Proteus in the Underworld

by Charles Sheffield

  Bey wasn't much into higher causes. "If she didn't give you my name, then who did?"

  "I am not at liberty to discuss that." Fermiel refused to look at him. "However, let me assure you that your abilities have been described by that individual in the most complimentary terms. See there, Mr. Wolf." Fermiel nodded ahead. "We are now approaching the real Mars. Not the barren wilderness of the outer surface, nor the unnatural import from Earth of Melford Castle, but the true heart of this planet. Prepare to be amazed."

  Bey recognized a deliberate change of subject when it was pushed in his face. If Fermiel was hoping to make a convert to his cause he was going about it in a very strange way. Bey was tempted to tell him to go to hell, explain that he had been recruited unsuccessfully by better men than Rafael Fermiel, and demand to be taken back to the link exit point.

  But if he did that, he might never find out what was going on. And he did have most of a day to kill before he was expected at Melford Castle.

  Go with the flow.

  Bey leaned back in his seat, stared out of the car's front window, and waited to be astonished. He was not optimistic. Mars had been explored by humans and machines for two centuries and permanently settled for three-quarters of that period. The surface forms that Trudy had shown him seemed to be new, but what could be radically different about a maze of caves and tunnels?

  The car had continued its steady descent. It was emerging into the biggest caverns that Bey had seen so far on Mars, running its way along a black-top road that might have been found in a million places back on Earth. High above, in the roof of the cave, three artificial suns mimicked the solar spectrum.

  The air was warm and humid. Standing water covered the level fields that stretched out on both sides of the road toward the distant cave walls. Bey saw a handful of smart supervisor machines, rolling along by the narrow irrigation canals that marked the field boundaries. They were monitoring the work of thousands of small laborer robots, who in turn were tending countless millions of narrow green stalks that poked up from the shallow water. There was no sign of people.

  "Rice." Rafael Fermiel glanced smugly at Bey as he spoke. "Grown in the traditional way. It is alternated through the growing season with legumes and root crops."

  Bey nodded. He was beginning to wonder if there had been a bad case of mistaken identity. He was a form-change specialist. He could think of nothing less likely to interest him than a guided tour of mud farming.

  The auto-car went rolling on, back into another connecting tunnel. They were still descending, deeper and deeper into the Underworld. The atmosphere was noticeably more dense. A shimmering heat haze hung in the air of the next cavern that they entered.

  The black-top road and the multiple artificial suns were here again, but everything else had changed. The surface of this cave was bare broken rock and fine white sand. Jutting upward here and there were occasional stunted bushes and fat, spiny cacti. Bey saw no animals, except for one bird like an outsized crow that flapped slowly away from the moving car on lazy black wings. He glanced at Fermiel. The other man nodded in a satisfied way. The car rolled on.

  And on.

  By the eighth and last cave—a turbulent body of water, with a strong wind blowing salt spray across the narrow causeway that they were crossing—Bey understood. He had seen steaming wild jungle, desolate high veldt, salt ocean, gloomy moss-strewn swamp, hot desert, scrubby tundra, carefully-tailored agriculture, and bare snowy hills. Every cave was different. Every cave had its own balanced ecosystem. Every cave appeared empty of human life.

  "Well?" Fermiel was staring expectantly at Bey.

  "It's very interesting. It's a long time since I've really followed what's happening on Mars, but I had no idea—"

  "Everything you have seen is recent. Twenty years ago, each one of these deep caves was nothing but unbreathable air and dark, empty rock."

  "Which makes what you have done even more surprising." Bey stared ahead as the auto-car left the cave, accelerating sharply up the steep gradient of an unlit tunnel. He felt his ears pop at the change of pressure. He swallowed hard. "But I still don't understand why you showed this to me. I realize that you are simulating a variety of Earth ecosystems, but if you know my specialty you also know that I can't offer better comments on the caves than any casual tourist."

  "I know. Do not worry about it. That is not why we wished to meet with you."

  "We?"

  "You will have the answer to that question very soon now. We are almost there."

  The road that the car traveled had leveled off, while total darkness was giving way to a diffuse glow ahead. The car was emerging to an environment much more familiar to Bey. They were no longer in a natural cave, but approaching the side of a well-lit four-story building that filled the whole end of the tunnel. A dozen autocars were parked outside, in front of double doors of frosted glass. Their own car rolled forward to halt at the end of the line.

  "I said you should prepare to be amazed. I know you were unimpressed by what you have seen so far." Rafael Fermiel had descended from the car, and he motioned Bey to do the same. "But I was not referring to the habitats. Follow me, please. You are about to see something quite unique."

  The glass doors swung open, to reveal a lobby beyond, escalators, and a bank of elevators. Fermiel went in, but he remained right by the entrance. A great cube of grey stone stood there, as tall as a human. He pointed to one face of it, where a plate of hardened transparent plastic had been set into the rock.

  "The original." Rafael Fermiel tried to sound casual, but the reverence showed through. "There have been millions of copies, but this is the original."

  Bey stepped closer. Behind the impermeable plastic sheet stood an oblong piece of yellowed paper. He could see the printing and the couple of dozen signatures scrawled at the bottom, but the words were almost too faded to make out.

  "Be it known by all who follow . . ." he read aloud.

  And then he knew. "The Declaration! I thought it was lost—a century ago."

  "It was. It was buried when the Ladnier Cavern collapsed. We found it last year during a secondary excavation. Are you amazed now, Behrooz Wolf?"

  "More than amazed. I am overwhelmed." Bey leaned close. Of the original Mars colony, three men and three women had died during the first few days. The remaining twenty-four signatories were all here, immortalized by far more than a crumbling piece of paper a century and a half old. Their names were engraved on the memory of every child born on Mars.

  Rafael Fermiel reached forward and touched his finger to three of the signatures. "Ilya Mahajani, Mira Alveida, and Dilys Chang," he said proudly. "I am a direct descendant of each of them. But I did not bring you here to boast of that. Nor, indeed, merely to show it to you. Come along, Mr. Wolf." He tapped Bey, who was still crouched forward in total absorption, lightly on the arm. "Mr. Wolf! I was informed of your interest in historic writings, but there will be time later for a fuller examination. In any case, you will see the Mars Declaration—or at least a far more readable copy of it—again in a few minutes."

  He led a reluctant Bey to the escalator. They ascended two stories. The arrival of the car must have been noted on some automatic routing board, because a group of men and women stood waiting for them in silence at the top of the escalator.

  If Rafael Fermiel did not actually preen himself, he came close to it. The red beard jutted out, and he squared his shoulders. "Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to present Behrooz Wolf, former head of the Earth Office of Form Control."

  He turned to Bey. "Mr. Wolf, you are in the presence of the policy council, leaders of what is popularly referred to as 'Old Mars.' Our enemies in the media often use a different term— 'The Rulers of the Underworld.' So far you have showed remarkable restraint in asking questions of me. But now you will have answers."

  Fermiel waved Bey forward, following him into a long room whose grey table held places for precisely twenty-five people. The twenty-three others came crowding in after t
hem and moved to pre-assigned seats. Bey found himself at the head of the table, facing two long lines of intent faces. Rafael Fermiel sat at his right hand. At the far end, occupying most of one wall, the first section of the Declaration was engraved in huge letters.

  Fermiel waited until Bey was settled in his seat before he leaned closer. "Before we perform introductions and begin in earnest, let me ask Mr. Wolf if he would like to say anything. I assume that you know nothing about us?"

  Any colleague of Bey Wolf's would have recognized that as a dangerous question. Fifty years with the Office of Form Control was a long time, enough to master a few party tricks.

  "Very little." Bey's voice was deliberately casual. "Of course, most of you restrict the use of form-change to medical functions, rather than to cosmetic ones. Nothing wrong with that, so do I. I'm pretty happy with the shape I was born with, and like you I feel content to stick to it. But I note that" —Bey glanced along the line of name plaques, which sat in front of each member of the policy group— "that Ms. Beulah Cresz needed remedial work in the form-change tanks as a child, for kidney problems. Mr. Willi Moskewitz spent time in a tank very recently, after an accident that broke his left arm and produced facial scars. Ms. Katerina Dussek suffers a hormonal imbalance, one which requires monthly corrective sessions. Seth Stein, like me, is naturally myopic. And like me, he tends to put off remedial work rather too long with the form-change equipment. Tomas Sedgwick has a hereditary chromosomal defect, which calls for occasional treatment now and will need more frequent ones later. While Janos O'Mara" —Bey paused and gave the man next to Rafael Fermiel a long, thoughtful stare. O'Mara gasped, turned white, and put his hand to his mouth. The two men gazed into each other's eyes for five seconds.

  "I think that's probably more than enough," Bey said at last. "Let's agree that I really know very little about any of you—or about the reasons why you brought me here."

  No one seemed to be listening. The members of the policy council for Old Mars were staring at each other and past each other, throwing in an occasional venomous glance at Rafael Fermiel.

  Bey reflected that there was no justice in the world. After all Fermiel's efforts in snaring Bey and bringing him to the Council Headquarters, the red-bearded man would be given little credit for that work on the basis of the meeting so far.

  "Perhaps we should proceed without further introductions." Rafael Fermiel cleared his throat and looked at Bey. "Although I must say that I should hate to hear your comments, Mr. Wolf, about a group you do claim to know something about. Let us get right down to business. That" —he pointed to the engraving on the far wall— "was not placed in this room by accident. The Declaration guides and motivates all the council's work. We begin and end each of our meetings with its words. I now ask that we do so again, familiar as it may already be to most of us."

  Be it known by all who follow. . .

  The Mars Declaration was indeed familiar to Bey, and to the whole solar system—as a unique historical document. But no one else, in Bey's experience, treated the words with anything like the reverence accorded them here.

  Be it known by all who follow that Mars is now a home for humans. We, the surviving crew of the exploration ship Terra Nova, pledge never to leave this world. We will not obey any order to return to Earth, no matter how or by whom delivered. We will venture no more into space. We will remain here to live, to labor, and to die.

  Since we will not survive to see the end of our work, we give our dream to those who come after. This we believe:

  That Mars, before our arrival, was barren of life.

  That Mars will never after this be without the life forms of Earth.

  That Mars is destined to be one day fertile and blooming, as a second Earth.

  That human children will breathe the air of this New Earth, and sit at ease beside its flowing rivers. . .

  Its flowing rivers. Bey was sure that the crew of the Terra Nova had known nothing of the deep caves of Mars, had never imagined a Mars Underworld of simulated Earths like the ones that he had just seen.

  Their vision had been of the surface. Its flowing rivers. Bey saw again in his mind's eye the old, dried-out watercourses and jagged, rusty rocks, the desolate wilderness beneath a thin, dry atmosphere and a diminished sun. But on that frigid red desert, without life-support equipment, stood a handful of long-legged bipeds. How did Mars appear to them, the new forms that Trudy Melford had shown him?

  Bey tried to make the mental shift of viewpoint, to look on Mars through other eyes. He was still struggling when he became aware that everyone else at the long table was sitting patiently waiting. And he was less than a third of the way through reading the text of the Declaration.

  "We know what you must be thinking, Mr. Wolf." Rafael Fermiel spoke softly and sympathetically. "You have seen our work, creating the ecosystems for New Earth within Mars. On your last trip you visited the surface, and saw our progress in the Mars conversion process. Day-to-day changes are too small to notice, but the atmosphere constantly thickens and every year holds a little more water vapor. Had you gone farther north, you would have seen temporary pools of surface water near the cometary fragment impact points. The goals of the Declaration are being realized. Full terraforming will one day be completed. But there are complications."

  "The new surface forms?" Bey had made no promise of secrecy to Trudy Melford.

  "Exactly. Not so much their existence and present numbers as their implications. There are powerful groups on Mars who insist that the new forms point the direction of the future. 'It is far easier to change humans,' they tell us, 'than planets. Why not do as the Cloudlanders and Colonies do, and adapt form to setting?' We know and reject those arguments. We also believe that the most powerful voice in those dissenting groups is the newest one, and the one with most to gain from the use of form-change."

  "She employed me to help her."

  "We know that, too. We assume that you are the creator of the new surface forms, and we do not blame you for accepting a new and novel assignment in your chosen field. You could not have known its implications. Also, we do not ask you to deceive or betray Trudy Melford. We ask rather that you resign from her staff—and work with us."

  "Doing what?" Bey glanced along the double line of intent faces. "I know of nothing I could do that would be useful to you."

  "We will gladly give you whatever Trudy Melford is paying you, to do nothing." Rafael Fermiel sounded desperate.

  "You have no idea how much she is paying me." Bey was on sure ground with that—he didn't know himself, and he didn't really care.

  "Mr. Wolf, money is not an issue." Beulah Cresz spoke up from the far end of the table. "Whatever she is giving you, we can more than match it."

  "More than match Trudy Melford? She's the richest woman in the solar system."

  But the others were all nodding assent. "Take our word, Mr. Wolf," Fermiel said. "Our available resources at least equal those available to BEC."

  "I am flattered that you place so high a value on my services." Bey leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. "But I can't give you an immediate answer. I need time to think about all this."

  That was the understatement of the century. Trudy and BEC, suggested as the developers of the surface forms? Although Trudy denied it, and insisted that the forms were nothing to do with her, it made both technical and economic sense. She had access to the right equipment. She had more than enough money to fund experiments indefinitely. And BEC would benefit most if Mars were not terraformed to look like a new Earth.

  But if that were true, why bring someone all the way to Mars, to investigate those same forms? Bey's mind was on fire with paradoxes and conjectures.

  "Of course you need time," Rafael Fermiel was repeating. "We have no intention of rushing you to a decision. Like the original framers of the Declaration, we have learned to operate on a time-scale of centuries rather than days or weeks. Take as much time as you need. And if you want to discuss this f
urther, with us or even with Ms. Melford, we understand. From everything that we have heard about you, you are an honorable man."

  Bey nodded. He was hardly listening. A few weeks ago he had been happily unemployed, a retired man pottering about on his own private business. Now everyone seemed to want him.

  He hadn't changed. So what had?

  And he knew one other thing, from half a century of experience. When a whole lot of people wanted you, it was almost never for your benefit.

  * * *

  Rafael Fermiel offered to drive with Bey to Melford Castle. Bey refused. He needed an opportunity for private thought.

  He promised to be in touch with Fermiel "soon," without specifying what that meant. And as the autocar snaked its way up from the deep Underworld he leaned back, closed his eyes to the endless succession of caverns and tunnels that rolled past him, and turned the pieces of the puzzle over in his mind.

  The trick, as always, was to ask the right questions. Do that, and clarification would usually follow.

  So. Question One: Why did Trudy Melford suddenly want him to come to Mars, when she had not contacted him in the three years since he left the Office of Form Control?

  Answer: To explore the surface forms.

  It was the obvious reply, but it did not feel like the right one. Particularly if, as the Old Mars council insisted, Trudy and BEC were themselves the agents behind the development of the new forms. Accept, then, that Bey lacked the information to answer the question.

  Try Question Two: Were the new surface forms on Mars indeed a BEC/Melford product?

  Answer: Trudy had suggested that they were not, but her statements were suspect. There was no way for Bey to determine the truth without more data. In particular, he had to examine the forms directly. From such an examination he was pretty confident that his own knowledge of BEC's work would tell him at once if their labs had been involved.