Fossil (1993) Read online

  Hal Clement

  Fossil

  (1993)

  Chapter One

  Here Jumpers Suffer More From Wind Than Weight

  The slope was long and steep, and the lights her husband had installed made it stand out sharply against the scattered illumination of Pitville and the much dimmer background hills of the Solid Ocean. Janice Cedar knew that she should have been frightened. In theory, height should scare anyone except, of course, a Crotonite; in practice, after a Common Year under Habranha’s gravity, she could lean over the edge of a hundred-meter ice ridge without a qualm. She just wasn’t being pulled hard enough downward to affect her emotions. Her husband and the few other Erthumoi on the little world had the same trouble.

  It took a lot of the fun out of skiing. Even armor full of diving fluid, which made most amusements either less fun or practically impossible, merely increased her inertia enough to make the wind less challenging.

  She was able to push off and start accelerating, if one could really call it that, down the ramp without feeling her heart speed up at all. What little thrill the sport could furnish on this world would come a little later.

  Her husband Hugh and their supervisor Ged Harrar stood watching her and waiting for their turns; Janice had wished briefly, before pushing off, that she had the Naxian ability to read emotion. The Assistant Director was a Samian, probably no more objective than the average Erthumoi, and she felt quite mystified why someone with no real body of his own, by her standards, should be interested in an Erthumoi sport. His stated reason might be true, but it had left her unconvinced. Barrar had admitted that the Cedars presumably knew what they were doing when they slid around on narrow boards in search of “fun,” and that this might well be worth doing for morale, but that he couldn’t really feel the point. He insisted that Hugh’s status as the person in charge of safety required that this human amusement be studied in more detail. Someone in the administrative office, Hugh suspected, doubted that Erthumoi, or at least the particular Erthuma named Hugh Rock Cedar, really grasped the concept of risk at all. There were, he thought, reservations in high quarters about the wisdom of using him as Safety Director.

  He hadn’t worried at first; like his wife, he was kept by the low gravity from feeling any real fear of falling, and didn’t consider skiing dangerous here. He assumed that Samians would be even less concerned, since most of their planets were high weight and their physiques certainly less prone to injury. The few members of the species on Habranha were mostly researchers, Diplomacy Guild representatives, or, nowadays, individuals from one or another of the Six Races who felt an interest in the hypothesis that the intelligent Habranhans might actually be a remnant of the Seventh Race, known so far only from archaeological data. None of the Samians were settlers; there was no room for settlers.

  Hugh’s first sight of Barrar “dressed” for skiing had caused him some other doubts, though. Instead of the six-limbed horizontally arranged sensibly stable walker which he usually employed, the administrator had appeared on something vaguely resembling a headless human skeleton made of some highly resistant — Hugh hoped — black and apparently resilient composition. The reddish-brown limbless, eyeless, and generally featureless slab of leathery-looking meat which was the Samian himself rode inside the rib cage, the fine wires which connected it with the various effectors and sensors of the “body” just barely visible from two meters away. Ordinary skis were mounted on framework feet which had been designed to fit them.

  Even Janice, not usually a worrier, had tactfully suggested on their way to the jump area that familiarizing himself with a new mechanical body and a new method of locomotion at the same time might not be a fair trial of either, but Barrar had assured her there would be no problem. New bodies were an everyday affair to him. He had, indeed, managed to ski with no obvious problems from the residence area along the snowy, and often icy, streets of Pitville and even to herringbone up the slope to the top of the jumping ramp. He had still been standing completely at ease when she started her run. Now, as she approached its lowest part, she had to focus all her attention on her own technique and forget the Samian. Her husband would have to provide any help his boss might need.

  The jump ramp itself was of packed snow, some of it natural and some the pulverized ice excavated from the two shafts which gave Pitville its name. They were only about a hundred and fifty kilometers from sunlight, so the general temperature, while extremely variable like all of Habranha’s weather, was usually high enough to let a reasonably strong Erthuma make snowballs out of water ice powder by squeezing. The ramp was therefore fairly hard and even moderately slippery, though its skiing surface was constantly changing as the natural precipitation which tried to cover it competed with the equally variable winds which strove to sweep it clear.

  The falloff at either side was stabilized by native vegetation, carefully selected for deep roots and lack of explosive quality. There were two basically different types of life on Habranha; one had a biochemistry enough like that of the Erthumoi to use ATP as its “battery.” The other and more common employed azide ion for the same general purposes, so that much of the world’s vegetation and some of its animal life was either explosive or electrically hazardous or both. The winged natives belonged to the first category, lending strength to the mounting belief among the Six Races that they had not actually evolved on Habranha.

  At the lowest point of the run, where the curve flung skiers upward again, the surface was hardest to predict or even to analyze by sight. Hugh had had the area lighted as well as possible, but no lighting would let human eyes determine how well the deposit was packed at any given moment. This was where the sport grew interesting…

  Janice kept her feet. She was traveling last enough now to guarantee serious damage to her armor if she hit anything solid, explosive or not, and she was crouched to give the wind as little handle as possible.

  For a brief moment she felt almost normal weight as she reached the bottom arc and caromed upward. Then she was off the snow beyond the first lighted area, with a fifty-meter gulf below her, and orbiting more or less toward a second and larger hill which started two hundred meters away. The target area was also well lighted, but for these few seconds she herself must be nearly invisible to Hugh. She had no idea of how, or how well, the Samian could perceive her.

  She was busy with her poles, which looked more like broad-bladed oars; a skier’s problem of staying upright either on or off the ground, in Habranha’s feeble gravity and dense air, was much worse than on any Erthumoi-normal world. Strong wrists meant quite as much as good ankles in this kind of “jumping.” She made a technically poor but not catastrophic landing on her right ski, which she had managed to keep aligned with her direction of flight, brought the other down, slowed aerodynamically for a few seconds with her poles held across her body, and finally felt sure enough of her traction to bring herself to a stop in normal ski fashion. “All right. Who’s next?”

  She didn’t ask vocally. Her armor and body cavities were filled with diving fluid, since her job of-ten took her to the bottom of the Pits. Vocal cords evolved for gas don’t work in liquid, and her armor carried a code transmitter whose output, while far more sophisticated than the short-and-long combinations of the original Erthumoi telegraph, was still much slower and clumsier than ordinary speech. It was loud enough to be heard for several hundred meters if the wind were not too strong.

  “I’m coming. Be ready to pick up the pieces!” This was vocal language, through Barrar’s speaker and the woman’s translator, though originating in a device fully is artificial as Janice’s coder. The Samian had no more voice than he had arms, legs, or eyes; how his species had come to evolve intelligence was a favorite challenge to science from the mystics who still r
ejected evolution as well as among the biologists themselves.

  Husband and wife watched tensely as the plastic-skeleton poled itself to the head of the ramp and paused for a moment while its driver presumably made a final evaluation of his problems. Both Erthumoi had time to wonder whether his feelings were normal enough, by their standards, for their own to qualify as sympathy. Then Barrar thrust himself forward and downward.

  The mechanical body’s acceleration was rather greater than the woman’s; the framework must have set up more turbulence in the dense air but certainly had less total drag than her armored figure. Steering in the swirling air currents with the oarlike poles could have been a straightforward matter of logic, hut for a living nervous system reason takes significantly longer than reflexes. Janice and her husband had the reflexes — had acquired them, in fact, under some five times Habranha’s gravity; Ged Barrar did not.

  The ramp was five meters wide, which was ordinarily plenty even in fairly high winds. By the time he was fifty meters down its slope, however, the Samian’s overcorrected turns were bringing him almost to the edge, first on one side and then on the other. Janice could do nothing from the low end of the run; Hugh was tempted to launch himself after the swerving figure in spite of the obvious fact that there was no way he could catch it in time to keep the plastic framework out of the bushes. Fortunately, he didn’t have to.

  “Relax, Hugh.” The voice was not recognizable through the translation system, but the tone was that used by the equipment to identify male native Habras. Simultaneously three figures resembling dragonflies with three pairs each of, to Erthumoi, unbelievably short wings swooped into the lighted area above the ramp, diving toward the skier. They were flying almost in line, twenty-five or thirty meters apart.

  The first missed; reflexes able to deal easily with Habranha’s chaotic air turbulence were defeated by Barrar’s inadequate attempts to steer himself.

  “Ged! Just go straight! They’ll pick you up!” Hugh keyed out before realizing how silly he was being. If the Samian had been able to go straight, there would have been no problem. It was too bad Janice had heard — but she’d never remind him unless he asked for it.

  The next native had an additional second or two to allow for the extra variables, and neatly inserted four sets of handling appendages among the upper bars of Ged Barrar’s pseudobody. This was light, far lighter than an armored Erthuma, and, with no obvious effort, the Habra lifted it clear of the ramp and around to the right of its upcurved end. Seconds later he set his burden down beside Janice, swooped gracefully up and around, and landed in front of them with his fellows.

  “I’m coming,” keyed Hugh. “I can’t guarantee just where I’ll land; you fellows should be ready for a quick lift.”

  “We know, Boss,” came the translated reply. “We’ve seen you often enough. Come on down. We’re ready.”

  Hugh came. By some combination of luck and personal skill he held a relatively straight course both on the slopes and in the air, and landed on both skis at once, fifty meters or so to one side of, and seventy short of, the waiting group. He slid to a halt beside them, spraying snow.

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to bury anyone. Many thanks for the help…” he hesitated briefly as he glanced at body patterns…”Ted. Did you just happen by, or were you on duty?” He added for Barrar’s information, “Ted’s one of my safety people.”

  “Ob duty,” replied the Habra. “We always have one flyer — one of us or a Crotonite — here when someone’s using the jump. Today it seemed wise to have more.”

  “Not the most tactful of remarks, if my presence is the reason you intimate,” interjected Barrar.

  “The Crotonites keep telling us sad stories of what happens when crawlers try to imitate flyers. We recognize their tendency to make a good story better, especially at the expense of nonflyers, but we also know how long it takes to develop really good reflexes for flight or — is orbiting the appropriate word here? Children are children for a long time.” The Samian shifted slightly, and Hugh quieted him with a gesture; such a phrase, he knew, carried no belittling implication to the natives. “We hadn’t seen any of your people trying this before, Administrator, and felt that our responsibility involved safety more than tact.”

  “Quite right,” keyed Hugh. “Thanks again.”

  “Yes.” Barrar caught on quickly; he himself had a tact-demanding job. “I hadn’t realized what my efforts would do to the air as well as to my own motion. I should have been more prepared for feedback. Your help was very much in order, Ted. I must go back and try again immediately; I should have learned something from this set of mistakes. Will your people stand by again?”

  “Of course. As long as you care to keep practicing.”

  “I’ll have time for only one, or at most two, more tries before work calls. I believe the Cedars can stay longer, but they probably don’t need you so badly.”

  “We cover while anyone is using the slope,” the native replied. “Even a minor fall can damage armor, and the temperature is low even away from the Pits.”

  “You don’t seem to need protection from the cold,” Hugh keyed. “It’s a good thirty Kelvins lower here than at Pwanpwan. Far below water-freeze. I had the idea you were comfortable at two seventy or eighty.”

  “That’s about right,” Ted agreed. The Samian was making his way back to the starting point of the jump, but none of the natives had bothered to follow him yet. “It’s not very obvious, but do we have protection. It seems to be — what do the Naxians call him? — the ‘Muscle’ who doesn’t need it. This is poor light even for us, so you’ll have to look closely to see ours.”

  At the implied invitation, the Erthumoi approached the nearest of the Habras. Like the other two, he was wearing male ornaments, not very noticeable even in good light at more than a few meters; but over this, held a few millimeters away from the body plates by what looked like little wads of sponge a few centimeters apart, was an extremely thin, transparent film. The light of Fafnir, as Erthumoi called the small companion to Habranha’s own sun, was not bright enough to reveal color; the supporting pads looked dark gray and the body plates rather lighter, but both Erthumoi knew that the latter were patterned randomly in shades of red.

  The covering did not seem to include the three stubby pairs of wings, more reminiscent of fins to Erthumoi, currently folded back against their owners’ bodies.

  Hugh and Janice judged that the film was simply insulation. Even on Habranha, a flying creature of roughly human mass would need an active metabolism and should generate plenty of its own body heat. There was certainly no sign of an artificial heater that either could see, though admittedly the light was poor.

  “I’m coming!” Barrar’s voice interrupted the examination. The Habras took to the air at once, without apology. The Samian, either sensibly or tactfully, waited until he saw them swoop through the lighted region shortly below the starting point before he pushed off once more. This time no help was needed until he was off the end of the jump; he did what to Hugh, at least, was a surprisingly good job of holding his direction down the slope. Experience did seem to have helped.

  The third dimension was another matter, however. No one afterward tried to judge how much of the Samian’s subsequent contortions should be attributed to random Habranha wind and how much to Barrar’s own unskilled efforts at control. A being may know perfectly well what feedback is, and even such physical laws as Conservation of Angular Momentum, but reasoning takes time; flying and jumping take reflexes. He was upside down before reaching the peak of his trajectory. His poles waved frantically; one was knocked from his grip as it struck the wing of the first native to attempt a rescue pass.

  He was out of the lighted region now, and neither of the Erthumoi could really see what was going on. They might have made some gasp or other anxiety-driven sound, but with no voices could only watch, worry, and feel the discomfort as diving liquid was driven slowly through their windpipes by the reflexes which would normally
have made them cry out. Barrar, as far as they could tell, was equally silent; whatever panic reflexes he might have been indulging did not involve his artificial voice. The translators should have been crackling with orders or signals among the natives, Hugh thought briefly, but even the radio spectrum seemed to be silent. The reflexes of the flyers were all aimed at flying, not communicating.

  A second Habra, barely missing the one whose wing had knocked Barrar’s pole away, secured a grip on the Samian’s skeletal leg — the skier was still upside down — and for the moment seemed to end the danger since the burden was so light. The limb, however, had not been designed with enough foresight, and proved unable under tension to support the weight of the rest of the structure even in Habranha’s gravity. It came away at what the Erthumoi considered the knee, and Barrar was falling again with less control than ever, while Ted found himself holding a left shin, foot, and ski. The translators started buzzing and crackling, but emitted no comprehensible words; several of the Habras were speaking at once. This lasted only a few seconds before silence, except for the endless variable fluting of the wind, returned.

  Ted swung far to one side and tossed leg and ski clear, while one of his companions made another attempt to intercept the falling Samian. The task proved easier this time; Barrar had stopped trying to do anything for himself, and the aerodynamic problems were accordingly less complex. The native secured a grip on the skeleton’s shoulders while he himself was nearly inverted, and without apparent difficulty brought the rotation of the Habra-Samian system to a halt with the remaining leg and ski underneath. Half a minute later Barrar was lowered beside the Erthumoi, and Ted was asking rather diffidently whether there would have been serious damage if they had let him fall head downward.

  The Samian seemed amused.

  “This walker shouldn’t have been hurt. I certainly wouldn’t have been, since there isn’t any head on this machine.”