Proteus in the Underworld (23 page)

The vegetation scrunched slightly under his boots. Looking behind him, he could see his progress marked by thin broken stems. It made him feel slightly guilty. He tried to walk where the path was already well-defined because plants were not growing as thickly. Vegetation on Mars bad enough to cope with from natural conditions, without a blundering human adding to the hardships.

Soon he was at the edge of the shadowed rock. The track he was following went right up to the shadow and vanished into it. Bey could do the same, but he would have to use his suit light. Presumably the car had allowed for such a thing when it quoted him his power and air limits.

He set the light to broad beam and turned it on. And froze.

Right in front of him, standing no more than ten meters within the shadow, a white form was silently waiting.

"Hello." Bey raised his suited arm in greeting. "Can you speak?"

Even as he said the words they sounded inane.

"Of course I can speak." The voice was faint and distorted, carrying to Bey partly through the thin Martian air and partly as ground vibration. It sounded impatient and irritated. Bey noticed that there was no cloud of frozen vapor emerging from the broad mouth to accompany the words. The form did not waste warmed air with valuable oxygen in it merely to produce speech. A smart design would pass it over the vocal chords and then return it to lung storage. And if this form had anything, it was a smart designer.

"My name is Behrooz Wolf. I am a visitor to Mars. I would like to speak with you. I mean, with the ones of your kind who are most appropriate."

"Sure.
Take me to your leader.
Why don't you just say it? I didn't volunteer for this job anyway. Come on." The form turned. "My name is Dmitri Seychel," it said over its shoulder as it headed deeper into the shadow, "though I'm sure you don't give a damn about that. What took you so long? I've been waiting for you ever since your car landed."

Not
it. He.
Bey was sure he would have determined that for himself after a few more seconds. There were a hundred clues as to the innate sex of a form, and most of them had nothing to do with appearance or dress.

He studied Dmitri Seychel as he walked along behind him. His only previous opportunity to examine the surface forms had come from above and far away. Now he could confirm or deny those first impressions.

The body was a little taller than Earth-human average and far fatter. The bulky torso, arms, and upper legs were covered with a pouched suit of gleaming white. Bey suspected that, like the visible parts of the body itself, the suit changed color depending on its surroundings. It was white now, to minimize loss of heat, but it would change to black when exposed to sunlight. The fat body wobbled with each step that Seychel took. Almost certainly it bore an inches-thick layer of protective blubber as thermal insulation.

The extremities were less clearly human. The feet, encased in snug-fitting boots that came half-way up kangaroo-like legs, had thick well-separated toes. Bey noticed that Seychel had no trouble at all in strolling along in front of him like any other human. But those same limbs, from what Bey had seen on his last visit to Mars, permitted surface travel in great twenty-meter bounds. More evidence of clever form-change design.

The hands were either bare and lacking in nails, or covered in long gloves that followed every fold and wrinkle of the skin beneath. The fingers, like the toes, were thick and splayed.

All interesting enough, yet all offering no real surprises. The first evidence of those came in the head. Dmitri Seychel's cranium was big and thickly-haired. Below it his face pushed far forward into a long broad muzzle. That, together with the brown, thick-lashed eyes, gave Dmitri's head something of the look of an irritated Earth camel.

And still all those elements were trivial, the simple superficial changes to an Earth form that might be performed by any sophisticated cosmetic form-change program. The work that interested Bey lay deep within. There must be massive and complex reconstruction hidden inside the head and torso—
functional
reconstruction. Some body organ—a new one, or perhaps lungs with basic modifications—had to extract oxygen from the super-thin Mars air while the body lay dormant. It must somehow ignore the air's carbon dioxide. And it must store the extracted oxygen for many hours, until needed during the active period.

The long muzzle had seen changes of just as fundamental a nature. A whole extra set of air passages must reside there. For one thing, speech had been separated from exhalation. Vocal chords could be exercised without the loss from the body of precious, warm, moisture-laden air. Bey had no proof of it, but he was also willing to bet that somewhere within that long, bulky nose sat an organ that absorbed every trace of water and oxygen from used air. What was finally released to the atmosphere of Mars would be almost pure, dry carbon dioxide.

If Trudy Melford had any notion of the sophistication of the Mars surface forms, there was no wonder she was excited. A genius of a designer had been at work here. Trudy liked to collect geniuses, and turn them to BEC's exclusive service.

That last thought left Bey more than a little uneasy. He was supposedly independent, supposedly retired, and working if he worked at all only on his own projects—all at the moment sadly neglected. Yet here he was, lured somehow to Mars and doing exactly what Trudy wanted him to do. Had she
deliberately
made herself unavailable when he arrived at Melford Castle, knowing that he would then head at once for the surface, and fly here? The car had been all ready and waiting for him.

Well, duped or not, here he was. And oddly excited. The old curiosity for any strange new form-change development was strong within him. Maybe Trudy Melford knew Bey better than he knew himself.

They were winding their way now down a long ramp, with fixed red lights on the tunnel walls. It looked more and more like the inside of a building, except that there was no air but the ambient Mars atmosphere. Dmitri Seychel had not once looked back to see that Bey was following, or offered one more word of conversation. Bey felt like kicking him in that amply-padded blubber-laden behind. If that was typical, what the Martian form needed in addition to any physical modification was a booster shot of sweetness and light.

"Here you are." Dmitri halted at a rectangular opening in the tunnel. "Home of the big cheese, Georgia Kruskal. Have fun."

He went off along the tunnel without another word, leaving Bey hesitating at the entrance of the room.

"Come on in." The thin voice was cheerful, as though visitors from Earth or Old Mars dropped in every day of the week.

Perhaps they did. Bey walked in, and found himself in a room that could easily have been an office back on Earth. There was a desk, a table and chairs, a data terminal, and even half a dozen potted plants. But the plants were all different, and all strange. Some were warty black cacti, others hugged the red soil or turned thin, sail-like leaves to face always to the light.

"Experiments, of course." The being seated at the desk could at first glance have changed places with Dmitri Seychel, and Bey would not have known the difference. "Sit down and make yourself comfortable. I'm Georgia Kruskal, and I get the blame for this madhouse. Tell me who you are, and why you're here instead of skulking in the Old Mars burrows."

"I'm Behrooz Wolf. I'm not from Old Mars. I'm from Earth, formerly with the Office of Form Control." Bey hesitated. Now for the tricky bit. Might as well lay it on the line. "I'd like to know more about the form you are using, because I think I might be able to help you to improve it."

"Oh-ho." The camel snout turned to face Bey more directly, and the liquid brown eyes stared at him. "It's nice to run into someone with real gall.
Improve
us, eh? Fine.
Quem dea vult perdere, prius dementat."

" 'Whom God would destroy, she first makes mad.' " Bey did not even blink. He could play that particular game all day long.

Georgia Kruskal was nodding. "First points to you,
hombre.
Maybe you will improve us after all. Why don't you tell me how?"

"I need to have some questions answered first."

"I'll bet you do. So do I." Kruskal leaned back in her chair, which was contoured to fit her bulky body. "All right, your turn first. Fire away."

"Thank you. First of all, are you pure human?"

"You better believe it. One hundred percent, no artificial additives. You and I could get together and start a
bambino
tonight, Behrooz Wolf."

"Sorry. I'm spoken for."

"I'm not sure I believe that." Georgia studied him for a moment. She had the temporary advantage. She could see and understand his facial expressions, while he had not yet learned to read the body language of the new form.

"Anyway," she went on, "let's stay with your question. Everything here is done with form-change programs and without inorganic components. Dmitri's father is standard form and lives back in the Old Mars burrows. I'm Dmitri's mother. You've met Dmitri, so you probably think I have a lot to answer for."

"I did get the impression that I was more pleased to see him than he was to see me. How many of you are there?"

"Last time I bothered to check, about fourteen thousand. And the number is growing. Does it matter?"

"It might." Bey thought of Rafael Fermiel, and the earnest faces of the Old Mars policy group. "A more important question: Are your forms stable?"

"Not as stable as I would like. We still need weekly sessions with the tanks. But the life-ratio is good, we should live as long as an unmodified form."

Georgia Kruskal sounded pleased with herself; as indeed she should be. Most radically modified forms died in just a few years.

So now Bey had to ask the trickiest questions—the non-technical ones.

"Do you use BEC form-change equipment?"

"BEC hardware and basic routines. The more complex programs and interactions are our own."

"Done with BEC's permission?"

"Let's not split hairs. Anyway, I'm sure you know the answer to that question."

It sounded like an answer, but it wasn't one. The time had come to be more direct.

"Does Trudy Melford know about and fund your program?"

There was a long pause. The eyes with their thick fringe of eyelashes closed. The thick lips pursed. Bey waited impatiently. A
yes
would tell him a great deal. A
no
might mean no more than that Georgia Kruskal was lying.

"You ask two questions in one," Georgia said at last. "Does Trudy Melford
know about
this project? Yes, I feel sure that she does. Although she is a recent immigrant by Mars standards, her agents are sprinkled throughout Old Mars. We are known—and hated—there. As for your second question, whether Trudy Melford
funds
our efforts, I wish I could give you a good answer. On the face of it, she does not. Nor does anyone in BEC. But since her arrival on Mars we have consistently found it easier to obtain lines of credit for our work, and for no reason that I can explain."

Bey found himself impressed again with Georgia Kruskal. Like him, she understood and applied the same basic principle:
Follow the flow of money.
The project to develop surface forms for Mars was no different from any other major project. It needed funds, and those funds had to come from somewhere.

"One more question, then it will be your turn. You say you are known and
hated
in Old Mars. Why?"

"You can answer that for yourself, Behrooz Wolf, if you think for a second."

"I think I know, but I want to confirm it. Old Mars is afraid of you. They see you as interfering with their plans."

"Interfering, and worse." The broad mouth widened. It was a smile, toothless and tongueless. Bey guessed that both those features lay far back, out of sight within the long snout. "Isn't it obvious that Old Mars sees us as a major enemy? The policy council is committed to terraforming Mars, making it into a world in Earth's image. They take the Mars Declaration and they misunderstand it. The first colonists wanted Mars to be a world where humans can live. The policy council read that statement, and think
terraform.
But our existence proves that more change is unnecessary. If the comets ceased to arrive and Mars remained as it is today, humans can be quite at home on its surface. We prove that fact daily. Our version of the Mars Declaration would recognize a simple truth:
It is easier to change a human than to change a planet.
"

"If you know what you are doing, it is." Bey had no doubt in his mind. She
did
know what she was doing. Why was it, just when you were convinced that you knew every major player in form-change through the whole solar system, another one would pop up from nowhere? "I could go on asking questions all day, but I promised you that would be the last one."

"I'm not sure I believe that, either. But I'll take my turn since it's offered. First question. Do
you
work for Trudy Melford and BEC?"

"No. She thinks I do, but that's not the same thing."

"Not the same thing at all. Do you work for Old Mars?"

"No. They recently tried to recruit me, but that's as far as it has gone."

"I advise you to keep it that way. If you are bought by Old Mars you will work
against
form-change, not with it. So what are you doing here?"

"Damned good question. Curiosity. Terminal nosiness. Habit. Back on Earth, I was head of the Office of Form Control for a long time—"

"Your name and reputation are not unknown to me. Do you imagine that I would sit here and allow myself to be questioned by any casual visitor? Or give even the time of day to anyone with the arrogance to suggest that he might
improve
on my work, unless I had reason to believe that such a thing was possible?
Remotely
possible, I would add. You are not alone in your arrogance." Again the smile appeared, the stretching of thick camel lips. "But I can tell you why you are here, Behrooz Wolf. You are here to
learn.
So let us begin."