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Stories from the Verse
In Verse Proportion
Chapter 96: Brown 225
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Kondor 206
A few days later Derek decided that he should transmit another skill to Vashti, but wasn’t certain what. It struck him that probably the next easiest skill to teach her was the ability to transmit a psionic skill pattern, as he was doing, but that she had no one to whom to transmit one--that is, she only knew one skill, she learned it from Derek, and she couldn’t really transmit it back to him. Well, maybe she could, but at present he did not expect she was going to learn any skills he didn’t teach her, and she wasn’t going to have anyone else to teach.
That meant, as far as he could tell, telepathy was next.
It also got him thinking, and he realized something else. He had contacted one of the indigs telepathically; he could probably find that mind, wherever it was on the ship. If he could find it, he could read it--but only in its own language. Still, Lauren had mentioned being able to read the language center of another person or creature, and so to be able to understand their language by using their mind to make sense of it. If he could do that, he could understand what was being said on the educational program, but beyond that, he could tell if the translation program was adequately speaking indig.
Maybe.
First things first: teach Vashti telepathy. He did that, and then explained his idea to her.
“Why didn’t you think of this before?”
“I don’t know.” Why didn’t he? “Maybe it’s because we’re in a high tech world, and I’m a pretty high tech person, so I was thinking in terms of technological solutions, not psionic ones. I’ve seen television shows where they have translators that enable them to talk to people speaking a different language. I still don’t know how reliable psionics are going to be in this world, and I’d hate to have them fail during a critical moment in communicating with the indigs.” Indeed, even now, he realized, he was thinking of using psionics to help him devise a technological solution. Still, a technological solution would be useful even if the psionic skill worked.
Could he do it? Could he find the mind of that one indig he had contacted? That proved not to be so difficult. Apart from Vashti, it was the only mind he knew. But what about finding the speech center? Again, this proved a bit difficult, because it was an alien mind, but within a few minutes he had made a connection.
He knew it was working, because the sound of the television in the other room suddenly made sense. He didn’t hold it for long, but it was sufficient to prove that it was working. He would have to test it with the robot--Vashti would talk to the robot in English and Arabic, and it would translate to indig, and he would use this new skill to see whether what the robot said in indig made sense.
Of course, the robot was in the kitchen making supper. The test could wait until then.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with twenty other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #448: Inventive Versers. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
