Proteus in the Underworld Read online

  "I am not to be held responsible for office gossip, nor for your own preconceptions. If that's all you have to say to me, you should go."

  "I don't believe that it is gossip. I believe it's true. Three years ago you'd have had that poor creature out of its cage and been examining it in two seconds. You've changed. I want to know why you changed. You can hide away here on your island, but there's still a real world out there with real problems to be solved."

  "There is indeed." Wolf was smiling. She had hoped to break through to him, but he remained as cool and unemotional as ever. "As there has always been. I have had"—he paused, and gave her another careful inspection—"fifty-one years more than you to work on such problems."

  Evidence of humanity from Wolf at last, in the form of a touch of wounded ego. Like most people, Sondra held her physical appearance at age twenty-two. She was actually twenty-seven and a half, and somehow Wolf had read that. With his last statement he was just pointing out to her that his mistake about the age of the caged form-change failure was an exception.

  But he was continuing: "You say I hid away. I say, I need solitude. It is also time for me to move out of the way and allow the next generation—yours—to spread its wings. Crabbed age and youth cannot live together. "

  It was one of his damnable old quotations, she was sure of it. Sondra didn't know who had said it—and she certainly didn't care. "That's rubbish. We need your experience. You talk about being old, but unless you have an accident you'll be around for another fifty good years. You developed the multiforms just four years ago, and that was your best work ever."

  "In whose opinion? Yours?"

  "Mine and everyone's. The multiforms add a whole new dimension to form-change. You are still at your peak and it was criminal of you to retire. Do you think you are going to sit loafing in your rocking-chair and staring at the ocean for another half century? Next thing you know you'll dodder around in your garden, growing vegetables and keeping bees."

  She realized that she was pushing hard, still trying to goad him to a response that was more emotional than rational. And finally he was frowning. But it was in wry amusement, not anger.

  "You need my experience?" he said. "Very well, you will have it. And then you must go. You said that the creature in the cage was shipped to you. From where?"

  "From the Carcon Colony. Out on the edge of the Kuiper Belt."

  "I know the region. Strange territory. Strange people. Have you been there?"

  "No. It's a long journey and an expensive one. My cheapskate boss—or rather, my boss's boss—is hoping I can find the answer here, without making the trip out."

  "Who is your boss's boss?"

  "Denzel Morrone."

  "I know him. He smiles pleasantly, but don't turn your back on him." Wolf was standing up. "Morrone knows me, too. Go back and tell him that you talked to Behrooz Wolf. Say that Wolf told you the chances of solving your problem without visiting the Carcon Colony are close to zero."

  "Suppose he asks me why?"

  "Just tell him that if it were my problem—which it isn't—I'd be on the next ship out. You don't need to tell Morrone this, but chances are it's a software problem in the form-change equipment used for the original humanity test. You need to check the routines first-hand and in person. Until you do that you are lacking basic information. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. " Wolf led Sondra toward the back door, where he had placed the cage with its feral contents. Twilight was well advanced and the creature inside was quiet, perhaps cowed less by coming darkness than by the presence of the two mastiff hounds. They lay stretched out on opposite sides, guarding it.

  Wolf picked up the cage without giving the creature inside a second look. As he led the way around the house toward the jetty where the skimmer was moored, he jerked his head to the row of brown conical boxes that Sondra had noticed when she arrived.

  "Know what those are?"

  "Not really. They look like bird houses, but I don't see any way in to them."

  "There is a way in—if you're small enough." And, when Sondra stared, first at him and then back at the nearest cone, "You had it right earlier. Those are beehives. I keep honey bees. And I do grow my own vegetables—or at least, the garden servos do it for me."

  "You live here alone? No regular visitors?" It was absolutely none of Sondra's business, and she was not sure why she was asking.

  "Alone. No regular visitors." They were approaching the jetty, its black rock almost invisible against the dark water. "No irregular visitors, either, until you came." Wolf stepped into the skimmer and lowered the cage carefully to the deck. "Go to the Carcon Colony, Sondra Dearborn. That is my only advice."

  "Sondra Wolf Dearborn. I'll ask Denzel Morrone if I can go. If I do, can I come back here and tell you what I find?"

  He remained silently crouched over the cage for so long that Sondra wondered if he had seen something new inside. But at last he straightened and shrugged.

  "Why not? If you wish to return, and if you believe that what you have will interest me. And with one other condition: next time, give me advance notice of any possible visit. The hounds are not dangerous, you know that." Wolf started the skimmer's engine, then quickly stepped ashore. "But it could be fatal to assume that nothing on this island is dangerous to an unexpected visitor."

  Startled, Sondra glanced up at him. His face was no more than an inscrutable pale oval in the near-darkness. She turned to gaze at the hulking deformed pyramid of rock that formed the center of Wolf Island. It seemed larger than before, the island's dark heart looming black against the evening sky.

  The skimmer moved silently away from the jetty and began the long journey north; but the brooding obsidian hill remained in Sondra's memory, long after the island itself had vanished into the night.

  Wolf watched the little vessel as it disappeared into the fading line between sea and sky. As the day ended, his work could begin. The bees in one of the hives had swarmed that morning. He had followed them up the rocky central hill of Wolf Island and carefully noted the location of the tight swarmed cluster. Now with the temperature dropping and the bees somnolent it was time for the next step.

  Bey retraced his path up the hill with an empty container and a monofilament cutter. When he returned he was carrying the swarm, undisturbed and in the precise order in which it had been created. He had learned on his previous tries that it was not enough to follow the normal beekeeping practice of shaking the bees of the swarm into the container. For his plans, order seemed to be vitally important.

  He went back into the house and descended two levels from the main floor. The lab that he came to had been cut from the solid basement rock of Wolf Island. Bey had not lied to Sondra. He did need solitude—for the freedom from vibration and noise that it provided, and for the absence of inquisitive neighbors which remoteness guaranteed. What he was doing was not illegal, but it was certainly the sort of thing that might raise eyebrows.

  Bey suspended the swarm of bees above a table, from which it could be moved directly into any one of the waiting form-change tanks, Once the swarm was in position he paused. Even with the aid of his miniaturized servos, what came next was going to be infinitely tricky and tedious. He was not going to enjoy the next twelve to fourteen hours. He had to attach tiny optical fibers for biofeedback control to every bee in the swarm, then network the result into the computer so that responses were possible on both the individual and the composite level.

  No point in waiting. The work could not be split into shifts, it had to be done in one long session. The sooner he began, the sooner he would be able to rest. Bey sighed, adjusted the microscope, and settled to his task. It called for great care but little brain work. He had plenty of time to think, and to wonder again if he really knew what he was doing.

  The idea behind his new work derived from the multiform theory that Bey himself had invented four years earlier, for the creation of human composites. Now he wanted to take it far beyond the point
that anyone else—Sondra Dearborn, or even the workers at the Biological Equipment Corporation—would believe possible. The use of biological form-change for humans was two hundred years old, widespread, and almost universally accepted. The corollary, that humans and humans alone could achieve such interactive form-change, was embedded so deeply in society that it had become the definition of humanity itself.

  Sondra, like Bey himself, was too young to remember the great humanity debates. She accepted their final outcome as a necessary and inevitable truth.

  What is a human? The answer, slowly evolved and at last articulated clearly, was simple: an entity is human if and only if it can accomplish purposive form-change using bio-feedback systems. That definition had prevailed over the anguished weeping of billions of protesting parents. The age of humanity testing had been pushed back, to one year, to six months, to three months. Failure in the test carried a high price—euthanasia—but resistance had slowly faded in the face of remorseless population pressure. Resources to feed babies who could never live a normal human life were not available.

  And in time the unthinkable had become the unquestionable. The validity of the humanity test had been established beyond doubt over the years, by attempts to induce form-change in everything from gnats to whales to daffodils. Every one had been unsuccessful.

  Now Bey was questioning the unquestionable. The development of the multiforms had made him re-evaluate his own deepest assumptions about form-change—things that everyone "knew must be true," commonsense things like the earth being flat, or the sun going round the earth, or atoms being indivisible, or nothing being able to travel faster than light.

  Humans could operate as a multiform ensemble in a form-change environment, but not if more than six people were involved. Therefore, composites behaved differently in form-change than their individual units. Nothing surprising there. An individual cell from a human being did not respond to form-change feedback stimuli at all.

  But a colony of social insects, bees or ants or termites, was a single, functioning entity. A hive possessed a complex structure and a survival capability that far transcended those of individual—and expendable—bees.

  Three years ago, Bey had examined the long history and literature of form-change and found it wanting. The data he was looking for on social insects did not exist. He would have to create it. What he had not expected was that it would take so long.

  Bey straightened his aching back, leaned away from the microscope, and glanced up at the wall clock. Sondra's skimmer journey should be over, and she would now be flying back to Form Control headquarters. She didn't know it but she had been given a tough job, one too hard for someone of her experience. The Carcon Colony was likely to eat her alive. While he, of course, sat loafing around in his rocking-chair.

  Bey smiled to himself. Sondra's energy and directness pleased him in a way that he found hard to define. He began to examine the tendriled tangle of fibers, sprouting like white hair from one side of the swarm's dark mass. The night's work was just beginning. By dawn, if he were industrious and lucky, he would be finished with the connections. And then he would be ready for the more difficult next stage.

  * * *

  Bey was industrious, but not lucky. Minor movements within the swarm forced him to re-define part of the network. By the time that he placed the final assembly into a form-change tank, adjusted the settings, and emerged from the basement lab, the sun was high in the sky.

  He peered out at a day that promised high wind and rain. He closed the house, helped himself to a hot drink, and collapsed into bed. Before he closed his eyes he set the skull contacts into position and programmed four hours of deep sleep. He would be awakened early only if there were a disastrous failure in the lab, or a high-priority call was received at Wolf Island.

  * * *

  Bey was forced back to consciousness by a house signal buzzing urgently at his ear. Even before he sat up he knew that he had slept no more than two hours. His eyes did not want to focus, his mouth was dry, and his whole brain felt grainy.

  He removed the contacts from his temples and turned at once to the status monitors. If the swarm was disintegrating so soon, after all his work . . .

  Everything in the lab reported as normal. There had been no change of status in the tank, which was as it should be so early in the experiment.

  It meant that the house had chosen to waken him based on some urgent external signal, a call at a level high enough to override Bey's own demand for rest. He keyed the communications system. An image popped into view instantly, projected into the viewing area beyond the bed.

  "Mr. Wolf!" The man wore one of the standard forms of BEC management. He was handsome, impeccably dressed in a style new to Bey, and grinning broadly. "I have good news."

  Bey scowled back at him. "How did you get in?"

  "Top priority interrupt circuit. My name is Jarvis Dommer. I'm with BEC."

  "I can see that. What do you want?"

  "To make you an offer you can't refuse." Dommer seemed to have more teeth than a normal person, and now his grin widened even farther. "Mr. Wolf—may I call you Bey?"

  "No."

  "Fine." The smile remained intact. "Mr. Wolf, you may have heard that BEC has a whole new line of commercial forms on the drawing-board, planned for release two years from now."

  "The marine and free-space forms. Sure. I've seen the advertisements."

  "Good. But what you haven't seen—because we've kept quiet about it—is the plans for multiform versions of the new releases. We'll be using your own ideas, the ones that you sold to BEC three and a half years ago. And we said to ourselves, who better than Bey Wolf to be our exclusive consultant on this? No one knows as much as he does about the promise and potential of the multiforms—"

  "No. I retired three years ago. I'm not interested."

  "That's because you haven't heard what we can offer you."

  "I said no. I have enough money. Forget it."

  "I'm not talking just a high consulting rate, the way you are thinking. You'd certainly get that, the most we've ever paid. But I'm authorized to offer you a royalty as well, one percent of everything that BEC makes when one of these new forms is licensed. Nobody in history has ever been offered that by BEC. You may think you're well off now, but compared with what you can be you're a pauper. You won't just be a millionaire, you'll be a billionaire, a trillionaire, a jillionaire. You'll be so wealthy that you'll be able to—"

  Bey hit the disconnect. The image of Jarvis Dommer, still talking a mile a minute, faded slowly away. Bey reset the house interrupt levels so that for the next three hours all messages, no matter their priority level, would be recorded for his later review.

  He lay down again and reset the controls to continue programmed sleep. In the two minutes that the skull contacts needed to adjust his brain wave patterns, he thought about the BEC proposal. Jarvis Dommer was absolutely right about one thing: the offer to pay royalties for use of a form-change program to an individual was absolutely unprecedented. And since BEC was the biggest business enterprise in the whole solar system, Bey would surely become obscenely wealthy. He should feel flattered and overwhelmed by their offer.

  He didn't. He was too cynical for that. Instead he wondered what horrible problems BEC were having with the new forms. To promise so much, someone must be completely desperate.

  CHAPTER 3

  Bey Wolf understood form-change theory and practice better than any human alive. Sondra admitted that, without reservations. What he didn't understand so well, maybe not at all, was people.

  Back on Wolf Island he had made it sound logical and easy. Go to Denzel Morrone, head of the Office of Form Control. Explain that a visit was needed to the Carcon Colony. If necessary, cite Behrooz Wolf's own assertion that the journey was essential if Sondra was to find out why a clearly non-human caged form had somehow passed the humanity test.

  In the real world it wasn't so simple. Sondra had waited in the anteroom to Denzel Morrone'
s office for more than two hours while a succession of senior officials from the Planetary Coordinators swept in and out. The whole Form Control department had recently moved to an expensive new building, all airy columns of carbon composite and transparent outer walls. Sondra, perched above a thousand feet of open space, could see all the way across an ocean of smaller buildings to the dull grey bulk of Old City. The Office of Form Control had come a long way—physically as well as financially—since Denzel Morrone took over two years ago.

  It had also changed in other, more subtle ways. Sondra, finally admitted to Morrone's presence, told him at once that she would like to travel out to the Carcon Colony. Morrone, dressed in the smart new uniform that he had designed for members of the Form Control office, listened carefully as she explained her reasons: she must make a direct on-site inspection of the biofeedback equipment used in performing the humanity test. The tests that she had performed on Earth had all shown the caged form unable to interact with form-change equipment. It should never have passed the humanity test. Therefore a problem, hardware or software, existed within the colony's form-change tanks.

  As she concluded with a repeat of her request to visit the Carcon Colony, Morrone slowly shook his head.

  "I understand your position, Sondra. But I don't think you understand mine. What you have described sounds like a purely technical problem. It isn't. It's also politics. Solar system politics."

  "I wouldn't be doing anything political in the Carcon Colony."

  "Nothing overtly political. But the colony is in the Kuiper Belt, and that lies in the transition zone between the Inner and Outer Systems. Anything involving the Outer System is politics. If I request that you make a visit there it's another way of saying that we don't think they are competent to evaluate the performance of their own equipment."