Ice Giants Wake!

by Gary J. Davies

  "ANYWAY, ALL THAT WOULD PROBABLY STILL NOT PROVIDE ENOUGH ENERGY TO POWER GIANT STONE MONSTERS THAT WALK ABOUT THOUGH SOME SUCH SOURCES MUST HAVE BEEN IMPORTANT TO THEIR ORIGINS AND EARLY EVOLUTION. I SUSPECT THAT THEY HAVE SINCE LEARNED TO TAP THE ENERGIES OF NUCLEAR DECAY. I WOULD CHECK TO SEE IF THEY ARE RADIOACTIVE."

  The suggestion rocked Ed. Radioactive? What the hell! "SWELL, JERRY! THE JANTS HERE TIRE, AND WE NEED TO CUT THIS CONVERSATION OFF. ANY OTHER QUICK ADVICE?"

  Pause.

  "MOVE SOUTH."

  ****

  Good advice at last, thought Ed, as he walked uphill towards the Hairless Bear site again. It was at least ten degrees below freezing, and the wind was starting to pick up and drift the snow again. He had left John Running Bear and Talking Owl at the Hairless Bear site after sending Mary and Jack back to the lab. When he returned to the site he wasn't surprised to find that the wood pile around Hairless Bear was a couple of feet shorter and/or Hairless Bear was taller, but John and Talking Owl were sitting around the campfire chatting away amiably as though nothing troubling was happening. John was actually smiling, and so was Talking Owl.

  "I spoke with Jerry Green via the jants," he announced to them.

  "I don't suppose that Jerry Green told you where he is hiding?" asked John.

  "Someplace a hell of a lot warmer than here," said Ed.

  John laughed. "It is very cold today. Where is Global Warming when you need it?"

  "It's making Alaska and most of the rest of the world warmer, but we're stuck here," Ed replied, before he told them details about his conversation with Jerry.

  "A long distance conversation using jant telepathy!" remarked John. "I suppose that for the sake of humanity I will need to tell the NSA about that, but first I will need to devise a clever cover story that does not reveal how I could ever have learned such a thing."

  "Jerry's speculations could be important to our little science team," Talking Owl noted. "You two should resume your work here, while I return to the lab with this information." With that she stood and walked away through the drifting snow. A snowy white owl flew above her, they noticed.

  Ed watched John longingly watch Talking Owl walk away. The Mohican's smile quickly faded away and his usual somber demeanor returned. "I suppose that you better take a little nap in the tent and try to talk to turtles and smart rocks," John suggested.

  "Right," agreed Ed.

  John began fussing with his cameras. "I'm going to use my NSA know-how to set up a remote camera surveillance of Hairless Bear so that he can be directly monitored from the lab. Not that I don't enjoy staying out here in the cold in a tent with you, Ed Rumsfeld, but I don't want to do it forever."

  "Me either," agreed Ed, as he and John set about to accomplish their assignments.

  This time Ed was able to more easily hear turtles and Stone-Coats without even the help of blackberry bourbon. "MESSAGE RECEIVED!" he replied to the continuing cries of alarm from the turtles. There were six of them nearby he determined, set up to hibernate not far from a tiny nearby stream. Over the next half hour the biggest and oldest one expressed condolences to Ed for the death of Talking Turtle. That was the wise turtle, Ed surmised. After Ed thanked them for several minutes, for the next half hour they told Ed that it was time for them to sleep their long winter sleep.

  One by one the turtles became silent. At some point they would perhaps dream something interesting, but whatever additional wisdom they might wish to consciously provide would have to wait for spring. Ed hoped that the hibernating turtles would last that long; the winters here were getting too long for them. Maybe he could rent another U-Haul and move them somewhere warmer.

  With the turtles finally silent, Ed could sense the Stone-Coats much more clearly. Hunger is what they projected constantly: overwhelming hunger. Ed sensed that there was much more that they were thinking: quick flashes of information that he didn't understand at all. There was also an echoing quality to their 'hunger' message and to the quick flashes similar to what he sensed from the jants, suggesting to Ed that he was listening not to a single Stone-Coat but to a great multitude of Stone-Coats that were sometimes feeling and thinking together as one great hive-mind. He tried to isolate to a single individual but couldn't. He focused on several different questions but got no reply. He thought English words and Mohawk words, but got no response.

  There was clearly yet another level of Stone-Coat communications going on that had to be deciphered, but so far he was getting nowhere with it. At last he gave up and left the tent. He found the Mohican sitting near the fire eating MRE soup and sat down next to him. The warmth of the fire felt wonderful but it warmed only one side of him at a time. "If we ever do this again let's build two camp-fires that we can sit between, John."

  "Good idea, if you would be so kind to gather the extra wood needed," John replied. "Also you would assume full responsibility for the resulting extra C-O-2 emissions and more extreme climate change." He handed Ed a cup of hot soup.

  "I promise I will plant a carbon-fixing tree someplace," Ed replied, after sipping soup. "Or maybe we need all the Global Warming we can get to hold back the next glacial period. Did you set up the surveillance cameras?"

  "Affirmative; I've got all three cameras going now. I had to lay out co-axial cable between them and all the way to the lab though; there's too much interference around Hairless Bear for any of the normal sorts of atmospheric signal communications."

  Between soup slurps Ed told John about his turtle and Stone-Coat telepathic experiences. John's only immediate response was to say "interesting," But Ed could tell that he was mulling things over. The sun was rapidly setting and it was getting colder as the two men cleaned the soup pot and their cups, mostly using snow.

  "It's supposed to get to below zero here tonight, Ed. What say we move our cold carbon and water-based butts back to the lab, where we can more comfortably watch for Hairless Bear movement using the cameras and make use of the fancy white-man inspired indoor plumbing? Let the clan animals and the cameras carry on the watch. I've got some ideas about electrical interference to talk to White Cloud, Jack, and Doc about. We can leave the tent and most gear here and travel light."

  "I like the way you think, partner," replied Ed.

  The uphill trudge to the lab was more work than Ed thought it would be, as the growing wind had recreated three-foot snow drifts that obscured the pathway, but the thought of spending the night with Mary in the semi-warm Great Lodge spurred him on. Not for the first time he marveled at how much his physical condition had improved since his Jerry and jant encounter more than a year ago. He wasn't even tired or out of breath when he arrived at the lab and exchanged a warm hug with Mary. For John Running Bear the hike had also been an easy one, and Ed noticed that the Mohican 's demeanor brightened up considerably when he found that Talking Owl was present in the lab. How much of the Mohican's desire to hike to the lab was motivated by Talking Owl, Ed wondered?

  Crowded to one side of the lab, the little science team was already in deep discussion about ideas stimulated by the Jerry Green's insights. "The possibilities are simply mind boggling," Doc explained to Ed and John. "The key might indeed be carbon, and its ability to form in both two-dimensional sheets of hexagonally arranged atoms called graphene, and in the form of three dimensional crystal lattices. With the 3-D lattice you get diamond, which is usefully the hardest known substance and a very poor electrical conductor. In graphene you get tensile strength a hundred times greater than steel and conductivity that can be better than copper."

  "Graphene sheets can also be structured as microscopic tubes called carbon nanotubes, with a variable electrical conductivity depending on how they are structured," added White Cloud. "Using carbon nanotubes and electrical impulses various minerals could be selectively transported throughout the body."

  "That means that nanotubes could in principle perform functions analogous to both blood vessels and nerves," noted Doc.

  "But silicon also has interesting prop
erties," White Cloud explained. "Silicon based structures also provide the potential for a great variation in electrical properties, particularly when doped with various metalloids and so forth. And besides being nearly as hard as diamond, quartz is even a better electric insulator than diamond."

  "Oh!" exclaimed Doc. "Our Geiger counter came. Good news: the Claw is radioactive!"

  "That's good?" Ed asked.

  "Well, it might help explain how the Stone-Coats are powered," said Doc. "The object is not so radioactive that occasional short term contact poses a serious danger to us, but you wouldn't want to live with one of those things under your bed."

  Ed shook his head. Graphene? Nanotubes? Conductivity? Tensile strength? Radioactivity? All of this was way beyond him. "Pretend that I don't understand most of that, guys. What's the bottom line on all of this?

  "A real possibility of rock-based life is the most important resulting concept," said Doc. "From the standpoint of science it's conceivable that this finger-tip might be a living super-computer." He pointed towards the nearby box that held the Bear Claw.

  "But how would it ever get that way?" Ed asked. "The stuff you're talking about is beyond the current abilities of human engineering, correct? Are Stone-Coats super smart?"

  Doc shrugged. "Not necessarily. The details about how our own bodies work are not all worked out by our science either, but they gradually evolved via evolution. With us it was organic carbon molecules evolving in an acquis media that led to primitive life. Through a lot of trial and error over countess trillions of generations, single cell life and then multi-cell life evolved as organic-based life forms, enabled because we carry and control an aqueous media around inside of ourselves.

  "With Stone-Coat life forms it was a crystalline media instead of water that supported life-creation and a separate evolutionary path. As our ancestors learned to control the aqueous media inside their cells, Stone-Coat ancestors developed the means to control the form of their mineral bodies. In both cases some measure of intelligence eventually became a positive factor for continuing survival, and it naturally emerged as a capability in both of our lines of evolution. But they need not have developed a science that helps them understand what they are. The blind watchmaker that is evolution made them just as it made us."

  "The game theorists have computer models that strongly support the notion of evolution," added Jack. "Just as we didn't have to be designed by biologists, the Stone-Coats didn't have to be designed by mineralogists and computer designers. Life didn't need to be designed. We all arose due to the materials and the basic mathematical laws of nature put into place at the Big Bang."

  Ed wasn't totally sure they had answered his question, or what watchmakers or games or big bangs had to do with anything, but he felt reassured that his science oriented friends finally thought that they knew what might be going on.

  "However the oldest Stone-Coat legends speak of various sizes and shapes for Stone-Coats, and Hairless Bear clearly resembles a flesh and blood bear," said Talking Owl. "Perhaps the fact that they mimic our life forms suggests that they can purposely manipulate gross aspects of their anatomy. Might that also be an advantage that their evolution would favor?"

  Running Bear was staring at Talking Owl in open-mouthed awe. Ed didn't have to read his mind to guess his thoughts. She was beautiful and brilliant too! Wow!

  "Our Mohican also has some thoughts to pass on to us, I believe," Talking Owl concluded. "Do you not?" She turned her gaze to John Running Bear and their eyes locked.

  There was an awkward silence that seemed to go on forever as the two stared into each other's eyes.

  "Yes, John," Ed cued him. "It was something about electrical interference, wasn't it?"

  "It was," said John. "Perhaps the unintelligible static that Ed and Talking Owl sense telepathically is related to the electromagnetic interference that plagues our signal devices when near Hairless Bear or the Mountain. Perhaps they are both manifestations of Stone-Coat electronic based thought and communication. Maybe what we sense or measure and interpret as noise is how they communicate between themselves. Their feelings as detected by turtles and Ed may be slow, but perhaps their cogent thought and communications are computer-fast, so fast and perhaps digital that we think it is noise."

  "Nifty!" exclaimed Doc. "If that's the case, maybe electronic signals could be used by us to communicate with them!"

  "Or perhaps hurt or repel them," added Jack.

  "Based on legends it is fire that repels them," noted Doc, "but it doesn't destroy them. It just stops them in their tracks."

  "You bring up another important clue to their physiology," said Talking Owl. "They have to be in an environment below the freezing point of water in order to move. The freezing point of water is very significant to them. In the Hiawatha story Hairless Bear bled water and ice when the Bear Claw was broken off. Water runs in their veins."

  "Frozen water expands by several percent," John pointed out. "Men build machines that operate using hydraulic fluid within hydraulic lines and cylinders. Perhaps using the freezing and melting of ice they can move by means of the resulting hydraulic pressures."

  "Natural freezing of ice is so powerful that it even breaks apart rock," noted Doc. "Perhaps over time Stone-Coat life forms adapted that natural phenomenon to their repertoire of tricks in order to eventually achieve motion. They could have evolved ice-driven hydraulic systems to move body parts." He shrugged. "Of course this is all conjecture. So far we haven't verified that they can move at all."

  ****

  CHAPTER XII

  Hairless Bear Wakes

  "What the hell?" John suddenly muttered. He stood and moved closer to the monitor that displayed the camera feeds from the Hairless Bear site. The three windows that displayed camera outputs appeared to be blank.

  "Malfunction?" Ed asked.

  "I don't think so," said White Cloud. "My wolf friends watching at the site are very upset and frightened." Indeed, the eerie sound of howling wolves erupted outside, loud enough to be clearly heard inside the lab.

  "My owl friends are also upset," added Talking Owl.

  John was busy at the keyboard. A window with rows of numbers and mnemonics popped up that the Mohawk scrolled through quickly. "All self-checks are positive," he concluded. The system thinks that it is fully operational."

  "Maybe it's the cold," Mary suggested.

  "Maybe somebody stuck chewing gum over each of the lenses," said Ed. "The images are dark but not totally blank."

  "Play the last few recorded minutes back," suggested Doc.

  John went back five minutes. On the monitor two infra-red and one optical view of Hairless Bear appeared. The woodpile had shrunk down to Hairless Bear hip-level, the viewers noticed, but the stone giant stood unmoving in its normal pose. There was a sudden impression of motion on all screens, and the optical camera facing Hairless Bear suddenly shook, got blurry, and then quickly became dark.

  "Replay that in slow-mo if you can," said Doc.

  In slow motion the astonished viewers saw something shoot out from the mouth region of Hairless Bear and strike and cover the optical camera. John replayed the event even slower. "It spat on my camera!" he exclaimed.

  "Possibly water at near freezing temperatures," said Doc. "Striking the even colder camera and air it would quickly freeze into ice, covering the lens. Let the recording play further forward."

  They watched as the head of Hairless Bear abruptly twisted towards the second camera and repeated its spitting actions, and then towards the third camera. Soon the feed from all three cameras was essentially blank.

  "Damn!" said John. "The head moves! And it put all three of my cameras out of commission in about ten seconds!"

  "It did that for a reason." said Ed. "It's up to something!"

  "What I find amazing is that it apparently recognized their function and acted to effectively nullify them," said Doc. "High intelligence is definitely implied."

  "Someone should hike to the site
to see if Hairless Bear is still there," Mary suggested.

  "Unnecessary," said Talking Owl. She stood apart from the others, with her eyes closed tight. "It is fully awake and mobile. It walks now and my owl friends follow it, as do wolves and bears. They are all very upset that Hairless Bear is attacking a tree near the site."

  "Exactly where is it?" Jack asked.

  "Its exact position is unclear from my conversations with animals," said Talking Owl. "But it is not far from here and near or on the path."

  They heard the sound of cracking wood and the crash of a fallen tree.

  "The snow and the lab walls greatly muffle any sounds," said John. "That noise had to come from nearby. Surely no more than a hundred meters."

  Everyone scrambled into winter coats and moccasins, picked up flashlights, rifles, and cameras, and rushed outside. They ran to the nearby path that stretched to the Great Lodge all the way from Giants' Rest. Downhill towards the Hairless Bear site, the sound of breaking wood, hooting owls, and howling wolves shattered the stillness of an otherwise quiet winter night.

  "We should warn the Lodge," said Mary, but they soon saw the light of several flashlights moving towards them from the Lodge. Distant startled voices could be heard, and it was clear that people in the Lodge were already alerted.

  The crackling sound of breaking tree-limbs and the ponding sounds of monstrous footfalls came from someplace down the path towards the Hairless Bear site and was moving closer. The science team pointed all of their flashlights in the direction of the sound.

  Far down the path at the edge of darkness, something monstrously large was steadily moving up the pathway. Fifty feet above the path a pair of saucer sized eyes more than a yard apart glowed red. The massive diamond scaled body below the eyes flashed multi-colored reflections from the flashlights.