The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 13

by Gardner Dozois

  “And several points minus for keeping us in the dark!”

  “We’ll check for cracks,” added Dominic, as steadily as he could. They all turned their attentions back to the bugs.

  The fire had almost completely died out. So had the wind from Hotnorth. Dominic, glancing away from his work occasionally, saw that the pillar of smoke was sheared cleanly at, he judged, nearly a kilometre above, with the higher part whipping back toward Hotsouth. It was high enough to glow for some distance in the sunlight against an unusually dark and cloud-free sky. He was tempted to try another weather guess, but firmly turned his attention back to Candlegrease’s body. So cracks could be really hard to see . . .

  Hard, or impossible. None were found, but no one could be quite certain. Absence of evidence is not –

  They drove on into heat and sunlight, more silently than before, with a bug following on either side, its operator constantly scanning the tank. More words were spoken in the next few hours by Senatsu with her guidance information than by all four of the tug crew together.

  No one was exactly in a panic, of course, but everyone had enough sense to be uneasy. Erni and Nic were more relaxed than the Treeferns now. At least they seemed to be.

  “Open ground for about thirty kilos.”

  Ninety minutes of silence.

  “What looks like a compression fold across your path ten kilos ahead. Two possible passes. The wider is four kilos to your right. Turn twenty-two degrees right to thirty-seven.”

  The planet’s magnetic field was too distorted to provide reliable direction, but enough of the sun was now in sight to indicate Hotnorth – and make driving into it uncomfortable. The new heading was a relief.

  The wider pass had walls high enough for the left one to provide shade for nearly a hundred kilometres, a distance which did not lift the star’s disc perceptibly. The valley was not a recent feature; the walls on both sides were greatly collapsed and eroded. Had it been much narrower the travellers would have had a problem threading their way among the fallen fragments.

  “Lake eighteen kilometres ahead. Stay close to it on its left.” When they reached the lake, there was not very much rock-free space to the left of the liquid, but there was presumably even less on the other side; the drivers trusted Senatsu. She herself was developing more confidence as reports from the tug kept filling out her interpretations of the satellite radar.

  She hadn’t spotted the vegetation which grew densely along the shore, but this gave no real trouble. Erni and Nic thought of the fire now far behind, but there was no sudden downdraft this time. There was, as usual, lightning.

  “It could happen,” Dominic remarked. “The right wall is pretty high, and wind flowing over it would drop sharply and heat up by adiabatic compression –”

  “How much?”

  It was Akmet who asked this time, but Nic declined to bet. Erni wondered whether his friend was actually learning, or simply didn’t want intruders in their friendly game. He said nothing; he was driving. Bet or no, there was no fire, and eventually the Hotnorth end of the lake came in sight.

  “Head right along the shore.”

  Erni started to obey before realizing it was not Senatsu’s voice. This was not too unusual; the Yoshihashis shared the muscular fitness supplied by constantly fighting water’s inertia, but even they had to sleep sometimes.

  “Who’s on?” Erni asked, before realizing that the voice wasn’t human either. The answer was unexpected.

  “What?” This was Senatsu, recognizable even through the biological static, now familiar enough to be tuned out fairly well by the human nervous system.

  “Who just told me to head right?”

  “No one. You’re in fine shape.”

  “You didn’t send the message? Or hear it?”

  “Neither. Repeat it, please.”

  Icewall did so.

  “That did not come from here, or through satellite relay in either direction. Is it a native voice?”

  “Turn right. You do not turn right.”

  Pam was quickest on the uptake, and was first at the communicator. “Why should we turn right?”

  “The symbol ‘we’ is unclear. Turn right for safety and information.”

  Erni had done a quick-stop by now.

  “Sen, did you hear that?”

  “I heard static only, none of it either unusual or structured.”

  Treefern glanced at her husband, who nodded. His smile was of course invisible. Pam nodded back.

  “Sen, this is what we heard.” She quoted. “Now, repeat that back to us, please. As exactly as your voice will let you, and emphatically word for word.”

  Senatsu obeyed, mystified but guessing this was no time for argument or question. The message promptly came again, in the new voice, and the observer gasped audibly.

  “I did hear that! It came through the link.”

  “I thought it might. They’re not stupid, and certainly not slow. Erni, fire up and do what they say – but keep your driving eyes peeled!”

  “For what?”

  “How should I know? Anything. What do you usually watch for?”

  Icewall drove without answering. It had started to rain, unheralded by Yucca, and Pam thought of a possibly useful question for their new guide. “How far?”

  “Twenty-two point one kilometres.”

  “Sen, if you heard that, try to see what’s that far ahead.”

  “Sorry. I heard it, but radar isn’t getting through just now.”

  “Comm frequencies are.”

  “True. They’re not very good for imaging, but I’ll do what I can. Stand by.”

  The rain grew heavier, whatever it might be composed of, and Erni slowed sharply. The voice promptly came again.

  “Why stop.” There was no question inflection.

  Pam answered slowly, with measured and carefully chosen words. “Not stopping. Slowing. Rain. Bad measuring.”

  “Rain. Bad measuring,” was the acknowledgment. After a pause, “No rain. Eight kilometres. Not slow.”

  “Eight kilometres,” answered the woman. “Sen, you heard that? Can you see what’s eight kilos – kilometres – ahead?” There were many listeners by now. Most could guess why Pam had corrected to the full length of the distance label. They also wondered which form the unknown guide would use the next time distance was mentioned.

  Tricia Feather’s voice came through to the tug.

  “Much more of this and the translation computer won’t need my help! Willi, can you use a maths assistant?”

  None of the travellers paid attention to this. All were looking eagerly ahead for the predicted break in the rain. Not even Nic tried to second-guess the native.

  The really interesting item, they agreed later, was that their informant had allowed not only for their own speed in his, her, or its prediction. The rain clouds had been travelling much faster than tanker and tug, but the eight kilometres was still right. Dominic bowed internally to superior knowledge and vowed to himself, as he had several times before, that Erni would get no more of his cash. Prediction was evidently possible, but not for a mere human being.

  Or maybe he could set up some sort of private channel with the natives, and get some of his money back . . .

  Neither he nor anyone else was particularly surprised at the sudden improvement in communication, though there was plenty of joy. The natives had been known to exist, had been known to be intelligent, and information supplies do build on themselves and grow exponentially. Maybe Erni’s question about water could be answered soon . . .

  “Look up!” Akmet cried suddenly. All except Erni obeyed; he chose to continue driving.

  There were scarcely any clouds now, though a number of the blowing black objects still fluttered and swirled above and beside them. One, rather larger than the rest, was dipping, swerving, and wavering in much the same way, but was larger and had a more definite shape.

  The tug drivers represented three different colony planets, but all had seen d
andelions, which are almost as ubiquitous as sodium and human beings. The object looked like a vastly magnified bit of dandelion fluff. It had a shaft about two metres long, topped by a halo of wind-catching fuzz of about the same diameter, and with a grapefruit-sized blob at its lower end. It must have been incredibly light to be wind-supported in this gravity.

  It was moving almost as randomly as the other jetsam, but not quite. The windhold at its top varied constantly in shape and size. All the watchers soon realized that it was controlling how much of its motion was due to wind and how much to gravity. Sometimes it lifted sharply, sometimes slowly or not at all; it blew horizontally now one way and now another, but most often and farthest the way Erni was sending the tug. He had speeded up when the rain had stopped, but now he slowed again to stay near the object.

  “Go. Travel. Not slow.”

  “We want to observe,” Pam transmitted.

  “What?” asked Tricia from her distant listening post. Pam gestured to her husband, who described briefly what was happening.

  The response was still terse, but comprehensible. “Observe better forward. Not slow. Go.”

  “Let’s take its word for it. Go ahead, Erni. It wants to lead us to something, and this thing doesn’t seem to be it.”

  Icewall shrugged, refraining from comment about “somethings” on this part of the world, and Candlegrease left the airborne object behind in moments. There were presumably fourteen kilometres to go, and the going was fairly straight.

  It was a less impressive prediction this time; the target was motionless.

  If this was the target. A branch tangle some fifty metres across and up to eight or ten high, resembling the filling of Jellyseal’s cockpit, was spread at the edge of the lake, separated from the liquid by a metre-high ridge of soil which might have been made by a dozer – or shovels. The ridge – or dam? – ran straight along the lakefront for three dozen metres or so, with each end bending away from the liquid to enclose partially the slowly writhing tangle.

  “Left. Slow – left more – slow slow.”

  “Slowing. Turning.” Pam was plainly addressing their guide. Then, “Close to the copse, Erni, I think it means.”

  “I think so too.” Icewall veered very slightly to the right until the big tank was scarcely a metre from the edge of the patch of growth, then even more slightly left so they were moving parallel to it.

  “Stop.”

  “That’s it, I guess,” Nic added his voice.

  “That’s it.” The guide omitted the man’s last two words. Its intelligence seemed to include a computerlike memory.

  “Now we wait?” asked Erni, free from his driving.

  “Wait. Observe.”

  “Is that dandelion seed anywhere near us yet?” asked Akmet. “That’s what ‘observe’ was last used on, as I remember. I’d say it was ten or twelve kilos back by now, unless the wind was really helpful.”

  “Observe.”

  No one had time to ask what. From somewhere near the middle of the copse a duplicate of the “seed” popped upwards and began to gyrate like the other as the wind took it. It was followed by several others. All four pairs of eyes were fastened on them, some through the finders of video recorders. Akmet was giving a vocal report to Nest in all the detail he could. There was no video contact through the biological static even via satellite at this distance. Ben and others were asking for clarification, forcing Treefern to repeat himself with additional words. His wife approved; this should help the natives’ vocabulary.

  They were never able to decide whether the new seeds were a deliberate attempt to capture their attention. Neither of the Treeferns believed that the natives could possibly have worked out that much about human psychology, especially in view of what their own minds turned out to be like. Nic, and even more Erni, were much less sure of this. In any case, either accidentally, incidentally, or deliberately, their attention was held while branches writhed out of the tangle to the tank and its tug and began to feel their way around and over the vehicle bodies, among wheels and treads, around emergency controls meant only for bugs and rescuers . . .

  Both machines were enveloped in a loose, open cocoon of branches, some of them two or three centimetres thick, before anyone noticed. Again the question later was whether all Annie’s windows being covered last was intentional or not. After all, the natives could have inferred the purpose of windows from their experience with Jellyseal.

  Erni’s cry of surprise as he saw what was happening was followed by prompt startup and an effort to break out of the cocoon. Pam’s “Hold it!” preceded the guide’s voice by only a fraction of a second.

  “Stop. Observing.” Erni stopped, less because he cared about obeying a nonhuman than because the brief effort had shown they were in no obvious danger, the branches were not nearly strong enough to fight fusion engines. Many of them had pulled apart, and the attention of the watchers was now held by seeing these rejoin the main tangle, not apparently caring where the joining occurred.

  “Observing. Go later.” Pam spoke tentatively; the native seized on the new word.

  “Observe. Go later.” Erni’s hands dropped from the controls, but his attention did not return to the gyrating dandelion seeds. Neither did Nic’s. Both wondered how much of this their wives had experienced – there was, after all, no telling when the communication link had broken.

  It must have been farther Hotnorth, both realized. They had talked to their wives often, of course, and there had been descriptions of landscape with the sun almost above the horizon. The women had wondered why clouds seemed to be as numerous, large, and dense as ever in spite of the rising temperature. Not even Dominic had risked a guess at the time.

  “They’re hijackers! They’re playing with emergency drain valves!” Akmet, who had deployed a bug and was using its eye, cried suddenly.

  “They’ll be sorry,” answered Erni dryly. “Get your bug ready to close anything they open.”

  “Will it – they – whatever – let me close enough?”

  “They won’t be able to stop you, I’d guess. But I’ll be ready to roll if we have to.”

  Pam uttered just one word, for the benefit of their guide. “Danger!”

  There was no answer at once; perhaps the native had been unable to untangle her word from the two men’s transmissions. Pam waited a few seconds before repeating her warning. Still no answer from outside, or the city ahead, or wherever the messages were originating.

  “Those things are being controlled by the natives, the way the stuff that drove Jelly was!” exclaimed Erni. Nic had an even wilder idea, but kept it to himself for the moment. For one reason, it seemed silly.

  A set of millimetre-thick tendrils had been concentrating on one relief valve. There was no instrument to tell the crew how much force was being applied, and the cock itself was safetied to prevent its being turned accidentally. The four people watched the bug’s monitor screen in fascination as the cotter pin was straightened, worked free, and dropped to the ground.

  The tendrils played further with the valve, and found almost at once which way it would move. The paraffin was not entirely melted yet, though the temperature had been rising; but there was quite enough liquid just inside the wall to find its way through the opening. The watchers saw a drop, and then several more, emerge and almost at once disappear as vapour.

  The results were not surprising. Pam controlled herself with no trouble – it was not yet clear whether sympathy was in order – and made sure the new word was understood.

  “Danger! Danger!”

  The association should have been clear enough. There was no flame at first, but the hydrocarbon produced volumes of grey and black smoke. It was anyone’s guess what compounds, from hydrogen fluoride on up, were being made. Within seconds the branches immersed in them appeared to stiffen; at least they ceased moving. Their colours changed spectacularly. No one had seen bright green, yellow, or orange on Halfbaked until now. The branches that turned yellow did flame a mo
ment later and also went off in smoke, leaving no visible ash. None of the watchers was a chemist; none tried to guess what might be forming. Akmet did his best to paint a verbal picture for the listeners at Nest, but this was not detailed enough for an analysis.

  There was no objection, from inside or out, when Erni jerked the tug into motion and pulled away from the site. The bug stayed, but two of the witnesses preferred to use the windows with their broader field of view. Wind was spreading and diluting the smoke, but the stuff was still deadly; fully a quarter of the copse was now visibly affected.

  “Hydrogen compounds. Danger.” Pam knew the natives had the first word already in memory, and took the opportunity to add “compounds”, which might not be.

  “Are you after my job?” came Tricia’s voice, with no tone of resentment.

  “Just grabbing opportunity while I can see what’s happening.”

  “Hydrogen compounds. Danger. Observed.” The native was starting to handle tenses.

  “I guess they grow machinery the way we do. I wonder how much time and material that test cost them,” remarked Erni. Nic once again made no comment, possibly because there was no time; their guide resumed instructions almost at once.

  “Observed. Go.”

  “Which way?” asked Erni. There was no answer until Pam tried.

  “Right? Straight? Left?” The first and last words were known; the middle one might be inferred from context. Perhaps it was, perhaps the native was testing it.

  “Straight.”

  Erni obeyed. At the moment Annie was heading thirty degrees or so west of Hotnorth, the sun ahead and to their right. They had gone about half a kilometre when the command “Right” came. Erni altered heading about five degrees, and received a repeat order as he straightened out. This kept on until they were once more heading almost at the tiny visible slice of sun.

  Once convinced they had the direction right, Pam asked, “How far?”

  “Five thousand three hundred twenty-two kilometres.”

  No one spoke, either in the tug or back at Nest. Senatsu had no need to point out that the distance and direction corresponded to the source of Jellyseal’s last communication, as well as the native transmissions. Halfbaked seemed much too large for this to be coincidence. They drove on, but the hours were now less boring.