The Nitrogen Fix

XII Menace, Misunderstood

The wait was short; the approached figures entered the water without a pause. Kahvi had been collecting spare cartridges by touch; now she added some slices of beef and bags of milk from the food plants, and wrapped the former in tissue. Some of the Hillers were swimming, now.

“All right, Dan,” she whispered. “Plug in. Into the water, and hold onto my harness. I’ll swim, you stick!” The child gave her mother’s arm a silent squeeze of assent, and they slipped quietly into the sea together. Kahvi headed north as fast as she dared. The drag on her harness was lighter than it might have been; evidently the little one still wanted to feel useful, and was swimming with her feet. They stayed as close to the bottom as possible, keeping the wavering moon behind and to their left, though it was increasingly hard to see in the growing daylight.

Presently the water became too shallow for swimming. Kahvi pulled Danna around in front of her, touched the child’s breathing mask in a gesture for silence, turned her face down, and then, indicating that they should stay side by side, began to crawl slowly and carefully onward. Their course soon took them out of the water.

They had reached the nearer of the Sayre islets. It was only a couple of hundred meters from the anchorage, but was heavily overgrown with all sorts of vegetation and offered excellent concealment.

Kahvi did not intend to remain here indefinitely; she was hoping that the Hillers, not finding her at the raft, would assume she had gone toward the city. There were no air sources in this direction. She would get back home by darkness; there was enough air in their cartridges to last through the day. After nightfall she would move the raft behind the islets; Earrin would know where to look for it, and it could be hoped that the Hillers would not guess.

Well into the jungle and away from the water, the two fugitives constructed a comfortable nest from the abundant vegetation and settled down.

The mother wanted to sleep, but Danna wanted explanations. Kahvi made the situation as clear as possible, keeping her voice to a whisper which barely got through her mask, but didn’t try to explain what might happen to Danna if the Hillers caught her; considering Bones’ share in her upbringing, it was conceivable that the child’s curiosity would override her caution. She had occasion ally expressed curiosity about what it was like in cities.

By the time the conversation was finished it was full daylight, though the sun was not quite up. The moon was almost invisible in the golden sky, and the comet had faded entirely from view. Kahvi stretched out to sleep, after whispering to her daughter, “You should sleep if you can, because there’ll be a lot to do later. I know it’s pretty bright for sleeping, though. If you can’t, at least stay close to the nest while I do. We’ll have to be rested before the sun goes down — maybe sooner.” With that, the mother closed her eyes and relaxed as completely as possible.

The child soberly examined everything in sight. She looked closely at slime-saturated soil and plant-furred rocks, pulled branches, leaves, and bark from the larger growths surrounding the nest and compared them minutely, and even stood up to see what could be seen at greater distances. She was careful, however, to make sure that she could not be seen from the south; she kept as close as possibleto a densely-growing cordage bush taller than she was, peeping cautiously out from behind it. She even ventured a few meters from the nest, but obeyed the injunction to keep in sight of her mother. Her training had been effective. She found several objects, mostly pseudolife forms, which were new to her; these she collected carefully and brought back to the nest for her mother to explain when she woke up.

One was an Evolution plant, the artificial organism which produced enzymes affecting the stable structures of most of the other pseudo forms. It was this fabrication which made it possible for humanity to continue to manipulate the artificial organisms in a rough trial-and-error fashion long after human technological culture had decayed, just as some of the “countercultures” of an earlier time had been able to use and even maintain and repair motor vehicles while not being able to make them.

If Kahvi had seen that plant she would have left the island at once; she would have realized that it was not a safe hiding place. The thing itself was not dangerous to human biochemistry, but its presence would have told her the Hillers would be around. The Evolution plant never grew wild; it needed too much attention. It was completely symbiotic with the present human culture. But Kahvi never saw it. She didn’t have time after waking up.

It was midafternoon when Danna was awakened by the sounds of people crashing through the jungle. Her reaction was the right one; she squeezed her mother’s bare shoulder with one hand, and laid a finger of the other over Kahvi’s mask where it covered the mouth. The woman was awake almost at once, and immediately grasped the situation. Nodding approval at the child, she rose cautiously and peered through the bushes in the direction of the sound.

This was from the west, the nearest mainland, rather than the south from which the fugitives had come. It seemed possible to escape back toward the water, but at first she considered the chances of getting submerged unseen to be too small to be worth taking. The alternative, however, was to keep hidden in the jungle; and neither of them could be sure of moving around quietly enough for that to be practical policy. There was no way to conceal the nest, and even if these people were not already hunting for the fugitives, they would be once that was seen. If that did occur, it behooved Kahvi and her child to be well away from the site, preferably with a broad choice of travel plans.

So the water was the best bet after all. Again warning Danna to silence, Kahvi led the way slowly and carefully back along the path they had made earlier. Behind them, voices and snapping branches grew louder — the Hillers were certainly not being subtle about their doings. It was tempting to go faster and get under water as soon as they possibly could, but the woman knew that a splash would be easy for the Hillers to distinguish among their own noises. She held herself to the slow pace, and Danna, frightened as she was, stayed with her.

When the water was hip-deep on the child, they stopped and readjusted their burdens so as to give the little one a free hand with which to hold her mother’s harness. Then the woman lowered herself slowly and carefully until she was as nearly submerged as possible, crawled until the water was a little deeper, and finally began to swim. Within a few meters they were both submerged, and Kahvi could relax a little.

She was heading back toward the raft; there was nothing else to do, though she had planned to wait until dark. A trip to the north around the peninsula to reach some of the west side jails would be possible, but risky given limited air and the child. If they could get back home without having to risk discovery by surfacing they would have more resources and a chance to think.

Presumably they would also have warning of the approach of another search party. Finding such a goal under water would not be easy, but they could spend hours in the search if necessary. The sun was well up and would provide directional guidance, and the water depth would mean something. Kahvi was in no sense a professional diver, but in the earth’s present condition the difference between air and water was more one of seeing than of breathing: Danna thought of underwater as the part of outdoors where it was hard to see.

The biggest problem was judging attained distance, but Kahvi felt sure that if they did not get too far out they should encounter raft or anchors easily enough. The gesture language was specific enough to let her tell Danna the plan, and presently she allowed the child to let go and swim separately a few meters to her right to help in the search. She could be trusted not to show herself above the surface.

It was in fact the child who encountered an anchor line. She grasped it and waved eagerly to hermother. Kahvi responded, swam over, and led the way along the cord to the raft itself. Leaving Danna huddled on the bottom in the shadow of the floats, the woman cautiously approached the entrance, placed her feet on the bottom, and slowly stood up.

Nobody could be seen inside the tent. The floats were bobbing in a heavy swell, and she could not tell by their heights whether any of them concealed extra weight. Finally, still unsure, she climbed cautiously up into the tent. Keeping her head below the general level of the air and food plants, she crawled slowly around among their trays checking the whole interior of the structure.

Finally sure that there was no one else inside, she lifted her head slowly to see whether anyone was in sight on or toward the shore.

There was, rather closer than she had expected. The head and very broad shoulders of a man seated at the shoreward end of the raft caught her eye and prevented her from rising far enough to see the rest of him. He was looking to his right, toward Sayre, at the moment. Kahvi felt an internal fluttering which might have been the baby but was probably her own nervous system readjusting. How could this fellow have failed to see the fugitives when they entered the water at the island? How had she failed to see him?

The distance was only two hundred meters. Of course her own attention had been focused in the opposite direction, and maybe Hiller mask windows were even worse than those she was used to. Still…

Why was he outside? It would have been smarter to hide in the tent if he wanted to intercept Earrin or Kahvi. Had he been inside? If so, he must know about Danna, whose toys and spare outdoor harness could not be mistaken for anything but what they were. Perhaps he had been inside, made the discovery, and decided to wait on the deck so that the Fyns might not guess what he had learned.

There was no point in theorizing or guessing; long association with Bones had made the woman almost as impatient with speculation as the Observer. The important thing was for her and Danna to get away again unobserved. This meant a long underwater journey — the trip around the peninsula would have to be risked now. Going south was pointless; the shore curved cast, and they would be in view wherever they emerged for several kilometers unless they happened to find some small creek. That would be asking for too much from luck.

Should they take more supplies? No. There were no more charged air cartridges, and they already had food to last as long as their air. Besides, crawling about the tent picking meat and drink pods from the plants would be asking for the attention of the guard.

As she reached this conclusion, Kahvi saw the fellow suddenly lean forward. She tensed; was he about to leave the raft? Or come inside? Then the anxiety was replaced by a mixture of relief and sympathy. The fellow was actually removing his mask, and his torso and shoulders were heaving unmistakably. Every few seconds he held his mask to his face — he was evidently not entirely out of control — but it was evident why he had not seen the fugitives and why it might even be safe to collect more food. The unfortunate fellow was seasick.

Firmly quelling the reflex urge to help — there should obviously be someone nearby to manage the mask if he did lose control — Kahvi eased back into the water. After all, if these Hiller oxygen junkies were such idiots as not to have one of their own people on hand — she stopped that thought firmly. She knew perfectly well that jobs had to be done and chances sometimes taken to do them.

This Hiller was doing his own job and taking his own chances; good breath to him. Still, her job was to take care of Danna and Earrin.

So she told herself as she swam back to the child, but she was uncomfortable about it. Not quite as uncomfortable as after she had lighted the fire, but queasy enough. Conflict-of-duty questions had been few for Kahvi Mikkonen since she had been a Nomad, and they bothered her. Maybe Earrin, when she found him or he got back to them, would be a help; he was the sort who could keep from worrying over things that couldn’t be mended. On the other hand, she might not be able to bring herself to tell him about the fire. He had been an understanding and tolerant teacher in the early months of her Nomad life — otherwise she would never have developed the affection for him which she had — but even he must have a limit somewhere, and lighting fires might be beyond it.

With Danna swimming close beside her this time, Kahvi hugged the bottom closely as they moved away from the raft. She headed almost east for a time. She was not going to risk going between Sayreand the mainland; the water was deep enough, but there was the obvious risk of running into the search party on its way back from the island. Since they might also be intending to look over the smaller one farther north, there was at least a kilometer and a half to swim around this. Danna, her mother was sure, could make the distance as long as they went slowly enough. The water was warm enough so that even the little one’s big surface-to-volume ratio offered no risk of chilling. All Earth’s water was warm these days, except next to the still-vanishing pole caps. The acid seas had given off most of their dissolved carbon dioxide, and carbonate minerals were busily doing the same; greenhouse effect was warming the planet. Nitrogen dioxide, blocking some of the incoming radiation, was slowing the process, but where it would end no one could tell.

Fortunately for general peace of mind, no human being left on the planet had any idea of the process; and it had not even occurred to Bones.

By keeping in less than four meters of water, the two were able to contour-chase around the islands, but they were both extremely hungry by the time Kahvi judged they had come far enough. Danna had not yet learned how to eat under water, though the Nomad masks permitted this. The woman did not consider this a good time for a lesson in the art, since an error in coordination might have forced them to surface in order to get water out of Danna’s mask, so she had not eaten either.

As it turned out, they had come rather farther than necessary. They came up at the mouth of the cove on the northwestern tip of the peninsula, here Bones had decided the night before not to attempt landing.

Kahvi, aware that the searchers might have come this far but considering it most unlikely, chose to take the chance. The two swam ashore, got quickly out of sight in the dense vegetation, and settled down to eat.

The sun was now well past the meridian. Danna was very tired from the swim, and Kahvi decided that time had to be taken to rest, though they would have to find a jail or some other oxygen source before too many hours. They didn’t build a nest this time; there was a fluff organism large enough to keep the small body off the ground, and the child curled up in this, while her mother scouted the area for useful plants. The peninsula, or at least this part of it, seemed to have been visited by people who had allowed many kinds of pseudolife to take hold; Kahvi wondered whether this had been intentional. She would have been much more certain if she had seen the one which Danna had found on Sayre. There were tissue producers of a dozen kinds at least; a gigantic block of the Newell material from which the Fyns made their raft floats, the transparent stuff which was used for roofs, even the highly specialized material from which breathing cartridges were loaded. At present, of course, this was empty; Danna, waking up at last, was able to pick up logs of it larger than herself. She amused herself throwing one of these around while her mother explained the uses of the different growths.

“Do you think you could find these again if we wanted them?” Kahvi asked at length.

The child looked thoughtful. “Where will we be when you ask? I don’t know where home is, right now.”

Kahvi laughed. “Good for you! Mother wasn’t thinking, was she? Here, let me show you.” Even with air shortage threatening, the child had to learn, and a few minutes could be budgeted for a mapping lesson. Danna caught on quickly, and after a few minutes study of the diagrams Kahvi scratched in the earth, she was able to point out the direction to the raft and even give a fair description of how long it might take to get there.

Very satisfied with themselves and each other, the two resumed their journey. There was only a small amount of food left. Kahvi rolled it into a single pack of tissue and fastened this to her harness. She was still fatigued, and even Danna had not slept very long; but the woman let the child straddle her shoulders, after readjusting cartridges and breathing lines to make room, and set off again a little west of south. The bulk of Great Blue Hill loomed three kilometers away in that direction, but she was using this as a guide rather than a goal. She planned to follow the ridge which led south along the peninsula — the same one which overlooked the anchorage — high enough to get a good view of the land in hope of spotting jails, but not big enough to be seen from the anchorage itself or the islands.

The choice of route was unfortunate, since it led close to the fire site which Bones had found. Kahvi saw this, and once again decided that the search for air could be postponed a few more minutes toexamine this curiosity. The Bones trait was contagious, at least to intelligent people.

The contents of the fire pit had now reduced themselves to white ash which would not have glowed visibly even at night, but some heat could still be felt. Kahvi realized as Bones had done that this must be the site of the fire which had imperilled the nearby jail. She also saw that the stone wall which had been around it must have been artificial, and had to examine it closely even though it was obviously not an oxygen source — at least not any longer. She put Danna down, advising her to rest, but made no mention of the danger of appearing at the top of the ridge.

The child, tired as she still was, wanted to make sure that the ideas she had gotten from the map were right. If so, she judged, she would be able to see the raft from the elevation only a few dozen meters away; and without Kahvi’s noticing, she headed quietly in that direction. The vegetation here was too sparse to hide either from the view of the other, and the girl felt perfectly safe.

Inevitably, she encountered the same bed of glass slivers which had trapped Bones. Her scream brought Kahvi on the run. Her reflexes were good, and she placed only one foot in the danger area; she managed to stop before the other was injured, and even held back the cry of pain which almost escaped her lips. She snatched up the child and retreated several meters, ignoring the agony in her left foot until she felt they had reached a safe distance from whatever was causing the pain.

Then she put Danna down gently, sank to the ground herself, and fainted.