Three days later Jown arrived in an outskirt system with good communications lines, just what he was looking for.

He landed on a station because there was less chance of someone listening in, on this end anyway.  He settled into his chair and began.  The most accessible material would be written news articles and Jown supposed that the caliber of linguist he would need would have had at least something written up about them sometime so he began by searching news articles for linguists.  There were way too many to deal with so he tried more specialized searches like “theoretical linguists” and “ancient language interpretation linguists”.  That was a more manageable number, only about 10,000!  Next he added doctorate and expert.  That helped a lot.  Finally he added “disgruntled”, “dishonored”, “guilty”, “disenfranchised” and just plain “fired” and the number dropped to 157 articles.  Well that was better.  He ordered the node to extract the names associated with those articles and was down to 5.  One at a time he entered those names and searched for anything about their history and location.
Dr. Petal Swata was deceased.  Dr. Steven Landmanson was in prison for embezzlement.  Dr. Joan Oisoh taught at the University of New France, Ancient Studies Campus (that sounded possible).  Dr. Hui Soto had been executed for murdering his partner (wouldn’t want someone like him anyway).  And last Ex. Dr. Grunhilda Gieorn lived in a system he wasn’t familiar with, in modest retirement with her husband. 

Jown was looking for someone out of the way, someone not too desirous of helping the government or corporations.  Dr. Joan Oisoh seemed a little too established for his taste.  It seemed she was “disgruntled” about the campus cutting down some trees the ruining the view from her office window.  Typical spoiled crusty!  Ex. Dr. Grunhilda Gieorn on the other hand had been disenfranchised and had her university pension voided by her government for translating a previously un-translated text in a manner that said their ancestors on earth had exterminated a whole nationality of people when a dispute broke out over borders. The government had called for a retraction, but all Grunhilda would do was print that she was very sorry she had translated the text, and would not retract it as wrong. 

Since she was married Jown decided it would be prudent to look up available material on him as well.  Her husband’s name was Johann.  Jown searched on Johann Gieorn and found that Johann was a retired scientist with no degree.  “That’s very strange.  How does someone become a “scientist” without a degree?”  Intrigued he read on.  Seemed that Johann had worked in a laboratory from his teen years.  Using self-study, some training by the staff and practical experience he had educated and trained himself, but by that method could never earn a degree.  However he was eventually recognized and given a job a scientist at the lab, not just an aide.  The list of his innovations was very impressive.   Then the same time his wife got in hot water, the government decided that their scientists had to have advanced degrees.  The reports said they made this a retroactive provision and forced Johann to take a reduced retirement as an aide.  “Now that’s just evil.  It’s obvious that they did that just because of his wife.  And that means they must like their government even less than I do.  If anyone is right for this job they are.”  As Jown ended his session and headed for his ship he paused at the door.  “Maybe I should send them a gram rather than just going there?  But if I do that sometime in the future it could be resurrected and traced to them.  Better not.”  With that he turned and continued to the Gater.