The Nitrogen Fix

by Hal Clement

  The translation itself was not always clear; neither Fyn nor the human listeners had an adequate information background. Human beings in general still knew some physics and astronomy, since many books still existed. They knew much more chemistry, since the technology which kept the remnants of humanity alive was based on biochemical products of earlier times.

  Mankind was in more or less the position of a motorcycle gang whose members could not have built their machines from metal ores or refined their own fuel, but were kept supplied with spare parts and gasoline. The continuation of the supplies was due to the fact that the resources of the biochemical culture were self-renewing, pseudoliving organisms and tissues. No person now living could have produced the pseudolife from raw chemicals, but many of them could still manipulate it with the aid of such agents as the Evolution plant’s enzymes.

  With this sort of limitation on human knowledge, it was impossible for all of Bones’ account to be completely clear even to the adults. Fyn’s translation of Bones’ pronouns was also very foggy. The Observer had no conception whatever of the difference between “he” and “she,” as Earrin already knew.

  What affected the present attempt at communication was the fact that the native also lacked any real grasp of the difference between “I” and “we,” and understood “You” only because of long association with the raft family. Earrin’s translation was therefore much more of a paraphrase than a direct quote.

  It was clear that Bones had arrived on Earth after the air change, and was not responsible for it — He/they had travelled frozen in a body which an astronomer of earlier times would unhesitatingly have called a comet nucleus. These, traveling slowly between the stars, were constantly carrying vast numbers of Bones’ species through the Galaxy in obedience to their basic psychological drive — the need to know.

  Automatic controls would place the comet into an appropriately close orbit and awaken the crew when and only when sensing apparatus identified an atmosphere as being primarily nitrogen, with enough traces of oxides of that element to indicate the presence of nitro-life. Bones’ vehicle was the comet which now rode sixty degrees behind the moon in the latter’s orbit; his/their landing craft was on the sea bottom thousands of kilometers from the Boston area.

  The fact that all this came as though it were a personal memory confused Fyn, and did not get through his translation very well. The other human beings were therefore even less clear about the matter.

  There was no doubt, however, that Bones was denying categorically that his kind had had anything to do with the change in the world’s air.

  Zhamia, who had the best conception of the times and distances which must be involved, was rather suspicious of the account. She admitted that it was hard for her to believe in a coincidence which had apparently brought Bones’ comet to the Solar system within a few years, or at most a few centuries, of the time the change had taken place. She put this to the Observer.

  Bones made it clear that no coincidence was involved. Many comets had undoubtedly visited the System; until the Earth conditions were correct, they would merely have gone into shortperiod orbits around the sun and waited, boiling off some of their ice at each perihelion passage until they were consumed. Their personnel would have died without ever being aroused. When one crew was awakened, the other comets would, if they possessed mass enough, leave automatically in search of another habitable system.Fyn could not see how the crews could face such a fate, and said so. It was Bones’ attempt to explain why they didn’t mind which started the man toward the realization that the being now talking was not, in fact, “his” Bones. There was no clear communication here; the Observers had no grasp of the concept of individual death, and Fyn’s difficulty had not been understood at all. From the answer, the man at first got the idea that Bones was immortal. This was in a sense, as far as personality was concerned, true; it was of course very wrong in detail. The “units” could and did, eventually, die. Genda had listened, though all she really noticed was the statement that the Observers had arrived after the change in Earth’s atmosphere.

  This supported her view of orthodoxy, and she made no secret of her delight.

  “That will let those delinquents know the poor animals aren’t to blame for anything! Let’s go over the Hemenway and tell them right now!” She was actually smiling. The other three adults looked at each other silently; two or three of the children giggled until Zhamia caught their eyes.

  The teacher spoke gently. “How will we make them believe it, Gen?” she asked. “We don’t really have proof — just Bones’ story. Would you have believed it if we’d been told his people had made the air change?”

  “But he didn’t!” The implications of Zhamia’s question were simply beyond the older woman.

  “He told the truth, as much of it as he knew. It was sin that caused the change — you know what kind of sin. Nothing else could have changed the whole world so much.”

  Earrin translated this to Bones, not because he felt that Genda’s opinions carried much weight but because he assumed that any knowledge which would help predict the behavior of a Hiller might be as useful to the Observer as to Earrin himself. The answer was surprising, and for some seconds after it was translated it silenced even Genda.

  “It may be the action of your kind which changed your world; I have been trying to decide. However, I must also decide why it always seems to happen, on every world I have seen.”

  XV

  Debate, Directed

  “Every one?” Mort took the question up instantly. “How many worlds are there? Have you visited them all?” The idea that Bones was immortal had also dawned on the teacher. He watched Fyn eagerly as the question was translated.

  “I certainly have not visited them all; how many there may be is knowledge not yet acquired. I have landed only on those with proper living conditions, and presumably only a small fraction of those. I can remember only sixteen, directly, but many units have made — ” there was a pause, as even Bones had to grope for a meaningful signal — ”Branch trips. Doubtless some, perhaps many, of these have also found habitable worlds, but the units have not rejoined with their memories. Knowledge itself grows dim with time, but I am quite certain of the sixteen I mentioned.

  On every one of them there was much chemical evidence that some time earlier — always until now very much earlier — the world had had an oxygen-rich atmosphere. I have been trying to learn why this always changed, and it was a delight to find a world where the change seems to have been so recent.

  Perhaps I can really know. Perhaps your companion is right.”

  Genda was too delighted even to be angry at the perhaps.”

  “Have any oxygen-breathing people ever been living on the worlds you have seen?” asked Zhamia.

  “No, this is the first. This is why I am hopeful. Perhaps some of your people can supply knowledge — I have never before learned things indirectly, from other beings. This itself is a fascinating new field in which to learn. Had it not been so, I would have tried to escape much earlier. There was little I learned during the months I was a captive, but there was that great hope.”

  This statement, of course, distracted Earrin from his interpreting job.

  “Months? But you’ve been in their hands only a day or so!” The true situation had been filtering slowly into Fyn’s mind, but had not quite reached conscious level. Bones’ earlier story had started theflow; the latest statement cracked the dam.

  “No. I had no way to judge the time precisely, until the other unit arrived; but this unit now knows where the moon and planets are in the sky. It was in the cell for eight of the moon’s orbits, plus five days.”

  The dam was broken, but common sense fought the flood valiantly.

  “That’s impossible! Less than two days ago you were helping pull our raft across Boston Harbor.”

  “Yes, of course. What is impossible about that?”

  “You can’t be in two different places at the same time, doing tw
o different things!”

  “I think we are having more trouble with your communication code. Remember, the two units met long enough to exchange memories while both were captive.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do we,” Mort cut in. “Could you tell us what’s going on, Fyn? You haven’t been translating.”

  “Can’t. I’m too mixed up myself. Wait until I can get this straight, please.” The Nomad had continued to keep his eyes on Bones’ gestures.

  “We were able to use the real speech.” The Observer tried to use less direct terminology, though the gesture language provided little wherewithal “You know-at least-I thought-you and Kahvi sometimes-but perhaps I was wrong. Tell me, is the sound system really your only way of transferring information-memories-knowledge-from one of your kind to another?”

  “There’s writing.”

  “But that is just an even less direct use of your sound code. There is nothing more direct?”

  “No.”

  The Observer stood motionless, except for eyeballs which shifted slowly from one of the human beings to another, for fully two or three minutes.

  Fyn was equally bemused. Common sense had stopped fighting back. He had just about grasped the true situation with the natives-he and Kahvi would always think of them as plural, and as native, since they could live on Earth unprotected.

  The facts that he had been wrong about the “experimenting” and that the small Bones facing him was not, in body, the Bones he and his wife had known for years, were just about at the accepted knowledge status.

  At last he brought the teachers and children up to date on the communication. They were fascinated.

  Genda heard, but was dissatisfied; she had been counting on some assurance, somewhere within the story, that Science had indeed destroyed the world’s air. The Observer’s claim that this might be the case but he didn’t really know irritated her almost as much as Earrin’s unwillingness to take her word for it; after all, she did know. Earrin and the teachers were rather angry with Genda, but Bones was fascinated.

  Psychology was another totally new field to a mind which had not only never met another intelligent species until now, but had never encountered a different mind in its own. This crowd of individuals, cut off from each other except through crude and consuming code symbols, was a revelation — a brand new field of knowledge — indeed, a whole set of such fields. It was obvious that the incomplete and distorted picture of the universe transmitted by words would have fantastically unpredictable effects on those minds; the code symbols themselves would probably take the place of the reality they were supposed to transmit much of the time. Genda was a most fascinating example.

  It would not occur to Bones for a long time that the Observer’s sensory impressions were just as much a coded representation of reality as were human words. So were the molecular patterns which recorded those impressions, and passed them from one Observer unit to another. The species was a good scientist, but not yet a philosopher.

  Genda was finally persuaded to settle, for the time, for Bones’ concession that her belief was possible; it was one of those things which a scientist could not call knowledge. All the human listeners except Genda could see this viewpoint easily enough. Such terms as UFO and Chariot of the Gods had not survived. Common sense had, of necessity, though the teachers might have been bothered if anyone had called their attitude scientific. They were, in their own way, as religious as Genda, though far less bigoted.With the collective nature of Bones’ mind now fairly clear, the question of what had happened to the “other” Bones had to be faced. Events up to the time the two units had shared memories through the bars were clear enough. The smaller unit had managed to escape observation by descending several levels at the first opportunity after their separation. This had been a matter of luck, since there had been no knowledge of the Hill’s population arrangement to provide guidance. Hours of unguided wandering had been ended by a decision to go up for food, based on the same logic which had guided Earrin. The Nomad had been found first. Where the original Bones might be was a matter of guesswork; the teachers had heard nothing of even one Observer wandering about the Hill, much less of two. The best guess seemed to be that Bones-One was still in the Hemenway area, free or otherwise.

  Earrin, however, was starting to develop another worry. While he had no real reason to suppose that his family were anywhere but on the home raft, he knew that he should, get back there himself before long. Otherwise, his wife would take some sort of action. He didn’t know what it would be, and certainly felt more trust in her general competence than in his own, but did not want to return to find them missing.

  It might be possible, of course, to guess what she would be doing and even what she was expecting him to do — they had, after all, been together for a number of years — but Earrin would feel much better and less undecided if he managed to get home before she yielded to the urge for action.

  The Nomad was therefore more pleased than offended when Genda began resuming her hints about intruders who used up city air. He said nothing about being owed air or anything else.

  The teachers, however, reacted differently, and even the children looked embarrassed.

  “Genda!” exclaimed Zhamia. “You can’t want these people to go. It’s the first real chance we’ve had to learn — ”

  “We don’t need to learn some things!” Even Earrin could see that the old woman’s personality was crystallized, but Mort felt bound to keep on trying.

  “That may be so, Gen,” he said quietly, “but don’t you want to teach? I’ve heard you complain so much about the people who don’t have your firmness — not just the Hemenway kids and their heresy, but people like Zhamia and me who are a bit weak on details. You know people get tired of listening to the old words, but maybe Bones and Earrin can provide new ones which will help convince them.”

  A more objective mind than Genda’s would have caught the weakness in this argument — the obvious possibility that new information was as likely to undermine the faith as to support it.

  However, she was quite unable to entertain the idea that she might be wrong, so this risk never occurred to her. Earrin was tempted to point it out to her, so that she would not be persuaded to let the strangers stay. Then it occurred to him that he didn’t have to stay anyway, so he kept quiet.

  Of course, if Zhamia and Mort wanted him and Bones to provide still more information, perhaps they should stay and do so; the chance of getting on really good terms with the Hillers would be too good to miss. Even Earrin, with fourteen years of Nomad life behind him and a complete confidence in his own ability to take care of life’s problems, was willing to accept increased security for himself and even more for his family. Kahvi’s first baby, and her last two, had lived only a few weeks; Fyn was ready to go a long way to improve the chances for the next one.

  He did not hear Genda’s reply to the teacher’s argument; he was too deeply immersed in his own thinking. He should get back to the raft soon. He should maintain friendly contact with Mort and Zhamia.

  He should get Bones-One out of the hands of the Hemenway delinquents, if Bones didn’t solve that problem by himself. It took him some time to resolve these conflicting needs — typically, as his wife would have said with a smile and Earrin himself easily admitted. Just as typically, when the plan did develop he put it into execution with no further thought. This was at least excusable in an adult Nomad; such a person had to have the right answers on file. When problems did arise, there was very seldom much time to solve them.

  “Are all these people you dislike — the Hemenway ones, oxygen junkies, Genda?” he asked.

  “The jail where I landed and where several of them met me has waster’s air in it. I only met one person inside, but something the others said made me think he was part of their group.”

  “I didn’t know they were that bad,” sniffed the purist, “but it doesn’t surprise me much.” The reaction of the teachers was much m
ore constructive, and Earrin congratulated himself silently.”Mort! We can’t leave a safety building in that condition! And if the young people have been responsible for their upkeep, maybe a lot of them — or all of them — we’ll have to get some nitro culture.

  Earrin can — ”

  “Earrin can,” Mort cut in, “but we can’t ask him to. In the first place, he has his own home to take care of. In the second, if these youngsters are all O-junkies we’ll need a lot more people to fix things over their objections anyway. If Earrin wants to help for reasonable pay, that’s one thing; but it’s a city job.”

  A child’s voice cut in. The youngsters had been listening with an attention and silence which might have been startling a couple of millennia before, but which the adults present all took for granted. Even in the cities, people walked so nearly hand-in-hand with death that discipline was one of the first necessities learned. This was the chief reason why Mort and Zhamia were so concerned at the news that the Hemenway youngsters might be oxygen-wasters as well as heretics.

  “You’ve been talking about practical lessons,” the child said, “for a long time now. Would this be a good time for them?” The teachers were a little startled for a moment.

  “It certainly would,” Zhamia admitted, “but we could take only Betty outside. We’ll have to get the parents of you others. We can’t leave the air room here unattended, either. Let’s see. We’ll pick half of you by whack, and those can go and get their parents. We’ll meet at North-Up-Two. The rest of you will have to stay on duty here. Mort, do you have the gold?”

  “Sure.” The man drew an old medal from his harness pouch. “I’m ready.” He turned his back on the others. “Face goes, inscription stays. Pick one.” Zhamia touched one of the children.