Classic Fiction

by Hal Clement

  “And I have explained why you should. Isn’t the value of keeping me—a source of information better than any you’d find for parsecs around—worth the risk of what I might do to you?”

  “Not if I comprehend the meaning of ‘risk’ correctly.”

  “You can’t think of any way to render yourself safe from me, except by killing me?”

  “No.”

  “You haven’t really tried. You ran down only one believable scenario. Use your imagination, dammit!”

  “The symbols are strange.”

  “Never mind the last one. Imagination is the quality which lets you picture the results of letting me back on board! The ability you have been using, you say, to relive the old days on Tammuz! It doesn’t have to be a real event, Beedee; think what might happen! You can imagine a future, not just the past! or let me do it!”

  “You do it. I need a better referent.”

  “All right. You could open up the main communicator. There is another ship in the neighborhood. Call until they answer, and then tell them about yourself. Tell them what you are, and what you know, and that I found you and have you on my ship. After that, you can be sure they’d kill me if I did anything serious to you. There are too many people around who are like you. Knowledge is the most important thing in their lives, and they couldn’t sympathize with my wrecking or losing you even to save my life. Don’t you find that believable, whether you consider us alive or not? And don’t you want to get in touch with these other people anyway?”

  Surprisingly, there was a pause. Cunningham wondered what had to be going on in the diamond-based intelligence above, which should have been able to decide most items in microseconds, and after several whole seconds began to worry seriously. Anu was setting; he could last the night, and much of the next day, without restocking his suit, but if Beedee chose to leave there might not be much use waiting.

  Then Nimepotea began to descend, and the little machine’s voice came again.

  “I have considered about half a million possible scenarios as you suggested, most of which offer ways of keeping you operational and in my company. Imagining, especially about the future, is even more fun than understanding, and seeing which imagined event is going to be right promises to be the most fun of all. Do you have any other suggestions for amusement? And do you have a personal symbol of address?”

  Cunningham did not answer until he was inside.

  “You were taking a lot for granted.” The captain of the Deemfong looked as though she wouldn’t have done anything of the sort, and glanced at Beedee with suspicion.

  “Not in the least,” Cunningham assured her. “I was a long way from being out of ideas. There was no real doubt that Beedee’s main interest in life—”

  “I am not alive!”

  “—in existence is accumulating data. I can only guess at his, or her, or its memory capacity, but if diamond unit cells correspond at all closely to human nerve cells in that structure it must be the equivalent of millions of human brains. He’s grateful to me for giving him the idea of organization and generalization into rules—actually he picked that out of Needs computer—”

  “Why didn’t he have that already, if he’s such a superior example of—”

  “I can only guess. First, he seems to have been merely a sort of pocket recorder, not intended for scientific work. Second, he seems to have a built-in routine giving a special status—life, as he has interpreted the word—to his makers, and I’d expect any shaky axiom to interfere with organization. Whenever he started to organize on his own in the early days, he’d run into that irresolvable and unchangeable inconsistency, and have to give up.”

  “But—”

  “With his makers gone, he could imitate my ship’s computer as long as those beings weren’t part of the picture—and they weren’t a significant part until I began asking about their real nature and insisting about mine. That was a mistake. As long as we don’t claim to be living beings, we shouldn’t have any trouble from him.”

  “Except from the fact that he regards fellow machines as fit subjects for experiment, I gather.”

  “Yes, that happened at first. You’ve cured that, I’m sure.” “I cured it? How?”

  “By turning out to be different from me. How about it, Beedee? If all my kind are as individual as Captain Mbende and I, how many varieties of interaction could there be among us to predict?”

  “The number is inexpressible in any of your symbols I know. The problem of calculating it would be a good imagination exercise itself.”

  “So what would you be risking if you caused a person to cease operating?”

  “Obviously, an incalculable number of possible problems. The risk is not to be taken. I realize you cannot believe this statement totally, since I have lied in the past, but a prime problem I am attacking at the moment is that of proving that I no longer regard that practice as desirable. When I solve it, I will inform any people within communication range.”

  Cunningham looked at the captain.

  “I know nothing’s certain in this universe, but that seems a playable risk to me. At least, it saves me from using the ultimate stunt I was going to play if he didn’t let me into my ship.”

  “What was that?”

  Cunningham smiled, looked at Beedee, took out a note block and wrote on it, carefully keeping the written surface from the little machine’s line of sight. He held it so the captain could read it. When she, too, smiled, he crumpled it up, written surface inward, and pushed it into a disposer.

  The woman nodded slowly. Ignorance could not be preserved forever, of course, but she could see why Cunningham was in no hurry to teach Beedee about puns.

  1989

  BLOT

  CILE STEPPED THORUGH THE INNER LOCK DOOR, AND TURNED white as it closed behind him. The woman at the data station shivered as she felt his presence.

  “I’m sorry, Sheila,” he said hastily. “Rob wanted to use the lock himself right away, and said I should defrost inside.”

  “Why didn’t he come through first? Armor doesn’t have anything like your heat capacity.”

  “He didn’t say.” ZH50 had stood still since entering, using his own power to warm up; the frost was already disappearing from his extremities. Sheila McEachern waited, knowing there was nothing to be gained by complaining to the robot, her irritation giving way to curiosity anyway as the lock cycled again. She could hope, but not be sure, that Robert Ling had not wanted to annoy just to gain her full attention.

  The valve slid open to reveal a human figure, its armor’s gold background fogging briefly under a layer of white as the ship’s air touched it. The man unclamped his bulky helmet as its contrasting black started to show again, and flipped it back.

  “Chile, you’re in the way. Why did you think I wanted you inside first? I was hoping to see the new display as soon—”

  “I can answer that.” The woman snorted. “You didn’t tell him why, just sent him first. Otherwise he’d have taken the reason as an order and given me frostbite while he plugged into the console.”

  “I would not have injured you, Sheila.”

  “Of course not, Chile. But you wouldn’t have minded making me uncomfortable, with a real order on file.”

  “And you’re still in my way,” Ling cut in impatiently. ZH50 crossed to the data console in a single floating step, uncovered its input jack, and inserted the plug now extending from the heel of his right hand. The woman controlled herself; his metal was still cold enough to feel from a few centimeters away, but at least the frost was gone. She aimed her annoyance more appropriately.

  “Why all this rush for a new picture? Did you finally find something which isn’t too radiation-saturated to date?” She disapproved basically of sarcasm, but had more control over aim than fire power. Ling knew her well enough to ignore the second question.

  “We caught another glimpse of Chile’s ghost.”

  “We?”

  “We. The lovebirds saw it too, so I’m
not floating.”

  “Did Chile?”

  “Not this time, Sheila,” the robot answered for himself. “I was with Luis and Chispa near the Banjo, at Square Fifty-four. Robert and the Eiras were at Ninety-one.” The woman frowned.

  “Then why the hurry to get Chile inside?” she asked. “He could have been here long before you, if you started at the same time from those areas.”

  “I didn’t think of him until I was nearly back. Then I had an idea, and needed him to check it. Luis and Chispa found two more of those blocks a while ago. The Eiras and I heard them; you probably weren’t listening. Of course Chile hadn’t filed them with Dumbo yet.”

  “I was listening. And your idea needs all their positions.”

  “Right.” If Ling noticed the remaining sarcasm he ignored it. “Look. Whether we want to believe it or not, those cubes are artificial. Shape may be an intrinsic property of a natural crystal, but size isn’t. Even if they were life forms, they wouldn’t all match dimensions to four figures. It occurred to me that they might be sensors—detectors of some sort.”

  “It occurred to Chispa days ago. You didn’t want to believe then that anyone else beat us to Miranda.”

  “I know. I still don’t. There’s no way a group from Earth could have set up this expensive a trip in secret, and I can’t make myself believe the other explanation. We’ve been hoping for ETI too long. But I thought of a way of checking.” He smiled, with a distant look on his face as though he were contemplating the approach of Fame.

  “And?”

  “The things radiate—broadcast—infrared patterns, nonthermal ones, at unpredictable times.”

  “I know.”

  “Well, we’ve mapped way beyond the local horizon. If that IR output is being coordinated, there must be a central unit they can all reach. You could have Dumbo mark any points on the map which are in eyeball touch with all the cube positions at once. If we’re lucky, there’ll only be a few. If we’re very lucky—”

  The woman was already keying at Dumbo, the central data unit.

  “And if there aren’t any?” she asked dryly.

  “Well, it won’t prove I’m wrong. It’ll just mean . . .” His voice trailed off as the display popped into view, and a grin split his freckled face. Sheila rolled her eyes zenithward; it would happen to Ling. As though he weren’t bubbly enough already.

  Chile accompanied them, naturally. The display had indicated a projecting spur at the top of a cliff which Chispa Jengibre had called El Barco, from the shadow pattern the sun was casting along its face when she first saw it. It was in block ninety-two, a little over twenty kilometers from the Dibrofiad. The location was understandable enough by hindsight; there would be splendid line-of-sight coverage from there. However, a one-hundred-fifty meter fall on Miranda would be dangerous for a human being; even if no limbs were broken, damage to the armor needed against the airless heat sink and Uranian radiation was nearly certain. While Dibrofiad’s crew had gotten fairly used to two-plus percent normal gravity, this hadn’t made anyone a good walker; it was doubtful that anything ever would.

  Chile, therefore, viewed a human trip to the cliff as a parent would his one-year-old toddling out on a diving board. The actual visit to the spur must be robot’s work, if it had to be done.

  The walkers looked ridiculous, trunks leaning forward like a sprinter about to leave the block, but legs almost straight along the same line. Walking is essentially coordinated falling forward, and Miranda needs every advantage to provide much fall. Thrust came from lower leg muscles bending and straightening ankles to drive toes hooked into surface irregularities, since bending the knees very far made them hit the ground. Bumps and cracks were fortunately numerous, possibly due to the expansion of freezing water, though none of the crew had a clear idea how water could ever have been liquid this far from the sun. The “hikers” carried alpenstocks, but used a free finger more often than the stick to keep faces off the ground. Luis, Chispa’s husband, had remarked that walking could be called body-surfing if Miranda’s water were only melted. His wife insisted that the analogy was too strained, though it was she who had insisted on the robot’s name being spelled to look Spanish after the Gold team had won the throw for right to select the name itself.

  Whatever one chose to call it, Sheila was as good at “walking” as Ling; everyone, regardless of specialty, shared the field exploration, which was the most time-consuming crew duty.

  Chile would stay ahead of them, since he alone dared to leap. His memory held a detailed surface map for sixty or seventy kilometers around Dibrofiad, so he didn’t have to see his target; he could jump with enough spin control to be sure of landing on his feet; and being built to operate in the sixty Kelvin temperature range, he had no armor to worry about.

  The greenish bulk of Uranus hung beyond Stegosaur, the same jagged ridge of carbon-darkened ice it had silhouetted ever since their arrival, changing visibly only in shape as the sun circled above it to produce phase. At the moment it was about eight hours from narrowest crescent, and a slight darkening of the green, showing through the deeper notches of Stego, showed that the fuzzy terminator of the gas giant would be in view shortly.

  The party turned to put the planet to their left rear and the sun behind them, and set out. Neither of the other human couples could be seen, but Ling had reached them on the low-frequency sets to report that the Gold team was going out. Bronwen Eira, engineer and captain of Dibrofiad, had acknowledged.

  Little was said even by Ling as they went; each person was coming to terms, in his or her own way, with the increasing certainty that they would be the first group to prove the reality of extraterrestrial intelligence. It was hard to believe, like the “yes” to a proposal. Sheila, accustomed to the rugged Miranda landscape as she was, found it now showing a strange, dreamlike aspect; Robert scarcely saw it at all through constantly changing visions of the futures the next hour or two might crystallize. His usual free-time occupation of talking his companion into sharing a name had been put aside, not entirely to her relief. Even the Green and Orange teams, the Jengibres and Eiras, though not going along, were having trouble concentrating on their work; all four had thought of dropping it and following the Golds, though none had so far suggested it aloud.

  Travel was fast, in spite of its awkwardness. ZH50 spoke occasionally to guide his companions away from the deeper chasms, though one or the other of them would sometimes issue a startled gasp or exclamation when carried by a “step” over a drop deep enough to jar an Earth-trained nervous system but dismissed by the robot as safe. Their startlingly sharp shadows, that of each helmet surrounded by a Brocken halo visible only to its owner, pointed the way. Dibrofiad was quickly out of sight; even had Miranda been smooth, five kilometers would have put the ship below the horizon.

  Finally Chile stopped them with a gesture. “We turn left here. A straight path toward the point marked by Dumbo would have brought us to the foot of Barco. Be careful; there is less than a kilometer to go. Be sure to aim no step beyond a spot you can see.”

  The speed of the group slowed accordingly, until he stopped them again. “Tripod fashion from now on; use your sticks. No free fall.”

  An unusually smooth horizon now faced them. Neither Rob nor Sheila could estimate its distance; none of the numerous wrinkles and shadows on the ground ahead offered any clue to size, and there was no reason to suppose the general surface was horizontal even if they had been able, in the feeble gravity, to be sure of vertical. They knew from the Dumbo display that there was a possibly lethal drop beyond the edge, but this could have been fifty meters away or five hundred.

  “Where’s the spur?” Sheila asked.

  “There.” Chile pointed. “Its tip has enough downslope to be invisible from where we stand, though if you jump straight up for a few meters you could distinguish . . .”

  “Thanks, I’m not sure I could go straight up. I’ll take your word. What’s the actual distance?”

  “We are just un
der one hundred fifty meters from the main line of the edge and from the base of the spur. I advise you not to get any closer, but if you want to see me all the way to the end, you will have to. Please go very slowly indeed, and do not pass me under any circumstances.”

  Nearly erect now, using the alpenstocks, and never having more than one foot or stick off the ice at a time, the trio edged forward.

  “I wish you would stay back,” Chile repeated when the distance had shrunk to fifty meters. “We have no data on the strength of this ice. We could be providing the heaviest load it has experienced since it formed. It would be much safer if I went forward alone and brought back whatever may be there.”

  “No collecting yet, Chile,” Sheila replied. She made no comment on the danger the robot had implied, but was conscious of it. The cliff might even have an overhang. “Nothing gets moved from its original site until we make final decision about what’s coming home with us. We don’t want to spoil more than we can help for later researchers.”

  The robot, who knew this perfectly well, made no reply; but both Sheila and Rob knew that First Law tension must be building up in him. They kept safely behind him as he approached the edge, the woman doing nothing to oppose her companion’s obvious intention to keep ahead of her, and stopped when they were close enough to see the far end of the projection.

  There was something there. Ling had a scope—a monocular whose eye relief allowed it to be used through his face plate—but this was little help. He could tell that the object was cubical like the other finds, but much larger, seven or eight centimeters on the edge. It seemed to have been set into the dirty ice of the cliff, with two thirds of its height above the surface and an equal fraction projecting outward. The cube faces they could see appeared to be covered with regular lines of dots which sparkled faintly on their mirror-like background.

  “How close do you think you can get, Chile?” the man asked at length, after Sheila had also done her best with the scope.