The hall they came to was crowded for a room on a harvester. Bey's initial worry—that it was too public a first appearance for his new body—vanished when he saw the general behavior. A peculiar sense of panic and excitement filled the air. No one took any notice of Bey and Sylvia. A couple of hundred noisy people were milling around a dais at one end, and as Bey looked at them he felt reassured. He was one of the most conservatively dressed. Pink sequined pantaloons and curved-toe slippers competed and clashed with scarlet tunics and glittering black hose. Earth taste was nonexistent.
At a gesture from Sylvia, Bey slipped into an eating cubicle at the back of the room. Sylvia in the next cubicle was out of sight unless she stood up to look over the partition, and one-way glass in the front wall allowed both of them to see the rest of the hall. Most of the crowd was clustered around a scarecrow of a man with a blue skullcap, a long white robe, and a mask that covered the lower half of his face.
"You have a choice!" He had a muffled, booming voice, echoing from the room's bare white walls. "I can give you a choice. If you do not like the idea of form-change, if you do not care to face the terror of the tanks, there are other ways. Ancient secrets, the mysteries of Earth's antiquity, means of treating illness that do not depend on the use of form-change tanks."
"Nothing good comes from Earth!" The shout came from somewhere in the throng of people.
"From today's Earth, you are right." The man on the platform turned to that part of the crowd. "I think we ought to destroy Earth and all the Inner System." There was a roar of approval from the crowd. "But that does not mean that the knowledge of Old Earth is useless. All our ancestors once lived there! I have learned Earth's old secrets."
Bey spoke to Sylvia, busy ordering food in her cubicle from the table server. "What's he talking about?"
"I was going to ask you the same thing. He said something about knowledge coming from ancient Earth."
"The distilled wisdom of long-dead ages," the booming voice was continuing. "Three hundred years ago, the knowledge that I possess was tightly held by a small group of people. When form-change came in, the need for their skills disappeared. They lost their power. Their special learning vanished. But not forever! By intense research, I and my assistants have repossessed those lost skills. We are the New Aesculapians." He held up two clear bottles, one filled with a cloudy green liquid and the other filled with small white spheres. "Whatever your ailment, we can help you! One of these will be the answer."
"Oh, my God." Bey had been chewing on a bland yellow wedge of material that Sylvia had ordered. He almost choked, then spoke with his mouth full. "I never thought I'd see this."
"What is he offering?"
"Pills and potions. Panaceas. He's saying he's a doctor!"
"You mean a—a physician?" Sylvia groped for the old word. "There are no such people in the Cloud."
"Nor on Earth, anymore—there hasn't been for two hundred years. I didn't think there ever would be again, anywhere." Bey was ecstatic. "Before purposive form-change was developed, there were thousands of them. They were enormously powerful, just like a priesthood. Those clothes and masks he's wearing were their robes. I wonder he isn't spouting the Hippocratic oath and writing prescriptions."
"Writing what?"
"Purchase approval for chemicals. They used to treat diseases with chemicals, you know—and with surgery, too."
"Surgery. Isn't that cutting—"
"Right. Cutting people open. Before it was outlawed, they were allowed to do that. I hope he's not proposing it here."
The white-coated man was being mobbed by people shouting out their problems. He had been joined by half a dozen acolytes, who were beginning to hand out vials and packages. Sylvia opened the door of her cubicle and stepped out. "I have to tell Cinnabar Baker about this. We can't allow it."
"No." Bey came out quickly to grab her sleeve and restrain her. "First we get samples, have them analyzed. I'll bet they're totally harmless. Come on."
They had not finished eating, but the food and drink had been enough to produce another mood change. Bey was getting a little sleepy and extremely cheerful. He began to make his way toward the center of the crowd. Sylvia caught up with him and pushed in front. "Not you. I'll do it. I can move easier than you. You stay right there."
She eeled into the mass of people and returned a couple of minutes later with a bottle in one hand and a packet in the other. She held them up triumphantly, but just before she reached Bey, she halted and her expression changed. She was looking right past him.
"Here comes your real test." She leaned close and spoke rapidly. "If you pass this one, you're home free."
Bey slowly turned. Heading toward them across the room was a smiling woman dressed in a cloudy dress of flaming pink. "Sylvia! I had no idea you were here."
"I just arrived." Sylvia squeezed the woman's hands in both of hers, then stepped back. "Andromeda, this is Behrooz. He's also visiting the harvester. Bey, this is an old friend of mine, Andromeda Diconis. We studied optimal control theory together, many years ago."
"Too many. But Sylvia was always better at it than I was. That's why I'm here, in my boring little job, while Sylvia roves the system." The woman had taken Bey by the hand and was giving him a head-to-toe stare. Her glittering blue eyes and full mouth held an odd and unreadable expression. "Very nice clothes you have—you both have. Perfectly matched. What are you doing here?"
"Behrooz works on communications equipment," Sylvia said before Bey could speak. "He's an expert on it."
"We can certainly use some of those here. Where are you from, Behrooz?"
"The Opik Harvester."
"Ah. Such a dull place—I would never want to live there. And you are a communications expert? How impressive." Andromeda Diconis was still holding Bey's hand, but it was Sylvia she spoke to next. "I'm sure he is an expert on many things. But my dear Sylvia, whatever happened to your other friend? What was his name, Paul?"
"Paul Chu. I suppose you didn't hear. He disappeared on a mission to the Halo."
"Oh, yes, now you mention it, I did hear that. But I thought he came back. Someone here said they'd seen him just a week or two ago. Anyway, we don't want to talk about him, do we?" Andromeda finally released Bey's hand and reached up to straighten his collar. Her fingers ran over the hollow of his throat. "Not when you've been able to make new friends, Sylvia. And very attractive friends, too. I'll tell you what, I'm going to stay here and have something to eat. Would you and Behrooz"—Bey earned a dazzling smile—"like to wait for me, and then we can all go to the concert along the corridor?"
Sylvia placed her hand firmly on Bey's arm. "Not today. We've just eaten, and Bey has had a very hard day. He needs to rest now."
"I'm sure he does. I'm sure you both do. But it's wonderful to see you again, Sylvia, and I'll call you tomorrow." She reached forward and stroked Bey's forearm. "And I really look forward to seeing you again, Behrooz. Once you're properly rested."
Bey tried to smile and nod, but Sylvia was already towing him off toward the exit. He waved to Andromeda Diconis and received a blown kiss in return.
"What's the hurry?" he asked as soon as they were out of earshot. "Was I making her suspicious?"
"Not in the slightest." Sylvia's manner was a mixture of pleasure and irritation. "You passed perfectly. Couldn't you tell? She'd never have acted that way if she thought for one moment that you were from the Inner System. She's the perfect Cloudlander, looks down on everything inside the Kernel Ring. But Andromeda was all ready to eat you for breakfast."
"If I was passing perfectly, why drag me away?" Bey rather liked the idea of being eaten for breakfast by Andromeda.
"Because Andromeda has to think that I'm jealous—the way she would be. She thinks she understands our relationship exactly, and that's the best thing that could have happened. Andromeda's a total bitch, but she took you at face value, as a Cloudlander. And she's the universe's greatest gossip. Give her a day or two, and everyone will know t
hat I have a new companion, a man from the Opik Harvester."
"Isn't that dangerous? They may want to meet me."
"She'll tell people that I'm jealous of you and want to keep you all to myself. It's a perfect reason to let us stay private while you work. But that's something we'll worry about tomorrow."
"Uh uh." He yawned. "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. Great word. Great speech. Hmmm."
Sylvia had noticed the change in Bey since leaving Andromeda Diconis. Another common aftereffect of a long session in the tanks was hitting him. He was on a high but was fast running out of adrenaline and energy. The surprise of waking in a strangely different form and the stimulus of the new surroundings had been enough to give him a lift for the past few hours, but that was fading.
"Come on. Before you fall asleep in the corridors." His exhaustion had been a convenient excuse to leave Andromeda, but it was true enough. Bey Wolf would need a good rest before he was fit to work on the Marsden Harvester's form-change problems.
She led him away toward his assigned quarters. Bey did not speak, and by the time they arrived his eyes were closing. Sylvia steered him to a bunk. He was asleep before she could add another word. After a few moments she gently removed the bright blue clothes and the extravagant hat and secured him in the bunk with loose straps. He would become used to low-g sleeping soon enough, but he might be disoriented when he first woke.
He lay flat on his back. Sylvia looked over the sleeping body with approval. "Pretty good job I did with you, Behrooz Wolf, if I say it myself. Andromeda was fascinated, and she's a connoisseur. 'Very attractive friends,' eh? We'll have to fight to keep her away from you."
Sylvia frowned, remembering another of Andromeda's comments. Someone on the harvester had seen Paul Chu recently. Even if it were no more than a bit of gossip, Sylvia needed to follow up on it. Cinnabar Baker had pointed out the problem. When one talked of war and sabotage, all roads seemed to lead to the Kernel Ring; but no roads led to Black Ransome, or to Ransome's Hole—unless she could track the lead to Paul, and he could provide the pathway.
She started for the door, then paused. She must not go back to the hall too soon. Andromeda had her own ideas about what Sylvia and Bey were doing at the moment, and Sylvia wanted to keep that idea intact.
She forced herself to wait for almost two hours, thinking hard and watching the steady rise and fall of Bey's bony chest. At last she headed for the concert hall.
* * *
The lights had dimmed automatically. Bey lay in darkness, listened to the faint hissing of the air ventilators, and wondered what had wakened him. He was almost in free-fall, floating with only the imperceptible tether of a pair of retaining straps. And he was not ready to wake. He felt groggy with sleep, so tired that it was an impossible effort to open his eyes.
"Bey!" The voice came again. It was no more than a whisper, but it jerked him at once to thrilling wakefulness. It was a sound to rouse Bey from the dead.
He opened his eyes. The projection system in the corner had switched itself on and revealed the interior of a dark room. In the center of that open space, her face illuminated by the faint gleam of a single red spotlight, sat Mary Walton.
"Bey!" The soft call came again.
"Mary. Where are you?"
"Don't try to answer me, Bey. This message was prerecorded, so I can't hear what you're saying. It is triggered when you respond to your name and open your eyes."
She was hauntingly attractive and as crazy-looking as ever. Bey even recognized her outfit. It was the one she had worn when she played Titania, a long russet gown that should have been dowdy but glowed with fairy tints of warm light. He had last seen it locked in a closet of his Earth apartment. Her voice was even more familiar, as wonderful as ever, with smoky, husky tones that made Bey hear sexual overtones even in her comic speeches.
"I don't want you hurt, Bey," she went on. "I've already saved you many times, back on Earth and on the space farm, but I don't know how many more times I can do it. You have to stop what you're doing, leave the harvesters, get back to Earth."
"How did you know where I am?" Bey responded automatically, forgetting that she could not hear him.
"You are being used, you know, by the Outer System." She had not paused. "It's not your problem, but they'll try and make it yours. The Outer System is going to break down more and more, and if you try to stop it, it will kill you. Say no to Cinnabar Baker, whatever she suggests. When Sylvia Fernald tries to sleep with you—she will, if she hasn't already—remember that she's doing it as part of her job. You are nothing to those people." Mary raised her hand. On her middle finger glowed a huge kernel ruby, the rarest gemstone in the system. "It may be over between us, Bey, but don't ever forget that I'm fond of you. I saved you when the messages were making all the others die or go mad. Give me credit for that. Goodbye now, and please take care. Sleep well."
She waved. The projection unit's image slowly faded, until after twenty seconds Bey could see nothing but the ghostly glimmer of the kernel ruby. Finally that, too, was gone. The sleeping chamber was again in perfect darkness.
Bey was sweating hard, and his heart was pounding. He was filled with a mixture of excitement and amazement. Mary's final words had been a grim joke—he would not sleep now, not for hours. He loosened the straps that had held him snugly in position and made his way across to the projection unit. It should hold a recorded copy of that whole message.
The recording storage was completely blank. Naturally. Bey was not even surprised anymore. After the Negentropic Man, after the projected images that were filling the Outer System, and Mary's ability to leave a message for him wherever she apparently chose, no other anomaly of the communications system could be ruled out. It was all impossible.
But one impossibility throbbed in his head harder and harder the longer he thought about it. If Mary knew where he was, then perhaps she could find a way to send a message. But how, in a total region of space so large that the whole Inner System was no more than a dot at its center, had she known where he was?
She had known of his trip to the Sagdeyev space farm. She had learned of his return. She had tracked him to these quarters within a few hours of his arrival there. How? How did she know?
He would never get to sleep. Never, never, never, never, never. With that single word resounding in his head, he went drifting irresistibly toward the slumber of total exhaustion.
And it was in those final moments, swimming down toward new unconsciousness, that Bey had a first inkling as to how Mary knew what was happening so quickly. He tried to catch the thought, to study it; but it was too late.
He was asleep.
CHAPTER 17
Aybee had a problem. He wanted his captors to think he was from the space farm and not a representative of the Cloud's central government. On the other hand, he could not afford to meet any other farmers. They would know at once that he was not one of them, and they would have no reason to hide that fact from the Podders. For the moment, at least, he seemed safe. There were plenty of Podders, easily recognized from their suits, visible near the lock of the cargo vessel, but he could see no sign of farmers.
Steered along by the woman behind him, Aybee went drifting on into the interior. From the outside, the ship had been an inert, lifeless hulk, a derelict abandoned in the early days of Cloud colonization. Within, the airless enclosure was filled with activity.
Aybee looked around with a professional eye. They had entered through one of the ship's forward ports. The outer hull arched away from them, a great curved span of carbon fiber sheet with strengthening beams of hardened polymers. From the inside it seemed much more than six hundred meters wide. There was enough interior space for whole cities, complete with everything from food and power production to swimming pools and game fields. But there were signs that the ship was more than a simple colony.
The first giveaway was the bracing struts and massive electric cables. They ran through the whole interior, and there was no reas
on to have them unless the ship had to withstand acceleration. Aybee did a quick mental calculation and decided that the mechanical and electromagnetic stiffening was consistent with about a two-g thrust.
That at once told him something else. At two g's, the ship was over a year's run away from the Podders' natural home in the Halo. There had to be some way of moving people and materials faster than that. Aybee looked again around the cluttered and dimly lit cargo shell and saw the expected equipment far away near the outer wall. A high-acceleration ship hung there, its McAndrew drive off. Its design suggested that it would allow up to three hundred g's before the gravitational and inertial accelerations were in balance. Aybee studied that ship very closely. With it, the Marsden Harvester was only twenty-four hours away.
The second oddity was the presence of transparent internal partitions and numerous internal air locks. Cargo hulls were rarely pressurized, and the Podders had no interest in living within an atmosphere. Their suits were all the air supply they cared to have. So who wanted parts of the ship to be air-filled, and where were they?
Finally, there were the kernels. Aybee could see a dozen places where the local spherical structure implied housings for shielded kernels. That suggested a monstrous power demand. One kernel would be sufficient for normal operations of a volume this size, even if it were a full-scale colony ship. The alternative explanation, that the kernels were being used for some other purpose, made no sense without more data.
Aybee turned back to the woman behind him. Inside the ship, she had put her gun away. "What are you going to do to me?"
"Just keep going. You'll find out in a few minutes." She relented. "Don't worry. We don't kill people without a good reason."
But we do kill people with a good reason? Aybee wondered what a good reason was. Trying to escape? Lying about one's identity? Being a spy for the Outer System government?
They were entering a new section of the ship, passing through an interior lock into an enclosure with opaque walls. Aybee heard the hiss of air and looked questioningly at the woman.
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