The Void Princess 12: Here and Now

We have one way communication; they can show us shapes. But to establish a common language, we need to be able to talk back.

I flash Laika the concept of soul transmission. The way we talk to them, pushing thoughts at them. I can’t turn it on and off fast enough, but can you make binary code with it?

Slow, he says. Possible.

So you can tell them what we call these shapes?

Mmm. Morse code. He sends me the handful of Morse emergency codes I know. I can spell the words.

I don’t think it’s worth the time and effort to teach them our language and spelling system.

No need. To them, it’s a flash pattern. They don’t need to know the letters first. Word-as-picture.

That’s a fair point. The aliens had seemed to know what I was doing last time I touched the wall, so I climb onto Laika’s head and let him lift me up to the images. I plant a palm against the person outline. Okay. Tell them ‘human’.

Human? Or Shana? Or Princess? Or space suit?

Huh. Fantastic question. Human, for now. If there are misunderstandings, it’s probably easier to specify later than to generalise.

Laika obligingly spells out ‘human’ in Morse code, using big, clumsy thrusts of his raw soul. He moves his head so that I can touch the dragon, and have him spell out’ dragon’. Then, we move on to the alien. I press my hand to the image, and pause.

What do we call our new friends?

‘Aliens’ is vague. ‘Venusians’ is probably inaccurate; nothing about this environment is similar to the rest of Venus, they’re probably from somewhere else, like us. ‘Starfish aliens’ is too unwieldy, and carries the potential for offence; we know nothing of these peoples’ culture and they might not appreciate being compared to animals.

The aliens seem to take our hesitation as a question, and send out a quick pattern of short and long signals, just like Laika has been doing. It’s not Morse code, obviously, but if you throw out a random dot-dash pattern, you’re going to make some letters by accident. I query Laika to learn that they’ve spelled SVI. Not sure how we’re going to pronounce that, but sure.

Human, dragon, svi. That… about covers the things that we can easily get across. Now what? Three nouns isn’t going to get us ‘we come in peace, please don’t kill us, we’re just trying to get home’.

Then the cavern, quite suddenly, goes dark. And countless pinpricks of light litter the dome around us. They stay for several seconds, revolving slowly around us, new dots appearing at ground level on one side and disappearing on the other. Then they vanish, and are replaced by a new configuration. Then those vanish, and are replaced by a third – or perhaps the first one again?

They make no sense to me. What?

Oh! Laika darts forward and touches an apparently random point of light with his tail, broadcasting the pattern they gave us. SVI.

The svi flash agreement and send, humandragon. And I realise that I recognise this dot pattern. It’s the stars, revolving slowly to cover a full spherical view on the hemispherical dome.

Are they asking where we’re from? I ask.

Yes! They showed a star view from svi space. Now they ask where humans and dragons are from.

Well, that’s going to be a bit hard to communicate. The sun isn’t part of the display; it would only obscure the view of the other stars. The svi don’t seem to have accounted for the possibility of this being our home system. I suppose they have a lot of faith in our ability to travel. I pace a bit and try touching the ground, but they don’t respond to this. I don’t know how well they can even see me, in the middle of the dome. How do we make them show us the sun on the display? Can you get them to display things from their home system again?

Laika flashes uncertainty at me. He taps their star a couple more times. svi.

They flash agreement and ask once again, humandragon.

He taps the star again. Finally, they seem to get what we want and change the display. Laika immediately heads for another star (the sun, I have to assume, from the point of view of the svi’s home planet) and taps it. Human. Dragon.

The svi do not flash agreement. There’s a pause. Then the map disappears and the cavern lights up again while they seem to have a conversation.

Dots reappear in a new pattern. From another point of view in the universe, I have to assume. One of them begins to strobe, and the svi say, svi.

Then another strobes, and they say, svihumandragon.

Oh! Laika, we can get some useful words out of this! Let’s teach them ‘from’ and ‘go to’. I rush over to touch their home star, and Laika says, svi from. I drag a finger across the wall of the cavern as I head for our star, and Laika says, svi go. I tap our star, and Laika says, svi go to. Then I tap our star again, and Laika says, human from. Another tap. Dragon from.

The maps disappear again for another conversation, longer this time. I don’t know enough about the svi to even guess what the political implications of what we’ve just told them might be. How territorial are they? Is it a big problem that they’ve stumbled into our home system? It very well might be.

Maybe they’ll help us go home, and then leave themselves, and there’ll be no more problems ever. But that would really be a pity. To discover aliens actually exist, and then have them leave forever.

They display something new – a large circle at the very top of the dome, with various rings around it, spreading out and down the sides until the last ring is almost at the floor. I try to puzzle out what exactly this is supposed to be.

The second ring pulses briefly with light. Humandragonsvi go to. The light stops. Humandragon from.

Okay, so we’re currently on the second ring, meaning… oh! I reach up, and Laika lowers his head to lift me to the third ring, which I assume to be Earth’s orbit. (Technically nobody except a halfkind would claim to be from Earth, but we have to start somewhere.) Human from, Laika says. Dragon from.

Okay, this is going to be unnecessarily confusing without place names. After a brief discussion with Laika, I tap the line again. Earth, Laika says. I stretch out and tap the Venus line. Venus. And just for good measure, since they’re from another star, I tap the big circle in the middle. Sol.

Now this part. This might be tricky. But if we’re not willing to risk come confusion, we’ll never get anywhere.

Laika says, while I trace my hand between the rings as appropriate. Human dragon from Earth. Human dragon go. Human dragon go to Venus. Svi on Venus. Human dragon on Venus.

Silence. Light rippling between layers of crystal in rapid svi discussion. After some time, with a hesitance between pulses that I choose to interpret as caution, they say, human on dragon.

Yes! I’m on Laika’s head! Laika indicates approval.

I get off Laika’s head, and walk across the room.

Human from dragon. Human go.

That’s right! Laika indicates approval, and then walks over to me. I climb back onto his head.

The response is immediate this time. Dragon go to human. Human on dragon.

They have it!

Svi go to Venus, the svi say. Svi on Venus, svi on Venus, svi on Venus, human dragon on Venus, human dragon on svi.

Okay, so… lots of them were here? Or some of them, but here for a long time? And then we showed up ‘on svi’ – in their territory? Or do they just mean me and Laika, here right now in their cavern? Either way, it doesn’t tell us a huge amount we couldn’t have inferred for ourselves. To make any progress, we’re going to need some way to convey intentionality, to separate what we want to do or intend to do from what we have done. At the very least, we need to be able to convey that gearing up Laika’s engines wasn’t some kind of attack, but an attempt to leave. We need to be able to convey that we’re stuck.

And, I think as I look about this cave, whether they’re staying here on purpose or whether they, too, are stuck.

It’s time for a little play acting.

After a brief discussion with Laika, I climb down again and the two of us position ourselves close to the cavern wall. I’m not sure how well the svi can perceive things at a distance and don’t want to take chances.

Human want go, Laika says. I turn and walk away from him. Human go. Then I come back and lay down so that he can pin me to the ground with one huge claw. Human want go. I do my best to move away from him, but can’t make any headway. Human not go, he explains, using the established disapproval/negative signal to indicate ‘not’.

I’m a little nervous about this one. Even if the svi can correctly perceive what’s going on and make enough sense of our body language to understand what we’re trying to show, there are dozens of ways in which it can be misinterpreted. But trying to establish any useful level of communication will take risk.

There’s another pause.

Want, the svi say, with a strange sort of signal on the end.

Laika indicates approval.

Want, they repeat, with that signal again. Then they show the picture of my silhouette, give the signal, and say Human. They show Laika’s silhouette, give the signal, and say Dragon. They show their diagram of the solar system, say From and add the signal at the end, then light up Earth’s orbit ring.

Oh! They’re asking for more information! They’re establishing a marker to tell a question from a statement! Yes, that’s going to be incredibly useful! We have a question mark. I’ve never been so happy to have failed to portray a concept.

Unfortunately, neither of us have any idea how to answer them.

We repeat the pantomime, this time with Laika holding my arm with his tail instead of pinning me to the ground, in case they can interpret that better. It doesn’t help.

We are not qualified for this job.

I wish we had help, I grumble to Laika.

We get help, he says, like it’s obvious, and flashes me a picture of the little human settlement we’d just been in. Oh, right! Them!

Next question: will the svi let us leave?

I climb into Laika.

Human dragon want go to humanhumanhuman, Laika tries. Human dragon go?

This one’s a little tricky, because the way in which Laika’s using our new question mark, as a request, is different to the way that the svi were using it, as an interrogative. We have no guarantee that they would interpret it as the same; they could very well just assume we had misunderstood their usage of it and we could end up even more confused than we started. Also, we’ve just established that they didn’t understand ‘want’. Either this will result in better communication, or much worse.

But whether they understand the words or just extrapolate the obvious from me climbing into Laika and heading for the airlock, they do let us out.

“You have got to be fucking shitting me,” Ereniv says when we explain the situation. “Aliens are trapping us down here? Fucking aliens?”

“I don’t think they’re doing it on purpose,” I say. “They seemed surprised that we were sapient. We’ve established very, very basic communication, a handful of words, but not really enough to work with.”

“So now we have to convince a bunch of aliens that their machinery is fucking with our machinery and not letting our dragon leave. And get them to switch off whatever they’re doing long enough for you guys to get into space so you can go for help. Is that about it?”

“It’s more complicated than that,” Flora says. “We’re not going to be able to hide their presence from humanity at large. If we just leave, some corporation looking for Maxwell crystals is going to find them and fuck things up. Maybe get them hurt or killed, maybe start some war with what is apparently an interstellar empire, so I don’t see humanity coming out of that particularly well. We’re going to need to negotiate more than our own rescue here.”

“Flora,” Ereniv says, “if you’re going to tell me that the fate of humanity relies on our ragtag team of idiots who weren’t even smart enough to turn down this contract – ”

“It probably doesn’t. There’s a good chance that humanity will take alien contact really seriously. But… it might.”

“The first thing we need to do,” I say, “is establish proper communication. Nobody will be able to do anything if we can’t talk to each other.”

So me, Flora, and Erenev suit up, pack into Laika’s tiny cockpit, and head back to the svi cave.

While the newcomers inspect the cave and the svi with fascination, I take the opportunity to distinguish species from personal names, indicating each of us in turn while Laika gives both species and name. The svi seem to accept this concept with no difficulty, which makes sense; given that they seem to communicate through the Maxwell crystals, establishing personal identity with a label is probably really important. Presumably things would get confusing if they didn’t know who was saying what. Some of them introduce themselves in turn, and I don’t even try to keep track of which pattern of pulses indicates which identical-looking alien. That can be Laika’s job.

With Flora and Ereniv’s help, and making use of our incredibly useful new question mark, we quickly manage to braden our shared vocabulary. We teach the svi the names for various body parts and learn their names of theirs in return (not because it’s particularly useful, but it’s an easy place to establish patterns that can be used to verify more complex concepts), cover several new verbs, establish terms for past, present and future, and with several more actors do manage to clarify the concept of intention as opposed to action.

Svi go to Venus, the svi explain. Svi want from Venus. Svi not [unknown pattern] human dragon. Human dragon want from Venus?

Is it just me, or are there more svi in the room now? They move around the dome, clustering in areas near us. I’m not really sure how to interpret that behaviour, but it makes sense that it’s an important question. They’re establishing that they came here to colonise Venus, and asking if we want the same.

I trust Laika to remember the unknown word, and together we formulate a response. Human dragon want go to Earth. Svi want from Venus past? Svi want from Venus present? Now that they know about us, do they still want to colonise Venus?

Human dragon want from?

What does that mean, in context? We just told them we want to go home. Human dragon want go to Earth. Human dragon want not on Venus.

Human dragon want from Earth? Human dragon want from Venus?

Human dragon want from Earth. Human dragon not want from Venus. Svi want from Venus present future?

Some internal svi discussion, before the response. Svi want from Venus past. Present future svi want? Svi want from.

Okay, that grammar’s not particularly clear.

Svi yes svi no svi want yes no.

Ah, they’re conflicted. Learning that you’re stepping into someone else’s solar system probably does that.

Svi want from, svi from Venus future. Svi want go, svi from Venus future. Svi want yes no svi [untranslateable pattern].

Hmm. Okay. Communicating with barely coherent nonhumans is my speciality. I can do this. Let’s try adding some more words. We need something to help us work with logic.

With four of us to pantomime and a wealth of body part names at our disposal, it’s easy to establish ‘and’ and ‘or’. ‘If’ and ‘then’ are trickier, but we manage it making use of some simple ‘go to’ activities. We establish words for numbers, which is so easy it really should’ve been one of the first things we did, and ask the svi what the fuck they’re talking about.

If svi want from Venus future, then svi from Venus future, svi not go. If svi not want from Venus future, then svi from Venus future, svi not go.

Ah. It’s not up to them. Maybe they’re under orders from someone who sent them here. Or maybe, like us, they’re stuck.

Still, there is one important point that we actually do need to clarify. Svi want Venus home?

Svi need [unknown pattern].

It’s the same one that they used before. This time, they try to explain.

Past svi not [unknown pattern] human dragon. Then Shana Laika go to svi. Present svi [unknown pattern] human dragon face foot eye if then one two three. Future svi [unknown pattern] things things things.

Hmm. I have Laika send our interrogative signal.

Shana not [unknown pattern] hli. They put a silhouette of something up on the wall of the dome; it looks like a tree, perhaps. Hli. The picture glows briefly to indicate that it’s definitely what they’re talking about. Hli. The picture disappears. Shana [unknown pattern] hli. Shana past not [unknown pattern] hli Shana present [unknown pattern] hli Shana future [unknown pattern] hli.

I don’t know what they… oh! Know! It’s a term for know or understand! They haven’t decided if they want to stay on Venus because they don’t have enough information, and the question is irrelevant anyway since they can’t leave.

Okay. This, we can work with.

Past human dragon know svi on Venus? They ask.

No, Laika tells them. We didn’t know they were here. Earth human dragon not know. Only Laika and human on Venus know.

That’s something I’d have preferred not to make explicit, personally (it makes me feel a bit like an underling in a drama confronting my evil boss about her crimes only for her to ask me “have you told anyone else about this?”), but ah well. It’s not like we could realistically keep it a secret. Our communication limitations are pretty easy to infer at this point.

Earth human dragon want Venus human dragon from Venus? The svi ask.

No. Human dragon know Venus, Venus change (we haven’t shared the word ‘change’ yet, hopefully they can infer it from context), then human dragon not know Venus. Human dragon want know Venus, go to Venus. Then know svi.

The svi discuss this among themselves for a bit. Then, Laika Flora Ereniv from Earth?

Yes. Laika Shana Flora Ereniv from Earth.

No. The response is immediate, almost before Laika finishes broadcasting. Shana from Laika.

I find myself blushing, while Laika immediately broadcasts assent. There’s an undercut of pride in his soul as he says, Princess. Princess human from dragon. Shana princess.

Shana princess from Laika.

Yes.

Flora Ereniv from dragon?

No.

“How the fuck did they know I was a Princess?” I ask. “They can’t understand our souls.”

“Maybe they looked at you for two seconds?” Ereniv suggests. “Compared to us, the way you are with Laika is pretty obvious.”

“I think that’s a bit of an exaggera – ”

“You move like you’re two parts of the same person,” Flora says. “And Ereniv and I don’t.”

Svi want know Earth princess, the svi say. If Earth princess then yes from Venus or no from Venus.

“They want to talk to the Queen Magistrate of Earth?” Flora frowns. “Earth doesn’t have one. The halfkind own Earth.”

“I think,” I say, “that they want to talk to someone with the authority for territory negotiation. Their culture seems heavily territory-based, so far as I can tell from this.” I might be wrong, of course – we are discussing a topic where territory is important. Maybe svi who hadn’t stumbled into aliens when setting up a colony don’t care much about territory, for all I know.

Earth princess future go to Venus know svi, the svi suggest.

Well, that’s not happening, and not only because that position doesn’t exist. But humanity would absolutely send diplomats. I can see it now – an embassy on Venus, built with the help of Maxwell crystals with all the facilities for long-term living. The svi have something extremely valuable; Maxwell crystal tech. Not to mention that they’re, oh yeah, an entire alien species! Provided we can get this information to the right people, in the right way so that nobody fucks everything up for money or personal power…

Earth princess talk Abi.

Abi is one of the svi names we were given earlier. Their leader, perhaps? Or a professional diplomat, possibly.

Abi princessnotprincess, the svi explain.

Laika sends the interrogative.

If svi from Venus, Abi princess from Venus. Then human dragon. Svi not from Venus. No princess. If svi from Venus future then Abi future princess from Venus.

Aha. They are indeed very territory-focused. Authority based on territorial control, it seems; the question of the ownership of Venus is bringing their whole power structure into question.

Or possibly I’m misunderstanding. I’m trying to communicate with aliens with just a handful of words. There’s going to be errors and false assumptions.

Abi princessnotprincess, the svi explain. Abi princess from zeronotzero.

They want Abi to act with the authority of their leader but their system has no official authority for a leader with no territory. I think. A Queen Magistrate with no city, a Princess with no dragon. Until we trade ownership of a planet well outside human territory in exchange for technology that will revolutionise our engineering in every field.

I’m grinning so hard my cheeks hurt. Alright, Abi the Princess of Nothing And Not Nothing. Let’s change everything.

——————-

“And that’s pretty much it,” I explain to Tascia as she looks over my equipment list. “I stuck around for a couple more months to help refine the language and see the start of the embassy built. Obviously our main priority was getting the svi airborne; they were physically stuck on the planet, it turns out, and were living in their spaceship broken beyond repair. With their materials and the scientists’ knowledge of human tech, we copied Laika’s core setup and Laika and I didn’t leave until we knew that Belka and Strelka were spaceworthy. The scientists stayed behind to work on the embassy and get as much mutual cultural education done as they could, so by the time Laika and I get this news to Ilya, they should have a lot of information for the diplomats that get sent to work with. Some of them wanted to come home but there weren’t enough food stockpiles to send multiple people, and anyway, Belka and Strelka are needed where they are.”

“You’re taking this information to your sister? Isn’t she just starting her career?”

“Yeah, it’s only been a few years. But she’s someone I trust completely. The wrong sort of people got to Laika when he was being repaired on Minotaur; I don’t know who we can trust or how to bring this information to the right people. Ilya will.”

“And you’re telling me?”

“Yeah, of course I trust you.”

“Why are you telling me?”

I sigh. “Because, and I really do hate to put this on you, someone needs to know. If Laika and Ilya and I disappear – and I don’t think we will, I really don’t, but this isn’t something we can take any chances with – someone needs to make sure that the right people are informed before the wrong people fuck it up. If I don’t make it, then eventually the scientists will broadcast a message and return themselves, when they have the food and dragons to do it, but there’s a lot of things that can go wrong in the meantime. And all of my usual contacts are on the other side of Earth. You and Ilya are all I have here.”

“You’re asking a lot of me, Shana.”

“There’s a really high chance that I’m asking nothing of you at all. Except possibly a discount on the parts for the enviro system?”

She laughs. “Absolutely not.”

“It was worth a try.”

“I have all these in stock, I can grab them right now.”

“Great. I need to get back to my dragon. He’s liable to cause serious damage if I leave him alone for too long.”

Laika is waiting for me in the den, lying flat against the floor, eyes closed. He opens one to look at me as I approach, and I brace against the dizzying sensation of his field of view pouring into my mind as data that I can’t really interpret. The year together on the homeward journey has certainly done nothing to help with the soul bleed.

You’re ruining our party, he tells me balefully.

I roll my eyes. How’s our princess of nothing?

Having a nice conversation, Until you interrupted.

I climb into the cockpit. There’s something I hadn’t told Tascia, a little detail left out of the end of the story. When we’d gotten across the concept of a diplomat to the svi, they’d been very resistant to it. Apparently they wanted leaders to speak directly to each other, and if ours wouldn’t come to Venus, well then.

We weren’t just carrying information that could change humanity. We were speeding up the process. Safely sealed in one of Laika’s carefully hidden, scan-proof smuggling compartments, surrounded by the scientific marvel of Maxwell crystals, was Abi, Princess of the void, ready to negotiate immediately for svi ownership of Venus as soon as we got in contact with someone with enough authority. There could be no corporate race, no engineer sneaking in to cripple Laika this time. All we had to do was get Abi to Ilya alive.

Do we go now? Abi asks through the Maxwell crystal network as I climb in. Our communication has improved significantly too, after a year with little to do but talk to each other.

Yes. We go now. I have a lot of work to do installing the new enviro system, but I can do it in flight, and I don’t want to spend any more time in population centres than we strictly have to, not with so volatile a secret aboard. I strap into the pilot’s chair and feel Laika’s legs push, his wings spread, and we push away from Pegasus and back towards home, towards Minotaur. Towards my favourite city in all of colonised space.

But is it home?

I was born there, of course. But most of my familiar haunts are further out on the edge, and nowhere is as familiar or comfortable to me as Laika’s cockpit. And Laika thinks of Venus as his home, a place I don’t think we’ll ever return to, so I guess he doesn’t have a home, either. And Abi, in its svi way, won’t consider Venus its home until reaching a settlement with humanity, since its our native system, and won’t consider its authority official without a home, but needs to use that authority to make it happen. A leader of zeronotzero. Everything and nothing. At least the svi have a solid location to call their own; all they’re waiting on is the paperwork.

But I have Laika, and Laika, being a dragon, is itinerant by nature, so maybe that’s my home too. Everything and nothing.

I settle back in my seat, unwrap a chocolate bar, and watch the stars through Laika’s cameras as we press on into the void.

——————

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