Hal Clement - Noise

“But these folks wouldn’t know what I have, and if they don’t know and come for us anyway, they don’t care. How do you know they aren’t pirates?”

“You haven’t recognized that ship yet?”

“Recognized it? How—?” The captain’s eyes turned back to the other craft. Two more people—adults this time—had appeared on its deck, and one had taken the tiller from the child. The other was working sails, and it was already moving toward Mata . Mike allowed himself to smile, and went on.

“I don’t know very much about Kainui ships, so I can’t guess what the chances are of two looking so much alike, but this one is a single-outrigger just like the Aorangi ones. It has its leaf deployed, you can see; why would that leaf be so much smaller than ours?”

“Why would they have a leaf at all? Aorangi, if that’s what you’re trying to tell us this is, uses a different power system!”

“Which they can’t use on their ships; it takes up a lot of their city and would act as a sea anchor. Their gold-fish did have leaves, remember. Why do they have so few ships? Why do those ships stay so close to their city except in emergencies? Having a spread of boats around the city to help slightly off course homing ships doesn’t apply to them. They even gave up early in their search for the very important wandering fish we found.”

“Where did this one get the leaf it has?”

“From you; remember? You gave them a clipping of ours, and told them how to feed it. It’s still growing. That’s if they weren’t able to modify one of their own leaves on short notice.”

“I didn’t think a ship’s leaf would be much use to them that far south. I was just impressing them with what we could do.”

“It wasn’t much use to them—that far south. They were taking chances now on breathing equipment, though not on food; you can see the plant trays. I’m guessing those three people—one of them a child—are all that there are on board. Look again, Captain. That is the ship Hinemoa was using, paint pattern and all. It’s Koku . Ask ’Ao.”

The captain didn’t. “But why? And how under Kaihapa?”

“Why? Because they’re either still having an emergency or have spotted an opportunity. How? How did they get so precisely to Muamoku’s latitude? How did they dare this time to come so far from Aorangi? And, as part of the same question, why do they have so few ships? Want a good, solid guess?”

“Yes! Of course! They’re getting close.”

“They have their own version of ’Oloa. I don’t know what it’s built into, but they have inertial systems and computers at least good enough to handle navigation problems.”

“Then why aren’t they traveling all over Kainui?”

“Because they have only a few of them, and can’t make more. They’ve never had more—at least not many more; they may have lost some ships down through the years, I suppose. I expect what they have was on their original colony ship. Just like your people, they used what was available. They had pseudolife skills, an ocean, and a lot of ice, and all the carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and other light elements anyone could ask. They needed a power source, and circumstances steered them in the temperature-difference direction, so eventually they had to hug the ice cap. Sort of like Earth; we headed in a direction that let us develop and get addicted to heat-engine technology. That set us to finding better and better ways to make and use heat engines—powered by nonrenewable fuels. I wonder if they had a period when they used mercury instead of gold for ballast? I’d like to study that part of their history. Gold’s more plentiful than mercury in the universe, but maybe not this near the surface of the ocean here—”

“You’re wandering, Hoani.”

“Sorry. Back to why you should get into trading mode. They’d like to have more ships. To them, that means more inertial systems. They’d never be patient enough to circumnavigate the planet every time they lost track of home, just as an Earth native now would never, except in really unusual circumstances, have the patience to spend weeks crossing a continent—I hope you know what that is.”

“I’ve had some history.”

“They can’t get silicon on this world; its compounds aren’t soluble enough in your acid ocean. Maybe you should devise traveling fish; you could give them real guidance systems now—though I suppose they still wouldn’t know where to go to find their cities. Aorangi wants to trade for silicon, I’d bet all I have but my family, and so far at least Muamoku is the only place they can do their trading. Nowhere else has physical offworld contact. They probably do know that gold has trade value on other worlds, even if it’s only to provide a value scale. Whether they’ll pay more for raw silicon or finished navigation units I wouldn’t guess; you’re the expert in that field. Either way I can see Muamoku and one Captain Wanaka doing rather well for themselves and quite a few other people. So, Captain, I suggest again—get into trading mode. They can see your ship is carrying cargo. I doubt that they know or care what it is, but they’re not stupid and must realize that their gold-fish is the most likely place for you to have found it. They should see no reason for you to distrust them; was a single one of your suspicions about what they were trying to do ever really confirmed? Think it over—quickly. They’re almost here. What are you going to say to Hinemoa?”

“Nothing,” cut in ’Ao placidly. “Hinemoa isn’t there.”

Three faces quizzed the child silently, and a triumphant expression appeared around her mask.

“That’s Eru,” was her completely adequate explanation.

“Heave to, Keo dear,” was Wanaka’s response. “Maybe they’re not even traders. It’s surprising they even have any; I wonder where Hinemoa got her skill. Aorangi shouldn’t know what trading is.”

She was wrong, of course. Mike had little time to think independently for the next few hours of translation, but it did occur to him that in a city that must contain several thousand people there should be plenty of opportunity to acquire sales competence without developing a foreign trade.

The seeming fact that nobody had been trying to sell his labor to the community during the recent emergency, but had simply done what obviously needed doing, did suggest something interesting about the city’s culture. It might be the most civilized on the planet; he should go back to add a few more footnotes to his observations, obviously.

But that would be later, he decided as a storm swept over the linked ships and ’Ao and Eru went to work with their shovels.

The adults aboard Koku were one sailor, named Rua, and one of the teachers who had guided Mike around his city earlier, called Wherepapa. The latter, amazingly to Wanaka and Keo, was in command, at least in the sense that he gave orders about destination and any activities like mining or not if the chance arose; Rua was captain in maritime emergencies. Eru was his apprentice, though Wherepapa could give him instruction when there was time available from ship’s duties. Mike was impressed by the fact that neither adult seemed bothered by any aspect of the arrangement.

He was even more impressed by the discussions between the captain and the teacher. Wherepapa might regard trading as an exercise in logic, but he had picked up enough background facts—Mike wondered how long that had taken him—to make his logic work.

He admitted that Aorangi badly wanted silicon, but pointed out that the materials for gallium arsenide, or boron and nitrogen for doping diamond, could probably be obtained from Kainu’s own oceans. Wanaka questioned the possibility of making or working with diamond at pseudolife temperatures. He suggested that Aorangi could sell gold for electrical wiring; the captain pointed out that copper was a somewhat better and silver a much better conductor. Wherepapa countered that gold was far more corrosion resistant than either and wouldn’t need replacement so often, if ever. Wanaka was not sure this was desirable.