Fossil

Chapter Twelve And Word Unknown Guide Straighter Than A Print

Barrar resolved the Erthuma’s unuttered wonder.

“S’Nash told me about that question, Hugh, for reasons of its/his own which I understand fairly well. I assure you I wasn’t eavesdropping. Please come inside, now; I have a request. Mahere, Jayree, and I do need transportation, but not just for ourselves. There are things I very much want you to take to Janice so that she can examine and date them. I’d stay here myself rather than have them left.”

The Samian turned back to the building. He said nothing to his Erthumoi companions, but they followed him. Hugh, Rekchellet, and S’Nash, after a brief hesitation on the Naxian’s part, trailed them inside.

There was no air lock; the whole interior was under Habranhan conditions. Its only furnishings were benches and tables, nearly all carrying instruments and tools and specimens. The largest work surface bore a block of ice, and both Hugh and Rekchellet had an inkling of what they were about to see. They were almost right.

It was not a complete Habra body this time, just a portion of thorax, with much of the head and two right wings attached. Even the Erthuma and Crotonite could see that there were differences between this body and the natives they knew; the head was narrower, the remaining eyes much larger. The wings were much shorter than was usual on the natives they had seen, leading to the speculation that this being might have been smaller or at least lighter than they. Hugh could understand Ged’s interest; this had to be a key find in Habranhan prehistory, and a proper description of it would ensure anyone a reputation.

“Where did you find it? How deep?” he asked. “Let me call Jan; she’ll want to see it.”

“Then you’ll carry it back and do the measuring for me? Wonderful! But I didn’t find it myself. Ennissee did.”

Rekchellet stiffened, and his wings spread slightly.

“Where?” repeated the Erthuma. “And I suppose he found the other one, that was left in the truck, too?”

“Yes. We wanted that dated without having Spreadsheet-Thinker bothered. Has that been done, by the way?”

“Jan has figures,” Hugh evaded. “What about this one? Can we see the site?”

“I’m afraid not. Our means of reaching it is gone.” Barrar paused, possibly for effect. “It was under the ice at a depth of two hundred sixteen point four one kilometers.”

Hugh and Rekchellet were not just startled. They were more dumbfounded; perhaps reasonably, S’Nash seemed more interested in watching them than in pondering Ged’s statement. Hugh glanced at the other Erthumoi to see how the words affected them, and judged that they were not even listening. They had found seats across the single room and were waiting with apparent indifference. It would hardly be news to them.

“How did you get a shaft that deep? It can’t be anywhere near here; there are no pump buildings or waste piles or…”

“There was no shaft. Ennissee had financed the development of a digging vehicle which could carry explorers, usually him and one of his Erthuma helpers. It had seismic and other sensing equipment to tell of fossils or other objects nearby, and such details as its depth below the surface. He collected a great deal of material at various depths from this area, mostly root fragments, but there are a few entire bushes, too. Everything is in this building. Janice must examine it all. This specimen, however, is the prize.

“It was the mole — the digging machine — which destroyed itself just before your arrival. I do not look forward to telling Ennissee.”

“You don’t know what caused it to blow? Was anyone in it, or using it, at the time?”

“No one was aboard, and its power was off except for minor things like maintenance heaters.”

“Did it have any sort of automatic control, like the truck?”

“Oh, yes. Ennissee sometimes sent it down on test trips unoccupied. It also had remote control, and could be operated from here.” The Samian stepped over to another worktable bearing an obvious directing console and several vision screens.

“Did you ever go down in it yourself? And did you ever pilot it yourself?”

“Yes to both, though not on really deep journeys.”

“I suppose it had a standard fusion unit for its basic power.”

“So I always assumed. I don’t really know, but it seems likely. What else could there be?”

“Those aren’t supposed to be dangerous. I wonder what could have happened.” Hugh was frowning, and it did not require a Naxian to perceive his mystification. He thought for several seconds while his fingers rested. Then, “Did Ennissee have a training simulator to go with these controls, or did he teach you on actual trips?” It was a last-hope question.

“I learned by driving the real machine, under his supervision. It was not difficult.” There was another pause.

“Did he teach you any emergency procedures?”

“No. I have no idea what emergencies he had envisioned, nor what he would have done about them.”

The last hope seemed to be gone. Hugh could not believe that any rational being would design a machine without backup equipment for the more predictable sorts of failure, but he had no specimen of the machine to examine in the hope of guessing what was predictable. Equipment, even fusers, did sometimes malfunction. The trouble was that the mechanisms which used the fusion-produced energy were more usually at fault, and the fact that the building he now occupied was still intact suggested strongly that the explosion had not been nuclear. However, no further look at the explosion crater seemed likely to furnish informative remains.

“All right,” said Hugh. “Get your specimens and their documentation together. We’ll get the flier back and load them aboard. I’m afraid it will be pretty crowded; we still have a lot of food. What would you have done, Ged, if we hadn’t shown up? Wouldn’t Spreadsheet-Thinker be missing you fairly soon?”

“There was a transmitter in the mole. There are several people at Pitville who could have come for me in a flier when I called. Without communication, as I said when you arrived, I was in trouble.”

“Are you going to let Spreadsheet-Thinker add this project to her picture, now that it seems to be finished?”

“I’ve been thinking about that. Eventually, yes, but I’d prefer to wait until I get detailed measurements from Janice…”

“And have written your own report, crediting her and Ennissee, of course.”

“Naturally.” Not for the first time, Hugh wished he had the Naxian power. He hated himself for it, but was beginning to feel that he couldn’t trust anyone, and wishing that he had more of his wife’s built-in civilization. He said no more, but went outside and gestured to the aircraft waiting a few hundred meters away and forty or fifty above the ice. It approached immediately; Janice had been watching.

He boarded, and as quickly as possible summed up what had just happened. His wife, who should have been delighted, frowned thoughtfully.

“It sounds exciting, but you don’t like coincidences any better than I do. I take it you want me to be very, very critical of all this material.”

“I do. A plausible motive isn’t enough for a conviction, of course. I never cared any more for Ennissee, from what I heard of him, than Rek does; but Ged and S’Nash I’ve always thought were pretty sound people. I don’t like suddenly having to wonder which one is less reliable.”

Janice nodded silently, and rearranged her features to show proper interest for this Samian’s benefit as they entered the building. This was presumably a waste of time with S’Nash, but within moments of her seeing the fragmentary Habra body the Erthuma no longer had to pretend. Her full attention and interest went into examining it for many minutes.

“I’m not a biologist,” she said, looking up at last, “and Plant-Biologist will have to get his eye into this; but as far as I’m concerned, the sooner we’re back at Pitville the better. Tell you what — maybe we could send for another flier? This one has to stay with the Habras and Crotonites, of course. Maybe you should stay out here with them anyway, Honey. You came to look around, and haven’t spent much time at it.”

“Getting rid of me?”

“Oh, no. Come back whenever you’re ready. I just didn’t want you to feel you’d wasted the flight and food and time. You haven’t as far as I’m concerned, but I didn’t think you’d be satisfied.” She kept a perfectly straight face. Hugh glanced at the Naxian, but it/he chose not to be helpful.

“All right.” Hugh could play any games his wife could, he felt sure. “Ennissee is presumably tied down for a while, so Rekchellet’s in no hurry. The others expected to stay a while anyway. We’d better ask, though — Ged, did your borer start any holes at other places around here? Ones we could check? It would be nice to know what disturbance it made of the ice it went through, and that sort of thing. Maybe we should get some ice specimens from the inside of its holes for Jan to test. Maybe she should stay and get them herself.”

“Oh, no. You can do that perfectly well.” Janice looked again at the icebound material still on the benches. “I’ll wait until you’ve called for another transport before I move this…”

“It might be better to have Ged call,” Hugh keyed. The Samian showed no Erthuma-detectable reaction to the implication even he must have perceived, but set his walker in motion toward the flier. Hugh, embarrassed, found himself following close behind, hoping that his motive was not obvious. They went aboard, and within five minutes Ged announced that another machine, large enough to hold Janice and the specimens, would be with them shortly. How the administrative head had reacted to the new information, which Ged had tent along with the request, was not mentioned.

“I’ll have to go back to Pitville with your wife,” he added. “I can’t stay out of touch with Spreadsheet-Thinker for the days it will lake you to get back. There’s no use my talking to your wife, though, until she has the information and I can start writing. She may want to give some guidance in the wording, too, I expect; I suppose it will really be her article, too. We won’t have to wait for Ennissee, though; I’ll simply give him support credit for developing the mole.”

“And operating it.”

“Well, of course.”

“Mightn’t he want to describe some of the under-ice search activities and problems?”

“Well, yes. We’d belter consult him, at that. Do you suppose he can talk while his wing treatment’s going on?”

“Rekchellet could,” Hugh assured him, and rejoined his wife, shaking his head gently. He had encountered jealousy in the exploring field, but it had always seemed to him that there were enough worlds to go around. Greed for publishing credit was not exactly arcana to him, but he had never before met it face on.

The other craft appeared overhead, flashed past trailing its sonic shock wave, slowed, and settled beside the building. The loading took a surprisingly long time, as Janice took extreme precautions to make sure that all Ennissee’s notes remained with the right specimens, or as nearly with them as they already were. Her initial examination had left some doubt about some of them, which the Samian was sometimes but not always able to resolve. Neither of the Erthumoi seemed able to help, though it was hard to be sure with no appropriate translator modules available. They had made trips in the mole, Barrar had said; but they seemed to be mainly muscle and hand labor in Ennissee’s project.

Eventually, however, Janice and Barrar entered the new flier, whose Locrian pilot had never left it, and moments later it had vanished in the east.

Hugh, rather deflated, set up the search arrangements which had been planned earlier in case nothing had been found, and waited for dreary hours while the activities neared and reached their anticlimax. He spent some of the time exploring two or three tunnels made by the mole, whose location had been provided by Barrar, but obtained little information. For one thing, they were extremely steep and smooth-walled; descending them on foot was hazardous, not so much because falls might be dangerous as because return might be impossible. Foresight worked.

The scouring of the area by his flying personnel provided nothing except basic science information; the patterns of the ice surface itself offered fascinating clues to what might be going on below, and Hugh thought a little wistfully about the seismic studies S’Nash had proposed earlier. Maybe, with Barrar revealing himself more widely as a would-be Respected Opinion candidate, something might be done about that without anyone’s having to be underhanded.

But right now, nothing having any imaginable bearing on the Truck Problem was appearing. Actually, it looked as though the problem itself were pretty well solved in all but minor details. Had Barrar, for example, actually been responsible in some subtle way for finding the lost Crotonite? Or was he merely trying to give that impression?

Once again, Hugh felt the acute discomfort of realizing that he could no longer completely trust someone.

Perhaps. The “perhaps” was the worst part.

The trip back to Pitville was a little less boring. There was room for more people on board now, with Janice and much of the food gone; this was fortunate, because the two Erthuma had to be carried.

There was no adequate way to talk with them; their translators seemed to work only between Ennissee’s speech, which none of Hugh’s Crotonite group knew, and their own Erthumoi languages — different ones; they could talk to each other readily enough, but had to use translators. They had kept to themselves during the stay at the explosion site, eating their own supplies — their environment armor was not full-recycling — and sleeping on air cots which were set up in one corner of the building; but when Hugh gathered his flying group and sent them in close formation on an eastward course, with the once again rising Fafnir ahead and to their left, the pair had no trouble interpreting the situation. They pointed to themselves and to Hugh’s aircraft; when Hugh nodded assent, they salvaged some cartons of food from the building and went aboard.

Their lack of appropriate translator modules helped ease the boredom of the flight; Hugh made a serious effort to learn the language of one of them, something he had never really attempted before and had no real idea how to do.

The one who had offered her help in the exercise answered to the name of Mahare Chen. She had a slightly different skin shade and facial shape, especially around the eyes, than the Falgan norm, but Hugh had seen Erthumoi displaying far wider appearance variations and was conscious of this only as a recognition feature. Before they had been exchanging noises and sketches for very long it was clear that she claimed to be from the original home world of the Erthumoi. Hugh had learned a little Swahili as part of required Human History during his basic education, but this proved not to be the right tongue, and progress remained slow.

Rekchellet’s drawing skills proved useful occasionally, but the Crotonite could not remain aboard for long at a time. He left his pad and stylus with Hugh, somewhat reluctantly the latter felt sure, and the equipment did resolve an occasional impasse in hand signs. Mahare was a better artist than Hugh, but far below Rekchellet’s level. Once or twice even S’Nash was of some help by explaining that a particular sketch had produced more humor, or concealed anger, than enlightenment, though it/he could never give a reason for the reaction.

Personal names and most of the immediately appropriate nouns came across fairly quickly. Hugh could name Naxian and Crotonite and human being and Habra in the Erthuma language without making his listener laugh at his accent; he could name the planet and speak of flying and walking and crawling and a few other activities, since the others were not wearing recycling armor and the flier lacked equivalent facilities and had to land occasionally. The world’s name sounded like “I-Bawl;” a Crotonite was a “Snutibat,” and a Naxian an “Eednite.” Sometimes there was more than one word, not surprisingly; when Rekchellet drew the specimen which Janice had taken back to Pitville ahead of them, Mahare called it a “Palaksee” or a “Pilldahn,” though she had called the living Habras “Needulz.” She had also glanced at her companion and laughed for no obvious reason. Hugh had no success relating any of these sounds to his own language; apparently even the comparatively few centuries separating Falga’s population from Earth had allowed, or possibly caused, too much linguistic evolution to permit easy tracing.

The whole flight time was not, by any means, spent at language lessons; Mahare sometimes slept, sometimes chattered at length to her tall male companion through their translators, sometimes sat and thought or simply watched the Habranhan icescape below or sky above as they flew. If there was any connection between the two other than their common employment by Ennissee, It never became obvious.

Both passengers knew the word “Pwanpwan,” and used it often enough to make Hugh realize that they hoped to get there eventually. He assumed that there would be no great difficulty about this, but tried not to make any signs likely to be taken as a promise that he would carry them there either himself or at once.

As it turned out, this was no problem. Hugh reported arrival to Ged as they slanted down toward the lights of Pitville, mentioning his passengers, and did not even have to arrange quarters for them after he landed. The small flier which had brought him and Reekess back from Pwanpwan was waiting beside the warehouse, as was Ged Barrar himself. The Samian shepherded the two Erthumoi aboard with almost discourteous haste, and they were gone before Hugh had a chance to more than wave a farewell.

“You’ll be less surprised later,” S’Nash remarked. The Naxian’s words were surprising enough right then. Clearly it/he knew more about everything going on than had been made clear so far, but this sounded almost as though the devious character intended to provide answers it/himself. Hugh refused to worry about it; he had not seen Janice for several Common Days. He left the unloading of what was left of the supplies to the warehouse people.

As far as his wife could tell, the specimens from Ennissee’s dig were very old. This merely meant older than the carbon dating limit; there was no reliable way to go farther with organic specimens. Habranhan “Fossils” were entire frozen remains, not mineralized. The only radionuclide in them with a respectable half life was potassium-forty, and there was very little of that; Habranhan life made do with an extremely low mineral content, not too surprisingly. The argon-forty which was one of its decay products could diffuse fairly rapidly, on the geological time scale, from the immediate area of its production; cross-checking with calcium-forty, the other product, pointless on other worlds because it was ubiquitous, might help a little here, but still all one could hope for was a minimum age. Actually, Janice had found only a little of the potassium and too little of its decay products to measure. The main specimen was certainly older than one hundred sixty thousand Common Years, with another faint probability that it was older than five hundred fifty thousand; but she had no faith whatever in the latter figure.

Such of Ennissee’s plant material as she had had time for was all much younger, safely inside the carbon limits. This, surprisingly, included that which seemed to be associated with the Habra remains. She had no explanation for this. She was still correlating her various results with Ennissee’s collection notes.

“What do our biological friends say?” asked Hugh.

“Just what you’d expect. Irritated because this or that part is missing, so they can’t check this or that theory of Habra evolution.”

“But they are sure it is a Habra ancestor?”

“They seem to be taking it for granted. I may be doing them an injustice, of course.”

“It’s a pretty key point. If there is this much evidence that the Habras did evolve here, that undersea project gets very important indeed.” Janice had not heard about this; Hugh had been too occupied otherwise to remember to tell her what he had learned from Bill and Shefcheeshee on his earlier return from Pwanpwan. He clarified the story now and she nodded.

“Have you told Ged about your dates yet?” her husband asked.

“Yes. There seemed no reason not to.”

Hugh was less sure of this, but reflected that it would take the Samian time to get his article written, if it were to be of degree caliber. If Ged didn’t realize that, which he might not, then perhaps it would be just as well if Janice’s name didn’t appeal on the work. In any case, it was a safe bet that the author would be back with more questions, since Janice was still at work. No need to worry.

In fact, there suddenly seemed no need to worry about anything. The original frozen body, beyond serious doubt, had been brought back in the truck and foisted on them more or less as a dress rehearsal. It would be nice to know where it had actually come from — Ennissee’s mole? From how deep under the ice — but that information could be worked out of Ennissee. It would be a little surprising if both specimens had been found near the Cold Pole.

And Hugh suddenly realized how surprising it was. His own native assistants could never have reached that point without the supplies in the aircraft, or some complex arrangement of food caches such as he had set up earlier for the Crotonites. That was something to be checked immediately through Ted; there might be historical records of such an expedition, or even several, though it was surprising that nothing of the sort had been mentioned in earlier discussion of the truck specimen.

If the other find represented a remote ancestor of the present natives there would of course be no historical record for it — but how had it flown that jar? It had smaller wings than the present species, and at least superficially a smaller brain. How could the Habra equivalent of a Lucy have made such a journey? Where had the specimen actually been found? Granted the general Habranhan chaos, which presumably extended to the surface and subsurface glaciers of the night hemisphere, what were the chances of a primitive flier from the ring continent being carried by a storm to or shortly past the terminator and then borne by ice currents all the way to the Cold Pole?

The first chance was probably respectable, granting Habranha’s storms. The second seemed remarkably close to zero. The seismic study of the Solid Ocean discussed a year or so ago by S’Nash suddenly seemed urgent.

Ennissee would have to be questioned in such a way as to establish the truth or falsehood of his answers beyond reasonable doubt, no argument about it. Rekchellet could be trusted to help with that, since it would make the other Crotonite look subservient to an Erthuma. There could hardly be a better revenge in Crotonite eyes.

The truck might bear further study; it could have been used to transport the second specimen as well. In any case it ought to be either returned to the Port, or have its location reported to the owners. That was not really Pitville responsibility, but Hugh’s people had been involved, and it would be a courtesy. No further excuse should be needed.

Maybe Jan and I should fly out, Hugh thought, with someone to take the aircraft back, and drive the truck back here ourselves. That could be fun; not even a Locrian within dozens of kilometers. We need a vacation from the diving juice. I’ll have Rek give me a quick lesson on that autodriver — no, he doesn’t know how to make it avoid elevation data— wait, that’s all right, if we’re just setting a new route and not back-tracing—

Janice thought it a great idea, though there were many small specimens yet to be dated. Barrar made no fuss this time about a few minutes of flier use; both had rather expected this after recent events. Most unfortunately there was no chance to dejuice themselves; inspection of the Pits was still important, and no one else could yet do it. Hugh, exasperated, had a long conversation with Ted, who seemed to know the people working on the Habra cold protection problem. He got some encouragement, but no assurance of any immediate solution. The Erthumoi decided to take the break anyway.

Third-Supply-Watcher flew them out to the truck, which was still where they had abandoned it, let them off, and waited until they had powered it up and signaled that everything was in working order. The Locrian promptly departed, and the couple began setting up the controls.

It was some time later, with the vehicle well on its way back to Pitville, that an object in the living quarters caught Hugh’s eye.

“That’s the tech supplementary translator we found before, when we hoped to figure who the Erthuma on board might be. Remember that one I told you about, who claims to be from Earth? She probably is. One of the modules seemed to be an Old Planet language.”

“Is it still there?” asked his wife, not greatly interested.

“I suppose so. The unit is. We took the modules out to examine, and then — Hmph. I don’t remember. Let’s see.”

Hugh opened the device. Apparently whoever had been holding the modules when the line of activity had swerved had felt that the best place to put them down was back in their own sockets; they were indeed there. Hugh extracted them, one by one, checking the symbols and nodding slowly, putting each back before extracting the next.

“This is it,” he said at last. “Do you know what it is?”

“No. Like you, I’d guess it’s Mother Planet. Shall we take them with us when we get back, and try to find out?”

“Strictly speaking, we have no business doing anything of the sort. They’re not our property.”

“They’re probably Ennissee’s,” the woman pointed out.

“If either of us were Rekchellet. that would probably be an excuse. Tell you what. We’ll write down the ident code, and call the Guild office when we get back. We might even want a copy of that module; couldn’t you use some information from that Erthuma on collection details? Ged said that one of them usually went with Ennissee in the mole, and you were worried about some of the sample labels. They weren’t helpful out at the site, but maybe talking to them without Ged around would be different.”

“We could ask Ennissee himself.”

“We could, but I’d rather not, for several reasons.

The way he treated Rek is only one, though it’s the basis of the others, I suppose. I know Rek plans to find him and settle matters…”

“You mean a duel or something like that?”

“I don’t think so. Crotonites are civilized. He wants revenge, but not violence; he wants to embarrass the fellow. It will complicate things for Rek if he finds us dealing on friendly terms with his enemy, and maybe complicate his feelings for us.”

“I think he’s safely our friend now, regardless. He’s known us a long time, and makes allowances of all sorts for our being crawlers and Erthumoi.”

“You may be right, but let’s not strain it. We’ll try those Erthumoi assistants first, until Rek finishes his business; after all, he may get the knowledge we want. Making Ennissee come crawling to us with information would be a very satisfactory revenge, I suspect.”

“So you said before. All right, let’s get in touch with this Chen person.”

Nothing further relevant to the problem occurred on the way back to Pitville, and with the truck parked by the still undisturbed Habra corpse they went to Hugh’s office.

The Guild was able to help them. Mahare Chen was indeed, according to their records, a native of Earth, and the office had translator modules of her language. If Explorer Cedar would load his communicator appropriately, a duplicate would be transmitted for his own unit at once. A Falgite module would be provided for Engineer Chen, and the office would attempt to locate her, deliver the module, and request that she make contact with Explorer or Chemist Cedar at Pitville. No trouble.

Janice went back to her lab. Hugh called Ged and tactfully tried to find out what progress had been made on his article, especially in the matter of getting information from Ennissee. The Samian replied ruefully that he had had no time for either the article or Ennissee, that some of Spreadsheet-Thinker’s chart sections needed serious modification, and that he hoped Hugh would not need fliers or large numbers of people for the next few Common Days. Hugh promised to do his best but mentioned the intrinsic nature of his job. It sometimes called for— “I had noticed that,” interrupted Barrar, and ended the conversation. Again, Hugh found himself wondering unhappily how much of what he had been told could be believed, and intensely disliking the sensation.

S’Nash came in, and Hugh wondered whether the Naxian had sensed his emotions from outside. Janice’s theory, which she had not yet explained in detail, implied that the beings had to see the subject of their analysis. She was not, however, sure of this and Hugh was even less so. S’Nash seemed to turn up very often when it/he could be of help; maybe people broadcast, something more subtle than a visual image.

It was nearly two more hours, and the Naxian was still in the office being useful, before Mahare Chen returned his call. It was five minutes after he had started talking to her, just after Janice had also come in, that he discovered with shock what the words “Palaksee” and “Pill-dahn” meant, and decided with relief that he could probably trust the Samian after all.

Ennissee, however was another problem. Hugh could only hope that he was safely immobilized.

And S’Nash was still another, but he tried to put this out of his mind for the moment.

Hugh asked several more questions, which Chen answered, but sometimes rather hesitantly.

“Are Jayree and I in trouble?” she asked bluntly, after one of them. Hugh shrugged.

“Not with the Guild, as far as I’m concerned. Most of your work for Ennissee was legitimate. All anyone could object to is this joke, if that’s what it was. If your consciences bother you, tell the story to Rekchellet. He should be very much on your side.”

“We thought it would affect only a few Crotonites who didn’t seem to be flying with both wings and were about ready for a correspondence course in astrology anyway. And the pay was good,” she added.

“If you mean extra pay for the joke, that should have warned you of something. Never mind, though; we’ll try to calm down the rest of the population. I suggest you stay around Pwanpwan, or leave a very specific forwarding address if work takes you elsewhere. It will make a much nicer picture with the Guild than disappearing, and I’m sure Rek will be delighted to take your side if any Trueliners get indignant about your telling me the story. I don’t suppose there are many of them on Habranha anyway, and you could make Ennissee look pretty foolish among the ordinary Crotonites if he tried to make trouble for you.”

The woman still looked slightly uneasy, but admitted that Hugh was probably right. He hoped her trouble was conscience, but couldn’t be sure under the circumstances that she had one.

He was about to break the connection when another thought struck him.

“You might get a lot more people on your side,” he pointed out, “if you and your friend helped reconstruct that mole. You must know a good deal about it, and I know at least one person who is already very upset about what happened to it, and is going to be a lot more so when he finds out about the faking. You know him, too; it’s the Samian who was out there with you.”

“Didn’t he know about the trick?” The question startled Hugh; it was a possibility which hadn’t occurred to him.

“I don’t think so, but I can find out pretty reliably, I think. Keep in touch with the Guild, anyway.”

Janice and he took brief counsel, but there seemed only one decent thing to do, and that at once. They asked S’Nash whether he could and would tell them whether Barrar was hearing something new when Hugh told him about the fossil, as he proposed to do immediately.

“From here, even if I can watch him on the screen, I doubt it,” was the answer, “but if you’ll give me time to get over to his office so I can watch him first hand, probably yes. Samians are something of a challenge, but it will be fun to try. Give me time to get over there before you call him.” The Naxian left the safety office without waiting for an answer.

The Erthumoi allowed what seemed a reasonable time to pass, and called the administration center. They thought at first they had gotten Barrar directly but realized almost at once that they were talking to another Samian wearing a similar walker. Ged, they were informed, had left firm orders that he was not to be interrupted; perhaps his recent complaint about his work load had been based on fact. Hugh wrestled briefly with his own conscience, won, and stated that the call was an emergency one from the safety office, glad that the being on the other end was not a Naxian and rather happy that S’Nash had left. Of course, it/he would presumably not have betrayed him, but Hugh was embarrassed at lying before anyone but his wife. She would understand.

An image of Barrar, wearing a dome-shaped body with a dozen arms ensconced on a platform in the center of what he probably thought of as a desk and surrounded by numerous data-handling and communicating devices, appeared in a few seconds. Hugh gave him no time to complain.

“Ged, did you ever have much talk with the Erthumoi working for Ennissee?”

“No. Practically none, and that little was all through him. Neither they nor I had appropriate translator mods. Why?”

“Did you ever hear them talking between themselves? And if you do, do you remember the words ‘Pill-Dahn’ or ‘Palaksee?’ “

“Thanks for the flattery. I have a brain, not a mechanical recorder. I heard them talk often enough, but don’t remember a syllable. Why? Get to the point, if any. Spreadsheet-Thinker is screaming about empty cells.”

“I’d like to hear a Locrian scream, but you’ll have to do. The words both mean the same, in the language of one of the Erthumoi — the female, if you care.”

“I don’t. Get to the point. What do they mean?”

“Faked fossil. I don’t know why that should rate a single word, let alone two, in any language but I suppose it’s a historical…”

“Shut up!” Barrar’s speech mechanism was not designed to produce a scream, but it had a more than adequate volume control. Hugh and his wife decided it might not be necessary to ask S’Nash how the Samian was feeling.