Federation World (21 page)

"Don't worry," Martin said dryly, "I'm worried."

On his screen, the shadowy, gray tube which was the tunnel was growing larger. His escort was slowing and beginning to break up again, but without the prior urgency. Obviously this was the end of the line. Martin guided the vehicle into the tunnel at right angles and cut the power when his ports gave a view in both directions along it and his cargo hatch was free to open. Then he waited.

His external lighting showed burrowers emerging from the tunnel roof and floor. They did not approach the vehicle closely, other than to remove the small heaps of soil his arrival had brought down. When the tunnel was smooth and unobstructed they, too, settled on the floor to wait.

"I think," Martin whispered, "they're ready to talk,"

When she replied, Beth's voice sounded embarrassed, defensive, and angry-the tone one used when making excuses for a friend. She said, "The computer isn't getting anywhere with the translation. It's still working on a combination of amplification and filtration, trying to reproduce the process whereby Earth-people in noisy jobs, riveters, workers in sheet steel, and such, are able to carry on a quiet conversation while a boiler shop din is going on all around them. But all we can hear behind the background noise is more background noise. Listen."

Martin clenched his teeth as the hiss and static built up to what sounded like a continual barrage of sharp, irregular explosions. Then suddenly they were gone, converted into bursts of silence in a new and quieter background.

He was able to identify and isolate the regular, soft pulsing of the lander's sonic probes, but there was something more. It was a steady bubbling sound which rose and fell at frequent but irregular intervals, varying in pitch so that it sounded as if someone were playing a wind instrument under water. Beth stepped up the volume until there could be no doubt that the sound was not a natural phenomenon.

"If it is a language," Beth said, "then everyone is talking at once and the babble is untranslatable. If it isn't a language, then the sound is probably produced continually as an aid to fixing position and distance between individuals. The computer says there is a high probability that the sound performs both functions, but that doesn't help us with the translation."

"But that computer," Martin protested, "is supposed to be capable of instantly translating any intelligence-bearing sounds which-"

"This isn't a species like the Teldins," Beth said defensively, "whose words and the actions to which they referred were implicit in previously observed behavior patterns. These people are blind and the vibrations they produce are received as touches, which refer to the feel, not the sight, of objects and actions. We receive them as sounds, so translation is theoretically possible. But it may well be that in this case a successful contact will be just that, an actual physical contact."

When Martin did not reply, she went on, "We need a long, careful think about this one. You should return to the ship at once."

"No," Martin said firmly. 'This bunch wants to make contact, and I don't want to have it all to do again with another group. They've gone to a lot of trouble and considerable personal discomfort to..."

"The computer," Beth said, just as firmly, "was not programmed with Braille."

"I want to give it another shot," Martin said stubbornly. "They've been whispering at me and I've been shouting at them, from inside a vehicle which has to be distorting the word sounds. Can I modify the digger's external address system to step down, attentuate, my voice instead of amplifying it?"

"No problem," she replied. "But the system is integral with the vehicle's structure, so you'll have to return here to have the... Oh, oh, they're moving out. I think they are breaking off contact, not you."

Bitterly disappointed, he watched them go. Obviously, the communication problem was presently insoluble, and hopefully they, too, were going back to have a long think about it. They were undulating rapidly along the tunnel, not burrowing through the soil, in the direction of their cavern-all except one, who stopped about ten meters from the digger.

"One of them still wants to talk," said Martin.

"Don't get too excited about it," said Beth, "they may simply have left a guard."

But she had to be wrong because the bubbling sounds in his headphones had become quieter, yet more distinct. Only one burrower was talking, the one outside who was tapping its forward stubble gently against its beak.

"My helmet!" said Martin suddenly. "Can I step down its external speaker?"

When she replied a few minutes later, her voice sounded far from enthusiastic. "There is an on-the-spot modification you can make to the helmet comm system.

If you wrap the mike and your lower jaw and mouth in sound absorbent material-some of your couch padding would do it-you should be able to talk quietly without the distortion caused by you pitching your voice unnaturally low.

"But it would mean you leaving the digger," she concluded warningly. "That suit you're wearing is little more than an overall, and your backpack has air for less than-"

"The air down here is breathable," Martin broke in, "and the backpack is too big and awkward to wear in that tunnel. I would be able to move more quietly and quickly without it. Don't worry, I won't move far from the digger."

To these people his voice must sound like a continuous, modulated explosion, Martin thought as he worked on the helmet, and unintelligible because of its sheer volume. He wondered how beings who had only the sense of touch would think of an explosion, how they had learned chemistry without being able to observe chemical reactions, and ultimately develop the other sources of energy which enabled them to detect starships entering their system.

It could not have been easy.

A boyhood memory came to him of reading a book on the early days of exploration and navigation on Earth. Instances had been mentioned of unsighted people who had been able to find their way among the widely scattered islands of the Pacific Ocean by sniffing the air for the almost imperceptible land smells, feeling the winds, and gauging direction by the warmth of the sunlight on their faces; in short, using the enhanced senses they had developed to compensate for the fact that they were blind.

There was growing in Martin a curiosity so intense, coupled with a feeling of such awe, that any risk he might have to take while getting to know and understand these blind borrowers seemed of secondary importance.

"The bio-sensors say you are less tense," Beth said hopefully. "Are you having second thoughts about coming back?"

"No," Martin said, "just thoughts."

Unavoidably there were a few clicks and thuds as he wriggled through the tiny hatch onto the tunnel floor. The noise must have bothered the being outside because, when he directed his helmet light along the tunnel, the burrower had backed away by nearly three meters.

He left the hatch open in case he needed to return in a hurry, knowing that if a burrower tried to enter, Beth could use the remotes to close it. Slowly, and as silently as possible, he began crawling toward what he hoped was the spokesperson.

The tunnel was just high enough for him to move on his hands and knees provided he kept his head down, which meant that only a small area of the floor in front of him was illuminated. To see where he was going he had to crawl on his stomach, using his elbows, forearms, and the inside edges of his boots to move himself forward.

Of necessity, his approach to the borrower was slow and, he hoped, reassuring. But when he had closed to within arm's reach it backed off to lie with its stubble rubbing gently against its beak three meters away. Martin tried again with the same result, although this time it halted a little closer to him. Once again he moved toward it, speaking quietly and noting by its reactions that it was hearing his attentuated voice with visible distress.

How would he have felt, Martin wondered, if an out-sized extraterrestrial he could not see was crawling toward him. He could understand and sympathize with its timidity. Then suddenly the burrower was moving away at the same rate he was trying to approach it.

"Except for your timid friend," Beth said, "there are no other burrowers in the area. I think it wants you to follow it to the cavern. Maybe they have special communication equipment there that they want to use on you.

"You are twenty-eight meters from the digger," she added warningly.

Deliberately, Martin closed his eyes and crawled on. Not seeing where he was going for a while might put him more closely in tune with the burrowers, who could not see at all. But it also made it impossible for him to see the tunnel, which seemed to be growing lower and more constricting.

He tried to imagine that he was in reality crawling along a narrow trench, keeping low because it was necessary for him not to be seen, while above him stretched a black, limitless sky and all the damp, earth-scented air that he could breathe. But his ability to delude himself had never been great, and so he knew with a dreadful certainty that a few inches above his head there were countless tons of the soil waiting to collapse and bury him alive.

"The bio-sensors report elevated pulse, respiration, blood pressure, and perspiration unaccompanied by a rise in ambient temperature," Beth said urgently. "Is the air becoming unbreathable?"

"It isn't the air," Martin said, trying to keep his voice down. It was impossible, he thought wildly, to have hysterics in a whisper. "This idea isn't working. I have to get back to the digger, at once."

"Right," she said briskly. "Stay put, relax, and I'll send it for you. You'll be back on the surface in no time."

Behind him the digger came noisily to life, and a sprinkling of loose, brightly lit soil fell like dry rain through his spotlight beam.

"No," he said with quiet desperation. "Don't move the digger! You'll bring down the roof wherever you come through, and I'd have to clear a way to the hatch with my hands. The tunnel isn't safe. It was made by people who eat dirt and don't mind being buried in it. I have to go back the way I came." · But moving backward along the tunnel was incredibly slow and awkward. He could not see where he was going and his boots kept digging into the walls, bringing down sizeable quantities of soil, raising the level of the floor, and making it harder to squeeze through.

The floor-! he thought suddenly.

If he dug downward, that would not affect the unstable condition of the walls and ceiling, and a hole just deep enough to take his legs and lower body would allow him to crouch down into it and turn himself around.

He knew that what he intended doing was dangerous, but he had to try it. He had to try it because he was not sure how long he could continue to function as a thinking and physically coordinated being. More and more of his mind was being swamped by the one all-pervading and irresistible urge.

To get out!

With fingers which were beginning to bleed inside the thin, tough membrane of his gloves, Martin tore at the loosely packed soil of the floor. As the hole slowly deepened he pushed the dirt to either side, packing it against the walls or throwing handfuls of it into the tunnel ahead. The burrower had edged a little closer, but the sweat running into Martin's eyes made it impossible to see what, if anything, it was doing.

Abruptly, he stifled a cry of pain as his fingers scraped against solid rock.

When Beth spoke she did not mention the gloves, which Martin had insisted on wearing because they would give him maximum touch sensitivity while dealing with the burrowers, or the shelf of rock he was uncovering, or even his bio-sensor readings which must have been worrying her badly. Her voice was calm and unhurried, as if by a process of sympathetic magic she could transfer those qualities to Martin. And even though they both knew what she was doing, it seemed to work.

"A suggestion," she said, "You have moved more than one-quarter of the distance between the digger and the cavern. Do you think it might be easier to go on instead of turning back? I can guide the digger to the cavern, which is protected by a rock overhang, without bringing the roof down on top of you..."

The bio-sensors were already telling her what he thought of that suggestion. He said, "The burrowers would try to stop you again and be chewed up by the digger. They seem to place a lot of value on that place. No. I'm going back, backward."