Hal Clement - Noise

Wanaka did not abandon the separated deck, to her passenger’s curiosity. This had tipped back to horizontal and floated awash when the mast stays had been cut. It seemed incapable of carrying anything useful; even little ’Ao’s weight pushed a side or corner under the surface unless she balanced herself very carefully at its center. She was amusing herself trying this when the captain ordered her rather sharply to get back to work.

The three adults were now all out of the sea on the remaining hull; it was not necessary to use hand language. Mike could interpret tone as well as words. The child complied instantly without even looking indignant. Her doll, once more perched on her shoulder, made no comment either.

Mike, fully appreciating his own ignorance, decided not to ask about the deck just then. Also, he kept quiet on another point: after sunset there had until now been a light at the top of the mast whose purpose seemed obvious, but there was no suggestion of replacing it on, say, the roof of the cabin, though even the fainter sun was now almost below the horizon. He wondered what the chances might be of their being run down by another vessel in the dark.

His reluctance to look ignorant overweighed his slight worry that the others might actually have overlooked that matter. Once the still floating hull had been attached to the sections of mast and the latter in turn to the floating cabin, he entered with the others and settled down to the usual evening activities.

“Usual” was not quite the right word; it was the first time all four of them had been inside at once for more than a few seconds since leaving Muamoku. Also, there was much more than usual to do with the life-support equipment. Mike couldn’t help much with this, but watched and listened to explanations, mostly from ’Ao, as the adult crew members toiled. The least pleasant of the explanations made it clear that they would possibly be eating suit-type synthetics until further notice once the parting gifts from the other ship had been used up. The pseudoplants that produced the more palatable substances might or might not survive their recent immersion; they had been on the deck, and Keo had not gotten them out of the water immediately. The realization that the suit synthetics had been most carefully designed to provide all possible human nourishment needs for an indefinite period did not offset the evident fact that taste had not been considered in the listing of those needs.

Or possibly, Hoani told himself, the notions of what tasted good had also diverged in the last few generations from Earth-human-normal. He promptly corrected that term in his mind to Hoani-personal-normal. There is a broad spectrum of “normal” human tastes.

Eventually the most urgent tasks seemed to be done, and everyone ate once more, quite slowly this time. Then the child was firmly gestured toward her hammock, and Keo without orders tumbled onto a bunk. Mike decided it would be tactless to claim the other, even though Wanaka showed no signs of being ready for it. She settled down to paperwork— Malolo ’s log, mainly. Mike began to put his own copious mental notes of the day into permanent form, up to the minute.

He finished before Wanaka did, but eventually she stopped writing, too, and looked up from her desk.

“A nonstandard day,” she remarked with no sign either of annoyance or humor. “You must have a few questions.”

“Some,” he admitted, “but I’m figuring out quite a bit for myself. If the kid isn’t going to spend any more time at a masthead, maybe you could have her start teaching me Finger.”

Wanaka nodded. “Good thought. I doubt that either Keo or I will be able to give you as much attention as we hoped.”

“That’s all right. She knows enough more than I do to be an appropriate teacher anyway. But I can’t help wondering whether she could tell me much about what turns the oxygen I heard Keo mention into a danger. I could only infer from the spoken words after the episode under the hull that she didn’t know as much as she should about it, so maybe you should tell me.”

The captain smiled wryly. “She can tell you as much as either of us could. She was dangerously careless, and I had to downgrade her for it. But I may as well give you the picture.

“It’s nasty stuff. You probably know that not everyone on Kainui is completely agreed about everything.”

“I’m ready to take that for granted. You’re human.”

“Some people want to get a lot of oxygen into the air and at least get rid of the carbon monoxide. This, to be managed in less than a good many generations, would require pseudolife able to reproduce itself indefinitely—the sort of thing we told you back at the iron-fish that most of us consider unacceptably dangerous. Others remember too clearly the unforeseen side effects of that sort of seeding on a lot of worlds, including the Old one. The result, since there’s never been any way to stop people from using knowledge once it’s been acquired, is that some folks, and some whole cities, have gone ahead designing and releasing pseudos able to break down water, and others to take the oxygen and react it with CO before the freed hydrogen made a nuisance of itself, interfering with the redox we use in the city and on board here. Usually these things have been grown as symbionts. Unfortunately, while officially designed systems have so far behaved fairly well, some of those designed by hackers—individuals with less interest in social approval than in displaying their own skill—have gotten loose with some pretty sad side effects. No doubt their planners meant well, but having to keep a project more or less under water divides attention, and not knowing what other people were doing in the field—well, you’ve probably heard the story of a couple of nations having political disagreements back on the Old World. One of them sabotaged the guidance system of a missile being tested by its enemies, and targeted its makers’ capital, not knowing that another department of its own government had already sabotaged the warhead. Not an unusual event in complex societies, or even in our quite simple ones.”

“So there are oxygen-producers loose on the planet, not all of them putting their product to its best use.”

“Exactly. And several types will leave the oxygen free to attack many other sustances than carbon monoxide. For the last couple of centuries cities as well as ships have had to keep a constant watch for such stuff. Nowadays we also have to watch out for people who dream up organisms which will act as predators for such oxygen-producers. These also, of course, have to be unlimited breeders. I’ve heard an old aphorism about the perils of riding a tiger, and I can see its implications even if I can only guess what a tiger is.

“Anyway, we’ve picked up a dangerous oxygen-maker. It’s lucky it takes so much energy to break up water, and the things that don’t dispose of the oxygen properly usually don’t get much of it back. I do wish I could promise we could get you back to Muamoku. But we told you about that before we started.”

“You did. No blame. I may have been safer crossing nineteen hundred parsecs between the stars, but I doubt it.”

“Anything else you’re curious about?”

“Lots, but you couldn’t cover it in one night. I gathered the kid did something out of line? Part of what went on was in Finger, and most of the rest out of my hearing in the thunder. Don’t give me details that you consider none of my business, but I wouldn’t want to make any verbal slips that might either bother the kid or undercut discipline.”

Wanaka glanced at the hammock and gave a terse account of what had happened. She skipped her own doubts about the punishment, since she was not completely certain that ’Ao was asleep. More to the point, she was quite certain that the doll wasn’t.