Proteus in the Underworld (3 page)

And in time the unthinkable had become the unquestionable. The validity of the humanity test had been established beyond doubt over the years, by attempts to induce form-change in everything from gnats to whales to daffodils. Every one had been unsuccessful.

Now Bey was questioning the unquestionable. The development of the multiforms had made him re-evaluate his own deepest assumptions about form-change—things that everyone "knew must be true," commonsense things like the earth being flat, or the sun going round the earth, or atoms being indivisible, or nothing being able to travel faster than light.

Humans could operate as a multiform ensemble in a form-change environment, but not if more than six people were involved. Therefore, composites behaved differently in form-change than their individual units. Nothing surprising there. An individual cell from a human being did not respond to form-change feedback stimuli at all.

But a colony of social insects, bees or ants or termites, was a single, functioning entity. A hive possessed a complex structure and a survival capability that far transcended those of individual—and expendable—bees.

Three years ago, Bey had examined the long history and literature of form-change and found it wanting. The data he was looking for on social insects did not exist. He would have to create it. What he had not expected was that it would take so long.

Bey straightened his aching back, leaned away from the microscope, and glanced up at the wall clock. Sondra's skimmer journey should be over, and she would now be flying back to Form Control headquarters. She didn't know it but she had been given a tough job, one too hard for someone of her experience. The Carcon Colony was likely to eat her alive. While he, of course, sat loafing around in his rocking-chair.

Bey smiled to himself. Sondra's energy and directness pleased him in a way that he found hard to define. He began to examine the tendriled tangle of fibers, sprouting like white hair from one side of the swarm's dark mass. The night's work was just beginning. By dawn, if he were industrious and lucky, he would be finished with the connections. And then he would be ready for the more difficult next stage.

* * *

Bey was industrious, but not lucky. Minor movements within the swarm forced him to re-define part of the network. By the time that he placed the final assembly into a form-change tank, adjusted the settings, and emerged from the basement lab, the sun was high in the sky.

He peered out at a day that promised high wind and rain. He closed the house, helped himself to a hot drink, and collapsed into bed. Before he closed his eyes he set the skull contacts into position and programmed four hours of deep sleep. He would be awakened early only if there were a disastrous failure in the lab, or a high-priority call was received at Wolf Island.

* * *

Bey was forced back to consciousness by a house signal buzzing urgently at his ear. Even before he sat up he knew that he had slept no more than two hours. His eyes did not want to focus, his mouth was dry, and his whole brain felt grainy.

He removed the contacts from his temples and turned at once to the status monitors. If the swarm was disintegrating so soon, after all his work . . .

Everything in the lab reported as normal. There had been no change of status in the tank, which was as it should be so early in the experiment.

It meant that the house had chosen to waken him based on some urgent external signal, a call at a level high enough to override Bey's own demand for rest. He keyed the communications system. An image popped into view instantly, projected into the viewing area beyond the bed.

"Mr. Wolf!" The man wore one of the standard forms of BEC management. He was handsome, impeccably dressed in a style new to Bey, and grinning broadly. "I have good news."

Bey scowled back at him. "How did you get in?"

"Top priority interrupt circuit. My name is Jarvis Dommer. I'm with BEC."

"I can see that. What do you want?"

"To make you an offer you can't refuse." Dommer seemed to have more teeth than a normal person, and now his grin widened even farther. "Mr. Wolf—may I call you Bey?"

"No."

"Fine." The smile remained intact. "Mr. Wolf, you may have heard that BEC has a whole new line of commercial forms on the drawing-board, planned for release two years from now."

"The marine and free-space forms. Sure. I've seen the advertisements."

"Good. But what you haven't seen—because we've kept quiet about it—is the plans for multiform versions of the new releases. We'll be using your own ideas, the ones that you sold to BEC three and a half years ago. And we said to ourselves, who better than Bey Wolf to be our exclusive consultant on this? No one knows as much as he does about the promise and potential of the multiforms—"

"No. I retired three years ago. I'm not interested."

"That's because you haven't heard what we can offer you."

"I said no. I have enough money. Forget it."

"I'm not talking just a high consulting rate, the way you are thinking. You'd certainly get that, the most we've ever paid. But I'm authorized to offer you a
royalty
as well, one percent of everything that BEC makes when one of these new forms is licensed. Nobody in history has
ever
been offered that by BEC. You may think you're well off now, but compared with what you can be you're a pauper. You won't just be a millionaire, you'll be a billionaire, a trillionaire, a jillionaire. You'll be so wealthy that you'll be able to—"

Bey hit the disconnect. The image of Jarvis Dommer, still talking a mile a minute, faded slowly away. Bey reset the house interrupt levels so that for the next three hours all messages, no matter their priority level, would be recorded for his later review.

He lay down again and reset the controls to continue programmed sleep. In the two minutes that the skull contacts needed to adjust his brain wave patterns, he thought about the BEC proposal. Jarvis Dommer was absolutely right about one thing: the offer to pay royalties for use of a form-change program to an individual was absolutely unprecedented. And since BEC was the biggest business enterprise in the whole solar system, Bey would surely become obscenely wealthy. He should feel flattered and overwhelmed by their offer.

He didn't. He was too cynical for that. Instead he wondered what horrible problems BEC were having with the new forms. To promise so much, someone must be completely desperate.

CHAPTER 3

Bey Wolf understood form-change theory and practice better than any human alive. Sondra admitted that, without reservations. What he didn't understand so well, maybe not at all, was
people.

Back on Wolf Island he had made it sound logical and easy. Go to Denzel Morrone, head of the Office of Form Control. Explain that a visit was needed to the Carcon Colony. If necessary, cite Behrooz Wolf's own assertion that the journey was essential if Sondra was to find out why a clearly non-human caged form had somehow passed the humanity test.

In the real world it wasn't so simple. Sondra had waited in the anteroom to Denzel Morrone's office for more than two hours while a succession of senior officials from the Planetary Coordinators swept in and out. The whole Form Control department had recently moved to an expensive new building, all airy columns of carbon composite and transparent outer walls. Sondra, perched above a thousand feet of open space, could see all the way across an ocean of smaller buildings to the dull grey bulk of Old City. The Office of Form Control had come a long way—physically as well as financially—since Denzel Morrone took over two years ago.

It had also changed in other, more subtle ways. Sondra, finally admitted to Morrone's presence, told him at once that she would like to travel out to the Carcon Colony. Morrone, dressed in the smart new uniform that he had designed for members of the Form Control office, listened carefully as she explained her reasons: she must make a direct on-site inspection of the biofeedback equipment used in performing the humanity test. The tests that she had performed on Earth had all shown the caged form unable to interact with form-change equipment. It should never have passed the humanity test. Therefore a problem, hardware or software, existed within the colony's form-change tanks.

As she concluded with a repeat of her request to visit the Carcon Colony, Morrone slowly shook his head.

"I understand your position, Sondra. But I don't think you understand mine. What you have described sounds like a purely technical problem. It isn't. It's also politics. Solar system politics."

"I wouldn't be doing anything political in the Carcon Colony."

"Nothing
overtly
political. But the colony is in the Kuiper Belt, and that lies in the transition zone between the Inner and Outer Systems.
Anything
involving the Outer System is politics. If I request that you make a visit there it's another way of saying that we don't think they are competent to evaluate the performance of their own equipment."

To a political mind, everything is politics.
Bey Wolf would probably have said just that. Sondra was shrewd enough to keep the thought to herself.

Morrone was continuing, a soothing smile on his big, pleasant face. "I'm not saying I won't grant your request. I may. What I am saying is that I need to think about it further. Keep this whole thing in perspective, Sondra. The humanity test is given to every baby. That's nearly three hundred thousand tests every day. And here, after centuries of use, we have one isolated failure. On a statistical basis we don't have a problem at all."

And on a statistical basis there was no need for an Office of Form Control. By definition, the office was concerned only with the anomalous: the form-change failures, the illegal forms, the investigation and labeling of borderline cases.

It wouldn't help to say that either. Sondra changed tack. "I spoke to Behrooz Wolf about this. He feels that I ought to go out to the Carcon Colony as soon as possible."

Morrone's face froze. "Why did you talk to Wolf?"

Sondra, ready to mention that Bey was a distant relative of hers, decided that a statement of kinship would be a bad idea.

"I met him. Socially."

Not quite a lie. She had stayed to dinner.

But Denzel Morrone was shaking his head. "The discussion of our problems with someone outside the office shows very poor judgment. I expect discretion on the part of my staff. Wolf's opinions on this subject are not relevant. He is no longer part of the Office of Form Control."

"But he ran it for almost half a century!"

"He did." Morrone snapped out the words. "And what happened? Under his guidance it remained an obscure component of a small and insignificant department. It should hardly be necessary to point out to you that the growth of influence of this office—and with it your own opportunity for employment and advancement—came
after
Behrooz Wolf had retired."

Sondra wanted to snap back, that when it came to solving form-change problems everyone said one Bey Wolf was worth a hundred Denzel Morrones. She bit her tongue. Morrone obviously knew office opinion. He had his own inferiority complex, otherwise he would not have reacted so violently when she quoted Wolf's suggestion. And everything that Morrone said was also true. The office had seen a spectacular growth in funding and influence since he took over.

"I'm sorry." Sondra did her best to sound contrite and truly apologetic. "My job is very important to me. I really want to understand what caused this form-change problem, even if it turns out to be no more than an isolated case."

"We all want to understand what happened." Morrone's self-control had returned and he was smiling again. "As I said, I'm not
refusing
your request. I merely want time to think it over." He touched the surface of his desk and the door of the office slid open. Sondra's meeting was ending. "But let me offer you a piece of advice. According to your record you have traveled little beyond the Inner System. In particular you have never been to the Carcon Colony. That is not a place for casual visits. I suggest that you learn more about it and confirm that you actually wish to go there. And if you change your mind, I won't be surprised."

As Sondra left Morrone's office and began the eighty-floor dropchute descent toward ground level she reviewed the meeting. Using Wolf's name had been a disaster. Bey obviously had no idea how much his successor resented his fame. But in spite of that, Sondra had not been given an actual refusal. She would certainly do what Morrone suggested and find out more about the Carcon Colony. She had been assuming that it was just another of the thousand small groups who populated the Kuiper Belt and the Halo. Apparently there was something more to the colony than she had realized.

"Strange territory, strange people," Bey Wolf had said. How strange? And strange how?

As she reached the ground floor, Sondra noticed something else. More and more of the staff she passed looked like male and female versions of Denzel Morrone. Apparently his internal campaign for an Office of Form Control identity that went well beyond clothing was succeeding.

* * *

Sondra had been born on Earth. She had been given a rather standard planetary education, which meant that she knew a great deal about the Inner System out to Pluto, and less and less about the rest of Sol's retinue as the distance from the Sun increased.

She had spent tourist time on Mars and Ceres and cruised the Europan deep ocean. She had flown past the off-limits planet of Saturn, with its Logian forms busy on projects beyond the comprehension of any human. She had visited the moons of Uranus, and in derived reality aboard a deep submersible she had watched the Ergatandromorphs, constructed synthetic forms, as they worked on the Uranian Link deep within their mother planet.

And there her first-hand experience ended. Beyond the Inner System, in order, came the Kuiper Belt, the Kernel Ring, and the vast extended region of the Oort Cloud. Cloudland, diffuse and underpopulated (by Inner System standards, not by its own) reached out to a full third of a light-year from the Sun. Beyond that, and last of all, came the Dry Tortugas. Those arid, volatile-free shards of rock marked the edge of Sol's domain and shared their gravitational allegiance with other stars.