Noise

by Hal Clement

  The climbing at this point was much more difficult. The ice slope was shallower, smoother, and generally wet. Waves traveled fifty meters or more up the slope from where they broke. They found it better to crawl most of the time, hitching along by digging a coral spike into the ice ahead of them and pulling themselves toward it. They were over two hundred meters from the sea before reaching humps of any size, and were still scarcely ten meters above Mata’s deck.

  It was easier to go around the humps than over them, however, and this quickly put the men out of sight from below. ’Ao quickly climbed to her masthead station and was in sight for a few more minutes; but finally, after a farewell wave from both parties and a loud-as-possible yell from Mike, all contact was lost. Wanaka, they knew, would not be considering them for the moment; a waterspout was bearing down on the area where the ship had last been visible, as though ordinary noises weren’t interference enough. Thunder remained at standard background level; they were still far below lightning risk as far as either could judge, though the sky flickered as usual.

  The general ice slope was getting steeper now, and its imbedded coral spicules regular enough in arrangement to be helpful in travel; in many areas they were projecting slightly above the ice itself. At the steepest places they would almost have formed steps if they had been closer together. It was quite possible to walk most of the time, even for Keo.

  All travel was suspended for some minutes when the waterspout actually tried to climb onto the ice—both men looked uneasily for fragments of Mata—and died from lack of feed. The column collapsed over some hundreds of square meters of the berg’s area and washed both men some distance back toward the sea. They were relieved by catching a glimpse of the still floating ship by managing to stop themselves well short of the ocean, and for Mike because the captain was not close enough to comment on a possible reason, other than rising, why the lower parts of the berg had been smoothed as though by wave action.

  Distance was too great to tell whether they had been seen from aboard, and it seemed to both the climbers that the best thing to do just now was to continue their exploration. It seemed unlikely that Wanaka would have ordered them back even if they had been in touch; falls had been foreseen and the safety lines had worked, after all.

  A little farther up the general slope they discovered a few hailstones in the occasional hollows. They wondered why these had not been visible lower down or during the earlier climb, decided that waterspouts were a plausible answer, that more extreme rise and fall of iceberg or ocean wave might be another, and that the rain that normally accompanied the hail in thunderstorms might well be a third; and Mike filed yet another possible reason for the smoothed-out lower slopes of the berg.

  The only problem, he reflected aloud to Keo after making a cautious test around his mask, was the presence of liquid salt water in some of the hollows still holding hailstones. The mate’s experience with frozen puddles on Earth was nonexistent, but even he could see that water produced by melting in the ice hollows should have been fresh, though probably carbonated. For that matter, he added, if the hail-filled hollow they had seen earlier had been exposed to rain as well, it should certainly have looked quite different.

  Neither of them had any way of measuring the actual temperature, and neither knew enough to consider the effects of even slightly salty spray. Their ignorance might, just possibly, have been bliss, but made no difference in the long run.

  Higher up still, another hail-filled “crater” was found. Very careful checking showed that the hailstones were not cemented together, at least near the surface of the deposit; like those in the other pit, they could easily be removed by the handful.

  They ate and slept near what seemed to be the highest area of the berg. The arrangement of the coral here was just as it had been lower down. The region was fairly flat; from its center they couldn’t see ocean. The whole mass was not nearly as high as they had judged from below. Their line of sight would not have reached sea level now less than three kilometers away. Even from the edge of the plateau that formed the top of the berg, where the slope was steeper than any they had faced lower down, the water itself could not be seen; too many humps and bumps intervened. Mata was not in sight, but could easily have been, and probably was, too close to see. The captain’s suspicion that the whole structure had been artificially grown was becoming more and more plausible to Mike, from the way the spicules were arranged. Keo seemed never to have doubted it seriously.

  They wandered for half a day over the plateau without finding anything more to cause deep thought. They found two more craters, both nearly full of hailstones. There seemed no particular reason to retrace their original path up, since there had been no arrangement about where to meet Mata, and with breathing, eating, and drinking stores running rather low the pair finally just headed downhill—with normal care, of course. If the ship were continuing to circumnavigate the berg, they’d be spotted soon enough, they assumed. If it weren’t; or didn’t seem to be, they’d have to decide for themselves when to start their own circumambulation. At least, there’d be no question about which way to go; the captain had assured them she’d circle to the right as she saw the ice mass, so going to their right was their safer alternative.

  Actually, both were out of food when the catamaran hove into view. She was only a short distance from the ice, and ’Ao saw them from her masthead almost as soon as they sighted the vessel.

  What the men did not see was the pods that had been left around the berg’s circumference to mark the water line. Keo noticed their absence first, and wondered aloud whether they had served their purpose in the last two-plus days and been recovered, or had been lost in some way. The latter was no worry, except as a matter of policy, of course; there was even more fresh hail on the berg than they had realized before, though it would have to be carried an inconvenient distance. Keo was more concerned than Mike, of course, his upbringing being what it had been.

  They were more than a hundred meters from the edge, but the ice between was smooth. They took the easiest way to the water, still roped together of course. Neither was able to keep from a certain amount of spinning, and Mike almost failed to close his helmet in time. Their joint splash impressed ’Ao more than it did the captain, but they were aboard in moments. Mike let the mate report first. He did it tersely, and ended with a question.

  “Are we still heading south?”

  “Yes, more or less. About one-sixty. At more than two meters a second now, ’Oloa says.”

  “What happened to the markers?”

  “We recovered them when they started to float. You don’t have to make up your mind now, Mike; this thing is sinking. And waves aren’t the only things that can round off the ice, I expect you now realize.”

  “Yes,” he replied. “Waterspouts, rain, and probably things I haven’t thought of yet. And it’s sinking because a lot of ice is melting down below.”

  “And it’s going south because?”

  Mike was silent for some seconds.

  “Because it’s got a better grip on the deep currents!” ’Ao offered.

  “If it’s melting enough down below to sink, how is it reaching farther down?” asked Wanaka. The child was silent in her turn. She even glanced at Mike, who had nothing to say either.

  Keo expressed a thought with no obvious connection to the problem. “Hadn’t we better get away from here?”

  “I—don’t—think—so,” the captain answered slowly and thoughtfully. “Maybe staying around will give us our best chance of finding out what our cargo is worth.” All waited for some seconds for a more detailed explanation, but the next one to speak was the child, in very excited tones.

  “You think there are people here!” she exclaimed.

  “Unless you or Mike or Keo can come up with a purely natural answer to what’s been happening, yes. You can’t disprove miracles, of course, but sane people don’t count on them. If you can’t find a simple natural explanation, people are the next best. Alway
s.”

  “So do we tie up, or keep circling?” asked Keo practically.

  “Circle. I certainly want to talk to anyone here, but I want us to have a choice, too. Besides, we don’t know how much up-and-down oscillation this thing may have at max.”

  “When do you expect to see the people?” asked ’Ao.

  “About an hour after they see us, if they haven’t already. That’s another reason to keep moving. I can’t guess where they are, except it’s probably not on this chunk of ice, and don’t know which way they’ll be coming from, and if we tie up it could be on just the wrong side.”

  “Why don’t you think they’re on the berg?” asked Keokolo.

  “Because you and Mike and ’Ao didn’t find any sign of them except the evidence that this thing was grown.”

  “But there’s something like four square kilometers there, a lot of it too bumpy to let us see anyone else from more than a few meters, even without the haze. The fact that we didn’t see any tunnel openings doesn’t mean a thing.”

  “But if there are people here they’ll maintain some sort of watch, and they’d have seen us long ago.”

  “Maybe they did, and are just hoping we’ll go away again,” suggested ’Ao. That thought stopped the captain for a moment, and probably earned the child a few more points.

  “That might be,” Wanaka said slowly. “The iceberg-sellers, I’ve heard, didn’t like either guests or passengers; there were tricks to maneuvering them they didn’t want others to know. Still, if there’s anything this piece of ice doesn’t resemble, it’s a water-for-sale chunk. For one thing, it’s far too big. If there are people here hoping we’ll go away, they can change their minds when we don’t.” It wasn’t quite an order, but was certainly a clear decision.

  But even Wanaka began to wonder as the days went by, Mata and the berg drove ever southward, and the temperature began to drop farther and farther.

  The ice continued to sink; they attempted no actual measurements, but Mike estimated that a good dozen vertical meters of ice had settled below the water level since their first trip “ashore.” The best evidence was the change in the shoreline; from a relatively smooth oval, it had become indented with more than a dozen bays—they were not nearly steep-walled enough to be called fjords—reaching two or three hundred meters toward the interior.

  There had also been enough thunderstorms and waterspouts to confirm the notion that these could be responsible for rounding off the berg’s humps and projections; waves weren’t necessary, though they might help. The berg was definitely melting; excursions by swimmers suggested that Mata could easily have collected a full cargo of melted-out coral spikes if anyone could have seen any value in them.

  The spikes were still floating when they melted free; they were still less dense than the water, though that could simply mean that the surface layers of the ocean were now noticeably saltier. Mata was certainly floating a trifle higher. The berg was sinking nevertheless, so an even more impressive amount of ice must be melting. The southward speed was increasing, no longer by very much but enough to make it harder to understand why the melting berg could get a better grip on any deep current. The wind certainly wasn’t helping; there was practically none of that now. The ship was reaching the mid-latitude zone of calms, and there was less and less free choice involved in Wanaka’s still solid determination to stay with the shrinking, sinking growth—as she still claimed it to be. It was now by far the largest source of fresh water within reach, though of course there were still thunderstorms enough to prevent worry. Even in a zone of calms and with lower temperature, water vapor is less dense than air—especially Kainui’s air—and an ocean needs very little outside heat to spawn thunderheads.

  The real surprises came when they were on the west side of the ice. These were, first, the sight of four sailing craft appearing almost simultaneously through the haze in a formation that neatly cut Mata off from the open sea; and moments later more than a dozen sound-armored human forms walking easily toward them on the ice from the opposite direction. Mike’s first, unvoiced, question was how such a maneuver could possibly have been timed, considering Kainui’s long-range communication problems. What the other adults were thinking he had no idea, and it didn’t occur to him to wonder about ’Ao or her doll.

  The child had sighted and reported the ships; the walkers had been spotted moments later by Keokolo from the deck. Mike felt sure that ’Ao wouldn’t be blamed for missing them; her job after sighting the ships was to report any details she possibly could about them.

  And it was quite evident that the members of the shore party had all appeared at almost exactly the same moment from behind a single ice mound, along a surprisingly level and low ice surface that seemed to continue away from the ocean. More coordination? How?

  Well, the people had probably been in sight of each other, of course; but how about the ships?

  If Wanaka had had any idea of making for the open sea she must have abandoned it at once. Not only was the wind extremely weak and there was no way to tell whether they could outsail the others, but Mata was a trading ship; traders didn’t flee from other vessels without strong evidence that they were pirates. The only such evidence to be expected at the newcomers’ present distance would be the presence of very large crews on their decks, and ’Ao quickly reported that there seemed to be only three or four people on each one and that cabin size was no greater than usual. Wanaka glanced upward, not at the girl but at the pennants floating from Mata’s mast. These had been unchanged for many days, and Mike had been told that they signified the unknown nature of some of their present cargo.

  Any behavior other than staying hove to for possible bargaining would be suspicious, even though they were being approached by a small fleet rather than a single vessel and even though the fleet happened to be spread out so as to cut Mata off from any reasonable escape route. That could be as purely chance as the appearance of the four vessels all at once.

  Yes, thought Mike, that was a good way to put it, considering the number of other craft they had sighted since leaving Muamoto. Not much of a chance.

  Keo was watching the captain intently, Mike saw, but offering no suggestions. She was the captain; he was only her husband. There was no way to guess what he might be thinking, until the situation changed abruptly. The two ships farthest from them, the ones in the middle of the arc, changed course at almost the same moment, the one on the left of the line as seen from Mata to starboard, the other to port. Keo relaxed visibly as their path to freedom began to open—slowly. The wind was very low, as he had noted, but Mata could sail very close to it. Wanaka’s reaction was less obvious, but her attention turned from the approaching ships to the people on the ice, now collected in a group partway up the smooth hummock that had concealed their approach.

  Most of these, it could now be seen—the adults; there were three or four in the group of about ’Ao’s size—were carrying what might have been spears, though Mike had never seen such an implement on the planet. His brief uneasiness was dispelled when several of the poles were raised vertically and waved from side to side to display signal banners that had not been obvious in the feeble wind.

  Hoani was still unable to read these, but the captain gestured Keo to the sails and took the tiller, heading Mata toward the ice. The people on shore watched with little apparent interest as the mate swam ashore with mooring lines. He was also carrying a number of the coral spikes, which he drove into the ice a few meters from the water and used for rather frail-looking bitts.

  ’Ao had descended from her perch, but so far had offered neither comment nor question.

  “Want me to talk to them?” asked Hoani.

  “We’ll wait ’til the ships arrive. I don’t think there’s anything to worry about—you were worried, weren’t you, Mike? But if they all represent one city it’ll be better to find who’s in charge before we start bargaining, and if they don’t it’ll be better to have them all together bidding against each other. I w
ish I could even guess what this metal is. If some of them know and we don’t, we could get badly taken.”

  Mike, for the first time since leaving Muamoku, had a little trouble with the end of this speech. She was, he suspected, using some highly specialized trader’s slang.

  “But don’t our banners say we don’t know? I thought that’s what you told me when we first loaded the metal.”

  “Yes. I wouldn’t try to fool anyone on that point. Never try to play any game from ignorance. Right, ’Ao? But I’m hoping there’s more than one city in this group. If they start bidding against each other we can find out a lot, and there’s no way they can help that even though they’ll know we are. It would be nice to head for home, whenever we can find it, with something worthwhile aboard. We’d like to stay with our kid again for a while, but goodness knows what we’ll owe the school when we do get back.” Keo nodded silently.

  “Keo, Mike, furl the sails,” Wanaka ordered. Mike couldn’t guess whether she had completely ceased to worry or was merely trying to give that impression, but the order didn’t surprise him. The next one did.

  “Mike, get ashore and talk to them. Find out what you can, especially about their connection with these ships. Feel free to tell them anything you want about us and our cargo and you, but don’t say anything about ’Oloa beyond that she’s ’Ao’s doll, and not even that unless they ask. They’ll see right away that there’s something strange about you; no doubt they have already. They’ll certainly know after the first couple of sentences that you’re not a trader. They must be sure already that you’re not from any city on Kainui. Let them wonder about why you can handle languages so well—and if they ask, tell them. Keep them talking until those ships get here. Don’t worry about hiding any secrets except about the doll.”