Proteus in the Underworld p-4

by Charles Sheffield

  Sondra also had Capman’s assurance that all of this would be enough. That was what had provided her, at last, a suspicion as to what had been happening. What she could not understand was why.

  In particular, why had she, Sondra Dearborn, been thrown into the middle of all this mess? Samarkand was supposed to provide the answer. It was this or nothing. The opening door in front of her was her last chance.

  She went on through with the fourteen others of the visiting group. Like them she was officially described as a tourist, a simple working type from the inner system who was spending ten years’ savings to come out and gape and marvel at the wonders of the Kuiper Belt. A few were on their way home, but most of them would be going farther out to sample the still-stranger expanse of Cloudland, with its vast open spaces, great Harvesters, and billion-kilometer thinner-than-gossamer Space Farms.

  The tour guide was a native of Samarkand. If he was representative of the wonders to come it would be a dull day. He was short and dumpy, with a pale face and fair, straggly hair. He offered comments on what they were seeing in the monotone of one who had said the same thing hundreds or thousands of times.

  “Established in 2160 by the League of Brethren, originally from the Central Asian region of Earth. The Brethren took as their guiding doctrine the sacred rights and natural goodness of all things, and that doctrine continues to be applied here in the Colony.” He was leading them through a long, spiral room that vanished into the distance. Groups of workers, fat and thin and tall and short but all seemingly cheerful, were standing at thousand after thousand of identical machines. They were chatting to one another, and it was clear that the equipment mostly ran itself.

  “We honor the guiding doctrine.” The tour leaders nasal drone went on and on. His eyes were half closed. “Because of this we refuse to consume any living organism—not even the single-celled ones which form the basis of most food production through Cloudland and the Kuiper Belt. Here you see our food being synthesized from elementary inorganic components, water and minerals and carbon dioxide and nitrogen. Observe the steadily increasing complexity of the molecules at each stage, as higher order synthesis is performed.”

  The other tourists were already bored. Sondra could see their attention beginning to wander. She sympathized, but she could not allow herself to blank out. Somewhere here was the clue that she needed.

  Somewhere?

  Where?

  She glanced from the guide to the workers that they passed. They were worse than ordinary looking. Back on Earth they would have drawn attention by their ugliness. Not just the occasional man or woman, either, but every one of them. And not the standardized ugliness of Cloudlanders, whose elongated stick-thin bodies and arms and short legs were all ugly to Earth eyes in the same generic way. The workers here had customized ugliness, all different.

  Sondra started, and looked at the people of Samarkand through new eyes. Could that be it? She had carefully remained at the back of the group, remaining as inconspicuous as possible. She didn’t want to draw attention to herself now, by asking their guide a question. As they moved on to another assembly line, she whispered to the bored-looking man next to her: “These people look as though they could really use a form-change session.”

  “I know.” He nodded at a stooped man standing by one of the machines, and grinned. “See him? If I looked like that I’d be in a tank sharpish, before anyone else could have a look at me.”

  “Me too.” Sondra took care to glance in all directions before she spoke again. “I haven’t seen any tanks, though. Did you notice where they were when we came in? Suppose one of us was taken sick and needed remedial change. Where would we go?”

  A woman on the other side of the man had turned to listen to the muttered conversation. Sondra stayed in through a few more remarks about the unattractive appearance of the people of Samarkand, then allowed herself to drop out of the exchange. She stepped a little closer to the back of the group. She was not missed. A couple of others were now peering about them, examining the workers or looking for evidence of form-change equipment.

  It took a few minutes, but finally as they moved through to a smaller chamber one of the more aggressive members of the group piped up. “Excuse me.” It was a big dark-haired woman, wearing one of Earth’s popular peasant girl forms. “I have a question.” The guide, in mid-sentence monotone, ground to a halt. He stared uncomprehendingly at the interrupter.

  “We’ve seen a good bit of your colony.” The woman waved an arm at their surroundings. “But we’ve seen no sign of your form-change tanks. Where are they?” It was like watching someone return from the dead. The guide stood up taller, his eyes popped open, and his pale cheeks turned pink.

  “Form-change tanks!” He glared at the woman who had asked the question. “You may search Samarkand from one end to the other, and you will find no such thing. We have no place for decadence in our world.”

  “But what if you get sick? Hey, what if I get sick?”

  “Weren’t you listening to me? I told you already, the guiding doctrine of the League of Brethren is based on die natural goodness of all things. That includes human beings. We have no need of form-change to cure sickness, because sickness is no more than a failure to allow innate goodness to triumph over evil. The rest of the system may choose an unnatural method to combat the evil within, but we prefer our way. Nature’s way.”

  The tour guide had left his prepared script far behind. Sondra, drifting away from the back of the group, decided that she liked him rather better this way. He was a kook, but now he was a kook with his own principles and convictions.

  The woman who had asked the question did not agree. She had not enjoyed the answer at all. Sondra heard her voice rising in pitch and volume as she slipped through into an adjoining room.

  “Are you telling me what I think you’re telling me? That if I get sick when I’m here on your dumb colony, you’re going to tell me to argue with myself, instead of somebody dumping me into the nearest form-change tank? Well, let me tell you something, mister … ”

  The chamber that Sondra had entered was empty. She moved through it rapidly. The argument would help, but there was no way of knowing how much time she had before her absence from the tour group was noticed.

  She had apparently left behind the main manufacturing region of the colony. The turning corridor along which she was hurrying had many closed doors, one every few meters. At the end lay a larger open door leading to a much bigger room.

  Sondra paused a few feet short of the entrance. She could already see what was inside the room. She had realized that many rooms like this must exist within Samarkand as soon as she heard the tour guide speak of decadence and the absence of form-change equipment But she did not want to go any closer.

  The view from a distance was quite bad enough. The people inside the room were slumped in upholstered chairs or moving unsteadily from place to place. Sondra saw faces with sunken, bleary eyes and withered cheeks, topped by white and scanty hair. Limbs were bony and lacking muscle, skin was wrinkled and marked with moles and spots of dark brown.

  It might have been a scene from the files of the Office of Form Control, showing the terrible end results of illegal form use. Sondra knew that it was not. It was a picture of the world as it used to be, before purposive form-change had banished the specter of aging. People—except on Samarkand—employed the machines in biofeedback loops that permitted them to remain in peak physical condition throughout their whole lives, until finally the brain lost its power to follow the biofeedback regime. At that point irreversible physical and mental decline began.

  Death had not been banished from the solar system. But now it came quickly, in just a few days.

  Except on Samarkand. Here on Samarkand death crept in slowly, stealing life a little at a time. Muscles weakened, senses faded, eyes and ears lost their sensitivity. Hearts and lungs faltered and failed. Life was a long decline, its end a long disease. Sondra had not noticed this on the tour, f
or a simple reason: very old people could not and did not work.

  She paused, leaning against the wall of the corridor. No form-change machines. None. Not a single one, anywhere on Samarkand. It was not like the situation on some of the poorer worlds of the Belt, where for economic reasons machines were few and far-between and used only for urgent remedial medical work. Here it was a proscription, an outright ban.

  But this was the colony, of all worlds in the Kuiper Belt, that Trudy Melford had chosen to visit The flagship of the BEC fleet, with Trudy as passenger, had been here just a few weeks ago. There had been other and earlier visits.

  “Curious and anomalous” indeed. Robert Capman had clearly known how the people of Samarkand felt about form-change equipment. It didn’t make sense.

  Except that suddenly it did—all of it. Because if this room was on Samarkand, what else must be here?

  Sondra was filled with a sudden huge urgency. She had to get off this world as soon as possible. She must head for the inner system, exactly as Denzel Morrone has directed. She would call Bey on the way, and tell him that they had to meet.

  But not this time on Wolf Island, nor at the Office of Form Control.

  This time they must meet on Mars.

  CHAPTER 20

  The absolute certainty that she knew the answer had supported Sondra all the way in on the long return trip from Samarkand to Mars. Even Bey’s cryptic reply to her message had not worried her, though she did wonder what he meant by the last part of it: “I have other business on Mars that I must complete in advance,” it said. “Start the meeting without me if you have to—but whatever you do, don’t finish without me. I’ll be bringing visitors.”

  Now, on the last stage of the journey, nervousness came rushing in. What real evidence did she have? Very little, and she was about to take on one of the most formidable forces in the solar system. She had better have her arguments in order.

  The autocar was creeping its way into the courtyard of Melford Castle. Didn’t the very fact that Trudy Melford had agreed to meet prove that Sondra was right? She had offered no reason for wanting a private session with Trudy. The BEC staff member who took the message had seemed astonished that she dared to ask for it on the way from Samarkand—and dumbfounded when he contacted her after her arrival on Mars, to tell her that Trudy had said yes, they could meet in her private chambers.

  The knowledge of where she was added to Sondra’s uneasiness as the elevator slid silently up from the courtyard and halted at the fourth floor of Melford Castle. For a century and a half this building had been the power center of the greatest economic force in the solar system. And the woman waiting for her as the elevator door opened formed the absolute hub around which all that power revolved.

  Trudy Melford wore a long, severe dress of black, unrelieved by any form of decoration. She nodded once to Sondra and turned to lead the way back through a long hallway to a dark-paneled office. Sondra slowly followed. There would be no formal niceties or offers of bogus hospitality at this meeting.

  Trudy gestured to Sondra to sit in a brocaded upright chair at a polished cherrywood table and placed herself in another one on the opposite side. “You think you have something to say of interest to me?” Dark eyebrows raised. “Very well. My time is valuable, so I would appreciate it if you will be as concise as possible.”

  “Your time is valuable. But you can spare enough time to make trips all the way out to Samarkand, in the Kuiper Belt.” Sondra saw the frown on the other woman’s face. “I’m sorry, if I am to be concise that is not the place to begin. Let me start where I started: with a problem assigned to me by my superiors in the Office of Form Control.

  “At certain colonies in the Kuiper Belt, babies were born which after a couple of months took the humanity test. The humanity test in the Belt is no different from anywhere else in the solar system. A baby passes and is pronounced human if and only if it is able to interact with purposive form-change equipment.

  “In this case, however, there was something wrong. Three babies passed the test, but it quickly became clear that they should have failed. What I have been calling the ‘feral forms’ were not human. The humanity test, after a hundred and fifty years of successful use, was failing. I was told to find out why.

  “Do you have any questions about this?”

  Trudy Melford was listening intently, elbows on the table, her chin resting on her closed fists and her face impassive. She shook her head. “I am here only to hear what you have to say.”

  “We’ll see. Anyway, I discovered nothing useful in my examination of the forms, or of the data concerning them, when I was on Earth. So after I had consulted Bey Wolf I headed out to the Kuiper Belt to see things at first hand. Did you know, by the way, that I tried to persuade him to work with me on this problem? And he refused, because you had lured him here to work for you.”

  “I have an important form-change project on Mars, one well-suited to Behrooz Wolfs unique abilities.” Trudy’s face gave away nothing.

  “An inconveniently timed project, from my point of view.” Sondra realized that the two of them were still fencing, although the flashing rapiers remained out of sight. “So I went to the colonies alone. I learned even before I arrived that the colony mutation rates are naturally higher because of increased radioactivity. That would give more humanity test failures than usual, but it doesn’t explain at all why things that should have been failing were passing.

  “I had no answers. So I dug into the actual form-change equipment, both hardware and software. Know what I found?” Sondra studied Trudy’s impassive face. “I think you do know. I found nothing. The hardware was genuine BEC equipment with the original seals unbroken. The software showed no signs of tampering, and it checked out down to the last binary branch.”

  Sondra paused and turned as she heard footsteps behind her. It was Bey Wolf. And in spite of his message, he was alone.

  On the other side of the table Trudy was standing up, her face pink. “Bey!” She looked right through Sondra. “I didn’t expect you. I’m sorry, but at the moment I can’t—”

  “It’s all right. I’m part of the same meeting.” Bey nodded to Sondra and sat down next to her. “Don’t let me interrupt. Just carry on.”

  Carry on—if she could. Sondra stared at Trudy. Could anyone blush on demand? Maybe Bey Wolf produced strange effects on both of them.

  “I was just saying that both the software and the hardware out in the colonies was perfect on the form-change equipment that produced the humanity test anomalies. So where did that leave me? I had run out of all the reasonable explanations.”

  “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” Bey waved his hand. “Sorry, sorry, it’s a bad habit that I don’t seem able to kick. Keep going. This time I promise I’ll keep quiet.”

  Sondra was beginning to wish he had not shown up. Her job was hard enough, without random interruptions. Where was she?

  “I had to take what I had found to its logical conclusion. The hardware was exactly as it had been delivered from BEC. The software was error-free. There was only one other possibility: the hardware had a hidden flaw when BEC delivered it. It had been produced that way in the BEC factory. And knowing the BEC quality control procedures, that told me the change must have been deliberate.”

  Sondra paused and waited. This was the point where Trudy should stand up and object. BEC’s reputation for two centuries of reliable delivery was on the line. The other woman remained silent. Trudy was certainly tense, but it was the tension of someone who was also waiting. Sondra had to continue.

  “But of course, a deduction that makes no sense and explains nothing is just as bad as no deduction at all. Why would BEC—or anyone—want creatures to pass the humanity test that should have failed it? I didn’t have an answer. There didn’t seem to be an answer.

  “Then I wondered if maybe the target was not the colonies, as it seemed to be at first sight. Maybe the tar
get was the humanity test. It has to be infallible, or it is useless. If it can fail three times, people would argue, who knows how many more times it might fail?

  “That seemed to lead to a bigger mystery than the one that I started with. Why would anyone possibly want the humanity test to be called into question?

  “And there I stuck, until it was suggested that I invert the problem.” Sondra glanced at Bey. He looked as though he was about to speak, but he placed a hand over his mouth and waved at her to continue.

  “Thanks, Bey.” Sondra turned again to Trudy Melford. “Invert the problem, and what do you get? Not that non-humans are taking the humanity test and passing it, but maybe that humans are taking the humanity test and failing. It’s an awful thought, some poor human baby, taken and disposed of in the organ banks. But that is what would happen.

  “Or that is what would usually happen. There might be very special circumstances, under which someone with great money and influence could take a baby who had failed the humanity test and destroy all evidence that the test had ever been given. Of course, there would still be a problem. What would the parent do with the baby? The child could officially no longer exist. He would be unable to interact with form-change equipment, otherwise he would have passed the humanity test. And it would not be enough simply to establish a false identity for him. He would still be discovered, because form-change is used routinely through the whole solar system.

  “But it is not used everywhere. There are a few places, like the Samarkand colony, where form-change equipment is not only not used, it is banned from use. Naturally, such a colony also rejects any suggestion that humanity depends on form-change equipment. A child could grow up there, without fear of discovery. That child’s parent could visit,” Sondra met Trudy’s eye. “If she had sufficient wealth, she could visit as often as she chose. Suppose that Errol Ergan Melford, the infant son of Gertrude Zenobia Melford, did not drown four years ago in the Aegean Sea before he had the chance to take the humanity test. Suppose that he had taken it—and he had failed. Suppose that he is alive today, and living in the Samarkand colony. And suppose that his mother has a long-term goal, of doing something that only the Empress of BEC could do: changing form-change equipment, to cast doubt on the humanity test itself—so that one day her son might return and lead a normal life in the inner system.”