Aybee wandered in while the message was still on the screen. He whistled and shook his head. “Dream on, girl. Did Capman really say that he wanted to meet you?”
“He did. But I don’t know why. Did you ever meet him?”
Aybee shook his head. “Not yet. But I’ve had messages from him, ’cause he reads a lot of my stuff. Field theory, mostly. You don’t ask for a meeting with Capman, by the way. He grants you an audience—if he feels like it”
“Bey Wolf has no trouble getting through to him. Capman even tried to recruit Bey, to change to a Logian form and go to work on Saturn.”
“That’s different. Him and Bey have what you might call a special relationship. Bey was the only one who realized what Capman was, way back when everybody else in the system was convinced that the man was a multiple murderer of small children.”
“I know all about that.” It was another legend of the Office of Form Control. “Nothing wicked was going on.”
“Sure, you know it now, we all do. Pretty easy with hindsight But it took real insight to sniff out what Capman was doing back then, and Capman himself was the first to realize that. Like I say, the Wolfman’s a special case. The chances of you or me or anyone else asking for a meeting with Capman and getting one right off the bat is like a snowball’s chance—” Aybee paused. A message was creeping onto the display, its data points filling in from random noise like a pointillist painting.
“—a snowball’s chance on the Ganymede ice cap,” Aybee finished “What do you say to that, then? Guess you’re on your way to downtown Saturn. Leave your rings in the hotel safe.”
To meet in person. Except that of course you couldn’t, not really, when one of you needed an oxygen atmosphere and the other lived in mostly methane. No matter what type of air was provided one of you would choke and die. The best you could manage was a talk with a glass wall between you.
So why had she asked for a face-to-face meeting? Maybe it showed a suspicion that any long-distance link could be tapped. Bey Wolf’s paranoia was infectious. There was no such thing as safe conversation unless it was a direct one between two isolated individuals—and perhaps not even then.
Sondra sat waiting, more nervous than she had ever been. The ship she had ridden to Saturn had parked itself in equatorial orbit not far below the innermost ring. Less than two minutes after her arrival she had seen another little ship rising up to meet her from the brown and crimson thunderclouds of the Saturn upper atmosphere. The new ship lacked any sign of the usual tongue of flame or laser boost needed for flight out of a deep gravity well. It simply rose and rose, until it was clearly homing in on the vessel waiting in orbit.
Sondra felt the slight vibration of a smooth docking. She waited, staring expectantly at the transparent wall. Not many people in their whole lifetime got to see a Logian form. Still fewer were privileged to meet with Robert Capman.
The door of the room at the other side of the partition slid open. A bulky grey form appeared, moving easily on massive triple-jointed legs to stand close to the glass. It raised a hand in greeting.
Sondra had to tell herself that, regardless of appearances, a human being was waving to her. Or rather, he had started his life, like all Logian forms, as a human. Sondra herself, or any man or woman given an injection of Logian DNA and access to a form-change tank, could become as Robert Capman. And if she really wanted to (though few Logian forms ever did) she could then change back to human form.
Capman was studying her, his pearly, luminous eyes drinking in every aspect of face and body. If they ever met again he would recognize her instantly. It was the least of the Logian talents.
“Sondra Dearborn.” Capman’s voice was soft, its sibilants slightly emphasized. “Sondra Wolf Dearborn. Tell me why you are here.”
“I have a problem. I am unable to solve it. I seek your help.”
“Ah.” Capman sounded totally non-committal. “I thought you would know our strict rule: No Logian form will interfere in human affairs.”
“I’ve heard it often enough, but I don’t believe it.” Sondra had decided even before she left the Rini Base that she had nothing to lose. She might as well stick her neck out and go for broke. “In fact, I can prove to you that your statement is not true.”
“I would like to hear that argument.”
“Do you admit that you have offered the Logian form to Behrooz Wolf?”
“That is true.”
“And he refused.”
“That is unfortunately the case. However, I have not abandoned hope.”
“And when it comes to form-change, Wolf is one of the best humans in the solar system. Would you agree with that?”
“No.” The head bobbed forward in the Logian laugh, but Capman went on before Sondra could express her surprise. “I would not quite agree. Behrooz Wolf is not ‘one of the best humans’ in the solar system. When it comes to form change he is the best. Others abide the question, he is free.”
Capman sounded uncomfortably like Bey himself—she was sure that last bit was some sort of quotation—but Sondra could not allow herself to become distracted. “So he’s the best. Now suppose that one day you talked him into changing his mind, and coming to Saturn to be a Logian form and live with you. And suppose that later on a problem arose that Bey could have solved, and no one else. But now he’s a Logian, so he follows the Logian rule, and says he can’t become involved. Isn’t that interfering in human affairs, by taking Bey out of circulation?”
“Indeed it is.” Capman was nodding approvingly. “Please do not think for a moment that such an argument is new to us. Every Logian form removes a person from the human pool. In addition, our very existence particularly the knowledge of our existence—has an inevitable effect on a great deal of human thought and behavior. What would you have us do? Cease to exist?”
“No. I want you to do just the opposite.” Sondra leaned forward, wishing she could reach out and grab Capman by the arm. “Become more involved in what we do! Give advice.”
“That avenue is not open. Not at the moment.”
“Then at the very least, listen to what I have to say. If after that you choose to offer no comment, that is your option.”
White membranes slid down and hooded the luminous eyes. Capman’s head sank to his chest. After a few seconds he looked again at Sondra and nodded slowly. “Speak. Tell your story.”
The moment of truth. She had one shot, and she had to get it just right. She had rehearsed what she wanted to say over and over on the flight to the inner system. According to Aybee it was a miracle that she was getting even this chance with Robert Capman.
The good news was that one shot with the Logian form was apparently all it ever took. Capman was super-bright even by Aybee’s snooty standards, and he would catch on to everything instantly.
Aybee had offered one other piece of advice: “Provide more data and raw facts than you think anyone could possibly need or want or be able to take in. You can’t flood a Logian.”
Sondra started at the very beginning, when the news had first been given to her that she had a new assignment, and ground on through every event with what she felt to be stupefying detail. She showed all the data she had on the Carcon and Fugate forms. She spoke of her meetings with Bey, and of her unsuccessful attempt to enlist his direct assistance. She mentioned Beys conversation with Capman, and was ready to skip over its content-after all, Capman had heard it for himself—until her audience interrupted: “Your recollection, please. Exactly as you remember it.”
Sondra did her best, most uncomfortable when she spoke of Bey’s evaluation of her brains—or lack of them. Capman clearly did not care. He sat impassive and focused. She plowed on, and finally came to her trip to the Kuiper Belt, then her close call on the Fugate Colony and her “rescue,” though he would not admit it as that, by Aybee.
Capman neither moved nor spoke until the very end, when Sondra was summarizing Aybee’s careful but inconclusive analysis of ship movements in and around t
he Kuiper Belt, with emphasis on trips to and from the colonies. She had been tempted to omit this information as irrelevant, but suddenly Capman was sitting up a little straighter. Did she imagine it, or was there also a gleam of speculation in those hard-to-read eyes?
“The record indicating trips by Gertrude Zenobia Melford’s flagship to Samarkand.” Capman’s thick-fingered paw lifted in the murky, methane-rich air on the other side of the glass panel. “In full detail, if you please.”
Sondra backed up, considerably puzzled, and presented the mass of data. With Aybee as a grumpy observer she had run through those records a dozen times. They had both agreed that the trips were odd and apparently meaningless. They seemed just as meaningless now, as she plowed through the thousands of entries for Capman’s benefit.
“Curious.” Was it imagination, or was Capman truly interested for the first time? One hand was touching his fringed mouth. “Curious, and anomalous.”
He was silent for maybe ten seconds; according to what Sondra had heard about Logians, that was a long, long time. Difficult problems a Logian solved at once. Impossible ones took a little longer.
Finally Capman nodded. “I now have a question. Most of the calls made to and by Behrooz Wolf since your first visit to him form part of the general data records for the inner system. Have you reviewed those calls?”
“No. I didn’t see how they could have anything to do with this.”
“They are data. ‘It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.’ ”
“That’s exactly what Bey Wolf said to me!”
“No doubt. We both cite a higher authority. But now, if you will, continue.”
“There’s nothing to continue with. That was the end.”
“I thought as much. Very interesting. And in its way quite entertaining.” Capman bowed, the thick body tilting forward a fraction. “Perhaps we will meet again. I cannot say that I approve of Behrooz Wolfs interest in you, but I do understand it.”
He was turning, moving toward the chamber door.
“Wait. You can’t leave.” Sondra banged her fist on the glass, realizing too late that could be a dangerous act. “You haven’t let me ask you anything.”
The broad head turned and bobbed. Capman was laughing—laughing at her.
“Did I not inform you at the outset that our rules do not permit Logians to become involved in human affairs? However, Sondra Dearborn, I am going to bend that rule.”
“You are? Then do it!”
“I do so when I make this statement: Based upon what you have told me and what I have told you, you have enough information to complete without assistance from anyone the task assigned to you by the Office of Form Control.”
He bowed again and turned. The door in the adjoining chamber slid open and the great Logian body drifted out through it. One minute later, Sondra felt the slight jolt as the two ships separated and the Logian vessel headed for Saturn re-entry.
Sondra was alone again in space; not sure what she was supposed to have learned, but convinced, deep inside, that whatever she had learned would not be enough.
CHAPTER 18
The scene was much as Sondra had imagined it in conversation with Aybee: Bey on Mars, lying waiting in the ornate bed. Trudy Melford, scantily-clad and breathless, hovering over him.
But there were certain major differences. Trudy’s arms and legs were bare, because that was her standard Martian day outfit. She was panting hard because she had run up eight flights of stairs rather than wait a few seconds for an elevator. And although Bey was waiting, it was not for anything that Trudy might do.
He was trussed and wrapped like a mummy, with swathes of bandages on his left arm, leg, head, and chest; a pair of annoying tubes ran into his nostrils, a line of electrodes nestled along the back of his neck, IVs dripped into his good arm, and catheters had been inserted into body locations that he preferred not to think about It was depressing to feel like this, and be told that he was doing well. He was waiting impatiently for the medical equipment, clucking and countering at his bedside, to take a closer look and refute that optimistic assessment “I downloaded from your message center.” Trudy sat on the other side of the bed from the robodoc, her breasts still heaving disturbingly. “Nothing important. You should certainly stay at the castle until you are fully recovered. I can bring the best medical services in the solar system to you right here.”
Bey reached out his right hand and picked up the little message transfer unit that Trudy had dropped carelessly onto the bed. Her definition of important might not coincide widi his.
“Did you find out what happened?”
“We’re not sure.” Trudys blue-green eyes met Bey’s for a moment, then darted away. “It looks like an accident the whole bottom section of the escalator had been removed for routine service. There should have been a notice that warned of scheduled maintenance.”
“There was. I ought to have been more careful.”
“Not really. There’s no way that the escalator should ever have been running. The machines always stop it during repairs. Someone had to start it again, deliberately. I said, it looked like an accident; but I don’t believe it was.”
“Then what was it?”
“Sabotage.” Trudy’s gaze came back to meet Bey’s. “A deliberate attempt to kill you.”
“I’m not worth killing. In any case, no one knew that I was up there on die surface. Not even you, until the machines hauled me back to the castle.”
“That’s not true. At least one person did.” Trudy gestured to the message unit. “You’ll hear it on that. There’s a call from Rafael Fermiel, asking you to contact him, in his words, ‘as soon as you return from your trip to the surface.’ How did he know you were going there?”
“I don’t think he did. He assumed it, because he and his policy council think that I designed those surface forms myself. You know Fermiel?”
“Everyone on Mars knows him. He is the leader of the Old Mars faction—the Old Mars fanatics. If they had their way there would be no form-change in the Underworld except for necessary medical repairs. They believe that the surest way to make sure that the Mars surface environment will become a close copy of Earth is to forbid radical form-change here. If Fermiel thinks you are the designer of the surface forms, then he has a motive to kill you. We also know that he expected you to visit the surface.”
No form-change in the Underworld. Bey’s aching head spun with that thought. It had implications. And more fanatics. It occurred to Bey that Mars was full of them, Georgia Kruskal and Trudy Melford and now Rafael Fermiel. Might Bey be one himself, and not even know it?
“Fermiel tried to recruit me. He doesn’t have a reason to kill me, at least until I say no to his offer.”
As a deliberate attempt to force a strong reaction from Trudy, it was a failure. She smiled. “He tried to recruit you? How strange. What does he have to offer you that I don’t?”
“Safety, maybe. You haven’t told me how someone could have entered Melford Castle and rigged the escalator.”
“I don’t know that yet. But I will.” The blue-green eyes hardened. “Believe me, I will. You’ll be safe here.”
She knows who did it. Or at least she suspects. “If Rafael Fermiel is so against what you want to do, why not oppose him and the Underworld openly?”
“I can’t do that. Neither I—nor BEC—is in the business of planetary politics.”
Wrong answer. With Trudy’s interest in the surface forms she ought to be a fervent New Mars supporter and a strong opponent of Old Mars. Why wasn’t she? She said the Old Mars group were fanatics, but she did nothing to oppose their efforts. As for the suggestion that BEC did not play politics, when BEC had done it so cleverly and consistently for two centuries.
Bey was getting ideas, swimming vaguely around the base of his brain; he had a lot of thinking to do and he could not do it. The pain-inhibitor electrodes running along his neck from the fourth to the sixth cervical vertebrae did not interfere
with the thinking process; BEC’s best engineers had certified that fact. But how did they know? Who had ever been able to measure the quality of thought, to say how the processes that went on in the brain of a Darwin or a Newton was different from the normal?
Bey struggled to sit up. “You tell me you are not in the business of politics. Well, neither am I. And I don’t want to find myself in the middle, when I choose not to be. I’ve made up my mind. I want to head back to Earth.”
“You can’t! You’re too sick.”
“Let me be the judge of that. What I need is a form-change machine and repair programs tuned to my own body. The best place for those is Wolf Island. That’s where I’m going.”
Bey had been testing again, and this time it worked. For just a second he saw the other side of the Empress. Trudy’s face filled with an iron determination, the fixed stare of a woman who was operating under total compulsion. Then it was just as quickly gone. She was smiling at him, sweetly and sympathetically.
“I know how you must feel. You’ve had a terrible experience here at the castle, and you don’t trust my word that it won’t happen again. So go home to where you are comfortable. Go to Wolf Island, use your own form-change machine, and recuperate.”
She didn’t quite tell Bey there was no place like home, but he would not have been surprised if she had. In spite of that brief moment of a different look, she radiated warmth and concern.
And then he felt vulnerable, more like a sacrificial lamb than the wolf of his name. Trudy could buy or sell him a thousand times over, he had known that before ever he met her. Now he realized that she could also sweet talk and cajole and beguile him—and he liked it. He could resist money, but could he resist the rest? Flattery never failed. If a woman would re-make her whole body into a form attractive to you, that ploy worked even if you saw through it. Even if you were convinced that she was doing it for her own motives, part of you still responded. Trudy was more dangerous than he had realized, smart enough to know when she should hold on and when she should let go.
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