Bey picked up the sheet of paper and smoothed its creases. “This is not Errol’s psychological profile. I did not have his to use. This is my own, as it was when I was four years old. I gave it to Rafael Fermiel, and I asked him to screen the juvenile population records of Old Mars. Not for the usual things, name and parents and residence and personal history, but in terms of psychological profile parameters. I gave Fermiel tolerance ranges for each parameter, and said I wanted to determine any individuals whose profile matched the one that I gave to him within those tolerances. You might say, I was looking for myself at the age of four, or the closest thing to it. I squeaked through, Errol failed. Fermiel came up with five reasonable fits—I want to know more about them—and just one excellent match. I asked him to locate that individual, and bring the person here. He had no idea who he was bringing. I did.”
“But now Fermiel knows.” It was Sondra, not Trudy, who spoke. “He heard you say the name. You can’t ask him to keep quiet, Bey. It’s all in the open and everyone is going to find out.”
“They are. But can’t you see—both of you—that it doesn’t matter any more? I’m telling you, Errol is going to be all right. He doesn’t need to hide.”
“But the humanity test. He failed the test. Anyone who fails the test … ” Trudy spoke softly, her voice trailing away as it came to the unspeakable thought.
“He did. But I have seen Errol, and I am prepared to testify, as former head of the Office of Form Control, that he is a normal human. I am tempted to say, supernormal. Anyway, before people bother Errol Melford they will have to fight their way past me.” Bey sat up straighter, unconsciously squaring his shoulders. “Me, and if I have to involve him, Robert Capman. He’s in the Logian form, and I’m retired, so maybe some people think we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven—sorry, I seem to be quoting again—but what we have to say still counts in anything involving form-change. The decision-makers will listen to us. They won’t touch Errol.”
“Are you saying it’s over?” Trudy spoke in the uncertain tones of someone unsure that she could believe her own words. “That he can come out of hiding? Errol can live with me all the time, instead of just when the castle is quiet?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“Then … ” Trudy leaned over and took Bey’s hands in hers. “Then I’ll say again what I said before. If I have Errol, you have me and everything I possess. No exclusions. Tell me what you want and when you want it.”
Bey leaned back a little from the intense stare of those blue-green eyes. He read in them hero worship and unconditional surrender. Even if they were temporary offerings, he was uncomfortable with both. And behind Trudy he could see Sondra, scowling most horribly.
He was saved from an awkward answer by the sound of loud argument outside the room.
“That must be Georgia.” Bey stood up in relief. “I didn’t intend for her and Rafael to meet without my being present. Wait a minute.”
He hurried out. When he returned he was accompanied by Errol Melford, Rafael Fermiel, and a third being that Sondra stared at in disbelief. It was like an obscenely fat kangaroo with the long muzzle of a camel, and it was dressed in snug boots and a form-fitting white suit with pockets all the way down the sides.
Errol at once ran to his mother and sat on Trudy’s lap. She hugged him fiercely. Fermiel came to sit at the table opposite Trudy. Oddest of all, the fat kangaroo moved to the end of the table and crouched comfortably on its haunches.
“Introductions,” said Bey. He waved his hand. “Sondra Dearborn. Trudy and Errol Melford. Rafael Fermiel. And”—to Sondra’s surprise he pointed to the kangaroo—“Georgia Kruskal. Georgia, you’ve amazed me yet again. You’re not wearing a suit.”
“I know.” Georgia grunted, in a tone an octave lower than usual. “We can operate at these temperatures and pressures for a few hours, but now I’m here I’ve decided that I don’t want to, ever again. Like sitting in a kettle and breathing hot onion soup. Are you going to say why you asked me to come here, or is it all still a big mystery?”
“I’ll tell you.” Bey sat down at the table between Rafael Fermiel and Georgia Kruskal. “At least, I’ll tell you part of it. There are things I still have to sort out, and I can’t do most of them until I’m back on Earth.
“I have some bad news for you, Georgia. Some for you, too, Rafael, before you start to gloat. But also some good news for both of you.
“Let me begin where I began: ignorant. Before I came to Mars a couple of months ago I had no idea that there was a war going on here. I only learned it when both sides tried to sign me up as a new recruit. It’s not a shooting war, but it’s still a real battle. Old Mars versus New Mars, the Underworld against the new forms. The territory at stake is the surface of the whole planet. You, Georgia, like it pretty much the way it is. You, Rafael, conceive it as your sacred duty to make it look just like Earth.
“Now, don’t hassle me yet”—the other two were starting to protest—“you’ll get your turn later. First, let me tell you who each of you has as your allies. Maybe you’ll get a surprise or two. You, Georgia. BEC hasn’t been funding you, but they’d do it like a shot if you needed money. Right, Trudy?”
“Right.” Trudy nodded at Georgia. “I’ve been fascinated since I first flew over the surface and learned of your existence. I asked Bey Wolf to learn all he could about you.” She turned to him. “That was genuine, you know, nothing to do with—the other.”
“You can talk about that if you want to—no need to hide any more.” Bey turned back to Georgia. “But I doubt if Trudy is as interested as I am. You are the most intriguing new form I’ve seen in twenty years, even if you are technically illegal. I don’t have BEC’s money, but you can add me to your list of allies.”
“Some things are more important than money.” Georgia’s broad camel’s mouth smirked triumphantly at Rafael Fermiel before she again faced Bey. “You gave me a dozen new ideas in a few hours, things I would never have dreamed of trying. We already have a form- change program for an organic radio transmitter and receiver. We’ll try a tank experiment in the next few days.”
“I’d like to see it. But now, before you get too uppity, let’s talk about the Fermiel camp. First, he has everyone who believes that the Mars Declaration must be honored. You think they are kooks, Georgia, but there are lots of them. They won’t go away. Second, Trudy Melford has been sympathetic to Old Mars and the Underworld. And before you start looking smug, Rafael, let me tell you that the practical motive for that sympathy went away a few minutes ago. If you want Trudy’s support from this point on, you will have to earn it.
“Third, I suspect that you will have my support; but I can’t confirm that until I have a conversation with someone who isn’t here at the moment. Now here’s your bad news, Rafael: even if you have my support, I suspect that you are going to lose part of your funding. You won’t have enough in the future to do anything that you like. I’m thinking especially about the terraforming. It may have to slow down.”
“But the Mars Declaration—”
“Is a piece of paper, like any other. It needs to be interpreted in today’s terms, not those of a century or two centuries ago.”
Rafael Fermiel’s red beard jutted pugnaciously at Bey. “You’ll never persuade the Old Mars policy council of that.”
“Quite right, I won’t. You will. And Georgia Kruskal will help you.”
“Wait a minute.” Georgia rose up from her haunches. “If you think I’m going to work with a bunch of wombats like the Old Mars flapheads—”
“I do. I expect you and Rafael to sit down and work out a way of doing things together. This is one planet, with one future. You can’t both win. You have to cooperate.”
“And if we don’t?”
“Then I’ll make a prediction. No, I’ll make a promise.” Bey stared from one to the other in frustration. “If you two don’t find a way to work together, I’ll pull my own support f
rom both sides, including my technical input on the surface forms. Trudy will take all BEC support away. I’ll do my best to make sure that every cent of outside funding that goes to Old Mars dries up at once. And I’ll set the Office of Form Control going on an investigation of Mars illegal forms.”
Fermiel frowned at Georgia Kruskal. “He’s threatening us—both of us.”
“He can’t do that!” They turned in unison to glare at Bey.
“I can, you know.” Bey stared right back at them. “I just did. God, if you only knew how I hate laying down the law like this to anybody. I’m retired, for God’s sake—and I couldn’t stand this sort of stuff when I wasn’t. The expense of spirit in a waste of shame. There I go again. Sorry, but I’ve had it. Trudy, you’re the Empress. Take over. Bang their heads together, make them compromise. You asked me what I wanted from you, and I’m telling you. Make these two see reason. Me, I’m heading for Earth.”
“You can’t do that!” This time it seemed that everyone in the room spoke in unison. The only exception was Errol Melford, who was still staring in fascination at Georgia Kruskal’s animated snout and wobbling layers of body fat.
“I can.” Bey stood up and started for the door. “It’s my home, I have unfinished business there, and I’m going. Sondra, if you want to see this thing through to the finish you should come with me.”
“What are you going to do?” Sondra hurried after him.
“We’re done with the easy stuff.” Bey turned at the threshold. It was a strange tableau. Everyone was frozen and silent at the table, watching his departure. He nodded to them. The nod said, Don’t waste your time gaping at me, you have work to do. Get to it!” He spun around with Sondra at his side.
“Now we have to tackle the hard part.”
CHAPTER 22
“What you are telling me,” said Sondra, “is that the humanity tests are no damned good.”
“Not quite that.” The fast-moving skimmer was approaching Wolf Island, and Bey was squinting ahead in the late afternoon sun for a first sight of home. “It’s fine in almost every case; but occasionally, maybe one time in a billion, it misses. The trouble is, when it does fail it’s in the worst possible way.”
“Humans are judged non-human?”
“Right. I mean, it’s no big deal if an occasional feral form is passed as human, like the ones in the colonies. That’s a pretty trivial problem.”
Bey ignored Sondra’s outraged gasp of protest. A lopsided pyramid of rock had come into view, jutting above the swelling ocean surface, and he was staring at it with satisfaction.
“It’s the other way round that’s intolerable,” he continued. “Babies, genuine humans with unusual talents and mental powers, dumped into the organ banks. They have odd psych profiles, and when they’re different enough to exceed program tolerances the test judges them non-human.”
“But if that’s true how come no one has ever noticed?” The idea of babies slaughtered and dissected for the organ banks sent chills up Sondra’s spine. “I mean, you’re saying these are unusually smart people.”
“They are. But they’re babies. They never have a chance to prove themselves. And if they were the smartest people in the world, how would we recognize their absence? It’s hard to notice what isn’t there.” Beys manner had become unusually grim. As the skimmer docked the two hounds stood at the jetty, wagging their tails madly. But Bey fondled their heads absently and led the way straight toward the house.
“Lop the top-end tail off the distribution of human intelligence and creativity,” he went on, “and it would make no measurable difference to the population. Only one person in a billion is out beyond the six-sigma level. That’s what we’re talking about here, But eventually those one-in-a-billion make a huge difference. Ninety-five percent of all human progress comes from less than one thousandth of one percent of the population.”
To Sondra, he was suddenly nervous as she had never seen him before. On the journey back from Melford Castle he had become increasingly serious and preoccupied. He had refused to tell her what came next, answering her questions only with a terse, “Wait and see.”
Could it be his vow to have Denzel Morrone fired as head of the Office of Form Control? Sondra had been dreading her own next meeting with Morrone—she had disobeyed his direct orders-but it was hard to believe that Bey had any such worries. Trudy Melford had promised Bey anything he asked, and she had such political clout that the dismissal of a medium-level official from a government department ought to be child’s play to her.
But if it wasn’t that, then what was it?
Bey was heading downstairs and straight for his communications center. He nodded to Jumping Jack Flash, who peered up at him with perplexed brown eyes as Bey at once sat down and entered a call sequence unfamiliar to Sondra.
“I’m afraid we have to wait a while,” he said. “Maybe three hours or more. Why don’t you help yourself to some food, or have—”
Bey paused. The terminal was already flashing a response. While Sondra was still wondering who—or what—could be three hours’ signal time away and yet provide an instant reply, the image display area came alive. She found herself staring at a familiar figure. There was no mistaking the massive head with its ropy strands of hair and luminous eyes.
Bey seemed even more surprised than she was. “How the devil can you—”
Capman’s head bobbed forward, in the Logian smile. “No magic today, Behrooz Wolf. Not even unfamiliar science. I have been expecting and waiting for your call.”
“But where are you?”
“Very close by—look up to your north, and you could in principle see my ship. I am parked in Earth geostationary orbit.”
“You couldn’t possibly know that I wanted to speak to you!”
“I made no such statement. Perhaps it was I who wished to speak with you.” The Logian’s face was quite unreadable, at least to Sondra. “However, your last remark suggests that you in fact do wish to talk with me. I am curious to learn the subject.”
“I don’t believe that. I believe you already know very well why I placed my call.”
“If that is the case, then there can be no possible reason for delaying discussion.” The great head bowed forward to Bey and Sondra. “I await your remarks with interest.” Bey bowed in return and stayed with head bent for a long time. At last he sighed and straightened.
“This will be more questions than comments. But first let me tell you what I know. You are familiar with the Mars terraforming operation, to make the planet more like Earth?”
“The whole solar system is aware of it.”
“Right. But I said familiar with it. Most people know about the project the way I did before I went to the Mars Underworld. Superficially. In other words, they don’t really think about it at all.”
“Assume that I am, as you put it, familiar with the project.”
“Then lets get right to the central question: Who is paying for the terraforming effort? Someone pays for everything, no matter what the project is.”
“The terraforming project is funded by the Old Mars policy group, seeking to fulfill the intent of the Mars Declaration.”
“That’s what everyone believes. But that’s not really an answer, is it? The cost of a full- scale terraforming project is prodigious—everything from purchase of Cloudland comet fragments, to the flying of the volatiles to Mars impact, to the creation and use of bespoke organisms for the absorption of atmospheric carbon dioxide and release of bound oxygen. The Old Mars contingent is wealthy by Mars standards, but nowhere near rich enough to pay for everything that’s going on.
“As soon as I had been out on the surface of Mars and seen the scale of the operation for myself, I had my doubts. I wondered if maybe BEC had a hand in it somewhere. The company could afford such a thing if it decided it was important enough to BEC operations.
“But I couldn’t make sense of that, either. First of all, Trudy Melford went to Mars only recently, three years ago, a
nd for reasons nothing to do with terraforming.”
“Reasons which I presume that you now understand.” The Logian stared curiously at Sondra, standing by Bey’s side. “May I ask, did you make that deduction, Miss Dearborn?”
“Not really.” Sondra stared back, and wondered to what extent that hulking form in its methane—rich atmosphere was still the human Robert Capman. “I got part of it right—a little bit.”
“You got most of it,” Bey corrected. “And Sondra would have deduced the rest if she had been able to look at Errol Melford’s picture, as I did, in Trudy’s private quarters at Melford Castle. But don’t let me get sidetracked. Trudy went to Mars long after the terraforming effort was started. Also, she has a real interest in the surface forms, and BEC’s commercial gain would be maximized if the terraforming stopped, because if Mars becomes like Earth anyone can live on the surface without needing form-change. The modification developed by Georgia Kruskal is able to colonize the surface as it is today, but only with extensive and continuing use of form-change equipment.
“So I had a mystery. But I still didn’t rule out BEC funding for the Old Mars efforts, because Trudy seemed so oddly sympathetic to them. We found out why when we learned about Errol Melford. And that was when Trudy, with no more reason to lie about it, flatly denied that she was funding the Old Mars terraforming project.
“Dead end. But somebody was pouring resources into changing Mars to be like Earth. Who was it? Who had the resources? An even better question, who had the motive?
“You can count the candidate groups on one hand. First, Earth could do it. They have the money, and they would quite like Mars to become another Earth. New land, new living space, a new sphere of influence. But I’m in the heart of Earth’s information networks, and there’s no way that anything this size could be happening without my learning of it. So I had to cross Earth off the list.
Proteus in the Underworld p-4 Page 26