"Wake up, sleepy head!" Dr. Ayers practically sang as he burst into Kharmadi's quarters.
Kharmadi pulled the thin thermo-blanket over her head, and rolled in her bed to face the wall. "Leave me alone. I was up all night. Getting the meadow the all clear, remember?"
"And you've slept all day." He didn't sound the least bit repentant. "Get up, we're having a celebration." He shook her shoulder. "We're finally able to communicate with the Rcyyt."
Flinging off the blanket Kharmadi sat up. "And?"
Her small quarters consisted of a single room, basically a bedroom, off of her specimen lab. She had no kitchen facilities, taking her meals in the colony mess, and used the bathroom off of the specimen lab. A built-in, padded, sleep ledge served as her bed and the only furniture in the room. Her "real" quarters were in orbit on the colony ship. Since Kharmadi didn't plan on staying with the colony she couldn't see putting them to the expense and trouble of setting her up with a home.
Dr. Ayers frowned down at her. "Do you always sleep in your work clothes?"
"I put on clean after I showered." Kharmadi levered herself up and out of bed. "It saves me ever so much time getting ready in the morning. Or evening, as the case may be." She grinned at him. "So what happened?"
"The children made the big breakthrough." Dr. Ayers shook his head, but he couldn't help grinning. "Remember 'water?'" He motioned for Kharmadi to follow him. "We thought we were looking at chemical and mathematical information from the Rcyyt. But water is also food. They thought we wanted information on their food."
"Food." Kharmadi winced. "Which is also composed of chemicals. Please don't tell me our communication unit has been trying to parse their cookbooks."
"That's ... pretty close." Dr. Ayers motioned to the bonfire, already burning near the central gathering place of their encampment. "Once we got that straightened out, the communication unit started grinding away on their language. When they were repeating 'Rcyyt mix Terra yes,' they were trying to say they wanted to ally with us." He grinned at her. "You were right; they really are a very friendly species. Though perhaps a bit stuffy."
All the Terran community had gathered around the bonfire, and to start off the celebration Uljana Koleka announced a holiday for everyone the next day. Everyone that wanted to could come to the meadow, meet the Rcyyt, and try their luck at communicating.
Which gave Kharmadi an idea. She sought out Dr. Ayers and Uljana for permission to bring several Rcyyt back to look over the specimens in her lab. Perhaps as natives they could speed things along in her cataloging.
Even though she'd been sleeping most of the day, Kharmadi only stayed at the celebration a short time, before heading back for her bed. She wanted to be awake and ready to go as quickly as possible in the morning. There was so much to discover.
Getting some of the Rcyyt to follow her back to camp was the hardest part of the day. The whole thing apparently had to be decided by several Rcyyt committees, starting with figuring out what the silly Terran wanted all the way through who should get to go.
In the end Iol and several others accompanied her back to the specimen lab. They were absolutely fascinated with her set up, poking their purple horned heads into every nook and cranny of the lab, even the bathroom and her quarters. In turn they provided her with much information on the animal and plant specimens she'd found.
Using several holo views of the planet, pointers, and miming, they were able to expand her knowledge of the various geographical habitats and spread of the plants and creatures she'd cataloged so far. Either they didn't understand her or they simply didn't want to share any information on how widespread they might be, or how large their population was. So, Kharmadi decided to ask if they knew of any larger animals on the planet.
She showed them videos she'd made of several of the insectoid creatures, miming to indicate bigger.
Iol shook his head, and held his hand up with thumbs spread to indicate the average size of the insectoids.
"Yes, but not this particular animal, a different one." Kharmadi ran her hands through her hair in frustration, as she tried to think of some way to convey her question in signs.
The aliens just stared at her.
"Wait!" A few taps and a data chip switch enabled Kharmadi to pull up a video she'd made years before of her now deceased pet cat. Lucifer glared at the screen with his usual haughty disdain, then stalked away, black fur shining like sleek silk, tail flicking a warning as the video followed him around her old apartment.
"This," Kharmadi pointed to the specimen cage with the small insectoid from the previous video, "Is about this big. Cat," she pointed to the current video running in an unending loop, "Is about this big." She indicated the size of Lucifer with her hands. Iol held his hands out at about the same size and nodded to her. "Now is there anything," Kharmadi pointed to all her cages, filled and unfilled, "About as big as the cat?"
Iol shook his head, as did the others. They jabbered away to her, incomprehensibly, but indicated that there were no other animals on the planet larger than thumbs-width.
"Darn. I could have sworn I saw something bigger. And it's so unusual to have a planet where there's such a large gap in size between animals. Usually there's a spectrum of sizes from very small to very large." She looked at the aliens, all holding very still and watching her. She sighed. "And you can't understand a word I'm saying."
Kharmadi sat at her chair and turned off the video of Lucifer. Iol tapped the blank with his thumb, followed by a terrible mime of his hand walking without any of the grace or art of a cat.
"Oh, you like my video, do you?" Kharmadi grinned. "And they said I had no cinematographic talent." After letting Lucifer parade through another couple of times, she pulled out an entertainment chip. "You might like this one a little better."
She put on a short computer-cartoon video of a knight fighting, and defeating, a dragon. The video had all the colorful effects the creators could stuff into it, including glaring bright flames, shining armor, iridescent scales, and fluffy clouds of smoke cleaved with super sharp sword. It even had its own peppy, thrilling, musical score. The Rcyyt were enthralled, staring at the screen in captivated rapture.
It took a few moments before the Rcyyt stopped staring at the blank video. Iol bowed to her, hands clasped, said something, and nodded to the video.
"Sure." Kharmadi ran it again, and again, and again. After a while it dawned on her that such intense interest had to be significant. "Don't you have videos?"
The Rcyyt ignored her, too caught up in the video playing away.
Kharmadi slipped away from them. "Perhaps I should get a mobile unit that we can take with us to show everyone else." A bit of coaxing, and a demonstration of the video in her carry-computer, allowed Kharmadi to ease the aliens out of her lab.
The video was a hit with all the Rcyyt back at the meadow. The four that had accompanied her preened and posed as they demonstrated their superior knowledge.
Using the communications unit, Uljana was able to determine that the Rcyyt had no video-motion type art, only static two and three dimensional representations. They did have a type of video, but had used it only for educational or factual purposes. The idea of fictional videos, or even recreational videos had never occurred to them.
Uljana patted Kharmadi's back. "One step forward, two steps sideways. But we're getting there."
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