Classic Fiction

by Hal Clement

  If the alien’s broken leg-bone healed itself on the way, it would be even more impressive. It might be amusing, later, for Mapper to break an arm or a leg deliberately before witnesses, and watch their amazement as it healed. If it didn’t take too long, of course.

  The alien seemed nearly dead already; at least, it had shown no signs of awareness. The limp body might be awkward to carry, but there was a solution now for that.

  Briefly, Mapper thought of borrowing the odd knife which had sectioned the trees so easily, but decided familiar equipment was better. The chlorine-breather was strong enough to do the job with her own knives, and minutes later four two-meter lengths of wood lay beside the strange, still form.

  There was plenty of cord left in the creature’s possession and Mapper used it all. There was no objection, or sound which might conceivably have implied an objection, as she tied one end of a strand to one of the new splints and began winding it around the body and the poles. Perhaps the creature was nearly dead, which would simplify matters. The winding took a long time; the cord was in many separate pieces and one end had to be tied to another every minute or two. It was lucky the alien had demonstrated the art of knotting.

  By the time the job was finished, forty or fifty turns of parachute line encased body and splints. It should be easy enough to carry the package now with only two arms, leaving one and a fraction free for ladder and if necessary for knife work.

  Mapper rested for a while after completing the wrap-up. All her strength might be needed for the ladder maneuver, which would have to be done slowly and carefully.

  It was neither. Before the intended rest had lasted a hundred breaths squeals sounded from far up the rockfall, and for the first time Mapper realized what could have happened while she was gone. It was lucky any of the alien was here at all. As quickly as her strength permitted, she dragged the bundle toward the head of the ladder. They reached it, but before any maneuvering could be started, nearly two dozen oxygen-users were upon them.

  Again she thought of borrowing the alien knife, but this time it was unavailable under several turns of cord, and three of her own blades went into service. Fatigue and perhaps the approaching egg delivery kept them from moving as fast as usual, and several times one or another of the attackers came close enough to get a quick bite.

  Even in the excitement of battle, Mapper noticed that the ones which nipped out bits of the alien and retreated to swallow them almost at once went into convulsions. Cause and effect were easy enough to connect, but it still seemed best to kill the things in the usual fashion. Dead or alive, the body was needed for evidence, and not enough of it might be left if it were used for poison. Besides, the attackers weren’t being choosy; she had to defend herself. The knives continued to slash. This time the affair went on until the last of the things was dead; a few of them had gotten nips out of Mapper and this, not surprisingly to the native, drove them into a feeding frenzy.

  There were more squeals from above as the last of the group was slashed apart, and with no trace of caution she eased the bundle over the edge onto the ladder. She held the burden with two hands and used the other two, including the one on the broken arm, for climbing. The descent was not quite at free fall speed but was far from casual. Once down, the bundle was thrust urgently to one side and the ladder pulled away from the rock face. Moments later louder squeals could be heard and pointed, razor-toothed heads appeared at the verge. None of the creatures appeared willing to jump.

  Two did indeed go over the edge, probably being pushed by the crowd, but Mapper’s knives were ready and each attacker reached the ground in two pieces. The others promptly retreated, and the surveyor’s attention went back to her burden. This seemed not to be dead after all.

  The dark body fluid was oozing from the places where the oxygen-users had nipped, so circulation was still operating. Also, the eyes were open and sounds were coming from its mouth.

  Jerry had no notion of what had occurred in the hours since Creak had left. He was not suffering from infection, luckily—it was luck; no Paintbox organism could have managed his body chemistry, of course, but there was no reason to suppose his own clothing and equipment were sterile. He was nevertheless in bad shape. The broken leg had swollen since it had been splinted, and even with the padding its circulation was suffering. He had eaten a few crumbs—nearly all he had left—since Creak had vanished below, and drunk more than was really wise of the water he had left. He had tried to be firm with himself on that point, he had heard that thirst was about the worst way to go, and he had off and on been trying to decide when it would be best to remove his filter mask. The trouble was that breathing chlorine, while much quicker than dying of dehydration, was also extremely painful.

  He had been too deeply unconscious—it was not normal sleep—to be aware of the native’s bundling him up, and only slowly was he realizing now how helpless he was. He couldn’t touch his mask if he had wanted to. He couldn’t even get at his drinking tube, and there was some water left. There had to be.

  His arms and legs hurt in several places, though he had no way of knowing about the bites and couldn’t move his head freely enough to see what was wrong. He wondered briefly whether he had been delirious and the Paintboxer had tied him up for his own security. There was no way to ask, and Snow had never liked futile talk, so he didn’t try. He remained silent while the native gathered him up, settled him in two of its uninjured arms, and started to walk away from the ladder, in the direction in which it had disappeared nearly forty hours earlier.

  They were over three hundred meters lower when Jerry Snow uttered his last carefully considered words.

  “Creak is taking me down into Death Valley. I’m tied up with parachute cord and can’t do a thing about it. If he ever repeats these words to anyone who understands them, please tell him I don’t blame him, even if I don’t know why he’s doing it. At least I can be sure he doesn’t want me for food, and I don’t suppose I could blame him if he did. I like to believe he’s trying to rescue me, and doesn’t have any idea what will happen when we get down to nearly zero oxygen. I hope the filter pump merely cuts out and doesn’t blow up. That would be quicker than suffocating, 1 suppose, but not much, and there’s no need for him to get hurt too. And I never had much chance anyway. The flyer probably did blow up. Even if it only crashed, the stuff I was carrying to Port Crayon will have to be replaced. At least, suffocating will be better than thirst. Don’t blame Creak.

  “Don’t blame any Paintboxers. Even if some of them know about oxygen, there’s no reason they all should. My will is in the green pack—”

  It went on for many minutes, less and less coherently, and ended with; “Hurry up. Creak. I’m getting thirsty.”

  “Pilot Swift was generous,” the Station Director remarked. “Mapper of course did not know enough details about oxygen breathers and is not to blame, but those of us responsible for communication and record updating do have some responsibility.”

  “I can’t see that,” answered the human pilot. “There was only the tiniest chance of Mapper’s ever meeting one of us in her existence, and you have better things to teach your people.”

  “Curious facts are always worth knowing, and the fact that for your kind death is not reversible is certainly curious. I don’t know how I can explain this to Mapper; she already has a problem.

  “What’s that?”

  “She discovered that Swift could repair damage to his own body, and wants me to include this quality in her present rebuilding. She’s quite indignant that this has never been done before, since it’s so obviously desirable quality. I’m not sure I can convince her—”

  “Maybe I can help. I’m not too much of a biologist, and we were long enough recognizing your biological nature, goodness knows, but it’s clear enough now. By our standards you’re nanotech machines—pseudolife, not real life. You didn’t evolve naturally; you were planned. That was very, very hard for us to believe, at least partly because there are still membe
rs of our own species who believe the same thing about us.

  “I have had the process of evolution explained to me. It makes sense, and answers one very old question.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The origin of the Creators. Obviously they couldn’t have made themselves, and assuming that other creators made them simply pushes the problem back a step without solving it.”

  “Like the old panspermia theory.”

  “Possibly. I haven’t heard of that. In any case, if there is a natural explanation for the origin of at least some life, it’s worth knowing—but how does this help my problem with Mapper?”

  “It should help her see why you can’t give her the healing option. The ability had to be part of natural life all along, almost from the first autocatalytic and self-duplicating molecules. No life form could last long enough to reproduce without it except by the wildest luck, so it’s there all through any planet’s life history. It involves carrying the complete plans for the organism in every cell.

  “Our bodies carry such plans already. We use them when we grow eggs.”

  “Of course, but are they in every body cell? I’d bet you your have them only in reproductive organs.”

  “Of course. Where else would they be useful?”

  “In healing. That’s what I’m trying to explain. Do you know, by the way, why your creators made you?”

  “Of course. There are very explicit records, but all that’s quite separate from the instructions telling how to produce new people without using eggs and how to repair damaged ones. No doubt we’ll need to study your own design before we can incorporate this self-repair process. I can see that the detail information must be enormous.”

  “We’ll be glad to help, if you really want. I’d bet, though, that if you did it’d have to be at the expense of a lot of things like your perfect recording ability and, most especially, your reversible death. In a way, you’re relatively simple machines, which can be shut off, repaired, and restarted. We aren’t. Life isn’t. It doesn’t normally stop all at once. Some chemical processes keep running longer than others, so many side reactions occur, ones which don’t take place while we’re alive because the wanted ones come first. Very quickly a point is reached where there’s no reversing and getting back on course. We’re really dead.

  “I’d guarantee that if you do manage to work out and incorporate the self-repair option, your own deaths will also become irreversible. So don’t let Mapper worry or feel guilty or envious. Swift had no real chance anyway, and his suffocation involved far less pain than being eaten bit by bit or dying of thirst would have. I guarantee he’d have preferred it the way it happened. Tell Mapper that. It should stop her from feeling guilty as well as discourage her ambition for a self-repair rebuild.”

  The Director pondered for several seconds.

  “That seems reasonable. I’ll tell her all this, if you’ll explain one more thing to me.”

  “Gladly.”

  “You used a word, ‘pain’, a moment ago. What does that mean? Do you think she might want it, too?”

  1999

  EXCHANGE RATE

  “Erni! Nic! Hold it! Senatsu’s found a break!”

  The speaker was excited, but neither driver bothered to look up. A “break” on Halfbaked meant little to human eyes; it was a spot where radar frequencies, not human vision, could get through the streaming and usually ionized clouds which kept starlight from the surface. Neither cared to look at stars. They were very worried men at the moment and didn’t even look at each other. However, Ben Cloud kept talking, and his next words did manage to get their attention.

  “It’s near Hotlat plus eight and Rotlat plus eighty, close to the track they should be taking back here.”

  The operators of the Quarterback did glance at each other this time. Facial expressions didn’t show through breathing masks. They didn’t need to. For a moment both were silent; then the younger spoke aloud.

  “Has she really spotted anything definite?”

  “She thinks so. She’s checking all the usable spectra now. Stand by; she should be through in a few seconds.”

  Quarterback’s drivers looked wordlessly at each other once more, and Dominic hit the quick-cutout that brought the runabout to a halt. Operating any sort of surface vehicle on Halfbaked demanded full attention.

  “Well?” said Erni. After all, a few seconds had passed.

  “Stand by. She’s still at it.” A longer pause followed, until even the more patient Nic was tempted to break it, but Ben resumed before either listener actually gave in.

  “She says yes! It’s Jellyseal pattern.”

  “Anything from the girls?”

  “No, but Jelly’s moving apparently under control and at a reasonable speed.”

  “What’s that? Or can Sen tell?” cut in the elder driver.

  “The tanker’s doing about a hundred and eighty kilos an hour. Must be open country.”

  “How’s she measuring that?”

  “Tell you soon. Sen’s taking all the advantage she can of the break, but it’ll take a while to cross-check with memory. They’ll probably have to move a bit farther, too.”

  “If the speed is real, they’ve probably unloaded.”

  “Probably. Maria reported they’d reached what seemed to be the broadcast site and found something city-ish, though she never really described it. That was nearly twenty hours ago as you both know. That was about five hundred kilos outward of where they seem to be now. They could have emptied, loaded up again, and easily be at Sen’s current fix. You can stop worrying.”

  “And the natives did acknowledge receipt of the shipment, and even said how delighted they were, didn’t they?” asked Dominic. “But no more word was coming from Maria and Jessi. That’s the picture we had from Tricia before we started.

  “She was firm about the acknowledgment, yes. Still is. You know how she waffles when a message seems to involve abstractions, though. They were very repetitious, she says, talking about how they understood why we couldn’t send pure hydrogen and commenting again and again on the wide variety of compounds there were anyway—”

  “I got all that. Paraffin, whether you’re speaking European or North American Anglic, does have a lot of different hydrogen compounds in it. I’m admitting we know the girls got there, but still wondering why we haven’t heard from them since. We’ll stop worrying—maybe—when they say something.” Erni’s tone suggested strongly that he wanted no advice as he went on, “You say they’re backtracking? Using the same route?”

  “Senatsu hasn’t had a long enough look-see to tell. They’re just about on the path they took earlier, I gather, but remember we didn’t see them get to it. We did map more than half of it outbound, but I’d say—”

  “We know all that!” snapped Erni. “What I want to know is whether Nic and I should keep on and try to meet them.”

  “I’d say no. It made sense to head for the transmission source when they seemed to be stuck there, but now we know they’re moving and presumably heading back here, it seems smarter to wait for them here at Nest.”

  “But suppose they still don’t report? How long do we wait? And what could keep them from talking to us, anyway?”

  “The same sorts of things that keep us from seeing them as often as we’d like. We’re talking to you all right now, but you’re only a few hundred k’s away using multiple channel cross-link. They’re nearly fifty thousand. We can see even you only occasionally—less often than we can see them, since there are more clouds here on the dark side. You know all that as well as anyone. Halfbaked wasn’t built for long-range talking. It has too many kinds of clouds, too many kinds and strengths of charge dancing around in them, too many winds high and low and up and down and sideways and circular, too much pure distance—”

  “And natives who use AM communication but still make some sense. I know all that!” snapped Icewall.

  “Then please talk as though you did.” Ben was getting a little short, t
oo. “Look, I know you’re worried, and I know why, even if I don’t have a shared name yet. It’s too bad the girls won the draw for the first load, but even you didn’t try to change it so Nic could go with Maria or you with Jessi. They went. They really weren’t in any more danger pushing a tanker around the landscape than at Nest, except for being farther from help if they needed it, of course. It isn’t as though this idiotic world had any nice stable places where you could put up a building and go to sleep with reasonable hope the ground wouldn’t pull apart under it before you woke up. I know your wives haven’t talked to us since they reported spotting their city, or village, or whatever it turned out to be. That’s a fact. I don’t dispute it, and I can’t account for it except with guesses I can’t support. So go ahead and worry. I can’t stop you, and I wouldn’t if I could. They’re your wives. I still think, though, that you’ll be smarter waiting for them here than going thirty or forty thousand kilos, a lot of it in sunlight, and trying to find them while they’re still moving and we can’t keep good contact, visual or verbal, with either of you.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Erni admitted in a much meeker tone. “Nic? You think we’d better go back, too?”

  Dominic Wildbear Yucca—Maria might no longer be alive but he was still entitled to their jointly chosen name because of their children—nodded silently, and without further words looked carefully around through the windows ringing the cockpit. One looked before moving anywhere on Halfbaked. Neither window nor roof port was made of glass; there were too many fluorine compounds in Halfbaked’s atmosphere for silicate materials to be trusted. Silicon tetrafluoride is a gas even at most Terrestrial temperatures. Satisfied that no serious landscape change had sneaked by his notice during the talk, he repowered the driving system—stopping was nearly always safer than starting, and the control system reflected that fact—and sent the runabout into a fairly tight turn. The path was wide enough to need little steering care at the moment, though bushes, rocks which had rolled from the modest hills, cracks in the surface, and patches of vegetation which might or might not be on fire could be encountered any time.