Noise

by Hal Clement

  “Piru” was her important word. Then the other three were left alone, and Keo reported.

  “Gold!” exclaimed Wanaka. “What use is that to anyone?”

  Mike answered with a single word.

  “Chemical.”

  Wanaka pounced. “Chemical, as in seed design?”

  “Sure. All sorts of atoms can turn out to be good catalysts or coenzymes, especially heavies.”

  “Of course. I should have remembered that. I’m going to hold those traders up tomorrow—no, I’m not, either.”

  “Why not?” the two men asked simultaneously.

  “These Aorangi folks may not be pirates, but if they’ve found a use for lots of gold, important enough to justify designing a special fish to collect it, they may want to keep it to themselves for a while. Of course you can’t keep knowledge from spreading, but controlling the only source of a key material is something else. We could wind up here as firmly invited guests. I’ve already mentioned selling only part of the load here, and if they have a good reason for wanting to corner the gold supply then ’Ao might wind up having to look for a husband right here in thirty-five or forty years, and we’d be even longer seeing our own kid again, if we ever did.”

  “And any big economic reason is a good one,” Mike interjected.

  “Of course. And it would be as bad or even worse for you. I can’t see anyone even from offworld spending a single pod of iron looking for a missing Earth native who most probably had gotten himself lost at sea. Especially not on this planet. I suppose a world only half covered by a couple of kilometers of ocean would be a different matter.”

  “I wouldn’t count on that, especially if that ocean had sharks. That’s still an awful lot of water and a lot more under water. So what do we do, Captain?”

  “We get out of here, preferably long enough before they spot us and can launch a ship so we can get out of sight in the haze. There are seven other ships on that lake, or dock, or whatever we should call it. I don’t see how we get out of there alone, regardless of how one does get out, and we don’t know how fast any of them can sail—at least, we don’t know how much faster than we any of them can. Ideas in order, gentlemen, preferably before sunrise tomorrow when I’m supposed to start auctioning something I’m not supposed to know the name or nature of. I’m as likely to make a word slip there as I was afraid Mike would a little while ago.

  “Fellow brains, all of you hoist sail and set course on any bearing that seems good to you. Pardon the mixed metaphor.”

  “I s’pose they’ll be watching us all night,” Keo suggested.

  “I would in their place.” She smiled. “You and Mike better relieve their minds. Go outside now and look around the city; get lost if you want, it’ll help our reputation. You’re the ones most likely to do that, I hope they’ll think. Get some idea of population, tunnel complexity, and how noticeable you seem to be. I’m afraid we can guess that already, for Mike. If either of you gets an idea, don’t come in together. Separating would be a good idea anyway; you’re more likely to get lost, and it’ll look less as though you’re doing something specific or underhanded together. Wear your armor. See if they’ll fuss about your going outside, and if they don’t, take a look to make sure there’s really no watch on any of those ships. If there isn’t, fine. If there is, we’ll be even surer that our hostess was lying; go and talk to the watches. Try to make sure Keo was right about the ships themselves being empty. Especially try, if you get any sort of chance, to tell how much water they have aboard; if they have to load up on that before starting a chase, we have a much better chance.”

  “We’d have to check all of them for that to be useful,” pointed out Mike.

  “True. But do your best without looking suspicious. Whatever you’ve managed to think of or haven’t, both of you come in again at second sunset.”

  “We’ll have to be outside to know when that is. Don’t count on perfection, Captain dear.”

  “I won’t, one and only mate. Off you go.”

  Outside, where the pair eventually found their way without interference, there was a thunderstorm overhead. They had not yet separated, thinking it better to learn some geography together first. Keo automatically dashed for the lake, the ship, and the drinking breakers, then stopped when he remembered the last were already full.

  Mike had followed him more slowly. Together, they spent the next quarter hour sweeping hailstones from the deck and cabin roof into the lake and noticing with interest that no one was in sight to do the same on any of the nearby craft. There might, of course, have been some asleep in the cabins, but shore watches don’t sleep. Maybe they’d heard some truth. The two discussed this as they worked, concluding that there was no unsuspicious way to settle the question. After the storm had passed, they went ashore, without helmet discipline though Keo made a start, and walked away from the pool for a short distance rather than toward any of the ships.

  “I wonder how they get in and out of this place, anyway. I still can’t imagine any way of calling up a wave when they want it.”

  “That might be only for getting in, anyway,” pointed out Keo. “There might be some way of digging or blasting or simply opening a quick channel to let everything wash out as the lake empties. We could check the coral pattern for signs of something they could slide out of the way—some sort of channel gate.”

  “But some of the ships are aground now. That technique could be embarrassing.”

  The mate nodded silently.

  “Does this city have or use any other ships?” asked Mike after a pause. “There are always lots around Muamoku, dozens of different types and sizes. This place doesn’t seem to have much in the way of docking facilities, unless we missed an awful lot on our earlier walk.”

  “Most of our ships aren’t too different from these,” answered Keo. “We’ve never done much ship design ourselves. We seem to have brought all the varieties we’ve ever needed with us. Our ancestors knew Kainui was all ocean, of course. We’ve bought seeds from other cities sometimes, but the ships they grew weren’t enough better to be worth the cost. The ice near the pole seems to call for tricky sailing, sometimes, but we very seldom need to go there.”

  They walked slowly back toward the city entrance, sometimes feeling a little uncertain of their way among the irregular ice hummocks. They had almost succeeded in taking the captain’s advice about getting lost when they sighted two men—their gender was plain since, evidently not planning to leave shore, they were not wearing sound armor—who walked as though they knew where they were going. Trying not to be too conspicuous about it, Mike and Keo followed them, and in a few minutes recognized their surroundings once more. In another hundred meters they saw the city entrance.

  The suns were still well up, and Mike suggested that they now follow Wanaka’s advice, or order, to separate. Keokolo could go back to their quarters, make a preliminary report, and come out again on his own if the captain wanted; Mike would get into conversations, which they hadn’t managed yet though it had not occurred to either of them that the locals might be avoiding them for some reason.

  It did cross Hoani’s mind that by himself he might more plausibly be asking questions in a Kainuian city than when accompanied by one who was not obviously a stranger. It did not occur to him that at least some of the natives of Aorangi might hope that Mike himself might be more willing to talk about other cities on the planet, such as Muamoku, than would people who lived in them. His grasp of intercity attitudes and politics of Kainui was decidedly incomplete, though he was coming to understand Wanaka’s personality better every day. He also had, though in not too serious a form, the ordinary human tendency to stereotype—to assume, in this case, that he could talk to any citizen of Aorangi about any part of the city or aspect of its life and get informed and useful answers.

  He had, of course, attracted the attention of the men he and Keo had been following. When he looked around alternately at the icescape and the tunnel entrance after the mate’s
departure, simulating indecision about his next step, both of them approached him.

  Neither seemed at all suspicious of anything, as far as Mike could tell. Certainly they were talkative enough and could tell him a great deal about Aorangi. It had indeed grown from a ship of that name, which had arrived on the antarctic ice cap. Its friction-heated hull had melted its way inward far enough to trap it when the water refroze, and the colonists had had no choice but to build where they were, using what was available in ship and surroundings. The latter, of course, had been mainly liquid and solid water, and heat energy at a rather low concentration. He asked about the cap, of which he had heard no details in Muamoku though it had been visible enough from space, and was told that for some degrees of latitude around the pole itself there was a continuous floating ice sheet, its edge disturbed by storms often enough and violently enough to form temporary inlets some kilometers in length, and to send floes drifting for large distances northward. Mike could see why this might call for maneuverability of any local vessels. Less happily, he could also see that it might call for speed. Escape might be even more difficult than Wanaka hoped. Some Aorangi lived on the cap in experimental stations, working on projects such as designing better ice-coral structures. The speakers had a low opinion of this work, which seemed to produce mostly expensive failures. Mike suspected a possible source for the deserted ice-coral masses they had encountered earlier.

  “Is either of you a sailor?”

  “No. We’re not much of anything; we graduate from messenger status in about half a year. There aren’t enough ships to need many sailors, and neither my cousin nor I like the idea of going to sea anyway.” This remark slightly jolted Mike’s stereotyping of Polynesians but opened another possibly useful line of questioning.

  “Were you outside when we arrived today?”

  “Yes. Watching a landing is interesting, and anyway we were both on salvage standby. Ships sometimes ground too hard when they land.” Mike jumped at the chance.

  “How about when they leave?”

  “That’s safer. The port is filling up then, so they rise instead of grounding.”

  Mike was uncharacteristically quick on the uptake. “My captain will want to see that. She’ll probably need to be told just how to maneuver. Do you know when the next departure should be?”

  “They launch at sunrise every day for the regular search.” Mike decided not to ask what was regularly being sought and surrendered the conversational ball. Maybe he had learned enough along that line already. Wanaka would certainly be interested.

  “You’re from Muamoku, aren’t you?” asked one of the others.

  “The captain and the others are. You can see I’m not from Kainui at all.”

  “We’d noticed, yes. Does your world have oceans?”

  “We call them that. They average only about four kilometers deep, and cover scarcely three-quarters of the planet. A major sailing problem there is to keep from running into land, or worse, into land that doesn’t show above the surface.”

  This started a lengthy period of what would have been shop talk if any of the speakers had been sailors. Hoani might have learned more but decided not to ask further leading questions; he had already heard enough to demand deep and detailed thinking.

  A mutual eclipse of the suns gave him a chance to change the subject, and after a brief description of the locally rare solar eclipses of Earth he bade his informants a casual farewell and entered the city. He did not quite need help finding Wanaka and Keo’s assigned living space, and in a relatively few minutes was reporting to her. Keo had gone out again.

  The captain was thoughtful. “Sunrise. Just when I’m supposed to start auctioning, if I really am. Maybe I’d better see Hinemoa—but maybe I’m not supposed to know about this launch business; how do I get around that, I wonder?”

  “I’d expect her to come to you, if there’s anything about the launch to affect the auction.”

  “If another wave is going to come into that lake, it will affect where I have to lay out the metal. I think we’d all better be there awhile before sunrise and start setting up, and let her hold the tiller. Presumably something would have to be done to keep Mata from getting washed out with the others—or maybe—” She fell silent for fully a minute. “I’ll see her now and ask—no, tell her that I’ll need ’Ao at the ship half an hour before sunrise to help unload, and let her take it from there. You may as well get to your own quarters. Take care of your life support, sleep if you want. Keo or I will get you when we need you. No, wait. Stay here until he gets back, tell him what you told me and what I’m doing, then you’re on your own.”

  The mate returned first, so Mike didn’t hear what might have transpired between Wanaka and Hinemoa. ’Ao wakened him, presumably the next morning although there seemed to be no clock in his quarters, by rapping on the coral door and calling his name. They were on the way to the city entrance, armored, within minutes.

  The suns weren’t up yet, as Wanaka had planned. There were, however, people already at the lake, or port, or whatever it should be called, and one of these approached Mata’s crew.

  “Hinemoa advises that you bring your metal up there as quickly as you can, and then man your ship. We will be launching in a few minutes, there are no real mooring facilities, and it will probably be washed out with the others. Would you like help moving your metal?”

  If there was any hesitation in the captain’s answer, Mike failed to spot it.

  “No, thanks. We’ll do what we can before your launch. Give us five minutes’ warning and we’ll get aboard. Afterward, we’ll get out the rest, and see customers. Will that fit your routine?”

  “Perfectly, I think. Hinemoa will arrive shortly, I expect.”

  Mike and Keo began carrying pods of metal ashore. The only clue to what the captain had in mind was her brief order, in Finger, not to hurry, but not to dawdle obviously. They obeyed. Perhaps a fifth of Mata’s gold had been off-loaded and a smaller amount of the other metals when a larger group appeared at the lake, Hinemoa among them, and the crews who had been readying the Aorangi ships stood to their posts. Someone ashore began what turned out to be a countdown, though the counts were fully half a minute apart. Wanaka was at Mata’s tiller, the men were ready to hoist sail, but ’Ao had not yet taken her masthead post. One of the suns was just up, though not really visible through the haze.

  At the twelfth count, the sea poured into the lake. Mata was one of the few ships just barely afloat, and like the others was swept away from the sea by the inrush. Those still grounded followed more slowly as the water rose and floated them, too. Everyone hoisted sail, and Keo and Mike followed suit without orders. The “landward” side of the lake deepened, then the new water began to slosh back toward the sea. This seemed now to be below them. Wanaka’s full attention for several seconds was focused on avoiding collisions; like the other steersmen she was not entirely successful, though nothing dangerously violent occurred; all velocities were nearly the same. Mike couldn’t help thinking about infection. The water, bearing the eight vessels, poured out and downward over the path by which it had just passed in and downward.

  The native craft, sails now fully up, bore away from the city, remaining in close formation, on a course some sixty degrees left of straight out—almost straight south.

  Mike looked back toward Aorangi, wondering how they were to reenter the lake. To his own relief, he didn’t ask the question. It answered itself; Wanaka ordered them to set sail. In what Mike judged to be about twenty minutes, Aorangi’s bulk was indistinguishable. The only identifiable objects were two or three waterspouts, all of them more or less ahead, strobe-lit by the lightning flickering from every direction but down, and Kaihapa, not quite low enough to be in the heaviest haze itself. It should have been a crescent, but was merely a blurred patch of light unnoticeable except when both thunderheads and lightning were all for the moment in other directions than west.

  “’Ao!” called Wanaka to the masthead. “I
know it’s not really necessary, but tell ’Oloa we’ll be making random course changes twice in the next two hours. When I call again, she should direct us toward where the gold-fish ought to be, as well as she can calculate.” The child nodded understanding, without stopping the endless looking around that was her duty. No one could see her lips or fingers move or hear her voice, but no one doubted that she was passing the order to her doll.

  She reported nothing to the deck before the second course change. Then the captain ordered her to the cabin, placing the doll on her own shoulder. She also ordered Keo off watch, and told Mike she would have relieved him as well if the sea had not been unusually rough. Both were wearing safety lines, but the captain seemed not fully to trust these just now. There was no actual storm, but waterspouts were surprisingly numerous at the moment and she wanted two pairs of eyes to keep track of them. It went without saying that she wanted someone to heave Mata to if she herself went overboard for any reason.

  Mike’s own sailing experience on Earth had nearly all been limited to calm weather, and he was getting just a little tired of one aspect of Kainui. Nowhere on his home world’s oceans, as far as he had ever heard, was there anything like the microtsunami phenomenon, and even the best noise armor—and his, of necessity, was a special-order item—could not accustom its wearer to all the properties that made it wearable or, better, livable for many days at a time. Quite the reverse. Some aspects of its complex inner structure grew less and less comfortable as time passed.

  Wanaka had tacked twice, with easily two hours between the maneuvers, when she ordered Mike to ring the cabin’s signal bell and gave up the tiller to Keo, ordering him to heave to and attach a safety line to himself. Nothing had been seen of any other craft, not that even the captain had been looking very hard. The waterspout supply had thinned noticeably, as had the haze; Kaihapa was much clearer, though not, of course, noticeably higher in the west.