Noise

XI Overtones

This had not been the case when they had gone ashore. He filled them without comment, scraped the surplus hailstones overboard, stowed the shovel, and went to the air lock. The excuse he had given for the trip had been to get some of his own working materials. An unstated one was to check the reactions of his guides when he tried to enter the cabin alone. It was perfectly obvious that no adult could use the lock with him; but would they let him go in first? Or follow at once, before he could do anything? Could they feel sure there was nothing he might do to which their officials might object? Were they simply and generally suspicious of him, and presumably also of his crewmates? Or completely indifferent to anything they might do?

It was pretty obvious by now—at least to Wanaka, whose opinion tended to be contagious—that Hinemoa was a trader, whatever she might have claimed. Mike had already gathered that traders were the principal diplomats in most Kainuian cities. It had been clear almost from the beginning that she was also of high rank in whatever sort of government Aorangi had. This did not, however, have to mean that the entire population of the place either knew of or fully agreed with whatever policy she and her fellow officials might have adopted. Telephones were common enough in the city, but Mike had not yet seen anything corresponding to a newspaper or vision broadcast in the place. Technologial development here, as elsewhere on the planet, had presumably been guided by what each original colony ship had had on board and what actions had been forced on their crews by circumstances at the time of arrival.

Maybe he could fit more of this into his thesis after all.

The state of the drinking breakers had increased his own Wanaka-type suspicions; what about his present guides? Should he have admitted noticing the diminished water store? Would his failure to comment cause them to wonder? Or would they put it down to his presumed lack of seamanship? He had made no secret of this when describing his Earthly upbringing to the assembled teachers. Or were they completely ignorant of the whole breaker business, even that the tanks had been full when the crew had left the ship?

The guides glanced at each other as he opened the lock, but said nothing and made no effort to hold him back. That didn’t necessarily mean much. It was not their ship, there were always the rules of courtesy—Mike suddenly realized that he had been remiss in failing to invite them inside; might not that make them suspicious?—and it was hard in any case to see what mischief he could possibly do.

He was back on deck with one of his record cases in a few moments, hoping that the brevity of the errand would excuse his discourtesy. Mike couldn’t decide whether the guides were relieved or not. He waded ashore—he had flipped back his helmet when picking up the shovel, and now closed it again in proper routine—and started back toward the city entrance. The others followed.

He deliberately missed a turning on the way back, and was promptly corrected, but had no way of guessing whether the apparent slip relieved his guides or not. It might or might not have the effect of easing the obvious local policy of having him accompanied on all occasions, or of reinforcing it; either way he was no worse off. Once again he realized that he was picking up some of the mercantile paranoia of the captain. He didn’t really like this, but just now it might be useful.

He accepted guidance back to his room, thanked his escorts, and asked when the school would need him again. They didn’t know, but said he would be called in plenty of time. He nodded, remarked that he might be in the captain’s and mate’s nearby quarters rather than his own, waved a dismissal, and thankfully went inside to doff his armor. He had become used to wearing it for over a day at a time during the large fraction of a local year since they had left Muamoku, but it was never really comfortable. People generally accepted that no really efficient recycling wear could be, but complaining was of course discourteous and likely to be answered with a shrug and the remark “Grow your own, then.”

Waiting until his escort should be well out of sight, Hoani left his room again and went to the adjoining but unconnected apartment shared by captain and mate. Keo answered his knock at once, and gestured him to enter. Wanaka, seated at a worktable with charts—columns of numbers rather than maps in the Earthly sense—in front of her, looked up. Neither seemed surprised to see him, but his report of the drained water breakers caused them to look sharply at each other for a moment, then nod slowly.

“I wondered how they’d do it,” the mate remarked. “What d’you suppose they’ll use for an excuse if we say anything?”

“Doesn’t matter. They’ll either have one, which will leave us free for a while longer, or they won’t. In that case they’ll either take our armor or simply lock us up.”

Evidently, Hoani decided, Wanaka had not been sincere in accepting Hinemoa’s trade proposal. She was intending to leave after all.

“Why should they bother with that, if they’ve taken our water?” he asked, and promptly wished he hadn’t.

“You’ve refilled the breakers already. If they drain them again, we can refill them at sea easily enough. There aren’t quite as many storms here in the high latitudes, but there are enough.”

“Then why did they take the water at all?”

The captain smiled in a way Mike had not seen before.

“I am guessing. I’d like to make sure I’m right before we risk leaving, but don’t see how I can. Have you seen ’Ao since we arrived?”

Mike reported in some detail his encounter with the children. The captain showed little interest in the city model or power information, though it became evident later that she had listened carefully. She had a higher priority.

“Did ’Ao have ’Oloa with her? I know she brought it into the city.”

Mike thought a moment. “No. She must have left it at Eru’s home. All her talk was with Eru and me, except for courtesy to my guides. I’d guess she didn’t want to forget and talk to it.”

Keo spoke up. “She wanted me to take it, earlier. I got the impression she’d been embarrassed by something Eru said about it. Maybe I wasn’t as sympathetic as I should have been.”

For the second time since Mike had known her, Wanaka used language that was plainly rude; this time he couldn’t decipher it at all, but even her husband raised his eyebrows.

“Keo, get down to Eru’s home and—can you find it?”

“Not without help.”

“Then get help. Wanting to talk to her won’t be suspicious. If no one answers when you get there you won’t be able to go in, of course, but wait as long as necessary. If she’s there alone, or comes back alone while you’re waiting, make sure about the doll. If Eru or any of his family is there with her, tell her I need to see her, and while you’re talking look around to see if the doll’s in sight. Don’t let Eru or—”

“Of course.” Keokolo disappeared.

“We’re leaving?” Mike’s words weren’t entirely a question.

“If we can. It depends on two things I don’t know yet: just how the breakers were emptied, and whether we still have the doll. We could do without it—maybe—but I’d rather not. If the breakers were emptied through the regular drains, then these folks will probably take our armor or restrain us by force if they catch us trying to leave. If, as I’m hoping, they punched holes, we may have a better chance.”

Mike raised an eyebrow himself, but didn’t ask for more details. He was startled when the captain supplied them.

“I hope they just punched holes in the breakers. It would mean they didn’t expect them to heal. Did you know those seven ships we’ve seen are all the city has?”

“Do you know that, or did they tell you?”

The captain gave him an approving glance, which rather worried Mike. If he were getting cynical enough to please Wanaka, maybe he was in trouble. He shouldn’t be taking for granted that anything he was told was probably a lie. These traders…

“There are no others around the city; the place they are lying seems to be the only port. The city is moving. How could the others, if there are any, find it?”

“We asked about that before.”

“And got an answer. Did you believe it?”

“It seemed plausible to me,” Mike evaded.

Wanaka merely looked at him. He changed the subject.

“How do you expect to find Muamoku?”

“Circle the world westward at its latitude, of course.”

“And why couldn’t these folks do just the same thing?”

“You didn’t notice, either?” The captain looked rather smug. “This city doesn’t try to maintain latitude! They’re quite casual about north and south drift. They worry about melting if they get much too far north, of course, since the town is made mostly of ice, but they certainly don’t care about keeping their latitude range narrow enough to be useful for searching ships; remember the mists at this far south are even heavier than closer to the equator.

“Besides, they’ve been too far north too recently; they’ve lost a lot of city to melting—”

“You’ve seen this, or just been told?”

“We’ve seen it! We’ve seen the change in water line.”

“All right, they have only a few ships. How does that connect with empty drinking breakers?”

But Wanaka simply smiled again. It seemed that Mike was not yet on full crew status.

Keokolo was more than an hour returning from his errand, and Wanaka seemed to be worrying slightly about how close they were to sunset. When he returned, ’Ao was with him, but the doll was not.

When the captain, clearly restraining her temper with an effort, asked where it was, the child replied that she didn’t think she’d need it on watch and had not wanted to bring it for fear of rousing suspicion, and she didn’t want to carry it on the tour of the city because someone might wonder why anyone as old as she was would be carrying a doll around. Wanaka cooled down at once. Mike could guess the captain’s thoughts; the child was using her head. He wondered in passing whether games theory was a formal science on Kainui. With trading a major industry…

“All right. Very good, in fact. Can you get back to Eru’s by yourself?”

“Mau.”

“Do it. Get ’Oloa and your armor, and tell them you’re on watch tonight if you haven’t already. Can you get back to the ship on your own, too?” ’Ao merely nodded this time.

“It doesn’t look as though anyone gets stopped at the air lock, but if they worry about someone your age going out alone this close to sunset tell them you’re on watch, and if they’re still bothered ask for someone to guide you so you can obey orders. You don’t like admitting that you’re too young to do without a guide, of course. Be insulted if you like, but not so much they bring you back here instead of to the ships.”

“’Ioe.” ’Ao looked appropriately indignant.

“We’ll be with you somewhere around sunset, no later if we can help it. I wish I knew when that was; we’re farther south than I’ve ever been, the tables don’t give sunrise and sunset for latitudes greater either way than fifty. At least we’re close to the solstice, though.

“Check the water supply when you get there. If it’s down—Mike refilled it a little while ago—don’t worry and don’t try to refill it unless there’s actually a storm going on.”

The girl looked indignant once more, but the remark about obeying orders had sunk in and she only nodded. Wanaka decided against having her repeat her commands and gestured toward the door. ’Ao disappeared.

“Now, Mike. Can you find the air lock and the ship by yourself?”

“Yes, Captain. No trouble.”

“Good, because I think you’ll have to go last. Keo and I probably won’t be noticed in armor, especially if we don’t go together, but people will see and remember you. You have one of your note cases ashore? Good. Keo will go first, I’ll follow in about ten minutes, you wait at least twenty more, then head back to the ship with your case—I hope there’s just one? Or at least not more than you can carry? Good. We’ll hope no one wonders; maybe the fact that you took cases with you on other trips will keep them from wondering—”

“They’re not all traders, I noticed,” Hoani couldn’t help remarking. “I get the impression that most of them wouldn’t know what I was doing. They just wouldn’t care, except for congenital loafers, and there don’t seem to be many of those on this world.” Wanaka may not have interpreted the remark as a slur; at least, she let it pass. She put just one more question set.

“Did you notice whether the watch on the other ships were clearing hail while you were?”

“They weren’t.”

“Had they done it before you came? Were their decks clear?”

Mike strained his memory. “Yes. They were. Maybe that’s why the watch was there this time.”

“And why not before? What’s changed since then?”

“We’re farther south. I don’t know what else.”

“There are fewer storms farther south, and a bigger change in buoyancy after a storm, because the basic surface salinity is greater the farther one gets from the tropical rain belt. It increases away from the equator, at least until we get to the neighborhood of the ice cap, where I suppose melting dilutes it again.” She paused, eyed the man thoughtfully, then seemed to make a decision.

“Mike, you didn’t think these folks were making a wave come in at just the right time, did you?”

“I—oh. Of course. No. They must change the city’s buoyancy. They can raise and lower it. Not very far either way, I’d guess, but two or three meters anyway. I must be twins; I couldn’t be that stupid all by myself. You know, whoever is handling the buoyancy tanks right now must be very, very uptight.”

To Mike’s relief, he had gotten slightly ahead of Wanaka.

“Why?”

“Because the tanks must be big enough to lower or raise the city far enough to be useful even when all its normal floating ice is present. Right now, letting them fill too full could submerge everything—and if the sea gets to the air lock there’ll be more than buoyancy tanks getting filled. I’m sure they must have some emergency way to forestall that, but they won’t like to use it, any more than you’d like to see all of Muamoku’s floats submerged.”

Wanaka nodded slowly. Mike had an alarming thought.

“Captain, you wouldn’t try to—”

“Of course I wouldn’t. In the first place, I wouldn’t kill anyone, let alone a whole city. In the second, whatever happens to get Mata back to sea will have to happen with all four of us aboard. I’m simply assuming that Hinemoa won’t let us go, which is pretty obvious, you must admit.”

Mike was somewhat relieved that she had put the first and second items in that order, but said nothing. He had little chance, actually; there was a knock at the coral door. Mike was closest to it, and opened it at Wanaka’s nod. As they had expected, it was ’Ao. As they had not, it was also Hinemoa and Eru.

Wanaka as usual controlled her expression perfectly. Mike hoped that his own was less readable to the native. The latter spoke at once.

“Captain, how many children can you carry?”

“Why—well, for how long?”

“With good luck, about two days. With bad, indefinitely.”

“Mata can feed and breathe about four more of ’Ao’s mass without overloading oxygen and food equipment, I’d say. I’m guessing, because this far south our leaf doesn’t get as much power. Why?”

“We’re launching in just under two hours, carrying as many childen as we can.”

“Why? Or would you rather not say?”

“I’d rather not, but I will. We’re making an emergency drop of the bottom kilometer of the city shaft, so as to float higher. We’re getting close to the ice cap. We have to reach it to get more ice, but from here on south the ocean gets less salty because of the melting cap, so we’ll be settling. There’s no saying just how far. We can’t lift any higher without the drop because of melting loss—Mike must have noticed when they showed him the city chart that there was a lot less than a tenth of the volume above water.”

Mike made no comment since he had in fact failed to notice this, but Hinemoa wasn’t asking for confirmation and anyway he was busy translating. She went on, “We can’t risk settling far, so some weight has to go, and we’ve already dropped all our regular ballast. What’s come in on the last few loads hasn’t been processed into slugs we can handle rapidly, and even if we added yours, which I hope you realize is still yours, there wouldn’t be enough to make a difference. Once we’ve made the drop there’ll be no way to get the ships off, assuming it does lift us as far as it should. We’re launching as many people as we can, and if we don’t lose the city, hoping to take them back in a couple of days when we’ve started to gather cap ice. The times this happened before we came through all right, but we’re not taking chances.”

“Of course,” agreed the captain.

“So get your people aboard pronto. Eru wants to go with you if you’re willing. Other children are being selected and siblings separated, and will come along. You can take three besides Eru, you say.”

Mike was not a hero by instinct, but there are some things a civilized adult can’t, and some things he or she simply must, do. He answered without translating for or consulting with the captain.

“Add three more to Mata’s load. They won’t use more food or air than I do, and I’m not important in handling Mata.”

Hinemoa showed no expression. “Good. We can use your muscle here. Since Eru is going, my husband and I will stay, of course. Captain, you and your crew get to your ship and prepare for launch. Your other passengers will be brought to the harbor.” Mike translated the order and reported his offer. Wanaka showed no surprise, either. Keo gripped his hand briefly but said nothing.

“The tricky part will be submerging just enough for launch,” was Hinemoa’s parting remark. “If we don’t overshoot on that, there shouldn’t be any trouble later. We’ll get ready for the drop, then sink just enough—we hope—to let the fleet off, and immediately let go of the shaft segment. Don’t wait for orders or warning; go out with the spill. In a minute or two after that you’ll know whether a standby or a hunt for another city is in order.” She gestured to Mike to follow her, and left.

Fortunately there was no need to descend nineteen kilometers, or even to the bottom of the ice part of the city. In another large cavern a few hundred meters below the city model dozens of washers, presumably of some variety of coral, obviously not ice for several reasons, nearly covered the ice floor. Each was about five meters across. The floor was more than usually reinforced with coral also, to what depth Mike could only guess; he had no way of telling how much of the twenty-kilometer shaft’s weight was counteracted by buoyancy, though obviously it couldn’t all be. The ice part—mushroom cap of the model—clearly had to be at the top.

Each washer supported a half-meter-thick rod, apparently of the same material. The top of each of these was threaded, with a huge capstan shaped like a wing nut keeping it in place.

Four of the “nuts” were pointed out to the crew of men standing by. One of these said loudly, “Those are the ones to unwind. We have to get them off all the way; the actual release is remotely controlled and is down at the separation point. These are simply safety backups.” Mike wondered for a moment why he was explaining this to natives as well as to him, then realized these were probably a group selected for muscle rather than a permanent emergency crew. The work started, with six men at each side of each wing nut.

Hoani had supposed he could do the work of two or maybe three, but had forgotten his traction problems; the others wore studded boots. The foreman saw the difficulty, but a glance convinced him that looking for anything to fit the visitor’s feet would be a waste of time.

Fortunately the threads were well lubricated, and the capstans were free in less than a quarter hour. Nothing visible now supported the projecting rods. Everyone backed away from them and watched tensely.

The people at the main release controls, whoever and wherever they were and however the controls themselves worked, were holding the buck. Until the rods vanished…

After a reasonable time of suspense, they did vanish. There was no way for Mike to tell whether they were encased in pipes or wider shafts or anything at all, and the sounds that accompanied their departure weren’t informative, but he thought he could feel a slight and brief upward acceleration.

The end of the tense silence suggested that others had felt it, too. There was no shouting or cheering, though most of the danger was presumably over; but conversation resumed. At the foreman’s order, all started up the ramps.

Mike assumed—no, hoped—that he had merely not felt the much smaller acceleration when the city had settled to allow the launch. If for some reason that had not occurred, and the ships were still in the harbor, of course, it still might not be a catastrophe; the launching had been merely a worst-scenario precaution, after all. It would bother Wanaka, though. There would be no way for anyone to get to sea, as far as Mike knew, until tons upon tons of replacement ballast had been collected and processed. Of course, water for the control tanks might now be enough; there was no telling without a supply of numbers he didn’t have.

And preparing the other ballast would take a very long time, considering how much would obviously be needed and how slowly it would be collected.

He felt quite sure, now, what the ballast was.

He wondered what Wanaka would do if the launch had indeed taken place. If she decided to get away, leaving Mike behind—this somehow seemed improbable—it was unlikely that anyone would follow, unless someone badly wanted to recover the children. He knew the basic planet-wide customs pretty well now, and Aorangi seemed to be following them fairly closely as far as family matters were concerned, but couldn’t feel quite what the reaction would be this time. The people could be sure the kids were safe enough, except for the normal risks of the sea, but they didn’t seem enthusiastic about contact with the temperate-zone cities.

Don’t worry, idiot. There’s nothing you can do about it now. It would be nice to get home again sometime, though.

The group paused in the cavern of the city model; apparently everyone regardless of profession could read its various symbols. He was encouraged to see that the icons he had interpreted as ships were no longer visible—encouraged, since it seemed likely that if this implied anything worse than a successful launch there would be a lot more general excitement.

Quite sure that he could now find his way from here to the entrance, he unobtrusively left the crowd and made his way into the tunnel maze. He managed not to get lost.

As he approached the air lock he found a large crowd of people, mostly men and unarmored like himself, going in the same direction. He began once more to wonder, since about half of them seemed to be carrying hail shovels.

It couldn’t be an emergency; while noise armor was not really needed in air—the thunder was a nuisance above water, but not the deadly menace the overpressure waves from the core-ocean interface represented to a swimmer. Something must be expected, though. He saw no sign of Hinemoa anywhere, and of course didn’t want to look foolish to anyone ignorant of his background, so he simply went with the crowd. It could be that they just wanted to make sure the ships with their children were all right, but there seemed far too many people here to be only the parents, or even uncles, aunts, and adult cousins, of the youngsters who could possibly have fit in eight vessels, even if only one child from each family had been launched. Besides, that didn’t explain the shovels.

Outside, the crowd didn’t even head toward the lake. It divided, with very little conversation, into five streams, each fanning out in a different direction. Mike joined one of these, and shortly found himself in a crowd of somewhat over a hundred people assembled around one of the hail-filled craters he, Keo, and ’Ao had found on their first walk and blamed on lightning.

It was not, however, filled with hail now; it was a gaping hole of indeterminate depth.

There was plenty of hail on the ground; there had, after all, been at least two storms since Mata’s original arrival, and very probably more. The shovels went to work at once, and loose hail began to vanish into the pit. Mike could only watch and wonder.

In a few minutes it became evident why there were fewer shovels than men; the latter tired fairly quickly—once again, it was plain that only a small fraction of the citizens could be sailors—and the tools changed hands often. Hoani, seeing nothing complicated about whatever was going on, began to take turns himself. This seemed to be appreciated, but after he had slipped and fallen two or three times someone suggested that he work a little farther from the pit. It was not, after all, necessary to hurl each shovelful all the way every time, and if he went in himself it would delay matters seriously, they pointed out.

Most of the hail by now was too far from the edge for anyone, even Mike, to toss it all the way. Throwing toward the hole was enough; someone else could make the next toss.

The basic ice had been cleared of hail for a radius of fully two hundred meters when Hinemoa found him.

“Thanks,” she said. “I didn’t know where you’d gone, but you’re being about as useful as you could have been anywhere.”

“What’s going on here, anyway? You don’t need all this water for the city.”

“Not as water, but we need the ice. The shafts take it down about a kilometer. It gets drained, packed, and shoved outside. The lump floats up and catches on the bottom of the ice section. Any meltwater, plus any that gets in through the lock while the ice is going out, drains to a lower tank and vines take it back to the top and dump it into the sea at the edge.”

“Vines? Oh, I see. Sap rising. I should have guessed. I wonder why we didn’t see them when we were sailing around the city. Plants—trees most impressively—do it on Earth. Osmosis or capillary?”

“Osmosis, usually, but we’re always trying to design better vines. Better hand that shovel to someone else; even you must get tired sometime.”

Rather gratefully Mike obeyed.

“I take it the launch went all right.” “Oh, yes. And we’ve found a good current and are moving faster toward the edge of the cap. The hailstones are helpful, but wait until you see how we do it with the floe ice. The big chunks are hard to get up to this height; it’s lucky ice is slippery. They lose a lot less to melting than the hail does, though. Within a year or so we’ll have the bottom of the city cap replenished, and be on our way to replacing the emergency ballast. What do you think we could offer your captain for her supply?”

Mike was speechless for some seconds. He had been almost sure before, as several pieces of formerly disconnected information had joined up, but had not expected confirmation from Hinemoa, of all people. He’d have to start ridding himself of the Wanaka Conviction.

“The gold? You do use gold for ballast.”

“What else would tonnes of it be good for? A couple of kilograms would keep the pseudolife designers happy for a year. I know the stuff is pretty, but how much could the people of one city use up in jewelry? Why do you think we grow gold-fish at all, and try to keep improving them?”

“I really must be twins,” Hoani muttered again, more softly this time. Hinemoa looked slightly puzzled, but did not ask for an explanation. Courtesy again; the man had obviously not been speaking to her. He recovered himself after a moment.

“Then you have other gold-fish. Why were you so concerned about this one?”

“The others are moored to the city, can’t get as deep as we’d like or wander as far as we’d like, so they collect very slowly. This one had a modification that was supposed to guide it back to the edge of the ice cap. It didn’t work as well as we’d hoped. That’s another reason we’re grateful to your captain; we’d actually given up hope of getting it back. We recovered the guiding equipment from the fish the first time you helped us find it.”

Mike felt he might be getting cured of the trader’s paranoia he had been acquiring from Wanaka. Hinemoa couldn’t be lying; everything fitted so perfectly and made so much sense. This place should certainly be trading with the temperate-zone cities, though it was a little hard to see just now what either had that the others might want very badly. Cities riding on normally grown floats certainly didn’t need gold or much of anything else for ballast; Aorangi, with its thermal-gradient power source, didn’t need other metals for battery electrodes even if its latitude made pseudolife photo-synthesizers relatively ineffective. But at least, neither could really have anything it needed to keep secret from the others. The city rulers would realize that even if the traders didn’t—if they were different people.

“How is any guide method supposed to work on this world?” he asked. “There is no long-distance communication, and nothing is going to do celestial navigation from kilometers under the sea, certainly. A smeller like the one we thought Malolo had picked up wouldn’t work at any great depth in your thermal and salinity turbulence. How?”

Hinemoa smiled, perhaps regretfully.

“Sorry. ’Fraid I can’t tell you,” she answered.