Proteus Unbound (3 page)

Manx stood up, too. "Mr. Wolf, it is my opinion that you underestimate both yourself and the difficulty of this problem. But I cannot change your mind about that, here on Earth. Rather, allow me to introduce a new variable into the equation. While you were on the way here I asked for and read a copy of your dossier from the Office of Form Control. It is something that I ought to have done earlier. I learned more of your personal circumstances."

"You found out I'm going crazy."

"You are sick. If you know anything of the Outer System, you may know that we are advanced in the treatment of mental illness. That happens to be my own field. If you would agree to travel back with me—merely to observe the phenomena for yourself, for no more than a few days—I will devote my best efforts to your personal problem."

"Sorry. It's still negative." Bey headed for the door, but Leo Manx made a great effort and was there first.

"One more point, Mr. Wolf. And please excuse this importuning. You lived with Mary Walton for seven years. Is it possible that your reluctance to visit the Outer System arises from a fear that you may be obliged to interact with her there?"

Bey eased past the other man, trying not to touch him. "You're a conscientious and persistent man, Dr. Manx. I don't resent that—I respect you for it. I can't answer your question. Maybe I'm afraid I would meet Mary again. But in any case, I still refuse. Tell your superiors that I am honored to be considered."

"Yes, of course. But if by chance you should change your mind," Manx called after Bey as he headed for the elevator, "I will be here on Earth for two more days! Call me, at any hour."

But Wolf was already out of earshot. The final question about Mary had gotten to him more than it should have. Was he over her or wasn't he? Would he turn down a potentially fascinating problem simply because he might be forced to see Mary with the man she had chosen over him?

He was oblivious to the high-acceleration ride to the surface, oblivious to the evening crowds that pushed at him on the slideways. Manx's offer of dinner had never been realized, but in any case Bey had lost his appetite. He skipped dangerously across from high-speed to low-speed track, exited the slideway, and hurried up to his apartment He grabbed a projection cube at random from the file—they were all of Mary, it made little difference—and sat down to view it.

Predictably, it was one he hated to watch but also one he had viewed again and again. Mary in an amateur musical, dressed in a long gown, bonnet, and parasol, singing in the sweet, artificial little voice of a young girl. "Let him go, let him tarry, let him sink or let him swim. He doesn't care for me, and I don't care for him. He can go and find another, that I hope he will enjoy, for I'm going to marry a far nicer boy."

Bey felt his heart wither inside him as he watched. Nothing of her had faded; it hurt as much as ever. He was reaching to cut the cube when Mary Walton's demure figure rippled and darkened. A new scene was overlaid on the old and familiar one.

The Dancing Man, twisting and tumbling across the image, red-clad limbs akimbo. He paused in the middle, nodded at Bey, and made a singsong questioning little speech that could almost be understood. Then he was away, skating backward into the distance, head bobbing and hands waving cheerfully.

The Dancing Man—even here! In the middle of a sequence that Bey had recorded personally four years earlier. How could anyone possibly change that recording? Bey set the projection again to the beginning and forced himself to watch it through again. This time there was no Dancing Man. It was Mary all the way, to that intolerable final line when she set her parasol over her shoulder and waved good-bye.

Bey watched to the bitter end. Then he went across to the communications unit and called Leo Manx.

CHAPTER 4

"All isolated systems become less orderly when left to themselves."
(This version of the Second Law of Thermodynamics was offered by Apollo Belvedere Smith, age five, to explain why his room was in such a mess.)

"There is one other thing you ought to decide before we embark." Leo Manx was inspecting both his traveling companion and Bey Wolf's luggage.

"Namely?"

"Do you want to spend time in a form-change tank on the way out to the Cloud? If so, we must make sure that the programs are available."

"You mean, switch to something more like your own form, for physical comfort?" Wolf shook his head. "I like this form, and I know it tolerates low gravity and cold pretty well."

"That was not the reason for my suggestion." Manx took Bey Wolf's little traveling case and floated it one-handed across the cabin to secure it in the cargo hold. "My concern is with the response you may receive from Outer System citizens. It will be apparent to them that you are from Earth, or at least from the Inner System. The two federations are not at war—"

"Yet."

"But we are certainly locked in an economic struggle over rights to the Kernel Ring. There have been skirmishes in the Halo. If you remain in your present form, I foresee some unpleasantness and rudeness when we arrive. You will hear yourself called a Snugger—a Sunhugger Imperialist; there will undoubtedly be sly remarks about your hairy skin."

"Same as you've been getting when people here call you a bare-faced Cloudlander?" The other man's reaction was no more than a moment's twitch of the lip, but Bey was used to reading subtle signals. "Dr. Manx, if you got by on Earth without any major form-change, I can do the same in the Outer System. I'm used to criticism and sneaky comments."

"It was quite different in my case. I knew I would be here only for a little while, until you accepted or rejected our plea." Manx caught Wolf's expression and realized he had made a mistake. "Of course, you have agreed to stay with us only long enough for a preliminary evaluation of the problem. I realize that. But I was hoping, if you find the situation intriguing enough, that you might prolong your stay. Not only for our sakes; for yours. If one has never visited the Outer System, there are many things to see and do."

"No sales pitch. If you're wrong, it's not worth it. If you're right, I can use a program when we get there."

"That is true."

"So what are we waiting for?"

Manx gestured out the port. Bey suddenly realized that they were not waiting. Earth had disappeared, and they were already passing the Moon. The McAndrew inertialess drive had been switched on while they were talking, and they were accelerating away from the Sun at more than a hundred g's.

"Twelve days to crossover point, then another twelve to the Opik Harvester," Manx said. "It is not the nearest harvester to Sol, but it has a large number of form-change units on it. I have discussed our destination with my superiors, and we agree that it is a good place to begin."

"How far out?"

"Twenty-six thousand a.u.—about four trillion kilometers."

Manx called a stylized three-dimensional figure onto the display screen. It was a representation of Sol-space geometry. Even with a logarithmic radial scale, the graphic occupied one full wall of the cabin. The Inner System, comprising everything out to Persephone, was crowded within a Sun-centered sphere of ten billion kilometers radius. The Halo reached out two hundred times as far, a diffuse torus within which the Kernel Ring sat as a well-defined narrow annulus. The Oort Cloud, home for the Outer System, was a vast sprawling spherical region, approaching the Halo on its inner limit but seven times as large as its outer edge, stretching a third of the way to the nearest star.

Manx pointed to a cluster of color-coded habitats in the Outer System and to the arrowed flight path that extended to them from the Earth-Moon environment. "The Opik Harvester is fairly near the inner edge of the Cloud, but a safe distance from the Kernel Ring. No danger of trouble from there. As you can see from our trajectory, we'll be flying rather close to the Ring itself in about nine days." He gave Bey a sideways glance. "I thought you might be personally interested in taking a look at that."

Bey was learning. Leo Manx's omissions—rarely accidental—were more informative than his speeches. Manx was too self-conscious or diplomatic to say some things himself. He preferred to leave logical loopholes, then answer questions.

"I have never been near the Kernel Ring," Bey said. "I assume you know that."

"Your background summary says as much."

"Then it should also show that I know little about Kerr-Newman black holes and even less about how we use the kernels themselves as energy sources."

"That is indeed the case." The reply was polite and noncommittal. Bey would have to dig deeper.

"So what makes you think I have any personal interest at all in looking at the Kernel Ring? Do you think you see a connection with my—other problems?" Damn it, the habit was catching. He was getting as indirect as Manx. "I mean, with my hallucinations."

Instead of answering at once, Manx sat for a few moments, thinking. "That depends on the cause of those hallucinations," he said at last. "I hope that we will explore that subject together on this journey, when we have plenty of time. But answer me one question, if you will. When did your problems begin? Was it before or after Mary Walton left you."

"Long after. Four months after."

"In that case, I do not believe that the Kernel Ring is connected with your hallucinations."

It was like pulling teeth. "But the Ring is connected with Mary?"

"Possibly. Probably." Manx was getting there; Bey could see the decision reflected in the expression on the other man's face. "Mr. Wolf, I deduce that in addition to knowing little about the Kernel Ring, you also are unfamiliar with customs in the Outer System. According to Colonel Hamming, whom I did not find to be a particularly sensitive person—"

"He's an asshole."

"A felicitous description. He told me Mary Walton left to 'run off to Cloudland with one of you guys,' and the inference was that he was referring to a person from the Outer System, one that she met on a lunar cruise. Is that your own understanding of the situation?"

"It is."

"Did you ever meet this person?"

"Not a person. A man. No, I didn't meet him. If I had, I'd probably have tried to cut him in two."

"So you are unfamiliar with his appearance? Now, if you will permit me a more personal question. You knew Mary Walton better than anyone else. Was she a woman impressed by appearances? How a person looked? Whether he was handsome?"

"I guess so." More stalling! Bey cursed his own reluctance to give straight answers. "Yes, she was. Too impressed. Looks mattered to Mary."

"Very well. You know what men from the Outer System look like. I suspect that I am a fairly typical example, and although I am quite happy with my own appearance—" Manx looked admiringly at his skinny body and bowed legs. "—I know that I am far from the standards of beauty currently popular on Earth."

"That's irrelevant. Handsomeness is easy; all it takes is a little while in a form-change tank."

"Very true.
If
person wishes to make such a change. I certainly did not, and you had a similar reaction when it came to modifying your own appearance to match an Outer System form. However, there is a more important point here. Although the man Mary Walton ran off with
could
have picked an appearance that appealed to her, he would have had to do so
in advance
of meeting with her on that lunar cruise."

"I see where you're heading. You are questioning that he was from the Outer System?"

"More than that. Mr. Wolf, our citizens do not indulge in lunar cruises. To us, it would have as much attraction as a tour of Old City would offer the average Earth person."

"But some people might do it. Just to be different."

"They might." Manx looked away, refusing to meet Bey's eyes again. "But they did not. I have rather more information than I have so far revealed to you. Before I left our Earth Embassy, I checked all our visitors to Earth-Moon space for the previous four years. There was no one from the Outer System who went on a lunar cruise. Whoever Mary Walton met, he was not from our federation."

"So where does that leave us?"

"With no more than a speculation. I have of course no direct evidence—"

"Talk, man! I can stand it."

"I do not think you will find your Mary in the Cloud, even if you plan to look for her there. The most likely person to have offered a false identification and to be interested in Earth-Moon space as a possible source of energy needs would be a renegade."

"You mean a rebel? An inhabitant of the Kernel Ring?"

"Precisely. The inhabitants of the Ring practice a curious coexistence. Rebel outposts are scattered here and there through its whole volume, side by side with peaceful settlers, energy prospectors, and free-space Podder colonies. The Ring admits every form of oddity, every human shape attainable by the form-change equipment. You should look there."

"For someone who works in the high-gravity environment around shielded kernels. Someone whose unmodified appearance is more like mine than yours."

"You follow my thoughts admirably." Manx moved the cursor on the display to delineate the annulus of the Kernel Ring. "Here. To conclude, it is my opinion that Mary Walton is not to be found anywhere in the Outer System. She is
here
. In the Halo, almost certainly somewhere in the Kernel Ring itself."

"Shacked up with a damned outlaw."

"I'm afraid so. A dangerous man, Mr. Wolf, who recognizes the sovereignty of neither my federation nor your own. A man who would not hesitate to kill either of us. Mr. Wolf! Do you hear me?"

Bey was no longer listening. As Manx moved the cursor across the display, a familiar figure had appeared on top of it. He was sitting cross-legged, riding the little blue arrow and waving jauntily out at the two men. His song sounded a little different but was still just beyond comprehension.

The scarlet suit was brighter than ever. The expression on his grinning face was more than usually smug. Forget that hope, it said. It takes a lot more than a move to the Outer System to get rid of the Dancing Man.