Saviors
an excerpt

He dialed in the next adjustment to the antenna, and began again. "Mayday, mayday. This is the scientific transport Groovy, operated by Stephen Crick and Elizabeth Barton Crick-"
Suddenly, the receiver stopped just giving off static. "Mayday, mayday. This is the scientific transport Groovy, operated by Stephen Crick and Elizabeth Barton Crick."
_What?_
Who would just replay the message to him? Who would just toy with him under the circumstances?
"This is Steve Crick. Who is this?"
"This is Steve Crick. Who is this?" he heard in reply, stronger now, but still just a recording of himself.
"Identify yourself!"
"Identify yourself!"
"I'm serious! We're in a lot of trouble here!"
"I'm serious!" began the recording, followed by "Identify yourself!" - the recording from before.
Whoever this was, they had equipment, and they had range. They could help him, if he could make them believe that this was important. "My wife is very sick. We are dying, half-buried in the ash at these coordinates-" he listed them, hoping that there wasn't some reason to doubt the GPS too. "If you can't help, then please send someone who can."
The next response was puzzling; the person at the other end was editing the response, stitching together the audio from his previous words like some sort of audio random note. "We are- can help. We are- transport. We are- serious."
Suddenly it dawned on Steve what was happening. He needed help with this, though. "Beth! Wake up! I've got somebody, but they are having trouble communicating!"
Beth was awake already because of the shouting; now she jumped up and leaned over to the transmitter. "I don't know anything about radios."
"No, but you can help me talk to somebody who appears to be stitching my words together to form his sentences."
"Mm. I guess so. Let me try." He handed her the mike and keyed the transmitter.
"Identify myself, Beth Crick." No response.
She gave him the mike back. "You do it."
"Identify myself, Steve Crick."
"Identify myself, Chattanooga."
Steve looked at Beth. "OK, that was weird. Is it calling itself Chattanooga?"
"Apparently. Key up." He did. "Identify myself, with Steve Crick," she said, and waited.
Finally, a response. "Identify yourself, Beth Crick with Steve Crick."
Her eyes were wide. "He doesn't know our language. And we still haven't heard him make a sound on his own; he's using our sounds to communicate. Until we get to that point, we have to give him a vocabulary."
She leaned across Steve and keyed up again. "Chattanooga-"
"Identify myself," the other responded.
"Yes, you are Chattanooga."
"Yes, myself are Chattanooga."
Beth thought about this for a moment. No point dealing with noun case problems or verb conjugation.
"Chattanooga, can you help Steve and Beth Crick?"
"Identify Steve and Beth Crick."
This seemed like a regression. Then she started to figure it out.
"Steve and Beth Crick identify Steve Crick and
Beth Crick."
"Identify can help."
This was going to be tedious, if they didn't have a common ground for defining words besides themselves. There was science for this, but Beth hated biology; that's why she went in for geology. And psychology she hated most of all. But now Steve had an idea. He took the mic.
"Twenty-eight megahertz."
"Identify twenty-eight megahertz."
"You - Chattanooga - listen on twenty-eight megahertz."
"Chattanooga listen on twenty-eight megahertz."
Steve made a slight correction on the dial. "This is twenty-nine megahertz."
Silence. Steve waited for a minute, then repeated it again. "You listen on twenty-nine megahertz."
Suddenly, a burst of static, and the answer, again in Steve's own words. "I'm listen on twenty-nine megahertz."
Without keying up, he whistled. "Chattanooga's learning pronouns." He keyed up. "Yes, you listen on twenty-nine megahertz."
"Why you identify on twenty-nine megahertz."
_Interrogative, clearly._
"Why I identify on twenty-nine megahertz?" Steve carefully lilted his voice upwards.
Chattanooga mimicked him. "Why you identify on twenty-nine megahertz?"
"Whoever this is, he's smart," to Beth. Then back to the mic. "Before, twenty-eight megahertz."
"Twenty-nine megahertz," Chattanooga corrected him.
"Before, twenty-eight. Now, twenty-nine."
"Before, twenty-eight. Now, twenty-nine."
"Next, thirty," Steve said, and immediately moved the transmitter dial again. Then he said to the mic, "Now, thirty."
Right away they got the familiar response. "Now, thirty." Chattanooga had followed them to the new frequency right away. Chattanooga then kept talking. "Before, twenty-nine."
"Yes!"
"Yes!"
Beth covered the mic with her hand. "This is fun and all, but will he help us?"
Steve shook his head. "We're not there yet. Let me see if I can jump-start his arithmetic; otherwise I don't know how to communicate further with him."
"Myself help Steve and Beth Crick." Steve looked down, and realized that he had been holding down transmit the whole time. Oops. Now he turned back to the mic.
"Thanks, Chattanooga."
"Thanks myself."
Steve picked up a piece of metal and tapped the mic once. "One."
"[click] One."
"[click click] Two."
"[click click] Two."
In five minutes Chattanooga understood a childish way of constructing the base-10 numbers from zero to ninety-nine. After they had gotten into the forties, Chattanooga had started to do it on his own, and ended with "tenty," which was the best approximation of one hundred that he could manage in five minutes.
"Chattanooga: listen from eighty-eight megahertz to tenty-eight megahertz, then come back to thirty megahertz and talk to myself again."
He responded immediately. "Myself listen."
"_I_ listen," Steve corrected him.
"I listen. Not Steve and Beth Crick."
"No, not Steve and Beth Crick. Get words."
"Identify 'get words.'"
"Listen from eighty-eight to one tenty-eight megahertz."
"Yes, I listen."
It was quiet. Beth broke the silence first. "Steve, I don't think we're dealing with an adult human here."
"Me neither. Why do you say that?"
"Well, he didn't identify himself with an appropriate name; he's using the one that we gave him."
"True, but that's because he's using our recorded sounds to talk back to us."
"I've noticed him changing them. They're modulating; he's starting to pick up a tone of voice, too. And I don't know if 'he' is correct; many of those sounds are you, not me."
"That's another thing. I don't think we're teaching him English; I think we're teaching him verbal communication, but clearly he is very intelligent."
"I can only hope that this isn't somebody messing around with us, because we're running down the last of the battery power doing-"
"I'm back," the voice came, and it was now very different. It was higher-pitched, but now fairly constant; it was one voice. "Lots of talk radio. Thank you for listening."
"Can you understand us now?" Beth asked.
"Beth Crick! I thought I would never hear your voice again! It's been so long! Yes, I think I can understand you. I will ask you what words mean if I don't, though. Are you idiots or something?"
Steve looked a little shocked. "Why would you ask that?"
"Oh, sorry, that wasn't an appropriate question, was it? It's just that there are so many better ways to teach language, I wondered why you were so poor at it."
Beth paused for a moment, and then asked the question. "You're not human, are you?"