Hal Clement - Noise

“ Kumu, ” suggested the captain.

“ Pilikia, ” was Keo’s rather cynical suggestion.

“We have trouble enough,” retorted the child and the captain, almost together.

“I know. Sorry. I’ll settle for Mike’s suggestion.”

’Ao approved immediately, perhaps out of courtesy, and the other suggestions were dropped, partly because a converging spout and thunderstorm made maneuvering necessary and upset the sea-anchor arrangement once more. ’Ao scurried back to Mata with an armful of oxygen canisters to replace the ones she had used while away, and lashed them and herself in place. Very seldom does only one thing happen at a time.

But practically nothing hectic occurred for several days—at least, nothing out of the ordinary, though no one had reason to be bored, especially when at the sea-anchor controls.

Mata’italiga grew visibly. The captain checked over the seeds that would provide its protective coatings and stop its own growth. She, Keo, ’Ao, and even Mike held several discussions over the best order for applying them, all realizing that any given selection could be wrong. Mike became very fluent in Finger, and while no formal declaration about it was yet made, effectively reached the status of able-bodied seaman. Even ’Ao came to trust him at the sea-anchor lines.

Mata’s growth would have to be stopped at a rather precise size, in order to install the old cabin properly. They were, Wanaka and Keo judged, within two or three weeks of this point when temptation reared its head.

And the captain yielded.

Wanaka was a highly skilled sailor and a more than competent trader; she had contributed significantly to the general wealth of the city of Muamoku in recent years. For reasonable decisions, one needed reliable data, and she knew this perfectly well. She became less sure of herself when data seemed less than reliable, but usually made decisions anyway, as she did this time—quite aware that doing so might be expensive or fatal. She knew, in other words, that life was sometimes a gamble, and accepted the fact. She also accepted the fact that failure to decide was itself a decision, and therefore a gamble.

The decision this time was clear enough, considering both the available and unavailable facts. What was left of Malolo drifted into contact with a patch of weedy jelly rather similar to the iron source that had given Mike his first experience with Kainuian metal recovery. It was not quite a collision; the mine, or fish, whose species no one on board could recognize offhand, was riding the poleward surface current, while the ship was holding against this as well as could be managed with the sea anchors. The current itself was not very strong, however, by this time. They were much farther south than Wanaka liked; their “navigation” had been far from perfect.

The pseudoorganism was much larger, apparently, than the iron and copper sources Mike had seen before. Like those creatures, this one’s body was a huge and gelatinous expanse floating a meter or so below the surface of the sea, covered even more completely with the energy-drinking “leaves” than the iron-fish had been. Its total size could not be made out from any one spot. Leaf shape and color were markedly different from the others.

Wanaka didn’t consider this at first, however; the immediately meaningful fact was that the sea anchor, or at least its control lines, had been trapped in the jelly. Malolo ’s remaining pieces as well as the growing Mata had essentially become part of the drifting organism.

Specifically, they were drifting with it, away from the equator as if they weren’t already farther than anyone wanted. No sun-sighting was needed to know that; ’Oloa confirmed the fact when asked. The doll was being consulted much more frequently now; Mike suspected that he had not been told about its nature and uses earlier because he had had no need to know, and might have said something unwise when mixing with the crew of another ship. Neither Wanaka nor Keo had confirmed or denied this suspicion because, being Mike, he hadn’t asked.

The drift of the organism was not rapid, and would presumably become less so as the low-salinity current weakened and grew saltier with changing latitude. They would not, Hoani supposed, be carried too far from the latitude where they had met this fish; he guessed they could separate themselves from the thing in a day or two at the most, perhaps much less.

Like Wanaka, he had reached a conclusion with inadequate data. Unlike her, he didn’t know it.

Just how long it would have taken to get untangled from the pseudoorganism he never found out. Wanaka issued no orders on the subject. She questioned Keo intensively—excessively, Mike felt—about his certainty that he had never seen or heard of this particular species of fish. She even asked ’Ao. She sent the mate overboard, and even went herself, to collect leaves and leaf stems and bits of the thing’s tissue, and to look for pods of water and metal. She spent time in the cabin consulting a voluminous reference work, one of the few items of written material aboard, apparently without result.

There were plenty of water pods to be found, but no metal.

And that was the lack of data that guided Wanaka’s decision.

Well, Mike thought quietly, it was her profession.

“We don’t need to worry about drifting away from this thing,” the captain remarked slowly, after much fruitless trying to identify it. “Mike, you stay on the ship in case anything does happen. Keo, ’Ao, and I will examine every bit of it we can reach, for however long it may take us, to find out just what besides water it gives. For a start, though, you and Keo deploy the leaf; you’ll have to pull it out, of course, since there’s no relative current now to drag on it. ’Ao, check the food; we won’t be in motion, and we may have to do something about getting new sea water into the growth tanks.”

Mike ventured a question, not seeing how this one could be silly.

“How long do you think we’ll stay with this thing?”

What he could see of her face looked determined. “We have no idea yet about how big it is, but we’re not leaving until we’ve either checked every square meter of it or found out what metal, or metals, it traps. It’s got to be something really rare, or we’d know already.”

“It couldn’t be something designed just to desalt water?” The question popped out before he meant it to, but Mike decided that it couldn’t be regarded as silly, either. She evidently didn’t; she paused before answering.

“I doubt it. The drinkable water is usually incidental to reducing metal ions, and I don’t see much use in building a creature only for water and turning it loose at sea. Even for a city, there’s usually enough hail from storms to keep people in drink and baths. That’s one reason cities don’t usually let themselves drift too far north or south of the temperate storm belt. I suppose you could think of some excuse for a simple desalter, but this one is big enough for a city, it seems to me, and surely wouldn’t be floating free. Anyway,” she admitted frankly, “just the possibility of rare metals is enough to keep me right here. We’re staying ’til we’re sure, one way or the other. I hope you’re not too bored after the first few weeks.”

Hoani was a little startled at the suggested time, but tried not to show it. He had the sense not to say it, but still hoped they’d encounter another ship now and then; his own project could always use more language data.

He wondered how Wanaka and Keo would react to another ship’s appearing. The captain was clearly feeling possessive about this creature, just as the crew they had met earlier had seemed to feel about their copper mine. Wanaka had left this to them without argument, presumably as a matter of custom. If this creature were as potentially valuable as she seemed to hope, custom might not be enough for others—or conceivably, he suddenly thought, for her. He remembered the captain’s mentioning people “with a one-sided notion of trading.” This was a remarkably gentle description of piracy, after all.