s word for “one” is just two notes played at the same time. There are a bunch of harmonics and resonances in there, too, but the main frequency peaks are just two notes.

I type “one” into the spreadsheet on the other computer and note the relevant frequencies.

“Okay…” I return to the divider and hold up the “V” symbol. “Two,” I say.

“♪,” he says. Another one-syllable word. The oldest words in a language are usually the shortest.

This time, it’s a chord made of four distinct notes. I enter “two” and record the frequencies for that word.

He starts to get excited. I think he knows what I’m up to and it’s got him happy.

I hold up the “λ” and before I can even speak, he points to it and says, “♫♪.”

Excellent. Our first two-syllable word. I have to scroll back and forth a bit in the waveform data to get the chords right. The first syllable has just two notes and the second has five! Rocky can make at least five different notes at the same time. He must have multiple sets of vocal cords or something. Well, he has five arms and five hands. So why not five sets of vocal cords?

I don’t see a mouth anywhere. The notes are just coming from somewhere inside him. When I first heard him speak, I thought it sounded like whale song. That may have been more accurate than I thought. Whales sound like they do because they move air back and forth across their vocal cords without expelling it. Rocky may be doing the same thing.

Tap-tap-tap-tap!

“What?” I look back at him.

He points to the “λ” symbol still in my hand and then to me. Then back to the “λ” and back to me. He’s almost frantic about it.

“Oh, sorry,” I say. I hold the digit up properly and say, “Three.”

He does jazz hands. I throw some jazz hands back.

Huh. While we’re on the subject…

I stand still for a moment so he’ll know there was a break in the conversation. Then I do jazz hands and say, “Yes.”

I repeat the gesture. “Yes.”

He does it back to me and says, “♫♩.”

I note and record the frequencies in my laptop.

“Okay, we have ‘yes’ in our vocabulary now,” I say.

Tap-tap-tap.

I look over. Once he knows he has my attention, he does jazz hands again and says, “♫♩.” Same chord as before.

“Yes,” I say. “We covered this.”

He holds up a finger for a moment. Then he balls two of his fists and taps them together. “♪♪.”

…What?

“Ohhh,” I say. I’m a teacher. What would I teach someone who just learned the word ‘yes’?

“That’s ‘no.’ ”

At least I hope so.

I ball my fists and tap them together. “No.”

“♫♩,” he says. I check the laptop. He just said yes.

Wait. Does that mean it’s not no? Is that another yes? Now I’m confused.

“No?” I ask

“No,” he says in Eridian.

“So, ‘yes’?”

“No, yes.”

“Yes?”

“No. No.”

“Yes, yes?”

“No!” He balls a fist at me, clearly frustrated.

Enough of this interspecies Abbott and Costello routine. I hold up a finger.

He unballs his fist and returns the gesture.

I enter the frequencies for what I think is “no” into my spreadsheet. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong and we’ll work it out later.

I hold up the “+” symbol. “Four.”

He holds up three fingers on one hand, and one finger on another. “♩♩.”

I make note of the frequencies.

—

For the next several hours, we expand our shared vocabulary to several thousand words. Language is kind of an exponential system. The more words you know, the easier it is to describe new ones.

Communication is hampered by my slow and clumsy system for listening to Rocky. I check the frequencies he emits with one laptop, then look them up in my spreadsheet on the other laptop. It’s not a great system. I’ve had enough.

I excuse myself for an hour to write some software. I’m not a computer expert, but I know some rudimentary programming. I write a program to take the audio-analysis software’s output and look up the words in my table. It’s barely even a program—more of a script. It’s not efficient at all, but computers are fast.

Fortunately, Rocky speaks with musical chords. While it’s very difficult to make a computer turn human speech into text, it’s very easy to make a computer identify musical notes and find them in a table.

From that point on, my laptop screen shows me the English translation of what Rocky is saying in real-time. When a new word comes up, I enter it into my database and the computer knows it from then on.

Rocky, meanwhile, doesn’t use any system to record what I’m saying or doing. No computer, no writing implement, no microphone. Nothing. He just pays attention. And as far as I can tell, he remembers everything I told him. Every word. Even if I only told it to him once several hours earlier. If only my students were that attentive!

I suspect Eridians have much better memory than humans.

Broadly speaking, the human brain is a collection of software hacks compiled into a single, somehow-functional unit. Each “feature” was added as a random mutation that solved some specific problem to increase our odds of survival.

In short, the human brain is a mess. Everything about evolution is messy. So, I assume Eridians are also a mess of random mutations. But whatever led to their brains being how they are, it gave them what we humans would call “photographic memory.”

It’s probably even more complicated than that. Humans have a whole chunk of our brains dedicated to sight, and it even has its own memory cache. Maybe Eridians are just really good at remembering sounds. After all, it’s their primary sense.

I know it’s too early, but I can’t wait any longer. I get a vial of Astrophage from the lab supplies and bring it to the tunnel. I hold it up. “Astrophage,” I say.

Rocky’s entire posture changes. He hunkers his carapace a little lower. He tightens his claws a bit on the bars he uses to keep in place. “♫♪♫,” he says, his voice more quiet than usual.

I check the computer. It’s not a word I’ve recorded yet. It must be his word for Astrophage. I note it in the database.

I point to the vial. “Astrophage on my star. Bad.”

“♫♩♪♫ ♫♪♫♩ ♫♪♫,” Rocky says.

The computer translates: Astrophage on me star. Bad bad bad.

Okay! Theory confirmed. He’s here for the same reason I am. I want to ask so many more questions. But we just don’t have the words. It’s infuriating!

“♫♫ ♫♩♪♪♫ ♫♪♫,” Rocky says.

My computer pops up the text: You come from where, question?

Rocky has picked up the basic word ordering of English. I think he realized early on that I can’t automatically remember stuff, so he works with my system rather than trying to teach me his. I probably seem pretty stupid, honestly. But some of his own grammar sneaks in once in a while. He always ends a question with the word “question.”

“No understand,” I say.

“You star is what name, question?”

“Oh!” I say. He wants the name of my star. “Sol. My star is called ‘Sol.’ ”

“Understand. Eridian name for you star is ♫♪♫♪♩♩.”

I note down the new word. That’s Rocky’s word for “Sol.” Unlike two humans fumbling to communicate, Rocky and I can’t even pronounce each other’s proper nouns.

“My name for your star is ‘Eridani,’ ” I say. Technically we call it “40 Eridani,” but I decide to keep it simple.

“Eridian name for my star is ♫♩♪♪♪.”

I add the word to the dictionary. “Understand.”

“Good.”

I don’t have to read the computer screen for that particular translation. I’ve started to recognize some of the more frequent words like “you,” “me,” “good,” “bad,” et cetera. I’ve never been artistic and I’m about as far from having a musical ear as anyone can be. But after you hear a chord a hundred times, you tend to remember it.

I check my watch—yes, I have a watch now. The stopwatch has a clock feature. It took me a while to notice. I had other things on my mind.

We’ve been at it all day and I’m exhausted. Do Eridians even know what sleep is? I guess it’s time to find out.

“Human bodies must sleep. Sleep is this.” I curl up into a ball and close my eyes in an overdramatic representation of sleep. I make a fake snoring sound because I’m a bad actor.

I return to normal and point to his clock. “Humans sleep for twenty-nine thousand seconds.”

Along with perfect memory, Eridians are extremely good at math. At least, Rocky is. As we worked our way through scientific units, it became immediately apparent that he can convert from his units to mine in the blink of an eye. And he has no problem understanding base ten.

***

Chapter 12