by Hal Clement
Remembering the question Rekchellet had attributed to Ennissee, Hugh sounded Bill out on his attitude about Habranha evolution. No strong feeling was aroused. Bill shared an apparently general belief that the process did occur, but that, for chemical rather than mystical reasons, his own people could not be part of it. Hugh wondered if he had found another reason why some Habras were working for Ennissee.
He spent over an hour reminiscing with Bill before the native had to go his own way. Hugh headed back toward the Guild building with another minor problem of diplomacy on his hands.
Spreadsheet-Thinker and his group were very concerned with getting good, reliable, scientific answers from their own Pit Project so they could regard their administrative efforts as professional and successful.
It also seemed likely that getting answers before anyone else might carry weight with them. Barrar wanted information about the Habra project, and had mentioned interest in others. That seemed a most probable reason.
But now the natives were going to dig with the aid of artificial intelligence, in a place where fossils ought, one would expect, to be plentiful.
Locrian Spreadsheet-Thinker, Samian Ged Barrar. and the rest of their non-Erthumoi colleagues were about to collide with the fact that they were in direct competition with the nasty, immoral, improper, and generally unacceptable innovation of those irresponsible, juvenile newcomers to interstellar travel. They would be challenging Erthumoi-developed artificial intelligence. Ignoring the fact would leave them completely out of control of affairs on Habranha, because the natives would simply deal with people who could get things done.
Hugh gloated. Maybe his job was being done lor him.
Chapter Eleven
But New Light On A Scene May Show It True
Barrar received Hugh’s additional information with surprising calm, Hugh felt, and the aircraft reached Pwanpwan with equally startling speed. It was a smaller machine, and Reekess had some trouble accommodating her wings, but they were back at Pitville before this became a major discomfort.
It took some time for personal clocks to adjust, short as Hugh’s absence had been. Work on Habranha was continuous, since the “day” was a spatial rather than a temporal division. People rested, or slept if their species did this, simply according to the need of the moment, whether timed by simple fatigue or evolution-rated biological clocks.
Hugh had even gotten out of phase with Janice. Assigned duty watches in Pitville were based, of course, primarily on the need to keep a position filled; but the biological nature of the beings on duty also had to weigh heavily. This sort of scheduling formed a large part of Spreadsheet Thinker’s own job description; requests for change, such as Hugh so frequently made without consultation, ranked extremely high on her list of major nuisances. Barrar had wondered several times whether he should try to make this a little clearer to the Erthuma, but was so far still favoring natural selection.
Even with nobody actually criticizing his work, however, a safety director’s job remains full. When nothing bad is happening, there is time spent wondering when it will; when something does, one wonders why; when the reason is obvious, there is usually no one else to blame. Hugh had accepted this long ago and now simply tried not to take his irritations out on anyone else, especially not on Janice.
He was not sure how to react to S’Nash’s presence. This was frequent enough to make him wonder in his balanced moments whether the Naxian wanted Hugh’s job, and in his more paranoid ones to suspect it/him of being part of the Administration net. Knowing that the being could sense his feelings made it superfluous and even silly to relieve them with bad language or similar unrestrained behavior; on the other hand, the knowledge itself was, oddly, a sort of relief.
Hugh Cedar was a good, competent, thoughtful explorer. He was not yet a good administrator.
His wife was a good, competent, thoughtful explorer. She was also an extremely good physical chemist, at both theory and laboratory levels. Currently, therefore, she was much better off and happier than he. She knew it. She didn’t actually worry, but looked forward eagerly to the Lime when Rekchellet would be back in the air and the real, physical, possibly dangerous adventure over the Solid Ocean could start and let her husband relax. In the meantime, she tried to keep Hugh’s mind on other things, an effort sharply constrained by diving fluid and such of its effects as the need to use code rather than speech and the impossibility of enjoying such simple biological pleasures as eating.
They discussed the age of the frozen Habra in private; they had decided not to reveal it even to S’Nash, to make sure that Rekchellet’s expressed wishes weren’t accidentally frustrated. The body was, in fact, much more recent than the wing which had been found earlier, little over twenty-two thousand Common Years — well within the carbon reliability range on this world. They wondered where and how it had actually been found. The only source either one could guess was the putative Ennissee dig, and thinking of that made Hugh impatient again. All Janice could do was point out the obvious fact that the body could have come from anywhere on Habranha where ice existed, and that this was not even restricted to the dark hemisphere. The reminder didn’t really help. A confrontation with Ennissee, with a Naxian on hand to indicate whether the Crotonite were telling the truth, was very high on Hugh’s want list.
Whenever he was less self-centered, of course, the list had Rekchellet’s recovery even higher. Frequent calls to the Naxian station brought only the ages-old and galaxy-wide medical response — progress was normal. Since the biologists had admittedly never before tried the current techniques on a Crotonite, Hugh was tempted to ask just what the word could mean in this case.
He restrained himself, however, with Janice’s help, and tried to concentrate on his work. Occasionally a minor accident somewhere in Pitville would help, or at least relieve boredom. So did the training of Erthumoi workers in the use of diving fluid and Pit equipment, against the approaching time when Naxians would be unable to support the pressure at the bottom. Work on designing a Habra suit able to protect the natives from liquid air temperatures was making some headway, Ted reported. Erthumoi and Naxians had been helpful with information about the insulations they used. The Habra could not say what the difficulty was; he wasn’t involved with the matter himself, and had merely been asked by his Erthuma chief whether he knew anything about the program. Hugh, at the time of the question, had been particularly annoyed by the carelessness of some trainees of his own species, and was made no happier by Ted’s answer.
Twice he was able to talk to Rekchellet himself.
The second time the Crotonite reported that his hands and legs were done, but his wings were still immersed and restrained in growth tanks. He seemed disinclined to accept the Erthuma’s congratulations; wings appeared to be all that really mattered. Neither Hugh nor Janice, who happened to be in the safety office at the time, was greatly surprised, but did their best to point out the good side. The woman asked whether the Naxians were supplying proper Crotonite food, and found that this was precisely the wrong question.
“They haven’t fed me a shred!” Rekchellet snarled. “By the time my wings have grown back, my stomach will have shriveled. They insist they have to keep track of every molecule that gets into me. It’s all synthesized from chemically purified minerals, they brag, and is pumped straight into the tank — just enough into my arteries to keep my brain from shriveling, too! Not a drop or a sip in my mouth!”
“Do your people have organic feeding enthusiasts?” asked Janice. The other failed to get her meaning, and the discussion at least distracted him from his troubles for a few minutes. Unfortunately, her description of the people she was trying to explain carried a suggestion of extremism, and this reminded Rekchellet of Ennissee. The patient soared into another rage and was still in it when duty forced Hugh to drop out of the conversation. Hoping his wife could smooth matters over, he left his office to inspect the Pit area. He made it a point to get all the way to the bottom and be very detai
led.
“I got him thinking about Ennissee waiting for us to set out for the Cold Pole and wondering whether we really would, as Reekess did before. It seemed to work,” Janice said hours later when both were back in their quarters. “Rek was almost gloating. I still hope you — we — don’t walk into more trouble. I’d hate to have us in a couple of those Naxian tanks growing new extremities.”
“I doubt that’s what Ennissee’d want for us,” answered her husband. “We were born crawlers, beneath his dignity to hate from the beginning. Rek is a renegade by his standards, worth real emotion. That’s hypothesis, of course; I’m not at all sure. He may not even feel strongly about Rek, may just have wanted a Crotonite subject to go through the routine before he faced it himself. Don’t worry about our trip — I mean, worry as sensibly as you can; we’ll be careful.”
Fafnir had just risen again in the northeast as seen from Pitville when a Naxian called to say that someone could come to collect Rekchellet. He had already been brought down to Pwanpwan, and was waiting at the Guild center, or possibly flying about the city; the speaker could not be sure. It was Barrar, not Hugh, who received the call. The Erthuma knew nothing of the matter until minutes later, when Rekchellet settled beside him outside his office. The Crotonite was in very high spirits.
“Strong as ever,” he whistled, spreading his broad wings to full span — fortunately there was little wind at the moment. “You’d better take a good look, so you’ll know me still. The wing-face isn’t exactly the same. They said there was nothing they could do about that; the basic nature of the pattern is genetic, but the details are random.” Hugh obeyed. He had become as accustomed during the last Common Year to recognizing Crotonites by their wings and Naxians by their body swirls and ripples as his own species by their faces, and felt after a few seconds that he would still know Rekchellet among any number of his fellows. He was about to ask whether Ennissee might also recognize his former victim when Rekchellet forestalled him.
“Are we ready for the trip? Who’s going? I want that (no-symbol-equivalent) to have a chance to recognize me again, too.”
“Almost. We decided four other Crotonites, you, and four Habras, all of you flying yourselves, at least until a lot of the food’s used up, with the big craft carrying the food. The trip will take longer than if you all could ride, but we won’t be so restricted when we get there. Does that make sense to you? Can you fly that far on your new wings?”
“Of course. It’s the same old muscles, just new webs, and the muscles certainly need the exercise. I want to fly anyway. It’s been much too long. What’s not ready?”
“I don’t have the ship, of course. I didn’t even dare ask for it until I knew when you’d be here and we could go. Also, I think I’m learning something. I’m not going to ask for it.”
“Who is? I don’t carry any weight. There isn’t a flying person anywhere in Administration. I can guess why.”
“There are no Cephallonians, either, and only one Erthuma, for that matter. I’m it. I don’t try to guess why. It took me a long, long time to get an aircraft the other time, and I think I can shorten it now. Never mind why.”
“How?” asked Rekchellet.
“I’ll have S’Nash ask.”
“That doesn’t make sense. It/he isn’t an administrator, or even a section chief.”
“Not officially. Just a communication engineer and documentarian on Spreadsheet-Thinker’s table. But it/he gives me a strong impression of having weight to throw around, for reasons I can’t yet guess, and I’m going to encourage another throw. Wait and see. I’m a little surprised it/he’s not here already, but I’ll call around.”
S’Nash appeared at the safety office before Hugh had made his second call, and did not ask why the Erthuma was routing an official request through it/him.
This was no surprise to the Erthuma. Rather than use Hugh’s communicator, the serpentine being departed after accepting the commission, leaving Hugh and Rekchellet staring significantly at each other.
Thirty minutes later, long enough to make both wonder whether their suspicions were correct and to make Hugh suspect that the delay was for just that purpose, Barrar called the safety office and told him without elaboration that the large flier was at his disposal, parked at the warehouse. The two got there as promptly as they could, Rekchellet in thirty seconds completely relaxed, Hugh in three hundred panting heavily.
Counter-of-Supplies was again ready to load cartons of Crotonite and Habra foodstuffs into the vehicle. She neither said nor did anything about Naxian supplies, and Hugh was not in the least startled when S’Nash appeared once again in full-recycling armor. The word had already gone out to those who were to make the trip, and winged forms were settling beside the warehouse every minute or two as muscular Erthumoi trundled the containers from building to aircraft. Loading and personnel count were complete at about the same time. Hugh thanked the Locrian, who acknowledged the courtesy and withdrew.
S’Nash was already aboard, and the Erthuma lifted off with caution dictated by the presence of many living fliers and possibly other aircraft in the area.
He flew slowly to the living quarters, left the ship and awakened Janice — they were out of phase again and he had not wanted to disturb her sooner than absolutely necessary — and waited while she, too, donned recycling gear.
Moments later the craft was rising slowly straight up, surrounded by its winged satellites, and at half a kilometer’s height he pointed the nose west and set the autopilot for a comfortable fifty kilometers per hour, which he knew both Habras and Crotonites could maintain for hundreds of kilometers. Janice had already gone back to sleep; there were scores of hours of travel ahead of them.
They passed only a short distance from where the truck had been abandoned; the Habras, for whom it was well within sensory range, reported that it was still there. This was not very surprising, but neither would its absence have been; there was no way to read Ennissee’s mind. The vehicle was dark, and no one tried to find whether anyone was aboard. Hugh flirted briefly with a mild regret that they had not brought a Locrian, but didn’t ask anyone to open the vehicle. They flew on.
From time to time one or another of the fliers would come aboard to eat and rest; there was not room for all, or even many, of them at once with the present stock of food. Plans were discussed, but had to be vague; there could only be guesses at what lay at the end of the flight. Conceivably there would be nothing; the hypothesis that Ennissee wanted them there might be wrong or irrelevant. He might not have cared whether they knew about the site, and even the location might be a deception.
They could plan on the latter assumption, and did. A wide search pattern based on the sensory powers of the Habras and the eyesight of the Crotonites was tentatively worked out. No one looked forward to implementing it, however. A search in the dark and chill for something probably not there would be purest anticlimax.
They hoped Ennissee, and the two Erthumoi for whom there was some evidence, and the Samian who had been reported as boarding the truck at the port, would all be there and all be able, willing or not, to explain the apparently senseless activities of the truck itself and at least one of its erstwhile occupants. Rekchellet, quite frankly, hoped that Ennissee would not be willing to cooperate; Rekchellet wanted an excuse. An on-the-spot excuse, since he had obviously suffered no permanent damage, and civilized people were above resenting mere temporary inconvenience.
Ennissee, one could hope, would be neither sneering nor uncooperative — except just at first. Rekchellet flew westward with that “at first” in his mind. Reekess, a few meters away, said little, but knew his thoughts and shared them.
Fafnir ceased rising behind them and to their right, and began to sink again very slowly; even the flight speed of living beings was greater than that of Habranha’s equatorial rotation. The shadows below grew long again.
The hills still resembled dunes. No one could be sure whether they moved, since no one elevation was in sight
long enough, but the winds were generally less violent at the height where they were flying. Twice there were sharp, steep escarpments angling across their path; Habranha was far too small for plate shifting, but there must be slow currents in the deep ice, accompanied presumably from time to time by phase changes and glacier quakes far below, even this far from the sunward side. Chaos still ruled this world, however snaillike the pace of its armies might be here in the chill darkness.
Presently Fafnir was left behind, and only the distant stars lighted the icy surface. They flew on. Janice woke up and relieved Hugh at the control panel, though flight was still automatic; the only breaks in its monotony were pauses to open the lock and let people in and out. It would have been possible to open at their slow cruising speed without disturbing the handling of the ship, but entry into and departure from a portal with a fifty-kilometer-per-hour wind across the opening seemed risky to Hugh. All the fliers claimed they could handle such a maneuver, some even expressing indignation that the Erthuma should regard it as dangerous; but Hugh insisted, to the extent of stopping the craft instantly whenever he heard someone attempting to use the outside hatch controls in flight. His translator passed on a few Habra words not, apparently, directed at him which sounded suspiciously like “thinks we’re children,” but he reminded himself that the natives didn’t really regard this imputation as an insult and remained firm in his policy.
Possibly as a result of this, all his personnel were uninjured and reasonably rested and fed a hundred kilometers from their goal, after what he thought of as nearly four days of flight. They had agreed on an approach tactic, and now descended to a level just above the hills.
These were far more jagged than they had been nearer the terminator. The wind was much weaker, at least at the moment; and while there was still a good deal of blown ice dust filling cracks and hollows here and there, this no longer seemed to be the principal shaping agent of the landscape.