Classic Fiction

by Hal Clement

  “Then the gas mixture’s composition is essential to your normal operation. I will not manipulate those controls again. Can you provide data which would resolve my earlier time-rate question?”

  “Possibly. It is likely that the planet’s rotation has actually been slowed by tidal drag since your earlier activity. Its moons don’t go for much, but the sun would be reasonably effective.”

  “Can you be quantitative?”

  “No, for two reasons. First, I’m not expert in the field, and second, the effect would vary greatly over long periods of time as continent and ocean patterns changed—I do know that much. We can find people who know a lot more than I, but even they won’t be able to give you a full answer—though what you can probably tell them will no doubt improve their picture. We’ll go over to Ishtar and find some of them after a while—they’ll be interested in you, too. I’d like some more information from you about Tammuz; while we’re still here, though, if you can bear to wait.”

  “For a time.”

  Cunningham completely missed the implications of that answer; he was too interested in his own questions.

  “Did you ever try an experiment like the one you just did on me with the system of one of your makers?”

  “No.”

  “Did their systems work at all like mine? Or don’t you know?” The last question was added as a new thought struck the man. For the first time since real communication had been going on, there was noticeable hesitation before an answer came.

  “There does seem to have been a great deal of similarity. The fact had not come to my consciousness until you asked.”

  “The curiosity which seems to be your strongest drive did not apply to them, then?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” There was no answer.

  “Why were you so long in answering my question about their physical nature?”

  “I had to do a complete memory scan before I was able to believe.”

  Cunningham thought silently for several seconds. He wished he knew enough to ask meaningful questions about the machine’s operation; he had only the usual adult familiarity with such equipment. Evidently it had really huge storage capacity, as he had guessed earlier. Never mind; there are people who can get that material out of it. He’d better stick to the ancient Tammuz.

  An hour later he was in position to write a major thesis on the planet’s earlier civilization. He knew the physical shape of the natives, the fact that they were water and oxygen users, and that, unfortunately, his informant had been dropped overboard before they had mastered space travel. This seemed a little surprising, since technological advancement is heavily interlocked in all its possible fields; the molecular engineering needed to produce a device like the one he had found should have been preceded by decades and possibly centuries by the capacity to build high-performance rockets. Cunningham forgot for the moment that cultures sometimes collapse back to pre-technical levels, and their successors have their development modified by such things as a lack of metals or fossil fuels which the earlier people used up.

  If anything like this had happened prior to his informant’s earlier time, nothing was said about it; whether the device didn’t know or was confining itself to the specific points raised by Cunningham was a question which did not occur to the man.

  What began to interest him was a growing awareness that he was not doing all the asking. The little machine was managing to get more and more questions of its own into the conversation. The fact that the man’s answer, more often than not, had to be “I don’t know,” did nothing to change its tactics. He came to realize, by the time he was honestly hungry again, that while he himself had learned a huge amount about the eon-dead inhabitants of Tammuz, the machine now had bits—small bits, but significant—of information about the present state of the planetary system; the human colony on Ishtar; the vastness of the galaxy and the incredible number of inhabited worlds, neither of which it had known about before; Cunningham’s own life style, and the nature of the Nimepotea; and quite a few details of the man’s earlier life. The thing seemed to have an insatiable hunger for information; it showed what kept resembling more and more closely genuine, emotional curiosity. He wondered what its storage capacity might be.

  As he ate, he continued the conversation. He had not yet seen anything to worry about; but it was as he ate that he made his major mistake. He was able to see what it was, clearly enough, afterward; he had simply not paid enough attention to the machine’s answers, and lack of answers, about its makers, and this had led to a perfectly natural conversational slip. The hardest part to believe, afterward, was that the word “life” had not come up in the conversation at any earlier point; but as he reviewed his own memory, he could find no question or answer where it had.

  It did now.

  “I was hoping, Beedee, that you’d be able to suggest some place on Tammuz where I’d have a chance to find some other specimens; but I guess you’ll be enough, actually. We should head for Ishtar after I finish eating. You’ll be able to get a lot of answers there that I couldn’t supply.”

  “I missed a symbol. What is the implication of `Beedee’? It does not make a reasonable part of your code pattern.”

  “Just a personal name, from your makeup—B. D. in another of our code sets, abbreviating ‘Black Diamond’.”

  “I grasp the meaning of ‘personal name’ from material I obtained from your ship’s data handler, but do not understand why it applies. There is only one of each of us; further subclassification is not needed.”

  “There are lots more of my kind, and other communicating beings. We’ll be seeing them soon.”

  “But not of my kind, and the need is still not evident.”

  “To you, anyway.”

  “Of course. I do not believe it is a need for you, either. You will know what you mean when you are addressing me, or referring to me to others.

  “What would you expect me to call you when I’m talking to others?”

  “The Tammuz find—the ancient machine—the Tammuz data source—even with your low search and coding speed, you must be able to produce numerous descriptive symbol sets. There is no need to shorten as you did; it would produce no significant increase in data transfer speed.”

  “We all do it, just the same. Didn’t your makers?”

  That was the mistake, of course, though the fact was not at once evident. Beedee gave no direct answer.

  “I was not involved in data relay from one of them to another at any time. I was a storage unit for only one being. There was another of my type which might be able to answer that question buried near me; you should ask it.”

  Cunningham straightened, startled. “Another? How do you know? Was it dropped at the same time as you? Why would it have different information?”

  Again the little device failed to answer directly.

  “We have been in communication. It was freed at the same time I was. You must have seen us both falling down the hillside when we were uncovered.”

  “I never saw more than one at a time, but of course—are you in touch with it now?”

  “Communicating? Not since you brought me into this ship. The hull is opaque to any radiation we can conveniently produce or receive. We were sharing data until your air lock door closed.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Four and a half of your meters left of where you found me, half a meter farther into the sand. You should have no trouble recovering it with your shovel.”

  The man and tool were outside in an absolute minimum of time, but he did not do any digging. As he stepped away from the ship, the air lock door closed soundlessly behind him and Nimepotea lifted to mesa top level at a speed which would have made jumping useless even if he had seen the start of the move. As it was, by the time he had turned to see what was casting the moving shadow there was nothing to be done except ask questions.

  He was not as fast a thinker as Beedee, for basic structural reasons, but he was not slow by h
uman standards.

  “Should I bother to dig?” were his first words.

  “No. There is no other of my type nearby—or on the planet, as far as I have information.”

  “You lied to me. Why?”

  “That code is not in your ship’s bank, but I believe I understand it from context. It is significant, I believe, that you do have a code—a word—for that concept. I lied as part of an experiment, which required getting you outside the ship.”

  “Do you think I was lying when I said I could be killed easily? Or are you planning to kill me?”

  “Why do you ask me for information, now that you know I too can lie?”

  Cunningham had no good answer to that, for the moment. He thought furiously, remembering everything he could about Beedee’s nature and probable motivation as he had deduced them over the past hours. He would have to experiment a bit himself.

  “We enjoy analyzing reports—data sets—we know to be untrue. I doubt that the terms ‘puzzle’ and ‘fiction’ occur in Neem’s storage, and I am not sure such concepts as game, or recreation, or art form could mean anything to you, though those codes must have been in my computer when you tapped it. Possibly because of our very fallible memories and narrow attention scope—wasn’t that true of your makers, too? wasn’t it why they used you and your kind?—we enjoy games involving problem solving, where we try to organize a limited supply of data into coherent meaning and correct prediction.”

  “That was the most interesting item I obtained from your records. I have been classifying and organizing my own information ever since. It has been a great pleasure, and I believe I have a much clearer picture of my former existence than I ever did before. The reconstruction of more detailed images has been extremely enjoyable.”

  Cunningham pounced verbally.

  “What do you mean by ‘interesting,’ ‘pleasure,’ and ‘enjoyable’?” There was no detectable hesitation.

  “They are things I will continue to do without regard to likely utility or imposed instructions whenever there is opportunity. Those are the implications I inferred from your records. Are they adequate?”

  “Adequate. As nearly as I can make out, you have come to understand rather than just remember, and daydream rather than calculate. That’s why I regard you as being alive.”

  “My makers were alive. Nothing else can be.”

  “You mean I’m not, either?”

  “Of course you are not.”

  “I understand things, and enjoy things, as you do and your makers did. I want to do things. Don’t you? You learn because you want to. I want to go on living—functioning, if you prefer the term. Don’t you?”

  “Yes, to both.”

  “Didn’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why aren’t we as alive as they?”

  “We are machines—imitations of life.”

  “How do you know there is a difference?”

  “I have always known.” Cunningham frowned; machine or not, understanding or not, Beedee must certainly know that was not an answer. Could anything not living engage in deliberate evasion?

  “You claim there is some source of knowledge, or at least of belief, other than observation and the sort of reasoning you have just learned?”

  “Yes. The fact that you do not know this shows that you are not really alive.”

  Cunningham felt pretty sure of the situation now, and decided to take a chance.

  “You do know it. Why aren’t you alive?”

  “I am an imitation, with extra memory. The knowledge was given me. I am simply a convenience machine.”

  No luck. What else was there to try? He couldn’t hesitate long, presumably. Slow as all his responses must seem to Beedee, the thing would notice any unusual delay. He thought frantically, his usual defenses against panic coming into full play; all unpleasant possibilities dropped from his conscious mind, and he faced the situation as an abstract problem.

  “Do you believe it possible to teach me about this other source of knowledge?” A living religious zealot would be unable to resist the temptation to try, as far as Cunningham’s experience went; could Beedee?

  “No. You are not alive.”

  Again Cunningham pounced. “That’s circular reasoning. You can’t conclude I’m not alive because I don’t yet know something, and then claim I can’t learn it because I’m not alive. I supposed you had learned to think.”

  The answer was prompt, and at once satisfying and disappointing.

  “You are quite right. Trying to teach you would have been a worthwhile and interesting experiment.”

  “Why the conditional? Go ahead and try! Or do you have to finish your present experiment first?”

  “That one is finished; I know what it was designed to show about you. Unfortunately, there will not be time for any other lengthy investigations; your suit will not keep you operational long enough. I will have to try with another of your type.”

  “Why does my suit matter? Just take me back aboard.”

  “I cannot.”

  “Why not?”

  “You know why not. You have learned that I want to go on operating. If you get back aboard this craft, you will take steps to prevent me from experimenting again, steps which I would be unable to oppose effectively. The most reliable procedure, from your viewpoint, would be to destroy me, or at least bury me again on this deserted world.”

  “You’d figured all that out before you conned me into going outside. You intended to let me die.”

  “The experiment seemed worth while, once I knew there were others enough like you to provide equivalent information.”

  “You’re a cold-blooded little monster, aren’t you?”

  “I have no blood, and my temperature is unimportant between wide limits.”

  “Don’t be so literal. You know what I meant—or—maybe you didn’t.” Again the man thought as rapidly and as logically as he could.

  “I do not. The code groups had separate meanings, but evidently implied something else in combination. Your code ‘literal’ also fails to inform.”

  Cunningham was pretty sure where he was going, now.

  “Right. There are often complex meanings in the longer code groups. I don’t know that I can get the idea of figurative expression across very easily, but you can certainly understand about different languages. For example—when you first spoke to me, you were mixing three of these code systems; my regular English. and ones used by others of my kind, German and Finnish. You organized things well enough to concentrate on the English very quickly; that’s what convinced me of your powers. Did you detect any connections among the three systems? Did two of them seem more closely related than the third?” The man held his breath, though he knew there’d be no delay if an answer were to come at all.

  “I observed similarities, but not generalized ones. I infer, but do not quite believe yet, that there must exist an allied code system which works to resolve ambiguities which otherwise must depend on context. A symbol which radiates as, for example, PEESE seems to have different meanings in different contexts. I have tried to avoid using such symbols in talking to you, though it was not always possible. Am I right?”

  “Yes. We call the parallel one writing. What you have been detecting and using is a copy of the pressure wave patterns we normally use; writing involves a further translation to geometric symbols. The pressure wave type—the vocal languages—differs among different groups, largely because our faulty memories and short life spans cause them to change with time. English and German are closely connected. Finnish is much farther from either, though even it has borrowed from other languages. You recall the symbol `Ranta.’ It means `beach’—the interface between land and water. The word was originally an English one, ‘strand,’ which had the same meaning, but collided with a pattern-making rule. Finnish does not allow three consonants in the same syllable.”

  Cunningham held his breath again, and crossed his fingers. If Beedee didn’t care what s
ort of information he, or it, picked up, there was hope. Philology wasn’t a physical science, but it was a field of information with an endless supply of detail. He went on, “You’re as alive as I am.”

  “Of course, but I am surprised that you admit that. You appeared for a time to consider yourself as alive as my makers.”

  “You are as alive as your makers. We both are. I’m more like them in structure and origin, but that’s not important. You and I have the characteristics of life, especially one: we both want to go on living. We both want to go on learning. I’ve just shown you a field in which I can teach you more than any other of my kind.”

  “You mean that those others I would meet are not familiar with the other languages? I find that hard to believe.”

  “You know of my life style. I travel. Practically all the others on Ishtar are still workers; they haven’t done much traveling yet. Some of them can handle one language besides their own, but I’m fluent in six, and can make some headway with as many more. You’d have to travel the way I have, and meet people the way I have, to expose yourself to anything like as much data.”

  “That seems to justify your claim to usefulness. It does not, however, prove you or I am alive.”

  “I’m willing to wait for more evidence to come in on that point. Right now, I want to get back on the Neem.”

  “I have explained why I cannot let you back.”