Proteus in the Underworld (2 page)

"I am. I'm afraid it might break the chains and get out."

Sondra slid the cover back into position. She had played a high card, and Bey Wolf had not even opened his eyes. But she still had her trump card to play. "While you're in the analysis mode, I'd like your opinion on two other things. How long do you think that this form has been like this? And how old do you think it is?"

"I have no way to judge how long the form has been this way. But it would take about four months in a form-change tank to achieve that shape. As for the age"—Wolf shrugged—"for that I would need a longer observation period, to watch movement and reaction to stimuli. It could be anything between nineteen and ninety years old."

Gotcha.

"It could be." Sondra waited, holding the moment. "But it isn't. It's four months old. And it's not an illegal form. It was
born
this shape, and it's growing fast."

Wolf's eyes blinked fully open and he offered Sondra her first direct look. "It failed the humanity test? Then it should have been destroyed two months ago."

"No. That's the problem. It was given the humanity test two months ago. And it
passed
."

"Then it should have been placed in a form-change tank at once for a remedial medical program."

"That's exactly what was done when it was shipped to us. But the programs didn't work at all. No useful change took place during two whole months in the tank. That's why I came to you." Sondra gestured again to the cage, where scaled skin was rasping horribly against metal links. "The humanity test determines what's human, because only humans can perform purposive form-change. We have something here that
passed
the humanity test. That means it can't be destroyed and must be protected. But it clearly
isn't
human, and it's immune to form-change. It's my job to find out what's going on."

Wolf had been sitting up straighter in the chair. For a moment, Sondra thought she saw a real light of curiosity in his eyes. Then he was leaning back again, nodding his head.

"Very true. As you stated, it is
your
job to find out what is going on with a form-change failure. If you were hoping that by coming here you might also make it
my
job, I have to disappoint you. I told you once, I tell you twice. I'm retired."

CHAPTER 2

Sondra had lost. Bey Wolf would not help her. And because she had lost, she could at last relax for a little while.

Ownership of a private island was proof of wealth, but a far more impressive proof came to Sondra when she saw the quality of the house's food service. As Wolf led her through to a dining room that faced out over the ocean toward the setting sun, she saw the settings for the chef. The "bite to eat" that he had offered would be a banquet.

She sat opposite Wolf at a long table of polished ebony and watched him in puzzled silence as a succession of elaborate dishes appeared. He had been gone from the Office of Form Control for three years, but Behrooz Wolf anecdotes were told there all the time. Sondra had built up a distinct mental image of the man who now sat facing her. He was supposed to be cool, nerveless, and ironic, a man of immense mental energy who loved the challenge of tough form-change problems better than anything in the world (except possibly for his known obsession with the fusty and obscure works of long-dead poets and playwrights). He was also an ascetic, as little interested in elaborate food as in clothes or form-change fashions or social fads.

So how did a man whose energy had been legendary turn into a remote idler untouched by a unique new twist on purposive form-change? How did the ascetic fit with the array of epicurean courses that were appearing before them?

Sondra had no answers, but she noticed something during the seventh course. Wolf had described every dish to her in detail and made sure that both of them were served generous portions, but he hardly touched anything on his own plate. Instead he distracted Sondra with easy, fluent talk about the island and its history— and he watched her.

She finally pushed away her plate, the latest course untasted. "I didn't travel eight thousand miles for you to study me while I eat. And I have no more interest in fancy food than you do. I came here to talk to Behrooz Wolf."

"You can learn more about a person by watching them eat one meal than by listening to them speak for a whole day."

"And?"

"You like food well enough, but you don't worship your stomach. That's good." Wolf pushed his plate away from him but he kept his eyes turned down toward it. "You say you came to talk to me, Sondra Wolf Dearborn." Her middle name was slightly emphasized. "So, talk to me. Then it will be time for you to go home."

Since she had already lost, Sondra had nothing more to lose.

"I'm terribly disappointed—in you." She blurted it out. "I'd heard about you from my family ever since I was a small child. I've read about all your most famous cases, here on Earth, out in the Horus Cluster, off in Cloudland and the Kernel Ring. You're the reason I joined the Office of Form Control. And you're still a
legend
in that office" -there, she had used the word she had sworn never to use—"as a man who can solve any form-change mystery, no matter how strange."

"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.