Charles Sheffield - Tomorrow and Tomorrow

For the same reason that they were not constantly swallowing each other. Maybe the test hadn’t failed after all. Maybe Carp had taken it — and passed, by changing his smell to one acceptable to the Snarks.

And what was he doing now? He was still squatting by the heap of leaves, apparently lost in thought.

Drake noticed that the Snarks had begun a common activity. They were removing plants from the piles and dragging them across to make a master heap. In the first sign of peaceful cooperation that he had seen, four of them were using their many pseudopods to shape the heap. The sickle-shaped tails patted and smoothed the edges to round them off and provide a compact, flat-topped structure.

It only became obvious what they were doing when they were finished, and Carp moved across to lie down on the heap.

“Milton! They’ve made him a damned bed. ”

“So it would appear.”

“But how did he tell them what to do? You said that the Snarks have no language.”

“Apparently I was wrong. Do you wish me to — abandon the experiment?”

The Servitor, like other composites, could not handle certain notions. What Milton meant was, Do you wish me to destroy Carp?

“Of course not. He found an answer that’s a lot more effective than aggression: he has the Snarks working for him. I want you to go ahead with the next test. Pick him up — as soon as he’s had some sleep.”

If Carp was indeed proposing to sleep. He was stretched out comfortably on his back on the bed of plants, arms raised to cushion his head on his open hands. The dark, expressionless eyes were open, gazing up into a gentle downward drift of CO 2snow.

He was awake, Drake realized. And thinking… what?

The Snarks were Graybill’s most feral and dangerous species, but they were not the planet’s only predator. The soundbugs were big gray invertebrates with formidable exoskeletons. They ruled the “tropics,” where

Graybill’s sun could, at zenith, sometimes melt mercury.

The soundbugs were solitary hunters. “They do not resemble the Snarks in appearance, form, or habits,” Milton assured Drake. “Also, they hunt at night, and they use primarily sound and echo-location, like the bats of your own home world. It seems unlikely that smell will play any part in Carp’s survival.”

“If he survives.” Drake had seen a close-up of a soundbug, and he shriveled inside at the idea of fighting one. The animal was like a hard-shelled scorpion, about two meters long and supported by a dozen strong and leathery legs. It weighed three or four hundred pounds, most of that the thick shield of dense armor on its back and belly. Like the Snarks, it swallowed its food whole; unlike them, it could not expand its body and mouth because the massive exoskeleton was of fixed width. Instead, two constriction rings at the front of the maw crushed the prey, living or dead, to a size where it could be engulfed.

“It is my opinion that our Carp will do more than survive. He will triumph.” Milton had initially been dubious about the prospects of any combination of Snark and human. The idea that such a creature might be of value in the battle with the Shiva had seemed preposterous. Now the Servitor’s position was changing. Milton had become a supporter, rooting for their creation and ready to believe that it could do anything.

The Servitor was ready to order Carp’s release. At Drake’s insistence, all activities would still be carried out using remote handling equipment. As an extra precaution, the pilotless flier that had taken Carp from the Snark colony to the equator contained no sentient components. Milton and Drake were directing operations from a station several hundreds of kilometers away and monitoring everything with ground-based, airborne, and spaceborne observing systems.

Graybill’s long twilight was beginning when the door of the aircar automatically opened, and Carp was free to step out onto the crumbling, orange-gray surface.

The planet’s atmosphere was too thick for most stars to shine brightly through. Night observations had to rely on thermal and microwave signatures, and those pictures tended to be grainy and monochrome. Milton was already complaining of their poor quality and augmenting the results with sonic imaging. Drake worried that those high-frequency sound beams might interfere with the soundbug’s own sonic pulses.

Milton reassured him. “It is a different frequency regime. The worst that can happen is occasional signal aliasing, and the soundbug’s interpretation system has enough redundancy to compensate for that. Do not worry. The soundbug will be able to see Carp.”

There was a problem with Milton’s assessment. Unless Carp came out, no one would see him at all; and at the moment, nothing moved in the clearing where the flier stood.

“What’s he doing in there?” Drake asked at last.

“I am sorry, but I am unable to answer your question. The flier’s imaging systems are directed toward observation outside the car. Maybe we should change that in the future. But it is all right. Here he comes.”

A shadowy figure was emerging from the flier’s open door. Carp paused just a few feet from the flier, turning his head slowly from side to side.

“He won’t see clearly for much longer. And when it is fully dark, he will lack our night sensors.” Milton increased the image intensity. The scene became brighter, but no less grainy. “What can he be doing?”

The figure on the screen was bending low, touching the ground.

“He’s digging,” Drake said. “I have no idea why, but I’m sure that he does. Don’t forget that his memories are derived from experiences on the surface of Graybill. He also has instincts, things going for him that we know nothing about. He recognizes a dangerous environment without being told. He knows about soundbugs and maybe he has a way to deal with them.”

But a big part of Carp also derived from Drake Merlin. What would Drake do, himself, if he were outside and alone in the darkness?

Drake had information that Carp lacked. He knew that a soundbug, as big as any on Graybill, had its den a couple of kilometers to the west, across a narrow but deep hydrocarbon stream that ran to within thirty meters of the clearing. Worse than that, the soundbug’s nightly hunting path took it across the stream and through the clearing. They had picked this particular site to make sure that there would be an encounter.

Drake decided he could answer his own question: If he were outside as dark approached, he would climb back into the flier, lock the door, and wait through the long fourteen hours until dawn. Strangely, that seemed to be what Carp was doing. He had raised from his stooped position and moved back inside the aircar. But the door of the car remained open.

Now Drake could see the result of Carp’s digging with his hands. The soil of the clearing was soft and crumbling for only the first few inches, then it turned to a hard tangle of roots and rocks.

“He’s coming out again,” Milton said softly.

Drake could see that for himself. Carp had emerged from the car. He ignored his digging and headed west, toward the stream. He seemed to be following faint marks on the ground. When he reached the stream he stood on its bank for a few seconds, looking first up and then downstream. Graybill’s plant life had never developed woody trunks, and it was limited in height to a couple of feet. Carp had a clear view of both directions. Upstream, to the north, the ground sloped rapidly higher, and at its narrowest point the stream became a series of fast-moving rapids. Downstream the flood slowed and widened to a series of pools and shallows.

Carp stepped into midstream and waded north. The turbulent flow pushed against him, rising past his knees. At one point the stream became narrower and deeper, and he was in almost to his waist. After standing at that deepest point for a few moments, he turned and allowed the liquid flow to push him back downstream. He waded past his point of entry, on to where the flow was slower. There were calm, deep pools here, and the whole stream was much wider.