Sight of Proteus

by Charles Sheffield

  He reached out his hand and held it close to the wall.

  "See, you can feel the reflected heat on your skin. A tiny amount of heat passes through to the ice walls underneath, and a modest refrigeration connecting to the polar surface takes care of that very easily."

  Bey was looking on ironically. "I must say, Mr. Ling, for a man who is from off-Earth, you have a quite astonishing knowledge of Earth affairs."

  "The lunar nights are long. We have plenty of time for reading." Ling's formal reply carried definite hints of humor. Before Bey could comment further, a third person had joined them, moving smoothly and silently across the polished floor.

  "Welcome to Pleasure Dome, Sirs."

  She was tall and slim, dressed in a long white gown. Her skin was pale and flawless, her hair a fine white cloud. Even her lips looked faded and bloodless. She looked at them quietly with cool grey eyes as expressionless as clouded crystal. A Snow Queen. Bey wondered how much of it was natural, and how much she owed to the form-change equipment.

  "I am your hostess. I will help you to arrange your pleasures. Do not be afraid to ask, whatever your tastes. There are few wishes that we cannot accommodate.

  "Before we begin, there are a few formalities."

  "You want our identifications?" asked Bey.

  "Only if you choose to give them, Sirs. They are not necessary. We do need proof of adequate means, but that can be cash or any other method you prefer."

  "We are together," said Ling. "My credit will serve for both of us. Do you have a bank connection?"

  "Here, Sir." The Snow Queen produced a small silver plate from within her gown. Ling placed his right index finger on it, and they waited as the ID was established and the central bank returned a credit rating. As she read the credit, her expression changed. Previously she had been remote and self-possessed, a being without sex or emotion. Now she suddenly lost her composure and for the first time became a young woman. Bey realized that Ling's credit was probably that of the entire USF.

  "What is your pleasure, Sirs?" A pink tongue licked nervously at the pale lips. Even her voice had changed, become uncertain, tremulous, almost childish. With that much credit available, Bey suspected that there was nothing, literally nothing, that could not be bought at Pleasure Dome. The goods on sale included the body and soul of their hostess, and she knew it. It was dangerous for her to be in contact with such financial power. She could never know when one of Ling's whims might include her as a purchased pleasure.

  Ling had read her uneasiness, and divined the reason for it.

  "We want none of the conventional pleasures," he said. "We want to talk to the men who control the form-change tanks at Pleasure Dome. The men who recently handled three off-Earthers. Don't worry if you do not know what I am referring to—the men we seek will understand fully."

  She hesitated. It was odd how her vulnerability had suddenly cracked the glacial shell. There were wrinkles of worry on that perfect brow, and animation in those clouded grey eyes. Ling's request fell far outside the usual list of fancies, and the decision as to how to proceed made her uncomfortable.

  "Sirs, I must consult others on this matter. It will take me a few minutes. If you would wait here"—she led them to another, octagonal room—"I will return as quickly as possible. It is a viewing room, as you will see. The scenes change every two minutes, unless you wish to cancel and advance to another before that. The control button is on the seats."

  "And this?" said Ling, pointing to the metal cylinder that stood above each seat.

  "Don't worry about it. It is a sensor that will monitor your responses and move to others that should have increasing appeal to your particular tastes."

  As she left them, the room grew dark, then slowly lightened. They were in the middle of a holo-setting, surrounded by the filtered emerald light of a submarine reef. Across from them, winnowing the green gloom with giant questing tentacles, floated a huge octopus. The great eyes fixed on them, lambent and unblinking.

  "An illegal form, I assume?" asked Ling quietly.

  "Very much so," said Bey, staring in fascination at the slowly moving arms. "All the cephalopods are illegal. There is at least a five percent chance that reversion would be impossible in that form. I am surprised that anyone would pay huge sums of money to take such a stupid risk."

  "De gustibus . . ." said Ling. He shrugged, and the room again grew dim. When it lightened, Bey at first thought that they were again in an underwater setting. The light was again a dappled green. He looked up, to the fronded leaves far above them. The scene was over-canopied by a continuous growth of vegetation. In front of them, blending perfectly into the broken patches of light and dark, crouched the silent form of a tiger. As they watched, the great muscles bunched beneath the smooth coat, and the beast sprang. The unsheathed claws ripped at the boar's throat, at the same time as the other forepaw made a mighty swipe at the exposed backbone. The boar moved its head quickly, intercepting the extended forelimb with a razor-sharp set of long tusks.

  "If you don't mind . . ." said Ling quietly, and pressed the button to change the scene. "I hope that is not an accurate reflection of your taste or my own," he said as the light again dimmed.

  "I'm not even sure which form we were offered there, the boar or the tiger," replied Bey. "Both of them, I expect."

  The light grew brighter, then brighter yet. The man standing in front of them was imperious and commanding. He stood, arms folded, in the blazing light of an Egyptian noon, watching the groaning timber as it moved slowly over the wooden rollers. Heavy ropes held the great block of stone securely on the flat support, and the forms of the long lines of slaves who hauled it slowly across the desert were smeared with sweat and dust. In the distance ahead of them, the long, rising ramp led to the unfinished shape of the looming pyramid.

  "A real power kick," said Ling.

  Bey nodded. "No man has had that much absolute power for thousands of years. I don't think we really know much about Cheops; but I'll bet that the Pleasure Dome artists have made a creditable shot at the times."

  They looked in silence for a few moments at the glaring, empty sky, and the tall, white-robed figure standing rock-steady in the paralyzing heat.

  "I don't think too much of the power of that monitor to read our tastes," said Bey. "Unless that man is Imhotep rather than Cheops."

  The scene was shifting again, the bright white light of an Egyptian morning fading to a flickering red glare. It took time for their eyes to adjust to the smoky firelight. The groan of timber and the sighs of hard-worked slaves had given way to the creak of pulleys and the hiss of a bellows-driven furnace. The men moving around the long table were naked except for their black hoods and leather aprons, and the sweat trickled down their muscular bodies. The man on the table was silent, mouth gaping. His limbs were bound at wrist and ankle with wrappings of cloth and rope, spreadeagled and strained.

  A black-cowled figure was approaching the table, brand glowing orange-red in his hand. Bey pressed the button hurriedly.

  "Who could want that?" said Ling. Even he seemed moved from his ironic detachment. "I should have guessed it, there is nothing here for people like us."

  "How does the machine see us—victim or torturers?" asked Bey.

  The scene this time was pastoral and quiet. A young man was sitting alone by a great oak tree, his face calm and thoughtful. The sun was shining, but it was the soft green of a European summer rather than the harsh browns and ochres of Egypt. The birds flew about the garden, and there was the muted sound of distant running water. The man did not move. He was dressed in the shirt and woolen breeches of the seventeenth century. Wolf and Ling looked at each other, both puzzled.

  "Do you understand it?" asked Ling.

  Bey peered more closely at the man's hands, at the wedge of glass that he was holding. He felt a sudden thrill of recognition.

  "Newton," he said softly to Ling. "Look at the hands."

  "What?" Ling stared hard. After a moment he ma
de a curious sound, half grunt, half groan. "It is, it's Newton at Woolsthorpe. See, he's holding a prism." His voice was changed, from a cynical amused tone to one of fascinated longing. "God, can you imagine what it would be like? To see the world through Newton's eyes, in those years. His annus mirabilis, the Plague Years—he invented all the basics of modern science, the laws of motion, optics, calculus, gravity. All during those two years when he was at Woolsthorpe to avoid the plague."

  Ling leaned forward further, his eyes alight with interest. Wolf, no less intrigued, was wondering how long the scene would remain for their inspection.

  "Well, Sirs, I am sorry to have taken such a long time."

  The soft voice behind them broke the spell. The scene faded. Ling looked at the helmet above his head with respect.

  "I would have sworn that there was nothing that Pleasure Dome could offer me with real appeal. Now I know I am wrong," he said ruefully.

  He turned to the woman behind him, who had with her an equally striking blond haired man, also dressed all in white.

  "Who programmed this viewing selection?" asked Ling.

  The man smiled. "It is not the policy of Pleasure Dome to reveal our working secrets. Just be assured, everything we offer is done as well as history permits. The psychology, if we use the form of a real person, is as accurate as modern methods allow. You are interested in one of the worlds we offer?"

  Ling sighed. "All too interested. But we have other business. You have seen the credit I control. We need help. If we don't get it, we can close down the form-change services here completely. I hope that will not prove necessary."

  The man nodded. "Sirs, your credit is enough to purchase any pleasure. However, you must appreciate that certain things in Pleasure Dome are not available at any price. The detail of our operations is one. Please state your wishes again, so that we can see if we are able to accommodate them."

  "We have no wish to cause trouble here," said Ling. "If we wished to, there is no doubt that we could. This is Behrooz Wolf, the head of the Office of Form Control on Earth. I am Karl Ling, special assistant to the USF Cabinet. I tell you this, so that you will know we are not trying to trick you. Check our credentials if you wish to."

  The man smiled. "That was done as you arrived. Pleasure Dome takes certain precautions, although it does not advertise them. We seek an ID if anyone makes an unusual request—otherwise, the anonymity is total."

  Ling nodded. "Good. That saves time. All we are looking for is information. Three men died recently during form-change. We believe that they died here. We want to speak to the men who were in charge of that operation, and we want to see the full records of the monitors that were recording and supervising the form-changes."

  The man made no attempt to deny the charge. He was silent for a few moments, then asked, "If we cooperate, you will take our involvement no further, here or elsewhere?"

  "You have our word."

  "Then come with me." The blond man smiled. "You should be flattered. You are obtaining a service free of charge. To my knowledge, that has never happened before since Pleasure Dome was first created."

  The three men walked quickly through a maze of ice caves, fairy grottoes lit by lights of different colors. They came at last to a door that led to an ordinary office, with paneled walls and a functional looking desk.

  The man motioned to Wolf and Ling to sit down on the hard chairs.

  "I will return in a moment. This, by the way, is our idea of luxury. Normal walls, furniture, and privacy. We all aspire to it, but our lives here rarely permit us the chance."

  He left, to return a few minutes later with his identical twin. Bey felt that his question about the use of form-change equipment on the staff had been answered. The ultimate bondage: someone else dictated the exact shape of their bodies.

  The newcomer was distinctly ill at ease. The idea of talking about his work to an outsider clearly disturbed him. Bey was able to see a new side of Karl Ling in action, as he soothed and coaxed the man to become more relaxed and talkative. After a few minutes of introductory chatting, the real interview began.

  "All those three wanted was a full-speed reconditioning program," the Pleasure Dome controller said. Once started, it promised to be a torrent of words. "The only thing we did for them that is in any way illegal was the speed. We used the biofeedback machines twenty-four hours a day, and provided the nutrients intravenously. It looked like a completely straightforward job, and we didn't give them any special monitoring, the way we would if a customer was to come in and ask for a special change. We can do some pretty fancy things here, though of course we can't compete with the big BEC labs for change experiment. The program that the three of them had asked for takes about a hundred and fifty hours, nearly a week of changing if you run it continuously. I know there are versions that will do the same thing in a third of the time, but believe it or not we take all the precautions we can. I prefer to run the slower version; it's less strain on the people taking it."

  "You've run this course many times before, I assume?" asked Ling. The speaker seemed in need of a chance to breathe—all the information had come out as one burst.

  "Often, especially for off-worlders. It wasn't my job to ask their origins, of course, but I can make a good guess from their clothes and their speech. If anybody had thought to ask me at the beginning, I'd have told them the three we had weren't Earthers."

  He looked at the other blond man, with a hint of a dispute that still rankled.

  "Ever since Capman's work on the changes," he went on, "a straightforward program like this one has been completely automatic. The tanks have automatic monitors that control air and nutrient supplies, and the pace of the process is all regulated from the computer. Of course, the subject has to be conscious at some level, because it's purposive form-change that's involved. You understand what I mean, do you, or shall I explain it more?"

  He looked at Ling, taking Wolf's understanding for granted.

  "Enough," said Ling. He glared at Bey, who was looking smug. "Keep on going."

  "Well, the unit is completely self-contained. There's no viewing panel on the tanks, so the only way we know what's happening inside is by looking at the monitors and tell-tales on the outside."

  "How often do you do that?"

  "In a simple case like this, once a day. Even that shouldn't be necessary. We never have anything to do, but we check anyway. The three off-worlders had all checked in together and started the program at the same time, so one look a day was enough to monitor all of them. They all had the same reconditioning program. Needed it, too. They looked done in when they arrived—I don't know what they'd been up to."

  He paused for a moment. Bey wondered what the staff of Pleasure Dome did for their own entertainment—what would appeal to the men and women who had seen everything, who had provided for every possible taste? Probably something very simple. The chefs of the most expensive restaurants seemed to dine on the most basic fare.

  "The evening of the third day," the man finally continued, "I took my usual routine look at the tell-tales. All three men were dead. I couldn't believe it. At first I thought there had to be something wrong with the tell-tales, or maybe a programming error for the displays. Then we opened the tanks."

  He paused again, re-living the memory.

  "It was awful. God, it was like a nightmare. They had changed, they weren't men anymore. They were monsters, with great big glowing eyes and wrinkled skin—just like a horror holo. We checked that they were all dead, then looked at their ID's. I knew, even without that, we had three off-worlders on our hands. Everybody around here really panicked. We thought we might be able to get them off-Earth, but it isn't as easy as it used to be. When we found we couldn't do that, we decided the safest thing would be to put them deep at sea. But apparently that didn't work, either."

  There was a long silence. Ling was too engrossed even to give Bey a look of triumph at his reconstruction of events. He was bound in a spell of concentration so
intense that he looked blind, his eyes unblinking and focused on infinity.

  "Did you do any chemical analysis of the bodies?" he asked at last.

  "God, no. We wanted to get them out of here. We weren't about to waste time with tests. There should be records of all the chemistry, though, as it was measured during the bio-feedback work. It will all be in the files, still, along with the monitor and tell-tale records. Blood chemistry and cell chemistry should be recorded continuously."

  "Right. I want to examine those now. Bring them here or take us to them."

  "I'll get them. But they'll be in raw form. Only a form-change expert would be able to read them."

  Ling caught Bey's glance. "Bring them in. We'll manage somehow," he said. "It's a skill you never lose once you've mastered it completely."

  * * *

  John Larsen looked at the spectrograph output, then at Park Green.

  "It's far less than I expected," he said. "There are traces of Asfanium in all the bodies, but the amount is very small. There's a tiny trace of radioactivity because of that, but it's not enough to make a big physical effect, even if form-change amplifies it. I wonder if it could be a subtle chemical effect? Trace elements, even in microscopic amounts, do funny things to the biochemical balance. We still don't know too much about the chemical properties of the transuranics in the island of stability around 114."

  "Well," began Green doubtfully, "we don't know all that much. But we've found no strange properties for Asfanium or Polkium in our work on the Moon. I think it's something different. The crew of the Jason never encountered form-change before. They weren't experienced. I wonder if they somehow let things get out of control—they ran into something new, like a trace of Asfanium, and they didn't have the form-change experience to know how to handle it."

  Larsen slapped the spectrograph output sheet against his thigh.

  "Park, I bet you're on to something. Experience is important in form-change work. With inexperienced people, something could go wrong."

  "So can we test it?"

  "I think so. We already know that Asfanium concentrates in the thymus gland. We can take an extract from one of the bodies and conduct a controlled test to see if funny things happen when you use a form-change program."