Proteus in the Underworld p-4

by Charles Sheffield

  “Wait there,” he snarled. “And don’t touch anything else in my house!”

  It was an order, not a suggestion. Sondra opened her mouth for a second try at explanations and found that he was gone. As his image faded she made a quick check for the point of origin of the call. The reply was a stream of unfamiliar numbers. Bey was making a call from a point outside the whole communication system. He could not be anywhere on the land surface of Earth, or within its oceans.

  Wait, he had said. But for how long? Where was he? She had to be on her way to the Carcon Colony in just a few hours.

  Sondra grabbed the brown satchel of data records and went back to the terminal. Bey’s order not to touch presumably did not apply to general computer access. She loaded her new data from the colony and began to study it.

  The story was by now familiar. A new-born infant, strange in appearance even by colony standards, but given as always the benefit of the doubt (some of the system’s finest minds had emerged from the womb looking like teratomas). The standard humanity test, and its successful passage. And then the horror, as the supposed human was shown to be pure animal, incapable of reason, incapable of learning, capable only of savagery.

  Sondra peered at the most recent failure. This one did not look like a ferocious beast. It was placid and unresponsive, dull and unmoving. Staring at it she was able to ask a question that the horror of the other two failed forms had blanked from her mind. Here was a non- human result of human couplings. Random mutation would always produce such a genetic mistake from time to time; but what were the odds of such a result? If it were more common here than elsewhere in the system, the problem lay in the physical environment of the colonies, forcing mutations faster than elsewhere. She pulled the statistical data files and made the comparison. The mutation rate was indeed unnaturally high.

  But that merely created two mysteries in place of the original one. Why were mutation rates higher in these colonies, leading to the birth of non-human babies? And then, if that could be explained, why were the humanity tests passing those non-human creatures, insisting that they were in fact fully human?

  Sondra struggled on, comparing the Carcon Colony records with those of other colonies. Once she got into the swing of it the work was surprisingly interesting. She was amazed when she heard the outer door slide open and looked up to find that more than three hours had passed since she sat down.

  It could hardly be Bey—only a few hours ago he had not been anywhere on Earth. She jumped up and hurried through to the entrance hall.

  It couldn’t be Bey; but it was. He was glaring at the table with its leftover food and dirty crockery.

  “Nice to see you made yourself at home.”

  She had intended to give instructions to the cleaners to take the dishes away, then forgotten to do it. “I’m sorry. I had to come. There’s been another one—Carcon Colony again.”

  “So you said.” Bey hardly seemed even mildly interested.

  “You know what I told you last time you were here. Go out to the Kuiper Belt. My advice hasn’t changed—and don’t bother trying to show me what the failed form looks like this time, because I told you that externals are useless.”

  “I’m heading for the colony in just a few hours. I’m not on Wolf Island to talk about the new form.”

  “So why are you here?”

  “To ask you to do what only you can do. I want you to make a call to Robert Capman on Saturn. What’s happening in the colonies might be just the beginning. Suppose that it spreads and affects form-change everywhere?”

  “I don’t think that will happen.”

  “You have fewer facts about it than I do.”

  “My opinion isn’t based on fact. It’s based on intuition— what’s left after fifty years of facts have all evaporated.”

  “Intuition can be wrong. One quick call, it would be so easy. Won’t you please call Capman?”

  “No. I’ll do something better.” Bey walked across to the message center and sat down at it. After a few moments of interaction he turned to glance over his shoulder at Sondra. “I’ll warn you, you might not like some of what you are going to see and hear.”

  The two-way record of an earlier call was being drawn from memory, appearing split- screen in the display volume. The right side was Bey Wolf himself, in profile. The other showed a chamber filled with swirling greenish-yellow gas.

  Sondra guessed it, even while the chamber was still empty. “You already called him!”

  “Right. I had an hour to kill at the last link point before I could fly back to the island. Here he comes.”

  The general appearance of the figure who emerged from the green mist in the left side of the display was familiar to Sondra, as it was to everyone in the solar system. She stared at the broad skull, dominated by the Medusa of ropy hair, the jeweled eyes with their nictitating membrane, and the wide, fringed mouth. Below it sat a massive, wrinkled torso, with a smooth central panel that changed constantly in color and could be used to send or receive data to another Logian a thousand times as fast as any human transfer. The arms jutting from the heavy shoulders were powerful, long, and triple-jointed.

  Sondra had read and heard a lot about the Logians. But like most humans she had never met one. With the whole of Saturn off-limits and the Logian forms showing no interest in living anywhere else, Bey Wolf was a rare exception in his Logian experience and his access. Sondra did not even know how deep the Logian forms lived within the atmosphere of the gas giant planet, and she suspected that the information was available only to a chosen few.

  The great grey-skinned figure sat down and bobbed its head forward, in what Sondra knew to be a Logian smile. “Hello, Bey. It has been a long time. I received your call just minutes ago. Something interesting, you said.”

  “Possibly.” The icon of Bey in the display volume sounded more cautious than Sondra had ever heard him. She could not tell one Logian from another, but the other shape in the split viewing volume could only be the transformed Robert Capman. “It is unusual enough that at least I thought you might want to hear about it. Problems with the humanity tests.”

  “Ah.” The broad head nodded. “We have certainly seen that before. Continue, if you will.”

  “I’m going to edit. Stop me if at any point you want more details.” Bey in the display volume leaned back and started to talk. After a few seconds Sondra realized that she was hardly understanding a word. He was employing a cryptic, compressed vocabulary that seemed to reject discussion of specific form-change in favor of a general definition of envelopes of the physically possible.

  Whatever he was saying, it apparently went down well with Robert Capman. The Logian form offered not a word of comment until Rey was finished And then what he did say seemed to Sondra to come from a wholly unexpected direction.

  “Describe to me the individual who has been assigned to resolve the problem.”

  (Rey, standing at Sondra’s side, shrugged. “You won’t like this bit, Sondra.”)

  The icon of Rey Wolf seemed startled by the question as it replied: “Her name is Sondra Dearborn. She has a decent theoretical background, but very limited practical knowledge. By conventional measures she is not much above average intelligence, although I realize that neither you nor I place much stock in that parameter as a useful guide to achievement.”

  “Do you give her high marks in any field?”

  “If we agree that stubbornness is a field for which marks can be given, yes. She is also young, hard-working, and enthusiastic. And she cannot be suborned.”

  “Do you believe that the last fact is relevant?”

  “I do. And I believe that it was not realized by her superiors when she was assigned to the case. I also believe that they had no idea that she would seek help from me.”

  “Do you know what that implies?”

  “I do.”

  “Intriguing.” Capman was rubbing at his ropy locks. “Most intriguing. This is not relevant to the present discussion, bu
t on some future occasion I would like to meet Sondra Dearborn.”

  Sondra had sat up rigid when she heard her own name mentioned, and the last comment made her shiver. To meet with Robert Capman, the senior deity of form-change! She had found it hard to evaluate some of the other exchanges she was hearing, but it was clear that Bey was telling Capman something he did not want to say outright.

  Capman’s next words seemed to confirm it. He had allowed his head to sink onto the great chest, and his eyes were covered by a milky membrane. “As you know very well, Logians do not interfere in human affairs. For good reason.”

  “I understand.”

  “And I cannot break that rule. I will tell you only what I believe you already know: your intuition has not led you astray. This is a problem which owes less in its origin and its solution to natural events than it does to human actions. And that is all I will say.”

  “It helps.”

  “To confirm, rather than to inform.” The Logian sat straighter and his head bobbed forward. “And now, are you ready to change to a superior form and come to work with me on Saturn?”

  The icon of Bey Wolf smiled and shook its head. “Not yet. Maybe someday.”

  “The usual answer. Very well.” Capman stood up, moving easily in spite of his great mass. “It was good to hear from you again. Have you ever looked into the early history of the theory of elliptic functions? If not, you might want to do so. It would possibly enlighten you. Farewell.”

  The Logian figure nodded and stepped away into the mist. A starred icon in the display region showed that communication had been terminated.

  To Sondra, the final comment had been even less intelligible than Bey’s remarks. After looking forward for so long to hearing from Robert Capman, she felt bitterly disappointed.

  “Is that all we get?”

  “It’s more than we have any right to expect. You heard Capman and you know the Logian policy: they realize they are far smarter than humans, but they refuse to do our thinking and decision-making for us because they say it’s bad for the human species. He was already stretching it in what he told us.”

  “He didn’t tell us one thing!—not that I could understand.”

  “Wrong. He went out of his way to give us information. I think I got most of it.”

  “Why did he say he wants to meet me?”

  “There I’m as puzzled as you are. That’s one thing I didn’t understand at all. I’ve got to think about it.”

  “And what was that weird comment about studying the history of elliptic functions? It had nothing to do with anything.”

  “It didn’t seem to. But I believe he was revealing far more to us than he should have.”

  “Elliptic functions are some sort of math. Are they something else, too?”

  “Not that I know of. That’s not the point. Capman was giving an important clue, sure as I’m standing here. You just have to learn how to interpret it.”

  “I can’t do anything—I head for orbit in just a few hours.” Sondra glanced at the clock. “In fact, I should be leaving right now. Can’t you work on this while I’m gone?”

  “I admit that I’ll certainly think about it—I’ve been doing that ever since I spoke to Capman, I can’t help myself.” Bey turned off the display unit and began to call other files from storage. “But let me point out again what I’ve told you over and over: this is your project, not mine. I have other things to do.”

  “But you’ll be here if I need to talk to you?”

  “Probably not. I think I’ll be on Mars.”

  “Working for Trudy Melford?”

  “That, and doing some other things.”

  “You’re selling out!” Sondra felt a hot rush of anger, fierce and inexplicable. “You’re going to be just like everyone else and let that bitch Trudy Melford own you body and soul.”

  “Body if I get lucky. Soul I doubt. Look at it that way if you want to.” Bey quietly went on working at the terminal.

  His calm was almost more maddening to Sondra than her own strange anger. “You won’t help me—because I can’t afford you!”

  “Exactly right.” Bey lifted his head and gave her a cool stare. “You can’t afford me, Sondra, and Trudy can’t afford me, and nobody can afford me. Because I’m not for sale. And I am helping you, ungrateful as you seem to be.” Bey turned from the terminal with a program card in his hand. “This is a diagnostic routine of my own devising. It is better than anything you will find in the library of the Office of Form Control. Use it on the form-change programs in the Carcon Colony. My bet is that you will find the source of the problems there is a simple software malfunction.”

  Sondra took it without a word.

  “Second,” went on Bey, “I can be reached on Mars, or anywhere else, by using Wolf Island as a relay point. My access code is written on the same card. Third, you will find on the same card your introduction to a Cloudlander called Apollo Belvedere Smith. He is currently working in the Kuiper Belt. Aybee is an old acquaintance of mine. I strongly recommend that you visit him before you go to the Carcon or Fugate colonies. My letter asks him to help you.”

  Sondra looked at the card she was holding. “Why are you doing all this for me?”

  That stimulated Bey’s biggest sign of emotion since he had seen the dirty dishes. He growled at her, “Make up your mind, Sondra Wolf Dearborn. You keep insisting that you are my long-lost relative. Do you want me to help, or don’t you?”

  “I do. I need help. Thank you, Bey.” Sondra had to force the words out. Her own feelings were too complex to fathom. It is impossible for the whole transfer of information during a meeting of two humans, or even the bulk of such transfer, to be limited to speech alone. “I am grateful for the help, really I am. But I have to go now, or I’ll never make the shuttle. And thank you for the introduction, too.”

  To add a final touch to her confusion, he was now smiling at some private joke. “Maybe you should wait until you meet Aybee before you thank me for that.”

  “Why? what’s wrong with him?”

  “Wrong? Nothing at all. Aybee is a genius in mathematics and physics. A good guy, too.” Bey beamed at her. “The rest, I think I’ll let you find out for yourself.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Anyone who believed that time proceeded at a uniform rate had to be crazy.

  Bey sat alone in his living-room, cupped his chin in his hands, and gazed out at the red days-end splendor of an Indian Ocean sunset Today was a perfect example of the time problem. Since breakfast he had linked to Mars, wandered its surface with Trudy Melford, explored the interior of Melford Castle, and been actively recruited with an offer that came close to seduction.

  All that, by mid-afternoon. Then came the return to Earth, the conversation with Robert Capman at the link exit point, and finally the meeting with Sondra before she rushed off to the North Indian spaceport.

  All of this strange, and all worth thinking about. He knew now, for instance, how the Logians could send and receive messages instantly anywhere in the solar system. It had to be done by establishing a virtual link, similar to the link that Trudy had set up between Earth and Mars but somehow without the use of a physical link chamber.

  He was no closer to understanding Capman’s comment about elliptic functions, but he knew Robert Capman, and a little of how the Logian mind worked. That provided at least a starting-point for exploration. He would turn the problem over to his subconscious, and let it go to work while he worried about more immediate issues.

  Immediate issues, like Sondra’s new data about the peculiar failed form on the Carcon Colony. She had left a copy for him and it deserved at least a quick inspection. No help from the subconscious mind there, at least not until he had done the hard grind through a mass of detail.

  Strangest of all, though, was the event that did not happen.

  The car that had carried Bey from Melford Castle to the Mars link point was automatically controlled. Since the trip demanded no attention on his part he ha
d time to look all around, including behind him, and to notice that he was being followed by another car for the whole second half of the trip.

  At the link embarkation point Bey got out of his car and waited. The second car stopped fifty yards back. A short red-headed man with a bushy red beard stepped out and stood looking in every direction except at the car in front. When Bey headed for the transition zone, the other man trailed along behind. When Bey moved into the transition chamber itself, the man came closer.

  But they had reached the point of no return. Bey heard the sudden blare of a siren and a loud warning message from hidden speakers: This chamber will seal in twenty seconds for air pressure and composition modification to Earth standard. Anyone inside when this chamber is sealed will be linked to Earth. LEAVE NOW, OR BE LINKED TO EARTH.

  The man hesitated on the far side of the threshold. He lifted one hand toward Bey; and then the door between them slid into position with a hiss of finality.

  It could be some form of Mars Underworld security, making sure that a visitor did not stray into dangerous areas—parts of the deep Underworld certainly had a bad reputation. It could be a BEC employee, sent by Trudy to make sure that he got to the link point without difficulty. It might even be a BEC act undertaken without her knowledge, Jarvis Dommer perhaps making sure that Bey was out of the way before he sought his own session at Melford Castle.

  The last explanation was the most plausible. Bey had worked most of his life in a big organization, and he knew the ferocity of fights over turf and guaranteed easy access to the boss. But the red-bearded man’s final wave of the hand didn’t fit any of the possibilities. He had actually wanted to talk to Bey, but he had made his move a little bit too late. By implication, he was unfamiliar with the mechanics of the Earth/Mars link.

  Bey sighed, and stared unseeing at the vanishing rim of the setting sun. Plenty to think about, and no clear place to begin.

  So make it chronological order. First things first. Bey stood up and went over to his main data center. He tapped into the general banks and began his search. It took less than fifteen minutes to be sure that he was getting nowhere. Every key-word that he could think of came to a blind end. At least that explained why he had never heard before of the event that interested him.