Proteus in the Underworld Page 25

  "And then your BEC people got into the act." Bey sighed and shook his head. "It's an old, old story, one I suffered with myself for half a century. Your employees try to do what they think you want done, but they only know half the facts. So they do things you later wish they hadn't done. Jarvis Dommer—I feel sure it was his work—somehow guessed that you were worried about Sondra. He arranged for her to have an 'accident' out on the Fugate colony. Since it was supposed to be an accident it couldn't be made foolproof, and Sondra was smart enough to survive. But it was more evidence, proof to me that we were close to learning something that you really didn't want learned."

  "I didn't intend for anything bad to happen to Sondra. I didn't even know anything was going to happen." Trudy Melford stared at them across the table. "Believe that, Sondra, if you believe nothing else. As for your accident, Bey, I had nothing to do with that, either."

  "You don't surprise me. There's a problem with people like Dommer, who only really work for money. So long as you are paying them top rate, they are good, loyal employees. But the moment some other group offers them more, they automatically work for them and not for you."

  "I pay Jarvis Dommer very well—ridiculously well."

  "But someone was willing to outbid you. My bet is that the Old Mars team got to Dommer. They thought—wrongly—that I was behind the surface forms, and they decided it would be cheaper to put me out of circulation than buy me."

  "Rafael Fermiel?"

  "No. I'm not sure I can even suggest the name. By the way, Fermiel should be arriving here in just a few minutes. He was doing something for me, then he'll be along. Georgia Kruskal, too, the designer and leader of the Mars surface forms. So I'd better press on.

  "I was out of the picture for a while, sitting in a form-change tank recovering from my own 'accident.' I didn't know anything about Samarkand until Aybee Smith told me that Sondra was going there, and why. Then I dumped the transport records. I found that sure enough, you had been making trips out there, yourself. But you know what, Trudy? You were a little bit careless. You didn't fix the old transport records. They show that you visited Samarkand only during the past year. That's not long enough if Errol Ergan Melford had been out there for four years. I added that to my own set of puzzles.

  "The list was starting to grow. Let me give you another item or two on it: If you are really interested in the surface forms, and I believe you are, why weren't you all for them and deadly opposed to the Underworld? Yet when we talked about it you came across as neutral, telling me that you didn't play politics—when it's BEC s main stock in trade and everybody knows it. And here's another puzzle for you: Why did you move BEC Headquarters to Mars? I know what you told me, that it was simple economics. But I did a little of my own digging. I found that the Planetary Coordinators on Earth were willing to give BEC a deal every bit as good as the one that Mars offered. You didn't need to move—didn't need to, at least, for the reason that you gave. What other possible reason could there be, for such a major undertaking? You had to move all the records, the business, the castle itself. Is there any single explanation that could cover the whole list?"

  "Get it over with, Bey." Trudy Melford was nothing like an Empress now. Her lips were trembling and her face was set and bloodless. "I know that you know. Just tell me what you want."

  "I can't do that yet." Every few seconds Bey was glancing impatiently toward the door.

  "You mean won't. Don't play with me, Bey Wolf. I'm not a mouse."

  "And I'm not a cat, Trudy. I don't enjoy hurting people."

  "You don't even have to tell me what you want. I'll give you everything. Everything I possess if you'll keep what you know to yourself."

  "I can't do that, either. Damnation, where are they? Trudy, if I'm right it may not be as bad as you think—"

  "It couldn't be." Trudy leaned forward until her head rested on the smooth table top. "You have no idea what I think—how I feel."

  Sondra had watched in total amazement. She had little idea what Bey was talking about, but in a few minutes she had seen Trudy Melford change from the Empress of BEC, a regal woman in full control of herself, to a pathetic lump of misery. In spite of herself, the sympathy swelled inside Sondra. She went around to Trudy's side of the table, sat down next to her, and took her hand. And then, at what should have been a very private moment, in came a chubby red-bearded stranger, bounding along on the balls of his feet.

  "Done," he said to Bey. "Took a bit longer than I expected, but you were exactly right."

  "Where is he?"

  "Outside."

  "What the devil's the point of having him out there before we've seen him? Bring him in, Fermiel."

  "Sure." Red-beard bounced away again, leaving Sondra wondering what could possibly come next.

  "Come on, Trudy." Bey was speaking again, almost chiding. "You can't let him see you like this. It would upset him."

  "He's here?" Trudy Melford straightened up at once, staring wild-eyed about her. "But how—how did you find out what he looks like and where he was? Nobody should know that, except me and a few people in the Underworld."

  "There is far more to a person than external appearance." Bey paused. Rafael Fermiel had entered again leading a small blond child. The boy took one look around the room and ran to Trudy Melford's arms.

  "Mummy!"

  Bey gazed at Trudy and the little boy with curiosity and huge satisfaction as they hugged each other. "Sondra, I don't think the two of you have met. I feel sure that there is an official Mars name, which Trudy can tell us, but let me use his Earth name. Allow me to introduce you to Errol Ergan Melford."

  CHAPTER 21

  Trudy had the child clutched in a great bear hug. "It's all right, sweetie. Everything's going to be all right." She glared defiantly at Bey over the boy's head. "You can do anything you like to me, I don't care. But can't you leave him alone?"

  "I could, but I don't think I ought to." Bey came around to stand by Trudy and placed one hand on the top of Errol Melford's shoulder. "He deserves something better in life than skulking in the deep Underworld." The fair head turned up to look at him with clear, trusting eyes. "Errol, my name is Behrooz Wolf. I work with your mother."

  "Are you her friend?"

  "I hope I am. I hope she will think so, too. Will you do something for me?"

  "I'll try."

  "Will you wait outside again with Mr. Fermiel for a little bit longer? I need to talk to your mother again."

  "Business?"

  "Business."

  The blond head nodded. Bey waited until Fermiel had led the boy out of the room, then he sat down on Trudy's other side. He stared thoughtfully at Trudy and Sondra.

  He did not speak, until Sondra said tartly, "Are you going to sit there forever? Or are you sometime going to explain what's happening here?"

  "Sorry." Bey sighed. "I summon up remembrance of things past. Sorry, I'm at it again. I'm not supposed to do that. But all this carries me back a long way." He roused himself and reached into a shirt pocket. He took out a single sheet of paper and placed it on the table. "Some of this you already know, Trudy better than anyone. But let me summarize.

  "A baby, apparently normal physically and psychologically, who failed the humanity test. A mother who couldn't bear the idea of losing him, of seeing her child dumped into the organ banks. So she used her money and her influence to erase the evidence that the test had ever been taken, and then faked her infant son's death. But that couldn't be the end of the story. What was Trudy Melford going to do with Errol Melford?

  "There was more than one possible answer to that question. She could send him to a place like Samarkand, far off in the Kuiper Belt, where humanity tests and purposive form-change had no place. But if she did that, she would see her son only rarely, maybe a couple of times a year.

  "Was there somewhere closer, and almost as good? Well, there was the Mars Underworld. It was not as safe as Samarkand, but the struggle between Old Mars and the developing surface forms
was having an effect. Although form-change was not banned outright in the Underworld, it was increasingly unpopular. Errol could hide there, with a new identity. And his mother could see him as often as she chose—particularly if she moved to Mars herself, along with BEC Headquarters and Melford Castle. Then she might see him every day. Relocation would be a major step, but who was going to argue with her? She was the Empress, she made the rules.

  "You did all that, Trudy, and still you were worried. It was hard to see how it could happen, but suppose someone learned that Errol had not died in the Aegean Sea. Suppose they suspected that he was still alive?

  "There was an answer to that, too. Make a false trail that showed Errol had been shipped off to live on Samarkand—a trail, by the way, that we never found, but I feel sure it's there. Go to Samarkand yourself, a place that the head of BEC would never normally choose to visit. That would 'prove' that Errol was living there.

  "And do one other thing, too. Trudy Melford is the absolute ruler of BEC, and she controls BEC's production line. So make slight changes to machines intended for certain high-mutation-rate colonies, changes that would allow a few cases to pass the humanity test when they should have failed it. That became a real concern of mine, when I first suspected what was happening." Bey paused. "Trudy, it could have gone both ways. Did the changes ever fail an individual who would otherwise have passed?"

  "Never!" Trudy glared back at him. "Do you think I would put some other mother through the hell that I went through? A few feral forms passed. That was all."

  "But as a result the humanity test itself came under suspicion and increased criticism. When its results were questioned, Errol would become a little bit safer. The Office of Form Control would 'investigate' the problem, but Denzel Morrone would make sure that the right person was assigned to it."

  "Uhhh! The right person." Sondra banged her hand on the table. "You mean the dumb person. You mean me!"

  "Sorry, Sondra. Morrone did it, I didn't. I told you there were things I had to say that you would not like to hear. Anyway, Morrone assigned you. But he remained close to what was happening—too close. I sensed that very early. He was the director of the whole office, and this was a relatively small and apparently unimportant project. Normally a junior staff member would have no direct contact with him. But he had to stay close, because he intended to remove the investigator if she did too well. He would track her activities. At worst, Sondra might be allowed as far as the false trail to Samarkand. But no farther.

  "It seemed that nothing could possibly go wrong. And in a sense, it didn't. The fact that Sondra was related to me, and came to see me, was really irrelevant. I had my own work to do. I wasn't about to become involved. But you and I had met before, Trudy, and it seems I have a reputation at the Office of Form Control. Even though I had retired, you were afraid."

  "With justice." Trudy gestured to the door through which Rafael Fermiel had taken Errol Melford. "I was afraid, and I had every right to be afraid. You were Bey Wolf, the legendary Bey Wolf. I was afraid of what you might be able to do. I was afraid of something exactly like this. And I'm still afraid. Even if you found out that Errol was alive and on Mars, you ought not to have been able to find him. There are five separate links between him and me, and no one should be able to follow the whole chain. How did you do it?"

  "I didn't." Bey tapped the sheet of paper sitting on the table in front of him. "Tracking people is not my game. Form-change, theory and practice, is. The humanity test is based on the ability to perform purposive form-change. I have been thinking about that test for more than fifty years, and I have a first-rate reason to do so. Because although I passed the test—obviously, since I am here—I came perilously close to failing. I discussed the problem long ago with Robert Capman, who is known to you by reputation if not in person. We concluded that there is a certain psychological profile which differs a little from the human norm, in specific ways. Individuals with it have real trouble with the humanity test. I have such a quirky profile. So does Capman. And so, I suspected, might Errol Melford."

  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 a
sked 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."