Hidden Variables

by Charles Sheffield

  The man fell silent and there was a long pause.

  Ling was too engrossed even to give Bey Wolf a look of triumph. He was bound in a spell of concentration so intense that he looked blind, his eyes unblinking and focused on infinity.

  "Did you do any chemical analyses of the bodies?" he asked.

  "God, no. We wanted to get them out of here. But there will be records on the tapes that were made by the monitors and tell-tales, and there should be continuous monitoring of some cell chemistry and blood chemistry."

  "Right. I want to examine those now. Bring them here or take me to them."

  "We'll get them. But they'll be in raw form. Only a form-change expert can read them."

  Ling caught Bey Wolf's look. "Bring them in. We'll manage somehow," he said. "It's a skill you never lose once you've mastered it completely."

  * * *

  John Larsen looked at the spectrograph output, then at Park Green.

  "It's not as much as I expected," he said. "But there are traces of Asfanium in all three bodies. There's slight radioactivity because of that, but it's not enough to make a strong physical effect. I wonder, do you think that it could be a chemical effect of Asfanium that did it? We don't have a good understanding of that aspect of the transuranics in the island of stability up around element 114."

  "That's quite possible," Green replied. "You know, we are still doing a lot of work on Asfanium and Polkium and are finding some odd chemical properties, up in Lunar Base. One other thing occurs to me, the crew of the 'Jason' had never encountered form-change before. Do you think that they let things get out of control, maybe, due to their inexperience? Then they ran into something new, like the effect of a trace of Asfanium?"

  Larsen slapped the spectrogram output sheet against his thigh. "Park, I bet you're on to something. With inexperienced people in purposive form-change, anything might happen. Now, we can test that. Asfanium concentrates in the thymus gland. If we take an extract from one of these three, we can conduct a controlled test and see if there is a tendency to form-change the way they did."

  Park Green frowned. "I didn't realize you had suitable test animals. Isn't it true that humans alone can achieve purposive form-change? After all, that's the basis of the humanity tests."

  Larsen laughed confidently. "Exactly right. You want to see the test animal? Here it is." He tapped himself on the chest. "Now, don't get the wrong idea," he added, as Park Green began a horrified protest. "One of the things we get in Form Control is many years of training in form-control methods. If anything starts to happen, I'll have no trouble stopping it and reversing it. Don't forget, it's a purposive process. Come on, let's get a thymus gland extract made here and then back to the form-change tanks at Headquarters. We'll really have something to show Bey and your boss when they get back."

  * * *

  The jaunt to Pleasure Dome was becoming a grind. The staff employees looked on in amazement as Wolf and Ling worked their way through the monitor tapes at express speed, reading raw data, swapping comments and analyses as they went. The tapes contained a mixture of body physical parameters, such as subject temperature, pulse rate and skin conductivity, with nutrient rates. Programs in use as they were swapped in and out of the tank control computer, plus chemical readings and brain activity, were recorded in parallel on the same tape. Reading one required many years of experience, plus a full understanding of the processes—mental and physical—of the human body. Ling was tireless, and Bey was determined not to be outdone.

  "Who is he?" whispered the Pleasure Dome form-change supervisor to Bey, at one of their brief halts. "I know you are head of Form Control, but where did he learn all this?"

  Bey looked across at Ling, who was deep in thought and probably would not have noticed an explosion in the room.

  "Maybe you should ask him yourself. I've had that conversation already."

  Then more tapes arrived and the question was pushed aside.

  After thirty-six hours of intense work, the basic analysis was complete. They had an incredible array of facts available to them, but one of them dominated all others. The crew of the 'Jason' had died well before their form-change was complete. They had died because the forms they were becoming were unable to live in and breathe normal air. The final form they would have become remained unknown. The reason why they were changing to those forms, under the control of a reconditioning program that had been used successfully a thousand times before, was equally unknown.

  Karl Ling sat motionless, as he had for the previous two hours. Occasionally he would ask Bey a question, or look again at a piece of data. Rather than disturb him Bey decided that he would go into another room to call back to Headquarters and check with John Larsen on the general situation. Ling was voyaging on strange seas of thought, alone, and Bey Wolf had developed a profound respect for Karl Ling.

  Park Green answered the communicator instead of Larsen. He looked very uncomfortable.

  "Where's John?"

  "He's been in a form-change tank since yesterday morning."

  To Green's great relief, Bey Wolf didn't seem at all concerned. Even when he had explained the whole story to Bey, the latter seemed interested but not at all worried.

  "John's been around form-change equipment for a long time. He knows how to handle it as well as anyone on Earth. But honestly, Park, I'm sceptical about his theory. Why, injured Belters have been using form-change equipment for years. They call it regeneration equipment. But it's the same thing exactly. It's only form-changes to forms that are not your original shape that are illegal to off-Earthers."

  Park Green looked as though a big weight had been lifted off him.

  "Thank God for that. I thought I might have let John talk me into a deal where he was taking a big risk. I don't know enough about all this to argue with him. I'll go off to the tanks, and see how things are coming along there."

  Bey smiled at the honesty of the big man's concern for Larsen and signed off. He strolled back to join Ling, who had now come out of his trance and accepted a cup of syncaff, 'compliments of Pleasure Dome.' Having let them in free of charge, the staff of Pleasure Dome seemed to have adopted them. Ling had just politely refused a Snow Queen's offer of an age-old technique to relax him after all his hard work. He seemed mildly annoyed when she made the same offer to Bey.

  "I think I have it, Mr. Wolf, and it's fascinating. More than I dreamed. If I'm right, this is a special day in history." He sat back, relishing the moment.

  "Well, Park Green and John Larsen think they have it too," said Bey. "I just had video contact with them."

  "They do? Without the evidence that we have here?" Ling was openly surprised. "What do they believe it is?"

  Bey sketched out Larsen's theory, and summarized the situation back in Headquarters. He mentioned finally that Larsen was putting it to a practical test.

  "Larsen injected an extract from one of the dead men, and got into a form-change tank?" Ling's self-possession had failed him, and he had turned white. "He's a dead man. God, why didn't they consult us here?"

  He sprang to his feet, hurled the papers to one side and grabbed his jacket.

  "Come, Mr. Wolf. We have to get back to Headquarters as fast as we possibly can. If there is a chance now to save John Larsen's life, it depends on our efforts."

  He ran out of the room. Bey Wolf, bewildered and alarmed, followed him at top speed. When Karl Ling lost his dignity so completely, it was time to worry indeed.

  * * *

  In the elevator, on ground transport and through the Mattin Link, Ling explained the basics of his discoveries to Bey Wolf. By the time they reached Headquarters it was hard to say which man was the more frantic. They went at once to the form-change tanks.

  Park Green, alerted as they travelled, was waiting for them there. He looked at Ling in trepidation, expecting an outburst of insult and accusation. It did not come. Ling went at once to the tank containing John Larsen and began to read the tell-tales. After a couple of minutes he gr
unted with satisfaction.

  "So far everything is stable. If he follows the same pattern as the others, we have about twenty-four hours to do something for him. The one thing I daren't do is stop this process in the middle. We'll have to let the process run its course, keep him alive while it happens, and worry afterwards about reversing it. Bring me the tank schematics. I need to know how the circuits that control the nutrients and air supply work for this model."

  Park Green went for them and came back in bewilderment. He took Bey Wolf to one side after he had given the schematics to Ling.

  "Mr. Wolf, does he know what he's doing? He's a Loge expert, he doesn't know about this stuff, does he? Are we risking John's life by letting him do this?"

  Wolf put his hand up on Green's shoulder. "Park, believe me he does know what he's doing. If anyone can help John now, he can. Let's help all we can here. I'll tell you what my view is when this is all over."

  Ling interrupted their conversation. His voice had a reassuring authority and certainty. "One of you come over here and make a note of the equipment changes we have to put on this tank. I'll read off settings as I find them on the charts. The other one of you, call BEC. I want their top man on interactive form-change programs. Ramo Wold if he's still with them, the best one they have if he isn't. Top priority. Tell them it's codeword circuits, if that'll move them faster."

  The equipment modification began. At every stage, Ling rechecked the tell-tales. Larsen's condition inside the tank remained stable, but there were definite changes occurring. Pulse rate was down, and there was heavy demand on calcium and sodium in the nutrient supply. Skin properties were changing drastically.

  "They would have noticed all this in Pleasure Dome if they'd have looked closely," grunted Ling. "Give them their due, they had no reason in the world to expect anything peculiar. But look at that body mass indicator. It's up to a hundred kilos. What's Larsen's usual weight?"

  "Eighty." Bey was absorbed, watching the indicators. He longed to see inside the tank but there was no provision for that in the system.

  After many hours of equipment change and work on program modification with the BEC program engineer, Ling finally declared that he had done all he could. The real test would come in a few hours' time. The records of the crew of the 'Jason' had begun to go wild then. It remained to be seen if the equipment changes would keep Larsen's condition stable as the change proceeded further.

  As Ling made the final checks on the tell-tales, Bey realized the mental anguish and confusion that Park Green was going through.

  "Mr. Ling, have we done all we can here?" Bey asked.

  "For the moment. The rest is waiting."

  "Then if you will, for my benefit and Mr. Green's, I would appreciate it if you would explain this to us, from the beginning. I got a quick overview on the way here, but Park is still in the dark."

  Ling looked at Green as though seeing him for the first time. He finally noddded sympathetically.

  "From the beginning, eh? Well, that's a long story and I'll have to tell it the way I imagine it. Whether it is true or not is another matter."

  He sat down and put his hands behind his head.

  "It begins sixteen million years ago, on the planet Loge. Loge was a giant, about ninety earth masses, and Loge was going to explode. Now for something you may find hard to accept. Loge had living on it a race of intelligent beings. Perhaps too intelligent. Maybe they were the reason that their planet disintegrated. We'll probably never know that.

  "The race had nuclear energy, but not spaceflight. How do I know that? Well, I know they had nuclear energy because they made transuranic elements. Any natural source of transuranics would have decayed by natural process in the past several billion years since the creation of the Solar System. The only way we could have a source of transuranics on Loge—and only on Loge—would be if they were being created there, by nuclear transmutation. We can't do that efficiently yet, so there's good reason to believe the Logians had an advanced nuclear technology—more than we have today.

  "How do I know they didn't have spaceflight? That's harder. The main reason: they couldn't get off Loge, even though they knew it was going to disintegrate. They must have had some years' warning and time to plan, so I imagine it wasn't a nuclear war. Perhaps they had found a way of making large-scale interior adjustments to the planet, and lost control. Again, we'll never know.

  "They looked around them in the Solar System. They were going to die, personally, but was there a way their race might survive? To a Logian, the natural place for the survival of the race would be Jupiter or Saturn. They probably never even thought of Earth, a tiny planet, too hot, oxygen atmosphere, a metal ball crouched too near the Sun. No, Jupiter or Saturn was their hope. That's where they turned those big luminous eyes—adapted for life in a methane-heavy atmosphere.

  "Their scientists calculated the force of the explosion and gave a grim report. No life form, even single celled ones, could survive it. Parts of Loge would be thrown in all directions. Some would undoubtedly hit Jupiter and its satellites—and Earth too. Could anything survive that transit?

  "If anything could, it would be a virus. There's no 'life-support system' in a virus, it's just a chunk of DNA. To grow and multiply, it needs a host cell. The Logians took a chance, and packed their genetic material as a viral form.

  "Maybe it worked. We've never had a ship down to the surface of Jupiter or Saturn, and perhaps there are Logians down there, created by viral growth of Loge genetic material in host bodies. We do know there are no Logians on the satellites of either planet.

  "Some of that viral material was on fragments of Loge that were blown far out and became part of the long-period comets. That didn't matter. A virus lasts indefinitely. Sixteen million years later, some of those fragments fell back into the Solar System and men began mining them—not for their Loge DNA, not at all. For their transuranic elements.

  "Humans are very poor hosts for Loge development. The Loge virus could get into the human body easily enough, and even take up residence in the central nervous system. But it couldn't thrive in such unfamiliar surroundings. Wrong atmosphere, wrong chemical balance, wrong shape."

  Ling paused and looked at the other two. He had ceased to be the irritating special advisor and become the great scientist, lecturing to an audience of laymen.

  "You may find it hard to believe, but I was already convinced of the existence of a Loge civilization before I ever came to Earth for this investigation. The transuranic elements proved it, to my satisfaction. Otherwise I would never have been led down this train of thought so quickly.

  "The crew of the 'Jason' picked up Loge DNA from the Logian fragment. Nothing happened. Then they came to Earth and got into the form-change machines; and at last the virus could begin to act. It stimulated their central nervous systems, and the purposive form-change began to create a form that was optimal—for Logians, not for Earthmen. When that change had proceeded to the point where the changed form could not survive in the atmosphere of Earth, the creatures died. Asphyxiated, in normal air."

  Park Green was now looking in horror at the tank containing John Larsen.

  "Does that mean that will happen to John, too?"

  "It would have. He injected himself with Loge DNA, along with the Asfanium. The work we've been doing this past day has been to modify the life-support system of the tank, so that it follows the needs of the organism inside it. If you go and look at the tell-tales now, you'll find that the nutrients and the atmosphere are ones that would kill a human."

  Park Green hurried over to the tank. He looked quickly at the monitors and came back.

  "Body mass, one hundred and sixty kilos. Oxygen down to eight percent. Mr. Ling, will John live?"

  "I believe he will. Can we ever return him to the shape of John Larsen? That is a harder question. If we can, I suspect that it will not be for some time."

  Karl Ling looked at Bey Wolf and caught a reflection of his own excitement.

  "
We must look on the positive side," he said. "We've dreamed for centuries about our first meeting with an alien race." He nodded towards the tank. "The first representative will be in that tank, ready to meet with us, a day or two from now."

  AFTERWORD: LEGACY.

  Writers sometimes become ingenious in finding methods to avoid the actual process of writing. I managed to waste a full week on this story, moving a home-made string dodecahedron about over the surface of a large globe. I said that I was determining where to place the Mattin Link system's exit points. When I had a set of locations that best fitted to world geography, I made a list of them. By the time I wrote the story, I had lost the list.

  This one was plotted on British Airways Flight 520, between London and Washington. You can't beat a long plane trip as a place to work out ideas—there's nothing to do but eat, drink, and think. But you can't really type there, even if you have the tiniest of portables. Typing requires that you stick your elbows out to the sides and even if you travel first class you become a hazard to passers-by. It is better to stick to scribbles of plot and dialog.

  I wanted to call this story, "His Flashing Eyes, His Floating Hair." I gathered that Jim Baen, then editor of GALAXY, didn't think much of that when he asked me in the politest possible way whether perhaps I didn't have an alternative title in mind. He was almost certainly right, but you'll never persuade a writer that the title he thought of is not at least as good as any other.

  Note to the historians of the field. Although this story forms part of the novel SIGHT OF PROTEUS, it was never conceived as such. The novel came much later. When I wrote this, I couldn't imagine how anybody managed to write more than about fifteen thousand words on any fictional subject.