Noise

by Hal Clement

  Mike couldn’t tell how close to the center of the huge pseudoorganism they got, but their course seemed straight; there was no wandering around to find their target. Once within a dozen meters or so, even he was pretty sure he could recognize it.

  A bulge of darker-tinted jelly swelled almost to the ocean surface, the area for several meters around entirely devoid of leaves. The guest couldn’t remember having seen the thing before, but realized that it might not have been so distinct during the harvesting. That was something he could ask later, if the development cycle of this particular form of pseudolife ever seemed to be important to anyone but harvesters. He wouldn’t be expected to know about that in advance.

  Keokolo and the girl squeezed air from their buoyancy controls and settled to the bulge. Mike remained drifting above them. Keo handed over the case he had been carrying, and ’Ao unlatched and swung back one of its narrower sides. No bubbles rose; it had apparently contained water all along—water of about the same density as that around them. This was probably, Mike realized, about the same as the general upper ocean value at this distance from the equatorial endless rain belt, since there had been no major storms in the last couple of days. Rain and hail could dilute the surface layers almost to fresh water density, at least by percentage salinity and osmotic factors, but more than an hour or so after an ordinary storm even surface water was likely to have too high a concentration of nasty ions like nickel or cadmium to be safely drinkable.

  Mike suddenly could guess why Wanaka had decided Malolo was loaded enough for now, high as she was still riding.

  With obvious care, ’Ao was taking something from the case. It was rather fish-shaped, though circular in cross section and lacking fins or tail. At first its skin was smooth; then, as the child ran gloved fingers along a set of reddish stripes—a dozen or more, though Mike couldn’t see well enough to count them accurately—a set of dangerous-looking spikes, each two centimeters or more in length, began to extend. They didn’t come straight out, but slanted toward what looked like the rear of the organism. The last quarter of its length remained smooth, and ’Ao held it in one hand by this “tail.”

  With the other she groped around the iron-finder’s bulge, exploring a circle about a meter in radius around its top. After a minute or two of this a smaller bulge swelled on the slimy surface and at its top a sphincterlike opening appeared. With far more care than she had displayed up to this point, the child brought the spiny whatever-it-was close to the mouth—or whatever-it-was—and carefully suspended it, still by the tail, so that the outer curve of each of the “forward” spikes would touch the rim of the opening at the same moment if she lowered it much farther.

  For the first time, she hesitated and looked at Keo. Even Mike could understand the answer—an encouraging circle-and-three-finger gesture of the gloved right hand. The child’s facial expression could of course not be seen, but both men could imagine the firmly compressed lips and fixed gaze as she very slowly eased the thing, which seemed to be a good deal denser than the surrounding water, downward again.

  With only millimeters to go, her hand shook slightly, but she didn’t jerk it upward; she merely stopped, steadied herself, and resumed the letdown. Keo repeated the approval gesture, and an instant later contact was made.

  As far as the visitor could tell, it was simultaneous all around the opening, though he had no idea why this should be important. For several seconds nothing more happened. ’Ao’s hand remained steady—unbelievably so, to Mike. Then a ring-shaped film of tissue pouted away from the opening and contracted around the first three or four rows of hooks. ’Ao let go, and almost instantly the spiky “fish” was swallowed and the opening closed. Thirty seconds later the smaller bulge had flattened to match the curvature of the big one, and the child relaxed visibly.

  The job was not quite done, it seemed; the two knowledgeable watchers kept on watching, and Mike followed their example.

  Nothing really obvious happened for something like a quarter of an hour. Then the top of the big bulge began to sink, along with a meridian stripe now visible on each side of it. Soon even Mike could tell that the bulge was dividing, and guess what was happening. The meridional groove grew deeper and wider, and when its depth had reached ten or fifteen centimeters Keo rested a hand on the child’s armored shoulder and waved presumably toward Malolo, though Mike was no longer sure of direction. He did not yet keep mental track of the sister world or the suns as a matter of habit.

  They began swimming. The dividing bulge vanished behind them and presently the ship could be seen ahead. The Terrestrial wondered, as he had several times in the last day or two, whether the Kainuian sense of direction was simply an incredible memory for details, a habit of keeping aware of the few visible celestial bodies, or something more subtle.

  He had no reason to believe that there was any local technology unknown on the older human-inhabited worlds, and ordinary communication equipment worked very poorly indeed on this planet; the ubiquitous thunderheads and charged haze droplets blocked or quickly damped out all electromagnetic transmission of much longer wavelength than visible light, even when frequency modulated. Only Muamoku had lights bright enough to guide a space craft to a specific point on the surface from directly above; none of the other floating cities could, or wanted to, spare the energy. He had not asked Wanaka or Keo why even Muamoku bothered—probably the reasons were economic—and didn’t plan to. The miners might not know, and might dislike showing ignorance as much as Mike himself did. He had no wish to make himself unwelcome, at least until his own project was done. Tact, he often pointed out when the subject arose, would have been his middle name if he had had one, and to him tact meant talking as little as possible when he wasn’t sure what to say.

  They climbed aboard and doffed helmets.

  II

  Discords

  Keo redonned his again almost instantly, joined promptly by the captain and a little less so by Mike. Even he had felt the jar, feeble as it was, as something struck one of the hulls, but having no knowledge of the appropriate response he imitated the rest.

  The helmets, unlike the rest of the armor, were extremely transparent; how they were soundproof at the same time was a question Mike had not considered. Even now, it simply flashed through his mind as a suggestion that Kainuian technology might have something to offer after all; right now the fact that he couldn’t read the captain’s lips because of her breathing mask and was still left out of the conversation by his ignorance of Finger was his principal conscious thought. He could only guess at her orders by the actions of the crew.

  “Mike, hold a safety line for ’Ao. I’ll take Keo’s.” That was obvious enough from what she did with the ropes. “’Ao, starboard hull; Keo, port. One quick runover, then repeat with all possible care, covering as much as you can while there’s daylight. Start from the stern.”

  The child seized the end of the light rope the captain was holding out to her, clipped one end to her belt, threw her doll at one of the mast’s climbing rungs that it caught firmly, and disappeared overboard. By the time Mike had secured a good grip on his end of the line and decided it was long enough to let her reach both bow and stern of the thirty-meter hull if he stayed amidships, Keokolo had gone also. Mike looked questioningly at the captain.

  She hesitated a moment, then removed her helmet. He assumed it was permissible for him to do the same, and heard the endless thunder once more. Wanaka’s voice came over it; he had not had to ask any question.

  “It could be any of several things,” she said. “We’re still drifting, so we didn’t run into anything small—not that hard; we did feel the impact. We’d have seen anything really large on the surface, like floating coral. The most worrisome guess is a tracer, something jammed against the ship deliberately which will emit chemicals a smeller can follow. It’s not quite the most likely explanation; usually, such a gadget would attach itself too quietly for us to notice.”

  “Why would it be done at all?” aske
d Mike.

  “There are people who have a one-sided idea of what trading means. Not many of them, because cargo is always printed when one takes it aboard—”

  “Printed?”

  “Scented might be a better word. Identified with the growth code of the harvesting ship. I took care of that as each iron pod came aboard. If anyone took some of it without our consent, the fact could be proved.”

  “Not the water?”

  “No. That or oxygen would be shared with anyone in need, however little we had. Of course, if pirates took our iron and used it up themselves, in batteries or growth tanks or what have you, nothing could be proved later. That’s why piracy, when it is proved, carries the same penalty here as it did on old Earth.”

  “And why, I’d guess, pirates would also tend to dispose of the crews they’d overcome.”

  “Not always. ’Ao would be safe; she’d simply be adopted, swapped with other ships a few times so her story wouldn’t do anyone much good, and wind up in a city sooner or later. They might do the same with Keo and me, depending on their food and oxygen resources; how they’d feel about you is anyone’s guess. You’re decidedly unique.”

  Mike, whose body mass and personal strength were twice those of the much taller Keokolo, nodded. He felt no urge to learn all about Kainui’s customs firsthand, but saw no need to take the worst for granted.

  Judging by the motion of her line, ’Ao had finished one examination and gone back aft to start a second. Keo was almost through with his first check; whether he was a slower swimmer or was just being more careful was anyone’s guess. Mike noticed that the captain was glancing back and forth between the two cords and suspected that she was thinking along the same lines. Being Mike, however, he didn’t comment. He devoted most of his attention to the child’s cord, providing her with slack or drawing it in as seemed in order. Hence, he failed to see Keo’s attachment jerk tight twice, less than a second apart, until the captain called out to him.

  “Call ’Ao aboard! Give short pulls on her line, and keep doing it until you can tell she’s coming!” The man obeyed without question or comment; he’d learn the details as quickly as anyone else, he assumed. Keo, who had apparently discovered something, should be aboard before the child.

  He wasn’t, however. ’Ao surfaced at a set of climbing rungs five meters forward of the stern and ascended them nimbly without using her flippered feet. Mike reminded himself once more that her weight here was less than seven kilograms. She stood dripping for a moment, looking at Wanaka; the latter gestured her toward the spot where Keo’s line disappeared over the gunwale, and said something more detailed in Finger.

  Moving a little aft so that her safety cord would miss the captain, the child crossed the deck and reentered the sea. Mike adjusted the slack once more.

  “Can you tell what Keo’s found?” he asked. “I know you can’t see or hear him, but is there some sort of code you can send by the ropes?”

  Wanaka shook her head negatively. “He’s spotted something worth reporting, but wants the little one to see it too so they can tell us better what’s going on, I assume. Otherwise he’d simply have come up. If it makes you feel better informed, the longer they stay down will probably mean the worse it is.”

  Hoani wondered whether this remark said more about the captain’s experience or just her personality. She had not, so far, seemed noticeably pessimistic or even cynical, so maybe it was experience. Before he himself could really start worrying, however, both ropes slackened and two heads broke the surface. Mike, without thinking, stepped toward the side of the deck to help his charge aboard and lost his footing as Malolo jerked to an unusually sharp tsunami. By the time he was back on his feet, both the others were aboard.

  Keo’s helmet was off instantly. “If it’s a tracer, it’s a kind I’ve never seen,” he reported. “It’s fish-shaped, and has a hard shell, about twenty centimeters long. It doesn’t seem to have penetrated, but is very firmly fastened against us.”

  “And we can’t really be sure about penetration,” added the child. “We can’t see under it. It has a jelly coating a centimeter thick all over it and reaching out over our hull for five or six centimeters all around. Someone better check the inside for things that shouldn’t be there.”

  “You do it. You know where to look,” replied the captain. “If you have to shift any cargo, get Keo or Mike to help. Keo, help me set sail until ’Ao calls you.”

  “But the suns are almost down!” exclaimed the child.

  “We get away from here first, and worry about missing more cargo and bumping into things much later,” was the answer. “Don’t bother to say it—no, we don’t really know it’s a tracer, but we can’t do anything useful about it after dark, and I want to be far from here and have time to be careful when we can see again by something better than lightning or hand lamps. Carry on.”

  The child disappeared belowdeck, and the others made sail. For once, Mike could help; he had done some sailing on Earth, and had kept his eyes open so far on this trip. In minutes, Malolo was under way, as usual in the direction that let them get the most possible speed out of the existing wind. Hoani had heard about the bits of stuff—“coral”; he could only guess what local item or phenomenon had taken over that word, though he knew what materials were grown to build the floating cities—occasionally found loose on Kainui’s oceans, but didn’t know how visible such objects might be even by daylight. He decided to let the captain’s apparent lack of worry be his guide, until it occurred to him that this might merely be a minor worry.

  Keokolo stayed at the helm, while the others entered the cabin—the air lock allowed the child and the captain to go through together, but Mike’s bulk kept anyone from sharing it with him—and removed their breathing masks. Mike settled down to recording his mental notes of the last few hours, while Wanaka updated the ship’s log. ’Ao for some reason didn’t seem relaxed. She said nothing to her doll and watched the others, particularly the captain, closely. Eventually both adults noticed this.

  Even Mike could see that the youngster wanted to say something, but he couldn’t guess what it might be. Not until Wanaka looked up from her writing and caught ’Ao’s eye did the problem become clear. The man suspected afterward that the captain had known all along what was on the youngster’s mind.

  It was Wanaka who spoke first.

  “Keo says you did a very good job on that split, ’Ao.”

  The child’s expression brightened, but her words were less happy than they might have been. “Why didn’t he tell me?”

  “Didn’t you know anyway?” Both the listeners caught the verbal trap, and ’Ao avoided it neatly.

  “I was pretty sure, but there might have been something no one ever told me about that I missed. I was afraid he was going to tell me what was wrong when he comes off watch.”

  “He may, of course.” ’Ao’s face fell. “He didn’t tell me anything bad, though. As far as I’m concerned you have another spark in your fire.” The girl still seemed uneasy.

  “Then—will you—can you—”

  “Sure. Let’s have it. Permission to doff armor. Do the air checks while I’m scribing.”

  The upper half of the suit of noise protection, complete with helmet, was peeled off and handed to the captain at once. Mike looked away; in spite of many weeks on the planet, he was still a little uncomfortable at the Kainuian body shape. ’Ao had a reasonable height for her age, by his standards, but massed barely twenty kilograms and on this world weighed fewer than seven. To Mike, she looked unhealthily thin, as did the others. Clad in the bulky noise armor Kainuians looked all right, but in the single leotardlike garment worn in places where one could breathe without masks they were almost grotesque to human visitors. Their uniformly dark hair and eyes, contrasting often with extremely pale skins that were becoming increasingly widespread as generations went by under a pair of red dwarf suns, gave many visiting Terrestrials the impression of a group of walking skeletons.

  ’
Ao went to check the indoor part of the oxygen equipment, which photosynthesized the Kainuian air along several chemical paths to produce sodium peroxide, controlled the reaction rate of the latter with water, and pumped enough of the remaining nitrogen into the cabin to keep any leakage moving outward. This equipment, like the “leaf” itself, was pseudolife powered by battery molecules charged in the “leaf.” Mike was not in the least surprised to see the child finish by slicing small pieces from each machine to make sure its healing capacity was normal.

  Wanaka took the proffered upper garment and opened a small instrument kit taken from a compartment in her work desk. ’Ao crowded close after finishing her check; Mike couldn’t decide whether this was to watch better or because of the rule about never getting far from one’s armor when at sea. The captain took several styluslike objects from the kit and turned the garment so that she could see the back.

  Mike had noticed the twenty-centimeter-diameter pattern on the child’s suit between the shoulders, but had not paid it much attention; the other two had similar markings, and he had assumed them to be crew insignia with meanings he might learn later, since his own suit was plain. The pattern details were extremely complex, and reminded him slightly, but only slightly, of Mandelbrot figures.

  Wanaka, using one stylus after another for some ten minutes, modified ’Ao’s pattern carefully. Mike could see each change as it was made, but would never have been able to spot any difference between original and final designs if he hadn’t been watching the process. Also, he almost missed the fact that each tiny modification kept on changing for a while after the artist had gone on to another section. Once again nanotechnology—pseudobiology—must be at work.