Hal Clement - Noise

“I really must be twins,” Hoani muttered again, more softly this time. Hinemoa looked slightly puzzled, but did not ask for an explanation. Courtesy again; the man had obviously not been speaking to her. He recovered himself after a moment.

“Then you have other gold-fish. Why were you so concerned about this one?”

“The others are moored to the city, can’t get as deep as we’d like or wander as far as we’d like, so they collect very slowly. This one had a modification that was supposed to guide it back to the edge of the ice cap. It didn’t work as well as we’d hoped. That’s another reason we’re grateful to your captain; we’d actually given up hope of getting it back. We recovered the guiding equipment from the fish the first time you helped us find it.”

Mike felt he might be getting cured of the trader’s paranoia he had been acquiring from Wanaka. Hinemoa couldn’t be lying; everything fitted so perfectly and made so much sense. This place should certainly be trading with the temperate-zone cities, though it was a little hard to see just now what either had that the others might want very badly. Cities riding on normally grown floats certainly didn’t need gold or much of anything else for ballast; Aorangi, with its thermal-gradient power source, didn’t need other metals for battery electrodes even if its latitude made pseudolife photo-synthesizers relatively ineffective. But at least, neither could really have anything it needed to keep secret from the others. The city rulers would realize that even if the traders didn’t—if they were different people.

“How is any guide method supposed to work on this world?” he asked. “There is no long-distance communication, and nothing is going to do celestial navigation from kilometers under the sea, certainly. A smeller like the one we thought Malolo had picked up wouldn’t work at any great depth in your thermal and salinity turbulence. How?”

Hinemoa smiled, perhaps regretfully.

“Sorry. ’Fraid I can’t tell you,” she answered.

And Hinemoa really must be a city official, not just a trader. So much for reason. Mike changed the subject, but not because he wanted to.

“When do the ships dock again?” he asked.

“Not until we have a good supply of ice away from the cap and down where it’s useful. Half a year, maybe.”

“But—”

“You said the ships. We’ll have the children back inside the lock in a few days. They have their noise armor, and can swim from the ships. The crews will have to stay aboard, of course; we can’t afford to lose any vessels. It takes a long time to grow new ones, and some parts can’t be replaced at all. The ship seeds are incomplete, though I’m afraid I can’t tell you in just what way.”

“How—oh, all right. How about why ? Just plain bad design?”

Hinemoa looked thoughtful for a moment. Then, “Well, you’re not a sailor any more than I am and I won’t give details, but I don’t think it’s possible to design a seed which will grow every single bit of a ship or any other complicated machine. Weren’t you and your crew lucky to have salvaged a good deal of your original ship’s equipment? Didn’t you need to use more than one seed, anyway? Could you have replaced everything— in life support, for example?”

“I don’t know. I got the impression that Wanaka and Keo weren’t too worried, but maybe that was because we did have all the stuff we couldn’t grow.”

“I’d almost guarantee it was. I won’t be any more specific, but we can grow all the new hulls and sails and paint we want. They just wouldn’t be very useful at sea.”

“Maybe Wanaka can supply the seeds you need. If she can’t from our present stock, surely she could get them from Muamoku or any other of the temperate-zone cities. I don’t suppose they’d charge any more than the traffic will bear.”

“I doubt very much that they could, but I’m not going to tell you why.”

“Because you don’t want anyone to know just what you’re lacking? I suppose because they would charge the ocean for it?”

Hinemoa shook her head negatively.

“They couldn’t supply it. And now, no more discussion. I may have said too much already. I know you’re not a sailor but I don’t know all your background, and I have mixed feelings about how worried I should be. Why don’t you go back to your quarters and get some food and sleep? We’re going to ask you to help move ice later on, if whatever loyalty you feel to your captain allows it, and it will be hard work even for you.”

“You said we were approaching the ice cap. I’d like to have a look at that first, if there’s no objection.”

“That’s all right. I’ll be busy; you can find your quarters by yourself, I gather.”

“Sure. No problem.”

Hinemoa nodded, gestured a farewell, and took a shovel from a nearby laborer. Mike glanced at the suns, estimated their height above the invisible horizon, and made his way south. This happened to be the current direction of the lake-cum-harbor, which was nearly enough empty so that swimming and wading across seemed easier than going around. The iceberg’s treacherous footing emphasized the preference. Whenever possible he worked his way uphill, and eventually found himself able to see the water’s edge in every direction.

This had not been the case earlier; much of the edge of the berg had been hidden behind closer ice hummocks even from its highest points. Now, he realized, the city was riding considerably higher than before and much that had been under water was now exposed. The sea was farther away.

Just coming into view through the haze was the ice cap. He had assumed it would be about at water level, since what had frozen at the ocean surface could hardly be sunk very far by hail landing on it and would presumably be melted from below by warmer and saltier water about as fast as the hail piled up above.

This was true enough, but the equilibrium did bring the ice sheet’s surface half a meter or so—a little more in places—above the water. This meant, he realized, extremely large and heavy fragments to haul aboard the berg and slide to the collection pits. With, it seemed, nothing but muscle power.

Hinemoa was right; he’d better get food and sleep. He had no trouble in finding either the air lock or, once inside that, his former quarters, and never knew just how long he slept. He was awakened by ’Ao’s shaking his shoulder. He sat up in some surprise.

“You’re back already? Hinemoa said you youngsters would have to swim.”

“Most of us did. A few stayed on the ships. I’m going back pretty soon, but the captain wanted me to talk with you.”

“Important, I expect.”

“She says so. At least, she wants you to tell me anything you think is important that’s happened since the launch.”

“I don’t know for certain what’s important. She’s right about there being only seven ships in their fleet. Hinemoa admitted they couldn’t make more, but wouldn’t say why. They use their gold mainly for ballast, to keep the low end of the city pointing down. You can see how much they’d need for that. Tonnes and tonnes. No other city could use even a tiny part of what they have to collect, and Aorangi needs that badly so I don’t see yet what they’d trade any of it for. If Muamoku or any other city were collecting gold itself, then maybe something could be worked out, but these people have a lot of gold-fish tethered to the city and except for times like right now they always have plenty for themselves.”

“All right. I’ll tell her all that. Anything else? And do you think you’d have a chance to swim back to Mata ? Or would they try to keep you? Or can’t you guess because they haven’t said anything about it to you?”