Hal Clement - Noise

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.

“ 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.”