Fossil (1993)

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Fossil (1993) Page 8

by Hal Clement


  “I can set it to drive itself, and do the flying as well, Jan,” was the slightly indignant response. “But we’ll have to get a transmitter. Is there one here in the warehouse we can use without disturbing Spreadsheet-Thinker?”

  “There are several here,” said the Locrian supply chief, “but it seems unwise to…”

  “I’ll clear it with Administration. This is certainly a safety matter,” Hugh cut in. “Let Rekchellet have it, please. He’ll need it to get his information from Pwanpwan anyway.” The Locrian gestured silently to two of her Erthumoi assistants, who promptly disappeared into the building. Hugh turned his attention to Rekchellet.

  “Of course you can go, as far as time is concerned, and I certainly won’t stop you if you think it’s best. But should you go alone? In your best judgment? As a safety specialist?”

  After a moment of silence Rekchellet shrugged again. “No. Of course not. Who else can come without upsetting routine?”

  Realizing that she’d better speak quickly or not at all, in view of Rekchellet’s tendency to get any given task under way as quickly as possible, Janice keyed in a matter which had taken her interest from the first. She didn’t know where the frozen body had come from or who might consider it personal property, but it was the largest and most complete object Habranha had provided so far bearing any resemblance to a fossil.

  “Hadn’t we better unload the body?” she asked.

  “Why?” asked Rekchellet. Before the woman could key an answer, he provided one himself. “Oh. I see. A very good idea. If we find the missing people and they don’t want to answer questions, the fact that we possess their specimen may make them cooperative.”

  “We’d better find out whether it’s a specimen,” Hugh pointed out. “Ted, is it likely that this could simply be an accident victim, or someone who’s missing from a Habra project?”

  “I see no way to tell. I agree with Janice that we should unload it before sending the truck off. Later I or one of us can examine its ornaments more closely and try to identify it.”

  Minutes later the truck was trundling eastward toward the ocean on automatic control. Its cockpit windows had been cleared by heaters, and Third-Supply-Watcher was looking out through them. Rekchellet and two Habras were swooping back and forth above the vehicle. The rest of the supply personnel had returned to their building, while Hugh, Janice, and S’Nash were walking and crawling, this time with no haste, toward the residence area.

  Hugh still felt a little tense, and wondered what word might come from the other end of the road to the ocean. He relaxed only a little when the Locrian’s first promised report from the truck reached the safety office on schedule.

  “We are still following the road. The truck’s air sweepers are operating much of the time, but the snow has not been very heavy. The fliers are remaining in sight most of the time, as agreed.

  Establishment of a routine calmed Hugh enough to let Janice get him away from the office. The Erthumoi left their snakelike satellite for a brief visit to their own quarters, and for a few minutes seriously discussed whether they should get rid of the pressure fluid to free themselves for more varied activity. Both of them felt that this might prove necessary, but both knew that the feeling might be subjective, fed by the general discomfort and inconvenience which went with diving juice and by the curiosity generated by the unoccupied truck. Both taking on and getting rid of the fluid were operations needing hours and calling for much discomfort and reorganization of body mechanics; neither step was ever done lightly, to be reversed again shortly. If they “de-pressed,” either an untrained Erthuma pair would have to take on the duty or part of the Pit work would have to be, by Hugh’s standards, inadequately covered. He could accept neither.

  There was. Of course, another solution, but none of the other races would accept it. Not yet. Neither husband nor wife felt that the time for that sales pitch had come. Even S’Nash’s robot interest hadn’t reached that level.

  They were still debating when the second report came in from the truck.

  And the third. Rekchellet spoke this time.

  The information from Pwanpwan had arrived. The truck had left the Port ten standard days before, but was not involved with the Project. The Guild knew only that the vehicle had been taken for unspecified Darkside research by a Samian whose identity could be supplied if necessary and that it had been boarded by a Samian, presumably the same one, by two Erthumoi, and a Crotonite just before its departure. There had been some surprise at the presence of the flier, but like the others he or she had been wearing environmental armor and there had been no way to satisfy casual curiosity about identities.

  Hugh was intrigued by the confirmation of their earlier ideas, and its addendum.

  “A Samian, too? That’s interesting. It couldn’t have traveled far from the truck without special gear, so…” he fell silent for a moment. “You’re still following the road, I take it?”

  “Well, not exactly. I was about to tell you.”

  “You’re off it? Which way? How far?”

  “Well, not very far. The autodriver pulled us off to the left, which is north, about fifteen minutes ago. It went about two hundred meters, started up a hillside, and the engine stopped. I can’t seem to get it going. Third-Supply-Watcher can’t see anything wrong with it, but of course she doesn’t know very much about these machines.”

  “Do you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Can you tell whether it’s power or control?”

  Rekchellet hesitated for a moment.

  “Well, sort of. If I turn off the automatic driver, I can start the engine and move the truck around, but the moment I engage the auto the drive simply cuts out.”

  “You’re sure you’re not at the end of the recorded path in the automatic?”

  “Nowhere near it. The record readout shows it’s been far into the dark hemisphere, to a point about a hundred and fifty kilometers north of the Cold Pole. It’s clear and unambiguous, and I don’t see why the driver can’t make the truck follow it.”

  The Erthuma looked at each other but found no inspiration. There was no more reason to expect Rekchellet to be familiar with Crotonite guidance devices than for Hugh to have expertise in Erthuma-made vision transmitters. The identity of the manufacturing species was irrelevant.

  Their minds ran on parallel tracks that far. Then Janice began to smile.

  Chapter Five

  Here Hills Maintain Their Stance No More Than Waves

  Hugh could see his wife had thought of something, probably something which would annoy or embarrass the Crotonite. He was a little surprised when she leaned over to bring her code sounder near the microphone of the neutrino transmitter, since she usually got no pleasure out of irritating people; then he relaxed when her fingers fell away from the keys. She turned toward him, the smile replaced by a thoughtful frown.

  “Hugh, I can’t tell him. It’s too silly. Didn’t he, or someone, say that the autodriver was Crotonite equipment? I’m sure I remember that.”

  “Right. They didn’t say what world, though. Rek hasn’t mentioned any trouble with using it, but that doesn’t prove it’s labeled in his own language. It could be a model standard on any number of their planets. Why?”

  “Why would a Crotonite ever design or build an automatic controller for a ground vehicle, let alone make so many that it’s a stock item in galaxy-wide use?”

  “Why should this one have been made for a ground— Oh!!” A slow smile, similar to his wife’s moments earlier, spread over his face; then, like hers, was replaced by a more serious expression, and Hugh looked consideringly at the microphone. After a moment he keyed a message.

  “Rek, I take it the instructions on that driver don’t help.”

  “I don’t know the language they’re in, much less the abbreviations. And don’t bother to ask about instruction manuals. I don’t see one around, and if there’s anything certain it’s that it wouldn’t be in any language I know.”
>
  “But you said it had produced a record — a readout — of the route the truck had followed.”

  “That’s in numbers, on a map which is simply a vector diagram. No terrain, just coordinates.”

  “You can read the numbers.”

  “Sure.”

  “Then that language can’t be too far from your own. Still, I suppose reading tech in it might be a bit — well, never mind. Could you follow that course and drive the truck manually?”

  “I suppose so. So could Third-Supply-Watcher here, I expect, with about a five-minute lesson in reading the numbers. It would be a nuisance. We’d have to identify vertical coordinate information and ignore it and — oh!” The next few seconds gave only no-symbol-equivalent signals from the translators. Husband and wife smiled at each other. At least, they hadn’t had to mortify their friend by explaining the trouble themselves, though this didn’t mean that he wasn’t mortified.

  “I suppose,” Hugh cut in finally, “there’s sonic way of making the autodriver ignore elevation instructions.”

  “Why should there be?” Rekchellet’s voice didn’t actually snarl recognizably, but both Erthumoi were quite sure of the feeling. Janice tried to be soothing, though this was difficult through the translator and doubly so in code.

  “Wouldn’t anyone ever want to get back over or to a particular place, without necessarily following the specific dips and swoops of an earlier trip?” she asked.

  “I suppose so,” came the grudging answer, “but if there’s any way of telling this mess of defective diamonds to do anything of the sort, I can’t read it off its key symbols.”

  “Then we’ll have to follow the readout manually. Will that slow things down too much?” queried Hugh. “Are you listening, Third-Supply-Watcher? Do you think it will take long for you to interpret the driver’s record?”

  “I am listening. It should not be difficult to learn the number symbols; the ease of actually following the chart will depend on the nature of the path. It will probably be easiest for Rekchellet to interpret the whole chart to me now, so that I can work from memory instead of stopping to read whenever the direction changes.”

  “You can remember the whole thing?”

  “Of course, once I understand it.”

  “Then you and Rek please take care of that. If you can tell about where you’re going during any given hour, please let us know. Rek said something earlier about a place near the Cold Pole. I’m not expecting to lose track of you and the truck, but if only the expected happened I’d be helping Janice full-time at specimen dating, or be out where you are, studying dune motion.”

  “Of course. We’ll keep sending the information in whatever form seems clearest once I understand it myself,” the Locrian promised.

  Hugh nodded, meaninglessly as far as the truck crew were concerned. There should be no problem expressing locations on Habranha; the world was only a little over three thousand kilometers in radius, but quite large enough for its own gravity to keep it decently spherical. It was tidally locked to Grendel, as Falgite-speaking Erthumoi called its red dwarf sun, in an almost perfectly circular orbit with its rotation axis at right angles to the orbit plane. Tidal forces had done all they could over perhaps twice the age of the Solarian system, and those of Fafnir were negligible. Hence there were no complications from libration, and longitude as well as latitude could be defined objectively without an arbitrary prime meridian. This was fortunate, since all the “land” on the sunward hemisphere was floating ice and the stability of the Solid Ocean glaciers was open to doubt.

  Hugh again fought down the urge to get rid of the diving fluid and take an aircraft out to the truck himself. He knew he wasn’t needed. Rekchellet was much better qualified physically to do search work over the Fafnir-lit snow hills than any Erthuma. Hugh didn’t know Third-Supply-Watcher or all the Habras who were along, but he had no reason to doubt their abilities either. He and his wife had a natural desire to find out what had led up to the truck’s arrival at Pitville and the source of its grim cargo, but so, presumably, did the others. They had as much right to satisfy the emotion as the Erthumoi, and could be trusted to pass any information along when it became available.

  And there was a bright side to staying. They were also curious about the frozen corpse still lying outside the warehouse, and any answers to that problem were likely to be found right here at Pitville when dating and other analyses could be made.

  Maybe.

  The real trouble with the safety job, Hugh frequently told himself — he didn’t waste code effort repeating the point to Janice — was that it was interesting only in spurts. The rest of the time he had to spend trying to think up things that might go wrong and arrangements he might reasonably make to forestall them. That, at least, was what the job description implied.

  There were actually other things to think about. Rekchellet’s half-joking remark that S’Nash was distracting its/his fellow Naxians by suggesting that the Erthumoi were plotting to popularize the use of artificial intelligence had not been funny. It was very close to the Cedars’ actual basic responsibility on Habranha, a fact it would be better for the Guild, or at least its local personnel, not to know. It would be naive to suppose that S’Nash, at least, hadn’t figured il out by now; the words to Rekchellet could easily have been meant to tell the Erthumoi this. The Naxian, Hugh was sure, was quite subtle enough. Even if they hadn’t, S’Nash must have sensed his and Janice’s emotional response to the Crotonite’s words, and there could be very few reasonable explanations for those feelings. No mind reading would be needed.

  Of course, S’Nash it/himself seemed a bit— liberal? — by Naxian criteria; one could hope for tolerance of such activity.

  Also, it/he had been using Rekchellet and the Erthumoi for personal convenience, and had given the former permission to return the attention. This might not have been meant literally, but taking it so could hardly be resented by a reasonable being.

  Hardly.

  Wishful thinking, Hugh. Let Jan get in on it, boy; she’s better with non-Erthumoi than you are.

  “We’re starting.” It was the Locrian’s voice. “We cannot use full speed, since my attention will be divided between chart and surface now that we are off the road, and the surface itself is far from level. In a way, that will help since it will give the fliers more time to examine the region to either side, but I am more doubtful now about their chances of seeing anything. The hills seem to move fast enough to keep this machine from retracing its way in all three dimensions even after what I assume must have been a fairly short time, so it seems likely that traces left by anyone who went outside, or which were left by the truck itself when it stopped, will be covered.”

  “That would depend on chance,” keyed Hugh. “Some stuff might be left clear for hours or days, depending on which way the dune was traveling. Keep your eye ready for tracks; the truck is heavy enough to have welded snow or melted its way into ice if it stopped for more than a few moments, or perhaps even if it didn’t. A long stop should leave an ice sheet where the engine melted the ground under it. Is there any spot on the map which looks special? Something they headed toward for a long time, or away from for a long time?”

  “Yes. After many short legs starting at the Port, it indicates a great circle path of forty-two hundred eighty-three kilometers to a point two hundred ninety-one kilometers north of the Cold Pole, and from there a similar one of even greater length, four thousand four hundred ten kilometers, followed by a dozen more short legs ending at the point where we left the road.”

  “And, I assume, a final leg along the road itself to here.”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, I suppose the long sections are as likely to be meant to deceive as the short ones. Better not shortcut.”

  “That was Rekchellet’s opinion and mine.”

  “Good. Remember, the best indication of a slop will probably be a patch of melted and refrozen surface.”

  “That may well be. I will wa
tch.”

  “You especially,” added Janice. “Even a thin cover of blown snow would hide that from the fliers.”

  “True. I will watch carefully. That was why I expected to have to divide attention so much.” “It’s worth any lost time, I’d say,” keyed Hugh. “I agree.”

  The Erthumoi leaned back from the microphone. There was little they could do until more information came in from somewhere. Hugh almost hoped for another emergency signal, which would at least have made him feel useful. His wife could always fall back on lab work, of course. That thought gave birth to an idea.

  “Say, Jan,” he signaled, “Do we really need anyone’s permission to go to work on the Habra body? You only want tiny samples, and if it’s anything like as old as that wing, no one would mind anyway.”

  “But if it’s a modern casualty, someone might. We don’t have any idea how old it might be. It’s like a fossil bought from a wandering dealer — no provenance. We can’t even guess how old it might be because we don’t know how long this species has been around on Habranha in its present form — that’s the main reason for this whole project, after all. What we could see in the ice looked modern, and Counter-of-Supplies didn’t mention any differences…”

  “But she did say she wasn’t very familiar with Habra insides. We can’t weigh that very much. Come on. You could use a regular microcorer on the ice slab, and get a bit of body plate or even some inner tissue, and no one’d be bothered. They wouldn’t even have to know. You wouldn’t have to check out special equipment from anywhere; you have everything you’d need in your own lab right now.”

  Janice frowned thoughtfully.

  “Did all the Habras who saw the body go with Rek?” she asked after a time.

  “No. Only two.”

  “Can you get in touch with any others and ask if the body ornaments on it showed through the ice well enough to help with identification?”

  “I guess so. I don’t know who else was there, offhand, but Counter should be able to tell us. She knows — no, maybe not. The Erthumoi and Locrians were supply people, but the Habras came from outside about when we did. I think Switch went with Rek; Ted was there, too, but would have stayed around. Still, I’ll ask her.” Hugh turned back to the microphone. He wasn’t seriously bothered by his wife’s scruples; he shared them, actually. It was merely that his curiosity was overpowering them.

 

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