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"As I say, it's still patchy, but we ought to be able to make a stab at understanding what someone says. It's going to be another matter if we try to talk back, though. So far Harry and I have identified seven distinct dialects and what may be one minor language, and there's no way we could mingle with the locals without a lot more work."
"How much more?" Tamman asked.
"I can't say, Tam—not for certain—but I'd estimate another month of input. At the moment, we can read about forty percent of the printed material we collect, and the percentage is expanding, but that's a far cry from understanding the spoken language, much less conversing coherently. And we need more than simple coherency, unless we want to scare the natives to death."
"Umph." Sean frowned at the frozen image of the teacher. He'd hoped for better, but even while he'd hoped, he'd known it was unreasonable.
"In the meantime, one of our 'borrowed' books—an atlas—has given us a ru
"As near as we can tell, this is what Pardal currently looks like." The display changed to a map of Pardal's five continents and numerous island chains. The biggest inhabited continent reminded Sean of an old-fashioned, air-foil aircraft, flying northeast towards the polar ice cap with a second, smaller land mass providing its tail assembly. "We made enough photomaps on the way in to know the atlas maps aren't perfectly scaled, and we still can't read all of its commentary, but it appears Pardal is split into hundreds of feudal territories." Scarlet boundary lines flashed as she spoke. "At the moment, we're located just inside the eastern border of this one, which is called, as nearly as I can translate it, the Kingdom of Cherist.
"Now, North Hylar—" she indicated the fuselage and wings of the "aircraft" "—seems to be the wealthiest and most heavily populated land mass. The 'countries' are larger and seem to contain more internal subdivisions, which suggests they may be older. It looks to us like there's been a longer period of absorption and consolidation here, and that conclusion may be supported by the fact that our ground site is, indeed, underneath North Hylar's largest city." A red cursor flashed approximately dead center in North Hylar.
"South Hylar, co
"Of the settled continents, both Hylars are extremely mountainous, and Ishar's on the desert side. Herdaana's much flatter and seems to be the bread basket of Pardal, and a lot of the territories in Herdaana and Ishar alike have Hylaran names prefixed by 'gyhar,' or 'new,' which probably means they were colonized—or conquered—by North Hylar. It may or may not imply a continuing relationship between those territories and their 'mother countries' back home. Some evidence suggests that; other evidence, particularly the small size and apparent competition between the Herdaana states, suggests otherwise, but we simply can't read the atlas well enough to know, and the entire continent's out of range of our remotes."
She paused, brow wrinkled in frustration, then shrugged.
"All right, that's the political structure, but there's a catch, because despite all these nominally independent feudal states, the entire planet seems to be one huge theocracy. That surprised us, given Pardal's primitive technology. I'd have thought simple communication delays would do in any planet-wide institution, but that was before we figured out what this is."
The display changed to a tall, gantry-like structure with two massive, pivoted arms, and she shook her head almost admiringly.
"That, gentlemen, is a semaphore tower. They've got chains of them across most of the planet. Not all; they'd need ships to reach Herdaana and Ishar, and given the mountains on the isthmus, they probably send over-water couriers to South Hylar, too. It's a daylight-only system, but it still means they can send messages a whole lot faster than we'd suspected."
"Ingenious," Sean murmured.
"Exactly. Obviously we're still guessing, but it looks like the Church deliberately keeps political power decentralized, and control of the communications net would give them a heck of a tactical edge. I'd say they push it to the max; when the Church says jump, it's a good bet the local prince only asks how high. In addition to the semaphore towers, every town—and most of the villages—in range of our remotes contains at least one Church complex. Some larger towns have dozens, and they do a lot of business. Our reading class is only a tiny part of it.
"More to the point, our power-source city is where the semaphore chains converge—the Pardalian equivalent of the Vatican. In fact, the entire city is simply called 'The Temple,' and as far as we can tell, it's ruled by the high priest as both secular and temporal lord. Interestingly enough, the title of said high priest appears to be eurokat a'demostano." Sean looked up sharply, and she nodded. "Even allowing for several mille
" 'Port Admiral,' " Sean translated softly, frowning at the city's light dot. "You think the Church is tied directly to the quarantine system?"
"Probably," Harriet answered for Sandy. "The Temple's site certainly suggests it, especially given this 'port admiral' priestly title. And if they have, in fact, preserved any access to the computer ru
"Which might help explain the Church's authority," Sean mused aloud.
"Exactly," Sandy said, "though we've turned up a few suggestions that the Church's current political power is a relatively recent i
"Which," Tamman observed sourly, "doesn't help us out at all, Sean. Not in terms of getting hold of the computer, I mean. If it's their holy of holies, access is going to be limited, I'd think—unless we want to shoot our way into neural feed range, anyway."
"We're a long way from crossing that bridge yet, Tam. Anyway, I'd prefer to do a personal recon on the ground before we make any plans."
"Perhaps," Brashan said, "but I fear you'll have a problem there." He changed the display image to a closeup from one of their approach opticals. "Observe a typical citizen of the Temple."
"Oy vey!" Sean sighed, and Sandy laughed at his disgusted tone. The image was far from clear, but the individual in it was perhaps a hundred and fifty centimeters tall, red-haired and blue-eyed—the complete antithesis of any of Israel's human crew.