#4 – Dark Angel
I had nearly finished transcribing the “yellow dot” words. Lt. Engers hovered, anxious to get his hands on the triangle in order to take it apart. “You’ll have to wait,” I told him crossly. “I need all the words."
“I’m not going to break it right away. I’ll scan it first. It’s so light and thin.” He pressed all three buttons at once.
“Don’t do that! You’ll jam it or something!”
Engers put it down. The little figure popped up, and the chittering noise of the red dot sounded first, a sharp burst of sound. Then the voice of the yellow dot spoke: “The first charge is that Humans from Earth have damaged the designated environment by introducing species and crops not in the specifications.”
The similar voice of the blue dot began speaking. It was deeper, more melodic and had almost a hypnotic effect. One felt that if one only listened hard enough, meaning would emerge. The yellow dot version chimed in at the conclusion of the last sonorous phrase: “The defense asserts that the introduction of Earth style agriculture is not necessarily harmful to a planet’s biosphere, and that people have the right to eat. The Humans on E*intock are growing wheat, rice, corn, a variety of vegetables, and fruit trees. Samples have been shown in court. The people of the Circle can eat this food, and it would be palatable to many other species.”
“Wow,” said Engers “Sounds like we got a good lawyer.”
“That’s it! All along, I’ve been bothered by the lack of balance among the voices. We assumed they all said the same thing, but –“
The chittering stopped and the yellow dot voice said, “The second charge concerns the damming of the river, creating a lake where none was planned and altering the water flow to the detriment of the downstream design.”
Blue spoke at length, the lovely voice precise and emphatic. My transcript was right in front of me. The speaker was talking in detail about our water use: so much drinking water per day, the hydroelectric plant, methods of treating sewage. As soon as Blue finished speaking (he was somehow impossible to interrupt), I showed the transcript to Engers and asked, “How would they know all this?”
Engers pulled out a chair and paged through my transcript. I listened to Yellow, trying to decide if this was really the same voice. The register was higher, and the music was missing. The speaker sounded tired and flat, as if reading a prepared text. I waited for Blue to cycle around again, and closed my eyes to listen better.
“Esther, wake up!” Engers shook my shoulder.
“I wasn’t asleep. I’ve figured it out. You were right with that crack about the lawyer. The red dot is the prosecutor, and blue is the advocate for the defense. When you shook me, I was almost there, at the trial. I visualize Blue standing tall and confident, filling a vast hall with his beautiful voice. The yellow dot translation was added later. The voices sound different because the circumstances were different. He was tired, maybe he worked all night on the translation in order to meet a deadline, and he was sitting down, which robbed his voice of flexibility and power.”
Engers looked at me oddly. “I think you’ve been working on this too long. Sam says the voice that plays when the yellow dot is pushed is the doctor on the big ship. I don’t think it sounds like the other at all.”
I had a headache. “Maybe so. What did you think about all that mass of detail?”
“Terrifying. I don’t know how they could have scanned that from space. What did you think of the fourth charge? Seems like our silver-tongue advocate let us down.”
