by Hal Clement
The arrival of the lookout sent Barlennan back to the radio, but there was no better idea than his own to be had. This did not surprise ‘him at all. He brushed Rosten’s apologies aside, and set to work along with his crew. Not even then did any of the watchers above think of the possibility of their agent’s having ideas of his own about the rocket. Curiously enough, such a suspicion by then would have come much too late — too late to have any foundation.
Strangely, the work was not as hard or long as everyone had expected. The reason was simple; the rock and earth blown out by the jets was relatively loose, since there was no weather in the thin air of the plateau to pack it down as it ihad been before. A human being, of course wearing the gravity nullifier the scientists hoped to develop from the knowledge concealed in the rocket, could not have pushed a shovel into it, for the gravity was a pretty good packing agent; it was loose only by Mesklinite standards. Loads of it were being pushed down the gentle inner slope of the pit to the growing pile around the tubes; pebbles were being worked clear of the soil and set rolling the same way, with a hooted warning beforehand. The warning was needed; once free and started, they moved too fast for the human eye to follow, and usually buried themselves completely in the pile of freshly moved earth.
Even the most pessimistic of the watchers began to feel that no more setbacks could possibly occur, in spite of the number of times they had started to unpack shelved apparatus and then had to put it away again*. They watched now with mounting glee as — the shining metal of the research projectile sank lower and lower ifa the heap of rock and earth, and finally vanished entirely except for a foot-high cone that marked the highest level in which machinery had been installed.
At this point the Mesklinites ceased work, and most of them retreated from the mound. The vision set had been brought up and was now facing the projecting tip of metal, where part of the thin line marking an access port could be seen. Barlennan sprawled alone in front of the entrance, apparently waiting for instructions on the method of opening it; and Rosten, watching as tensely as everyone else, explained to him. There were four quick-disconnect fasteners, one on each corner of the trapezoidal date. The upper two were about on a level with Barlennan’s eyes; the others some six inches below the present level of the mound. Normally they were released by pushing in and making a quarter turn with a broad-bladed screwdriver; it seemed likely that Mesklinite pincers could perform the same function. Barlennan, turning to the plate, found that they could. The broad, slotted heads turned with little effort and popped outward, but the plate did not move otherwise.
“You had better fasten ropes to one or both of those heads, so you can pull the plate outward from a safe distance when you’ve dug down to the others and unfastened them,” Rosten pointed out. “You don’t want that piece of hardware falling on top of anyone; it’s a quarter of an inch thick. The lower ones are a darned sight thicker. I might add.”
The suggestion was followed, and the earth scraped rapidly away until the lower edge of the plate was uncovered. The fasteners here proved no more troublesome than their fellows, and moments later a hard pull on the ropes unseated the plate from its place in the rocket’s skin. For the first fraction of an inch of its outward motion it could be seen; then it vanished abruptly, and reappeared lying horizontally while an almost riflelike report reached the ears of the watchers. The sun, shining into the newly opened hull, showed clearly the single piece of apparatus inside; and a cheer went up from the men in the screen room and the observing rocket.
“That did it, Barl! We owe you more than we can say. If you’ll stand back and let us photograph that as it is, we’ll start giving you directions for taking out the record and getting it to the lens.” Barlennan did not answer at once; his actions spoke some time before he did.
He did not get out of the way of the eye. Instead he crawled toward it and pushed the entire set around until it no longer covered the nose of the rocket.
“There are some matters we must discuss first,” he said quietly.
XIX: NEW BARGAIN
Dead silence reigned in the screen room. The head of the tiny Mesklinite filled the screen, but no one could interpret the expression on the completely unhuman “face.” No one could think of anything to say; asking Barlennan what he meant would be a waste of words, since he obviously planned to tell anyway. He waited for long moments before resuming his speech; and when he did, he used better English than even Lackland realized he had acquired.
“Dr. Rosten, a few moments ago you said that you owed us more than you could hope to repay. I realize that your words were perfectly sincere in one way — I do not doubt the actuality of your gratitude for a moment — but in another they were merely rhetorical. You had no intention of giving us any more than you had already agreed to supply-weather information, guidance across new seas, possibly the material aid Charles mentioned some time ago in the matter of spice collecting. I realize fully that by your moral code I am entided to no more; I made an agreement and should adhere to it, particularly since your side of the bargain has largely been fulfilled already.
“However, I want more; and since I have come to value the opinions of some, at least, of your people I want to explain why I am doing diis — I want to justify myself, if possisible. I tell you now, though, that whether I succeed in gaining your sympathy or not, I will do exactly as I planned.
“I am a merchant, as you well know, primarily interested in exchanging goods for what profit I can get. You recognized that fact, offering me every material you could think of in return for my help; it was not your fault that none of it was of use to me. Your machines, you said, would not function in the gravity and pressure of my world; your metals I cannot use — and would not need if I could; they lie free on the surface in many parts of Mesklin. Some people use them for ornaments; but I know from talk with Charles that they cannot be fashioned into really intricate forms without great machines, or at least more heat than we can easily produce. We do know the thing you call fire, by the way, in ways more manageable than the flame cloud; I am sorry to have deceived Charles in that matter, but it seemed best to me at the time.
“To return to the original subject, I refused all but the guidance and weather information of the things you were willing to give. I thought some of you might be suspicious of. that, but I have heard no sign of it in your words. Nevertheless, I agreed to make a voyage longer than any that has been made in recorded history to help solve your problem. You had told me how badly you needed the knowledge; none of you appeared to think that I might want the same thing, though I asked time and again for just that when I saw one or another of your machines. You refused answers to those questions, making the same excuse every time. I felt, therefore, that any way in which I could pick up some of the ‘knowledge you people possess was legitimate. You have said, at one time or another, much about the value of what you call ‘science,’ and always implied was the fact that my people did not have it. I cannot see why, if it is good and valuable to your people, it would not be equally so to mine.
“You can see what I am leading up to. I came on this voyage with exactly the same objective in my mind that was in yours when you sent me; I came to learn. I want to know the things by which you perform such remarkable acts. You, Charles, lived all winter in a place that should have killed you at once, by the aid of that science; it could make as much difference in the lives of my people, I am sure you will agree.
“Therefore I offer you a new bargain. I realize that my failure to live up to the letter of the old one may make you reluctant to conclude another with me. That will be simply too bad; I make no bones about pointing out that you can do nothing else. You are not here; you cannot come here;
granting that you might drop some of your explosives down here in anger, you will not do so as long as I am near this machine of yours. The agreement is simple: knowledge for knowledge. You teach me, or Dondragmer, or anyone else in my crew who has the time and ability to learn the material, all the
time we are working to take this machine apart for you and transmit the knowledge it contains.”
“Just a-”
“Wait, Chief.” Lackland cut short Rosten’s expostulation. “I know Barl better than you do. Let me talk.” He and Rosten could see each other in their respective screens, and for a moment the expedition’s leader simply glared. Then he realized the situation and subsided.
“Right, Charlie. Tell him.”
“Barl, you seemed to have some contempt in your tone when you referred to, our excuse for not explaining our machines to you. Believe me, we were not trying to fool you. They are complicated; so complicated that the men who design and build them spend nearly half their lives first learning the laws that make them operate and the arts of their actual manufacture. We did not mean to belittle the knowledge of your people, either; it is true that we know more, but it is only because we have had longer in which to learn.
“Now, as I understand it, you want to learn about the machines in this rocket as you take it apart. Please, Barl, take my word as the sincerest truth when I tell you first that I for one could not do it, since I do not understand a single one of them; and second, that not one would do you the least good if you did comprehend it. The best I can say right now is that they are machines for measuring things that cannot be seen or heard or felt or tasted — things you would have to see in operation in other ways for a long time before you could even begin to understand. That is not meant as insult; what I say is almost as true for me, and I have grown up from childhood surrounded by and even using those forces. I do not understand them. I do not expect to understand them before I die; the science we have covers so much knowledge that no one man can even begin to learn all of it, and I must be satisfied with the field I do know — and perhaps add to it what little one man may in a lifetime.
“We cannot accept your bargain, Barl, because it is physically impossible to carry out our side of it.”
Barlennan could not smile in the human sense, and he carefully refrained from giving his own version of one. He answered as gravely as Lackland had spoken.
“You can do your part, Charles, though you do not know it.
“When I first started this trip, all the things you have
just said were true, and more. I fully intended to find this rocket with your help, and then place the radios where you could see nothing and proceed to dismantle the machine itself, learning all your science in the process.
“Slowly I came to realize that all you have said is true. I learned that you were not keeping knowledge from me deliberately when you taught us so quickly and carefully about the laws and techniques used by the glider-makers on that island. I learned it still more surely when you helped Dondragmer make the differential pulley. I was expecting you to bring up those points in your speech just now; why didn’t you? They were good ones.
“It was actually when you were teaching us about the gliders that I began to have a slight understanding of what was meant by your term ‘science.’ I realized, before the end of that episode, that a device so simple you people had long since ceased to use it actually called for an understanding of more of the universe’s laws than any of my people realized existed. You said specifically at one point, while apologizing for a lack of exact information, that gliders of that sort had been used by your people more than two hundred years ago. I can guess how much more you know now — guess just enough to let me realize what I can’t know.
“But you can still do what I want. You have done a little already, in showing us the differential hoist. I do not understand it, and neither does Dondragmer, who spent much more time with it; but we are both sure it is some sort of relative to the levers we have been using all our lives. We want to start at the beginning, knowing fully that we cannot learn all you know in our lifetimes. We do hope to learn enough to understand how you have found these things out. Even I can see it is not just guesswork, or even philosophizing like the learned ones who tell us that Mesklin is a bowl. I am willing at this point to admit you are right; but I would like to know how you found out the same fact for your own world. I am sure you knew before you left its surface and could see it all at once. I want to know why the Bree floats, and why the canoe did the same, for a while. I want to know what crushed the canoe. I want to know why the wind blows down the cleft all the time — no, I didn’t understand your explanation. I want to know why we are warmest in winter when we can’t see the sun for the longest time. I want to know why a fire glows, and why flame dust kills. I want my children or theirs, if I ever have any, to know what makes this radio work, and your tank, and someday this rocket. I want to know much — more than I can learn, no doubt; but if I can start my people learning for themselves, the way you must have — well, I’d be willing to stop selling at a profit.” Neither Lackland nor Rosten found anything to say for a long moment. Rosten broke the silence.
“Barlennan, if you learned what you want, and began to teach your people, would you tell them where the knowledge came from? Do you think it would be good for them to know?”
“For some, yes; they would want to know about other worlds, and people who had used the same way to knowledge they were starting on. Others — well, we have a lot of people who let the rest pull the load for them. If they knew, they wouldn’t bother to do any learning themselves; they’d just ask for anything particular they wanted to know — as I did at first; and they’d never realize you weren’t telling them because you couldn’t. They’d think you were trying to cheat them. I suppose if I told anyone, that sort would find out sooner or later, and — well, I guess it would be better to let them think I’m the genius. Or Don; they’d be more likely to believe it of him.”
Rosten’s answer was brief and to the point
“You’ve made a deal.”
XX: FLIGHT OF THE “BREE”
A gleaming skeleton of metal rose eight feet above a flat-topped mound of rock and earth. Mesklinites were busily attacking another row of plates whose upper fastenings had just been laid bare. Others were pushing the freshly removed dirt and pebbles to the edge of the mound. Still others moved back and forth along a well-marked road that led off into the desert, those who approached dragging flat, wheeled carts loaded with supplies, those departing usually hauling similar carts empty. The scene was one of activity; practically everyone seemed to have a definite purpose. There were two radio sets in evidence now, one on the mound where an Earthman was directing the dismantling from his distant vantage point and the other some distance away.
Dondragmer was in front of the second set, engaged in animated conversation with the distant being he could not see. The sun still circled-endlessly, but was very gradually descending now and swelling very, very slowly.
“I am afraid,” the mate said, “that we will have serious trouble checking on what you tell us about the bending of light. Reflection I can understand; the mirrors I made from metal plates of your rocket made that very clear. It is too bad that the device from which you let us take the lens was dropped in the process; we have nothing like your glass, I am afraid.”
“Even a reasonably large piece of the lens will do, Don,” the voice came from the speaker. It was not Lackland’s voice; he was an expert teacher, he had found, but sometimes yielded the microphone to a specialist. “Any piece will bend the light, and even make an image — but wait; that comes later. Try to find what’s left of that hunk of glass, Don, if your gravity didn’t powder it when the set landed.” Dondragmer turned from the set with a word of agreement; then turned back as he thought of another point.
“Perhaps you could tell what this ‘glass’ is made of, and whether it takes very much heat? We have good hot fires, you know. Also there is the material set over the Bowl — ice, I think Charles called it. Would that do?”
“Yes, I know about your fires, though I’m darned if I see how you do burn plants in a hydrogen atmosphere, even with a little meat thrown in. For the rest, ice should certainly do, if you can find any. I don’t kn
ow what the sand of your river is made of, but you can try melting it in one of your hottest fires and see what comes out. I certainly don’t guarantee anything, though; I simply say that on Earth and the rest of the worlds I know ordinary sand will make a sort of glass, which is greatly improved with other ingredients. I’m darned if I can see either how to describe those ingredients to you or suggest where they might be found, though.”
“Thank you; I will have someone try the fire. In the meantime, I will search for a piece of lens, though I fear the blow when it struck left little usable. We should not have tried to take the device apart near the edge of the mound; the thing you called a ‘barrel’ rolled much too easily.”
Once more the mate left the radio, and immediately encountered Barlennan.
“It’s about time for your watch to get on the plates,” the captain said. “I’m going down to the river. Is there anything your work needs?”
Dondragmer mentioned the suggestion about sand.
“You can carry up the little bit I’ll need, I should think, without getting the fire too hot; or did you plan on a full load of other things?” “
“No plans; I’m taking the trip mainly for fun. Now that the spring wind has died out and we get breezes in every old direction, a little navigation practice might be useful. What good is a captain who can’t steer his ship?”
“Fair enough. Did the Flyers tell you what this deck of machines was for?”
“They did pretty well, but if I were-really convinced about this space-bending business I’d have swallowed it more easily. They finished up with the old line about words not really being enough to describe it. What else beside words can you use, in the name of the Suns?”
“I’ve been wondering myself; I think it’s another aspect of this quantity-code they call mathematics. I like mechanics best myself; you can do something with it from the very beginning.” He waved an arm toward one of the carts and another toward the place where the differential pulley was lying.