Proteus in the Underworld Read online

  Bey knew of nothing that he had said to cause the change. There had to be another reason—and he had an idea what it might be. He couldn't wait to get to his data center and begin his own investigations. He ate and chatted about nothing, but as soon as he could politely do so he nodded at Trudy and pushed his chair away from the table.

  "That was delicious." (Not really a lie. He had hardly noticed the food, but he was sure that Melford Castle served only the system's finest.) "Now I have to be getting back to Earth."

  Trudy came really alive for the first time since they had sat down at the table. "You'll consider my offer?" She was staring at him anxiously.

  "I am already considering it."

  "If there is anything else that you need to know, or want to add to make it more attractive . . ."

  "Nothing. I would like one small favor before I leave. I'd like to place a call to Wolf Island."

  "But you said no one is there."

  "True. I want to check my message center."

  "No problem." Trudy stood up. "You can use my personal communication system." She led the way out of the dining-room and back up to the fifth floor, this time taking the other direction when they came to the top of the stairs. Bey realized that her living quarters must consist of the whole fourth floor. Only blind luck had led him earlier straight into her private dressing-room.

  They walked along a hallway filled with Melford family portraits, most of them dark and brooding, until Trudy stopped and opened a paneled door of polished oak. She smiled and ushered him in. "This is it. Make yourself at home. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised."

  She stayed outside, closing the door.

  Surprised? Bey walked over and examined the console. It was a conventional enough communication system, no better than the one installed on Wolf Island. He sat down and queried for Earth-Mars response time. He expected to see a number around thirteen minutes, the round-trip travel time for bodies that were currency about a hundred and twenty million kilometers apart.

  What he got was nonsense. The Earth-Mars response time was cited as 1.5 seconds.

  Bey shrugged. If this element of the system was not working, there was a good chance that the rest might be no better. He entered his personal code and sat down to wait for an indication that the query was being relayed through to Earth. Before he knew it, the system was responding. His own ID appeared on the screen and his message center's voice was saying, "There are three messages for you. Do you want to hear them, or do you need some other service?"

  "I'll hear my messages. Oh Lord. I get it!"

  Sondra Dearborn's face appeared on the screen, but Bey hardly noticed her. He had realized what must be happening. Trudy was making use of her Earth-Mars link to provide signal communications. His outgoing message would be sent to a recorder on Mars, right next to the link; then the recorder shuttled through the link and down-loaded to an Earth-based planetary communication system for transmission to Wolf Island. The response would be stored on the same recorder, shuttled back through the link, and placed into the Mars system. Finally it would be sent on to him.

  The process could be done almost instantaneously, since the main reason for delay in shipping humans was the simple need to equalize ambient air pressure. Message units didn't require that. They would operate happily at any pressure, even in vacuum.

  Why had no one used the same sort of system for communications on Earth? Simple. Even using satellite relays, the signal delay was only a fraction of a second, and satellite transmission was a lot cheaper than a Mattin link. But there would be a real market when the natural signal travel time was minutes or hours—as Bey knew from experience, there were few things in the world more frustrating than waiting ten minutes for the answer to an urgent question. Trudy Melford had again showed the Midas touch. In opening an Earth-Mars Mattin link for her own convenience, she had tapped a whole new potential market. The United Space Federation would certainly want to use it for urgent USF business.

  Bey realized that Sondra was still talking. He had not been listening. He sent his own signal, telling the processor at his house to start over.

  It didn't work. She went on talking, and she looked ghastly. He swore, hit the command sequence again, and finally noticed that he was receiving a real-time transmission. It was not a recording. Sondra had somehow managed to over-ride his house system and replace its signal with her own—even though Bey's earlier experience with Jarvis Dommer had led him to make a specific change to rule out that form of interruption.

  "Sondra? How did you manage to do that?"

  There was a delay, of perhaps two seconds. In that interval Bey had another revelation. In the background, behind Sondra's framed head and shoulders, he could see a wall-chart.

  He recognized it: it was a taxonomy of form-change routes. He had made the chart himself. And hung it on his own study wall.

  "What the devil are you doing inside my house?" he burst out. "You're supposed to be on your way to the Carcon and Fugate colonies."

  This time even the two second delay was intolerable, until Sondra finally answered. "Weren't you listening to me at all?" There was horror on her face but no hint of embarrassment. "There's been another one—in the same region of the Kuiper Belt." Her voice rose to an anguished squeak. "Bey, I just have to talk with you about this—as soon as you can possibly get back to Wolf Island."

  CHAPTER 8

  Sondra's mood had changed on her way back to the Office of Form Control. Her meeting with Bey Wolf—or maybe it was her spat with Trudy Melford—had been the final straw. She steadily became more and more angry. She was going to prove she was as good as anyone, in BEC or out of it, when it came to solving form-change mysteries. As for Denzel Morrone, with or without his permission she would head for the Kuiper Belt just as soon as she could arrange a flight. She would do it with her own savings, and on her own time, and to hell with the office.

  She did not go to headquarters as she had originally intended, but hurried instead to the apartment that she shared with two other Form Control employees. The place was supremely disorganized—as usual—and locating the must-have items for her trip took a little time. She was still hunting and cursing when her partners in messiness walked in.

  "Well?" Gipsy and Dill came into the bedroom and perched on the high stool by the dressing table. They were testing an experimental multiform and had finally reached the stable commensal stage that preceded body cross-over. The combined form watched Sondra as she pawed through a big pile of freshly-laundered clothing, heaped randomly on the floor. "So tell us. How was he?"

  "What do you mean?" Sondra knew from the question that Gipsy was speaking, even though the commensal was in Dill's body. Dill herself must be in dormant mode. "How was who?"

  "That's what me and Dill are waiting for you to tell us. Who?"

  "I don't know what you mean."

  "Oh, come off it, Sondra. All of a sudden you get secretive with your friends about what you're doing. You disappear for days at a time without telling anybody, then you come back all wild and woolly like you just spent a weekend with Tarzan. Go look at yourself in a mirror. You're flushed and straggled and wiped out. If that doesn't spell s-e-x, I don't know what does."

  "You've got it all wrong." Sondra thought for a moment. She had not told anyone where she was going, but they had known it anyway. Denzel Morrone had reached her easily enough. Secrecy was a waste of time. "I've been to visit Behrooz Wolf. Twice."

  "Really?" Gipsy eased Dill's body off the stool and walked over to help Sondra assign the underclothes to their right owners. "The Great Bey himself. We always thought you were kidding when you said he was one of your relatives. I repeat the question with even more interest. How was he?"

  "If you're thinking along your usual one-track, I have no idea. We did nothing but talk about the problem that I've been assigned at the office."

  "The mystery problem that you can't talk about to us. Hmm. But you talk to Wolf—or you think you talk. Let me remind you
of something. Studies in Form Control, Lesson Three: A human being is at least ninety-eight percent subconscious mind and at most two percent conscious mind. The conscious two percent spends much of its time trying to explain, after the fact and in logical terms, what the ninety-eight percent subconscious mind decided to do and did. Speech is a function of the conscious mind. It is impossible for the whole transfer of information during a meeting of two humans, or even the bulk of such transfer, to be limited to speech alone. You think you just talked, but from the look of you Wolf did a whole lot more to you than that."

  Sondra had never been too impressed with that particular section of the training course, and Gipsy hadn't quoted it correctly; but she could not forget those intense final few minutes on Wolf Island. "He's not at all the way you're thinking. He's old."

  "How old?"

  "Middle seventies, according to his file."

  "And he's dropped his form-conditioning?" Gipsy suddenly sounded horrified. "That's suicide."

  "I don't think so. He looks like he takes regular sessions in the tanks. He's strange, but he's not crazy."

  "Then he's good for at least another fifty years. Plenty of mileage left in him once you get him going."

  "Don't be crude. Anyway, you don't understand. He doesn't look old, his form is maybe thirty and very fit. But he acts ancient. Cold, and remote and superior, and sort of turned off."

  "Maybe women turn him off." Gipsy went wandering across toward the message center as though she had lost interest in the conversation; but one eye was still on Sondra. "Maybe he prefers men."

  "No way!" Sondra raised her head and glared. "I'm sure he doesn't."

  "Well, if you're that sure." Gipsy seemed pleased with herself as she bent over the center. "There's still hope. Hey, don't you ever check for messages? You've had one waiting here for hours."

  "From Bey Wolf?" Sondra had not even thought about messages when she rushed in.

  "Dream on. It's from the boss. Wonder what dear Denzel wants with you. Like me to call it out?"

  They knew Sondra's code, just as she knew theirs.

  "Sure. Go ahead."

  Sondra moved to Gipsy's side, waiting for the message to be recalled. Typical of Morrone, it was in written rather than oral form.

  From: Headquarters, Office of Form Control.

  To: Sondra Dearborn.

  Subject: Failure of humanity test.

  My office received news four hours ago of another unfortunate situation in the Carcon Colony. Offspring successfully passed the humanity test but was proved non-human by its subsequent behavior. This is, as you know, the third such failure, others having occurred in the Carcon and also in the Fugate Colony.

  Earlier today I received a query from the United Space Federation via the Planetary Coordinators, asking why there has been no on-site investigation of this case. That question seems very appropriate. It is two months since the case was assigned to you. Why have you not visited either the Carcon or the Fugate Colony in person?

  I look forward to your prompt reply and explanation.

  It will form part of your official record with the Office of Form Control.

  —Denzel Morrone, Office Head

  "The bastard! The absolute bastard."

  "What has he done?" Gipsy could hear rare rage in Sondra's tone. The message meant nothing to her.

  "Screwed me."

  "Since it's Denzel Morrone, I know you're being metaphorical. Screwed you how?"

  "First he refuses me permission to go out to the Kuiper Belt, says it's not necessary. Now he turns around and blames me because I haven't already been."

  "Covering his ass. See there, he says he had a query from the Planetary Coordinators. Standard creepy-Denzel operating procedure. What are you going to do?"

  "Head for the Kuiper Belt and the colonies. But first—"

  "Watch it, Sondra. Don't throw your job away."

  "It's all right. I'm not going after Morrone—that slimy scum can sit and fester until I'm ready to talk with him. But I need help, bigtime. Before I leave I have to take one last shot at Bey Wolf."

  "We'll help you pack." The hands and head of the commensal gave a sudden twitch. Dill was awake and had joined the group. "Mm. Looks like I arrived just in time—before you do your usual trick and run off with all my clean underwear."

  "I don't know why you worry, Dill." Sondra started to throw bits and pieces into a travel bag. "By the time I get back you should be through body crossover. You won't be my size then—Gipsy will."

  * * *

  One last shot at Bey Wolf. It felt more and more that way when Sondra reached Wolf Island and found it deserted.

  She had contacted Bey's message center, just as he had told her to, but only a machine had answered. And when she arrived at the lonely beach after a top-speed flight from the Cocos Islands link point, only the two hounds greeted her.

  Sondra grabbed her travel bag and her thin brown satchel of data records and headed along the jetty. Before leaving the apartment she had downloaded everything on the new form-change problem and booked a rapid transit to the Carcon Colony. In less than fourteen hours she had to be at the spaceport and heading for orbit.

  She peered at the two mastiff hounds as they gambolled about her on the beach. Something looked different about them. Or about one of them.

  "Here, Janus! Good dog." Sondra grabbed the hound by the collar and made a closer inspection of its underbelly. Hadn't both dogs been male on her previous visits? But those nipples told a different story. Janus was now certainly a bitch.

  Well, it didn't prove much. Sex-change didn't imply form-change experiments; it could be done easily and routinely with pure chemical treatments. Sondra headed on up the beach.

  The house when she reached it was silent and deserted. It was also unlocked and open, as though Bey was either somewhere inside or had stepped away for a few minutes. Just when she urgently needed to see him.

  She called his name at the front door. No response. She went inside and called again. After a few more minutes of waiting and prowling the main floor she helped herself to a drink and a sandwich—it felt like days since she had eaten.

  Still no sign of him.

  Maybe he was in his basement lab. Retired or not, he certainly spent a lot of time there, and it might be pretty well sound-proof. Feeling like an intruder—but even more impatient and annoyed at the owner's absence—Sondra descended to the house's lower levels. There she confirmed the impression of her earlier visit: the basement's form-change tanks had seen some odd modifications, surely put in by Bey, but they were as sophisticated as you would find anywhere. Unfortunately there was no sign of the man himself.

  She returned to the main floor and went back to the message center. The lights were blinking. One of the messages would be from her. Maybe one of the others would tell where Bey was, and when he would be back. She reached out one hand, then stood dithering. She had no right in the world to read Bey Wolf's private mail. But time was short, and she couldn't afford to waste it.

  A difficult decision was avoided when the machine became active without any touch from her. She found herself staring at Bey's startled image on the display.

  The surprise was mutual. Sondra pressed the transmission button and started to explain why she was inside Bey's home, but before she was halfway through he cut her off. He didn't sound impatient. Just super-furious.

  "Wait there," he snarled. "And don't touch anything else in my house!"

  It was an order, not a suggestion. Sondra opened her mouth for a second try at explanations and found that he was gone. As his image faded she made a quick check for the point of origin of the call. The reply was a stream of unfamiliar numbers. Bey was making a call from a point outside the whole communication system. He could not be anywhere on the land surface of Earth, or within its oceans.

  Wait, he had said. But for how long? Where was he? She had to be on her way to the Carcon Colony in just a few hours.

  Sondra grabbed the bro
wn satchel of data records and went back to the terminal. Bey's order not to touch presumably did not apply to general computer access. She loaded her new data from the colony and began to study it.

  The story was by now familiar. A new-born infant, strange in appearance even by colony standards, but given as always the benefit of the doubt (some of the system's finest minds had emerged from the womb looking like teratomas). The standard humanity test, and its successful passage. And then the horror, as the supposed human was shown to be pure animal, incapable of reason, incapable of learning, capable only of savagery.

  Sondra peered at the most recent failure. This one did not look like a ferocious beast. It was placid and unresponsive, dull and unmoving. Staring at it she was able to ask a question that the horror of the other two failed forms had blanked from her mind. Here was a non-human result of human couplings. Random mutation would always produce such a genetic mistake from time to time; but what were the odds of such a result? If it were more common here than elsewhere in the system, the problem lay in the physical environment of the colonies, forcing mutations faster than elsewhere. She pulled the statistical data files and made the comparison. The mutation rate was indeed unnaturally high.

  But that merely created two mysteries in place of the original one. Why were mutation rates higher in these colonies, leading to the birth of non-human babies? And then, if that could be explained, why were the humanity tests passing those non-human creatures, insisting that they were in fact fully human?

  Sondra struggled on, comparing the Carcon Colony records with those of other colonies. Once she got into the swing of it the work was surprisingly interesting. She was amazed when she heard the outer door slide open and looked up to find that more than three hours had passed since she sat down.