Hal Clement - The Nitrogen Fix

It didn’t seem a good idea to ask those approaching, though it didn’t occur to him that they would lie.

He noticed the footgear they were wearing, but it meant nothing to him; he had not had Kahvi’s experience, and the smaller Bones had not included the glass detail in their conversations.

Fyn was spared the need of deciding what to say; one of the approaching Hillers opened the conversation. The Nomad had not recognized him, but evidently they had met.

“I’m sorry you chose not to stay with us, Fyn. I think if you’d listened you’d have understood why we wanted you.”

Earrin raised his eyebrows, though his mask hid the gesture. “It seemed to me I did know,” he replied. “You weren’t too happy about my use of the word, as I recall, but you wanted me to help you capture a friend of mine for experimental use.

There was no sharp reaction to the scientific word this time, but there was little friendliness in the voice.

“I see you’ve met up with Genda, the World’s major mouth. Been getting your faith renewed?”

“Not exactly. Some of us Nomads listen critically to people — not everyone really knows what he’s talking about, you realize.”“And naturally, if they don’t know, you don’t listen.” The sarcasm was obvious.

“When people waste oxygen on purpose I don’t need Genda or anyone else to tell me their judgment needs polishing,” the Nomad said quietly. “Look, friend, I didn’t come to argue. If you’ll give me the plants we agreed on as payment for the metal and glass I see you’ve been using, I’ll listen to anything you want, but most happily to an order for more material. You can straighten out anything else with Genda, or Mort here, or anyone and everyone else in the city. You can all go on straight oxygen as far as I care. I’d be happier, of course, if you’d leave the jail here use as a breathing place when we make deliveries. We don’t absolutely need it, but we always feel happier when a spare is in reach, and our own nearest one is several kilos away. We’ll put up with this situation if we have to, but the offense to our feeling about waste may cost you more on future deals.”

“And if we don’t want to make any future deals?” asked a woman.

“We’ll live with that. There are other cities.” The woman pulled in her horns. “I suppose we could leave old-style air in one building, especially since we have another almost ready right beside it. Your glass was very useful, and I suppose Genda and that other woman are spoiling the air in the jail anyway.

We do find you useful, I admit — more than we realized originally. You do know about the Invader that was following you, don’t you?”

“Yes, but as you know I don’t call him an Invader. He’s a friend of mine, and has been for some years. I’ll be glad to tell you all I know about him, but I won’t help you experiment on how to kill him. He says he didn’t have anything to do with the world’s air change, and I believe him.”

“Why believe him rather than us?” These Hillers seemed neither surprised nor excited at the revelation that the “Invaders” were intelligent enough to talk. It was, after all, consistent with their basic dogma. “I know you Nomads will believe anyone, but can’t you see that if those things had destroyed the world’s air, they’d certainly deny it?”

“No, I can’t. The reason I believe Bones rather than you wasters lies in what you just said — you believe there are reasons for lying. That, as far as I’m concerned, says all I need to know about you.”

The Hiller was silent. Mort and Zhamia, who had been brought up with the respect for truth necessary for any reasonably large society but who lacked the Nomads’ extreme attitude, were amused at the oxygen-waster’s discomfiture.

Their daughter was greatly impressed, looking at Earrin with admiration but saying nothing.

Another of the sandal-wearing group took up the debate.

“We don’t say lying is good,” she pointed out, “but you can’t blame us for realizing that there are people — and things — who don’t always tell the truth. We can admire idealism, but we’ve found the need to be a little realistic ourselves.”

“So you believe what you’ve decided to believe.” Fyn was plainly sarcastic, too.

“We don’t know what to believe, but the Invader idea fits what facts we have and seems reasonable.

We are willing to have more information — ”

“You mean it’s a hypothesis and you need more data, though you didn’t like to admit that earlier,”

Earrin said rather brutally. Mort and his wife were properly shocked; their daughter felt the pleasurable thrill which a child of an earlier millennium would have gotten from hearing an adult utter a string of four-lettered words. “Sorry, you folks,” Earrin added hastily. “I know this sort of thing bothers you, but the fact is that these people are trying to be scientific, and when you come right down to it I have to do the same to stay alive. I can’t really blame them, except for hedging about it. The old words offend people, but they originally stood for common-sense actions. It’s necessary to — pardon me — experiment in order to learn facts, and we need facts so as to be able to do the right things to stay alive.”

“Then you agree with us!” one of the women exclaimed.

“No. I still believe Bones. I believe in some of your attitudes. I was taught the Faith in Surplus school, you know, and you can’t expect someone who was aborted for the crime of being the third child born to his parents to feel much love for — ”

“But they taught you how to live outside in that school, didn’t they?”

“They taught me what to believe, not what to do. If I hadn’t had the luck to meet another Nomad within a couple of days after being thrown out of Beehive, I’d have been a patch of slime on the Mainericks thirteen years ago. Don’t get me started on Surplus schools. My wife says pretty much the same about yours here at Great Blue. She only lived because she was older when she left, and there are a lot of jails around which she’d already had a chance to get to know. Now you characters are spoiling those.”

“Making the air richer isn’t spoiling them.”

“Arranging that new Nomads will need three or four times normal oxygen concentration to have rationally is certainly spoiling them.”

“But when the world gets back to normal, they’ll be ready for it!”

Earrin, having no idea of the original composition of Earth’s atmosphere, had no reply to this, but Mort did.

“The old atmosphere wasn’t all oxygen. If you combine elementary chemistry with elementary arithmetic you find it couldn’t have been more than a quarter. All you’re likely to do if you try is run the total pressure up and make more trouble. To be all oxygen, you’ll have to get rid of the nitrogen. Have you plans for that?”

Two of the young people laughed, and the discussion degenerated into noise while dogmatic statements flew back and forth.

Earrin kept silent; he liked Mort, but in spite of Bones’ account he was not at all sure about the Hill dogma. He had grown up to treat all scientific terms as dirty words, but as he had come to learn what most of them meant — largely second-hand, from Kahvi’s reading — he had realized that they described the policies he himself had to follow to keep alive. He did not, of course, stress this fact in his dealings with city-dwellers.

It was his fear of wasted action and time which finally caused Earrin to interrupt the polemic. It was increasingly obvious that neither side would convince the other.

“Save breath!” he called loudly, at last. “Mort, these kids have spent years convincing themselves that they’re right. You’re not going to talk them out of it. Even Bones couldn’t talk them out of it, though he might possibly suggest experiments which would dent them. You others — Mort is a nice, devout Hiller, with lots of common sense buried in his devotion, and you’re not going to get him to help with anything that goes against both the faith and the common sense. Find something else to argue about; arguments are a waste of time unless they’re fun.”