by Hal Clement
Whatever Faivonen may have thought consciously of Beedee, his feeling toward the thing was essentially ordinary friendship. It was a personality. It was even a person. Their running conversation might almost have been taped at a dining table during a scientific convention; and for the first two Medean days it was little more exciting than dining-table talk. The only complications arose from the endless phase problems between Faivonen’s twenty-four-hour cycle and the satellite’s seventy-five-plus-hour rotation. He had to waste waking hours at “night.”
The white suns and the continuous aurora gave enough light to permit travel when the orange suns were below the horizon, but the man and the machine were both reluctant to do this. Seeing was poor enough to give a high risk of missing important data, a possibility which bothered Beedee even more than it did the man. Gathering and storing information was the diamond’s prime motivation—its equivalent of hunger, thirst, and libido combined.
On the third day, Faivonen was awakened early from his morning sleep by Beedee’s voice in his ear.
“Elisha! Something is trying to creep up on us very silently! Have weapons ready.”
The man snaked out of his sleeping bag as quickly and quietly as possible. “How far away?” he asked, wondering whether bow, axe, or knife would be most appropriate.
“I cannot tell the linear distance, since I don’t know how much sound energy it is producing. If it maintains its recent average rate of approach, it will arrive in about one hundred seconds.”
Faivonen was on his feet by now; he nodded, seized the bow, and nocked an arrow. “Direction?” he asked.
“Four o’clock from where you’re facing now.” The man whirled to his right. Nothing was yet visible, but there were many shrubs up to three meters in height which blocked the line of sight. He could not hear anything yet; the hard-packed soil was almost completely covered with the bladder-covered, mosslike growths which filled the ecological niche of grass over much of Medea’s surface, and even a very heavy animal would have made little noise.
Argo was just rising, and its dull red disc, rimmed on the upper left by the brighter crescent where the twins lit its farther hemisphere, provided a blood-tinted background against which the newcomer should be silhouetted any moment. Faivonen wondered whether the creature were following his trail, or had simply winded him—the air tide, if it were actually that, had gone much more negative during the last couple of cycles and blown a stiff breeze down the valley toward the sea. This had fallen in the last few hours as the Fire-planet rose, but could still be carrying the human scent to anything down-valley equipped to detect it.
“It’s stopped. It’s only breathing now,” Beedee said suddenly. Faivonen lifted his bow, and drew the arrow part way back. Some of the Medean predators could leap many meters—
This one didn’t. It suddenly came into sight to one side of a large bush, running toward him at high speed. It was moving too fast, and the back-lighting was too poor, to let him count legs or spot other details; but research didn’t occur to him until later, anyway. He drew the shaft back the rest of its length, aimed as best he could in the second or two available, and loosed. The creature swerved slightly, knocking him off his feet as it brushed by him. It must have had twice his own mass. He struggled back to his feet as rapidly as his muscles would permit, dropping his bow and drawing his machete.
“Relax. It’s still running. Your arrow is about half-shaft deep in a front left shoulder; you hurt it badly, perhaps killed it.”
“Any other details?”
“It was a species of lancer, the largest I’ve seen. It had a radula—the toothy-tongue arrangement they all do, and was running with tongue extended. If you had missed with that arrow, the tongue would have hit your throat and left very little of your neck. I thought of telling you to dodge, but it was obvious that your reaction would have been very much too slow.”
“And it’s still heading away from us?”
“Yes. I see no likelihood of recovering your arrow.”
“That wasn’t quite what I was thinking about.”
At least, the incident killed boredom for a time. The diamond claimed not to understand this, pointing out that if Faivonen had been killed he would have attained ultimate boredom. Faivonen failed to see any humor in this, but couldn’t help wondering whether Beedee were actually trying to display some such human emotion. He put a leading question.
“Do you really want all your predictions fulfilled and your calculations correct? I’ve heard you say that your fun consists of checking your figures against observation. Isn’t it sort of—well—deadening if you’re right all the time? Life needs some kind of spice.”
“I assume you speak figuratively, if the word you just used actually refers to the taste-only foods you left on Earth. I am aware that no research can be done without a little risk, but fail to see how adding to the danger improves the taste, if that matches your figure of speech, of learning or discovery.”
“You’re just trying to make yourself sound more like a machine,” retorted Faivonen.
“Gambling should obviously be saved for the time the odds are with you. My knowledge of human gamblers is limited, but manipulating the odds in their favor has always appeared to be one of their standard procedures.”
“Those weren’t gamblers. Look—you’ve just won a bet, since your existence is tied in with mine. If you don’t get a kick thinking about that, you’re just not alive.”
“I have never claimed to be alive,” was the diamond’s rather overwhelming answer. “Thank you for forgetting.”
Faivonen could think of nothing to say.
There was no more night, even the brilliant night of aurora and the white Castor suns. The trip had started at the equinox; four Medean days later, sunrise and sunset points had met ahead of the travellers. The Castor C twins were in the sky for the rest of the journey; they would not set for thirty of Medea’s revolutions around Argo. This at least resolved the question of whether or not to travel at night.
No more attacks were experienced in the next few days, and boredom again began to threaten the morale of the human member of the exploring team. On the seventh day he felt the need to do something about it.
Beedee, with its precise visual sense, had measured the distance they had travelled, mapping the valley as exactly as the human race was ever likely to find necessary. They were now just over five hundred and fifty kilometers from the bay as the balloons travelled—as many of them did. The winds were increasing in speed both ways, and more and more of the organisms were apparently getting swept into the valley. The down-valley winds, back toward the bay, were less intense and shorter in duration than those blowing from behind the travelers, but a change in both qualities was becoming evident as the days went on.
“Beedee,” Faivonen remarked as he finished a breakfast during the seventh day, “I’m getting a little tired of waiting for something to happen. I was inclined a couple of days ago to liven things up—season this meal of knowledge you find so tasty—by making a bet or two with you. Then I couldn’t think of anything either of us could use to pay off with; but I just have. The only trouble is that I’m not sure any bet could be really fair, since you can calculate things so much better than I can. Still, it’s worth trying, if you’ll tell me the truth.”
“Trying what? Why should I tell you anything but the truth?”
“To the latter, I don’t suppose you would; it would demand human characteristics you claim to lack. What I want to try, as I said, is a bet. For example, I’ve been wondering about those balloons—they’re being carried farther toward the cold side than back this way by the winds, so far. If they get there, it’s hard to see how they could do anything but freeze. We could bet on how much frozen balloon there is in the glaciers we both believe are a few hundred kilos along, with the uncertainties being things like natural methods of escape which I haven’t been able to think of.
“Or we could bet about the winds, which we both think are affec
ted both by the season and the tides. How intense will they get by, say, the third noon from now? I can only extrapolate roughly, and you say your calculations wouldn’t mean anything without data on the shape and length of the valley and the area beyond which feeds wind to it.”
“True. My set of possible solutions so far is so broad that any one of them would qualify as merely a guess. Yes, we could bet on that; but what possible currency could we use?”
“If I lose, we go fifty kilometers farther than the point where my judgment says we ought to start back. You will collect that much more knowledge.”
“A very tempting offer. Will you state in advance the criteria on which you would base that judgment?”
“Don’t you trust me? I can give you several, actually, but can’t guess which might happen first or demand highest weight. For example, if we went twenty hours or so without finding a food animal, I’d certainly think about return. If wind-chill got too close to the lower limit at which this suit could keep me alive . . .”
“But if we went beyond those points, you might die. Those are the same sort of factors which would make me recommend turning back.”
“Well, that would be just another bet. If I didn’t survive, you’d still be found sometime, so you’d be the winner again.”
“I don’t want to be turned off, even temporarily. I wouldn’t regard it as a win.”
“And you won’t bet?”
“No. What are you trying to arrange? You haven’t suggested what I should pay you if you win. I have never heard of a gambler who didn’t give that factor his prime concern.”
“I told you—you’ve never met a real gambler. I’d be content with being right in a dispute with you. Didn’t Riita ever challenge you to anything like that—both make predictions, and see who was right?”
“I thought you didn’t want to discuss her with me. It seemed to cause you grave emotional distress.”
“This is not a discussion. I simply asked a question.”
“Yes, she sometimes tried to outguess me about what was to happen, but she never made a formal challenge of it.”
“Well, I want to.”
“I get the impression that you are trying to confuse me. The set of possible explanations—or rather, the set of explanations I can think of—for your action is larger than the set of possible solutions to the problem of the valley wind.”
“I have thought of something you could pay me. Just stop with those artifacts. The correction in your choice of words was intentional; you had planned that sentence long before the first sound wave came out of the speaker.”
“You said that this did not bother or annoy you.”
“It’s beginning to. It reminds me, each time you do it, how much faster your brain works than mine does.”
“Then I will stop. No bet is needed.”
“Thanks—I guess. Well, I’m making a prediction anyway. I say that the wind coming down this valley at noon on the third day from now will have a speed greater than seventy-five kilometers an hour. Do you agree?”
“This is very close to the median of my set of possibilities.”
“What’s the median?”
“Seventy-seven point one four.”
“All right, I say it will be higher than that—or do you want to take the high side?”
“I see no basis for a choice. Let it be as you say. I will not, however, hold you to the pledge of extra distance if you turn out to be wrong.”
“You can’t stop me from paying off if my conscience demands it,” pointed out the man.
“You mean you are doing all this to remind both of us that you control all our actions? It seems silly.”
“I hadn’t thought of that. Thanks.”
“I wonder if that is really true.”
Faivonen made no answer, though the diamond’s remark startled him considerably. He fell silent, and gathered up equipment in readiness for the “day’s” next hike. The suns circled the horizon, hiding first behind one set of cliffs and then the other.
Some ninety hours later the trip became interesting again without the aid of bets. Over a space of about two kilometers the hard soil of the valley became first slightly damp, then quite wet, and finally coated with frost. The man’s first thought was radiation cooling, even though there had been no real night. Then he noticed that the frost extended about equally far on both sides of the valley, and part way up its walls, as though something had come down to this point to chill everything, and then retreated. The fact that frost crystals grew as deeply on the underside of branches and overhung rocks implied the same: things had cooled by some other process than radiating to the sky.
“This is a good one,” Faivonen remarked aloud. “Any ideas?”
“Of course,” replied Beedee. “This fact has narrowed my set of possible solutions by more than ninety-five percent.”
“Where does it leave my bet?”
“You are well ahead. You are also in about fifty times as much personal danger as I had estimated.”
“How bad is that? You mean we should turn back now?”
“I should be able to give you warning. Actually, the estimate remains grossly unreliable in view of the unknowns in the physiography ahead of us. If you are willing to face the risk of learning more of the pertinent facts, I most certainly am.”
“But what caused this frost? And why is it taking so long to melt, even with the suns shining on it?”
“Before I answer that question, I must ask you one—one which involves your wife. Do you object?”
Faivonen hesitated, then said, “Go ahead.”
“It was her very clearly expressed wish that I not solve a problem for her which I believed she might reasonably solve by herself. She may never have told you in so many words, but she did not wish to become dependent on me; she felt some guilt about bringing me to Medea at all. She fully supported the policy that you colonists should not be or become dependent on anything they could not produce here. If you share her policy views, I cannot answer your question. I know you have enough data, and I think you have enough reasoning power, to solve it yourself.”
Faivonen thought silently for several seconds. He was willing to take on the problem himself—it would help fight the boredom of pure fact collecting. However, he was less sure of the general policy suggested. Beedee, in spite of the need for independence, was highly important to the colony; it carried most of the data so far accumulated about Medea in its memory. Some of the group had objected to letting the device go out on exploring trips, yielding the point only because so much better quantitative information could be obtained through its senses. Several of the Fahuma’s crew had been clearly more concerned about the machine than about Faivonen when they left the ship.
If, as Beedee had just said, the danger were now greater, perhaps it would be better to turn back now and get the information so far gathered back to the colony.
On the other hand, as he was quite sure the diamond would claim, what they had learned already would be greatly multiplied in value if more were known about this area; the local meteorology, especially, would provide clues to the cold-side conditions which might take years to gather any other way or from any other place. It was not just a matter of Beedee’s burning thirst for information; Medea’s weather, and still more its climate, could be very literally matters of life and death for Medean humanity. There was no way of getting knowledge without risk, and knowledge itself was life.
“All right,” he finally said. “I’ll figure it out myself. Let’s go on.” Beedee approved briefly.
The suns were slowly melting the frost from the branches and leaves of the bushes, but were making much less progress with the coating on soil and rocks. The presumption was that the latter had been chilled to a considerable depth, which in turn suggested conductive rather than radiative loss of heat; beyond this, for the moment, Faivonen could not get. The only change made by ten kilometers of travel was a thicker frost, with some evidence of snow as well—pil
es of feathery crystals which had apparently blown into sheltered areas by wind coming down the valley, and then, strangely, had had frost crystals grow on top of them. The distinction between the material which had blown from elsewhere and that which had grown in place was quite definite, according to Beedee, and Faivonen himself could see it.
He could not see the physical situation which would produce such a phenomenon. There had been no clouds even a few kilometers down the valley; it was hard to see how snow could fall without them. On the other hand, it was hard to see how radiation cooling sufficient for frost could occur if clouds were present. A brief snow shower, possibly, followed by a quick clearing, would explain things after a fashion. However, it did not explain why he and Beedee had seen nothing of the shower. Such a phenomenon should have been part of a travelling system—a weather front; and why such a thing should have stopped and retreated, or died out after coming within a few kilometers of the last camp, was hard to see. There had not been a cloud; all that either of them had seen in the sky since the suns had stopped setting had been the balloons.
These had been floating in ever-increasing numbers, sometimes back toward the bay, sometimes passing the explorers on the way toward the cold side. The tides, if the valley winds really were tidal phenomena, still seemed to favor motion away from Argo.
The creatures seemed to be drifting lower each day. A hundred hours ago some had been only a few tens of meters up; now many were practically skimming the frost. It occurred to Faivonen that he might actually catch one of the things by its trailing roots, or tentacles, or whatever they were. Then it occurred to him that the converse was also true. However, he refused to worry, as usual.
“I suggest,” Beedee cut into this line of thought, “that we examine some of the clefts or chimneys in the cliff. We might get more evidence about the nature of this strange heat sink.”
“All right,” agreed the man. “While I’m climbing, you might look out over the valley for animal life. We’re short of meat, and I can’t live indefinitely on cheese. I can’t help wondering whether this freeze may not have driven the local animals away, or into underground hibernation, or something like that.”