Free Battleground by Terry A. Adams Page B

corridor outside it, but she heard a whisper, and even turned around before she heard it again, and this time knew who it was.
    i told you this was just like
Endeavor One
    The ghost.
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    Hanna won her round with Metra, or Jameson won it for her, and there was no duty roster for the team. You took a break or you had a meal or you got some sleep, and you went back to the auditorium. Fascinated members of the ship’s crew came and went as their duties permitted, but they had other responsibilities. Hanna’s team did not. Even Joseph Luomobutu had been released from his routine assignment in Communications.
    The Y beings looked and spoke exactly as Maya Selig had described. But Joseph said Maya had been wrong about the human inability to make analogous sounds.
    â€œI’ve studied the part of Earth my ancestors migrated from,” he told the team. “It’s written in my DNA, and I know exactly where that was. A people lived there even in historic times who spoke a language unique on Earth, and the oldest records describe it as using whistles and clicks. But it’s dead.”
    â€œWas it swallowed up by Standard?” Hanna asked.
    â€œNo, exterminated—long before interstellar spaceflight began. H’ana, you can’t imagine what Africa endured. Someday when there’s time I’ll teach you some history.”
    History again. Hanna smiled for the first time in several days.
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    They started paying closer attention to the content of the transmissions. Arch was the first to say, “It’s all the same. I don’t see any variety. No evolution. And there should be. We’re moving from early to present-day transmissions. We ought to see change. How could a civilization this static develop starflight?”
    â€œThere’s some movement,” Hanna said. “Communications says there are changes in the vocalizations, changes in what they wear—look, those ‘baggy coveralls’ Maya Selig wrote about must have come later.” They were looking at a crowd, and the loop switched to a series of stills of individuals dressed in identical multipart uniforms.
    â€œNo fashion sense,” Dema said. Hanna lifted an eyebrow. It was a comment she might have expected from Glory, not from the dignified Dema, whose garments were uniformly black and white (to save the bother of matching colors). Dema added, “There seems to be a lot of war.”
    â€œAnd a lot of speeches,” said Bella. “War and speeches and public assemblies, I guess you’d call them. And war. Is Communications doing some kind of selecting? This can’t be all there is.”
    Hanna went to Communications. She reported back, “There are huge gaps in the transmissions. Times when there weren’t any, or just a few, and weak ones at that. Or our instruments aren’t good enough to pick them up. But the only selection criterion is clarity. What Communications is leaving out is just more of the same—war, speeches, and public assemblies. And more war.”
    â€œWhy the gaps?” Carl said.
    â€œWar,” said Glory. “Everybody’s capability destroyed at times.”
    Arch said, “The place is just one big battleground, isn’t it?”
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    A D’neeran Adept did not have to fear ghosts. In trance, in fact, you didn’t have to fear much of anything—depending on how much humanity you were willing to give up.
    On Hanna’s first attempt to “listen” to Species Y, her humanity tripped her up. She detached herself from
Endeavor
steadily and remorselessly, and then, in trance or not, could not resist reaching straight out for one little human boy. Telepathy was not supposed to be possible over such immense distances, but telepathy, notoriously and unpredictably, could shatter boundaries when love was involved.