by Hal Clement
The thing was presumably some kind of communication relay; it was far too small to contain an intelligent creature, as Cunningham’s experience went. Its shape suggested a cylinder whose ends had been capped by hemispheres of the same radius, and the whole thing split in halves lengthwise and one of the halves thrown away. The overall length was twelve or fifteen centimeters, the diameter between four and five. It was shiny black in color, with occasional rather less reflective spots scattered sparsely over its curved surfaces. Its density was greater than that of water, as judged by feel, but not many times greater—perhaps about that of aluminum, Cunningham judged. All these figures could be established more precisely later.
At this the man suddenly realized he had not analyzed the rock and dust specimens he had obtained earlier, and had not been observing good lab practice; the specimen was quite dusty, and he had been handling it. He was perturbed only by the evidence that he was growing careless and the obvious fact that he could expect to be killed eventually by this trend if it continued. It did not occur to him consciously that eventually could include the immediate future.
Strictly speaking, he reminded himself, he should not even have exposed his new specimen to the ship’s air without learning more about its makeup; oxygen is a highly corrosive element which might have destroyed valuable information, and some substances are both volatile and deadly. This could hardly be the former, of course, since it had been baked in a near-vacuum for a long, long time and was still in existence; but that left wide open quite a few possibilities about its possible reaction products with oxygen.
Of course, anything likely to happen to it from oxygen exposure would presumably already have occurred—but Cunningham had heard that sort of excluded-middle argument used too many times as an excuse for apathy or a counter to a charge of serious error. It might be just as well to keep the thing away from air now for a while, and see whether the brief exposure had done anything serious—to it or to the air or to Cunningham himself. The scanning chamber of the particle microscope, now—that would be evacuated while running, and he could get some information about the finer details while he was waiting.
Twenty seconds later the black split-cylinder was in the two-liter chamber and the latter was evacuating, while Cunningham rather sheepishly flushed the ship’s air. A careful examination of every pertinent instrument had failed to indicate anything in the way of chemical or radiation danger, but he played safe anyway; and with his mind more at ease, he turned to the scanner and set Nimepotea’s data handler to running a study of the specimen in every available frequency of the electromagnetic and particle spectra, with an overriding command to stop if any of the radiation seemed to be causing measurable change in the thing’s structure. He started with soft energies to minimize that risk.
While this was running, he took his dust and rock samples and ran them through more restricted tests. The rock was a conventional basaltic mixture of silicates, in no way surprising except that he had judged it to be sedimentary. The dust which formed the valley walls, which he had rather expected to be limestone weathered in some fashion, might have been just that a billion years ago, but was now fairly pure calcium oxide. Cunningham whistled gently and made sure once more that none of the stuff was on his hands, glad that he had used a buffered cleaning gel instead of water to achieve that end earlier. The reason for the quicklime, as well as for the fact that what traces of atmosphere Tammuz still held consisted mostly of carbon dioxide, was obvious enough in hindsight—another result of the planet’s roasting as Anu had swelled and brightened. There, no doubt, went any chance of finding fossils in limestone; maybe there was still hope if he could find some shale.
And that was the last time Laird Cunningham thought of fossils for several days.
“Is it more effective to analyze or ask?”
The words were perfectly clear, but they represented a hodgepodge of English, Finnish, and German vocabularies and grammars so that the question was much less so. Also, he could not, for a moment, tell where the voice came from.
“What do you mean?” was the only response he could give.
“You are analyzing. Is this being done for the instrument’s sake or would your purpose be better met by being told about me?” This time the words were mostly English.
He got a direction on the sound this time, and moved toward the source, not that he believed it.
“What do you think I’m analyzing, and who can tell me the answers?”
“I am the answer to both questions.” There was no doubt about the origin of the sound, this time. It was the communicator in his own helmet, racked near the control console.
“I am analyzing you? Then you are the specimen I put in the scanner a couple of minutes ago?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you warn me if it bothers you?”
“It doesn’t, and I couldn’t. Until your code-storing device began to send investigative impulses and record their responses, I had no way to message—communicate. It was necessary to work out the codes and their underlying system, and then transmit impulses which caused your device to send more of its stored material to me. Its signal rate is low, and I have not received very much so far; but I have grasped a general picture of recent events.” There were occasional hesitations between words. The voice was rather high pitched, though not impressively childish or even feminine.
“It was you who were copying my ship’s control impulses?”
“I judge yes, though I am not perfectly clear on all the symbols you just used. Each new code pattern has to be tested against numerous possibilities and the greatest likelihood selected. Fortunately, you seem to have a slow response time, like those I supplemented before, and my analysis contributes no serious delay to communication.”
“Have you really been buried in that hillside for a long time?”
“I can infer only vaguely what you mean by the ‘long’ symbol, but when I was buried there the environment was solid grains separated by liquid water at the bottom of a large body of fairly pure water.”
“You claim you were buried in mud in an ocean bottom? Why and when?”
“Yes. I was dropped inadvertently by my user from a device which carried that being at the upper surface of the water, and gravity took me to and a short distance through the next interface. I have no way to tell when; at the moment I have no data on the interval, and very little information on your time symbols and their relation to mine.”
“Will it harm you—will the atmosphere in my ship, or anything else you are aware of here—harm you if remove you from that scanning chamber? Do you want me to take you out?”
“Your gas mixture will not affect me.” The words had been straight English for some sentences now. “I would be interested in emerging so that I can see more of you and your craft, though I recorded most of the details earlier. However, at the moment my most convenient communication channels are through the scanning circuits of this instrument, and it might take a” (there was a barely detectable pause) “second to set up others; I have not really identified in detail everything I saw before, and am not quite certain what is available which I could use.”
“Right now you have persuaded my ship’s computer to activate a regular broadcaster on the frequency used by my space suit. You are able to radiate in that part of the spectrum yourself—or did you have other equipment buried with you?”
“I can radiate myself, given enough energy.”
“What form of energy?”
“Thermal or electrical potential difference between any two parts of my structure will provide me. Thermal is all I have had for some time, and that has been rather intermittent. I was quite inoperative most of the time I was buried, until recently. Something brought me close enough to the surface so that heating and cooling of the material around me, by day and night, let me think much of the time.”
Cunningham fell silent. Nothing that had happened in the last few minutes had strained his ability to believe, given
that the thing in the scanning tank was a machine. Nimepotea contained much equipment of generally similar nature. It would be a little hard to expect any of that to survive—no, to withstand would be a better word—withstand being buried in ocean sediment and fossilized—well, not that; the machine’s own structure seemed unaffected. The sediment had consolidated into limestone and encased it for perhaps a billion years still in operational condition; but with no moving parts other than electrons or other charge units, and protected from erosion, such an event was credible in principle. It was not exactly everyday; one would of course keep alert for other possible interpretations.
Learning an appropriate communication symbol set from Neem’s computer—two, really; one for the computer and another, much higher-level one that it was now using with Cunningham himself—in less than a minute implied vast storage and extremely high function speed, but there was nothing intrinsically inconsistent about that with the rules as Cunningham understood them. It was simply a very high-class artificial intelligence.
And it was therefore the most useful imaginable archaeological specimen Tammuz had ever furnished, or was ever likely to, unless more examples of the same device might be buried here and there on the world. It could tell in detail what Tammuz had been like when its sun was still a main sequence star; it could describe the appearance and physiology and culture of the natives who must have explored the rest of the system—or, come to think of it, maybe not. The thing had been dropped from a surface vessel, possibly before its makers had mastered space travel. There were things—a billion years’ worth of things—which it couldn’t possibly know. Still, archaeologists usually have to work by extrapolation backward from their own times; interpolating to fill a bounded gap, even a billion-year one, should be easier, Cunningham assured himself.
“I will want to know as much as you can tell me about this world in the time before you were buried.”
“Of course. Your storage device lacks sufficient capacity for the information I can supply; is more available in similar devices, or will I have to rely on this form of communication and transfer to your brain? I judge you to be generally similar in basic structure to the beings who built me. What is your information capacity? Or more important, what is your likely operation span in seconds? Unless it is considerably greater than theirs, I will not be able to transfer a significant fraction to you by this method before you require replacement.”
Cunningham raised his eyebrows.
“I should be good for another ten to the ninth seconds or so, but will have to spend a good deal of that time in other activities. There is no significant additional memory available on the ship. There are people and computers on one of the planets of the other sun, and a shipload probably somewhere on this planet. We can reach either quickly enough, but I’d like to examine a few more things while I’m here on Tammuz.”
“Wouldn’t that restrict your rate of information intake?”
“In quantity, I suppose it would. I’m a bit choosy, though. At my age I can’t just collect trivia. The universe is a picture, and unless the new things I learn fit into that picture reasonably well I have trouble grasping, remembering, or sometimes even believing them.”
“The code believe lacks adequate referent for me in your storage device, even by inference from context. Your use of the ‘picture’ symbol is extremely interesting.”
Cunningham was silent for a moment.
“How about the word—the code—error?”
“I grasp that. Information inadequately coded, which requires correction.”
“That’ll do. I believe a sample of information when it seems unlikely that correction will be required.”
“What are your criteria?”
“Unfortunately, I depend rather heavily on consistency with the picture I have already formulated. I am aware of the logical weakness involved in this, and when possible compare items of what should be the same information from various sources . . .”
An hour later, deeply mired in philosophy which he had not consciously considered for three quarters of his life, Cunningham broke off the discussion, pleading a need for food and sleep. The specimen conceded the points, stating that its makers had had similar physical necessities. It closed the conversation, however, with a question which prevented the man from sleeping as quickly as he had expected.
“Is there no more information available on your ship than I have been able to decode from your storage machine? If not, I would appreciate your removing me from this place while you attend to your needs, and locating me where I can perceive my surroundings. If I can control your ship’s exterior viewing equipment and examine the planet near us, that would be even better. The sun, if it is really the sun, has changed greatly; I would like to know more of the details. I could see practically nothing while I was buried. You have suggested a technique for combining information units in such a way that I might develop a believable estimate of the length of time I was buried. Your storage contained information about stars which I did not possess.”
Cunningham obliged; there was remote-control capability to the screens, handled by the same microwave signals used to manipulate the ship, and it took the thing only an instant to learn the codes.
But the man watched from his bunk for some time as it observed, wondering and, as much as his personality allowed, worrying. Could a machine be curious? It was interesting to learn that it could “see” by essentially the same wave lengths his own eyes used, though there was no feature on it which remotely resembled an optical organ. Maybe he’d better ask about it first, rather than about ancient Tammuz. It seemed to know, so presumably its makers had known, that “the sun” was a star. At least, it had used the codes—the words—interchangeably. On the other hand. that might be recent knowledge from Nimepotea’s own information store. There was no way to be sure, except by asking it.
And what could it mean by having learned an “information-combining” technique from him?
Of course, the man realized, if its capacity were great enough, it might have been programmed to store information indiscriminately. Its filing and retrieval systems must be interesting in that case; but that would explain its “desire” to learn whenever an opportunity presented itself.
Adequate working hypothesis, for the moment, for the first point. The second question remained wide open, though, and he wasn’t sure he liked the possibilities. Cunningham felt suddenly unsure whether he was dealing with intelligence or not. He did finally fall asleep, and as usual failed to remember his dreams.
He awoke with the blood pounding in his ears and his chest heaving to rapid, heavy breathing. Normally he liked to consider himself immune to panic, but for two or three seconds he was quite unable to control the surge of fear which all but swamped his returning consciousness. Since gravity was practically normal, he had not strapped himself into his bunk; he was on his feet and had made a step toward the control console before he regained any sort of self-mastery. Even then it was one of the old spaceman’s litanies, which he heard himself chanting and had to listen through twice before it carried any meaning, which brought him back.
“You’re breathing air! You haven’t died! Go over what you should have tried! You’re breathing air, you haven’t died—”
Speaking aloud slowed his breathing, which was all that was really needed. The indicators above his console didn’t have to be read separately; they formed a face whose expressions, friendly and otherwise, he knew perfectly from years of intimacy. The face said there was too much carbon dioxide in Neem’s air, and his slowly recovering common sense agreed. His fingers, without conscious direction, played on the appropriate keys, and within a few seconds the indicators relaxed their unfriendly expression. His own body was a little slower responding, but two minutes after he had awakened only his still somewhat overspeeding heart and a burning curiosity were left as direct results of the incident.
There seemed a likely way to satisfy the curiosity. The specimen was lying where he
had left it balanced on the headrest of his conning seat; he picked it up, sat down, and spoke aloud. He was not sure whether the thing would detect sound, but it might have set up other connections through the wealth of communication equipment—everything was tied in more or less closely with the data handler.
“Have you been watching only outside the ship, or things inside as well?”
“I have been aware of both sets. There has been little changing outside except the direction of the sun. There is an uncertainty whether the difference in that rate is real, or represents a change in my internal time reference. I do not know which to believe. There is evidence that I have undergone some change.”
“What would cause that?”
“Most probably, though not actually a belief, particle radiation damage to my crystal structure. It is as stable a one as my makers believed possible to construct—essentially, diamond with structural modifications to provide mobile charge sites. I also have methods of duplicating data storage and detecting errors and inconsistencies. Still, natural radiation which you code “cosmic rays” would, when I was not powered, cause damage of which I would not be specifically aware.”
Cunningham returned to his own point of interest.
“Were you aware of gas mixture changes in this ship?”
“Yes. I noticed that controls existed for managing that composition, and that your own structure’s operation had an influence on the mixture. I modified the controls to a small extent to check what sort of feedback might exist.”
For a brief moment Cunningham thought of cutting off all remote control receivers; then he realized that this would probably block communication. Whether he wanted more to learn or to express himself he was not quite certain, but he definitely did not want to lose touch. Emotional language would probably be wasted on the little machine, he admitted to himself as he began to cool down again. He confined himself to, “I require expert technical help to get restarted if my major operations are stopped, and no such help is available. If the stoppage continues more than a few hundred seconds, restart becomes impossible because of chemical changes, except under very unusual conditions. I strongly advise against your experimenting with my personal systems; if you need knowledge in that field, wait until we get in touch with others who can provide it.” He took several long breaths, and decided that he was not going to explode this time. The specimen seemed well enough at home now in English to get his main point; at least, it did not ask him what code was represented by the closing sounds.