by Hal Clement
“Is there anything we can do but wait and hope we’re lucky again?”
“Nothing I can do, if you mean about persuading the snakes to come back. There’s lots of rabbits and smaller animals, but if only the two rattlers we saw yesterday are involved, they may not want to hunt yet. How long would it take to digest a mouse as big as they caught yesterday?”
D’Orrey didn’t know, but guessed, “maybe three or four days. I’m hoping there are more snakes on this. I’m budgeting for a wait, though; I don’t expect yesterday’s luck again so soon.
His pessimism proved justified, but the cause was not serpentine satiation. The trio spend over two hours on the rock while the sun rose higher and higher and grew less and less supportable, and nothing animal but a couple of mice came into view. Vicki, oldest of the group by several years and far the most patient by nature, simply waited, thinking silently most of the time but sometimes making a remark. Her suit was healing itself slowly be apparently without errors. Her personal injuries, because of or in spite of artificial intervention, were progressing far more rapidly. She took her pill faithfully every hour to keep from scaring subjects away.
D’Orrey whose own suit was having its usual thermal trouble, spoke more often, though he wouldn’t descend to futile complaint. Peter divided his attention between his monitor and the Stage, sweeping the latter frequently with a pair of binoculars which he didn’t offer to share with the others. His uncle thought of asking for a look, but didn’t want to hear something like, “Aren’t yours just as good?”
He suspected that they weren’t, that Peter had incorporated devices of his own in his optics, but couldn’t imagine what advantage these might confer—or rather, he could imagine many things, from infra-red and ultra-violet vision extension to time-lapse interferometers permitting better than ordinary resolution, but couldn’t guess which might be most likely. It would depend heavily on the kid’s specific skills; human limits forced even hackers to specialize.
Vicki’s healing completed itself, and after allowing with some distaste a dozen ladybug-sized mechanisms from the kit to crawl over the sites of her injuries scavenging spent chemicals and healing devices, she returned them to the case and resumed her own monitoring of the Stage.
The real interruption came late in the morning. The sun had been ducking behind clouds off and on as fair-weather cumulus began to build; all, even Peter, had taken this as welcome relief. Now a much darker shadow swept over the rock. The wind, which had been rising slowly as the sea breeze developed and had even been of some comfort, grew gusty, and large raindrops splattered on the rock and the watchers. For a moment they hoped for just a brief shower; then the drops grew smaller, steadier and more frequent.
Peter, after one nonverbal annoyed utterance, clambered quickly down the irregular slope where they had mounted the rock and began dashing here and there about the clearing. He had turned his suit off; apparently he now wanted any rattlers to take responsibility for avoiding him regardless of scientific protocol. He was back in four or five minutes with a slightly embarrassed expression on his face.
“I never thought of rain with some of this stuff. I’ve always used it indoors.”
“Insulation trouble?” Vicki sounded sympathetic, and even Jaques could remember too many of his own lapses to be critical.
“Not so much that. Just . . .” the youngster fell silent, and his uncle was annoyed. Something informative could have come out then. If it weren’t merely electrical insulation, what trouble could rain cause a micromachine? He felt a surge of irritation which goes with finding a gap in one’s knowledge, seeing no way to fill it, and being unable because of conscience to pass it off as supernatural and therefore unknowable. He obviously wouldn’t be told: Peter was changing the subject quite forcibly. “Vick, your suit still has sections not working. Shouldn’t it be healed by now?”
“I suppose so. I haven’t been timing, though, and don’t know just how much damage was done. Also, this never happened to me before, and I don’t remember what the manual said I should expect for healing times.”
“Maybe I should check it—the suit, I mean.”
“Can you? Have you equipment?”
“I can cobble some together in an hour or so.”
“Here?”
“Well, no. I’ll need my kit back at camp. I could take your suit back and you could use mine if you wanted to keep observing. It won’t really fit you—it isn’t self-shaping like yours—but its camouflage unit can handle wrinkles.”
“But if you aren’t here and anything interesting happens, will there be any record? Is your layout entirely automatic? I thought you’d have to be on hand to operate at least some of it.
“Peter looked uncomfortable once more.
“Well—I’ve had to turn a lot of it off, just now. Is there much chance of snakes hunting while it’s raining, anyway?”
“Rabbits and mice stay out in it. I expect the rattler’s lives go an as usual, too,” answered D’Orrey. “What it boils down to is that the Becker equipment can’t observe in the rain, and if this shower lasts more than an hour or two we may as well go back to camp and read Nanofacts for Beginners.”
“Peter flushed again. There was no way of taking the remark as anything but criticism, though the man had managed to avoid saying “. . . equipment we were counting on . . .”
Vicki, soft-hearted in spite of her disappointment, cut in. “Pete wouldn’t have to read. How long would it take to redesign your stuff to work even in the rain?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t spent much time outdoors. A lot goes on I didn’t think about . . .”
“And it isn’t just a matter of improving insulation, you say,” D’Orrey added, he hoped not too pointedly.
“Not by a lot. I’ll work on it, though. You want me to take your suit, Vick? Or will you be coming back too?” Neither adult could guess whether the youngster wanted to be alone or not.
They debated the question on its own merits for several seconds. Then Vicki sneezed again and reached doubtfully for her pill vial.
“Not just anti-symptom stuff, I hope?” Peter’s self assurance suddenly blossomed again.
“I thought you had a low opinion of natural cures,” D’Orrey cut in before the woman could answer.
“I do, but that’s not the point. Interfering with natural responses to an infection just because they’re a nuisance isn’t very smart. You should at least decide first whether the responses are helping fight the infection.”
“What would you do?” asked the woman, rather sarcastically.
“I’d spend a week blowing my nose, until someone—”
“So you do have some trust in nature. That’s just what I do, except where sneezing will interfere with the job.”
Peter scarcely noticed her interruption. “—cooks up an antibody for just the right virus. I’ll have to try that—I haven’t done any really fancy chemistry yet, though I grow most of my own gear. I wonder if pseudolife would do the job, or if I’d have to get into high class biochem?” He seemed about to drift completely into abstract thought, but D’Orrey brought the discussion firmly back to practical levels.
“We’d all better go back, I guess, and at least rethink what we should have up here with us. Vicki’s nerves and membranes can offer their proper responses to irritation”—another sneeze suggested that they were doing this—” and your gear needs rethinking, you admit. Her suit may need treatment, and even if the snakes come hunting again we can’t make the measurements and readings we wanted.”
“Maybe you’d better stay, though,” suggested the woman. “If anything does happen, just knowing something about the frequency of hunts and the possible number of snakes involved could be useful.”
The man nodded slowly. “All right. I’ll stay ‘til sundown, or enough before that to let me get back before dark. You two go on down and do what needs to be done with sniffles, suits, and sensors. Watch your footing—no insult intended.”
�
��Don’t worry!” Vicki responded with feeling. Peter had already disappeared down the climbway. She followed, showing no sign of stiffness or other effect of her injuries. D’Orrey’s attention shifted back to the Stage as Peter appeared and worked over the area once more. Apparently he had merely turned his equipment off before; now he was collecting it. Vicki was not with him, and Jaques didn’t even wonder whether she were waiting at the head of the trail or had started down at once. The boy presently vanished as well—really vanished, by departure, not by activating his suit. D’Orrey stretched himself out behind the screen of bushes, assumed as relaxed a position as possible, and watched the deserted Stage through the still falling rain.
Rabbits, mice, and squirrels might indeed be willing to feed during a shower, but none of them seemed around at the moment. The sun, glimpsed occasionally through brief breaks i the rain clouds, slowly reached the meridian. It sank seemingly even more slowly. The temperature had fallen considerably, which was a relief; the camouflage suit was better at keeping its wearer warm than cool. And at least he had food and more water this time.
No rabbits. No squirrels. No mice. Not even a toad.
No snakes. A few decades ago this would have been no surprise on Mt. Desert, but what some people called Greenhouse Effect and others had named the Warm Ripple, depending on political preference and statistical background, had gradually extended the northern range of the timber rattler by over three hundred kilometers and was still at it. How the creatures had made their way over the causeway from the mainland to Acadia was a matter of speculation, but no one was very surprised. There were far fewer human travelers these days, mostly because of fuel shortage and cost, and even a bear would not have been very startling.
But none of this explained rattlesnakes cooperating in a hunt. Miracles, to D’Orrey, meant high technology or unusual combinations of natural law, not the supernatural. High tech meant people, not spirits. The hacker attitude had spread quite naturally from data handling to nano and bio technology. Shaping micromachines and pseudolife “organisms” using commercially available enzymes and crystal-patterned molecular assembly guides, commonly and—when spoken aloud—confusingly called “ribosomes” from the trade name of an early model, was no more unusual now than the designing of viruses and more benign software around commercially available solid-state data processing chips had been a few decades before. Even casual—much too casual from D’Orrey’s viewpoint—gene engineering, though sometimes illegal, was a common field of amateur activity. Knowledge is nearly indestructible, since it does not obey conservation laws. The cooperative snakes might represent someone’s personal game, a serious piece of research to be published in due course, mere mischief or, just conceivably, a new natural phenomenon. D’Orrey, as an animal behavior student, needed to know which. New combinations of natural law were eternal, and amusement—eternal as knowledge itself. They were also as hard to control, as evolution, religious reformations, drug abuse, nuclear proliferation, and the sport of hacking all showed clearly.
The sun was low when D’Orrey started down the trail. He watched the footing carefully, and had no trouble recognizing where Vicki had slipped on the way up; but there was no sign of any similar accident going down until he was almost at the bottom of the steep section. Then he nearly provided the evidence himself as a loose stone went out from underfoot. His reflexes stood up to the test. His other foot moved quickly and stopped the fall; for a moment he felt the prickle of released adrenaline, then a mixture of two kinds of relief—that he had not actually fallen, and that neither of the others had seen the near-incident. He could have treated any minor injuries himself, since neither of them would know when he had started down and no delay would have been obvious; but suits healed themselves much more slowly, and the boy would certainly have noticed anything wrong even with the garment turned off.
Vicki was visible and audible as he neared the camp; the boy was neither. She was still sneezing, and occasionally coughing and blowing her nose. She was not wearing her camouflage unit, but a warm water-repellent coverall. Her suit was draped inside out over a nearby bush, and D’Orrey decided that his nephew was really showing off. Natural, or course, but his time promising a really useful put-down.
He turned off his suit as he approached the camp—he had forgotten to do so while crossing the road—and gave a cheerful whistle. Vicki saw him at once, waved, and noting the raised eyebrows as he drew nearer, nodded towards Peter’s tent.
“He’s been busy ever since we got here, as far as I can tell. I don’t know what progress he’s made. I haven’t heard any bad language.”
“Vick, you know me better than that!” an indignant retort came from the tent, whose soundproofing was evidently off. “I’ve figured out what to do, and started most of it. The things just have to grow now.”
“Then we can go back in the morning, rain or no rain?” Jaques asked.
“I think so. You never can tell just how long debugging will take, of course.”
“Of course,” the others agreed together. “Coming out soon?” the woman added.
“Might as well. It’s on its own now. Just a minute.” The tent entrance rolled itself up, and Peter crawled out and stood up. He was wearing the same shorts as before, designed to support pockets as well as dazzle eyes, plus the shoes whose soles had grown much thicker after a few minutes’ use around the stony camp site. A nanohack could make himself very comfortable if inclined that way. His nephew was still, D’Orrey felt, conscious of his own physique, but his suspicion might merely represent an undersize uncle’s jealousy rather than objective analysis. It would be nice to be a few centimeters taller . . .
He could have been, of course, but he had much better things to do with his money. Let the kid gloat if he wanted.
“Anything happen?” Peter asked.
“Nope.” D’Orrey shook his head negatively. “Nothing bigger than grasshoppers.”
“How much time do we budget for just waiting?” the boy asked. Both pairs of male eyes turned to Vicki, the patient one.
“A week at least,” she replied promptly, and firmly. “If that bothers anyone, maybe you could design some snake detectors for us so we could go where they are instead of waiting for them to come to us. I know it’s no use tramping around just looking for them; their prey would hear us and take off first, and they’d either go after dinner or at least away from us.”
“But don’t rattlers usually just wait for the dinner to get near enough?” objected Peter.
“Yes; but is it what they usually do that brought us here?”
“No. You’re still cooking tonight, Uncle Jaques.”
The rain continued, sometimes very heavily, for much of the night, but the sky visible through the branches seemed cloudless again by sunrise. Peter and D’Orrey of course took advantage of Vicki’s cooking turn to stay in their tents a little later, but before the sun was very high the three were again climbing to the Stage. They were laden pretty much as on the previous day, but Peter seemed to have learned something; attached to his belt was an object about the size, shape, and from the way he had handled it, the weight, of an ordinary brick. The others suspected he was bringing his entire stock of nano equipment this time.
Vicki’s suit now seemed completely healed. D’Orrey had not asked whether his nephew had done anything to it, assuming that the way it was hanging the night before implied the answer. The question seemed unimportant just now; the catechol embarrassment could come later. They reached the rock, this time without incident, unloaded food and water as before and draped reflecting film over them. Then Peter once more set out his apparatus, leaving his “brick” on the rock.
D’Orrey eyed it thoughtfully, but decided not even to test its weight. He was pretty sure that touching it without the owner’s knowledge would not be possible, and however harmless the act and natural curiosity he didn’t want to be defending himself.
The kid was close enough to running the group already. His embarrassed ignor
ance of outdoor environments, even with its resultant delay of the project, had been quite lucky, D’Orrey felt; but it couldn’t be expected to keep him down long.
His reflections were interrupted by a yell from the Stage, coming through the suit communicators but also audible directly. For a moment neither of them could see the boy; then he sprang into brief visibility as his suit cut off, vanished again fro a second or two, and reappeared once more. Neither watcher could guess whether the garment was being flicked on and off in indecision or was malfunctioning. Still less could they guess at a cause for either possibility until Peter provided it, coherent now but still highly excited.
“Rattlers! Dozens of ‘em! They’re heading toward you. What’ll I do?”
“If they’re heading this way, why do anything? Or are you in their way?”
“No, I’m behind them and they don’t seem to care bout me. But I can’t get back to you or the rock. They’re in the way!”
“Go around them. You should be able to run fast enough. Or don’t you want to get in front? Just make up your mind how badly you want to be up here with us instead of on the ground with them.” D’Orrey tried not to sound impatient or superior.
There were several seconds of silence. Peter remained visible, and appeared to be surveying the ground with some care. When he finally spoke again he seemed calmer. “I guess I can see more down here. Do you see ‘em yet?”
Both adults looked carefully before Vicki answered “No” as calmly as she could. “How far are they from you? And just how many are there really?”
“ ‘bout seven or eight meters from the farthest I can see. A dozen or so. I think there were more, and they’d be closer to you now. They’re really travelling.”
“And how many really are there?”
“Well—I can count eight, now. There were more, though. All heading for the rock. Don’t you have a flock of mice, or squirrels, or rabbits, or something they might be chasing?”
