Proteus Unbound (16 page)

The door of the tank sprang open, and he looked out. Sylvia Fernald was sitting by the control board, staring at him.

He roared with rage, a horrible squeal of unfamiliar vocal cords. "What the hell have you been doing to me?" The ionic balance of his body was still adjusting, and the chemical rush of anger was strong enough to propel him forward out of the tank in one movement. "Don't try to lie. You've been meddling and you know it."

"You call it meddling when somebody tries to help you?" She stood her ground. "I've just saved you. You'd have been cut to bits as soon as people in the harvester knew you were here. No one from Earth is safe now."

"I can look after myself." Bey tried to gesture in anger, but his fist would not close. His body felt terrible, a bad size, a distorted shape. "A form-change like that—you could have killed me."

"I studied the change very carefully. It's a standard type of form for the Outer System."

"I didn't need a change."

"
Wrong/
You need a change. More than a change—you need a damned
keeper
. I've had it with you, and I don't care what Baker wants." Sylvia stood up. "You're an idiot, Bey Wolf, you know that? You come out here, an Earther, and you think you're God's gift to the Cloud." She gripped him hard by the arm and pulled him along the room. He stumbled after her, still too weak to put up more than token resistance. She halted by the door at the end of the room. "Take a look there. What do you see?"

Bey found himself in front of a full-length mirror. He was facing a nightmare, naked and thin as a skeleton, tall and stooped as a praying mantis. All the muscles had gone from his arms and legs, leaving ugly tendons and sticks of bone that ended in taloned hands and feet. His rib cage jutted like a dry wooden frame under tautly stretched parchment. The hair was gone from his head and body, and his browless eyes glared demented out of hollow sockets. His hairless genitals looked vulnerable and ridiculous. He stood frozen, his skull-head mouth gaping open.

"What do you see?" She had gone on shouting at him, but he had not even heard her. "What do you see?"

"You did this to me!" He shook his arm loose. "You're insane. You've turned me into a monster. I've got to get back in the tank, make this right again."

"No!" She stood in front of him, blocking his movement, and he realized how tall he had become. They were suddenly eye to eye. "It's time you learned something, Behrooz Wolf—if you're still able to learn anything at all. I don't know what you see, but I'll tell you what I see, and it's the way everyone thinks in the Outer System."

She stepped back and swept him from head to toe with a searing glare. As his anger had calmed, hers had grown. "I see a passable-looking man for the first time since I met you. A man I would be pleased to know, a man whose company I might even enjoy. Not a damned monkey. Not a squat, hairy toad. Not a hirsute, jowly, Sun-sucking
midget
that no normal woman would be seen dead with. And
yes
, I did it to you. And
no
, I'm not sorry I did it. I sat by that damned tank for a hundred straight hours to make sure nothing was going wrong with the change I keyed in. And
yes
, I knew what I was doing. And
no
, I don't expect you to appreciate it. You're too graceless, too selfish, too self-obsessed, too wrapped up in your self-superior idea that anything from the Inner System has to be good and right." She was screaming at him. "So damn you, Bey Wolf. If you want to get back into that tank, go ahead. I won't stop you. And I won't interfere when the people on the harvester grab you and spill your guts."

Bey's body chemistry change was complete, and his condition was stabilizing. He was beginning to feel almost normal, but he also knew that the mood swings might be far from over. He stared fascinated at his image in the mirror and shook his head. "I look like a form-change
failure
. Those legs—you actually
programmed
for those legs?"

"They're great legs."

"They're revolting. Look at them! Too short, too white, too bowed." He turned to face her. "You're serious, aren't you? You think I should thank you for this."

"You should go down on your knees and kiss my hand. My God, I was doing you a favor." She had stopped shouting at him. "You're supposed to have brains. Use them. You asked Cinnabar Baker to announce that you had been killed on the space farm so you could explore the problem without people knowing who you were. How well would that have held up when people saw you? You
had
to change. I suppose you thought that you'd blend right in with the rest of us, with your ridiculous Earth body."

"All right. But why didn't you warn me?"

"Would you have agreed to this body if I had?"

"Never." Now that he was not angry, Bey was feeling a bit guilty. She had sat by the tank for days, looking after him, and he could see how pale and tired she was. "But do you blame me for feeling that way? Would you have let me change
you
so you look like an Earthwoman?"

"Don't be disgusting."

"Well, then. But I'll admit it, you're right about one thing, and I want to apologize for shouting at you. It's an odd thought, but in this stick-insect body I
will
be less noticeable here." Bey took another look at his reflection and grabbed for a robe by the door. It was suitably long and full—when he had it on he could see nothing but his hands and head. "That's better. I'd rather not see myself. But I still wish in some ways I could get back in the tank. I don't seem to be
done
."

"Are you feeling sick?"

"Not exactly. But I'm certainly feeling a bit Plantagenetish."

"A bit
what
?"

"You know. Or if you don't, you should." Bey held the robe tight around him, stood up as straight as he was able, and declaimed: " 'Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time, into this breathing world scarce half made up, and that so lamely and unfashionable, that dogs bark at me as I halt by them.' Richard the Third. One of my all-time heroes."

She stared at him. Finally she laughed. "My God, Leo was right. You
are
insane. You're worse than Aybee. Totally crazy."

Bey considered her statement. He was a bit light-headed, definitely that, but it was not his strongest feeling. "More like totally starving. Whatever you did to me, it left me hollow. Can I get some food?"

"We can try. And you'll have your big test. We'll see if you can pass—as a Cloudlander. Here, wait a minute." Bey was all ready to head out of the door. "You'll never pass in that outfit."

"You all seem to dress the same. There must be a uniform near."

"Wrong again." Sylvia gestured at her own gray suit. "I'm still just the way we came off the ship, but I wouldn't dream of mixing with other people here like this—or in the old uniform. You seem to think all the harvesters are the same. They're not alike, any two of them, in either their layout or their people. This harvester is super fashion-conscious. Nobody here would be seen dead in those yellow suits we wore on the Opik Harvester. If we want to be inconspicuous, we have to follow local ways. Come with me. It's right next door."

The room she led him to had rack after rack of clothing, all gaudy, varied, and extreme. Bey hesitated, then shrugged. "I've no idea. You know how to make me blend in. Pick something."

Within two minutes she had selected a pair of skintight peacock-blue suits with matching footwear and tall egg-shaped hats. They seemed designed to make Bey look even taller and thinner and were, in his opinion, the most ridiculous outfits he had ever seen.

He stared in disbelief at his reflection. "We can't go out in public like this. Everyone in the harvester will laugh at us."

"They won't even notice. Not in this harvester."

"But the people we saw as we came in from the ship didn't look like this."

"They were maintenance and operations crews. In uniform. You wouldn't know them if you saw them off duty."

Bey started for the door, then paused for a last look in the mirror. "Are you
sure
?"

"Trust me. You look quite handsome." Sylvia tucked her arm in his and led the way. "Remember, until you get the hang of that body in low g, you let me set the pace. Pretend we're a couple. Don't talk much at first, and if you don't know how to move, just let me drag you along."

They set off along a mysterious zigzag of corridors and stairways. Bey knew he was lost within one minute; in ten minutes, he knew why the Cloudlanders had picked their preferred forms. He was shaped just right for a low-g environment. He could pivot his top-heavy body around its center of mass and use his long arms to control the direction of his movement, unhindered by excess muscle or fat. Even the air somehow smelled better, but whether that was his new physiology or his imagination he could not tell.

The hall they came to was crowded for a room on a harvester. Bey's initial worry—that it was too public a first appearance for his new body—vanished when he saw the general behavior. A peculiar sense of panic and excitement filled the air. No one took any notice of Bey and Sylvia. A couple of hundred noisy people were milling around a dais at one end, and as Bey looked at them he felt reassured. He was one of the most conservatively dressed. Pink sequined pantaloons and curved-toe slippers competed and clashed with scarlet tunics and glittering black hose. Earth taste was nonexistent.

At a gesture from Sylvia, Bey slipped into an eating cubicle at the back of the room. Sylvia in the next cubicle was out of sight unless she stood up to look over the partition, and one-way glass in the front wall allowed both of them to see the rest of the hall. Most of the crowd was clustered around a scarecrow of a man with a blue skullcap, a long white robe, and a mask that covered the lower half of his face.

"You have a choice!" He had a muffled, booming voice, echoing from the room's bare white walls. "I can
give
you a choice. If you do not like the idea of form-change, if you do not care to face the terror of the tanks,
there are other ways.
Ancient secrets, the mysteries of Earth's antiquity, means of treating illness that do not depend on the use of form-change tanks."

"Nothing good comes from Earth!" The shout came from somewhere in the throng of people.

"From today's Earth, you are right." The man on the platform turned to that part of the crowd. "I think we ought to destroy Earth and all the Inner System." There was a roar of approval from the crowd. "But that does not mean that the knowledge of Old Earth is useless. All our ancestors once lived there! I have learned Earth's old secrets."

Bey spoke to Sylvia, busy ordering food in her cubicle from the table server. "What's he talking about?"

"I was going to ask you the same thing. He said something about knowledge coming from ancient Earth."

"The distilled wisdom of long-dead ages," the booming voice was continuing. "Three hundred years ago, the knowledge that I possess was tightly held by a small group of people. When form-change came in, the need for their skills disappeared. They lost their power. Their special learning vanished. But not forever! By intense research, I and my assistants have repossessed those lost skills. We are the New Aesculapians." He held up two clear bottles, one filled with a cloudy green liquid and the other filled with small white spheres. "Whatever your ailment, we can help you! One of these will be the answer."

"Oh, my God." Bey had been chewing on a bland yellow wedge of material that Sylvia had ordered. He almost choked, then spoke with his mouth full. "I never thought I'd see this."

"What is he offering?"

"Pills and potions. Panaceas. He's saying he's a doctor!"

"You mean a—a
physician
?" Sylvia groped for the old word. "There are no such people in the Cloud."

"Nor on Earth, anymore—there hasn't been for two hundred years. I didn't think there ever would be again, anywhere." Bey was ecstatic. "Before purposive form-change was developed, there were thousands of them. They were enormously powerful, just like a priesthood. Those clothes and masks he's wearing were their robes. I wonder he isn't spouting the Hippocratic oath and writing prescriptions."

"Writing
what
?"

"Purchase approval for chemicals. They used to treat diseases with chemicals, you know—and with surgery, too."

"Surgery. Isn't that
cutting
—"

"Right. Cutting people open. Before it was outlawed, they were allowed to do that. I hope he's not proposing it here."

The white-coated man was being mobbed by people shouting out their problems. He had been joined by half a dozen acolytes, who were beginning to hand out vials and packages. Sylvia opened the door of her cubicle and stepped out. "I have to tell Cinnabar Baker about this. We can't allow it."

"No." Bey came out quickly to grab her sleeve and restrain her. "First we get samples, have them analyzed. I'll bet they're totally harmless. Come on."

They had not finished eating, but the food and drink had been enough to produce another mood change. Bey was getting a little sleepy and extremely cheerful. He began to make his way toward the center of the crowd. Sylvia caught up with him and pushed in front. "Not you. I'll do it. I can move easier than you. You stay right there."

She eeled into the mass of people and returned a couple of minutes later with a bottle in one hand and a packet in the other. She held them up triumphantly, but just before she reached Bey, she halted and her expression changed. She was looking right past him.

"Here comes your real test." She leaned close and spoke rapidly. "If you pass this one, you're home free."

Bey slowly turned. Heading toward them across the room was a smiling woman dressed in a cloudy dress of flaming pink. "Sylvia! I had no idea you were here."

"I just arrived." Sylvia squeezed the woman's hands in both of hers, then stepped back. "Andromeda, this is Behrooz. He's also visiting the harvester. Bey, this is an old friend of mine, Andromeda Diconis. We studied optimal control theory together, many years ago."

"Too many. But Sylvia was always better at it than I was. That's why I'm here, in my boring little job, while Sylvia roves the system." The woman had taken Bey by the hand and was giving him a head-to-toe stare. Her glittering blue eyes and full mouth held an odd and unreadable expression. "Very nice clothes you have—you
both
have. Perfectly matched. What are you doing here?"