Oh, Natural

(1998)*

Hal Clement

Jaques D’Orrey wriggled a little farther forward and wiped the sweat out of this eyes. The Maine sunlight was merely warm, the sea breeze a hundred fifty meters up was almost cool, but the nearly skin-tight camo suit was hot; its capillaries were not quite up to handling his thermal output.

Nearly five meters below, extending from the base of the rock where he lay, spread some two thousand square meters of ground. It was studded with small boulders, nearly covered by patches of grass and shrub and almost surrounded by woods. A rabbit could have hidden almost anywhere in the area, but nothing of human size, even D’Orrey’s, could have done so unsuited.

Camouflage aside, he was occupying the best place in the vicinity to see without being seen; vegetation also topped the rock. He was peering carefully through the leaves of a convenient blueberry bush so that even the suit was just now superfluous. However, he never thought of removing or even opening it; it was habit, and the scene below held all his attention.

A dozen meters from the foot of the rock a field mouse was sitting up and looking around, evidently suspicious. It had a right to be. Only a few paces from it to D’Orrey’s left, apparently hidden from the small mammal but not from above, lay a timber rattler somewhat over a meter long. It was not coiled for action or announcing its presence audibly, but extended at nearly full length, making the size judgment easy. Its enlarged midsection suggested that it had eaten too recently to be in a hunting mood, though that point might be too abstract for the rodent.

The intelligence of snakes is also minimal, but not zero. Its silence now did not surprise D’Orrey; what had caught his attention from above was the familiar rattling a moment before. He had heard it clearly and with pleasure. He had been hoping for it. Presumably the mouse had heard also. Something had certainly caught the little creature’s attention.

“See ‘em?” D’Orrey muttered at just above a whisper. He knew the approximate locations of his helpers, having posted them himself, but wasted no time trying to see them directly from where he now lay. They, too, were suited.

“The snake, yes. The mouse is pretty small, but filters help.” The incoming voice was little louder in his bud phones than his own had been; Vicki, too was being careful. Snakes are deaf, but most mammals are not.

“How about you, Pete?”

“Sure. No trouble.”

“Does either of you see any other animal?”

“Not from here,” came the woman’s voice.

“No. What is there? What are we supposed to see?” The boy was young enough to be bothered by any suggestion that he might be missing something, and spoke loudly enough to betray the feeling.

“Watch. It’s much better hidden. It’s what I was hoping for. If the other day means anything, you’ll both see it soon.”

“The snake’s moving,” cut in Vicki. Jaques D’Orrey nodded, quite pointlessly.

The rattler had indeed started to weave toward the man’s right and slightly away from him. The motion made no difference in his ability to see it from above, but did take it into the mouse’s line of sight. The rodent spotted either the snake itself or the movement at once. It crouched down, drawing together as though to leap away; then, since the menace was not approaching, it froze again and kept watching while the rattler sine-waved onward three or four times its own length, still without drawing any nearer.

“What goes?” Peter asked, more quietly than before. “It must know it’s there!” Neither adult bothered to criticize the dangling pronouns; the meaning was clear enough, the boy would have defended himself, and this was no time for arguments.

“Right. You’ll see. Wait,” D’Orrey muttered just loudly enough for his suit’s mike to pick up.

“When?” The response was louder again and slightly indignant.

“Ask the snake. Watch.” The biologist’s impatience was as plain as the hacker’s, though the former was ten year’s older.

The rattler might almost have meant to answer directly. Its line of travel changed. It turned a little to its own right, keeping its distance from the potential prey nearly constant and also holding the animal’s full attention. D’Orrey, with the whole stage visible below him, could see what was coming and was satisfied. He might not believe the impending events himself; he’d certainly doubted them earlier, but at least this time there would be other observers with other instruments. Later he could even hope for records, if equipment were still uncompromised.

“Three or four more meters,” he whispered.

“To what?” It was still Peter, of course.

“You’ll see. It’s happening again. Watch ‘em both.” He was not baiting the eighteen-year-old deliberately; he had hired the fellow more for his demonstrated skills than at his mother’s—D’Orrey’s sister’s—insistence. He simply wanted the others to be at peak alertness, with no more preconceived notions than had been needed to persuade them to come at all.

The snake poured itself onward, following an arc with the mouse at the center until it was heading almost back toward the rock. The still nearly motionless mammal was almost below the man, the rattler now four or five meters to his right. Even D’Orrey, able to see what the others had not yet spotted, grew a trifle tense, though he was far more concerned for his demonstration than for the welfare of the doomed animal. He was not a vegetarian himself, and would have admitted without hesitation that morally he ranked with the snakes.

Events climaxed abruptly. The moving reptile turned toward the victim and increased its speed, now rattling loudly. The rodent responded predictably, turning away from the approaching death and leaping toward D’Orrey’s left. The second jump brought it down within centimeters of the second snake, which had been lying motionless, unnoticeable to the prey or the two more distant human beings, coiled and ready. It did not rattle; it merely struck. The mouse saw it in mid-jump, tried too late to change direction, squealed as it felt the fangs, and landed on its side a meter from the already recoiled serpent. It made one more awkward attempt to leap, wriggled briefly, and lay still.

“I don’t believe this!” came Vicki’s murmur.

“Neither did I. Watch!” replied the man. Nothing was heard from Peter.

Both rattlers were now beside the body.

“They can’t divide it. They have to swallow things whole. Snake teeth don’t cut, and they’d never get enough traction to tear it apart even if they were strong enough. They’ll fight, surely!” whispered the woman.

“Does that fit with what just happened—team hunting?”

“No. Of course not. Did they find someone’s dropped knife, maybe? And how would they—”

“You’re getting wild,” D’Orrey cut in patiently.

“I certainly am Watching snakes cooperate would drive anyone over the edge. It’s not natural—”

“That’s what we want to make sure of.”

“Are you sure you didn’t sneak a false-witness into these glasses?”

“That’s closer to sanity but no, I didn’t. How could I? You take care of your equipment, don’t you? I haven’t had a chance to get at ‘em—though that could be just because I haven’t been looking for one. Don’t take my word for it—get ‘em checked when we get back, or have Pete do it now. I’m looking for help in a research job, not just confirmation for a Ripley. I had my glasses done after I saw this first, and told the hacker w—pardon, told my respected colleague—I’d seen something I couldn’t believe. I didn’t tell him just what, of course. He said that the smallest false-witness he could design himself which could handle such a job—do the wave patterns, carry the record, allow for changing view line in both planes, be programmed to run only against an appropriate background or in a preplanned inertially locate spot, and coordinate in both barrels of a pair of binoculars at once would be at least peanut size, and that there was nothing anywhere near that big except the regular machinery in the glasses. All that was working as it should; nothing had been sneaked out to make room for a false-witness.”

“Who was the hacker?” asked the boy, speaking for the first time in several minutes.

“A colleague, Jerry Chu. Associate Professor at Orono. Why” You know him, I suppose?”

“Sure, who doesn’t?” It was not obvious whether Peter regarded the name as that of a co-hobbyist or a rival.

“Trust him? Is he good as I’ve always thought? Do you like him?”

“Oh, he’s good.” There was a pause. “Maybe too good.” Another pause, then D’Orrey was surprised by a rush of candor. “He made a fool out of me a while ago.”

“So you don’t trust him.”

“Well—I guess I trust him. Maybe I was asking for it. But I don’t like him. He’s just a spare-time hacker, anyway; he’s in the bio department, of all things, at Orono.”

“And what’s wrong with biologists? Your uncle is one, after all. Are we too cooperative with the rest of science, or just not—”

“Is it all right if I get closer? I can’t see how the snakes are settling who gets the dinner.”

“Something wrong with your glasses?” D’Orrey had not really expected an answer.

“I’d like to use my own plain, unsupported eyes. I know no one’s sneaked anything under my eyelids, and if there’s going to be a snake fight I want to believe what I see.”

“There isn’t, but come on over. Just remember these two may not be the only rattlers in the neighborhood.”

“I’m not worried.”

“That’s why we are. Keep your untampered-with eyes open, and get on over there if you must.” Vicki allowed some annoyance to creep into her tone, and raised her sending volume enough to make it obvious.

D’Orrey was right; there was no fight. The action was unbelievable, but happened just as he had seen it before. The rattlers were now together beside the victim, but the larger, the one which had done the herding, watched with apparent indifference as the actual killer proceeded to work its jaws around the corpse and engulf it in ordinary snake fashion. When it had finished, the two wriggled off together to D’Orrey’s left, the smaller leading, and finally disappeared even from his binoculars among the bushes. He waited five minutes longer before speaking.

“That’s it for now, I expect,” he said in ordinary tones. “I’m closer to the trail. I know it doesn’t seem natural, Vick; that’s why I want to make sure whether it’s technical. Shall we meet right here?” He stood up as he spoke and switched his suit off.

“All right. At least, all right if I can get out of this tree without tearing anything. I paid for this suit myself,” came the woman’s voice.

“Are you sure it’s all over? Shouldn’t we follow them? asked Peter.

“I don’t say it’s over at all. I hope it isn’t. I want to set up close observation on those critters. I want to know whether this was natural and new, or some hacker amusing himself, or what. We’re not ready to do it now, though; we have no food and not much water up here. There’s a lot of planning to do before we can start a real study. Knowing that it really happens, and right around here, was all I hoped for now. We can talk it over on the way back; I’d rather not do it through the suit coms. I’m coming down.” He turned his camouflage back on, since animal behaviorists prefer to be seen by potential subjects as little as possible, and began to make his way carefully down the sloping side of the rock, retracing his original path up. He had more confidence in his suit’s durability than Vicki seemed to, but took no major chances with sharp stones or thorns.

He was several minutes reaching ground level and getting around to the front of the boulder. Both his companions were approaching, though he had to look carefully in the direction he knew she must be to detect the woman at all; her suit, too, was on. The boy’s was not, and he was walking around and among the bushes as though he felt no concern for his cam unit or anything else.

“There could be more rattlers around,” D’Orrey pointed out again as calmly as he could. Peter took this as implied criticism, quite correctly, but his response was more impertinent than abashed.

“I know. And I know there’s snake-bite equipment in the first aid kit, but I’d just as soon they knew I was coming. They can see I’m too big to swallow. Even y—” he broke off; both adults felt they knew why, and were rather pleased. In the week they had been together, and in spite of who was paying the bills, Peter Ben Becker had shown a tendency to make rather perky remarks to and about his uncle, commonly about their seventeen centimeter height difference, which the boy regarded as being in his own favor. D’Orrey had felt that objecting was beneath adult dignity, and was reluctant to have trouble with his older sister. He was pretty sure, however, that Vicki had said something once or twice when he himself was out of hearing.

If the kid were really trying to curb his wit, all to the good. If he were beginning to realize that there were more valuable personal qualities than height, even better.

The man just barely stopped himself from switching off his own suit again. The point about letting rattlers know they were coming had been very well taken, but it seemed poor policy to be guided too obviously by the youngster’s advice. In a few seconds he forgot the matter. Vicki’s garment also remained active.

No more was said until they met at the kill site. Woman and boy examined the area for details they hadn’t been able to see from their trees, but neither found anything which helped answer the obvious questions. The man had seen all he needed. All that really caught his attention was the difference of watching what the others were doing.

Vicki Kalani’s suit was much like his own, though of different make. Its eyes, like his, were the size of split walnuts studded with hundreds of minute lenses, but she had only two, one on the outer side of each shoulder. D’Orrey’s numbered three, one on top of his head, one between his shoulder blades, and one at his breast bone. Both pattern processors were where the belt buckles would have been had either garment been belted—prolate hemispheres of coppery polymer about eight centimeters by four, thought the man’s was mounted with the long axis vertical. Dr. Kalani’s also fit better, less because her eight centimeter superiority in height made her easier to fit than because her suit’s more sophisticated processor handled warp and woof tension as well as light paths.

All fibers, both fabric components and control and sensor connectors, were far too small to see with the unaided eye. With the suits turned off, as Peter’s was, the basic material was almost transparent. The eye-hurting pattern of the tight shorts which were his only inner garment, a random alteration of patches displaying leopard spots, tiger stripes, and geometric exercises in fluorescent colors, could be seen too clearly for comfort.

Vicki’s face was also visible as she released her mask; she had knelt to examine the ground more closely, and brought out her pill vial. Her features were rather broad and round for D’Orrey’s personal tastes but much easier to look at than his nephew’s shorts.

“Nothing the tracks tell me,” she announced after several minutes of careful examination. “Any project details?”

“Some. We’ll trash it over on the way down,” D’Orrey replied. “Or do you want to stay longer, Pete? Can you think of anything else we ought to do now?”

“I guess not. I’d like to see where they went, but you’re right about not staying much longer without supplies. I know better what equipment we should bring up, now. We ought to have brought more food with us this time.”

“If I’d been sure we’d see anything, we would have. Now we can feel pretty sure of finding them in this area, we can set up here for a longer stay—maybe even move the camp.”

“Are you sure these snakes are the same ones you saw before?” Vicki asked suddenly. She had stowed the pills again without opening the container.

“Not at all. They could be, but I can’t recognize individual rattlers by sight. But if they are, they seem to work this area fairly regularly, and if they aren’t there could be a whole tribe of them around. Either way this should be a good place to work; there’s a lot of clover and berries, and presumably a lot of mice and rabbits.”

Peter nodded, and the three started down the trail which opened into the clearing a few meters from the lookout rock. They quickly found themselves in more comfortable shade, but discussing plans was harder than D’Orrey had assumed. The way was usually too narrow to let them travel side by side, steep enough to demand full attention to footing much of the time, and the woman’s sneezing was now up to full antihistamine-free level. She used her pills only when this would interfere with work. Nothing was really settled in the half hour they took to get almost back to sea level.

Here the mixed pine and second-growth hardwood opened out once more, and they could see the lake.

Here it was also a good deal hotter, and the midafternoon sun was nearly straight ahead of them. The sea breeze from behind and to their left was blocked almost entirely by hills. As they approached the road—little more than a track, but useable by vehicles—which led out toward the tip of the peninsula, Peter scored another point.

“Suits off,” he said quietly, deactivating his own. This time neither adult compromised with common sense; even though nothing wheeled could be seen or heard, crossing a road in an operating camouflage suit was what the boy would have called pure crack. D’Orrey switched his unit off without comment; Vicki thanked Peter. None reactivated the garments when they reached the other side.

The camp was still a half kilometer away, beside a brook which emptied further on into the lake. The way was quite open now, and they could talk more freely. Little had really been settled, however, when Peter stopped and gestured for the others to do the same. His other hand went to his waist. His suit, unlike the others, had a belt which carried several items besides the camouflage logic unit; as a matter of courtesy, neither of the adults had asked what these were. Hackers like to keep their tricks to themselves when not in showoff mood.

He seemed to be listening, but had not asked for silence so was presumably not using an ordinary eavesdropper. He had not removed anything from the belt, but he was touching first one point and then another on it, waiting two or three seconds before each new shift of the finger. It was fully a minute before he relaxed and turned to his companions.

“No one’s been in t he camp, and nothing—no animal—into the tents or the food.”

“As far as you can tell,” appended his uncle.

“Of course. If I’m wrong, someone’s curious enough about what we are doing to cover it very carefully.”

“Well, if the snakes are a hacker’s trick, maybe someone is. If it’s legitimate research or, perish the thought, a natural change in snake behavior, no one should be.”

D’Orrey thought a moment, then risked a guess. “I take it you left sound and maybe other sensors and recorders in and around the camp, and have been playing them back.”

“That’s the idea.

“The same general sort of stuff you said you’d use for me to track animals up on the Stage?”

“Right.”

“Good. How long will it take you to set them up back there?’

“Not long.” Peter grinned smugly. “You were here when I set these after we arrived, but never saw me.”

“Great. I didn’t think of it when we first talked this over, but can you keep our glasses and other gear checked for false-witness tampering?”

Peter frowned thoughtfully for a moment. “I could, but it’d be better for you to stay with Jerry, wouldn’t it?”

“Why?”

“Because I’m part of this team. Shouldn’t the checker be independent? You should keep your personal observing gear—glasses, cameras, recorders—out of my reach, and you should quarantine mine for checking if I ever report anything you don’t see or hear.”

“Unless you record it, I suppose that’s true. But you can record, obviously.”

“Sure, if you want to trust my records—”

Vicki cut in. “Of course we do. Any record can be faked; everyone knew that even before UFO days, but there’s no point assuming it has been until there’s trouble repeating an observation. Otherwise no one gets anywhere. You said it just now: you’re part of the team, as reliable a part as we are. Science is certainly a search for truth, mixed with a reasonable effort not to easily that you’ve already found it, but you’re worrying far too much about the faker-defense aspect.”

The boy glanced at D’Orrey, who nodded. “Even if I had any reason to suspect you, which I don’t, she’s right. I know about the never-ending war among hackers, anti-hackers, and other hackers, but nothing ever gets done if we spend all the time worrying about rivals and liars. This is where prevention is not better than cure; it gets in the way of the work. We assume no one wants to live with the only cure there is for liars unless he’s force to. So stop worrying, be ready to record anything any of us decides is worth keeping, and pardon the lecture. You cook this evening; deal out some of that chili you did before if there still is any. It’s good.”

“Thanks. I like flattery, but you still cook tomorrow.” His uncle made no answer, but shed his camouflage suit and stretched happily.

The meal was quickly prepared in an extremely old-fashioned kettle over a jellied-alcohol fire—burning wood was still taboo in the park—and almost as quickly eaten. D’Orrey took three helpings without looking at the boy, whose only comment was a repetition. “You still cook tomorrow.”

“And I wash up tonight,” added Vicki, getting to her feet. “Don’t dawdle too long over that last helping, Jaques.” The man made no answer; his mouth was full.

Vicki and Peter, the latter rather pointedly, took advantage the next morning of D’Orrey’s culinary duties to remain late in their tents, but the sun was not very high when the three left camp together with the built in back-packs of their suits loaded with food, water, and carefully selected equipment. They hoped to stay away until the study was done, so the tents and unused equipment were collapsed, cased, powered down as appropriate and stowed i a single travel pack concealed in a tree. Bears and smaller mammals could be a nuisance, but Peter felt that human interference was much more likely. The adults were pretty sure he was carrying equipment which would warn him if the bundle were disturbed. They didn’t ask, but both noticed that he had paid little attention while Vicki carefully adjusted the camouflage wrap on the container.

It was still cool when they started back up the hill. The sea breeze had not yet developed, and would have had little effect at the camp anyway. It would help later, but they wanted to get up to Stage, as Vicki had named the work area, before the sun became too oppressive. Once across the still deserted road, all activated their suits.

They wanted to get there early, but even Peter was too experienced to wear himself out at the start. He was willing—again rather pointedly—to allow D’Orrey to set the pace once the slope began to steepen. Vicki tactfully brought up the rear.

This proved to be, not exactly a mistake, but unfortunate.

They had climbed nearly a hundred meters, the woman’s natural morning sneeze pattern was well established, and they were at a point where the trail was not only narrow and steep but offered very poor footing in loose crumbled granite, dry dusty loam, and even drier pine needles. All were careful; they had passed this way twice before. Even the fact that it was much trickier descending failed to make anyone careless; Vicki was simply unlucky, perhaps because she was behind and encountering freshly loosened surface.

She ejaculated some words which would have been considered more appropriate for a male—one of low culture—not too many years earlier, as her weight came on her left foot and the substrate slipped from under her. Her hands were both free and her reflexes good as she grabbed for branches, but the only one she caught proved unworthy of trust. Her other foot, rising for a forward step,, came down abruptly on an equally unreliable surface well short of the spot she had intended; it slipped too. This brought her chest, stomach, knees and face into violent contact with the trail.

The others heard, but had no time to do anything. She stopped herself after a couple of meters of sliding, at a spot where the slope flattened a little, and struggled back to her feet. She had said nothing after the first moment and still remained silent, checking damage.

The suits were designed for outdoor use, and hers had been actually pierced in only a few places. Her skin had not done so well. She had a deep slash over her right eye, and her knees and palms were dirt-plastered crimson messes. Damage to her suit was at least as eye-catching. Several control fivers had been severed, mostly in places not matching visible bodily injury, and fairly large areas of its body and legs no longer responded to the logic unit. About half her head piece above the level of the cut revealed the mahogany red-brown of the hair inside, and a roughly triangular area from right shoulder downward to her waist and inward to the small of her back showed the fabric of the sweat suit she was wearing under the camouflage unit.

“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 i 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.

The sun was low when D’Orrey started down the trail. He watched the footing carefully, and had no trouble recognizing where Vicki had slipped on the way up; but there was no sign of any similar accident going down until he was almost at the bottom of the steep section. Then he nearly provided the evidence himself as a loose stone went out from underfoot. His reflexes stood up to the test. His other foot moved quickly and stopped the fall; for a moment he felt the prickle of released adrenaline, then a mixture of two kinds of relief—that he had not actually fallen, and that neither of the others had seen the near-incident. He could have treated any minor injuries himself, since neither of them would know when he had started down and no delay would have been obvious; but suits healed themselves much more slowly, and the boy would certainly have noticed anything wrong even with the garment turned off.

Vicki was visible and audible as he neared the camp; the boy was neither. She was still sneezing, and occasionally coughing and blowing her nose. She was not wearing her camouflage unit, but a warm water-repellent coverall. Her suit was draped inside out over a nearby bush, and D’Orrey decided that his nephew was really showing off. Natural, or course, but his time promising a really useful put-down.

He turned off his suit as he approached the camp—he had forgotten to do so while crossing the road—and gave a cheerful whistle. Vicki saw him at once, waved, and noting the raised eyebrows as he drew nearer, nodded towards Peter’s tent.

“He’s been busy ever since we got here, as far as I can tell. I don’t know what progress he’s made. I haven’t heard any bad language.”

“Vick, you know me better than that!” an indignant retort came from the tent, whose soundproofing was evidently off. “I’ve figured out what to do, and started most of it. The things just have to grow now.”

“Then we can go back in the morning, rain or no rain?” Jaques asked.

“I think so. You never can tell just how long debugging will take, of course.”

“Of course,” the others agreed together. “Coming out soon?” the woman added.

“Might as well. It’s on its own now. Just a minute.” The tent entrance rolled itself up, and Peter crawled out and stood up. He was wearing the same shorts as before, designed to support pockets as well as dazzle eyes, plus the shoes whose soles had grown much thicker after a few minutes’ use around the stony camp site. A nanohack could make himself very comfortable if inclined that way. His nephew was still, D’Orrey felt, conscious of his own physique, but his suspicion might merely represent an undersize uncle’s jealousy rather than objective analysis. It would be nice to be a few centimeters taller …

He could have been , of course, but he had much better things to do with his money. Let the kid gloat if he wanted.

“Anything happen?” Peter asked.

“Nope.” D’Orrey shook his head negatively. “Nothing bigger than grasshoppers.”

“How much time do we budget for just waiting?” the boy asked. Both pairs of male eyes turned to Vicki, the patient one.

“A week at least,” she replied promptly, and firmly. “If that bothers anyone, maybe you could design some snake detectors for us so we could go where they are instead of waiting for them to come to us. I know it’s no use tramping around just looking for them; their prey would hear us and take off first, and they’d either go after dinner or at least away from us.”

“But don’t rattlers usually just wait for the dinner to get near enough?” objected Peter.

“Yes; but is it what they usually do that brought us here?”

“No. You’re still cooking tonight, Uncle Jaques.”

The rain continued, sometimes very heavily, for much of the night, but the sky visible through the branches seemed cloudless again by sunrise. Peter and D’Orrey of course took advantage of Vicki’s cooking turn to stay in their tents a little later, but before the sun was very high the three were again climbing to the Stage. They were laden pretty much as on the previous day, but Peter seemed to have learned something; attached to his belt was an object about the size, shape, and from the way he had handled it, the weight, of an ordinary brick. The others suspected he was bringing his entire stock of nano equipment this time.

Vicki’s suit now seemed completely healed. D’Orrey had not asked whether his nephew had done anything to it, assuming that the way it was hanging the night before implied the answer. The question seemed unimportant just now; the catechol embarrassment could come later. They reached the rock, this time without incident, unloaded food and water as before and draped reflecting film over them. Then Peter once more set out his apparatus, leaving his “brick” on the rock.

D’Orrey eyed it thoughtfully, but decided not even to test its weight. He was pretty sure that touching it without the owner’s knowledge would not be possible, and however harmless the act and natural curiosity he didn’t want to be defending himself.

The kid was close enough to running the group already. His embarrassed ignorance of outdoor environments, even with its resultant delay of the project, had been quite lucky, D’Orrey felt; but it couldn’t be expected to keep him down long.

His reflections were interrupted by a yell from the Stage, coming through the suit communicators but also audible directly. For a moment neither of them could see the boy; then he sprang into brief visibility as his suit cut off, vanished again fro a second or two, and reappeared once more. Neither watcher could guess whether the garment was being flicked on and off in indecision or was malfunctioning. Still less could they guess at a cause for either possibility until Peter provided it, coherent now but still highly excited.

“Rattlers! Dozens of ‘em! They’re heading toward you. What’ll I do?”

“If they’re heading this way, why do anything? Or are you in their way?”

“No, I’m behind them and they don’t seem to care bout me. But I can’t get back to you or the rock. They’re in the way!”

“Go around them. You should be able to run fast enough. Or don’t you want to get in front? Just make up your mind how badly you want to be up here with us instead of on the ground with them.” D’Orrey tried not to sound impatient or superior.

There were several seconds of silence. Peter remained visible, and appeared to be surveying the ground with some care. When he finally spoke again he seemed calmer. “I guess I can see more down here. Do you see ‘em yet?”

Both adults looked carefully before Vicki answered “No” as calmly as she could. “How far are they from you? And just how many are there really?”

” ‘bout seven or eight meters from the farthest I can see. A dozen or so. I think there were more, and they’d be closer to you now. They’re really travelling.”

“And how many really are there?”

“Well—I can count eight, now. There were more, though. All heading for the rock. Don’t you have a flock of mice, or squirrels, or rabbits, or something they might be chasing?”

“Not that I can see,” replied the woman. “And would they be chasing? In a pack?”

“Who knows, now?”

“Are there any more behind you, or on either side?” D’Orrey cut in. “Could you tell whether they were all coming from the same place?”

There was a pause before Peter answered, still more calmly this time. He seemed to be getting back his control, and actually to have looked before answering.

“I don’t see any more. These were all between me and the rock when I first saw them.”

“Can you check in both directions—sideways, that is—and get some idea whether this is just a small bunch or whether more are coming from somewhere?”

“All right.” The suit vanished once more, to D’Orrey’s satisfaction; Peter must really be thinking again as an observer. He even began reporting his position every few seconds, realizing that the others would have trouble spotting him.

“Ten meters to your left of where I was. No more snakes … Twenty meters. Still none. Thirty … I’m getting near the trees. Still none. I’m heading back the other way … back where I first saw them … now to your right … ten meters … Another bunch from the trees— I’m going back,: There was silence for several seconds. “There are fourteen or fifteen in this bunch, mixed up together so they’re hard to count. They’re heading your way, too. They can’t be chasing mice.”

“Or you?” queried Vicki.

“No, neither group cared about me. It’s something near you, or at least the rock.”

“How closely do you feel like following them?” asked D’Orrey.

“I’m keeping them in sight. I’m about five meters behind a couple of stragglers in the new bunch. D’you want my suit off so you can track us?”

“No need. We both have strobes if we need ‘em, and as long as you’re moving can see you fairly well anyway. If you keep your suit on, you won’t have to worry about any more behind you.”

“Why not? I’d be less worried if they could see me!”

“Are you sure? We don’t know yet what has them excited. If you feel like being experimental bait, of course, we could start finding out.”

The boy did not answer for a moment. Then, “Why not? There’s plenty of trees. I’ll catch up with this batch.”

Vicki stirred and almost uttered a protest, then looked at Jaques and merely frowned. Both waited silently and attentively, watching with narrowed eyes the barely visible figure sixty meters away. Not even the first group of snakes he had reported could be seen yet from the rock.

Peter’s indistinct outline was approaching them, but no quite directly; apparently he was trying to come up on the right of the group—or should it be called a gaggle, a wisp, or a pride. D’Orrey wondered briefly and irrelevantly. Surely the language had a collective term for snakes; it wouldn’t be surprising if it had several for different kinds, though of course serpents had never been game animals in medieval Europe. As far as he knew.

“I’m only a meter to one side of the group, about halfway between front and rear. They’re not paying any attention to me so far. I’m going to cut my suit—don’t worry, Vick, I’m good and ready to run.”

The tall figure sprang into visibility, heading toward the watchers at nearly a run; if he were still matching speed with the rattlers, both adults thought, the snakes were certainly enthusiastic about something.

“They still don’t care about me. I’m going to get right among them.”

“Don’t be crazy!” called Vicki.

“Don’t worry. I’m set to jump, far and fast. What was that poem? Snakes to the right of me, snaked to the left of me, snakes before me—they still don’t care. I’m going to stop for a minute and check readings.”

They watched as he took the monitor from his belt and held it near his face. They then saw that his claim to be ready to jump was fully justified.

He jumped, farther and faster than D’Orrey had thought possible even for someone with Peter’s build.

“Hey! They stopped and —reporting later. I’m leaving.” The departure could also be watched easily; he did not reactivate his suit. He made four tremendous leaps, the monitor still in his hand, taking him over a dozen meters from his starting point; then he paused and looked back.

“They’re interested in me now. They’re all coming at me. I hope whoever pulled this trick hasn’t taught them to climb trees.” He resumed his flight.

“Lots of snakes can,” D’Orrey remarked mostly to hide his own mounting anxiety. “Pick a tree with—”

“If that includes rattlers I don’t want to know it. Wait a minute.” The boy stopped again, once more looking back at his pursuers. Then a chuckle came over the communicators.

“I thought it was too much of a coincidence. They’ve lost interest in me again. I turned my monitor off. They’re milling around sort of confused—now they’re starting back your way.”

“And your first group is in sight here,” added Vicki. “Snakes, nut no mice or any other prey.”

“Did they get distracted when I had my monitor on?”

“I didn’t notice, I’m afraid.”

“All right. Let me get farther from this bunch—no, I’ll wait here and let them get farther from me, and I’ll turn it on again. I’ll tell you when to watch for results. All right?”

The woman, and even the uncle, were less worried now; a straightforward and only mildly risky experiment was under way. They waited in relative calm until the second pack—that was the best word, D’Orrey decided—of rattlers had come close enough to count.

“All right, if you think you’re far enough—or close enough!” Vicki called.

“Right, Monitor on—now!” The pair on the rock watched the reptilian assembly below for long seconds, but no change in behavior was evident. The creatures had come to the base of the declivity, and some of them seemed interested in trying to climb the relatively smooth stone. This was not worrisome; even the human beings had not been able to ascend this face, though mice or squirrels no doubt could have. D’Orrey felt a twinge of uneasiness as some of the snakes wriggled off to both sides; if the surrounded the boulder, there was at least one place where they could certainly get up.

“They doing anything?” came Peter’s voice.

“Not exactly,” replied his uncle. “If they were responding to your monitor before, it must be too far away now.”

“Okay. This lot is coming back. Easy to check the distance effect, but I’ll cut off again and wait ‘til they all reach you.”

Neither Jaques nor Vicki had to look up to know what Peter was doing: there was only one obvious way to make the test. It made more sense for them to keep observing the rattlers.

These showed no change in behavior for some time, even after the second lot arrived. When they did, D’Orrey felt little relief. The reptiles directly under him were starting to behave aimlessly, as though uncertain of which way they wanted to go, but those farthest to the sides still seemed to keep their interest in the rock itself, and were gradually surrounding it, moving out of sight to each side. He did look outward, then.

Peter was scarcely a dozen meters away, still easily visible.

“You’re distracting the ones closest to you, I think,” his uncle reported as calmly as he could. “You’d better stop where you are—no, move to one side. Can you see them well enough, or should we warn you if they start your way?”

“I can see ‘em. We’ve settled something, anyway.”

“What?” asked the woman.

“They’ve been implanted with something. They’re homing, though I’ll need the kit up there to spot the actual radiation. My monitor broadcasts too, of course, but they seem to have a stronger yen for the kit itself. If it had been one of the suit processors, of course, this would all have happened the day before yesterday.”

“Why didn’t they come to the camp? You were working there for long enough,” D’Orrey pointed out.

“I suppose no rattlers, or at least no implanted ones, were close enough. We’ll have to try parts of the kit, one by one, to find out just what’s the light that’s drawing them. I’ll shut this off, and come on up.”

“Be careful on your way,” Vicki spoke up. “The things seem to be working round the rock on both sides. There was only one place we could climb, but maybe you’d better approach that a bit cautiously.”

“Sure thing, Ma.” What seemed to be progress was apparently restoring Peter’s ego. He vanished once more in camouflage, but the others could still make him out vaguely as he started around the boulder to their right. D’Orrey picked up the nano kit and placed it as far to the left as was practical; maybe this would draw the rattlers away from the climbing spot. Turning off its contents would presumably be better, but that would have to be left to its owner.

“Watch it!” Peter’s voice came again. “A couple of them are working their way up. I’m not sure I can—”

“Don’t try!” snapped his uncle, leaping toward the climbway. There was not sharp drop-off. Smooth top gave way with increasing steepness to an irregular lope much more overgrown than the flat part. The growth hid the top of the narrow path until he had descended nearly half way. No snakes were visible even when he got there, and after a moment he went a little farther and ensconced himself a short distance to one side of the route where the snakes might be expected to pass. The interesting question was whether the lure of the kit would cause them to continue up the rather vague trail or allow them to explore. Toward him. It would depend, he feared, on their intelligence level. He hoped this was no higher than he believed. If they passed him without noticing …

The first one, an eighty-centimeter youngster, did. He waited until it was a little farther up than his own position, set his jaw, and snatched at its tail. He caught it just ahead of the rattles and whipped it outward and upward away from the rock, only then wondering whether it would land anywhere near Peter.

A second rattler was now in sight, but he took time to call a warning.

“Pete, I’m tossing them back down, but can’t tell where they’ll land. Watch for snakefalls.”

“Fine. Half a dozen are at the foot of the climb, and more are coming. How do I get up?”

No one had an answer for the moment. D’Orrey flipped the second snake back to the ground, and half a minute later processed a third. None of the creatures had so far noticed him; their I.Q.s seemed acceptably low, or the implanted homing urge very strong, but he wondered what would happen when his first subject got back. Snakes do have memories of a sort.

“Maybe you could let all the ones on this side get up on top, so I could follow—”

“And get there to find them all wrapped around your high-tech brick?” Vicki finished.

“But if we tossed ‘em off the tock from there, it’s take them a long time to get around and back up, and I’d have time to find out which unit was attracting them.”

“If you really want to handle rattlesnakes when they’ve gotten where they want to go and probably have attention to spare, say the word and I’ll let ‘em up,” snapped D’Orrey.

“Well-let me think a minute.” The pause was brief. “Tell you what. I’ll go back around to the front, and you can keep tossing ‘em down here, Uncle Jaques.”

“Thanks.”

“The when you can see me, Vicki, and I tell you I’m ready, you can throw me the kit. I’ll catch it and start running, turning things off as I go. When they stop chasing me, I’ll know which was the right unit and I can keep it off, and the rattlers can go about their business, and I can come back up with you and we can work things out from there. How about that?”

“How long will this all take? I don’t want to keep grabbing tails of poisonous snakes all morning. I may improve with practice, but the statistics are against me.”

“Right.” The boy might have been concerned. “It’ll be quickest if we start right now. All right, Vick? Heft the kit and try to guess how far you can throw it. I’ll get as close as you tell me, unless—” he didn’t finish the sentence, but neither listener needed the rest. Vicki picked up the kit, judged the weight something over two kilograms, and made a number of simulated throws while waiting for Peter to appear. She was careful about this, fortunately; she stood well back from the edge of the rock, and when the smooth surface did slip from her hand on the third try, it did not fall over the edge. She didn’t mention the incident aloud. She had decided that a one-hand underarm toss would be most effective by the time Peter appeared below.

He approached the still numerous snakes to within three meters, his suit off, and looked up anxiously.

“Think you can get it out to me here? I’d rather catch it than have it hit a rock, but I don’t think I want to get much closer in.”

“Should I give a practice try up here once or twice?”

“Not unless Uncle Jaques is through snake-tossing and can get up there to catch it. Maybe—” He left the sentence unfinished and both hearers guessed that he had been about to suggest that they change places so that D’Orrey could do the throwing, and then remembered the man’s lesser size and strength.

“All right,” she said. “I’m not guaranteeing to get it all the way out there, so be ready to come in for the catch. All ready?”

“Ready.”

Vicki gripped the smooth, stony material as firmly as she could in her right hand, swung her arm backward as far as she could and forward as hard as she could. She meant to hold on a little longer than she actually managed, and the block started out at a slight downward rather than a slight upward angle. Peter saw, and leaped inward without regard for the snakes so as to catch it before it reached the ground.

He was not quite successful. It slipped through his hands and thudded to the surface, fortunately not directly on any of the numerous rocks. His luck was mixed, however; it buried itself partly in the softer ground, and Peter needed an extra second or two to get his fingers under it. He got it away a hand’s-breath from the head of a very interested rattler, took an extra split second to make sure he had a firm grip, and began running. The snakes, after a second or two of apparent uncertainty, followed. The monitor was off; if there had been any doubt about the center of their attraction, it was gone.

Peter gave himself a good lead before opening the kit. Giving it part of his attention slowed him down, but he had planned his procedure already. Without regard to possible effects on the test devices he had planted around the area, he opened half a dozen switches as quickly as he could. He ran a few more paces, and slowed to look back. The snakes were still coming. He touched another half-dozen, put more distance behind him, and looked back again.

There were nearly eighty units to cut off, and he was not surprised to find that the appropriate ones were in the last group. That was Life. It was also sloppy thinking, but he didn’t realize this just yet. He watched, ready to resume his flight, as his pursuers finally lost their interest and began to spread out. One or two were coming almost toward him, but that could be mere statistics; they showed no real interest, though he was fully visible. He began to walk slowly back toward the rock, and incidentally toward the nearest snakes.

“That’s done it,” he reported. “Good old Murphy—it was one of the last bunch. I can do without this last stuff I’ve cut off for a while at least. I’ll get the rest back in operation right away; I’ve gut off nearly all the equipment I’ve set out.”

“Are you sure it was Murphy?” asked his uncle.

“What else? It had to be something, and why else would—oh my gosh! They’re coming back! What?—Why?—”

“First things first. Can you beat them back here?” D’Orrey seemed unsurprised.

“I’ll try. Some of them must be nearly straight ahead of me, though.”

“You’re a good jumper.” Vicki too seemed to be taking the matter calmly.

“Yes, but—yeah, I can get over this couple. I hope the climb is clear. But—but why?”

“You mean why did you assume that only one gadget was attracting them?” asked D’Orrey as tonelessly as he could manage. Peter gave no answer, perhaps because he was concentrating on travel. His uncle was too kind to repeat the question; the point must already be clear.

The youngster came across the Stage at a speed both adults envied, and disappeared to their right. A moment later there was a yelp.

“There are still some back here!”

“Are they blocking the climbway?”

“Well, no. They don’t seem interested in anything special. I guess I can dodge them. But why didn’t they come back around front with the others?”

“At a guess, when Vick threw down your kit, the radiation had a lot more rock to shine through and not enough of it made the grade to affect their implants. You could check by flipping a switch or two.”

“Just a minute ‘til I’m a little higher—you’re right, I guess. Here they come. One of you will have to take on the snake-tossing duty for a few minutes while I find all the sources. It takes a little while after each cut before I’m sure they’re not interested any more. I wonder how many—”

“You said something about six variables being enough, the other day.”

“It would be for the sort of behavior they were showing. But that doesn’t mean they’d home on all the control frequencies somebody chose—that wouldn’t make sense—or that there wouldn’t be anything I’m putting out that would attract them even if it wasn’t part of this character’s control set.”

“Bad sentence structure but good thinking—or at least, better. I’ll watch the path. Do your testing.” D’Orrey worked his way down to where the rock steepened, and met his nephew there. No snakes were following; presumably all significant switches were off.

“We could wait until they’ve all gone out of range,” he suggested.

“How long would that be, if they’re moving at random?” Peter asked, already supercilious again. “And why wait, anyway? The sooner I know what we can use, the sooner I can shift to innocent wave patterns. All we’ll have to wait for is the mice coming back. That’ll be long enough, I bet; they must be scared off the hill with all these snakes.”

“We should have brought that can of chocolate syrup,” Vicki suggested. “That would at least bring mice—or maybe a bear.”

“Or bugs,” pointed out D’Orrey. “Actually, haven’t we don most of what I wanted your help for? We know, basically, why the snakes were behaving so weirdly. As science, this is a fizzle. Nature hasn’t done anything surprising—just some hacker, and who can be surprised at them?”

“Don’t be insulting, Uncle Jaques. Even hackers have reasons for what we do—sometimes good ones.”

“Sure. You want to prove you can do it, never mind the side effects. Some one’s probably shot the ecology of this island to pieces just for his”—he shot a glance at Vicki—“or her own amusement, like a kid making tracks with a dune buggy. I sometimes wish—”

“Hold it friend,” the woman cut in. “Whoever did this certainly knows just how many snakes were used. He knows or is finding out how much they eat, and how often. He’s altered one variable, essentially; just their hunting techniques. He’s in a position to make a more quantitative study of one piece of this local ecology than anyone, to my knowledge, ever has before. And I hope you weren’t about to wish nanotech had never been developed.”

D’Orrey was silent, and Peter nobly refrained from smirking.

After a moment, Vicki went on less emphatically. “I’m just providing the obligatory alternative hypothesis, of course; we’re supposed to be doing research—testing an idea, not just finding support for one. I was thinking hacker too, but I don’t want to get trapped into taking that for granted.”

D’Orrey nodded; he too, would have spent a long time seeking alternative explanations rather than risk being called a watchmakerite, even one assuming a human watchmaker. “Right, Pete, get what details you can about the homing signals. We should have checked at Orondo to see if anyone is doing a research project up here. When”—he carefully did not say “if”—“you have them, we’ll call there.”

The youngster nodded, and settled down with his kit. “You keep an eye out for anything coming up,” he instructed. His uncle nodded, and positioned himself where he could see anything working up the climbway, and for some time the only words were terse reports.

“One rattler, but seems casual.”

“Another, not headed this way.”

“First one interested—heading up.”

“Lost its enthusiasm. I’ll scare it.”

Over an hour passed before Peter said, “I think that’s everything. There seem to be ten patterns which make them home this way. For all I can tell not more than one or two of them may actually be meant to make them do anything—maybe none of them; this all may be just a side effect of whatever was planned. We’ll have to see another hunt, and try to find what’s radiated or what I can do to change that pattern before we can even start to be sure. For all I really know, what I’ve just been doing may have shut off the intended program and spoiled our project and the other guy’s. You’d better hope it’s a hacker, or Orono will be on your neck for not checking with them first.” He started to stand up with his kit. “HEY!!”

There are evidently more than one way up the rock, as far as snakes were concerned. D’Orrey’s attention had been on the path they had used, and Peter’s on his instruments; Vicki was still on top watching the Stage. None of them had noticed the two-meter specimen approaching from slightly above the level of the experimenters and, as it happened, from behind both. The rattler was still intent on something ahead of it. Peter say the motion from the corner of his eye as he was rising, and had immediate insight on what the signal must be.

He was also lifting his kit, and as it reached a point about half a meter off the ground—beyond what D’Orrey would have considered striking range—the creature struck.

Its target might have been the kit, but the kit was in Peter’s hands, protected only by the gloves of his cam suit.

The serpent dropped away and recoiled itself. The boy lashed out with a kick which sent it flying off the rock before it could strike again.

“Uncle Jack! It got me!”

“Drop your kit. Vicki, first aid! Pete, sit and relax. Never mind your box. If it’s still attracting anything we’ll solve that later. Let’s see your hand!”

The boy obeyed, and both saw instantly what had happened. The fleshy outer edge of his right hand bore the significant double puncture, and without waiting for instructions he tried to place it in his mouth. The location of the would made this difficult, but not impossible, and he began to suck.

After a few seconds he stopped and spat, and both could see that he was getting an encouraging amount of blood. He was about to repeat the process when Vicki arrived with the first aid kit.

No time was wasted; all knew what to do. She took a matchbox-sized container from the main carton and handed two copper-colored objects the size of split peas to D’Orrey. Peter was resting the arm and hand, palm up, on his right knee. The man carefully place on of the hemispheres on each of the punctures and touched a tiny button on the matchbox.

Vicki had extracted another device, cylindrical in shape, also copper colored except for a narrow red stripe along the curved surface from face to face, and about three centimeters in length and diameter. She lifted Peter’s arm so the elbow was straight and placed the curve of the cylinder inside the joint with the stripe across the large vein which showed there. The boy flinched slightly as she energized the unit and two needles worked their way into the blood vessel; emergency medical equipment did not always have anesthetic refinements.

“That should handle it,” D’Orrey said as he relaxed visibly. “Most of what’s in the puncture won’t get away from it, and any toxin getting as far downstream as the big vein will be handled by the washer. Not natural—at least, not as natural as the snake or the poison ivy Peter had your suit draped over last night—but it works.”

Vicki sneezed, but made no move to take another pill, and no response to either part of the “natural” remark. The man resumed, addressing Peter. “I suppose you have enough material to let me call Orono about this project? You hadn’t quite said so when our subject was interrupted.” He wasn’t quite as indifferent, or even quite as confident in the first aid equipment, as he sounded, but wanted to get his nephew’s mind elsewhere.

“The interruption was more info. If you’ll get my kit, I’ll see.”

“I can get it. Our friend may be back by now.”

“Dropping it should have turned everything off.”

“It didn’t when I dropped it to you before,” Vicki pointed out.

Peter’s mouth opened, and he looked blankly at her for a moment.

“You’re right! It didn’t!!” His gaze wandered into the distance, and he strated to move his right arm. She stopped him firmly; he obeyed her hand pressure, without bringing his attention back from wherever it had gone.

“Uncle Jaques. Check the kit. If no snakes are near, bring it to me.” D’Orrey obeyed without comment; maybe the kid should be in charge right now.

“I don’t see any,” he reported. “Here it is.”

Peter seized the block with his left hand as Vicki tightened her hold unnecessarily on his right. He set the kit on his left knee, took the monitor from his belt, and watched its screen for some seconds.

“It didn’t turn off this time, either,” he said at last. “Something’s interfered with my controls. How long before I can use both hands?”

The woman looked at the first-aid screen. “Five or six more minutes should have you pumped out.” Peter waited out the time with what his uncle considered surprising patience, learning only later what the real emotion was.

Vicki removed the blood filter pump and the venom denaturant units at last, and he flexed his arm and fingers for another half minute.

Then he went to work on his nano kit. He seemed to be examining every separate module and trying every switch, though it was not always obvious to the watchers just what was going on; the control system itself was as hard to see and obscure in detail as the mechanisms it directed. The first aid kit was state of the art as of a couple of years earlier and reasonably familiar to any adult; this, like any hacker’s work, was an individual—private—development.

Peter spent several minutes at the task, and his uncle got a distinct impression toward the end that he was working very slowly, almost as though he suspected a truth he didn’t really want to believe.

Finally he detached completely the plate which until then had hinged out from the brick and carried another monitor screen on its inner face, something neither had seen before.

An imperceptible gesture brought the screen to life. Exactly in its center was a blank area about a centimeter across with a set of tiny red symbols inside it. Peter seemed about to throw the whole assembly to the ground, but he controlled himself, put it down gently, stood up, and walked toward the top of the rock. He stood there silently for two or three minutes, while D’Orrey and Vicki looked at each other blankly. Eventually, the man’s imagination clicked back into gear.

He carefully refrained from saying anything like “Made a fool of you again, did he?” At the same time, he had to know—

“D’you suppose it was Jerry?” he asked.

The answer came before the boy could speak. It sounded in the left ear of each of the trio, in the form of a husky whisper not recognizable as anyone’s voice—small size puts physical limits on the detail of any wave pattern produced by a speaker.

“It was. Sorry, Mr. Becker. I had to, and it wasn’t all your fault. I apologize to you for bugging your kit, and to all of you for violating your personal privacy with these ear canal speakers. They’ll be removed as soon as I’ve finished talking to you. Doctor D’Orrey, just why didn’t you check with the department? I have better things to do with my time than ward even the well-meaning curious off my experiments. And I thank you, Dr. Kalani, for your analysis even though I suspect you didn’t really believe it. It was essentially correct.”

“But you knew what I was doing when I asked you to check my instruments!” exclaimed D’Orrey.

“I did not. You said you’d seen something queer and wanted to check its legitimacy, but you gave me no details. I judged you were hoping to make a discovery, which I can well understand, and wanted no rivals beating you to publication, which I can also understand, so I asked for no more. We’re as bad as the hackers, Jaques; we don’t trust each other enough. Maybe you can profit by this, Mr. Becker, and don’t wind up a complete lone wolf. I fear we two scientists may be too old to change.”

“Three,” corrected Vicki Kalani. “I guess it’s natural. Pete, of course you can do something about the catechols in poison ivy. I haven’t started to itch yet, but if …” her statement trailed off and Peter Ben Becker looked uncomfortable again.

“Better try the first aid kit,” he muttered.

“Better still,” suggested his uncle, “try learning to recognize poison ivy. You are planning some outdoor research, aren’t you? And Vick—how about taking one of my cooking turns? I cleaned your suit last night while you were both asleep.”

The End

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