Chapter 11: Inside

As the vehicle entered the spaceship lights came on and they were taken along a corridor to a room about twenty feet square, containing two three legged objects which Bronwen immediately thought of as old-fashioned milking stools. Just inside the entrance to this room the vehicle stopped and its door opened. Taking the tacit invitation, they stepped out of the vehicle and its door promptly closed again. It withdrew until the front screen was flush with the doorway and then the door slid closed in front of it.

After watching that operation, Huw said, “Evidently they don’t want us dead, but they don’t want us to escape either.”

“Modified rapture then?” asked Bronwen.

“Well done, an apt quotation from Gilbert and Sullivan. That shows a remarkable composure. Perhaps all our training and rehearsal have only made me more acutely aware of the possible dangers.”

“Just a façade, sir, to hide my fears.”

Huw considered telling her to use his given name, rather than calling him ‘sir’, but decided that it was too soon for such familiarity. It might still be necessary to give her some very unpalatable orders and he did not want to lose any element of control over her until he could be sure she would obey them.

One wall glimmered slowly into life and they could see ‘through’ it into what appeared to be the next room. There were two of the visitors there, or at least there appeared to be two beings, roughly human in appearance, but strangely androgynous. At any rate they had the normal number of arms, legs, head, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, all in more or less the right places. Since this was clearly an electronic transmission on to a flat screen TV wall, their appearance might have gone through any number of transformations, or even be wholly fake virtual images like a cartoon, though Huw was pretty sure he would be able to tell the difference in a matter of a very few minutes, even if he was fooled for a little while.

“I hight Hln,” said one of the visitors.

“I hight Hry,” said the other.

Huw and Bronwen stared at them.

The first one then launched into a longish speech, “We longen a compaignye of sondry felawship to goo on pilgrimages, the hooly blissful martyr for to seke. And wold we bespeke a Doctour of Phisik, one that knew the cause of everich maladye and where they be engendered and of what humour. Apothecaries beside to sende we drogges and letuaries. How think ye hereby?”

“What on earth?” said Huw, “Did you understand that?”

“Some of it seemed familiar,” said Bronwen, “It’s like English, but English with rotten spelling and pronounced by someone who has learned it all from a book. It just sounds all wrong.”

Huw tried to open the com link and found he could get no signal.

“Of course,” he said, “The ship acts as a Faraday Cage and we cannot get a signal. Bugger!”

The alien gestured to Huw and when he had their attention he mimed putting the com link on the table. Then he started talking again apparently to the object he had mimed putting down. Huw caught on at once.

Putting the com link on the table he opened the circuit, “Hello William.”

“Hello, how goes it? Oh, and can we keep this link permanently open, please?”

“Well we are in a quarantine chamber, not surprisingly, and there are two visitors here to talk to us on a wall-sized TV screen. Evidently they felt that they should match us one-to-one. The first problem is that they do not speak normal English. Ask the boffins what is happening and tell them that we cannot communicate adequately at the moment.”

William’s reply was, “Wait one.”

Huw turned to Bronwen and said “One? I bet it’s nearer an hour than a minute.”

It was three minutes before William called back and asked, “Has either of you read Chaucer in the original?”

They stared at each other.

“These visitors apparently learned their English from a study of the language of that era, and why that’s why they asked for Canterbury, as the most civilised spot on the planet in the middle of the fourteenth century. Nevada did not really exist until Santa Fe was founded at the start of the sixteen hundreds though the desert was there much earlier. We are working on what to say to them. But it does explain why the Americans backed off”

Huw did not wait; summoning up his schooldays and a little of the Latin he had so painfully learned, he said, “Hodie est Annus Domini duo milles et quinque,” and hoped they would understand.

The reaction from the visitors was gratifying, but also made Huw aware of something that he had not really noticed before.

In a matter of seconds one of them said, “Veritas? Non mille tres centum et quindecim est?” Huw realised that Latin is one of the languages they would have learned to visit 1315 as most educated people would have had a working knowledge of it.

“Veritas, Sed non habeo Latinam,” replied Huw.

“What was all that?” asked Bronwen.

“We used Latin,” Huw answered, “but I can’t remember much of it though I had to learn it at school, long before you were born. I told him that this is 2005AD and he asked me to confirm it isn’t 1315. I added that I have effectively no Latin, so that won’t work as a common language.”

Suddenly the wall went blank.

“What now?” asked Bronwen.

“We wait, unless you have any better ideas.”

They had to wait only ten minutes before the wall lit up again and the visitor said, “Salutations. We think we have the words needed now. Not your words but of a time you mayhap understand?

“Yes,” they chorused.

“We know not the causation of the error in our arrival but mayhap it will be easier. More civilised, I think you be now,” said the other visitor, “I am Hln and this my bravo, Hry is. You may discuss with your friends as they asked.”

“I am Huw and my colleague is Bronwen. We greet you and welcome you to earth. We wish to understand where you came from and why you visit us. It is a wonderful confirmation to us that other civilisations exist in the universe and mankind is not alone.”

“Sadly, my forefather, we think that alone we are in the universe, as all we know confirms. No trace of any other civilisaton has ever been found. From the future many centuries come we to visit you,” said Hln.

At least Bronwen thought it was Hln. She found it difficult to tell them apart, in identical clothes and with identical voices and very similar features, she searched their clothes and faces for some way to tell them apart and finally seized on a tiny button on the collar of their clothes (uniforms?) which was green on one and blue on the other. Now if she could only remember which was which...

“The air in here is very similar to our own atmosphere. Why can we not meet physically?” asked Huw.

“That is because the air you are breathing is victualled by your Earth. The air of our lodgings is not as yours is,” replied one of the visitors.

Bronwen and Huw were still having trouble distinguishing between them.

“We have come to you because the earth is in dire need of genetic material for humans, and for animals. What we seek is DNA samples, preferably in the form of ova and sperm, for people, sheep, cows and pigs. Why? you may ask. People are an endangered species, and the animal samples are for food compatible with the people.” Huw again wondered at the use of the acronym which sounded very twentieth century.

“How many years did you say you came back to see us?” asked Huw, “Incompatible atmosphere seems to imply many millennia at the very least.”

“We needed to be assured that there are no changes over the time gap; these many centuries are past,” was all the answer he got.

Determined to discover more about the future, Huw asked, “Is the shortage of genetic variety among the humans still alive due to some disaster in the past?”