Proteus in the Underworld Read online

  Bey had seen it happen a score of times. A colony would be founded because its core members shared some common oddity or belief that set them apart from the rest of humanity. After a generation or two, that singular world-view might fade. The colony would then dwindle and die, or be re-absorbed to the human mainstream. But sometimes separation widened the gap. Differences, physical or mental, became more extreme.

  The Fugates were a fine example. Begin with the belief that the human brain could and should be bigger; add to it a requirement that bigger brains need bigger bodies; and after a century or two you would have—this.

  Bey gazed at the image swimming in the field of view. The shape was undeniably human, with a soft, rounded body and shortened limbs. Its head was large in proportion, like a typical human baby.

  But now came the differences. The body was nine meters long and massed more than four tons. The head was three meters from the chin to the top of the cranium. Two-thirds of that length—more than Bey's own height—was above the eyes. X-rays showed that the fitted bony plates of a normal skull had been usurped by a web of soft cartilage, bulging slightiy from the pressure of the swollen mass within.

  As Bey watched, the diminutive arms and legs moved in unison. The great head bobbed forward. His first impression was reinforced. Swimming was the right description. The immature Fugate form was curiously reminiscent of a whale, and he could imagine that in future generations those arms and legs might shrink away like rudimentary cetacean limbs.

  The warning that had come from the Fugate Colony was also appropriate. The leviathan that Bey was viewing appeared so helpless, so harmless, so in need of care. But the record showed that the maximum-security chamber and the soft mesh of cables holding the form in position were fully necessary. The chubby body and dimpled limbs possessed a whale-like strength, while the bulging skull contained a brain of reptilian ferocity and random impulse.

  It was fascinating; it was disturbing; and it was not at all revealing.

  Bey finally sighed and leaned away from the viewer. He shook his head.

  "Well?" Sondra had returned to his side, and she was looking at him hopefully.

  "It's everything that you said it is. And I can't deduce anything more than you can."

  "But you have so much more experience . . ."

  "That's not the issue. If there has been post-natal form-change, what we are seeing is just the form-change end-point. There are a million ways to get to any given form. What you need is the whole record—every step of every interaction between the original form and the form-change programs. All the two-way information transfer. That should be in the permanent files. The form passed the humanity test, we know that. What we don't know is if there were marginal areas, places where the form showed definite oddities but just squeaked through. You also need something else that you don't have: you need to know the typical form and behavior of a Fugate Colony member. I think you have been regarding this one as a monstrosity. It isn't. Physically, I suspect it's very close to the norm for a standard Fugate modification. The differences are all in the brain—where we can't see them."

  "So what do we do now?" Sondra's bright outfit contrasted with her dejected posture. She sat slumped forward in the chair, elbows on bare knees, chin in hands, staring at the viewer.

  "We? We don't do anything. I told you already, this isn't my problem. It's yours. You have to find a way to persuade Denzel Morrone to let you make a trip out to the Fugate and Carcon Colonies."

  "That's easy for you to say, but Morrone is already mad as a coot at me because I came out here to see you. A message just came through on your message center, chewing me out, while you were sitting here."

  Bey was frowning at her, as though this was the most important news of the day. "For you? But I told you not to tell anyone that you were coming to Wolf Island."

  "I didn't tell Morrone or anyone else. I chartered the flier myself. Seems Morrone found out anyway. But are you sure that going to the colonies is the right next step?"

  "It's what I would do in your situation. Unless you have a bright idea?"

  "I do. We should call Robert Capman on Saturn." And, when Bey did not respond, she went on, "I've read everything that you've ever written about him. According to you he was the absolute master of form-change theory, the greatest intellect of the century—and he became even more capable when he assumed a Logian form and moved to Saturn."

  "All quite true. And all, I suspect, irrelevant. The Logian forms, deliberately, do not involve themselves in human affairs."

  "Not the average human problem, maybe. But for a form-change problem, Capman's own special field—and if the request were to come from Bey Wolf, rather than Sondra Dearborn . . ."

  "Ah. I see." Bey swung his chair around, to peer knowingly at Sondra through half-closed eyelids. "Why didn't you admit this earlier?"

  "Admit what?"

  "That you tried to call Capman, yourself, before you ever came to see me."

  "It didn't seem relevant." Sondra would not meet his eyes.

  "Why not? He is still alive, you know that. Messages beamed to Saturn reach him. Your message must have reached him. If he were interested in your problem he certainly had the means to reply."

  "That's not the point, is it?" She sat up straight and glared at him with new energy. "You are the one who worships the fusty old writers. You are the literature and quotation junkie. So try and finish this one. 'I can summon spirits from the vasty deep.' "

  "Maybe you have been doing some homework—at least on me." Bey leaned back and thought for a moment. "It's Shakespeare. Glendower says it. And Hotspur answers: 'Why so can I, and so can any man. But will they come when you do call for them.' I see. Anyone can call Robert Capman on Saturn—"

  "But only Behrooz Wolf will get a reply. I sent a message and I didn't hear one word back. But you would. You were his fair-haired boy. If you called him, he'd talk to you."

  "He might. He probably would. But I think I know what he'd tell me." "What?"

  "Exactly what I am telling you. Go and solve it for yourself. I'm busy enough with my own work."

  "You don't have any work. You've said it a dozen times, you retired three years ago."

  "To pursue my own interests. Not yours, or anyone else's."

  "You were ready enough to run off to Mars, when Trudy Melford wandered in and blinked her big blue eyes at you. But you won't help one of your own relatives."

  "That argument again?" Bey sighed. "Let's dispose of it, once and for all. Then I need rest—you may not care, but I have been up all night. Working. Come on."

  He led the way along another hallway, to a part of the house that Sondra had not seen before. It was an odd combination of bedroom and study. The displays in the ceiling and the controls beside the bed would allow someone to work or sleep with equal comfort. Bey went to a wall unit, where a complex chart was displayed.

  "You have assured me several times that you and I are related, as though this entitles you to special consideration."

  "We are related."

  "Indeed we are. But how closely? I took the trouble to determine that. Here is my genealogical chart, displayed together with yours. If we were identical twins we would share one hundred percent of our genetic material. If we were total strangers, unrelated in any way, we would share zero percent. From this lineage diagram you can determine for yourself our common genetic heritage."

  Sondra stared at the family tree. She shook her head. "I don't know how to do that."

  That earned another stare, this one more puzzled than knowing. "I am suitably appalled by your ignorance. But let me tell you how. Assuming there has been no inbreeding between distinct lines, the procedure is quite simple. Let's start with me. We go back through the tree, to every common ancestor that you and I share. Here we go." He stepped up through the generations. "Your great-great-grandfather was my great-grandfather, Dieter Wolf. He is our closest common ancestor. I was actually quite surprised to find that we share another, nine
generations back, but that's so long ago I'm not sure I trust the results. Let's ignore it for the moment. We start with you. You share one hundred percent of genetic material with yourself. Now we go back toward our first common ancestor. At each generation, we multiply by one half. Your father was Soltan Dearborn. One half. His mother was Amelia Wolf. One quarter. Her mother was Cynthia Wolf-Stein. One eighth. And her father was Dieter Wolf. One sixteenth. You have one-sixteenth of Dieter Wolf's genetic material.

  "Now we come back down the tree. And at each generation, we multiply by one-half again. Dieter Wolf was my great-grandfather. Dieter Wolf's son was Seth Wolf. We're now at one thirty-second, a half of one-sixteenth. Seth Wolf's son was Hector Wolf. One sixty-fourth. And finally we get to me, because Hector Wolf was my father. One one-hundred-and-rwenty-eighth. You and I share less than one percent of our genetic material. If I throw in the other common ancestor, nine generations back, I simply add that to the other number. It makes hardly any difference—one part in five hundred thousand. Do you follow this?"

  Sondra was scowling. "I follow it, but I'm not sure I believe it. Or see why it's relevant."

  "Try it for some cases you know already. Brothers: two common ancestors—mother and father. Go back one generation from brother to mother, and down again from mother to other brother. That gives one quarter. Do the same for the father, another quarter. Add. Brothers share half their genetic material. Half-brothers share a quarter, cousins share one eighth. You and I share one one-hundred-and-twenty-eighth. Now come with me. I want to show you something."

  Bey was smiling to himself as he led the way out of the bedroom and descended two levels to the basement laboratory. Sondra followed, totally confused. Bey had a habit of subject change and digression unlike anything she had encountered in her studies or in the Office of Form Control. It sounded as if he were simply trying to annoy her, but she sensed that there was more to it than that.

  He was walking along past a set of closed metal doors with external cipher locks. At the fourth one he stopped, dialed in a combination, and swung it open.

  "Come in."

  Sondra followed and squeaked in alarm and surprise when a small brown figure jumped across the room and grabbed her by the hand.

  "Don't be scared. That's Jumping Jack Flash, and he's as friendly a chimp as you'll find anywhere."

  Sondra looked down and found herself staring into a pair of solemn and knowing brown eyes.

  "I just wanted to introduce the two of you," Bey went on. "And here's a question that I know you can answer, because it's in the standard form-control briefings. How much genetic material do a human and a chimpanzee have in common?"

  "Ninety-nine percent. Actually, a bit more than that."

  "Quite right." Bey reached down, and the chimp swung itself up his arm and to his shoulders in one easy movement. "That means you and I have less in common genetically than you and the chimp."

  "That's absolute nonsense!"

  "Of course it is, and I'm glad to hear you say so. I'll leave it to you to explain why it's nonsense."

  It wasn't done simply to annoy. Sondra recalled another part of the Bey Wolf legend at the Office of Form Control. He was a unique teacher. Come to him with a problem, and he almost never provided a straight answer. Instead he did something apparently unrelated, something that made you think and figure out the answer for yourself.

  He was trying to make her think. And she was thinking—but not about genetics and probabilities.

  Sondra stared at the chimp, draped affectionately around Bey's neck. Jumping Jack Flash did not look quite right. His huge, grinning teeth were pure chimp, but his skull was higher than usual and his nose had more cartilage. Then she thought of the form-change tanks that they had passed as they walked through the basement lab, and another thought leaped into her mind from nowhere.

  "Bey." (She was calling him Bey, just as if she was on the terms of familiarity with him that she had pretended to Trudy Melford. Why?) "Bey, don't do it. Please. Don't even think of it."

  She expected an argument, perhaps a pretence that he did not understand what she was talking about. Instead she received a lightning flash from dark eyes that were suddenly wide open.

  "How do you know what I was thinking of doing?"

  "I'm a Wolf, too. I really am. All your genetic calculations don't mean a thing. I'm a Wolf."

  He was studying her again, as though he saw her for the first time. "Maybe you are at that."

  "Promise me you won't. It's a first step on the road to hell."

  " 'Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.' Sorry. Quoting is a lifelong habit, I find it hard to shake. All right, I promise you I'll put this experiment on the back-burner."

  "Not enough."

  Bey grimaced, with annoyance or resignation. "All right, I promise you I will not pursue experiments with Jack Flash—or with any other chimp that has been given a human DNA boost—unless I first discuss it with you."

  "Any other organism with a human DNA boost."

  "Any other organism."

  "Thank you."

  "No need for thanks." Bey stood silent for a moment, the chimpanzee lying silent like a great fur scarf around his neck. "And if you can tell me why I would make such a promise, I will be most grateful."

  "I don't know." But I think I do. Sondra stared around the room. It was not anything like an animal cage. It was an apartment, as good as the one that she lived in. "I have to go now. I have to get back as soon as the weather allows. I'm going to change clothes, then I'm leaving."

  What she did not say, what she could not say, was that she was suddenly hideously uncomfortable with what she was wearing. She was revealing too much skin, too much length of leg.

  But too much for whom?

  She headed for the door. As she reached it she turned. "May I come back and see you again?"

  "If you wish."

  "I may not have results."

  Bey nodded. "I know. Come anyway. Keep me from the road to hell."

  The moment stretched. Neither spoke. Then Sondra had turned and was fleeing—back to the upper level of the house, back to the psychological safety of the murderous storm outside.

  CHAPTER 6

  It was thirty-three hours since Bey had slept. He watched Sondra's departure, lifting off safely into dark afternoon rain clouds; and then he returned to his bedroom to rest.

  Or pretend to. He lay staring at the ceiling, while the overhead displays flickered in spiraling colored patterns designed to soothe and relax. One touch of his right hand to the control panel by the bedside would take a more direct step. He would be eased into programmed sleep.

  His hand remained at his side. Too many mysteries; they were creeping around the base of his subconscious mind. He needed to name and catalog them before he could relax.

  Begin with Sondra. He had checked her records at the Office of Form Control. She had done extremely well in everything theoretical, but her practical experience was woefully inadequate. And she was very junior. He would never have given her an assignment as difficult as a failure of the humanity test in a remote and unfamiliar location. The Carcon and Fugate colonists were notoriously tough on outsiders. Without help her chances of success were low indeed.

  But she was seeking help—his help, as a family member. Had someone else counted on that? Did someone in the Office of Form Control already realize that she and Bey were related when she was assigned to the case? That was unlikely. The connection lay so many generations in the past. Bey had noticed that her name in the official files was Sondra Dearborn, not Sondra Wolf Dearborn. She had identified herself to Bey as a fellow Wolf only because she was trying to enlist his support.

  But if no one had known of their relationship when the project was assigned to her, it was Bey's guess that this was no longer the case. Sondra was now tagged as a Bey Wolf relative—with whatever that implied.

  What else? He had told her to come and see him without telling anyone else in the Office of Form Control. Bu
t certainly someone had learned of her latest visit, because Denzel Morrone had known enough to send a message to Sondra here, on Wolf Island.

  Mystery, or trivial incident? Bey had asked her not to talk about her visit—but he had not told her to keep it secret. A crucial distinction.

  One person who had surely not known that Sondra would arrive on Wolf Island was Trudy Melford. Her surprise had been genuine. But how much else of what she had to say was true? If Bey's instincts were good for anything, Trudy held a whole hand of cards that she was not willing to show—until he did what she wanted, and went to Mars. Perhaps not even then.

  Did she need him all that much? Bey had little false modesty, but he doubted that his skills exceeded the combined talent available within the Biological Equipment Corporation. Trudy surely had her own hidden agenda, of which he must form a part.

  Bey reached for the control panel at the bedside. Not for programmed sleep, not quite yet. He inserted the silver card that Trudy Melford had given him into the transportation module. Here at least she had not been deceiving him. The return showed huge available credit, beyond the number of digits that the machine could display. Bey instructed the module to arrange for a maximum-speed link from Wolf Island to Mars beginning in fourteen hours, with money no object. He asked for feedback only if Trudy balked at the cost.

  At last he closed his eyes. He knew he would sleep now, and without the need for any program.

  Had Sondra Dearborn or Trudy Melford been present in the room he would not have thanked them. But he should have. For if one thing in the world pleased Bey Wolf more than any other, it was the delicious sense of anticipation provided by new and perplexing questions.

  * * *

  Earth's permanent link system composed an exact twenty entry points, located close to the vertices of a regular dodecahedron. It had been conceived by its creator, Gerald Mattin, as an instantaneous and energy-free system of transportation in flat spacetime. Practical details had ruined that dream. Earth was not a perfect sphere, so the vertices were slightly off their ideal locations; spacetime near Earth's surface was slightly curved. Travel through the Mattin Link was still effectively instantaneous, but it came at a price.