Sight of Proteus

by Charles Sheffield

  "But we'd need a search warrant from head office before we can do that."

  "Leave that to me. It reveals exactly what we're doing, but that can't be helped. We have to get over there this afternoon, while Morris is still on duty. I don't know how far we'll get, but we may need some assistance."

  "What are you expecting to find, Bey?"

  "If I could tell you that, we wouldn't need to go. I feel the same as you do—I'm not willing to be pulled off a case so easily this time, no matter where the order comes from. I want to know how those projects in the missing files—Proteus and the rest of them—tie in to that unidentifiable liver in the Transplant Department. We don't have much time. Let's plan to get out of here half an hour from now."

  Chapter 6

  On the way to the hospital, Larsen became silent and uncommunicative. Wolf noticed that he was listening intently to his phone implant, and guessed at the reason.

  "Any change on the situation at home, John?" he asked, when Larsen finally cut the connection.

  Larsen looked somber. He shook his head. "Nothing new, I'm afraid. She's still going down fast. She knows it, too. She's using the machines all the time but it's not doing any good."

  He drew a deep breath, then added, "How do you tell someone you love that the best solution now is to go gracefully?"

  Wolf could not give him an answer. It was a problem that every family dreaded. Just as BEC's work had provided an answer to the old question of defining humanity, it also provided a definition of old age. Life expectancy was still about a century for most people; fertile, healthy years spent in peak physical condition. Then one day the brain lost its power to follow the profile of the bio-feedback regimes. Rapid physical and mental decline followed, each reinforcing the other. Most people chose to visit the Euth Club as soon as they realized what was happening. An unfortunate few, afraid of the unknowns of death, rode the roller-coaster all the way down.

  Larsen finally broke the silence. "You know, Bey, I've never seen old age before. Can you imagine what it must have been like when half the world was old? Losing hair and teeth and eyesight and hearing." He shuddered. "A couple of hundred years ago, I suppose it was all like that. How could they stand it? Why didn't they become insane?"

  Wolf looked at him closely. With a difficult time coming at Central Hospital, he had to be sure that Larsen was up to it.

  "They had a different attitude in those days, John," he said. "Aging used to be considered as normal, not as a degenerative disease. In fact, some of the signs used to be thought of as assets—proof of experience. Imagine living a couple of hundred years before that, if you really want to scare yourself. Life expectancy in the thirties—and no anesthetics, no decent pain-killers, and no decent surgery."

  "Sure, but somehow you can't really think of it. You only really know it when you see it for yourself. It's like being told that in the old days people lived their whole lives blind, or with a congenital heart defect, or missing a limb. You don't question it, but you can't imagine what it must have been like."

  They moved on, and finally Wolf spoke again.

  "Not just physical problems, either. If your body and appearance were fixed at birth, think how many emotional and sexual problems you might have."

  The outline of Central Hospital was looming again before them. They left the slideways and stood together in front of the massive granite columns bordering the main entrance. Each time they entered, it seemed that old fears were stirred. Both men had taken the humanity-tests here, although of course they had been too young to have any memory of it. This time it was Larsen who finally took Wolf by the arm and moved them forward.

  "Come on, Bey," he said, "They won't test us again. But I'm not sure you'd pass if they did. A lot of people in Form Control say part of you isn't human. Where did you get the knack of sniffing out the forbidden forms the way you do? They all ask me, and I never have a good answer."

  Wolf looked hard at Larsen, before he at last relaxed and laughed. "They could do it as well as I can if they used the same methods and worked at it as hard. I look for peculiarities—in the way people look, or the way they sound and dress and move and smell—anything that doesn't fit. After a few years it gets to be subconscious evaluation. I sometimes couldn't tell you what the giveaway was on a forbidden form. I'd have to give it a lot of thought, after the fact."

  They were through the great studded doors. The same receptionist was on duty. He greeted them cheerfully.

  "You two seem to have caught Doctor Capman's fancy. He gave me this code for you. You can use it anywhere in the hospital—he said you would need it when you got here."

  He smiled and handed an eight-digit dial-code to Wolf, who looked at Larsen in surprise.

  "John, did you call and say we were coming?"

  "No. Did you?"

  "Of course not. So how the devil did he—?"

  Wolf broke off and walked quickly to a wall query-point. He entered the code and a brief message at once flashed onto the viewing screen. 'Mr. Wolf and Mr. Larsen are to be given access to all units of the hospital. All staff are requested to cooperate fully with Office of Form Control investigations. By order of the Director, Robert Capman.'

  Larsen frowned in bewilderment. "He can't have known we'd be here. We only decided it half an hour ago."

  Wolf was already walking towards the elevator. "Believe it or not, John, he knew. We'll find out how some other time. Come on."

  As they were about to enter the elevator, they were met by Doctor Morris, who burst at once into excited speech. "What's going on here? Capman cancelled all his appointments for today, just half an hour ago. He told me to wait here for you. It's completely unprecedented."

  Wolf's eyes were restless and troubled. "We don't have time to explain now, but we need help. Where is Capman's private lab? It's somewhere on this floor, right?"

  "It is, along this corridor. But Mr. Wolf, you can't go in there. The Director has strict orders that he is not to be disturbed. It is a standard—"

  He broke off when Wolf slid open the door, to reveal an empty study. The other two followed him as he went in and looked around. Wolf turned again to Morris.

  "Where's the private lab?"

  "Through here." He led the way into an adjoining room that was equipped as a small but sophisticated laboratory. It too was empty. They quickly examined both rooms, until Larsen discovered an elevator in a corner closet of the lab.

  "Doctor, where does this lead?" asked Wolf.

  "Why—I don't know. I didn't even know it was there. It must have been left over from the time before the new lift tubes were installed. But that's over thirty years ago."

  The elevator had only one working button. Larsen pressed it and the three men descended in silence. Morris was counting to himself. When they stopped, he thought for a moment and nodded.

  "We're four floors underground now, if I counted them correctly. I don't know of any hospital facilities this deep under the building. It has to be very old—before my time here."

  The room they stepped out into, however, showed no signs of age. It was dust-free and newly-painted. At its far end stood a large vault door, with a combination lock built into the face. Wolf looked at it for a few seconds, then turned to Larsen.

  "We don't have too many options. Good thing it's not a new model. Think you can handle it, John?"

  Larsen walked up to the vault door and studied it quietly for a few minutes, then nodded. He began to move the jewelled key-settings delicately, pausing at each one. After twenty minutes of intense work, with frequent checks on his percomp, he drew a deep breath and carefully keyed in a full combination. He pulled, and following a moment's hesitation the great door swung open. They walked forward into a long, dimly-lit room.

  Morris pointed at once to the line of great sealed tanks that ran along both walls of the room.

  "Those shouldn't be here! They're special form-change tanks. They are like the ones we use for infants with birth-defects, but these ar
e ten times the size. There shouldn't be units like this anywhere in this hospital."

  He moved swiftly along the room, inspecting each tank and examining its monitors. Then he came back to Wolf and Larsen, eyes wide.

  "Twenty units, and fourteen of them occupied." His voice was shaking. "I don't know who is inside them, but I am quite certain that this whole unit is not part of the hospital facilities. It's a completely unauthorized form-change lab."

  Wolf looked at Larsen with grim satisfaction. He turned again to Morris.

  "Can you tell us just what change work is going on in here?"

  Morris thought for a moment, then replied, "If this is the usual lay-out, there has to be a control room somewhere. All the work records on the changes should be there—computer software, experimental designs, everything. It's not at this end."

  They hurried together along the length of the room. Morris muttered to himself in satisfaction when he saw the control room there. He went to the console and at once began to call out records for each of the experiment stations in turn. As he worked, his face grew paler and his brow was beaded with sweat. At last he spoke, slowly and in hushed tones.

  "There are missing records, but I can already tell you something terrible—and highly illegal—has been going on here. There are humans in fourteen of those tanks. They are being programmed to adapt to pre-specified forms, built into the control software. And I can tell you one other thing. The subjects in the tanks are definitely of an illegal age for form-change work—my rough estimate puts them between two years old and sixteen years old, all of them."

  It took a few seconds for that to sink in. Then Larsen said quietly. "You are telling us that there are human children in those tanks. That's monstrous. How can a child assess the risks that go with form-change?"

  "They can't. In this case, the question of knowing the risk does not arise. The arrangement is a very special one, never used legally. We've known how to apply it, in principle, for many years. The stimulus to achieve a programmed form-change is being applied directly to the pleasure centers of their brains. In effect, they have no choice at all. These children are being forced to strive for the programmed changes by the strongest possible stimulus."

  He leaned back in the control console chair and put both hands to his perspiring forehead. When he finally spoke again, his voice was slurred and weary.

  "I can't believe it. I simply can't believe it, even though I see it. In Central Hospital, and with Capman involved. He's been my idol ever since I left medical school. He seemed more concerned for individuals, and for humanity as a whole, than anyone I ever met. Never cared for money, or possessions. Now he's mixed up in this. It makes no sense. . . ."

  His voice cracked and he sat hunched and motionless in his chair. After a few seconds, Wolf intruded on his troubled reverie.

  "Doctor, is there any way that you can tell us what form-changes were being used here?"

  Morris roused himself a little and shook his head. "Not without the missing records. Capman must have kept those separately somewhere. I can get the computer listings through the display here, but it would be a terrible job to deduce the program purpose from the object listings. Even short subroutines can take hours to understand. There's a piece of code here, for example, that occurs over and over in two of the experiments. But its use is obscure."

  "What do you think it is, Doctor?" asked Bey. "I know you can't tell us exactly, but can you get even a rough idea?"

  Morris looked dubious. "I'll be reading it out of context, of course. It looks like a straightforward delay loop. The effect is to make each program instruction execute for a pre-set number of times before moving on to the next one. So everything would be slowed down by that same factor, set by the user."

  "But what would it do?"

  "Heaven knows. These programs are all realtime and interactive, so it would be nonsensical to slow them all down." He paused for a second, then added, "But remember, these programs were presumably designed by Robert Capman. He's a genius of the first rank, and I'm not. The fact that I can't understand what is being done here means nothing. We need Capman's own notes and experimental design before we can really tell what he was doing."

  Wolf was pacing the control room, eyes unfocussed and manner intent.

  "That's not going to be easy. Capman has left the hospital, I'll bet my brains on it. Why else would he have given us free run of the place? I don't understand why he did that, even if he knew we were onto him. Somehow he must have tracked what we were doing, and decided he couldn't stop us. But unless we do trace him, we may never know what he was doing here."

  He turned to Larsen in sudden decision. "John, go and get a trace sensor. It's my bet that Capman has been here, in this room, in the past hour. We have to try and go after him, even if it's only for his own protection. Can you imagine the public reaction if people found out he had been stealing human babies for form-change experiments? They'd tear him apart. He must have got the children by faking the results of the humanity-tests. That's why their I.D.'s aren't on file."

  Larsen hurried out of the vault. As he left, Morris suddenly looked hopeful.

  "Wait a minute," he said. "Suppose that Capman were working with subjects that had failed the humanity-tests. That wouldn't be as bad as using human babies."

  Wolf shook his head. "I had that thought, too. But it can't work. Remember, the whole point of the humanity-test is that non-humans can't perform purposive form-change. So they must be humans he's using, by definition. Not only that, remember that the liver we found came from a twelve year old. Capman didn't just have experiments, he had failed experiments, too. The organ banks were a convenient way of disposing of those, with small risk of discovery."

  He continued to pace the room impatiently, while Morris sat slumped in silent shock and despair.

  "God, I wish John would hurry up," said Wolf at last. "We need that tracer. Unless we can get a quick idea where Capman went, we're stuck."

  He continued his pacing, looking at the fittings of the control room. The communicator set next to the control console looked like a special purpose unit, one of the old models. All the response codes for setting up messages had changed since they were used—which meant any dial-code might key different responses. Bey thought for a moment, then entered the eight-digit dial-code that had been left for him by Capman at the main lobby. This time, instead of the earlier message requesting cooperation with Form Control, a much longer message scrolled steadily into the viewer. Bey read it with steadily increasing amazement.

  'Dear Mr. Wolf. Since you are reading this, you are in the private vault and have, as I feared after our first meeting, deduced the nature of my work here. I have known for many years that this day must come eventually, and I have resigned myself to the fact that this work will probably not be completed under my direction. Mr. Wolf, you may not know it yet, but you and I are two specimens of a very rare breed. It was apparent to me very quickly that this work would probably end with your investigation. I regret it, but accept it.

  'Long ago, I decided that I would prefer to live out my life in quiet anonymity, should this work be discovered, rather than endure the extensive and well-meaning rehabilitation program that would be inflicted on me as punishment for my criminal acts. To most, these deeds must appear unspeakable. To you, let me say that my work has always had as its objective the benefit of humanity. To that end, a small number of human lives have unfortunately been sacrificed. I fully believe that in this case the end justifies the means.

  'In order to achieve the anonymity I desire, it will be necessary for Robert Capman to vanish from the Earth. It is unlikely that we will meet again. The risk for me would be too great, since I suspect that you and I would always recognize each other. As Homer remarks, such know each other always. Mr. Wolf, learn more form-change theory. Your gift for the practical is astonishing, but its true potential will be wasted until you master the theoretical also. Do that, and nothing will be beyond you.

&nb
sp; 'This morning I completed all the necessary plans for my departure, and now I must leave. Believe me, there is a point where fame is a burden, and a quiet life among my recordings and holo-tapes is devoutly to be wished. I have reached that point. Sincerely, Robert Capman.'

  That was the end. Wolf and Morris watched the screen intently, but nothing further appeared.

  "I'm beginning to understand why you people in the hospital regard him as omniscient," said Wolf at last. "But I'm sure you realize that I can't let him get away. If I can track him down, I have to do it. As soon as John Larsen gets here, we'll try and follow him—no matter where he's gone."

  Morris did not reply. He seemed to have had more shocks than he could take in one day. He remained at the seat of the control console, slack-jawed and limp, until Larsen appeared at last through the great vault door.

  "Sorry that took so long, Bey," he said. "I thought I'd better go by Capman's apartment and train the sensor on a couple of his clothing samples. It should be pretty well tuned now to his body chemistry. We can go any time, as soon as we get a faint scent. The sensor kept pointing this way, so somehow he must have been able to exit from here. See any signs of a concealed way out?"

  The two men began to search the wall areas carefully, while Morris looked on listlessly and uncomprehendingly. Finally, John Larsen found the loose wall panel behind an air-conditioning unit. Working together, they lifted it aside and found that beyond it lay a long, narrow corridor, faintly lit with green fluorescence. Larsen held the trace sensor in the opening and the monitor light glowed a bright red. The trace arrow swung slowly to point along the corridor.

  "That's the way he went, Bey," said Larsen. He turned to Morris. "Where will this lead?"

  Morris pulled himself together and looked around him. "I'll have to think. The elevator was in the west corner of the study. So that would mean you are facing just about due east."

  Bey Wolf pinched thoughtfully at his lower lip. "Just about what I expected," he said. "Where else?" He turned to Larsen. "That's the way we'll have to go, John, if we want to catch Capman. See where we'll be heading?—straight into the heart of Old City."