Classic Fiction

by Hal Clement

  I spent some time digesting that one. The Sahara point was understandable. The Board has always resented having to let all that solar energy go unused. Their stock difficulty, of course, is deciding when it’s worthwhile to put energy into a project in the hope of getting more back. It’s been the standard belief for decades that man’s only real hope lies in hydrogen fusion, and most of the authorized speculative expenditure is for research in this direction. From time to time, though, a very eloquent plea for a solar-energy project comes in. Sometimes an especially promising one gets approved, and one or two of these have even paid off since I’ve been working for the outfit.

  I couldn’t see, though, how natural sunlight shining on a desert could compare with artificial light shining on the sea bottom. I said so.

  He shrugged, and began to write.

  “The energy here comes from below the crust—straight heat, though I can’t properly call it volcanic heat. If they don’t keep their working fluid circulating down to the collector and get the heat out of it when it comes back up, the hot end of the unit will melt. Your real complaint, if you must have one, is that they don’t tie into the planetary power net and observe the rationing rules like everyone else. The reasons they don’t are very good, but there isn’t time to give them now—they call for a lot of history and technology which would take forever by this scribble-board. What I’m supposed to tell you is what you have to know if you go back up.”

  “I take it that Joey and Marie decided to stay down here.”

  “Joey hasn’t been here. Marie doesn’t believe me when I tell her that and is still arguing. No decision has been made in her case.”

  “But if Marie is still here with her future unsettled, why did you say I have to make up my mind in thirty hours or so? She’s been down here for weeks. Obviously you have facilities to take care of us.”

  “We don’t ‘have’ them. They were made especially for her, as far as food and air are concerned. She’s still living in her sub. It would take more work to get supplies into your tank, which doesn’t have locks or air-charging valves. Besides, you’re not in quite as good a position as Marie to have people go out of their way for your convenience.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re neither female nor good-looking.” I had no answer to that.

  “All right,” was all I could say. “Tell me the official word, then. What am I supposed to know if I go back?”

  “You’re to make sure your boss on the Board knows that we do have a large energy supply down here—”

  “That I’d tell him anyway.”

  “—and that it isn’t being rationed.”

  “That’s also pretty obvious. Why do you want those points stressed? I can’t think of any better way to get this place raided.”

  “Believe me, it wouldn’t be. If the Board thought this was just another bunch of powerleggers you’d be right, of course; but fifteen thousand people don’t make a gang. They make a nation, if you remember the word.”

  “Not pleasantly.”

  “Well, never mind that phase of history. The point is that the Board has hushed up this thing in the past and can be counted on to do it again if they know what they’re doing.”

  “Hush it up? You’re crazy. They’d do just one thing to an operating power plant, even if it was illegally built. They’d tie it into the network. The idea that they’d let it go on running independently, outside rationing, is dithering.”

  “Why do you suppose you never heard of this place before? It’s been here eighty years or more.”

  “I would suppose because nobody’s found it. That’s likely enough. The bottom of the Pacific isn’t the most thoroughly covered real estate on the planet.”

  “It’s been found many times. Several in the past year, if you’ll stop to remember. Twelve times that I’ve heard of since this place was built it has been reported to the Board as a finished, operating project. Nothing further has come of it”

  “You mean the Board knows where this thing is and still lets me come looking for you and—”

  “They may not know the location. I’m not sure the present Board knows anything; I don’t know what was done with the earlier records by their predecessors. The last time was over fifteen years ago.”

  “You know all this for fact?”

  “Objectively, no. I’ve read it in what seem credible reports. I’m not qualified as a historical researcher and didn’t make professional tests. It all seems very probable to me.”

  “It doesn’t to me. Have you told all this to Marie?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does she believe it?”

  “She doesn’t believe anything I say since I told her that Joey has never been here. She claims I’m a dirty liar and a traitor to mankind and an immoral skunk and that we disposed of Joe because he wouldn’t swallow our ridiculous falsehood.”

  “Would I be able to talk to her?”

  “You’d have my blessing, but I don’t see how. She’s a long way from here, since her sub arrived at a different entrance. I don’t think it would be possible to get your tank there without taking you outside again; it would take longer than you can spare, and I’d have trouble finding enough people to get you carried.”

  “Can’t whoever runs this place assign a crew?”

  “How do you think we’re run? There isn’t anyone who could order a person to do such a thing, since it’s more for your pleasure and convenience than public necessity. Besides, I told you there isn’t time.”

  I pondered that for a little while. His remark about how the installation was run was a little surprising, but this was hardly the time to go into local politics. He’d started to give me a more interesting impression, anyway; if what he’d said could be credited, it seemed almost as though it would be better for these people if Marie and I left than if we stayed. Why was the choice being offered, then? I asked Bert, a little indirectly.

  “What will your friends do if I don’t go back up? More people will come to look for me, you know. Even if I hadn’t reached the surface and started my rescue set, which I did, the Board knows where I was going and why.”

  He shrugged again. “No one cares how many come down. Unless there’s a whole fleet at once, we can pull ’em in and give them the same choice we’re giving you. It’s happened often enough, as I said.”

  “And suppose a whole fleet does come and starts wrecking those lights and that tent or whatever it is without wasting time looking for me or Marie or anyone else? Sooner or later if folks keep disappearing down here that’s what will happen.”

  “I’m not in on all the thoughts of the Council here,” he answered, “and I don’t know whether they’ve thought much of that point. I repeat, there have been quite a few people who stayed down here without getting the Board very excited. Personally, I think they’d just put this part of the Pacific off limits to the general public long before they’d waste energy sending a fleet of subs down here. In any case, that’s the Council’s worry. The current point is that you and Marie do have the choice and will have to make it of your own free will.”

  “What if I refuse to commit myself?”

  “Once you’ve been told what is necessary, we’ll simply turn you loose at the gate you came in by. You’re hardly in a position to hang on and refuse to go up. No problem.” He I gestured toward the direction from which we had come along the tunnel. “Speaking for myself, I’d like to have you stay—and Marie, of course. I do have some good friends down here now, but they’re not quite the same as old ones.”

  I thought for a few seconds more and then tried to catch his eye through the port while I asked the next question.

  “Bert, why did you decide to stay down here?”

  He simply shook his head.

  “You mean it’s too long to explain now, or you don’t want to tell me, or something else?” I persisted.

  He held up one finger, then three, but still wrote nothing.

  “In other words, I’m goi
ng to have to make up my own mind entirely on my own.” He nodded emphatically. “And Marie, too?” He nodded again.

  I could think of only one more question likely to be helpful, and I threw it at him.

  “Bert, could you go back up above now if you changed your mind about staying? Or is what they did to let you breathe water impossible to reverse?”

  He smiled and used the stylus again.

  “We’re not breathing water; that analysis misses on two counts. They did make an irreversible change, but it’s not a very serious one. I could still live at the surface, though the shift back to air breathing would be somewhat lengthy and complicated.”

  “You just said you weren’t breathing water!”

  “I repeat it. I’m not.”

  “But you just said—” He held up his hand to stop me and began writing again.

  “I’m not trying to tantalize you. The Council isn’t dictatorial by nature, or even very firm, but it feels strongly and unanimously that the details of how we live here shouldn’t be discussed with anyone who hasn’t committed himself to staying. I may have said more than they’d strictly like already, and I’m not going any further.”

  “Do the people out there with you disagree with the Council?”

  “No. The feeling on that point is pretty uniform among the populace.”

  “Then why did you take the chance of telling me as much as you did?”

  “Most of them were in no position to see what I wrote, none of them could have read it, and none of them can understand your spoken words.”

  “Then the native language here isn’t—”

  “It isn’t.” He’d cut me off again with a wave of his hand before I even named a language.

  “Then why do you worry about disobeying this Council on the matter of telling me things?”

  “Because I think they’re perfectly right.”

  That was a hard one to argue, and I didn’t try. After a minute or so, he wrote another message.

  “I have work to do and have to go now, but I’ll be back every hour or two. If you really need me badly, pound on your tank—not too hard, please. Even if no one is in sight, which isn’t likely, you can be heard for a long distance, and someone will send for me. Think it over carefully; I’d like you to stay, but not if you’re not sure you want to.” He laid the clipboard down beside the tank, and swam off. Quite a few of the others also disappeared, though they didn’t all take the same tunnel. The small number remaining seemed to be those who had arrived most recently and hadn’t yet given their eyes a real fill of the tank. They did nothing either interesting or distracting, though, and I was able to buckle down to heavy thinking. There was plenty of it to do, and I’m rather slow at the business sometimes.

  There was no problem about the decision, of course. Naturally I would have to go back to report.

  Staying here might, as Bert had said, merely pass the buck to another investigator, but sending another one down would be a clear waste of power no matter what trick they dreamed up to get him there. Also, I wasn’t nearly as sure as Bert seemed to be that the Board wouldn’t waste a few tons of explosive on this place if they found it and had reason to believe it had killed off three of their agents. The problem was not whether to go back, but when; and the ‘when’ depended on what I could manage to do first.

  What I wanted to do was make contact with Marie. It would also be nice to find out more about Joey, if information of any sort was to be had. I didn’t want to believe that Bert had lied about him, and it was certainly possible that Marie’s disbelief stemmed from her reluctance to accept the fact that Joey had disappeared in a genuine accident. On the other hand, she was by no means stupid. I had to allow for the possibility that she might have better reasons for doubting Bert.

  Joey, like Marie, had had a one-man sub. He could have found out things these people did not want known at the surface. After all, what they seemed to want Marie and me to carry back if we went was information, or propaganda, designed to discourage the Board from checking further.

  But wait a minute. That was true only if Bert were right about the Board’s preferring to hide the word of what went on down here.

  If he were wrong—if my own admittedly prejudiced idea of the reaction were closer to the truth—there’d be no question of suppression, and the Board would be down raiding this place within a day of the time either of us got back. That could hardly be wanted by this ‘Council’ Bert was talking about. Maybe there really was something in what he had said.

  But there still could be things these people didn’t want known, whether they were feeding Bert a line about the Board or not. Joey could be here or could have been killed, though the latter went very much against the grain to believe. Even if Bert had been right about his never arriving—perhaps especially if he were—there was Marie to worry about, too. If she were feeling stubborn she’d never leave of her own free will, and they couldn’t just turn her loose to float up, the way they could me. She had a sub. Of course, now that I was here they could cripple her boat, make sure it was low on ballast, and turn us adrift at the same time; maybe I should wait for that. Maybe—

  If you’re getting confused by the way I tell you this you have an idea of the way I felt. If you remember that my memory has done some editing and organizing since all this actually happened, you may have an even better idea. It got to be more than I felt like taking. I suddenly realized that I hadn’t had much sleep for a long, long time. The tank wasn’t a comfortable place for that, but there are times when one doesn’t bother with trifles. I slept.

  X

  I got in a good, solid eight hours, according to the clock. When I woke up, it was with the conviction that I couldn’t plan anything until I had figured out how these people managed to live as they did, what would have to be done to me if I agreed to stay and most particularly what I would have to arrange to do myself if, after agreeing to stay and being processed, I chose to leave.

  Bert had made it clear that he wasn’t going to tell me, but he had admitted saying a little more than he should have, so there might be a chance of my figuring it out for myself.

  My memory is supposed to be good. Just what had he said that might mean anything?

  The most striking remark was his denial that he was breathing water. Also, there had been something else in that sentence—what was it? —“that analysis misses on two counts.” What could that mean?

  Grammatically speaking, the most obvious implication of the first phrase was that the liquid now around us wasn’t water. Was this possible? And if it were, was there any other evidence?

  Yes, to both.

  Many liquids don’t mix well with water—nonpolar liquids in general. Carbon tetrachloride and all the oils, to name familiar ones. However, if this were such a liquid it must be at least as dense as water and probably denser. Not the general run of oils, therefore. Not carbon tet, either, since it’s highly poisonous. The density had to be high because there was no door or valve between this place and the ocean, and oil would have floated to the surface of the Pacific and been spotted long ago.

  On that basis, the interface between water and my hypothetical liquid would probably be at the entrance. Memory supported the idea.

  As the tank had reached the level of the pit’s mouth on the way in, the subs had hooked more ballast to it—obviously necessary if the new liquid were denser than water and the tank were just barely heavy enough to sink in the latter. The swimmers, too, had taken on more ballast—those ‘tool kits!’ Of course. If they had been tools, why put them on coming in from; the sea bottom? Or if outside were a place for recreation only and tools were only used inside, why not keep them at the place they were used? If there had been room in the tank, I’d have kicked myself for not seeing that sooner—or rather, for not following up the doubts I had had at the time.

  All right, first working hypothesis. We’re in a nonpolar, nonpoisonous liquid, somewhat denser than water. I think I see why, but let’s not be t
oo hasty.

  So that was the second point on which my analysis had been wrong. The people, as Bert said, weren’t breathing water—because they weren’t in water and because they weren’t breathing. I still had trouble believing it, but the logic went marching on.

  The basic idea was clear enough. If people didn’t breathe, they didn’t need gas in their lungs. If they didn’t have gas in their lungs, they wouldn’t be bothered by pressure changes. Well, qualify that. They’d have to fill their middle ears and sinuses with liquid, too. If the liquid had about the same compressibility as water (question: why not use water? Tabled for later consideration) then a change in depth would mean no significant volume change in any part of the body.

  A few details needed filling in, though. Granted that it would be convenient to be able to do without breathing, how was it managed?

  Well, why does one breathe, anyway? To get oxygen into the blood. Will anything do as a substitute for oxygen? Categorically no. Element number eight is the one and only oxidizing agent the human metabolism is geared to use—and ‘geared’ is a rather good word in that connection.

  But does the oxygen have to come in gas form? Maybe not. If my schooling hasn’t gone by the board, hemoglobin is only interested in O-two molecules, not oxide or peroxide ions or ozone; but up to the time the stuff is delivered to the hemoglobin some of the others are at least conceivable. The first thought would be some sort of food or drink. Could something be taken into the stomach which would release oxygen molecules? Certainly. There was hydrogen peroxide. The oxygen released didn’t start as diatomic molecules, though it got to that state quickly enough. I couldn’t picture anyone in his right mind drinking a slug of peroxide, for several reasons, but the. principle seemed defendable so far.