Tau Ceti (an Ell Donsaii story #6) (39 page)

In her heart though, she knew she’d be terribly disappointed. If he’d never even tried to understand
her math
, it would be OK, but to know he’d tried and failed…

With a
trembling
sigh she said, “Put it up on the big screen.”

The message popped up on her wall, “Raquel, thank you for agreeing to forward this to Ms. Donsaii. I hope I don’t embarrass myself and you. It’s taken me a couple of weeks
just
to get this edited into something I’m fairly confident
of
, so
I’m hoping
she doesn’t just laugh when she sees it. Wish me luck (and please strip this message to you off before you forward it.
)
”

Ell closed her eyes. The lack of confidence the message showed was breaking her heart. With a sinking
feeling
she scrolled down to the message
he’d written
to her
as “
Ms. Donsaii
…
”

…

It was five O’clock in the morning when Ell finally forced herself to turn off her screens and try to get some sleep, head still spinning with the ramifications of what Sha
n had found buried in her math…

Her
thoughts
flip-flopped
around…
from wonderi
ng how she could have missed it…
to wondering if Shan was laughing at her for overlooking it, to thinking he must be a genius to have seen it.

Genius, she
’d
concluded.

Manuel looked up as Ell walked into the team teecee meeting, “Hey Bosslady, you look exhausted. You OK?”

Ell smiled tiredly, “Yeah, I got some good news that kept me up all night.”

“Good news
kept you up
?”

“Hard to explain. H
ow are the Teecees doing?”

“Still sleeping. But you know how they spent the day yesterday flying up and down the mountain carrying a few things at a time?”

Ell nodded.

“I thought maybe we could send them a drawing of a travois?” An image popped up on the big screen showing one of Manuel’s elegant drawings, this time showing two poles dragging behind a teecee with a load of materials stacked between them.

***

Dex laughed and set down the handles of the travois, “We may finally have put too much on
this thing
! Let’s take those flint nodules back off.” Once they had done that, hie picked up the handles and trundled the travois down the game path a ways. Setting them down hie turned back to Syrdian. Hie threw hies arms around himr. “This’ll be easy, especially since we’re going downhill! Let’s make
another
one for you.”

They were able to load almost everything they wanted to take down the mountain onto t
he t
wo travois and stood looking at the
things
that remained. Dex asked, “What should we do with this stuff?”

Syrdian said, “I think we should leave it here for…” Hies voice got
juddery with emotion
, “For the next dalin that can’t fly the migration, injured or old. We can
climb
up here
with them and
show them how to survive,” hie finished in an emotional whisper.

Dex felt hies own chest constricting and simply dipped hies head yes.

They stacked the leftovers neatly and started down the mountain.

***

Allan, Ell’s AI, said, “A large animal is approaching Goldy and Silver.”
Ell looked over from the screen of equations she had been studying. The screens showed the teecees indistinctly
in
infrared. They were asleep and over them Ell could see a large infrared object, getting bigger as it approached.

“Use Piscova’s translation program to send the following. ‘Goldy, Silver, a predator comes.’”

***
 

Dex woke upon hearing Syrdian say, “Dex.”

Then to his utter astonishment hie heard
hies own
voice say, “Syrdian.”

Then Syrdian said, “Predator.”

Hies
own
voice said “Arrives.”

Hie bolted upright and saw Syrdian leaping to hies feet as well. A large animal
was
visible by infrared! Dex bent to grasp hies spears. The animal began to charge toward Syrdian! Dex leapt forward.
 

***

Ell said, “Target the predator’s eyes with the laser. High power!” However, Goldy leapt forward and came between the rocket and the predator. “Move the rocket to the left!”

Ell’s point of view lifted slightly and slid to the left
,
but by the time it got a good view
,
the predator’s head was no longer in view. The entire animal was skidding towards Goldy’s feet with two spear shafts protruding from the base of its neck. Goldy and Silver were dancing back, each still holding their second spear.

She leaned back in her chair, Piscova was going to be pissed not to have been involved in the first use of her translation program.

***
 

Hearts pounding and breath pouring through him, Dex looked around for the other dalin that had said “Syrdian” and “arrives.” No
dalin
were to be seen.

Dex
said, “
Syrdian
, how did you know it was coming?”

“Because you woke me up.”

“
But you called my
name,”
Dex
said, looking around.

“
You
called
my
name.”

They turned to stare at one another. Syrdian whispered, “I
heard me too, but I never said anything… I
thought the voices came from the direction of the meteorite.”

They both turned to stare at the spot where they’d placed the meteorite the night before. It wasn’t there!

As they looked around they saw it standing down to their left, apparently unharmed. “Did you move it?” Dex asked.

Syrdian waved hies head “no.”

Dex walked slowly over to the meteorite and picked it up. Speaking in Syrdian’s voice it said, “Hello Dex.”

As Dex’s skin crawled
and he wondered how Syrdian had made his voice come from the meteorite
hie heard Syrdian say over hies shoulder, “
It sounds like me!!
”
The astonishment in Syrdian’s voice told him that Syrdian had nothing to do with hies voice coming from the meteorite.

Saying some words with Dex’s voice and some with Syrdian’s the meteorite slowly said, “
Sometimes
, Dex, Syrdian,
I, help
.”

To Dex’s great dismay the meteorite said nothing further, despite many questions.

***

Shan’s AI chimed, indicating a new e-mail. He glanced up at his HUD and
stopped in his tracks when he
saw “Ell Donsaii” on t
he header. Heart beating faster, he had her message brought up.

Dear Mr.
Kinrais
,

I would like to congratulate you on
your
elegant work and for recognizing that your manipulations of these mathematical conventions have significant implications for
the discipline of
Astrophysics.

May I suggest that we submit the attached paper for publication?

Ell Donsaii

Goose bumps prickling his skin,
S
han sagged against the wall. He’d been on his way to a
meeting with his advisor but he just had to look!

When the paper opened on his HUD, the thing Shan noticed
most
was that the
authors were “Shannon
Kinrais
and Ell Donsaii.”
He was listed first!
He looked up to the title, “Some calculations regarding the effects of a 5
th
dimension on gravitation and redshift over great distance
s
: A possible explanation for the galactic rotation and expanding universe problems that does not require dark matter or energy.”

Shan called his advisor, “
Dr. Rhoades,
I’ve just had a major insight. Can I put our meeting off until
next week
?”

“
Kinrais
,” his advisor sighed, “I hope this ‘insight’ results in some progress. I’m really thinking you’re going to need to give up on Donsaii’s weird math. It’s hard to imagine how you’re ever
going to find something in those equations that
twenty other grad students aren’t already writing theses on.”

“Yes sir, I’ll know by tomorrow if I’ve really got something here.”

“OK. Same time
next Wednesday
. If this ‘insight’ is nothing, expect to talk about choosing another problem.”

“Yes sir.”

Shan practically ran back to his cubby where he sat and opened the paper on one of his screens.
As he read what Donsaii had written h
e began running tests and confirmatory calculations using some of the Math Department’s computing resources.

My God! He’d just sent this to
Raquel
last night as a series of questions
about
the bizarre results he got when he extrapolated her math out into intergalactic distances. This afternoon she presents him with a completely thought out
, beautifully written paper concluding that his “bizarre results” actually explained the increasing redshift of the light from distant galaxies
previously attributed to ever
increasing acceleration o
f the expansion of the Universe!
An explanation that didn’t require that they invoke any mysterious “Dark Energy.”
A
n
effect on gravity at great distance
explained the surprising rotation of galaxies without invoking
“Dark M
atter
”
to provide additional
invisible
mass.
Not being all that familiar with the physics part of the paper he had to keep looking up data on acceleration
of the Universe’s expansion
and
on
galactic rotation to confirm that his results did actually correlate.

Suddenly he noticed he was hungry and checked the time, he’d missed lunch and it was nearly dinnertime! His HUD was displaying a reminder for his dinner with Raquel, damn!

Shan trotted down the sidewalk and up to the doors of IP3. When he pulled the door open he could see Raquel leaning
back, elbows on
the counter, tapping her foot and watching the door. “Hey, I’m so sorry, I lost track of time and…”

She crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow, “Yes…?”

“Uh, I’m sorry?”

“Pray tell, just
what
was so important that you lost all track of time and forgot about
me
?”

“Uh, Donsaii responded to my questions and…”

The eyebrow went back up,
but her eyes twinkled,
“A
re you
really
telling me that you stood me up to
read an email
from another girl?”

Shan grinned and waved a hand dismissively, “Not another
girl
.
Psssh!
A
famous
scientist
.
I never
really
noticed
she
was a woman ‘til you just
now
pointed it out.”

“Yeah, yeah sure
.
” She grinned at him, “
Are we gonna order
,
or stand around talking about your other women all night?”

Shan ordered a stromboli and Raquel
four
slices of pizza and a salad, once again amazing him by the sheer volume of food she
intended to consume
. They got their drinks,
grabbed
a table and sat to wait for their order to be called up
.

They talked about some of the pictures of Tar Heel players up on the walls of the pizze
ria while they waited. When the
ir
order was called Shan went up to get it while Raquel got silverware and napkins.