by Hal Clement
The catamaran’s port hull was toward the ice and almost aground, so Mike simply slipped into the shallow water. There was a murmur among the masked, sound-armored figures, and even ’Ao, behind him, gave a rather shocked gasp. He did not, for some time, understand why; he did not even give the event a thought. He had been trying to decide how to open the conversation, but could think of nothing but a standard self-introduction. He chose to use unmodified Maori, and to follow the captain’s implied advice toward frankness as closely as possible.
“Kei ti pehea koutou? I’m Mike Hoani. My captain is Wanaka from Muamotu. What’s your city?” The answer came in almost identical speech, uttered by one of the group whose hands were now empty, his or her pole having been laid on the ice. Mike did his best to find some visible clue to this one’s identity, since it would be discourteous not to recognize the speaker later. The main possibility seemed to be a colored pattern a little like ’Ao’s on the armor, fortunately applied to both chest and back, as he could see from some of others who weren’t facing him directly. Less fortunately, the pattern was extremely complex; Mike hoped he could remember enough of it.
“This is Aorangi, I am Hinemoa. We know of Muamoku, and have occasionally met crews from there. But surely you aren’t of that birth?”
Mike relaxed, slightly relieved at hearing a personal name that indicated the speaker was female but not inclined to put too much trust in the clue until he learned more about the current evolutionary status of the language. He explained in detail his origin and reasons for being on Kainui.
“Why did you come to speak to us, rather than your captain?” The question’s tone suggested mere curiosity rather than indignation, but Hoani felt there might be a minor breach of courtesy implied by the words themselves. He tightened up slightly, but answered with what he believed to be the truth.
“I know many of the tongues the people of the islands used when our ancestors were still on Earth. The captain has formed the habit of having me greet strangers first. The languages in the different cities of Kainui have changed through the years.”
“True. But how is it you’re so far south? It has been many years since we spoke to a crew from Muamoto.”
“Our original ship was lost, and we drifted with an unfamiliar metal-fish while the new one’s seed grew. That’s why our banners say that we don’t know some of what we’re carrying—at least, so the captain told me; I haven’t learned to read them myself. Perhaps you can tell us what we are carrying, and whether it’s worth the trouble. If not, maybe the people in the approaching ships can do it for us. We also have some iron, copper, and titanium.”
“If we can’t I doubt that they can. The ships are of our own city, Aorangi.”
“Your eyes are keen.” A compliment never hurt, even Mike knew.
“Not that keen. We recognize them because we expected them now.”
Mike was not as quick as some, but not entirely stupid. Something said earlier suddenly clicked into place in his mind.
“This is Aorangi where we are standing? On Mata we had not recognized it as a city, though we made the opposite mistake about some other coral-and-ice structures we met farther north.” The listeners seemed more amused than indignant, Mike noted with some relief. “I—we had never thought of using ice for anything that big. You must have grown it much farther south than this. Might I ask why you are so far from the pole now? Isn’t the sea here pretty warm for your city?”
Glances were exchanged among the others, and Hinemoa’s answer was hesitant.
“The reason is somewhat embarrassing. It has to do with faulty rigging.”
“I apologize, and will restrain my curiosity. I assume you are now heading south intentionally.”
Actually, Hoani had been able to read a good deal into Hinemoa’s words. For one thing, she was speaking the least altered Maori that he had so far heard on the planet. The term “rigging” meant a great deal more to him now than it had before Malolo’s session with current-riding and controllable sea anchors. Aorangi might be a good deal more maneuverable than any of the floating metropoli nearer the equator. Why? More specifically, why would the ability be useful? Was there something about the polar regions that made precise position of importance to a city and its inhabitants? Was the city’s ice-based construction a cause, an effect, or a coincidence?
Also, was Hinemoa telling the whole truth? If the ships now drawing near were making a rendezvous planned in advance, how could the planning have been worked? Hinemoa had claimed, or at least implied, that the city had been out of full control long enough to get this far north—so far north that it was losing a lot of its structure to melting. Could that possibly be true?
Quite suddenly, in spite of Wanaka’s permission to be frank, Mike began to feel just a little uneasy. One of her hopes, that of getting the traders of the approaching ships to bid against the people of the iceberg for her cargo, seemed gone (well, maybe not; traders were likely to be traders rather than government agents). There was still no evidence that the people of Aorangi were piratically inclined, but Mike suddenly felt uneasy. He decided to pass the conversational buck to the captain. She might know no more about this city and its people than he did, but at least she knew the planet’s general customs that, considering the universal trading background, were probably fairly uniform. She should certainly have a clearer idea than did Mike of just where the boundary between ordinary trading and piracy generally lay.
He hoped.
He shifted the conversation as unobtrusively as he could back to the question of Mata’s cargo. Hinemoa and all her companions listened intently as Mike described the metal-fish where they had spent so much time while their replacement ship was growing. Some of the details were accepted with no visible surprise, though fairly obvious interest, including the fact that vast amounts of drinkable water were produced compared to the tiny amount of metal, the location of metal pods in the same pockets as the water, and the fact that so few of the pockets contained metal at all. It began to look as though Wanaka’s cargo might have only curiosity value here; none of the listeners seemed ready to suggest what it might be.
“I’ll ask the captain to bring a pod for you to see,” he finally said. He turned, took a couple of steps toward the water, and called out the suggestion.
“They can’t identify the metal from my description. We’d better show them a sample.” Wanaka nodded and spoke to the child, who disappeared briefly into a hold and returned with one of the pods, which she proffered to the captain. The latter gestured that she should keep it, said a few words inaudible to Mike over the thunder but apparently telling the child to accompany her ashore. Both flipped their helmets closed and stepped from Mata’s deck. The child had to swim, of course, but her burden didn’t seem to interfere.
Mike suddenly suspected what had caused the disturbance when he had come ashore himself; he had waded in open water with his helmet unclipped. The space had, it was true, been narrow enough to cross in a few steps, but he wondered how many points that would have cost him with Wanaka, and what the natives of the ice city had thought. The latter, he suspected, might have the more serious effect. He hoped his alien origin might be regarded as an excuse, but didn’t dare count on it.
Kainui’s people were not, as far as he had been able to tell, any more xenophobic than his own; but it might be unsafe to assume they were much less, and human beings have a tendency to be less tolerant of, or at least less empathetic toward, actions they regard as stupid than toward merely hostile ones.
’Ao, who had carried the pod ashore, now handed it to Wanaka, who held it up to give the local group its first close look. They had appeared expectant, Mike judged; now their talk stopped completely, though he was slow to realize that the cause was irrelevant to the specimen. One of the group gave a loud call, and pointed out to sea. Mike let his own gaze follow.
There were now seven of the local ships in sight, not four. More interesting, a wave two or three meters high was sweeping in j
ust beyond the three newcomers; and as everyone watched, the eight vessels including Mata were lifted on it and borne toward the berg, swept past the watchers on the ice hummock, and came to rest in what had just become a shallow bay.
The wave receded. Water poured back out the channel. The bay was now a lake. No one but Mike seemed in the least surprised; Wanaka, of course, had a trader’s face.
IX
Interference
Personnel from the Aorangi ships slid overboard and waded toward the party on the hill, helmets open. Keo, the only one still aboard Mata, followed their example, but snapped his helmet shut before he went overside. The term “shallow water,” used outdoors, was to him among the silliest of oxymorons.
Wanaka, concealing any surprise she might have felt, now handed the pod to Hinemoa, and there was silence while it was passed around among the others. Each time it was handed along, a single word was uttered by the passer. Mike had trouble making it out over the background thunder; it sounded like waru, but he could see no relevance in the number eight.
The pod was returned to the captain, but she was none the wiser about its identity. She was able, with practically no help from Mike, to suggest that it might nevertheless be of some trading value. Hinemoa agreed.
“None of us right here is a trader, but I’m sure there are people in Aorangi who would like to take a chance on it. If you care to entrust the pod to me, I can pass it on to the school; the chemists there might be able to tell us enough to make a better guess at its real value. But perhaps”—a smile was just visible behind her mask—“you’d rather not have that knowledge spread too far before the sale.” Wanaka smiled also; she of course did not regard the suggestion as insulting, but handed the packet of dust over without comment. She also began to doubt the statement that no one there was a trader.
“You might think about whether you should place a starting bid very low or very high in iron-equivalents,” Hinemoa added. “Too far either way I suppose would discourage risk-taking. Personally, I’d suggest starting low.”
“It will take some thinking,” Wanaka agreed, carefully not implying a preference. Her doubt was growing stronger. After some discussion, it was settled that word would be spread among the metal dealers of the city, and that these would be on hand at the next sunrise to inspect the cargo and make offers. Wanaka mentioned that she did have other metals to trade if they were wanted—iron, copper, and titanium. No one seemed greatly interested, and even Mike began to wonder whether some or all of the group might not actually be traders in spite of Hinemoa’s denial.
He also, although a much better historian than salesman, could understand what lay behind Wanaka’s final sentence: “Since we still don’t know what this stuff is, I plan to sell no more than a third of it here. If anyone wants more, I’ll need strong persuasion.” Her listeners showed no surprise at this either; if none of them was a trader, they were at least not naive.
The meeting broke up. The local adults spread out to greet the crews of the newly arrived ships. Some of these spoke briefly with Mata’s crew as well as they could without Mike’s help, but none admitted having anything to trade. Mike wondered what they might have been doing at sea, since even his inexperienced eye could tell that the ships in the lake were indeed floating high and probably were in fact carrying little or no cargo.
Keo confirmed the latter observation when they waded back to their own ship. Mike observed proper helmet discipline carefully this time.
The mate had also been wondering about how the rendezvous between city and newcomers could have been accomplished with the former’s location presumably unknown even to its inhabitants. He remarked on this at once, evidently sharing the captain’s suspicions that they had not been told the whole truth. Wanaka, quite reasonably, had a different priority problem: how was Mata to get back to sea?
“We’ll trade tomorrow if we can,” she said, “and leave as soon as possible afterward, also if we can. We won’t need to do any special water bargaining. Even if these people are the sort to hold someone up on water, which is hard to believe but would tell us a lot, we have plenty; and ’Oloa can get us back pretty close to where we got this load, anyway. The real question is how we get back to sea at all. It obviously can be done, since their own ships were washed up here with ours—and all of you surely realize that was planned. Intended. That wave didn’t come when it did by chance. I can’t even guess how it was done, or how they knew it was coming, but all our imaginations need to go to work on that. Even if we figure it out we’ll need these folks’ permission and probably their help to leave, but I’ll still feel better understanding that bit, too.”
“There are youngsters in the group ashore,” pointed out the mate. “Maybe ’Ao should practice a little hospitality, being sure to remind her doll about the talking rules first. It’ll be good to have a bunch of local kids chattering in the cabin with ’Ao and ’Oloa both listening, but remember the kids will be listening, too. Any of them could put two and two together if they heard the doll, and no matter how honest these people are we might find ourselves short one highly useful sample of concealed silicon.”
Wanaka nodded. “She won’t say anything that an ordinary doll wouldn’t if anyone but regular crew is in hearing. She already knows that. Mike, I’m afraid I’m more worried about your possible indiscretions than about ’Oloa’s. No insult intended.”
“None felt. I’m worried myself. That’s why I called you into the talk even though you’d said I could say anything. If I have to chat with any more of these people, except when I’m translating for you, I’ll certainly be careful. Just remember, I’m a scholar before I’m a trader. Words are communication tools to me, not game pieces.”
“I’ve noticed,” was all the captain answered. Mike couldn’t decide whether he had relieved her worries or added to them, but didn’t feel insulted.
The four went back ashore, where even more people were now assembled. Many of these gathered around to ask questions, and Mike was kept busy translating. It was easy enough for him; the local language, not too surprisingly from the city’s name, was indeed nearly unaltered Maori. Aorangi was the name of a mountain on the South Island, and probably of the ship that had brought these folks’ ancestors to Kainui.
’Ao was talking to people her own age, making as little use of Mike’s services as she could; and presently she and three others made their way—helmets sealed, this time, because all had to swim—back to Mata where, after some minutes of examining the deck and outside equipment, all crowded into the air lock.
While this was going on, Hinemoa had worked her way through the crowd back to Wanaka’s neighborhood, and invited her and her crew into the city. The captain was more than willing.
“Should we leave a deck watch?” she asked. “Your own crews don’t seem to be.”
“The ships are safe, but no one will be insulted if you do. You are in an unfamiliar port.”
“How about deploying our leaf? It’s less efficient this far south, and it’s the only way we can power our breathing equipment.”
Hinemoa was interested, and asked for a more complete explanation of Mata’s photosynthetic apparatus. Wanaka, glad of the chance to improve relations, provided the explanation and supplied several clippings of the structure when it had been deployed. It would, of course, heal itself.
“We’d better all come inside together so that we will know where we sleep,” the captain suggested. “I can decide about a watch later.”
“Of course. Most of us are going in now, but someone will gladly wait until your apprentice has finished entertaining. One of her guests is my son; we can board your vessel and make introductions if you like. You’ll want to know your ’Ao’s new friends. Then we can all go to Kone’s and my home and party properly.”
Wanaka responded suitably. Mike was pretty sure she meant it; it would be good, he realized, if more than just ’Ao heard the talk of the children.
They waited until nearly all the Aorangi had vani
shed, however, before going out to Mata ; interrupting an adult party would have been all right—they would simply have been joining in—but an all-child get-together was different. Hinemoa showed no signs of impatience, but Wanaka finally suggested, “Mike, you might visit the cabin and ask if anyone is having word troubles.”
“They won’t think I’m intruding?”
Hinemoa smiled behind her mask. “Eru will assume it’s a hint from me. The others won’t think about it except that adults are always interrupting. Go ahead.”
Actually, Hoani’s entrance did little to end the party; he was immediately put to work clarifying questions the visiting children had not been able to get across to ’Ao. Eventually, Hinemoa herself entered and invited everyone to her home.
This involved a trip across the ice for several hundred meters to a tunnel opening in the side of a hummock; through an air lock much more than large enough to take all the group at once; more tunnel to an area where several dozen people of both sexes and a wide spectrum of age staffed desks and tables—evidently a message and general information center, rather than a place for checking in from and out to the surface, Wanaka noted with some relief; and finally along a nottoo-complex set of smaller tunnels, still walled with the ice-coral growth, to Hinemoa’s home.
The party lasted there until the hostess pointed out that the newcomers should be shown their quarters and given a chance to sleep if they wished. None of the children argued.
Eru, however, promptly asked whether ’Ao could stay at their own home, and Wanaka, after a moment’s thought, approved. Then she added that the child should at least come to see where her shipmates were staying and make sure she could find them if she had to. Eru came along, with the result that ’Ao got only a few words across to Keo in a moment when she was asking him to keep the doll for her. He declined on grounds that an adult male with a doll would be suspicious behavior. She didn’t argue.