Tinker snipped off the end of the tape. A tiny bleb contained the drug. By diluting it in several liters of melt-water he made a mouthwash that acted as a local anesthetic. The numbness lasted several hours. It was accompanied by a copious flow from the parotid—a watery saliva. Tinker made a flexible dam to keep his work area dry, and the grinding continued. Root canals were scraped and soaked with iodine. Slightly less than six months later Moon and Dan were grinning uncomfortably at each other with bright gold teeth.
The bite surfaces were very irregular—fashioned freehand by Tinker with little regard for normal crown contour. They felt unfamiliar until the chewing stresses adjusted the periodontal collagenous bundles.
“I should keep an eye on you two for about six months,” said Tinker. “I don’t have X-rays, but I was careful not to fill any of the canals until the wicks smelled sweet. One could still turn sour, though. If either of you get a swelling it would be best if I drained it out the side of the alveolar ridge.” He pointed to his cheek just above and below the tooth line. “That way we can save the root and gold crown.”
Moon massaged his jaw thoughtfully. “Maybe you should come with us and keep an eye on your patients.”
It took Tinker a moment to realize that he wasn’t joking. Toothpick repeated the invitation. Tinker shook his head. He much preferred the stable village life of raising a family. Mu Ren was big with child again. The Hip had already contracted with him for a new set of teeth. No, the life of a nomad did not interest him. Moon, Dan and Toothpick moved on in the spring—traveling north through the mountains.
Hunter Control was empty except for its own class five built-in cyber—Scanner. His myopic sensors were scattered over the Orange Country—that part of the Outside that covered about a fourth of the continent, the southwest corner. Scanner’s memory banks stored data covering crop status, harvest yield, and the movements of Agromecks, Huntercraft and buckeyes.
Fat old Walter waddled in carrying his first cup of hot brew. Slumping slowly into his soft console seat, he closed his eyes and sipped the steaming liquid. The warmth flowed down his esophagus into his stomach. Slowly, another warmth—vague and chemical—diffused through his vascular tree, numbing arthritic pains and stimulating a mild enthusiasm for his work.
“Monitor on duty,” he announced to Scanner.
“Morning, sir,” said the cyber, flexing his wall screen into threedimensional relief. Colors from chocolate to avocado indicated crop stages of cultivation, growth and harvest. These remained static. Movements of colored lights indicated activities of men and machines.
“Anything on the fisheye detector?” asked Walter.
“It is no longer located over the canal. One of the buckeye detectors failed during the previous shift and fisheye was moved to cover the gap,” explained Scanner.
Walter frowned. Fisheye was his personal project. To build a fisheye took weeks. Circuits sophisticated enough to distinguish between water mammals and humanoids were hard to find these days. He hated to see it being wasted on a hill somewhere, doing a job any warm-body detector could do. He called up Val.
The screen focused on Val’s quarters. Empty. The communicator meck tried some of Val’s usual haunts with the same negative result. Checking the labile memories of random Watcher mecks, the communicator retraced Val’s activities during his off hours. Picking up a clue here and a thread there it finally tracked him down. He was in Tinker’s deserted quarters sitting at the workbench.
“Val,” called old Walter.
The younger man put down the small brain box and turned toward the screen.
“What is it, Walter?”
“The fisheye.”
“Oh, I’m sorry about that. But one of the detectors on the thirty-seven-oh-three line lost range. I had to cover the crops while I worked on it—first-line maintenance, you know. So far I haven’t found the trouble. Sensors OK. If the failure is in the image converter or discrimination circuitry again we’ll be months waiting for parts. I couldn’t leave a hole in the line that long.”
Walter appeared irritated. Scanner followed the old man’s biolectricals. Myocardial edema had been showing up with more frequency lately.
“I know how interested you are in fisheye—” continued Val apologetically. “But even if there is an aquatic variety of the Eyepeople—they’re no problem as long as they stay in the water. If they feed on shellfish they just compete with the cetaceans and help keep the canals clean. If they come out to steal our crops the buckeye detectors will pick them up. Remember that a simple fifty-Au-gram BD can keep an eye on twenty square miles of open fields—but one of your fisheye detectors can watch only a few hundred yards of a canal. And the FD is going to cost several hundred Au-grams. I think it will be impractical to watch all the canals.”
Walter slumped deeper into his chair. “I’ve explained before that the FD isn’t for hunting. It’s for study. If we can establish that the aquatics do exist, then we can decide if we want to monitor the dugong breeding grounds, or put sensors on them—or whatever. We won’t be able to completely wipe out buckeyes until we understand their life cycle.”
“Your research will have to wait. We have today’s crop to protect,” said Val.
Walter said nothing.
“Don’t take it so hard. If your grant comes through you can set up a dozen FD’s.”
After another moment’s silence the younger man signed off and returned to his workbench.
Already tired, Walter turned to the dull tasks before him. His grant—for fisheye census or the proof of the existence of an aquatic Eyepeople—was classified under research. Long-range buckeye control. But with next week’s harvest in danger the Big ES would postpone research—probably indefinitely. He shrugged and woke up Wolfhound IX. A crew of Hunters was assigned. Coordinates were given. A Hunt.
Walter turned to the dismantled meck eye. Without a Tinker, he and Val did what little repairs they could until a replacement could be assigned. Spreading the retinal membranes out, he checked them for EM sensitivity. Speaking into the dispenser’s audio pickup, he ordered new parts: “Need EM membranes for meck eye—layers IIIa, IIIb, and IVd. Eye number—HC 15-20486.”
It was a routine expendable item. The requisition jumped smoothly up through channels and the little package came whizzing through the ten-centimeter tube. There was a crunch and a mangled container fell out into his chute.
“Damn! The air cushion stop must be down again. Where’s our Pipe man?”
“Eppendorff is with the Sewer Service today, sir.”
3
Moses Eppendorff
Moses Eppendorff steered his minisub carefully through the mile-wide interior of the anaerobic digester. Visibility had been improved a little by recirculating a laminar stream of clear effluent, but he felt a bit nervous about the massive islands of sludge that remained. He preferred the placid check trips through the polar conduits carrying clear melt-water from the ice cap. There were few surprises in sterile fluids. But the digester was anything but sterile. Life flourished all around him—acres of fungus and bacteria pulsed with enzymatic life as sewage nutrients were digested. In the sub’s lights these resembled multicolored clouds above and firmer gelatinous towers below. Vertical stringy material connected the two. The stringy material clung to the sub’s bow-like gum and trailed behind. Soon he resembled an aquatic comet on the digester’s sensors.
Flexing the craft’s surface charge he shook off the sticky tail of yeasts and mycelia. He maneuvered close to a yellow translucent mass about ten times the size of his sub and extended his sampler tube. Aspirating a fragment of the gelatinous material, he moved on. So far it looked like a routine inspection.