Dr Seymour comes to stand between me and Gideon and adjusts something on both our machines. ‘Let’s start by listening to some recordings. The DDAD is mostly interestedin the dragons’ social calls. We want to know what the rebel dragons are saying to each other, and how they coordinate themselves during an attack. But knowing their ranging sounds could be beneficial as well.’
Gideon leans over the other loquisonus machine eagerly.
‘What you’re about to listen to is a selection of ranging calls emitted by a dragon during a hunt for prey,’ Dr Seymour says. ‘The loquisonus converts them to an audible frequency and slows them down so as to allow us to hear. Listen carefully, please.’
She presses a button and a static sound erupts from the gramophone speaker. It’s interrupted by a loud chirping, like a bird. A whole sequence of identical sounds follows. I glance nervously at the door. What must these sounds, now on an audible human frequency, sound like to Yndrir? Could he recognise them as echolocation calls, or does it simply sound like a bird is trapped inside the glasshouse?
Dr Seymour catches me looking. ‘We usually use headphones.’
Then there’s a different noise, much longer, like a melody. The chirping sounds resume for a few seconds, and then the recording stops. Dr Seymour looks at me.
‘Did you hear the ranging calls, the identical ones that appear at three-second intervals? Those were helping the dragon locate its prey. But there was another sound right in the middle, a lower but harmonious trilling sound. Did you notice?’
I nod.
‘That was a social call,’ Dr Seymour continues, ‘whichsuggests this dragon was not hunting alone.’
A shiver shoots down my spine as I imagine the dragons soaring above us, unaware they’re being listened to as they hunt. It’s like we’re flying with them, invisible.
Dr Seymour fiddles with the machine again. ‘Now remember that when you’re listening in real time there will be a short delay between the emission of the calls and what you hear, because the machine needs a few seconds to convert them. Here’s another recording.’
This time, the chirping sounds come at faster intervals, and get faster and faster until they blend into a high buzz.
‘That bit at the end is called a feeding buzz,’ Dr Seymour explains. ‘As the dragon homes in on its prey, it emits several clicks in quick succession for greater accuracy. This allows it to stay updated on the prey’s slightest change of direction. You can hear one last buzz at the end just before it catches it.’
I place my hands on the loquisonus machine. This is clever, cleverer and more complex than any form of dragon communication I’ve ever studied. But if dragons don’t want humans knowing about echolocation, does that mean they don’t want us learning their spoken languages, either? That they’re against humans studying dragon tongues?
I think back to Chumana in the library.
The child speaks dragon tongue.
She didn’t seem to mind. In fact, I’d like to think she was impressed. But echolocation is different. To be able to understand and imitate it would mean Wyvernmire’s government could not only spy on the rebel dragons or apply echolocation techniques to their own means ofcommunication, but potentially emit undercover calls that would lead the rebels astray. It would be ground-breaking. Now I understand why Wyvernmire needs this code. It trulycouldchange the course of the war.
‘Who designed these machines?’ I ask.
‘I did,’ Dr Seymour replies quietly.
She brushes a strand of loose hair behind her ear and I feel a wave of admiration for her.
‘Of course, this is going to take a lot of training. You’ll have to listen to hundreds of recordings – and at different speeds – until you can even begin to make sense of them. Vivien and Gideon, you’ll then attempt to liken echolocation to any word-based languages you know. Sophie and Katherine, you’ll be looking for patterns in phonology and occurrence. I want you all to start by learning the terminology.’
She pulls a box out of the cupboard and removes the lid. It’s full of alphabetically ordered index cards. ‘For this to work, you must know the difference between a click and a tick, a rasp and a trill. For us humans to be consistent in our observations, we must use a common lexicon.’
‘What are these?’ Gideon mumbles, pointing to a pile of notebooks on the table.
‘Those are our logbooks,’ Dr Seymour says. ‘They must never be removed from the glasshouse. When you begin your shift, you write your name and the date, then record all of your findings and your workings-out beneath. This allows us to keep up with each other’s progress and pick up where colleagues have left off. If you believe you’ve correctly translated a call, you add it to the indexing system.’Dr Seymour points to the box of index cards.
I peer at the last thing written in the logbook in front of me.
Trill-type2 may be used to alert other dragons to something of interest.
‘You have several hours left of your shift,’ Dr Seymour says, glancing at her watch. ‘Grab yourselves a cup of coffee and start getting to grips with the material.’
As Gideon reaches for the photogram book of patrol dragons and Sophie and Katherine share out some index cards, I read through the logbook. There are so many questions I want to ask, but first I need to read and learn everything there is to know. I feel a familiar thrill of excitement, the exact same one I used to get when my professors set a lengthy piece of translation homework, like a puzzle waiting to be solved. I stare at the different calls and notes marked beneath them:
Trill-type6
Trill-type10
