Outside, four teams of Ilmatarans held the ropes and stood braced on the sea bottom, straining to keep the capsule centered above its intended resting place. Broadtail and Rob communicated by clicks, but there was an awful lag.
Rob’s biggest worry was Alicia. Though the elevator’s skids allowed two meters of clearance below the access hatch, they were still pretty flimsy. He was terrified that one of the skids would give if they dropped the capsule too quickly, and Alicia would wind up crushed. When it was finally resting on the bottom, he realized he was holding his breath.
Bossing a team of Longpincer’s apprentices and tenants as they help the Builders gives Broadtail an odd mix of feelings—as if he is hungry and full at once. It is good to be in charge, or ganizing teams and telling them when to haul as if he is a landowner.
But the work also reminds him of his old home, and the memories make him sad. Whenever he remembers Sandyslope he is startled by how much he still desires the place. If he concentrates he can remember the way the water tasted, the feel of the stones, and the chill of the currents.
With a patch of clear ground he could trace the entire Steepslope pipe system, with all the valves, leaks, and uneven flow spots precisely marked. He can even remember what grows where, and the flavor of the different crops. His jellyfronds always get a sour edge from the sulfur in the stones, but that also makes his spine-beds taller and fatter than any others in Continuous Abundance.
Not his spine-beds. Smoothpincer’s spine-beds. Broadtail wonders if they are even there anymore. He remembers Longfeeler suggesting putting in some fiber plants there, as even good-quality spines don’t fetch as many beads as rope does.
Longpincer’s apprentices haul on the rope to keep the floating shelter in the right position as the Builders lower it. Broadtail goes over to inspect it before they tie off. Work is better than remembering his lost property.
As he runs his eating-tendrils along the rope, making sure there is no slackness, Broadtail wonders if Builder 1 and the other strangers have any feelings as deep and unbreakable as the bond between an adult and his home. Certainly the strangers move about with little sign of grief for their lost shelter. Do they have homes in whatever faraway place they come from? Perhaps they do—in which case all their shelters in the ocean are like a traveler’s quarters.
Broadtail intends to ask Builder 1 about this, although he is not certain the stranger knows enough words to understand the question.
Tizhos waited alone in the cold ocean more than a kilometer from the station. She had only her helmet spotlight to keep the darkness at bay. She tapped the control in her hand and the big portable hydrophone unit began blaring its message into the water.
The humans had more sensitive hearing than any Sholen, and even they had been unable to duplicate the spoken language of the Ilmatarans. Tizhos hadn’t even bothered. Instead she had concentrated on creating a Sholen-to-Ilmataran lexicon based on the native beings’ written number code, using the Sholen-to-English dictionary and the captured notes.
The method was horribly inelegant and cumbersome, and it required literate Ilmatarans to understand it. Tizhos had no way to know if all the inhabitants of the region even used the same number code to write with. If they didn’t, she might be broadcasting gibberish, or horrible insults.
And if they weren’t literate at all, she was simply advertising her position to any hostile native or predator within hearing range. With the hydrophone cranked up to maximum volume that meant nearly five kilometers.
Tizhos had her all-purpose tool in her lower left hand, set to knife mode, but she didn’t think it would do her much good if something like an Aenocampus or a band of Ilmatarans with spears decided to attack her.
Strongpincer hears a sound. It’s a rhythmic tapping or clicking. He can’t quite figure out what is making it. It doesn’t quite sound like someone hitting something, or clicking pincers. He moves clear of the rocks where he is resting with his little band and listens.
Numbers. It’s sounding out numbers. That means an adult, probably a towndweller. The noise is a long way off, which means it’s very loud. Why is someone making numbers so loudly?
He remembers raiding the schoolmaster’s place, and listening to the old teacher telling the young ones about making words by tying knots in strings.
“Smallbody!” he calls. “Come up here!”
Smallbody scrambles up to the top of the rock.
“What does that noise say?”
Smallbody is silent, straining to hear. “It says ‘Adults ocean approach food adults multiple food.’ ”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m not sure.”
“ ‘Multiple food,’ you say? That sounds fine with me. Wakethe others. Let’s go.”
Tizhos was about to give up and go back to the station when her sonar unit started clicking. She called up the visual display and saw a group of large creatures approaching swiftly. They were drawn up in a crescent formation, and held the alignment as they came. Ilmatarans.
Her suit stank of fear, and the hand gripping her all-purpose tool ached from tension. But she resisted the urge to flee. Instead she touched the control unit and turned down the volume on the hydrophone. No sense in deafening her guests.
This is utterly strange, Strongpincer thinks. No adults within hearing, or if there are, they are hiding. Just a large animal and some made objects sitting on the sea bottom making noise.
Strongpincer halts his band when they’re about three bodylengths from the thing. The repeating message stops, there is a brief silence, then a different pattern of clicks.
Smallbody translates. “ ‘Me and multiple adults are a group.’ ”
“I remember you going to a school,” Strongpincer says to Smallbody. “Do you know what that thing is?”
“No. I don’t even remember anyone telling me about anything like that. But it’s making numbers.”
Strongpincer doesn’t like being puzzled. “Kill it, save the meat, take the stuff.” He starts forward, choosing where he will stab it.
The numbers are replaced by a horrible noise, like the schoolmaster’s noisemaker but even louder. It is like being bashed in the head with a huge stone. Strongpincer clutches the sea bottom with his legs and flattens himself into the silt, not daring to move.
The noise stops. When Strongpincer can hear again, he pings. The others are all hunkered down as well. The thing is still standing before them. It touches some of its objects and the number clicking begins again.
“Smallbody,” Strongpincer pings. “What is it saying?”
“ ‘Adults fold pincers.’ ”
“Tell it we agree. Then ask it what it wants.”
A long exchange of clicks and pings between Smallbody and the thing. Finally Smallbody says, “It’s hard to understand it, but I think it wants to hire us.”
“Hire us?”
“Yes, it says it has tools and rope and things for us if we do what it asks.”
“What does it want us to do?”
After some clicking, Smallbody answers, “It wants us to go to villages and talk to other adults.”
Strongpincer feels himself grow calmer. “We can do that. Now let’s talk about the price.”
Tizhos led the Ilmatarans back to the station. It was not her idea. She was getting tired and cold, and her suit stank despite the pheromone filters. When she finally packed up her things to go, the Ilmatarans tagged along. At Hitode they camped around the nuclear power unit’s heat exchanger, snatching up some of the small swimmers that lived in the warm outflow, and scraping microorganisms off the rocks nearby.