The Nitrogen Fix

by Hal Clement

  “I think I see some of what’s going on,” she said slowly. Tell me, did any of these people use — well — dirty language.”

  “Such as what?”

  “I–I can’t give you any examples. About — you know — the things which were done to ruin the world.”

  Fyn thought he saw what she meant.

  “You mean things like expressions from the Science Myths.” Even the word science caused the woman to cringe a little, but she managed to answer.

  “Yes — that sort of thing.”

  “I wouldn’t say so-not the words, anyway. They did say they were trying to capture the animals they called Invaders to find out how they could be killed. They dodged the words, but what they were planning was certainly — that word you just now didn’t like. Calling it something else doesn’t change it.

  They didn’t believe the usual story about the way the air changed — ”

  “It’s not a story! That’s what happened. People tried to use — that method — to grow more food. It was a way to get more nitrogen, that their food plants needed, into the ground. The nitrogen combined with the oxygen, and there was a lot more nitrogen even then, so — ”

  “I’ve heard the details. Many times. The point is that these people don’t believe it; they think the Invaders did something to get the oxygen out of the air. They want to change it back, and think they’ll have to get rid of the animals first.”

  “I know now.” The woman’s face was eloquent with disgust. “They were all pretty young, weren’t they?”

  “Yes. Middle teens, I’d say — just about grown up.

  “That’s it. Those delinquents over in Hemenway. But I didn’t think they actually meant to use such methods. Most of us thought they were merely youngsters with the usual no-one-can-tell-me-what-to-do idea holding on a little late. I suppose — ” her voice trailed off, and she was thinking again.

  Fyn was almost as surprised as, Bones would have been at the implication that Hillers were not all one in mind and spirit, but he was better able than the Observer would have been to believe it. He knew that the basic anti-Science religion differed in dogmatic detail from city to city, but he had never encountered until now a group which flatly denied it. He resumed the search along the corridors silently, not wanting to continue the conversation until he had made more sense of the new information. The woman, whose name he did not yet know and who, he suddenly realized, had never bothered to ask for his, seemed to feel much the same. She checked the rooms on her side of the tunnel in complete silence for some minutes.

  She had gotten several doorways ahead of him, the rooms on her side being all single while most of those on Fyn’s were two- and three-chambered suites. He was just emerging from one of these into the main tunnel when he glimpsed two figures disappearing into doorways on the other side, both well ahead of him. The more distant one was slower moving, and he had no trouble recognizing his partner in the search; the other, seen more briefly but more closely, was equally easy to identify. He sprang silently toward the doorway through which it had vanished.

  The creature had seen him, too, and made no attempt to hide further. It waited, just inside the door, out of sight of the woman if she should come back to the corridor.It was not Bones; that was evident the moment Earrin entered the room. It was not even as tall as the man himself, though its shape was identical with that of the native. Why it was traveling in the tunnels of Great Blue Hill was a mystery. If it had escaped from its captors, who had apparently been in Hemenway if the woman knew what she was talking about, it should be outside by now — or perhaps it was as lost as Fyn himself. He would have liked to ask it, but could think of no way to do so. It might, of course, have learned to understand some spoken words during its captivity, but it probably had the same difficulty in distinguishing phonemes as Bones; and in any case it had no voice with which to answer questions.

  Fyn was naturally startled when the tentacles began gesturing meaningfully at him.

  “Earrin. I wasn’t quite sure it was you at first, but followed you to make certain. Should I keep out of sight, or is it all right for this person you are with to see us together and communicating? And can you help me either to get outside, or to find food in here?”

  “Bones! What on earth have they done to you? Never mind, you can explain later — yes, there should be food in the air center, and I can find that. It’s not far from here. Come on.”

  Much of this was of course spoken aloud, and the woman heard the words from farther along the tunnel. She came back hastily.

  “You caught it!” she exclaimed happily. Then her attitude changed abruptly. “Why — you were talking to it! How can you talk to an animal? Did you train it, the way people did when there were other animals in the world?” Then her expression changed from curiosity and amazement to anger.

  “You have met it before — you did know it! You-lied-to-me! What kind of Nomad are you? At least we could always believe them!”

  Fyn was even angrier. As the woman spoke, he too had jumped to an unbelievable conclusion, but it seemed to be the only one the data permitted. He snarled back, “You filthy hypocrites! So experiment is a dirty word, is it? Science is evil, and ruined the world, you say? And the people who use it are delinquents? Don’t talk to me about lying. You Hillers have been experimenting on my friend! Come on, Bones, let’s go. We’ll get your food and my air if we have to knock some of these subhumans down flights of stairs. Then we’ll get out of here!”

  XI

  Experiment, Educational

  The spear hurt, and pulling it out hurt a good deal more. Bones expected another flight of the weapons as the process was tried, but the human beings watched with interest as the handling tentacles pulled the long shaft on through and dropped it on the floor. The flow of nearly colorless blood ceased quickly. The Observer body was by no means either immortal or invulnerable, but most of the organs which would be vital to a human being were decentralized. There was no single heart, but hundreds of far smaller pump muscles along the blood vessels; nerve cells used internal information storage instead of the human method of coding connections, and travelled freely though the body both in the circulatory system and among the cells of the other tissues. Even muscles were not connected groups of tissue-forming cells but protean structures which could change their shapes and regroup as needed. The Observer muscle could actually push.

  Bones, therefore, was extremely uncomfortable, but not incapacitated. The fact that such major damage usually stimulated the long body to a budding reaction was a nuisance, but not a catastrophe; buds were sometimes even convenient, if they actually duplicated properly. Usually, of course, they didn’t.

  The fishlike form’s failure to fall down startled the human witnesses, and a buzz of conversation broke out.

  Bones could not, as usual, understand enough of the syllables to make any sense, and human facial expressions had never been very meaningful to the Observer. It was necessary to wait for overt actions before the thoughts of these people could be guessed. The one they had made so far was mystifying, butwas at least a datum to remember.

  Until they made another, it seemed reasonable to eat some more. This would be useful even if it did not stimulate the witnesses to some informative reaction. Bones removed the bubble from another planter and reached for the contents. The reaction, unfortunately, was too quick to allow a taste of the material; there was a single, sharp syllable barked by one of the tallest of the people, and six more spears were poised for throwing.

  Bones did not have combat-type reflexes, but was a reasonably intelligent being. The basic idea of throwing things at beings whose actions were undesirable was new, but not essentially difficult Actual execution of it might take practice — Bones suspected that making the spear which had already been thrown return point first to its senders would be more difficult than it appeared; but some things could be thrown without knowing about their travel attitude.

  The planter was heavy, but not too heav
y. Two strong tentacles lashed out, and the box of dirt and plants went flying toward the spearsmen.

  Two of them had time to launch their weapons, while the other four dropped theirs and ducked, in one case too slowly. More spears were raised.

  Bones, who had had no trouble dodging the pair just thrown once it was obviously the thing to do, reached for and raised another planter.

  The voice which had given orders before sounded again, this time in a monosyllable that Bones was able to understand.

  “Stop!”

  Bones stopped, not because of the word but because of its effect on the others. Spears were lowered, and their holders were looking at the speaker; even the Observer could tell that they were waiting for more instructions — that the one who had called out was for some reason the controlling mind of the group.

  The speech went on, but lapsed into incomprehensibility as far as Bones was concerned. How much information was being conveyed, why the leader had stopped the violence — there was no way to tell. If only Earrin or Kahvi, or even little Danna, had been there. No use in wishing; it was less useful than inference, or even than guessing. Watching what the people did was all that could be done now.

  The speaker finished. His listeners seemed relaxed, and divided their attention between him and the Observer; they showed no signs of further violence as far as the latter could judge.

  Only two of the human beings were doing anything. These moved slowly and steadily toward a table not very far from Bones. Neither carried a weapon or anything else. Their slow, very controlled actions captured the Observer’s attention more and more completely as the seconds passed.

  Both the people were much smaller than usual, though not nearly as small as Danna — they were about the height of the other Observer unit which had been in the prison. Earrin or Kahvi would have guessed them as being thirteen or fourteen years old; Bones had no basis for judgment. Both were males, another fact unknowable and unimportant to the nonhuman.

  They stopped two or three tables away from the tall watcher, and removed a light cover from a glass tank which covered most of the top of the furnishing. One of them dipped in with a fabric net which interested Bones greatly; it was the first woven material the Observer remembered seeing.

  The pocket of the tool went into a layer of milky-looking, thin mud which filled the lowest third of the tank; it was withdrawn, held to drain for a moment, and brought toward Bones.

  The latter wondered whether food were being offered, but as the net continued to drip the upper part of its contents cleared to a snowy white; and when it came close enough the nature of the substance was clear — too clear. It was a fluffy pile of the glass splinters which had made so effective a trap back at the fire site.

  For the first time, Bones noticed that all the human beings were wearing sandals. Evidently satisfied that the material had been recognized, the small human being walked toward a nearby door and began to spread the stuff over the floor in its area. The other youngster had dipped up another load, and was doing the same at another door. It took no great deductive power to see what was happening, but there wasnothing obvious the Observer could do about it.

  The larger beings still held their spears. Within five minutes, every door in the room was unapproachable, as far as Bones or any bare-footed human being was concerned.

  The Observer was interested, but not worried. This was certainly a better method of restraint than the bars, except for one factor. It was fascinating that the people seemed not to have considered that factor; unless and until they did, other matters could be studied.

  The tank from which the glass had come, for example. There were several more like it, some containing layers of gray mud like the first, others with lumps of spongy tissue in various stages of solution. It was obvious enough that the glass spicules were being grown in some form of pseudolife, and the supporting tissue was merely dissolved away when mature. Earrin would be interested, though he would probably have no use for the material.

  Now the human beings put their spears down, except for half a dozen who left the room with theirs.

  Those who remained set frantically to work. Some collected the fragments of the planter Bones had thrown, others picked up, very carefully, the bits of tissue from the growths it had contained. The people who had been hit by the missile were among those who had left, some of them still limping. The tissue was carefully placed in soil in several trays which were brought in from another room. Some of these were set up on empty tables, others carried through one of the doors out of sight. The planters from which Bones had eaten were examined carefully, and their covers replaced. All this was fairly obvious in purpose; Bones had seen Earrin and Kahvi carry out similar routine hundreds of times in the past few years. The culture, whatever it was, in the planter which had been smashed was being salvaged; the others were being checked for possible infection. There were always nitro-life spores in the air, even in a well-sealed environment like a city.

  Important plants such as air and food producers had to be kept protected, and divided as far as possible so that no single infection would destroy an entire resource. The trays Bones had uncovered would be watched with special care for some days.

  During all this, the small individuals who had spread the glass simply stood and watched the nonhuman. Bones suspected that they were much younger than the rest, and had begun to wonder whether a communication effort might be worth while. Danna had apparently found it much easier than her parents to learn Bones’ tentacle gestures while the code was being perfected; her signal vocabulary was not as great as her parents’ — so far, but what she knew she had learned much faster.

  Perhaps this was a quality which went with the more recently budded of the species. It seemed worth trying.

  The youngsters were cooperative, watching the motions of Bones’ tentacles and, after a while, seeming to get the basic idea and trying to imitate them with waving and posturing of their own arms and fingers. No real transfer of information was accomplished, however; the primary result was the total focussing of Bones’ attention on the two beings. This, it turned out, was an error — though the results might have been the same even if the Observer had really been observing.

  Even the pain of the spear wound had been forgotten for the moment, when suddenly two nooses settled over Bones’ head and tightened below the eyes. They could not get lower than the upper handling tentacles, and these appendages reacted at once, whipping upward and trying to flip the loops of fiber away; but the human crews pulled hard from opposite directions until the ropes were cutting painfully into the tough, rubbery flesh. Bones could not, of course, have been strangled, and the major parts of the circulatory system of the fishlike body were too deeply located to be blocked this way; but the long form could and did feel pain. For the time the Observer was completely helpless.

  The youngsters, apparently as startled as Bones, uttered cries of surprise and what the Fyns would have recognized as indignation; they had been getting interested in the embryonic conversation. There was a sharp argument between them and one of the older beings, which ended with the youngsters leaving the room sulkily.

  They looked back as they went, watching as the tall form was dragged over to a door, the floor in the neighborhood swept carefully, and the prisoner moved through it. Bones did not see them again.

  Once in the corridor outside, travel stopped briefly. The nooses were loosened a little, Bones’eyeballs relaxed into their proper shape, and their vision began to come back. Another noose was applied near the other end of the fishlike form, at the narrowest part just above the flukes. Two more followed at the same place; then the upper ones were removed completely. Bones, analyzing the situation, could recognize that there was no immediate chance of escape. The three ropes were held by three men, standing in three different directions; any one of them could jerk the support from under the Observer with no trouble at all.

  Untying one of the nooses, even if it could be managed, would be futile
, and there certainly was no way to work on all of them at once. It appeared that the men this time felt it would be easier to let their captive provide his own transportation.

  Of course, the Observer was in no great hurry to escape, though choosing and managing one’s own actions was always preferable. Food needs had been supplied for the time being, and unless the same prison as before were on the schedule there should be new things to learn.

  Since there was a fair chance that it would be the same prison, however, Bones gave thought to methods of escape as the party resumed its journey.

  Ropes were slow to untie, but they could be cut quickly. Did any of these people have a knife? The light was poor for human vision, but not for the Observer’s great eyeballs. Outdoor workers, like Nomads, always carried tools; but this might not be so usual inside the city.

  Apparently it wasn’t. Of the ten people in the party, eight were carrying nothing; indoor garments were scanty enough to leave no doubt about this. Of the two with cases or bags which might possibly contain knives, both were at the far ends of ropes attached to Bones, and seemed determined that the slack in those ropes be kept at an absolute minimum. Once, experimentally, the Observer made a sudden move as though to spring into an intersecting tunnel. The resulting horizontal position, achieved with no perceptible delay, was no surprise. The people provided no help in getting up, but did not interfere; carrying that weight was still no part of their plan if it could be helped. Bones did nothing more which might be construed as an effort to leave, but filed some data very carefully. One of the men had been noticeably slower than the other two in putting tension on his rope, though he had coordinated well with the others in controlling the direction of Bones’ fall.

  They did not, after all, go back to the original prison. To Bones’ surprise the party finally came to an air lock. After donning outdoor equipment from open shelves which lined the walls near the pool, they took their captive outdoors. For the moment, this completely baffled Bones.