Up Against It - M. J. Locke [64]
“Here.” Tania’s fingers flew across an invisible thicket of commands. “I’m logging us in.” Jane’s visual connection went live. “Go ahead, Thondu.”
The young man opened the case, pulled out a collapsible harp, and assembled it. It stood about half the size of a symphony harp, with a crisscrossed, double set of strings. He secured himself to the wall with Velcro, and slipped his feet into the straps on a set of pedals at its base.
“Excuse us a moment, will you?” Jane said over her shoulder to Mr. Macharia, and pulled Tania aside.
“What is all this business?” she said in a low tone. “What is a Tonal_Z troubadour? Have you lost your mind?”
“No offense, Boss,” Tania countered, “but have you been living in a cave?”
Jane cast a look askance at her. “As a matter of fact, yes. I don’t make it a point to track minor geek subcultures back on Earth. Tania, is all this really necessary?”
“Yes!” Tania sighed. “Tonal_Z isn’t minor. It’s been around for at least a couple of decades now. It’s better known in Earthspace, I grant you. It’s a music-based language developed for communication with sapients. It solves most of the natural-language problems that we’ve been struggling with over the years. It’s a huge deal. To make the best use of the most modern sapients demands high efficiency and rapid communications. Artificial sapients take to it like otters to water. Without Thondu, our ability to communicate with the feral would be greatly hampered. Trust me on this.”
“OK, fine, but what’s with the troubadour business?” She eyed the young man now tuning his harp.
Tania ran her fingers through her hair—Jane could tell she was having to suppress her own irritation. “It’s part of the gig. They’re computer programmers, fluent in Tonal_Z. A whole subculture has cropped up back on Earth. They’re actually quite cool. They’re hacker-musician-poets. They can fix just about any software problem you can think of.”
Now that Tania mentioned it, Jane remembered a Downsider show she had caught an episode of, that included a troubadour.
“You have no idea how lucky we are,” Tania said, “that Thondu happened to be traveling through. His ship was grounded by the crisis.”
“All right, all right.” Jane threw her hands up in acquiescence. “Let’s get on with this.”
They returned to Thondu, who gave Tania a querying look. She nodded. He played. His word-music dripped off the strings—plaintive, mellow, and exotic. Tania’s interface provided a multimodal translation.
Info: I = MeatManHarper, sang his harp.
“Who is ‘MeatManHarper’?” Jane whispered. “And what’s with the pseudo-baby tech talk?”
Tania gestured at the troubadour with her chin. “MeatManHarper is Thondu’s Tonal_Z nom de chanson. Tonal_Z is a creole. Very simple and regular grammatically. Simple verb structures make it easier to avoid confusion when you are talking to artificial entities. We have so few things in common with sapients,” she said. “Simplicity is crucial to avoid misunderstandings.”
The young troubadour continued to play.
Info: I = at-place this, at-time this.
Query: [algorithms], you = at-place what, at-time this? That’s all.
He repeated this whole sequence twice. As he stilled his strings, the interface lit up and sang on its own. Though Jane had been expecting it, it made her jump. Its wordsong spun out breathtakingly fast. She was surprised that the young man could keep up, but from his expression it was clear he understood. Her interface translated:
Info: I = BitManSinger. I = at-place this, at-time this. Command: MeatManHarper, sing-talk more at-time this! That’s all.
The young troubadour looked shocked. “It’s named itself!” he gasped.
Tania looked thoughtful. “BitManSinger. It’s named itself in juxtaposition to your name. Obviously, it has no gender identity; it’s borrowing your syntax.” She turned to Jane. “If that means what I think it does, it’s just reached a major milestone—it’s figured out that there is a whole other world out here, not made up of data bits and mols. It also seems to have a taste for poetry,” Tania said, while the young troubadour