Sandy spent the next two weeks with her head on a swivel. Her time was divided. Half her day was for her war fighters, eyeing the reports from the pickets. They had defeated one onslaught by the aliens. They were in general agreement that it was from one wolf pack. Most also agreed that it was very unlikely that another wolf pack would be in this vicinity.
No one, however, agreed with that enough to bet money on it.
The other half of Sandy’s time was focused dirt side. The full team of scientists, equipped this time for a carefully planned assault on the mysteries of this planet, was turning up some very interesting discoveries.
The language continued to puzzle the linguists. As they gathered more and more examples of the language spoken by more of the wandering groups, they were left with an impossible challenge.
“Language changes,” one scientist said over supper with Sandy. Sandy was spending a lot of time on the Galileo. “Just as DNA drift allows us to track the evolution of our bodies as we become isolated and mutations occur, so it is with languages. Take Standard. It’s a mishmash of several Earth languages. If you were dropped on a street in a slum of say, Beijing, New York, or Paris, you might understand every tenth word. And it would be a different tenth word depending on which of those cities, separated by ten thousand kilometers, that you stood in.”
The scientist waved his hand as if to avoid an argument. “Yes, I know. You could talk to any of the scientific or federated government officials and you could understand each other. But only because they had taught Standard in school. That’s not something many of those slum dwellers get a chance to learn. Okay, you get what I mean. Language changes over distances and over time. It takes a lot of effort to keep Standard the same Standard everywhere.”
He shook his head. “Now we come to this damn place. We’ve got people tens of thousands of kilometers apart. Separated by huge oceans that they lack the technology to cross. Similarly, they have no media technology to create a unified audience. My archeological associates tell me it has been this way for a hundred thousand years or more. But what I see is a collection of tribes where the most deviation we can find across continents is something that hardly shows more than a few hundred years of mutation.
“It’s just not natural,” he said. “It goes against everything we’ve found in the last five hundred years of human study. It can’t be!”
“I’m told you’re also studying the small groups around the pyramid that seem to have been recently exiled from ships. What about their language drift?” Sandy asked.
“It’s the same thing. The very same thing. If they talk slower, every one of them could understand anyone around them or on the other side of the planet. It’s impossible.”
“But it is what the evidence shows you,” Sandy pointed out.
“It is. I can’t argue with that. It is, but it can’t be.”
“Clearly, there is something going on here that we’ve either missed or don’t have a handle on yet.”
The boffin nodded. “Exactly. Trust me, Admiral. We are hunting for it. Oh, are we hunting for it!”
Another boffin cleared his throat. “We know the aliens, both those on the ground and those from space that we’ve studied, have a very complex DNA. We also know that complex DNA is reserved for just the sentient species and only for them. None of the prey or predator animals on this planet have it. Some of us are thinking it is artificial.”
“I saw a report somewhere,” Sandy said slowly, “that showed that the alien heads piled before that central family in the crypt of horrors also seemed to have a very complex DNA.”
“Yes,” said the boffin who had just entered the conversation. “They have eight acids in their DNA code. Two more than the bug-eyed monsters and four more than we have or the animals on this planet have. We can decode that DNA and break it down into its components. We can match some of the DNA against local animals and see the evolution. What we can’t do is tell what the DNA with the extra two acids do.”
“Is it possible that it has something to do with the unique characteristics that we’re seeing?” Sandy asked. “A language that doesn’t mutate much? A killing rage that hasn’t cooled in a hundred thousand years? Neither of those are humanly possible, but then, our limited DNA doesn’t allow for a lot more than the basics of recreating our bodies, does it?”
“There are proteins that pass along some echoes of what happened to the last few generations. If your grandmother suffered major trauma, she may pass echoes of that along to her children. Of course, after two or three generations, those proteins slough off,” the biologist said.
“And if you had two or three times the storage capacity in your DNA?” Sandy asked, raising an eyebrow.
The boffin rubbed his face with both hands. “I don’t know. I don’t know how you would get that data into the DNA. Did the aliens start out with fewer nucleonic acids, like the other animals on this planet? How the hell do you replace the DNA in an entire species?” Again, he shook his head. “This is so far beyond us, it boggles the mind even to think of it. Yes, we can do minor surgery on our DNA to get rid of this or that problem, but replacing it with an entirely new system and including in that revision a whole lot of other stuff? Language? Hatred? No, I can’t believe that.”
“Maybe we need to,” Sandy said. “When all the possible answers have proven insufficient, isn’t it wise to consider the impossible?”
“Of course, you’re right, Admiral. Of course. Maybe I should have supper with you more often. Maybe I should risk my comfort more often by talking things over with someone who knows nothing about what I’m talking about.”
“I think I’ve just been insulted,” Sandy said, grinning.
“No, say you have shown a light into a dark place, and now, a whole lot of people are likely to lose a lot of sleep chasing that light, expanding it in the darkness.”
“Are there any similarities in the DNA of our aliens and those of the family under the pyramid?” Sandy asked, getting back to something that had been nibbling at the back of her mind.
“Trying to match up eight acid DNA with six acid DNA is not an easy task. We’ve been trying to match up the six with the four, both from the animals and our own. It’s enough to drive you crazy.”
“I imagine it’s quite a jigsaw puzzle,” Sandy said, agreeably. “Still, it looks to me that it could be a big help. Does our database have all the DNA we’ve taken off of the different aliens we’ve had access to?”
“Pretty much,” the biologist said.
Sandy didn’t much like the sound of that. “Pretty much?”
“The samples from the first shoot-out Kris Longknife had with the aliens has gotten lost. Someone on Alwa screwed up and left the data back home. Also, Alwa didn’t have a lot of resources back then, so they only tested a few of the aliens on the first ship Kris brought back and the partial mother ship that she shot up at the cat system. We’ve got the DNA from the aliens she brought back from here, as well as everybody on the latest ship we captured.”
Sandy sighed. “It seems to me we need to study all the DNA, don’t you think?”
“Yes, ma’am. The first captured ship is still orbiting Alwa. We’ll get on it when we get back. In the meantime, we’ll see what we can find out from what we have. It’s kind of hard to figure out what DNA does when you only have a few live samples.”
“Yes,” Sandy said, tired of this conversation. She glanced around. Jacques caught her glance and moved in.
“Admiral. We’ve got some very interesting pictures I’d love to show you.”
“Then I think I’d love to see them,” Sandy answered.
“Do you mind dropping down to my room? I just got the pictures and Amanda wants to see them, too.”