Chapter Fifteen

THE PROCESS OF COMMUNICATION WASN'T EASY.

At first Elli's thoughts came in fragments that didn't always fit together. Sorting the fragments mentally and fitting them back together sometimes led to a rough understanding of what she was trying to get across. For Paul, the experience was almost like a dream that skipped randomly from scene to scene, and the reward for finally getting it right was always the same: an immediate rush of warmth and affection.

After an hour of trial and error, Elli's thoughts began to come through more clearly, as if she had learned how to focus them more effectively on the humans. By that time she was adding Basic words and phrases to the concepts. Paul wasn't sure whether she had actually learned the language that quickly from speaking with them, or if instead his own mind was somehow dealing with her thought projections by doing its own translation. The mingling of Basic and conceptual thought made under-standing come more easily, but it was not entirely comfortable. It was as if the words reached one part 157

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of Paul's brain and the projected concepts reached another. Pulling the two together required an effort that made his nerves stand on end. In addition to that, the concepts still were not always sequenced or ordered in a way that made sense in human terms.

During that first hour they discovered two fundamental principles of Elli's communicative process. First, they learned that she could understand them only if they spoke aloud. They could not project their thoughts directly to her as she projected to them. Second, they found that Elli's communication reached exactly to the outer ring of pedestals. One step beyond that point and her thoughts were abruptly cut off. There was no way for them to know if that was by design or coincidence. But even though Paul and Dorland learned how to communicate more effectively with Elli, they hadn't made any real progress in getting useful information from her, and after three hours, Paul was beginning to feel the tingle of anxiety. Now Dorland had come back to a subject they had touched on several times. The question he asked was simple enough:

"Where are you?"

Elli's reply was a variation of the one she'd given each time he asked the question:

*Eh-hli (negative)——(?)*

As far as Dorland and Paul had been able to determine, she was simply saying that she didn't understand the question. Paul wasn't even sure if the question was important. They had tested his observation about Lord Tern by placing one of the light globes behind Elli. Paul wasn't surprised to find that the globe was faintly visible through her body. That reinforced his belief that her image was being transmitted from someplace else, but it didn't answer the question of where.