Complete short fiction, p.288
Complete Short Fiction, page 288
“Can you walk? asked D’Orrey. “There’s a place a few meters up where we can get close enough together for first aid”
Peter silently came down the trail, passing very carefully the spot where she had slipped, and made his way with equal care around her.
The climb was resumed more slowly.
Jaques had been right about the level spot. There was even a boulder large enough for a seat and after making sure it was solidly embedded Vicki settled herself on its fairly smooth top.
“At least I can sit,” she remarked.
“Don’t be flippant. Those knees are a mess.”
“And my hands. You’ll—both of you—have to use the kit. And am I bleeding into my right eye? something has certainly happened to my head.”
“It sure has. We’d better work from the top down. Pete, you use the tester; find if there’s a skull fracture under that cut. I’ll take care of the blood. The first aid kit was open now, and the older man pulled out a squeeze tube, snapped off its tip, and began to spread a layer of opaque brown gel over the gash.
Peter had silently taken out a golf-ball-sized capsule, opened it in a walnut fashion, touched the convex sides briefly to each other and pulled them apart. He placed the flat side of one over Vicki’s left eye at the point corresponding to the cut over the right, waited for D’Orrey to finish his anointing plus a few seconds for the gel to crust, and place the other over the wound itself. A monitor screen in the lid of the kit came to life, and all three read it with interest.
“Put some goo on this side, too,” the boy said after a moment, lifting the sensor to permit the operation.
D’Orrey obeyed, and Peter replace the instrument. The seniors expressed satisfaction, the man with a nod. Vicki grunting approvingly. Moving her head was uncomfortable.
“They match well enough. I guess I didn’t crack the egg. I got quite a wallop, though.”
“Do you feel dizzy or sick?” asked Peter.
“Not really. I can use a P-pill, I guess; even if I don’t really have concussion or shock, it won’t hurt.”
“At least you’re not like Mom.”
“Should I be relieved or worried? How did you mean that?”
“She’d have you lying down while she brewed some sort of herb poultice to plaster on you, and some other sort of tea to pout into you. She doesn’t believe in antibiotics, and less in nano or pseudolife repair gadgets. Let nature heal, she says.”
“Hmph. Mostly I agree with her. But why aren’t antibiotics natural? They originally came from molds, didn’t they?”
“Don’t argue with me. I’m just a hacker, as far from nature as anyone can get, she complains.”
“At least she knows it’s natural for kids to disagree with their parents,” cut in D’Orrey. “Let’s not wait for nature with these hands and knees. They must hurt.”
The symmetry test for fractures was harder with the kneecaps, since both areas were damaged about equally, but after much moving around of the sensors and a certain amount of argument all three decided that neither patella had been damaged. The chemicals and nano repair devices suspended in the gel could be expected to deal with infection, pain and, within an hour or so, to finish healing.
Even so, walking wasn’t easy for a while. They went on, partly because all wanted to get to work and partly because it was better for the damaged knees to be in normal use during repair. More information was available to the nanohealers. Travel was much slower, of course, and now Peter brought up the rear while Vicki set the pace.
She was happy to rest and pull out her pill vial after they reached the study site, while Peter criss-crossed the Stage to plant his instrument layout. This time he kept his camouflage on and travelled very slowly and watchfully; he was quite willing to let any snakes know he was coming, but if he scared the small mammals away ti might delay operations. Even so, the process was much more obvious to his companions than it had been at camp. Two or three creatures did bound or scurry out of his path, but none of the group saw anything resembling a mass exodus, and kept their hopes up. Vicki had taken her first pill; D’Orrey hoped it would not prove incompatible with the first aid equipment already at work, but made no comment. She was old enough to have her own judgment—several years older than he.
The rock he had used the day before seemed the best observing site, and it was agreed that all three should stay there. Using trees would have allowed broader coverage of the Stage, but it seemed better to have all three watchers monitor the same area so that memories as well as objective records could be compared. False-witness units were easy to sneak into monoculars, but many times harder with binoculars because of matching, correlation, and cross-connection problems, and almost impossible with multiple sets of instruments being used by different people from almost, but not quite the same point—especially if the observers occasionally moved a trifle with respect to each other. This was not a matter of worry in the sense that D’Orrey had been preaching, but had long been lab routine like clean glassware.
The older two had binoculars and video rings; Peter didn’t reveal much about his own equipment, which he had presumably designed and grown himself, but the others assumed he would not only be recording vision and sound but other factors. Use of radiation equipment which might stimulate, activate, track, or control animals and observing gear through minute receivers and transmitters was standard research procedure, and an obvious possibility even to non-hackers. Neither D’Orrey nor Vicki would have wanted to implant anything in a rattlesnake, but there were many who would consider it an interesting challenge. The hacker mindset had expanded naturally from data processing to nanotechnology, pseudobiology, and gene engineering, which after all differed little from each other.
His elders did not, therefore, try to watch Peter at all closely as he went around the area presumably planting sensors and transmitters, and the boy showed no urge to brag about, or even demonstrate, what he had. He spent about a quarter of an hour moving around the Stage. Apparently he met no snakes, or at least aroused none, and eventually he rejoined the others at the top of the rock.
He was now carrying openly a palm-sized monitor unit. Its screen showed a very active display, but this was not pictorial; symbols neither of the others could understand flickered endlessly on its surface. Peter made no effort to keep them from looking, but wore a half-amused, half-contemptuous smile when they tried. Vicki thought briefly of asking whether he would tell them anything, but decided not to give him the amusement of refusing. D’Orrey faced the same temptation but decided not to give him the amusement of explaining. The man had no objection in principle to showing off—he enjoyed it himself—but considered that Peter’s feeling of superiority because of his height needed no encouragement. He confined himself to a different question.
“Is there anything we can do but wait and hope we’re lucky again?”
“Nothing I can do, if you mean about persuading the snakes to come back. There’s lots of rabbits and smaller animals, but if only the two rattlers we saw yesterday are involved, they may not want to hunt yet. How long would it take to digest a mouse as big as they caught yesterday?”
D’Orrey didn’t know, but guessed, “maybe three or four days. I’m hoping there are more snakes on this. I’m budgeting for a wait, though; I don’t expect yesterday’s luck again so soon.
His pessimism proved justified, but the cause was not serpentine satiation. The trio spend over two hours on the rock while the sun rose higher and higher and grew less and less supportable, and nothing animal but a couple of mice came into view. Vicki, oldest of the group by several years and far the most patient by nature, simply waited, thinking silently most of the time but sometimes making a remark. Her suit was healing itself slowly be apparently without errors. Her personal injuries, because of or in spite of artificial intervention, were progressing far more rapidly. She took her pill faithfully every hour to keep from scaring subjects away.
D’Orrey whose own suit was having its usual thermal trouble, spoke more often, though he wouldn’t descend to futile complaint. Peter divided his attention between his monitor and the Stage, sweeping the latter frequently with a pair of binoculars which he didn’t offer to share with the others. His uncle thought of asking for a look, but didn’t want to hear something like, “Aren’t yours just as good?”
He suspected that they weren’t, that Peter had incorporated devices of his own in his optics, but couldn’t imagine what advantage these might confer—or rather, he could imagine many things, from infra-red and ultra-violet vision extension to time-lapse interferometers permitting better than ordinary resolution, but couldn’t guess which might be most likely. It would depend heavily on the kid’s specific skills; human limits forced even hackers to specialize.
Vicki’s healing completed itself, and after allowing with some distaste a dozen ladybug-sized mechanisms from the kit to crawl over the sites of her injuries scavenging spent chemicals and healing devices, she returned them to the case and resumed her own monitoring of the Stage.
The real interruption came late in the morning. The sun had been ducking behind clouds off and on as fair-weather cumulus began to build; all, even Peter, had taken this as welcome relief. Now a much darker shadow swept over the rock. The wind, which had been rising slowly as the sea breeze developed and had even been of some comfort, grew gusty, and large raindrops splattered on the rock and the watchers. For a moment they hoped for just a brief shower; then the drops grew smaller, steadier and more frequent.
Peter, after one nonverbal annoyed utterance, clambered quickly down the irregular slope where they had mounted the rock and began dashing here and there about the clearing. He had turned his suit off; apparently he now wanted any rattlers to take responsibility for avoiding him regardless of scientific protocol. He was back in four or five minutes with a slightly embarrassed expression on his face.
“I never thought of rain with some of this stuff. I’ve always used it indoors.”
“Insulation trouble?” Vicki sounded sympathetic, and even Jaques could remember too many of his own lapses to be critical.
“Not so much that. Just . . .” the youngster fell silent, and his uncle was annoyed. Something informative could have come out then. If it weren’t merely electrical insulation, what trouble could rain cause a micromachine? He felt a surge of irritation which goes with finding a gap in one’s knowledge, seeing no way to fill it, and being unable because of conscience to pass it off as supernatural and therefore unknowable. He obviously wouldn’t be told: Peter was changing the subject quite forcibly. “Vick, your suit still has sections not working. Shouldn’t it be healed by now?”
“I suppose so. I haven’t been timing, though, and don’t know just how much damage was done. Also, this never happened to me before, and I don’t remember what the manual said I should expect for healing times.”
“Maybe I should check it—the suit, I mean.”
“Can you? Have you equipment?”
“I can cobble some together in an hour or so.”
“Here?”
“Well, no. I’ll need my kit back at camp. I could take your suit back and you could use mine if you wanted to keep observing. It won’t really fit you—it isn’t self-shaping like yours—but its camouflage unit can handle wrinkles.”
“But if you aren’t here and anything interesting happens, will there be any record? Is your layout entirely automatic? I thought you’d have to be on hand to operate at least some of it.
“Peter looked uncomfortable once more.
“Well—I’ve had to turn a lot of it off, just now. Is there much chance of snakes hunting while it’s raining, anyway?”
“Rabbits and mice stay out in it. I expect the rattler’s lives go an as usual, too,” answered D’Orrey. “What it boils down to is that the Becker equipment can’t observe in the rain, and if this shower lasts more than an hour or two we may as well go back to camp and read Nanofacts for Beginners.”
“Peter flushed again. There was no way of taking the remark as anything but criticism, though the man had managed to avoid saying “. . . equipment we were counting on . . .”
Vicki, soft-hearted in spite of her disappointment, cut in. “Pete wouldn’t have to read. How long would it take to redesign your stuff to work even in the rain?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t spent much time outdoors. A lot goes on I didn’t think about . . .”
“And it isn’t just a matter of improving insulation, you say,” D’Orrey added, he hoped not too pointedly.
“Not by a lot. I’ll work on it, though. You want me to take your suit, Vick? Or will you be coming back too?” Neither adult could guess whether the youngster wanted to be alone or not.
They debated the question on its own merits for several seconds. Then Vicki sneezed again and reached doubtfully for her pill vial.
“Not just anti-symptom stuff, I hope?” Peter’s self assurance suddenly blossomed again.
“I thought you had a low opinion of natural cures,” D’Orrey cut in before the woman could answer.
“I do, but that’s not the point. Interfering with natural responses to an infection just because they’re a nuisance isn’t very smart. You should at least decide first whether the responses are helping fight the infection.”
“What would you do?” asked the woman, rather sarcastically.
“I’d spend a week blowing my nose, until someone—”
“So you do have some trust in nature. That’s just what I do, except where sneezing will interfere with the job.”
Peter scarcely noticed her interruption. “—cooks up an antibody for just the right virus. I’ll have to try that—I haven’t done any really fancy chemistry yet, though I grow most of my own gear. I wonder if pseudolife would do the job, or if I’d have to get into high class biochem?” He seemed about to drift completely into abstract thought, but D’Orrey brought the discussion firmly back to practical levels.
“We’d all better go back, I guess, and at least rethink what we should have up here with us. Vicki’s nerves and membranes can offer their proper responses to irritation”—another sneeze suggested that they were doing this—” and your gear needs rethinking, you admit. Her suit may need treatment, and even if the snakes come hunting again we can’t make the measurements and readings we wanted.”
“Maybe you’d better stay, though,” suggested the woman. “If anything does happen, just knowing something about the frequency of hunts and the possible number of snakes involved could be useful.”
The man nodded slowly. “All right. I’ll stay ‘til sundown, or enough before that to let me get back before dark. You two go on down and do what needs to be done with sniffles, suits, and sensors. Watch your footing—no insult intended.”
“Don’t worry!” Vicki responded with feeling. Peter had already disappeared down the climbway. She followed, showing no sign of stiffness or other effect of her injuries. D’Orrey’s attention shifted back to the Stage as Peter appeared and worked over the area once more. Apparently he had merely turned his equipment off before; now he was collecting it. Vicki was not with him, and Jaques didn’t even wonder whether she were waiting at the head of the trail or had started down at once. The boy presently vanished as well—really vanished, by departure, not by activating his suit. D’Orrey stretched himself out behind the screen of bushes, assumed as relaxed a position as possible, and watched the deserted Stage through the still falling rain.
Rabbits, mice, and squirrels might indeed be willing to feed during a shower, but none of them seemed around at the moment. The sun, glimpsed occasionally through brief breaks in the rain clouds, slowly reached the meridian. It sank seemingly even more slowly. The temperature had fallen considerably, which was a relief; the camouflage suit was better at keeping its wearer warm than cool. And at least he had food and more water this time.
No rabbits. No squirrels. No mice. Not even a toad.
No snakes. A few decades ago this would have been no surprise on Mt. Desert, but what some people called Greenhouse Effect and others had named the Warm Ripple, depending on political preference and statistical background, had gradually extended the northern range of the timber rattler by over three hundred kilometers and was still at it. How the creatures had made their way over the causeway from the mainland to Acadia was a matter of speculation, but no one was very surprised. There were far fewer human travelers these days, mostly because of fuel shortage and cost, and even a bear would not have been very startling.
But none of this explained rattlesnakes cooperating in a hunt. Miracles, to D’Orrey, meant high technology or unusual combinations of natural law, not the supernatural. High tech meant people, not spirits. The hacker attitude had spread quite naturally from data handling to nano and bio technology. Shaping micromachines and pseudolife “organisms” using commercially available enzymes and crystal-patterned molecular assembly guides, commonly and—when spoken aloud—confusingly called “ribosomes” from the trade name of an early model, was no more unusual now than the designing of viruses and more benign software around commercially available solid-state data processing chips had been a few decades before. Even casual—much too casual from D’Orrey’s viewpoint—gene engineering, though sometimes illegal, was a common field of amateur activity. Knowledge is nearly indestructible, since it does not obey conservation laws. The cooperative snakes might represent someone’s personal game, a serious piece of research to be published in due course, mere mischief or, just conceivably, a new natural phenomenon. D’Orrey, as an animal behavior student, needed to know which. New combinations of natural law were eternal, and amusement—eternal as knowledge itself. They were also as hard to control, as evolution, religious reformations, drug abuse, nuclear proliferation, and the sport of hacking all showed clearly.
