The Gabble and Other Stories (36 page)

They were omnivores; often supplementing their diet with flute grass rhizomes, fungi, and, oddly, anything shiny on which they could lay their claws. They possessed complex voice boxes, and as was already demonstrable, there seemed no reason for this. Also, on the whole, they were solitary creatures and spoke only to themselves. When they met it was usually only to mate or fight, or both. There was also no reason for them to carry structures in their skulls capable of handling vastly complex languages. Two thirds of their large convoluted brains they seemed hardly to use at all. In short: they were a puzzle.

Shardelle stood, walked along the metal floor of the ATV and climbed up into the chainglass bubble of the cockpit. Checking the map screen, she noted the transponder positions for the two hooders in the area, then chose a route to take her back to the Tagreb complex that avoided them completely. She had seen what had happened to an ATV and its four occupants when they had ignored this simple rule and driven close to one of the creatures for a look--or rather, she had seen the torn and very small fragments that remained of both people and vehicle.

Taking up the joystick she drove herself rather than be guided in by Rodol. As an afterthought, she mentally sent the detach sequence to her aug and removed the chrome slug of sophisticated computer hardware from the side of her head. She had some thinking to do and found that easier while driving, bare-brained.

* * * *

Taxonomic and genetic research bases, or Tagrebs, looked like giant iron tulip flowers when stored in the vast hold of the research vessel Beagle Infinity. Launched, a Tagreb maintained its shape during entry into a planetary atmosphere while its AI came online. The AI then slowed the Tagreb in lower atmosphere with fusion thrusters before finally descending on the chosen location using gravmotors. Upon landing, the flower opened, folding four petals down to the ground. From this, five plasmel domes inflated--one at the center and one over each petal.

Their internal structures--floors, ceilings, walls, and stairs--were inflated at the same time. The AI then took a look around to decide how best to continue.

Rodol, aware of the problems Masada might present, first injected a thick layer of a resin matrix into the boggy ground below to protect the base from the depredations of tricones--molluscan creatures that, given time, could grind their way through just about anything--before injecting the same substance into the hollow walls and floors of the structure itself. Next the AI woke its telefactors, which immediately took the requisite materials outside the base to construct an electrified perimeter fence and four gun towers. Unusually, these towers were supplied in this case with proton cannons capable of punching holes through thick armor, for some of the natives were anything but friendly. After three days the base was ready for the next stage. Automated landers descended inside the fence and the telefactors began bringing in supplies: food, bedding, nanoscopes, full immersion VR suites, soaps and gels, nano micro and submacro assembler rigs, an aspidistra in a pot, autodocs, autofactories, holocams, coffee makers.... Every item was slotted into its place or plugged in.

On day five a hooder came to investigate, attacked the fence, then retreated leaving its rear segment behind--incinerated by one of the cannons. On day six Rodol brought the fusion reactor fully online, supplying power to the multitude of sockets throughout the base. Lights, embedded in the ceilings, were ready to come on. Sanitary facilities were ready to recycle waste.

Rodol stabbed filter heads down into the ground to suck up water, which was first cracked for its oxygen to bring the internal atmosphere to requirements, and thereafter pumped into holding tanks. The humans, haimans, and Golem arrived shortly afterward; disembarking from shuttles with massive hover trunks gliding along behind them. Only a few days after was it discovered that the five gravplatforms were not nearly enough for those who wanted to do field work.

Grudgingly, Rodol cleared Polity funds to pay the local population for twenty aerofans and five fat-tired all-terrain vehicles.

Jonas arrived on foot, having been on the planet for six months getting to know the locals and many of the ECS monitors still assigned here. Six months later he raised in celebration a glass of malt whisky to the scene beyond the panoramic window of his upper dome apartment and laboratory. It was in a befuddled state that two hours later he received the message through his aug.

“Hi Jonas,” said Mary Cole.

She was standing in the middle of his apartment--to his perception, for the augram was being played directly into his mind.

“Hello Mary.” He toasted her with his glass.

“This is not real time or interactive so don’t bother asking questions. I just want you to know that one of our coastal survey drones picked up precisely what you want, here...” The location downloaded into his aug. “That’s only five hundred and thirty kilometers from you. Have a nice one.”

As the image blinked out Jonas was already groping for his aldetox. “Rodol, I need the field autopsy gear, the big stuff, and I need it now!” he bellowed.

“What you require is available, but unfortunately the transport situation has not improved. All the gravplatforms are out and aerofans will not suffice,” the AI replied.

Jonas gulped water to wash down the pills. He was already starting to feel sober even though the aldetox had yet to take effect. “What about the ATVs?”

“There are three here. Two require new drive shafts, which one of the autofactories is currently manufacturing. The other is assigned to Shardelle Garadon. Perhaps you should speak with her.”

Jonas returned to his chair while the aldetox took effect. One of the ATVs had room enough to carry all the equipment he would require, initially, then came the problem of bringing specimens back. Perhaps he could get some help there from ECS? Something for a later date, he thought--plenty of work to do before then. After a moment he made a search for Shardelle’s aug address, found it, and tried to make contact. Annoyingly her aug was offline. Instead, he found her apartment address within the Tagreb, stood, and unsteadily headed for the door.

* * * *

Fifteen hundred and thirty-two linguists remained: the hardcore. The rest dismissed The Gabble as having less meaning than the sounds lower animals made. At least those sounds had a reason, some logical syntax, some meaning related to alarm, pain, pleasure, or the basic “I’m over here, let’s fuck.”

Unfortunately only a third of that hardcore consisted of linguists who Shardelle felt had anything meaningful to contribute. Of those, one Kroval--a haiman based on Earth who, in the silicon part of his mind, held nearly every known language in existence--had the most to contribute. His analysis fined down to, “The phonemes are 80 percent the anglic of Masada, and their disconnection from coherent meaning seems almost deliberate. I can say with certainty that they are not parroting the language, and perhaps a degree of understandable human paranoia engendered by the unknown, or possibly unknowable, leads me to feel they might be deriding it.”

The latest offering from a small group of the others, who Shardelle labeled the lunatic fringe, had been, “It must be what is not said: meaning can be attributed to the synergetic whole of negatives. We just need to isolate the network of dissaffirmative monads in a...” and so it had continued until the speaker in question seemed in danger of disappearing up his own backside. It was this last that had led Shardelle to disconnect her aug and cast it aside.

They seemed to be getting nowhere. In fact, over the last six months, more imponderables had entered the equation. On the biological front little more was known than had been obtained by close scanning and sampling, and that had cost them fourteen mobile scanners and seven beetle-sized sampling drones--gabbleducks swatted them like flies and then, if they were shiny, ate them. What Shardelle had been waiting for, like so many others in the Tagreb, was a death. Other researchers had obtained their corpses: a siluroyne, a heroyne, and loads of mud snakes. But it seemed gabbleducks were in no hurry to die, and not one corpse or any remains had been picked up by the vast number of ECS drones constantly scanning the planet.

Shardelle wondered about that: why so much scanning activity, why the quarantine areas still, what was it that ECS was keeping quiet? No matter, she had enough puzzles to concern her at present. Perhaps she should slip out one night with a pulse rifle and solve the corpse problem.

The Gabble, and its source, frustrated her that much.

Time to sleep, she decided. Thinking like that was a sure way to get her expelled from the Tagreb and the planet. Nothing gets killed, unless in self-defense, until its sentience level has been properly assessed. Just then, as she was about to head for her bed, there came a hammering at her door. Shardelle grimaced and considered ignoring it, but there was urgency in that hammering--maybe the corpse? She opened the door expecting to see one of the others on her team. Who was this?

He held out a hand. “Jonas Clyde ... hooders. May I come in?”

Shardelle stood aside and waved him into her apartment. He looked younger than she had expected, but that meant nothing. His blond hair was cropped and he moved with athletic confidence. His face was tanned and his eyes electric green. His hands looked ... capable. He scanned around quickly, his gaze coming to rest on her screen. The big gabbleduck was lolloping through the flute grasses.

“Moves like a grizzly bear,” he observed.

She, of course, recognized his name. Jonas Clyde was something of a legend in Taxonomy and usually studied exactly what he wanted on any new world. It had come as a pleasant surprise to Shardelle, upon hearing he was on this mission, that he had not chosen the gabbleducks.

“Substantially larger, though,” she said, closing the door.

He obviously auged through to her screen control, for figures appeared along the bottom.

“Eight tons--not something you’d want to be standing in the path of.” He turned to her. “I hear they eat people.”

“Chew, certainly ... coffee?” She walked over to her coffee maker--an antique almost three centuries old--and began making an espresso.

“Yes please--same for me. You say ‘chew’?”

“Humans obviously disagree with their digestion, but if someone annoys them sufficiently they chew them up and spit out the pieces. But of course, like everything else with them, their behavior is puzzling. Gabbleducks have pursued human prey across hundreds of kilometers, for no particular reason, and killed them. There was one case of a hunter shooting a clip from an Optek into one creature and it ignoring him completely. A recent one we observed via holocam: a gabbleduck abandoned its territory, crossed five hundred kilometers, and drowned a pond worker in her squirm pond. We don’t know why.” Bringing two cups of espresso over, she nodded to her sofa. He sat down. Placing the cups on the table between, she took the armchair opposite. “I was surprised you did not choose them as your subject for study.”

He grimaced. “They were my initial choice, but I have experience with dangerous fauna so it was suggested, rather strongly, that I choose the hooders. Obviously gabbleducks are dangerous, but not so lethal that it was felt necessary to fit every one with a transponder to know their locations.”

“I see,” Shardelle nodded, sipped her espresso. “So what can I do for you?”

“I want your ATV,” he replied.

“Nothing if not direct. What for?”

“Hooders are long-lived and practically indestructible.” He paused. “That’s a puzzle too--we were told by the locals that when hooders reach a certain age they break into separate segments and each segment grows into a new hooder. This planet should be overrun with them

... perhaps some mechanism based on predator prey ratio....” He sat gazing off into space.

“You were saying,” Shardelle prompted.

“Yes ... yes. They are practically indestructible but for one big fault. As you know, the sea tides here are vicious--the moons and Calypse all interact in that respect. Hooders sometimes stray down onto the eastern banks at low tide, get caught there, then washed into deep water where they eventually drown. It takes a while, but it’s deep off the banks and hooders are very heavy.”

“And?”

“Occasionally a hooder corpse will get dragged up by the bank current and deposited ashore.”

“I see--you have your corpse.”

“And no way of getting a large field autopsy kit to it.”

Shardelle gazed up at the screen. “Where is it?”

Jonas touched his aug for a moment, frowned, then pointed. “Five hundred and thirty kilometers thataway--straight to the coast.”

Shardelle nodded at the screen. “He is about three hundred kilometers in the same direction.”

“Your point?”

“Of course you can use my ATV, but under one condition: I’m coming with you.” Shardelle knew there was more to her decision than the gabbleduck’s presence on the route. There was the escape from the frustration of her research, which in that moment seemed to have translated into sexual frustration.

* * * *

From the chainglass bubble cockpit Jonas glanced into the back of the ATV. Apparently these had been used as troop transports during the rebellion against the theocracy. Now either side of it was stacked from floor to ceiling with aluminum and plasmel boxes, strapped back against the sides, with only a narrow gangway leading back and elbowing right to the side door.

It had been necessary for them to remove much of Shardelle’s equipment, including the chair, but she did not seem to mind. He realized she was glad of this excuse for a journey to take her away from the meticulously boring research into gabbleduck biology, and the seemingly endless and fruitless analysis of The Gabble.

“How long will it take us, do you think?” he asked, now looking ahead. They were leaving the Tagreb enclosure, rolling across an area of trammeled flute grass through which new red-green shoots were spearing.

“How long do you want it to take?”

“Your meaning?”

“Sixty hours if we go non-stop. Rodol can guide the ATV during the night ... do you need sleep?”