Classic Fiction

by Hal Clement

  “New rock buried,” Pam announced without bothering to look.

  “Bury clear.”

  A third set of thumpers, skillfully placed, kept the twenty-five-meter width nearly unchanged and practically doubled the other dimension. A fourth, with Annie and Candlegrease moved farther back for safety, left a promising if still rather frightening slope.

  Akmet, using the largest and heaviest of the available bugs, traversed this down, up, and down again, without starting any slides. Dominic repeated the test for practice. Then, with no argument from anyone, he turned back to Annie’s controls and very gingerly drove tug and tow down the same way. Everyone thought of trying this with the tow disconnected first, but no one mentioned the idea aloud. Erni wanted to get it over with; the others simply trusted Nic’s judgment.

  At the bottom, Candlegrease safely clear of the rubble, the tug stopped and everyone went to the left windows.

  The glider’s remains could now be seen easily. The body was flattened and cracked, the wings crumpled, the empennage separated from the rest. A patch of growing stems, twigs, and branches had already started to grow from, around, and through the wreckage, and after a few moments Erni brought them closer. Akmet was once again relaying descriptions to Nest. They were given little time to report.

  “Go. No stop needed.”

  “Right? Straight? Left?” asked Pam.

  “Straight.” They were at the moment facing about Hotnorthwest. Erni, still at the controls, obeyed. After they had gone about fifty meters, “Right.” He started to swerve, and Pam muttered softly, “Full circle.” He obeyed, guessing at her plan, and kept turning after they were heading sunward and the voice expostulated “Stop right.” Back at the original heading, the woman said simply, “Three hundred sixty degrees.” It worked; the next message was “Forty degrees right.” He obeyed, and received a “Four degrees right.” In minutes the wrecked glider and the growth around it were out of sight.

  They were now looking at the sky more often and more carefully. At least two more objects among or beyond the usual foreground of blackish jetsam, objects which might be other gliders, could now be seen. No one was surprised when an occasional “Left” or “Right” warned them of other obstacles, sometimes but not always before Senatsu provided the same information. The natives by now seemed to have a pretty good idea of what the human-driven vehicles could and could not do—or get away with. The tug and its tow sometimes had to be guided around a fair-sized boulder which had not been mentioned, but nothing really dangerous went unreported.

  “I guess they really want us to get there,” Akmet remarked at one point, rather rhetorically.

  “They want their hydrogen to get there,” retorted Erni. “It will. Don’t worry.”

  “And you don’t think they care that much about us?” asked Pam.

  “What do you think?” The woman shrugged, her wet suit doing nothing to conceal the motion. She said nothing.

  “What do you think of them, Erni?” asked Nic. He was driving and didn’t look away from his window.

  Icewall didn’t even shrug. As usual, not much of anyone’s face could be seen, but Pam gave an uneasy glance toward her husband. He answered with a barely visible raised eyebrow. It was at least a minute before anyone spoke.

  Then, “They care about as much for us as for one of their branches,” Erni said flatly.

  Nic nodded, his body attitude showing some surprise. “You’ve got it after all. You had me worried,” he said. This time his friend did shrug visibly. Rather unfortunately, no one chose to prolong the discussion. More time passed.

  They were now really close to their goal, according to their guide—“Three hundred forty-four” was its terse response to the question.

  “Any more danger?” asked Pam. “Go fast?”

  “No more danger. Go fast.”

  The driver, currently Akmet, started to add power, but after a mere twenty-kph increase Nic and Erni almost simultaneously laid hands on his shoulders. The former spoke.

  “That’s enough for now.”

  “Why?”

  “Somewhere along here something happened.”

  “That wasn’t until they got there!”

  “As far as we know. Don’t overdrive your reflexes. Keep your eyes wide open.”

  “No danger fast.”

  Erni answered. “Observing.” This seemed to be an unimpeachable excuse. There was no further comment from their guides and watchers. Anyone who had hoped or expected that they would betray impatience was disappointed.

  There were now six or seven of the gliders in sight most of the time. Their irregular motion made them hard to count. Pam was almost certain she had seen one struck by lightning a day before, but her question at the time—“Danger for you? Lightning?”—had gone unanswered. Since there were two new words in the sentence this might have been lack of understanding, but always before such lack had been signified with the “Unclear” phrase.

  Human tension was mounting, not only in the tug but at Nest, where Ben and the others were being kept up-to-date by nearly continuous verbal reports.

  The sun was causing less trouble now for the driver. It was still partly below the horizon ahead, but there were more and more clouds; and those near the distant horizon provided a nearly complete block even when only a small fraction of the sky overhead was actually covered. What the clouds failed to hide was largely behind blowing dust and other objects.

  Mountains seemed much rarer, though no one assumed this a function of Hotlat alone. Senatsu assured them it was not, that only the two or three million square kilometers around and ahead of them were any smoother than average. She could now confirm the native-given distance to the “city,” but could give no more complete a description of it than before. She was certain now that it was beside one of the lakes, but had no data whatever on the nature of the fluid this held. Chemists were waiting impatiently for news on that point.

  Senatsu had triumphantly reported resolving the area where the travelers had descended the cliff, and even getting an image of the thicket where the glider had crashed; but this, she said, had not grown more than a meter or two from the wreck. This made no sense to anyone but Nic, who still kept his developing ideas to himself.

  The glider count continued to grow. So did the number of crashes. Several times these events were seen from Annie, but more often wreckage was sighted to one side or the other of their track. Experience gave the human observers a way to estimate when the wrecks had occurred; it seemed that the plants which represented the remote control mechanism grew uncontrolled for a short time, then died for lack of—something. The natives had clearly not completely mastered aviation, but seemed casual about its dangers.

  A clue to the nature of the something was secured when they passed an apparently thriving thicket of the stuff at the edge of a small lake. The evidence was not completely convincing, since no trace of a wrecked flying machine could be seen in the tangle. The distant chemists at Nest were more convinced of the implication than the four on Annie; it was, after all, almost dogma among biochemists that life needed liquid; it was a solution-chemistry phenomenon—though the precise solvent seemed less important.

  At the present general temperature around Annie, it could easily be the cryolite found on Jellyseal. Numerous bets were on hold at Nest. Bugs went out from Annie to collect samples from the lake, but there was no means of analyzing these on board. There had been a limit to the equipment the tug could carry, no matter how many enthusiasts were involved in the design.

  The missing women had been better equipped in this respect, but had apparently postponed sampling until after their cargo was delivered. They had never reported any collecting.

  The lightning, even among small clouds, was now almost continuous. Thunder and even wind could be heard most of the time. The crash of one glider was near enough to be audible inside the tug; and of course the rain, frequently materializing with no obvious cloud as a source, could hardly be missed as it drum
med on the vehicle’s shell. Most of the liquid that struck the ground vanished almost instantly; no one could be sure whether it was evaporating from the hot surface or soaking into it even when an experimental hole was dug by one of the bugs.

  The explorers paused—bringing questions from their guides—to watch for results, but these were inconclusive. Whatever was happening was too quick to permit a decision. Pam made an effort to ask the natives, but it was hard to decide afterward whether the questions or the answers were less clear. Tricia, back at Nest, brightened up when this happened and got to work with her computer, but even she remained unsure of what had been said.

  At last the welcome “One kilometer” sounded, followed a few seconds later by “up slope ahead.”

  There was indeed a slope ahead, only a few meters high but quite enough to hide what lay beyond. Tug and tank labored up to its crest, and were promptly stopped by Pam. Her husband resumed reporting.

  “There’s a roughly oval valley below us, with a lake like the one where they tested the paraffin but a lot larger. Sen was right; the lake is about three quarters surrounded by a thicket of the same sort of plants we saw there, and its Hotsouth end is dammed in the same way. There are several low, round hills scattered over the valley. The two closest to the lake are covered with the bushes; all the others are bare. Between the two covered ones is another bare but differently colored space extending a kilometer or so toward the bushes and lake. The overgrown area covers about five by seven kilometers. It borders the Hotnorth side of the lake, which is oval and about three kilometers by two, the long measure running Hotnorth-Hotsouth. In the bare section, directly between the two covered hills is something like a wrecked building about a hundred meters square. I can’t guess how high it may have been. Another at the Hoteast edge of the lake seems intact, has about the same area though it isn’t quite so perfectly square, and has an intact flat roof. It’s about fifteen meters high. They’re talking again; you can hear them, I suppose. They seem to want us to—Erni, what’s up?” Akmet fell silent.

  “Something wrong?” asked Ben, while the rest of Nest stopped whatever it was doing.

  “You’ll see.” It was Icewall’s voice. He had gently but firmly sent Pam drifting away from the controls, and was guiding Annie toward the nearer of the overgrown hills.

  “Thirty-four right” came from the speaker. Again. And again. Candlegrease continued straight toward the eminence. Pam managed to silence the native with a rather dishonest “Observing.”

  Tug and tank descended the valley, crossed the bare part to the nearer overgrown hill, climbed it, and came to a halt looking down on what Akmet had described as a wrecked building. From three kilometers closer, there seemed still no better way to describe it.

  The other three cried out together as Erni did a quick-stop. Then, donning a waldo, he deployed one of the smallest bugs and sent it back toward Candlegrease on the side toward the lake.

  Nic, knowing his partner best and far more experienced with the equipment than the other couple, imitated Icewall’s action; but there was no way he could make his bug catch up with the one which had started first. Erni’s mechanical servant took hold of the still unsafetied relief valve which had destroyed the other patch so far back, in the natives’ grim experiment.

  “Hold it, Erni! What do you think you’re up to?” The question came in three different voices, with the words slightly different in each, but was understood even at Nest.

  “Don’t ask silly questions—or don’t you care about Maria?”

  Nic’s lips tightened invisibly behind his breathing mask.

  “I care a lot, and so will the kids when they hear. But that’s no answer.”

  Pam was broadcasting deliberately as she cut in; she was uncertain how much the natives would understand, but it seemed worth trying. “You just want to kill a few thousand of these people to get even?”

  “Don’t be stupid. I won’t be killing anyone. This isn’t a city, it’s one creature. I can punish it—hurt it—without killing it. I can teach it to be careful. You know that, don’t you, Nic?”

  “I’m pretty sure of it, yes. I’m not sure releasing the paraffin up here won’t kill it completely. We’re at about the highest point in the valley, much of our juice is denser than the local air, and the wind is random as usual. If we do kill it, it may not be a lesson. We don’t know that there are any more of these beings on the planet. We certainly haven’t heard from any, and the satellites this one spotted and began talking to can be seen from anywhere on Halfbaked. Think that one over. All the intelligence of a world for two human lives?”

  Erni was silent for several seconds, but his servo remained motionless. At last, “You don’t know that. You can’t be sure.”

  “Of course I can’t. But it’s a plausible idea, like the one that this is a single being. Anything I can do to keep you from taking the chance, I’ll do. Think it over.”

  Pam disapproved of what sounded to her like a threat.

  “Why are you blaming these people, or this person, whichever it is, anyway? You don’t know what happened is their fault.”

  “They weren’t careful enough! Look at that wrecked building there! That’s got to be where it happened—”

  “And the dead-vegetation area downslope from it! Maybe they weren’t careful enough—how could they have been? What do they know about hydrogen compounds? What do we know about their behavior here, except what they found out and showed us a while ago, long after the girls were gone? What—”

  “I don’t care what! All I can think about is Jessi! What she was like—what she was—and that I’ll never see her or feel her again. Someone’s got to learn!”

  “You mean someone’s got to pay, don’t you?”

  “All right, someone’s got to pay! And what do you think you can do to stop it, Dominic Wildbear Yucca, who is so disgustingly civilized he doesn’t care for the memory of the mother of his kids!”

  “Who is so disgustingly civilized he doesn’t want to admit to his kids, and his friends, that he didn’t try to keep a good friend from—”

  “Friend! How can you call yourself a—”

  “You’ll see.”

  “How?”

  What Nic would have said in answer is still unknown; he refused to tell anyone later. Pam cut in again.

  “Look! Isn’t it enough to scare them—scare it? Look what’s happening! Look at the city, or the creature, or whatever it is!”

  Even Erni took his eyes from the screen of his servobug. For the first and only time since the native’s hydrocarbon experiment, they clearly saw the dandelion seeds. Hordes of them, rocketing up from every part of the overgrown area, catching the swirling, wandering winds, many falling back to the ground close to their launch points, but some being carried up and away in every direction.

  The woman saw Erni’s distraction, and pressed home her argument. “They want to save what they can! Those things really are seeds. They scatter them when the parent is in danger, or knows it’s dying!”

  “You—you don’t know that either.” Erni sounded almost subdued, and certainly far less frenzied than a few seconds earlier. Nic began to hope, and waited for Pam to go on.

  Erni’s attention now was clearly on the scenery rather than his bug. Even though he still had his hands in the waldos, there was a very good chance that Dominic’s bug could knock the other away from the valve in time.

  Nic took what seemed to him a better chance by passing up the opportunity. Pam was silent, so he finally spoke softly.

  “I can forgive your cracks about my not caring, because I do care and know how you feel. But what you want to do is just the same sort of angry, thoughtless thing as those words, isn’t it?”

  Erni’s answer seemed irrelevant.

  “If it’s scared, why doesn’t it ask me to stop?”

  “Using what words?” asked Pam softly.

  “Me unclear.” The native utterance partly overlapped the woman’s, and proved the most effect
ive sentence of the argument.

  Slowly, Erni drew his hands from the waldo gloves, and gestured Akmet to take over the bug’s control.

  “Better try to get ‘we’ across while you’re at it, Pam,” was all he said. He let himself drift away from controls and window.

  “Me and we unclear. One at a time.”

  Pam might have been smiling behind her mask. She did look hesitantly at her companions, especially Erni. Then she tried her explanation. Numbers, after all, had long been in the common vocabulary.

  “Observe Annie closely. Me, one animal. We, more than one animal. Four animals in Annie.”

  Erni made no objection, but added quietly, “No valve danger. Which way?”

  “Right.” Erni, now thoroughly embarrassed, glanced around at the others as though asking whether they really trusted him to drive. The other men were concentrating on the bugs outside, the woman seemed to be watching the putative seeds. They were mostly settled back to the ground or blown out of sight by now. No more were being launched, apparently. Maybe the suggested explanation had been right, but even its proponent was skeptical. Maybe they were some sort of weapon . . .

  It soon became obvious that Annie was being led to the other shedlike structure. This one was at the edge of the lake but somewhat down slope from the overgrown areas. There seemed a likely reason, though not the only possible one, for this: care. No one suggested this aloud to the driver. It seemed too obvious that Jellyseal had, during unloading, wrecked the first building and killed much of the being or population which formed the copse.

  As they followed instructions along the edge of the overgrown area, bunch after bunch of tangled branches waved close past Annie’s windows. Looking in? None of them doubted it. Pam continued alternately reporting and teaching, describing their path and surroundings to Nest and reacting to observations through the window with remarks like “One animal driving. One animal talking. Two animals moving bugs.”

  They were guided around the structure to the lower side. This was open, and Annie was directed to enter. The far side, toward Hotnorth, could be seen to be open also, and though there was much growth within, there was plenty of room for tug and tank. Erni dragged his charge within.