Noise

by Hal Clement

  The captain gestured Mike toward the air lock; she seemed to feel that the quieter ocean justified leaving Keo alone on deck. Safetied, of course.

  For the next few days, the routine Mike had come to know in the early part of the voyage was gradually resumed. It took a while for both Wanaka and Keo to get over a mild fear of pursuit from Aorangi, distant as the city now should be. The hints from Hinemoa that its motion was under control meant, of course, that no guess whatever about its position could be trusted; but as ’Ao put it when the question was being discussed, there were so many directions—and its inhabitants had admitted, if that were the right word, that there was too much melting going on this far north.

  The word “admitted” bothered Mike slightly. Hinemoa, beyond argument, had been doing a certain amount of lying or, to use a word captain and mate seemed to prefer, selling. The launch warning she had sent had offered no hint that Mata would be launched with the others and that there was no way to prevent it; Wanaka had nevertheless been encouraged to unload a respectable part of her cargo. A more encouraging point seemed to be that, maneuverable or not, there was no way the iceberg city could possibly match Mata’s sailing speed.

  That was obvious. Mike was a little uneasy about this word as well, but told himself that paranoia could lead in only one direction and that a very undesirable one. There was no point in worrying about everything. Human minds had limits, and there was nothing to be gained by stretching these limits too far. Let reality catch up occasionally with imagination.

  Apparently the captain had not been wholly taken by surprise by the launch, Mike thought again. If either of the others had, they concealed it well. Of course, Wanaka might have briefed them before Mike had joined the party that morning, but he didn’t ask, of course.

  The doll did a good job of navigation, though not a perfect one. It eventually reported that they had reached the center of its error circle for the gold-fish, a circle now somewhat enlarged because a less-than-ideal wind had forced them to do a good deal of tacking. Since the object of their search would probably not be visible more than a few hundred meters away, the search rectangles couldn’t be allowed to get much bigger each time around; and quite soon each time around was getting noticeably longer.

  Everyone, even from the helm, watched eagerly for signs of their target, but the most trust was placed in ’Ao. Whenever she had to rest, day or night, Mata was hove to. It was the third day before the child screamed, “Port bow!”

  “You’re sure it’s the fish?” called Wanaka.

  “No, it isn’t, but I think it’s Malolo. That should still be stuck in the jelly, though. We never pulled up the sea anchor after we got there, did we?”

  Keo, at the helm, had swung their bow to port without waiting for orders, and within minutes everyone could see that the child was right, both as to identification and inference. She called again.

  “Keo! Heave to, or we could get stuck, too.”

  The captain rescinded the order.

  “No, Keo. Swing to port when you can see the fish itself from where you are, and then try to follow it around its edge. I want to get an idea how big it is. ’Ao, I don’t suppose any of your young friends who identified the gold at your party happened to mention how to tell which water pods have metal under them? I can’t believe their miners would have to do a blind search the way we did.”

  The child hesitated. “Not that I remember,” she admitted after a moment.

  “Well, don’t worry. You couldn’t have asked without—”

  “I know. I thought of that.”

  “All right. Come down. When we finish this trip around and know how big this thing is, we’ll try to replace what we left on Aorangi, and then—”

  “Back to Muamoku?” asked Mike, rather hopefully.

  “No. Back to Aorangi. Why do you think they fooled us into getting back afloat with so much of our cargo ashore? They knew we couldn’t get back to it. I don’t know what they want gold for, but they want it.”

  Mike felt some doubt about this, but said nothing. The idea was certainly plausible, he admitted to himself. He was, however, a reasonably well-educated man, and sets of questions, all starting with “How much?” were flocking into his mind.

  Soon enough all three adults were overboard. ’Ao stayed on deck, taking in the occasional metal pod that they found and trying to make some sort of record of where it had been found. Wanaka, Keo, and even Mike felt pretty sure there must be a system involved.

  This meant, of course, that no one was on effective watch, since it was impractical for the child to climb up and down the mast between every two pod discoveries even though these were many minutes apart. So, at least, Wanaka decided after the first few hours of searching.

  She rather regretted the decision near sunset, when they were going to have to stop the search anyway in spite of its disappointing results. No system of arrangement of the metal pods had made itself obvious yet.

  She reached up for what she had decided would be the last one of the day when the expression behind ’Ao’s breathing mask caught her attention. Although still in the water, she risked flipping her helmet back to ask, “What’s the matter?”

  ’Ao simply gestured behind her with her head. The captain had to pull herself partway up on deck to see what she meant.

  “Having any luck?” asked Hinemoa.

  Mike was still out collecting, but no translation was necessary.

  X

  Impedance

  “ Mauruuru,” was the new arrival’s next word. She didn’t seem to be sarcastic or ironic, though Mike, who had been a meter or two behind the captain, was a little surprised at the Tahitian word, which he didn’t have to translate. Wanaka accepted the thanks, but made no pretense of knowing what it was for.

  “We thought we’d lost this fish,” the other went on. “It was a new type, an experiment. It should have surfaced at the latitude where it submerged. We have no idea what went wrong.”

  “This thing is yours ?” Wanaka asked. Mike understood her surprise; metal-fish in general were simply released when the seed had been developed and tested, and it was generally accepted that whoever found it later could harvest it, since there was no way to plan an interception or delay its recharging and sinking again. They were no one’s property. The device submerged to a preplanned depth where it had been learned, or calculated, or hoped there would be a usable concentration of whatever useful metal they were designed to reduce, and thereafter rose when they needed energy and sank again, whether harvested or not, when they got it. Maybe that idea was changing; the Aorangi people had known when, apparently, and considering the size of the planet had been only slightly wrong about where this one would come up.

  Hinemoa seemed slightly embarrassed behind her mask. “Well,” she said slowly, “there’s no way to keep knowledge from leaking, of course.” She was back to nearly unchanged Maori, and Mike had to help occasionally. “We’d have let this one circulate after we were sure it worked properly, of course.”

  “And had been well harvested a few times.”

  “Of course.”

  “And you knew where it had come from when I first showed you that pod.” It was not a question. Hinemoa’s embarrassment had vanished quickly.

  “Of course. And you know what it is now.”

  “’Ae.”

  “I suppose your big guest from the Old World knew something. But why didn’t he tell you sooner? Oh. Of course. He did, but you didn’t know its origin, and were hoping we wouldn’t recognize it and would be tempted to speculate.”

  Wanaka avoided answering; there was no point in getting ’Ao’s new young friends in trouble with their elders, especially if that would make the youngsters more cautious next time. It was beginning to look as though Mata’s crew would be residents of Aorangi for some time to come, and the children might possibly be useful again. All seven of the ships that had, she had supposed, been left behind at the ice city were now in sight. Again, the newcomers seemed
to have been remarkably close together, for no reason the captain could see. They had not been visible moments earlier.

  Wanaka saw no reason for delaying the obvious question.

  “What happens now? Back to your city?”

  Hinemoa replied promptly.

  “We’d prefer it, but we aren’t pirates. Especially since you left so much metal with us, though that wasn’t just generosity, of course. This sort of thing has happened once or twice before in my own memory, and much oftener in history. Usually, we give the finder a full load of whatever is involved, and rights to the first trading sortie with it, in exchange for delaying the trip until we’re satisfied we have the scales worked off the new fish. After all, someone has to take the risk that no one else will want the stuff. If you prefer not to take that chance, we’ll give you half a load of gold and the other half in anything else you want and we can spare. But we very much hope you’ll come back with us—very much. Simply stay with Koku.”

  Mike could sense no threat underlying the words, but he wasn’t quite sure how Wanaka was feeling. He was a little startled himself; “koku” was not the name of any fish in any language he knew. Maybe that ship-naming custom wasn’t Kainui-wide after all.

  Wanaka responded at once, taking no obvious time to make the decision; she might well, Mike judged, have settled on a policy the moment she saw Hinemoa and realized that Mata had been caught.

  “We’ll come back with you. How did you follow us so quickly?”

  The Aorangi people wore narrower breathing masks than the Muamoku crew, and the woman’s smile was obvious. “We took some chance. Your ship’s sailing qualities are obvious. We assumed you had come from here at the usual best-time-daylight sailing and tacking procedure, and your child made no secret of the time you had spent en route. Once we found that our own children had told you about the gold we had little doubt you’d head back here for more—though actually catching you wasn’t the main idea. Finding the fish again was. We weren’t really sure you’d come back; you might not have known enough about the metal to consider it valuable. Did your Old Worlder tell you about it? If we hadn’t found you, and been unable to make our present arrangement, we’d still have loaded up our own ships rather than worry about you any further. I’m glad, however—all of us are, as will everyone on Aorangi be—that we did meet again. I hope you’ll be equally pleased with the arrangement.”

  “Mike told us something of gold’s use on other worlds, but I don’t see what can be done with it here—at least, not specifically. I’m not a pseudolife engineer, of course; I suppose they might want to play with some,” Wanaka replied. “If you want us to prepare the market, you’ll need to supply more specific information for sales pitches. All right?” Mike, to his surprise, had to guess at the meaning of “sales pitch,” which was in no language he knew. Hinemoa seemed to understand it with no trouble.

  “Of course. Anything that might help establish high value.”

  “Is it all right if we harvest more while we’re here?”

  “No. You wouldn’t get much in the time we have, and what you did get would slow us down—not much, but we’re certainly late, and it’s not at all certain when this fish will sink again.”

  “How long will it take to process the new load?”

  “About a year, maybe more. This was a test run, and we knew when—and thought we knew where—it would surface. It wasn’t really a question of how much it had gathered. The next run will involve a deeper search—really deep. We have only a vague idea of gold distribution in the sea, and made this dive to a hundred and fifty kilometers—we think; we don’t have very good density-depth curves for anything below about fifty kilometers or for any latitudes below about sixty.”

  Mike had no way to tell how this information compared with Wanaka’s; if any of it startled her she gave no obvious sign. She accepted the other’s ruling about no further harvesting here—maybe, he thought, that was a sign of something going on in her head—and asked no more questions. Hinemoa, who seemed to be pretty high on her city’s deck of authority, returned to her own vessel, Koku, and began to direct harvesting by her own group. The other ships had now reached the fish. None of Mata’s crew said anything for some minutes; everyone, including ’Ao, was thinking deeply.

  It was the child who spoke—she didn’t use Finger; one of the harvesting ships was close enough so that gestures might be understood, while far enough for the thunder to make vocal speech quite safe.

  “Captain, I don’t think she’s telling the truth now, either.”

  Wanaka nodded slowly. “I think you’re right. If it turns out that you are, you’ve earned some points. Everyone inside. We have some planning to do. If we don’t keep a watch on deck, they’ll be less likely to think we might leave without notice.”

  “If we did, wouldn’t they just follow us again?” asked Mike.

  “Not if Hinemoa was telling the whole truth,” was the answer. The captain and ’Ao entered the air lock. Mike gave them the time it needed to cycle, and followed; Keo came last. Hoani was trying to find some meaning in the captain’s last words, and said nothing after discarding his mask.

  It was Keo who spoke, in a declarative sentence rather than a question. “We’re going all the way to Aorangi.”

  Wanaka nodded. “Until we find out just how, and I hope just why, they’re lying.” Mike had spotted no evidence that Hinemoa had been untruthful, but of course didn’t ask what had convinced the others. When even the child felt sure…

  “I think I’d better go back outside,” ’Ao remarked suddenly. Wanaka raised her eyebrows, but said nothing. “They all stayed pretty close to this place when they started to harvest, instead of spreading way out. I’ll bet they can tell without having to feel under the water pods just which ones are covering metal. I want to watch them and see.”

  Wanaka smiled. “Good. Go ahead. But don’t try to hide the fact that you’re watching; I want them to know it. I won’t say you’re close to being a captain yet, but a twentieth of whatever cargo we have is yours the next time we have a chance to trade.”

  ’Ao vanished into the air lock, glowing visibly. Keo took one of the bunks, Wanaka busied herself with the ship’s log and some of the reference books, and Mike updated his own notes.

  It was the best part of two hours before the captain had finished. Hoani, of course, never finished; the notes were in a constant state of revision, and were almost certainly going to need detailed statistical analysis when he got back to a place where silicon was cheap enough for electronic use.

  When it became evident that the captain was going out again, leaving Keo asleep, Mike caught her eye. He didn’t have to say anything. She nodded permission and gestured him into the air lock first. Neither said anything for some moments after they emerged, either, though both were startled.

  ’Ao was not alone on deck. There was another child with her. It took Mike several seconds to recognize Eru, but less to see what was going on.

  ’Ao was teaching Finger, the supposedly Kainui-wide gesture language, to her friend. It wasn’t worldwide, after all.

  “Back to the planning table,” Hoani muttered. Wanaka couldn’t possibly have heard his words, or even that he was speaking aloud in the ambient noise, but she nodded. Some ideas don’t have to be communicated; they grow from the same seed.

  And some observations are top-class paradigm-changers. Mike was both a historian and a linguist, and this was a Michelson-Morley demonstration in both fields. He suddenly felt that he knew more about Kainuian history than anyone else on the world—temperate, antarctic, or anywhere else.

  The children had noticed the adults and risen to their feet.

  The hostess made proper greetings. “Captain Wanaka, you know Eru. His captain saw that I was trying to understand their harvesting, and sent him over to explain to me. I’ve been overboard with him, but there was trouble under water. You know, these folk don’t use the same Finger that everyone else does! It’s not just a little diffe
rent; it’s so different I can’t make out one sign in five! Have you ever heard of that? I know different cities have sort of different word languages, but we know that and we know why: people came from different islands back on Earth, where different languages were spoken, and like Mike says they’ve been trading words ever since as we traded other things with each other. But Finger was invented right here on Kainui, I thought.”

  “So did I.” Wanaka stopped herself just in time from saying firmly, “It was.” She did respond, Mike noticed, very quickly indeed not merely to the discovery that she was wrong about something, but even to the realization that she might be. The Aorangans were different people, very different, though the captain was nowhere near Mike’s theory of the reason.

  “Talofa, Eru,” she said after the briefest of hesitations. Mike translated to haere mai, the boy nodding acknowledgment to the translator but keeping his eyes on the captain. She went on, “Thanks for helping ’Ao. Would you like to go into the cabin? There is water, and silence. Perhaps Mike Hoani here could help; he knows your spoken language better than ’Ao or the rest of us.”

  The boy accepted both offers with courtesy, and the children disappeared into the air lock. Mike followed. Wanaka remained on deck, leaving him wondering what she might have in mind.

  Whatever this might be, he was too busy to think of it for nearly two hours; the children were eager for spoken language as well as Finger guidance, both sets of lessons were going both ways, and both youngsters were quick enough at learning to keep his attention occupied. Keo slept through it all, until the warning bell from the deck sounded.

  ’Ao and Eru were first outside, Mike last. By the time he was on deck Keo was hoisting sail. One of the Aorangi vessels was only a few meters away, and Eru gestured a polite farewell, closed his helmet, and went overside, to surface in moments beside its outrigger. All of the other ships had already set sail and were disappearing in the haze to the southeast.