Proteus Unbound (25 page)

Aybee was still staring at the blank screen. "That was in Baker's private apartment. It was seen through her own eyes!"

"Indeed." Ransome leaned back comfortably in his chair. "Aybee Smith, you are surprised. You should not be. My resources for the collection of information through the whole system—even within the coordinator's private apartment—are unmatched. Cinnabar Baker keeps no secrets from me. I know every word that is said, in every one of her meetings. If you want more proof of that, I can easily provide it. I have been aware of your own existence and of your potential for more than three years. Had I realized that you were with Behrooz Wolf on the space farm, I would have prevented the accident there."

"Could you have stopped it?"

"With ease. I controlled the whole destiny of the Sagdeyev farm, from form-change units to matter detection systems. But before we come to something so specific, let us be general. You are a young man, and you are fascinated by science. Let me ask you, do you have equal interest in politics?"

The tone in Ransome's voice was still casual and detached, but Aybee detected a heightened level of interest. He shook his head. "Politics isn't for me. I leave that sort of stuff to people like Baker."

"Ah. To be young. You will change as you grow older. If you do not know politics, do you know the theory of dissipative systems far from equihbrium?"

"I know all the classical work, Onsager and Prigogine and Helmut. And I've followed what Borsten has been doing on iterated function spaces in the past few years." The abrupt turn in the conversation was baffling, but Aybee was on familiar ground. Maybe they were going to talk about science at last.

"In that case you will readily follow what I am about to tell you, even if you at first have trouble accepting it." Ransome's eyes were like magnets, drawing Aybee's attention against his will. "I can demonstrate to you that the whole civilization of the Solar System is on the brink of massive change—total and irreversible change. I know this, and soon everyone will know it. In the language of dissipative systems, we now stand at a bifurcation point, at a singular moment on the time line. As you know, this bifurcation implies an instability. In such situations, the future of a large system can be controlled by small forces. I have such a force at my disposal—the same force that guarantees we occupy a singular point in time. But before the new system can emerge, the old order must crumble and fade. The process has begun; you have seen the signs, in the general breakdown of the Outer System. From its ruins, we will create the new order. Today's divisions into Inner System, Halo, and Outer System will disappear. There will be a central government, a single point of power and control. It will be here, under my control. My office will become the center of the Solar System." He leaned forward toward Aybee, eyes dark and hypnotic. "The program to accomplish this is well advanced. But in certain scientific areas I need help. You are well equipped to provide it, and I can guarantee that you will find the work totally fascinating. And think of the prospect. You will help to define the future! You will help to
create
the future. What could compare with that?"

He paused and looked at Aybee expectantly. His voice had never risen a decibel, always completely thoughtful and reasonable. But in terms of its persuasive power, it was like a triumphant shout.

Aybee struggled to resist the feeling of enthusiasm and well-being that was flooding through him. He had always been a loner, never one to join any movement, and some small corner of his brain was fighting back. But it
was
a small corner—most of him was in there cheering for Ransome.

He forced himself to think again about his journey to Ransome's Hole. He wanted to hear about the new scientific advances that had made the little ovoid ship possible. If Ransome were the genius behind those developments, Aybee had to hear the theory—all the theory. Instead he was listening to a man talk about politics. Was it conceivable that the scientific genius and the would-be emperor were the same person? Aybee knew very well the sacrifices and the demands on time and energy called for by great scientific advances. He was prepared to meet those demands, but could anyone combine such a life with an attempt to take over the Solar System? Surely not.

Aybee felt the flood of enthusiasm giving way to rational thought. He knew it was no time to argue with Ransome. Instead he nodded slowly. "What you are telling me is fascinating. I'd like to hear more."

He was not surprised when Ransome accepted his apparent conversion. The other man projected so powerfully, he was probably amazed by anyone who did not become his follower on first exposure.

Ransome stood up, so warm and friendly and convincing that Aybee began to have second thoughts about his motives. "You have much to learn, Aybee Smith. To the few thousand people already devoted to my cause—yes, we are still spread that thin—I am their only scientific expert. They see me as their prophet, and as the source of all the new technology. But there is a limit to what one man can do, and I have no more than scratched the surface of the possible. That has been enough to allow us to begin the reorganization of the system. You will help me to take our work much farther. When you are ready, we will go to the laboratories. You can begin work there as soon as you like. The faculties are the finest that we can provide."

He paused and frowned. "Of course," he added mildly, "there are certain precautions taken for such sensitive work. As you will appreciate, it would be intolerable if word of our plans and discoveries were to leak prematurely to the Inner or the Outer System." He smiled. "The monitor systems are automatic, and beyond my control. Attempted escape would unfortunately and inevitably lead to your capture, perhaps to your death. Now. Shall we proceed?"

CHAPTER 24

"Mary, Mary, quite contrary
How does your garden grow?
With spinor fields, and kernel shields,
And pretty men all in a row."
—crèche song of the Opik Harvester

The self-reproducing machines that alone made possible the rapid development of the Oort Cloud had never been so important in the Inner System. Fifteen billion humans were quite self-reproducing enough. Bey Wolf, accustomed all his life to human limits on work habits and energy levels, had not yet made his adjustment. He knew in the abstract what a group of machines could do, but their actual performance still amazed him. And they never seemed to stop work, even when Bey could see nothing useful to be done.

The odd logic of that had been explained by Leo Manx on their original trip out to the Cloud. "It's actually more economical of resources to keep them working," he said. "You see, if they're
not
working, they're programmed to make more copies of themselves. And that takes more materials."

"But why not just switch them off?" Bey asked.

Manx shook his head. "They're designed for continuous use. If you don't want them to decline in performance, you have to keep them busy."

Typical Outer System design philosophy, but Bey was looking at a good example of what Manx had meant. Sylvia Fernald had approached the same destination and found the darkness and silence of a mausoleum. To Bey, near to rendezvous just seven days later, it seemed inevitable that the body had looked then much as it did now, gaudy, bustling with activity, ablaze with internal lights. Half a dozen ships lay in the docks, and the irregular egglike outline of the surface was blurred and softened by a tangle of free-space vines, tilting their silver and black webs to drink in the miser's dole of radiation from distant Sol. The idea that the whole body had been dark and deserted as recently as two days earlier never occurred to Bey.

Its small size was a surprise. In the Inner System, a few hundred sets of orbital elements covered everything significant. The vast majority of planetoids were uninhabited and likely to remain so, except for mining operators. Travel to any of the interesting destinations took one to a body at least tens of kilometers across, with an associated population center. There would be thousands of people there at minimum, if not the billions of Earth, the hundreds of millions of Mars, or the tens of millions of Europa and Ceres.

That Sylvia would come so far to arrive at a body with a handful of people was perplexing to Bey. However, it might also make his own task easier. He was seeking Sylvia, but beyond that he had another motive. He sought the trail that would lead him onward to the right location in the Kernel Ring and the Negentropic Man himself. Whatever lay there, it was an improbable end point for Sylvia's travels.

There was little point in trying for an inconspicuous arrival. Space radar systems would have marked his progress and projected his arrival time when he was millions of kilometers away. Bey ignored the manual controls and allowed the docking to proceed automatically. He did not put on a suit. He was not being overconfident, nor was he a fatalist. Any dangers would derive from humanity rather than nature, and they would call for intelligence, not speed or strength.

The lock opened. He drifted through and found himself in the middle of a fairy tale. The interior of the body had been converted to a single chamber hundreds of meters across. Its vaulted walls were painted in red and white and gold, and vast murals reached up to the domed ceiling. Unencumbered by gravity, needle spires and slender minarets rose bright from the outer surface next to Bey, and lacy filaments arched between them.

He looked instinctively for signs of a kernel and headed for it right across the central chamber. No matter that he had spent much of the past week brooding on the impossible possibility of a demon inside a kernel shield, some indestructible, pachydermous, and unimaginable end product of infinite form-change that would bask and bathe in the radiation sleet within the shields. Never mind that thought. There would be a local gravity field near a kernel, and he yearned for it, even if it were a weak one—Earth habits died hard.

As he approached the outer kernel shield he was struck by a shocking thought. In his fascination at the sights within the lock, he had missed a central mystery. He could see almost the whole of the body's interior, and although a dozen machines were visible, there was no sign of another human being. Had he come all that way on a wild chase that would end on a deserted pleasure sphere? He knew such things existed, created as the hideaways of wealthy and reclusive individuals of the Outer System. They were maintained by their service machines, patiently awaiting the arrival of their owners, and for ninety-nine days out of a hundred they were uninhabited. If no one at all was there, his journey would have been a complete waste of time and effort.

Down on the kernel's shield Bey saw another oddity. Amid a riot of free-growing plants, a little bower had been created using a woven thicket of plaited vegetation to form a living roof and walls. The sight gave him an irrational shiver of premonition along his spine.

"Sylvia?" His voice was unsteady. Logically, he had no idea what came next, but the dark recesses of his hindbrain knew it already. He floated on down toward the kernel's shield. "Sylvia," he repeated. "Are you there?"

A sudden giggle came from the inside of the bower, and a curly-haired head peeked out past the tangled leaves. "Bey? Oh, my word. What have you done to yourself?" The laugh came again, this time full-throated. " 'Bottom, thou art translated.' You're so long and thin—and no hair! I knew it; you let them put you in one of your horrible form-change machines." It was Mary, moving out to meet him and filling his arms. "Oh, Bey, you're here at last. It's so good to see you again."

* * *

The questions had tumbled through Bey's head one after another. How had Mary known he was coming? How had
anyone
known he was coming? That information was supposed to be a close secret. Why was Mary here? Where was Sylvia? Mary had recognized him instantly, despite his changed form, but how had she been able to do that?

He thought everything and at first asked nothing. Mary was a drug that had lost none of its strength. She still ran through his veins. He felt light-headed with unreality.

"Right here," she was saying. Bey found himself led by the hand into the little bower and seated on a rustic bench fabricated to resemble aged and knotted wood.

It was typical of Mary that she felt no need to explain anything, and just as typical that she wore a costume equally alien to both the Inner and Outer Systems. Her print dress of faded dark purple flowers on a pale gray background belonged to another century. It fit perfectly with the bower and with the woven basket hanging over the end of the bench. She was wearing a hint of flowery perfume, light and fresh. Mary was playing a part—but which one?

"How did you know I was coming here?" Bey forced himself to ask that question, and at the same moment had a suspicion of the answer. He had told Leo Manx to tell no one—but did Leo have that much self-control? All it might have taken was one short conversation with Cinnabar Baker, and for Leo telling Baker was still second nature.

Mary was smiling at him as sunnily and possessively as if they had never parted. He thought for a moment that she had ignored his question, but then she said, "It's just as well for you that I learned you were heading this way, and better yet that no one else saw the message before I could take care of it. Otherwise you'd have found an armed guard waiting instead of me." She snuggled against him and laughed when she found that her head touched not his shoulder but halfway down his chest. "Oh, Bey, I've been taking good care of you. I changed all the messages that were going to you. If it weren't for me, you'd have been dead or crazy long since."

Bey had learned long ago that Mary did not lie. If her answers failed to match the real world, that was only because her perceptions of reality were so often awry. She had been protecting him, or at least she believed she had.

"What happened to Sylvia Fernald? She was supposed to be here." He was rewarded with a frown of disapproval.

"I know all about her. The two of you have really nothing in common."