Proteus in the Underworld

by Charles Sheffield

  The extremities were less clearly human. The feet, encased in snug-fitting boots that came half-way up kangaroo-like legs, had thick well-separated toes. Bey noticed that Seychel had no trouble at all in strolling along in front of him like any other human. But those same limbs, from what Bey had seen on his last visit to Mars, permitted surface travel in great twenty-meter bounds. More evidence of clever form-change design.

  The hands were either bare and lacking in nails, or covered in long gloves that followed every fold and wrinkle of the skin beneath. The fingers, like the toes, were thick and splayed.

  All interesting enough, yet all offering no real surprises. The first evidence of those came in the head. Dmitri Seychel's cranium was big and thickly-haired. Below it his face pushed far forward into a long broad muzzle. That, together with the brown, thick-lashed eyes, gave Dmitri's head something of the look of an irritated Earth camel.

  And still all those elements were trivial, the simple superficial changes to an Earth form that might be performed by any sophisticated cosmetic form-change program. The work that interested Bey lay deep within. There must be massive and complex reconstruction hidden inside the head and torso—functional reconstruction. Some body organ—a new one, or perhaps lungs with basic modifications—had to extract oxygen from the super-thin Mars air while the body lay dormant. It must somehow ignore the air's carbon dioxide. And it must store the extracted oxygen for many hours, until needed during the active period.

  The long muzzle had seen changes of just as fundamental a nature. A whole extra set of air passages must reside there. For one thing, speech had been separated from exhalation. Vocal chords could be exercised without the loss from the body of precious, warm, moisture-laden air. Bey had no proof of it, but he was also willing to bet that somewhere within that long, bulky nose sat an organ that absorbed every trace of water and oxygen from used air. What was finally released to the atmosphere of Mars would be almost pure, dry carbon dioxide.

  If Trudy Melford had any notion of the sophistication of the Mars surface forms, there was no wonder she was excited. A genius of a designer had been at work here. Trudy liked to collect geniuses, and turn them to BEC's exclusive service.

  That last thought left Bey more than a little uneasy. He was supposedly independent, supposedly retired, and working if he worked at all only on his own projects—all at the moment sadly neglected. Yet here he was, lured somehow to Mars and doing exactly what Trudy wanted him to do. Had she deliberately made herself unavailable when he arrived at Melford Castle, knowing that he would then head at once for the surface, and fly here? The car had been all ready and waiting for him.

  Well, duped or not, here he was. And oddly excited. The old curiosity for any strange new form-change development was strong within him. Maybe Trudy Melford knew Bey better than he knew himself.

  They were winding their way now down a long ramp, with fixed red lights on the tunnel walls. It looked more and more like the inside of a building, except that there was no air but the ambient Mars atmosphere. Dmitri Seychel had not once looked back to see that Bey was following, or offered one more word of conversation. Bey felt like kicking him in that amply-padded blubber-laden behind. If that was typical, what the Martian form needed in addition to any physical modification was a booster shot of sweetness and light.

  "Here you are." Dmitri halted at a rectangular opening in the tunnel. "Home of the big cheese, Georgia Kruskal. Have fun."

  He went off along the tunnel without another word, leaving Bey hesitating at the entrance of the room.

  "Come on in." The thin voice was cheerful, as though visitors from Earth or Old Mars dropped in every day of the week.

  Perhaps they did. Bey walked in, and found himself in a room that could easily have been an office back on Earth. There was a desk, a table and chairs, a data terminal, and even half a dozen potted plants. But the plants were all different, and all strange. Some were warty black cacti, others hugged the red soil or turned thin, sail-like leaves to face always to the light.

  "Experiments, of course." The being seated at the desk could at first glance have changed places with Dmitri Seychel, and Bey would not have known the difference. "Sit down and make yourself comfortable. I'm Georgia Kruskal, and I get the blame for this madhouse. Tell me who you are, and why you're here instead of skulking in the Old Mars burrows."

  "I'm Behrooz Wolf. I'm not from Old Mars. I'm from Earth, formerly with the Office of Form Control." Bey hesitated. Now for the tricky bit. Might as well lay it on the line. "I'd like to know more about the form you are using, because I think I might be able to help you to improve it."

  "Oh-ho." The camel snout turned to face Bey more directly, and the liquid brown eyes stared at him. "It's nice to run into someone with real gall. Improve us, eh? Fine. Quem dea vult perdere, prius dementat."

  " 'Whom God would destroy, she first makes mad.' " Bey did not even blink. He could play that particular game all day long.

  Georgia Kruskal was nodding. "First points to you, hombre. Maybe you will improve us after all. Why don't you tell me how?"

  "I need to have some questions answered first."

  "I'll bet you do. So do I." Kruskal leaned back in her chair, which was contoured to fit her bulky body. "All right, your turn first. Fire away."

  "Thank you. First of all, are you pure human?"

  "You better believe it. One hundred percent, no artificial additives. You and I could get together and start a bambino tonight, Behrooz Wolf."

  "Sorry. I'm spoken for."

  "I'm not sure I believe that." Georgia studied him for a moment. She had the temporary advantage. She could see and understand his facial expressions, while he had not yet learned to read the body language of the new form.

  "Anyway," she went on, "let's stay with your question. Everything here is done with form-change programs and without inorganic components. Dmitri's father is standard form and lives back in the Old Mars burrows. I'm Dmitri's mother. You've met Dmitri, so you probably think I have a lot to answer for."

  "I did get the impression that I was more pleased to see him than he was to see me. How many of you are there?"

  "Last time I bothered to check, about fourteen thousand. And the number is growing. Does it matter?"

  "It might." Bey thought of Rafael Fermiel, and the earnest faces of the Old Mars policy group. "A more important question: Are your forms stable?"

  "Not as stable as I would like. We still need weekly sessions with the tanks. But the life-ratio is good, we should live as long as an unmodified form."

  Georgia Kruskal sounded pleased with herself; as indeed she should be. Most radically modified forms died in just a few years.

  So now Bey had to ask the trickiest questions—the non-technical ones.

  "Do you use BEC form-change equipment?"

  "BEC hardware and basic routines. The more complex programs and interactions are our own."

  "Done with BEC's permission?"

  "Let's not split hairs. Anyway, I'm sure you know the answer to that question."

  It sounded like an answer, but it wasn't one. The time had come to be more direct.

  "Does Trudy Melford know about and fund your program?"

  There was a long pause. The eyes with their thick fringe of eyelashes closed. The thick lips pursed. Bey waited impatiently. A yes would tell him a great deal. A no might mean no more than that Georgia Kruskal was lying.

  "You ask two questions in one," Georgia said at last. "Does Trudy Melford know about this project? Yes, I feel sure that she does. Although she is a recent immigrant by Mars standards, her agents are sprinkled throughout Old Mars. We are known—and hated—there. As for your second question, whether Trudy Melford funds our efforts, I wish I could give you a good answer. On the face of it, she does not. Nor does anyone in BEC. But since her arrival on Mars we have consistently found it easier to obtain lines of credit for our work, and for no reason that I can explain."

  Bey found himself impressed again
with Georgia Kruskal. Like him, she understood and applied the same basic principle: Follow the flow of money. The project to develop surface forms for Mars was no different from any other major project. It needed funds, and those funds had to come from somewhere.

  "One more question, then it will be your turn. You say you are known and hated in Old Mars. Why?"

  "You can answer that for yourself, Behrooz Wolf, if you think for a second."

  "I think I know, but I want to confirm it. Old Mars is afraid of you. They see you as interfering with their plans."

  "Interfering, and worse." The broad mouth widened. It was a smile, toothless and tongueless. Bey guessed that both those features lay far back, out of sight within the long snout. "Isn't it obvious that Old Mars sees us as a major enemy? The policy council is committed to terraforming Mars, making it into a world in Earth's image. They take the Mars Declaration and they misunderstand it. The first colonists wanted Mars to be a world where humans can live. The policy council read that statement, and think terraform. But our existence proves that more change is unnecessary. If the comets ceased to arrive and Mars remained as it is today, humans can be quite at home on its surface. We prove that fact daily. Our version of the Mars Declaration would recognize a simple truth: It is easier to change a human than to change a planet. "

  "If you know what you are doing, it is." Bey had no doubt in his mind. She did know what she was doing. Why was it, just when you were convinced that you knew every major player in form-change through the whole solar system, another one would pop up from nowhere? "I could go on asking questions all day, but I promised you that would be the last one."

  "I'm not sure I believe that, either. But I'll take my turn since it's offered. First question. Do you work for Trudy Melford and BEC?"

  "No. She thinks I do, but that's not the same thing."

  "Not the same thing at all. Do you work for Old Mars?"

  "No. They recently tried to recruit me, but that's as far as it has gone."

  "I advise you to keep it that way. If you are bought by Old Mars you will work against form-change, not with it. So what are you doing here?"

  "Damned good question. Curiosity. Terminal nosiness. Habit. Back on Earth, I was head of the Office of Form Control for a long time—"

  "Your name and reputation are not unknown to me. Do you imagine that I would sit here and allow myself to be questioned by any casual visitor? Or give even the time of day to anyone with the arrogance to suggest that he might improve on my work, unless I had reason to believe that such a thing was possible? Remotely possible, I would add. You are not alone in your arrogance." Again the smile appeared, the stretching of thick camel lips. "But I can tell you why you are here, Behrooz Wolf. You are here to learn. So let us begin."

  Georgia Kruskal tapped at the terminal in front of her with thick fingers, and a wall screen came alive with a brightly-colored form-change schematic. "First I talk, Behrooz Wolf. You look, listen and learn. Then—if you have anything to say—you talk. And then, who knows? Perhaps I learn, too."

  CHAPTER 15

  Aybee hummed tunelessly and cheerfully to himself as the little high-gee craft prepared itself for docking. All this way to the ass-end of nowhere, when you had real work to do, and probably all for nothing; but once you said "yes" that was what you let yourself in for. So relax and enjoy it.

  Bey was just an old worry-wart. Smart enough, sure; but too much pointless worry, and why bother living? Might as well turn up your toes and get it over with.

  Aybee saw it the other way. The Apollo Belvedere Smith philosophy of life, if he had ever bothered to define it, was simple: If anything can possibly go right, it will.

  After Bey's call, Aybee had sent a hyperbeam query to Sondra on the Fugate Colony. She did not respond. Fair enough. Didn't mean a thing, except she was head-down working. She would ignore any messages, just as Aybee did when was really trying to get something done.

  But he had promised Bey. Aybee sighed, commissioned the little ovoidal Rini ship assigned for Kuiper Belt use, and zoomed off for the Fugate Colony.

  And now that he was arriving, what was he supposed to do? Tell Sondra that she had to go home with him because Bey Wolf said so? Aybee's exposure to Sondra had been limited, but he could imagine her reaction to that suggestion. She would tell him just where to put his advice.

  It was a lose-lose deal. If Sondra was fine, as Aybee felt sure she would be, then his journey was for nothing and he would look like a real idiot. He would have no choice but to turn around and head back to Rini Base. And if she wasn't all right? Then presumably he was supposed to dash in and save her. Aybee had no doubts about his own pre-eminent abilities. They did not include rescuing damsels in distress.

  He had checked the Fugate Colony's standard parameters on the way. The stated internal temperature and pressure were human tolerable—just. That wasn't enough for Aybee. He wanted something that was human comfortable. The Fugates could have their atmosphere soup, and good luck to them. He remained in his suit as the docking was completed, then floated on through the airlock.

  His ship had beamed ahead to signal his arrival, but that call had been fielded by the automatic equipment on the colony. His personal ID identified Aybee as a Cloudlander, familiar with a wide variety of free-space living conditions. On the strength of that he had received approval for unaccompanied docking. He had been offered—and declined—assistance upon arrival by Fugate staff.

  His first look at the interior of the Fugate Colony made him wonder if he had made a bad decision. Everything he saw was impossibly big, even the communications system. It had been designed for use by twenty-meter, thirty ton people, and even Aybee with his elongated arms could not manage the stretch.

  But that could not be the whole story. The Fugates, like most of the colonies, conducted regular commerce with the rest of the Kuiper Belt and made use of imported systems and services. Other people, many of them as small or smaller than Aybee, must be regular visitors. They had to be able to work inside the colony without continuous Fugate assistance. That implied the presence somewhere of standard-sized data terminals and information systems.

  Trouble was, this chamber was so cluttered and so foggy inside that you couldn't get a good look at most of it. Aybee went on the prowl, floating along past gigantic desks, doors, and transfer chutes. He finally found the data unit he needed over in the far right corner, hidden behind and dwarfed by a rack of space suits big enough to house Leviathan.

  It was an old-fashioned design and it didn't seem to have been used for a while, but it responded promptly enough when Aybee turned it on. And sorts and searches, thank Knuth, were pure logic, not dependent on anything so material as physical size or equipment age. The Fugate general query system was also a little primitive, but five minutes of experiment located the record of Sondra Dearborn's arrival at the colony. Her exact time of entry was shown: three days ago. After that it became a bit trickier. There was no sign that Sondra had left, so presumably she was still somewhere within the planetoid. But the file provided no indication of her present location. Chances were that she was working with form-change equipment, but which form-change equipment? The data bank showed thousands of tanks, set in many different parts of the colony.

  Aybee sighed. Work went a lot faster when you did it alone, but that no longer seemed an option. The record of Sondra's arrival provided the names of two individuals who had been assigned to help her. He gave in, and asked the terminal to put him in touch with either Mario or Maria Amari.

  Patience was not Aybee's strong point. He fidgeted and muttered for what seemed an interminable wait, while the colony communications system placed its calls. The result, when it finally came, did not seem promising. Sondra in her first meeting with the Fugates had been overwhelmed by flesh, by sheer physical size so great that she could not comprehend expressions on the giant faces. Aybee, seeing Mario Amari on a data screen no bigger than his hand, had an opposite first impression of a tiny, puzzled and sligh
tly annoyed baby. The bulging cranium was far too big for the eyes and pursed mouth.

  There seemed no expression at all on that diminished countenance as Mario Amari listened to Aybee's explanation of the reason for his call. At the end of it the puzzled look returned.

  "Let me be sure that I understand you correctly." Amari's rumbling voice was converted by the data line to the high-pitched, slightly squeaky delivery of a three-year-old. "You know that Sondra Dearborn is here on the colony, working on form-change equipment. You know that Maria and I met her, and showed her where everything is, and how it works. And you are worried about her?"

  "Well not exactly worried." Aybee didn't like the way the conversation was going. It was obvious that Mario Amari considered he was dealing with a half-wit. "I'd like to know where she is, and check what she's doing."

  "Are you a specialist on form-change methods?"

  "No." Make that a quarter-wit. Amari was slowly nodding as Aybee continued, "Look, I don't want to be a nuisance for you or anyone else on the colony, but I would like to see Sondra. So if you could just tell me where she is working, and how to get there . . ."

  "Do you know your way around this world?"

  "Not really."

  "Have you been to the colony before?"

  "No. Never."

  "Then it is probably quicker and easier if I show you where she is. Stay exactly where you are, and do not leave that chamber. I will be with you shortly."

  In other words, you shouldn't be allowed to wander the colony without a keeper. Aybee cursed Bey Wolf while he waited. Bey had dragged him halfway across the Kuiper Belt for nothing. Sondra was certainly all right—there had been annoyance but not a trace of concern in Mario Amari's voice. How could she not be all right, safe inside the colony? Amari was casual and unworried when he finally came floating in.

  "We did not stay with her, because she did not want it." Mario Amari, without asking Aybee's permission, grabbed him in one great hand and headed at once for the colony interior. "In fact, Sondra Dearborn specifically requested that we permit her to work alone in her first analysis of our form-change equipment."