Hal Clement - The Nitrogen Fix

Finally, however, they decided that there had been no witnesses to the presence of child or native, and went to work on the cargo.

The copper was in sacks similar to the anchors, each containing twenty of the two-kilogram nuggets brought ashore by the pseudoliving metal-collecting robots which still bred and operated in the oceans.

The change in Earth’s air had been much harder on natural life than on the artificial varieties. Fifteen of the sacks were on the raft. Kahvi dropped each in turn into the meterdeep acid, and her husband carried them ashore, not lifting them above the surface until it was unavoidable. Bones moved some of them as close to shore as possible without appearing above the surface.The glass, similarly wrapped, consisted of whole window panes salvaged from the harbor bottom by the native. Vast numbers of these still lay where they had settled into the mud as the houses disintegrated around them. There had only been enough oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere to make the oceans about one-hundredth-normal in nitric acid as it combined with the nitrogen, but rain, rivers, and even estuaries had often been much more concentrated during the fix. Metals in general were now completely dissolved, except for the nuggets which the pseudoliving collectors were still reducing in their mindless way. Glass and ceramics, of course, could still be found.

By the time the last of the cargo was above high water mark the sun was low in the west. The jailbird had not reappeared, and if there had been any Hillers at the fire site they had shown no interest in the jail side of the ridge. There had been no more smoke, and no sounds, from that direction.

Kahvi, who had helped carry material ashore as soon as everything was off the deck, straightened up and stretched. Then she looked at the jail and frowned slightly.

“He never came out, did he?” she commented.

“I wonder what he’s doing in there. He’s had plenty of time to fix that oxygen tray.”

“I’ll bring him some glass,” Earrin answered the unspoken thought. “I want to see what he’s like, anyway.”

“I’m afraid of him,” Kahvi admitted. “I’ll go along and watch from the roof. If he tries to do anything to you I can threaten to cut it open.”

Earrin raised his acid-yellowed eyebrows. “I know you love me, but that’s going pretty far. He probably wouldn’t believe you could do it, any more than I do. Besides, you’ve been working pretty hard, and Dan’s been alone quite a while.

You go eat and rest, and make her happy for a while. You do have other responsibilities besides me.”

“I know, but I don’t always want to remember them.”

“Sorry, dearest. I can look after myself this time, I think. Would you say this character is any stronger than I am? Was there anything he could use for a weapon?”

“I don’t suppose he’s as strong as either of us normally, but if he’s breathing straight oxygen there’s no telling what he can do. Anything that can be picked up can be a weapon, I’ve heard. I’m just afraid of him; he doesn’t think rules are for him, so there’s no telling what he’d do.”

“All right. I’m not afraid of him yet, but I may be after I’ve seen and talked to him, and I’ll be careful anyway. Tell you what-I’ll tell Bones what I’m doing. He’ll want to watch, since the jailbird is something new. He’ll help if the fellow tries to do anything to me.”

“Are you sure? He may just go on watching. That’ll be something new for him, too, remember.

Besides, what if other Hillers come and see her? We can’t afford to let them know we associate with natives.”

“Why should they suppose we’re associating? Natives are always watching things — even Hillers must know that.”

Kahvi frowned in thought for several seconds. She ran her fingers through her short, acid-yellowed hair where it was not covered by mask straps, and her dark brown eyes looked searchingly into Earrin’s blue ones. “All right,” she said at last, “but get back as quickly as you can, please. I suppose I did promise him the glass.” She turned away and started to wade toward the raft. “I’ll tell Bones. She’s probably under the raft playing with Dan. Don’t go in until she’s with you.”

Earrin nodded, and picked up one of the bundles of glass panes. He was no longer even amused at his wife’s choice of pronouns when referring to Bones; neither of them knew which gender, if either, was appropriate. His use of masculine and hers of feminine had been mostly a joke when it first started; now it was merely habit. If Bones noticed the difference in language, the Watcher had never commented about it.

The brassy patch in the sky which marked the sun’s position was almost against the hill which had concealed the fire, as Earrin approached the jail again. He glanced behind him as he reached the air lock pool, and saw Bones’ bulk surface briefly with one huge eye turned shoreward.

Kahvi had passed the word. He turned back to the building. “This is Earrin Fyn the Nomad,” hecalled loudly. “I’m bringing the glass Kahvi promised. May I come in?”

“I’ll be glad to see you, Nomad Fyn. Come along.” There had been no hesitation in the answer, and no suggestion of surprise in the speaker’s voice; if anything, it was more of a bored drawl. Earrin turned once more, signalled briefly to the partly visible native, and lowered himself and his burden into the pool.

Kahvi had described the man, so the centimeters of extra height and kilograms of lacking weight were no surprise to Earrin. As the woman had said, the jailbird’s hair was long enough to suggest that outdoor attire was not usual for him, and dark enough to indicate little if any exposure to nitric acid rain.

A glance around the room confirmed the other point; there were three different types of photosynthetic oxygen producers among the trays, all of them pseudolife, but neither plant nor tubing to provide free nitrogen. Several hoses did reach through the air lock, but their inner ends entered tanks in which pseudolife forms precipitated carbon dioxide as calcium carbonate — they simply provided fertilizer for the oxygenmakers. Earrin could not detect the excess oxygen by smell, of course, but since the total pressure must be about the same inside as out — the roof tissue was neither bulging nor sagging — there could be no doubt about what they were breathing. The Nomad deliberately slowed and shallowed his respiration, and hoped he wasn’t being obvious about it. He had removed his mask from habit as he emerged from the pool, and hoped he had suppressed all signs of the urge to clap it back on as he realized what the air inside must be.

If there had been any such faux pas, the Hiller seemed not to notice it.

“Thanks for the glass,” he said. “It was foolish of me to tell your partner that it should be a long time before I’d need any patch material. There is never any way to be sure, is there? I hope I didn’t shock her too much. You Nomads are very sensitive about what’s right and what’s wrong, aren’t you?”

“Being wrong is very often being dead,” Earrin pointed out. “Kahvi and I have travelled enough, though, to know that what is right outdoors may not always be so in a city. We hope she didn’t offend.”

“Not at all,” the boy assured him. “I do know that mere customs aren’t necessarily right. Most of my fellow citizens, as you must have noticed on our earlier visits, are a bit reluctant to accept or adopt anything new, but I and some of my friends don’t feel that way at all. That’s why we wanted your metal and glass.”

“Even the others aren’t completely down on new things,” Earrin pointed out. “I remember occasionally selling them a new product, and we are still eating from a pseudo plant which was developed here.”