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classroom or reprogram some A.I.s.”
    Alexander laughed and raised his cigar. “To the godlings!” he roared.
    â€œTo education!” chimed in Caesar. “It oughtta be a crime!”
    *****
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    Universal Language

    A Science Fiction Novel
    By Robert T. Jeschonek
    Now Available in Your Favorite E-book Formats
    Corporal Jalila bint Farooq bin Abdul Al-Fulani had had this nightmare before.
    She was on the surface of an alien world with her captain and crewmates from the Ibn Battuta . They all turned to her for help, for understanding. Lives depended on her making sense of an alien language she'd never heard before, which should not have been a big deal, because alien linguistics was her specialty...
    ...but she found herself drowning in a sea of gibberish.
    A tide of babble washed over her, a wave of seemingly disconnected sounds from a mob of creatures. Billions of phonemes, the smallest units of language, crashed together, mixing with millions of clicks and lip-smacks that could themselves be part of a language or just random biological noise.
    The tide swelled and swirled and Jalila felt herself going under. Again and again, she grabbed at the current but could never make sense of it.
    The display on the Voicebox interpreter device she carried blinked with indecipherable nonsense.
    She had had this nightmare before. The only problem was, this time, she was wide awake.
    Jalila's heart raced. She looked around at the crowd of beings who surrounded her, sleek-furred and slender like otters, and a chill shot down her spine.
    Then, she felt Major al-Aziz touch her arm.
    "Jalila?" He stared at her with his piercing green eyes, voice laden with concern.
    She took a deep breath and gathered herself up. Enough of this .
    She was on the surface of the planet Vox with Major al-Aziz and Colonel Farouk. The three of them had landed an hour ago in a scout barque jettisoned from the deep space exploration ship Ibn Battuta (named after the renowned Old Earth Arab explorer and scholar). It was up to them to warn the inhabitants of Vox about an approaching invasion fleet...the same fleet that had crippled and cast adrift the Ibn Battuta .
    So it was time to start acting like a professional. Jalila had to forget her fears and nightmares. She had to forget that the stakes were so high, with so many lives in the balance.
    And she had to forget that this was her final mission as linguist on the Ibn Battuta .
    Jalila was being drummed out of the service. In fact, she would have been drummed out and sent home by now if the Ibn Battuta had not encountered the invasion fleet.
    It was all because she'd mistranslated a message two weeks ago and gotten someone killed--a diplomat negotiating the end of a civil war on planet Pyrrhus VII. Jalila had made a mistake translating the complex Pyrrhic language, leading both sides in the war to believe the diplomat was working against them. They'd killed him, and the armistice had collapsed.
    So here was Jalila, career over, confidence shot...and her shipmates needed her one more time. Somehow, she had to pull herself together and get the job done. All she really wanted to do was go home and languish in disgrace, but she had to hang on by her fingernails and do this one last thing.
    Nodding to al-Aziz, Jalila smoothed the light gray jumpsuit uniform over her slender hips. She tucked her shoulder-length black hair behind her ears, then took a deep breath and turned to the crowd.
    "Quiet!" she shouted, as loud as she could, her voice rising over the tumult.
    She got her message across. Suddenly, the chaos of noise and chatter subsided. The gleaming black pearl eyes of the dozens of Vox in the city square all slid around to focus on her.
    Jalila cleared her throat and took a step forward, fixing her attention on a single brown-furred being. "Hi." She mustered a smile.
    The brown-furred Vox rattled off a stream of incomprehensible syllables, at the same time gesturing, clicking, and