Noise

by Hal Clement

  “I didn’t think a ship’s leaf would be much use to them that far south. I was just impressing them with what we could do.”

  “It wasn’t much use to them—that far south. They were taking chances now on breathing equipment, though not on food; you can see the plant trays. I’m guessing those three people—one of them a child—are all that there are on board. Look again, Captain. That is the ship Hinemoa was using, paint pattern and all. It’s Koku. Ask ’Ao.”

  The captain didn’t. “But why? And how under Kaihapa?”

  “Why? Because they’re either still having an emergency or have spotted an opportunity. How? How did they get so precisely to Muamoku’s latitude? How did they dare this time to come so far from Aorangi? And, as part of the same question, why do they have so few ships? Want a good, solid guess?”

  “Yes! Of course! They’re getting close.”

  “They have their own version of ’Oloa. I don’t know what it’s built into, but they have inertial systems and computers at least good enough to handle navigation problems.”

  “Then why aren’t they traveling all over Kainui?”

  “Because they have only a few of them, and can’t make more. They’ve never had more—at least not many more; they may have lost some ships down through the years, I suppose. I expect what they have was on their original colony ship. Just like your people, they used what was available. They had pseudolife skills, an ocean, and a lot of ice, and all the carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and other light elements anyone could ask. They needed a power source, and circumstances steered them in the temperature-difference direction, so eventually they had to hug the ice cap. Sort of like Earth; we headed in a direction that let us develop and get addicted to heat-engine technology. That set us to finding better and better ways to make and use heat engines—powered by nonrenewable fuels. I wonder if they had a period when they used mercury instead of gold for ballast? I’d like to study that part of their history. Gold’s more plentiful than mercury in the universe, but maybe not this near the surface of the ocean here—”

  “You’re wandering, Hoani.”

  “Sorry. Back to why you should get into trading mode. They’d like to have more ships. To them, that means more inertial systems. They’d never be patient enough to circumnavigate the planet every time they lost track of home, just as an Earth native now would never, except in really unusual circumstances, have the patience to spend weeks crossing a continent—I hope you know what that is.”

  “I’ve had some history.”

  “They can’t get silicon on this world; its compounds aren’t soluble enough in your acid ocean. Maybe you should devise traveling fish; you could give them real guidance systems now—though I suppose they still wouldn’t know where to go to find their cities. Aorangi wants to trade for silicon, I’d bet all I have but my family, and so far at least Muamoku is the only place they can do their trading. Nowhere else has physical offworld contact. They probably do know that gold has trade value on other worlds, even if it’s only to provide a value scale. Whether they’ll pay more for raw silicon or finished navigation units I wouldn’t guess; you’re the expert in that field. Either way I can see Muamoku and one Captain Wanaka doing rather well for themselves and quite a few other people. So, Captain, I suggest again—get into trading mode. They can see your ship is carrying cargo. I doubt that they know or care what it is, but they’re not stupid and must realize that their gold-fish is the most likely place for you to have found it. They should see no reason for you to distrust them; was a single one of your suspicions about what they were trying to do ever really confirmed? Think it over—quickly. They’re almost here. What are you going to say to Hinemoa?”

  “Nothing,” cut in ’Ao placidly. “Hinemoa isn’t there.”

  Three faces quizzed the child silently, and a triumphant expression appeared around her mask.

  “That’s Eru,” was her completely adequate explanation.

  “Heave to, Keo dear,” was Wanaka’s response. “Maybe they’re not even traders. It’s surprising they even have any; I wonder where Hinemoa got her skill. Aorangi shouldn’t know what trading is.”

  She was wrong, of course. Mike had little time to think independently for the next few hours of translation, but it did occur to him that in a city that must contain several thousand people there should be plenty of opportunity to acquire sales competence without developing a foreign trade.

  The seeming fact that nobody had been trying to sell his labor to the community during the recent emergency, but had simply done what obviously needed doing, did suggest something interesting about the city’s culture. It might be the most civilized on the planet; he should go back to add a few more footnotes to his observations, obviously.

  But that would be later, he decided as a storm swept over the linked ships and ’Ao and Eru went to work with their shovels.

  The adults aboard Koku were one sailor, named Rua, and one of the teachers who had guided Mike around his city earlier, called Wherepapa. The latter, amazingly to Wanaka and Keo, was in command, at least in the sense that he gave orders about destination and any activities like mining or not if the chance arose; Rua was captain in maritime emergencies. Eru was his apprentice, though Wherepapa could give him instruction when there was time available from ship’s duties. Mike was impressed by the fact that neither adult seemed bothered by any aspect of the arrangement.

  He was even more impressed by the discussions between the captain and the teacher. Wherepapa might regard trading as an exercise in logic, but he had picked up enough background facts—Mike wondered how long that had taken him—to make his logic work.

  He admitted that Aorangi badly wanted silicon, but pointed out that the materials for gallium arsenide, or boron and nitrogen for doping diamond, could probably be obtained from Kainu’s own oceans. Wanaka questioned the possibility of making or working with diamond at pseudolife temperatures. He suggested that Aorangi could sell gold for electrical wiring; the captain pointed out that copper was a somewhat better and silver a much better conductor. Wherepapa countered that gold was far more corrosion resistant than either and wouldn’t need replacement so often, if ever. Wanaka was not sure this was desirable.

  Wanaka pointed out that since silicon could be processed so much more easily on worlds with better developed high-temperature technology, Aorangi would be better advised to trade for finished semiconductor equipment for which the captain could make arrangements. Wherepapa conceded the point.

  Since personnel often visited between ships for a night or more at a time, the children listened in with increasing frequency, only partly to profit from Mike’s translations. What interested Eru was unclear to Hoani; the youngster was a city offical’s child and might reasonably be fascinated by anything at all, whether or not visibly connected with administration. ’Ao seemed to be most impressed with how useful it was to know things, though Mike tried to impress her with the existence of trivia. She was still young enough to have an extremely capacious memory, and found it hard to believe that this would ever fail her.

  As a student himself, Mike considered the ability to think more important; facts could always be looked up. He began to feel a little worried about the responsibility he might have incurred; after all, he had been collecting facts, obviously and carefully, for this whole trip. Had that been a bad example? His language skills, essentially memory, had been of almost continuous use to ’Ao’s captain. Did Kainui’s schools teach people to think? Wanaka was a skilled sailor, which was a matter of knowing what to do at a given time to produce given results, with most appropriate actions necessarily reflexive; Keo had the same training and qualities. Of course, the captain’s trading skills represented something else—Mike couldn’t quite decide what, but it was something else. But ’Ao?

  Well, what did she get points for? That was a comforting thought. Having skills, certainly—he remembered the points she had earned from setting up the division of the iron-fish. But there was judgment, too; she
had lost some for risking her armor to infection.

  Maybe he shouldn’t worry; she wasn’t his responsibility, except as any adult shared some responsibility for any child.

  He was talking to her, still with this question in mind, just before she climbed to her station after the wake-up meal.

  “You recognized that iron-fish just at the start of our trip,” he remarked. “Was that just because it wasn’t anything else you knew?” He had been confronted with that trick question, he remembered, during his own school days.

  ’Ao looked indignant. “Of course not. It might have been something I’d never seen before. It just looked like iron.”

  “Aren’t there any other fish that look like iron?”

  “Some. A little.”

  “What would you have said if you couldn’t tell any differences?”

  The child was beginning to show a why-are-adults-so-silly expression. “I wouldn’t have said anything until I was sure, unless the captain asked me. Then I’d have said I didn’t know, of course.”

  “Suppose you’d been wrong, and missed something that should have told you it wasn’t iron?”

  “I’d have lost some points, unless the captain missed it, too.”

  “So if you’ve eliminated all the wrong answers, you have the right one?”

  “Didn’t you go to school? Sorry, that was rude. Maybe it’s your school’s fault. They used to tell us a lot of stories with morals in them. Pretty often they were stories from the Old World, I expect just to make them interesting. I know what a wolf was, because they gave us the one about the boy who cried ‘wolf.’ They gave us that Sherlock Holmes one you’re trying on me, too—you know, the fellow who said that when you’ve eliminated all the impossibles, whatever was left must be right. He never said anything about making mistakes in eliminating. He didn’t say a word about the things you hadn’t thought of, either. Isn’t Wherepapa just wonderful; with the things he can think of to say why the captain’s wrong? I wouldn’t say that to her, of course; you won’t tell, will you?”

  He felt relieved, a little.

  Half an hour later, he felt slightly embarrassed, since captain and mate were both on deck at the time.

  ’Ao shrilled from her masthead, “City, two hands port.” Then just as loudly, “It’s Muamoko, Mike. I’m certain of it.”

  RAIRAI

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