Sight of Proteus

by Charles Sheffield

  Wolf paused. He felt that there had been an inconsistency in Larsen's replies, but he couldn't put his finger on it. After a few moments, he went on. Larsen continued to sit there motionless, his luminous eyes unblinking.

  "Let me give you one more fact, John, then you can tell me what you make of all this. Nine years ago, Karl Ling wrote twelve separate papers on the structure, formation and stability of Pearl. All references to those papers have been deleted—I had to dig out the information by indirect references. Do you recognize the pattern? It's the one that we saw with Capman's medical records back in Central Hospital."

  Larsen nodded calmly. "I see where you are heading. You think that Pear' ho'ds some specia' secret, something that keys you to find Capman. It is p'ausib'e, Bey, but I see one prob'em. You are suggesting that Capman managed to create the person of 'ing, at the same time as he was the Director of Centra' Hospita'. How cou'd he do that?"

  Wolf stood up, and began to pace up and down in front of the viewing panel. His manner was tense and nervous. "I checked that, too. All Ling's early papers show an Earth address. His other records show him living on Earth until six years ago, then moving to the Moon. That's the USF files—but the Earth ID files don't show anything for him at all. I suspect that the USF chromosome ID they have is faked. One more thing, then I'm done. Capman's travel records at Central Hospital for the final two years before he was forced to run for it show that he was off-Earth far more than ever before. He always seemed to have a good reason for it—hospital business—but he would have had no trouble making up a reason; he was the boss."

  Larsen was nodding his head and trunk slowly, eyes unblinking.

  "And so, your conc'usion, Bey? What do you propose to do next?"

  Wolf stopped his pacing. His manner was resolute. "First, I'm heading for the Moon. I have to know more about Pearl, and I have to know why Capman was interested in it. I'll be leaving tomorrow. I don't like to leave you out of it, but you're in good hands here. Maria will do all that you need if you want to begin reversion."

  "Of course, that is no prob'em. But one thing before you go, Bey." Larsen was looking directly at Wolf, his gaze steady and penetrating. "You ought to ask yourse'f one other question. Why do you pursue Robert Capman with such zea'? Even if you think he is a monster, why is he so important to you?"

  Wolf, who was turning to leave, was stopped in mid-stride. He swung quickly round to face Larsen through the viewing panel. "Tokhmir! You know that, John. There were two other projects in Capman's background at the hospital. We only traced two of them, Proteus and Timeset. What about the others? I want to know what Lungfish and Janus are. They're still complete mysteries. That's what fascinates me about Capman."

  His tone was defensive, not quite steady. Larsen looked at him quietly for a few moments.

  "Ca'm down, Bey. They are mysteries, I agree. But is that sufficient reason? I don't think so. We've had unso'ved mysteries before in the Office of Form Contro'. You managed to 'eave them a'one after a whi'e, didn't you? Remember when we were ba'ked on the form changes in Antarctica? We were pu'ed off that, and we hated it—but you managed to 'ive with it after a month or two. This has chased you, and you've chased Capman, for more than four years. Think about it, Bey. Do you have to keep up the hunt?"

  Wolf's eyes were introspective and thoughtful. He rubbed his fingers absently along the seam of his loose jacket.

  "It's hard to explain, John. Do you remember the first time that we met Capman, back in Central Hospital? I had a feeling, even then, that he was an important figure in my life. I still have that feeling." He paused, then shrugged. "I don't know. I'm not a believer in paralogic, and I don't find my own words very convincing. All the same, I have to go. I'm going to tell Park Green that I'll be up there in a couple of days."

  He hurried out. It was John Larsen's turn to become thoughtful. The hulking alien figure sat in silence for a few minutes, then went through to the inner living quarters. He seated himself before the comscreen and opened the high data-rate circuits. When the ready light appeared and the array of sensors was ready, he keyed in the destination. The prompter waited, until the link was complete.

  Larsen looked at the face that had appeared on the screen.

  "Burst mode," he said softly.

  The other nodded and activated a switch to his left. Larsen closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. The smooth grey oval of skin on his broad chest turned to a pale rose-pink, then swiftly became a dazzling kaleidoscope of shifting colors. The area now contained a multitude of separate point elements, each changing color as fast as the eye could follow. Larsen sat rigid in his chair, but after twenty seconds he began to draw in shallow, pained breaths. The brilliant display on his chest flickered on, a bright, changing rainbow shimmering like a winter aurora. The great body was motionless, racked by an unknown tension as the patterns fed into the communicator screen.

  Eight thousand miles away, at the global communications center in the South Pacific, the com monitors began to flash red. There was an unexpectedly heavy load on the planetary com circuits. Auxiliary channels automatically cut in. Through a thousand output displays, the world-wide network complained to its controllers at the sudden excess message burden. The load ended as suddenly as it had started. In his tank, Larsen lolled back in his seat, too drained to sign off with his distant receiver.

  Chapter 18

  The journey to Tycho City was supposed to be routine. Wolf had gone by aircar to the nearest Mattin connection, linked twice to get to the Australian exit, and taken a ground car to the North Australian spaceport. After a rigorous USF inspection and certification—no wonder, thought Bey, that the staff of Pleasure Dome had given up on the idea of getting the Jason's crew off Earth—a scheduled shuttle took him up to equatorial parking orbit. The Lunar connection was due in three hours.

  On the journey to the spaceport, and up to orbit, Wolf was preoccupied with Larsen's last question to him, and with the simple practical details of his departure. Then, waiting for the lunar transport, he was surprised by an urgent call from Earth. He went along the corridor to the main communications center.

  There was a brief delay in establishing the video link. When the channel was available, Maria Sun's image appeared on the tiny utility screen. Her china-doll face looked grim and suspicious.

  "All right, Bey," she began. "You don't have to be nice to us at BEC, I know that. But just let me remind you that if I hadn't helped you, you might not have been able to save John Larsen. So—what have you done with himl The USF people at the Australian spaceport swear that he's not with you, and none of the other manifests show any extra people or equipment."

  It took Wolf a second or two to grasp her meaning.

  "I've not done a thing with him," he said. "You're telling me he's gone, but he ought to still be in the living quarters at Form Control. There's no other place with a life-support system for him. Did you check—"

  He stopped. Maria was shaking her head firmly. "We've looked everywhere in Form Control. One thing I'm quite sure of, he's not here. Bey, that system Ling and I fixed up for John is really fancy. If he doesn't have a special environment, he'll die within hours. Are you telling me that you didn't arrange this between the two of you?"

  "Maria, I'm as surprised as you are. Damn it, I was with John yesterday, talking about my trip to Tycho City. He didn't give any sign that he wasn't going to stay just where he was. I agree with you, he had to stay put, he wouldn't last a minute without that special atmosphere."

  Maria bit at her full upper lip. She shook her head in perplexity. "I believe you, Bey, if you swear that's the truth. But then what is going on?"

  Bey looked past the viewing screen. He was beginning to feel a prickling sensation at the nape of his neck. A number of small factors from his discussion with Larsen began to sum in his subconscious. The curious arrangement of Larsen's living quarters, the elaborate comlink that Ling had arranged—ostensibly for tuition purposes of the new form—the way that Lar
sen had steered the conversation, all was coming together. Bey needed to think it out in detail.

  "Maria," he said at last. "I told you I didn't know what happened, and I was telling you the truth. But all of a sudden I'm getting suspicions. Let me call you back later. I know John couldn't live without his special equipment, but I don't think we should be too worried about that. Give me a couple of hours to do some thinking, and let me call you back."

  Without waiting for her reply, Wolf pushed himself away from the console and drifted slowly back through the ship to the transit area. He settled himself in one corner, lay back, and let his thoughts roam freely back over the past few weeks, picking out the anomalies.

  They were there. Strange that he hadn't noticed them before. Even so, it was disturbing to realize that he could be led so easily, even by someone he trusted completely. For the future, he would have to remember that he was dealing now with a new Larsen, one whose mind was quicker, clearer and more subtle than it had ever been in the past. Look at the tuition circuit that Ling had installed. Larsen needed to be able to acquire information from scattered data sources all around Earth. True enough. But why had he needed an off-planet capability, why a complete two-way link, why a circuit rated at many thousands of voice-grade lines?

  Wolf's thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a flicker of movement at the port. He looked up in surprise. A crewman was looking in through the panel, held securely against the outer hull by suction cups on his wrists and ankles. He was checking part of the antennae. Wolf couldn't resist a closer look. It was the first time he had seen a C-form development in its space environment.

  The crewman's skin was thick and toughened, and his eyes were coated with a thick transparent layer of protective mucus. He wore no air-tank or protective suit. The modified lungs, structurally modeled after the deep-diving whales, could store enough oxygen, under pressure, to work outside in comfort for several hours. The scaly skin was an effective seal against loss of fluids to the hard vacuum surrounding it. The hard ultra-violet was screened out by abundant melanin surrogates in the epidermis.

  Wolf watched as the crewman moved off easily along the hull, quite at home there. He sighed, as his thoughts came back to his own stupidity. Larsen had led him, coaxed him easily along, to find out more about Ling, more about Pearl. So Capman wanted him to be aware of that connection, wanted him interested in the Egyptian Cluster—there was no doubt now that Larsen and Capman had been in regular communication, ever since Capman/Ling's disappearance a few weeks earlier. Larsen had moved Bey steadily along in his thinking, to the point where Bey had made his decision to set off for the Moon. With that accomplished, Larsen had promptly disappeared. He couldn't have done it without help, but it was quite clear where the help had been coming from. Capman, with resources available to him that Bey could still only guess at, had removed Larsen from the Form Control offices, and sent him—where?

  Bey was getting ideas on that question, too. Although it was only ten minutes to ship separation, he hurried back to the communications center and placed a quick call to Tycho City. When Park Green appeared on the screen, the first buzzer had already sounded to tell Bey to get back to his seat.

  "Park, I'm on my way and don't have time to say much." It was Wolf's turn to dispense with formal greetings. "Check if there's a ship available with enough fuel capacity to make a trip right out of the ecliptic, up to the Egyptian Cluster. If there is, charter it. Use my name, with Form Control on Earth as surety. Don't say where I want to go with it. I'll see you in twenty-four hours. Tell you everything then."

  The purser, his face red-veined with vacuum blossom, was motioning to him urgently. Wolf cut the connection, swung hastily back to his seat, and strapped in.

  "Cutting it fine," said the purser gruffly.

  Wolf nodded. "Urgent call," he said. "You know, I just saw a C-form working outside the ship. I thought they were still forbidden for USF work."

  The purser's expression became more friendly, and he smiled.

  "They are. There's a little game being played there. The C-forms aren't USF men at all. They're part of a student exchange program—Earth gets a few specialists in power kernels, the USF gets a few C-forms."

  "What do you think of them?"

  "The best thing to hit space since the cheap vacuum still. It's only the unions who are holding things up. Job worries." He looked at the read-out at his wrist. "Hold on now, we're cutting ties."

  As the ship began the slow spiral away from parking orbit, Wolf switched on the small news screen set above the couch. Movement about the cabins would be restricted during the high-impulse phase of the next hour. He turned to the news channel.

  The media had picked up from somewhere a surmise that John Larsen was missing. It was a small item, far down on the news priorities. More to the public interest were the latest statements on the social indicators. They were still oscillating, with swings of increasing amplitude. Even with the power kernel beaming down to Quito, energy was still desperately short in South America. The famine deaths were rising rapidly in northern Europe. Compared with the mounting crisis that faced the General Coordinators, Bey realized that his own preoccupations were a tiny detail. But he could not rid his mind of Larsen's question. Given all this, why was Capman as much on his mind now as he had been four years before?

  From where he was lying, Wolf could see ahead into the pilot's station. The computer could handle most things, but the man preferred to operate in manual mode for the beginning of the trip. It was another C-form, added proof that events were moving faster than the union wished. The pilot, hands and prehensile feet delicate masses of divided digits, was manipulating sixty controls simultaneously. Bey watched in fascination, while his thoughts continued to revolve around the same old issues.

  After the first, surprising moonquake, the second construction of Tycho City had placed the living quarters deep underground. Bey, vacuum-suited, rode the high-speed elevator down through the Horstmann Fissure, towards the main city more than three kilometers below. He left it at the optional exit point, halfway down, and walked over to the edge of the ledge. The preserved body of Horstmann, still sealed in his spacesuit, hung from the old pitons fixed in the fissure wall. Wolf looked at the Geiger counter next to the suited figure. The rapid chatter carried clearly to him through the hard rock surface. The half-life of the nucleides was less than ten years, but Horstmann would be too hot to touch for at least another century. The radioactivity could have been lessened more quickly by stimulated nuclear transitions, as was done with the usual reactor wastes, but the Lunar authorities were against that idea. Bey read the commemorative metal plaque again, then continued his descent through the fissure.

  Park Green had managed to pull strings with Immigration and Customs. The reception formalities were smooth and very brief. Green's grinning face, towering a good foot above the other waiting USF citizens, greeted Wolf as he emerged from the third and final interlock.

  "Bey, you don't know the trouble you caused me," he began, as he engulfed Wolf's hand in his own. "I didn't know how well-known you are. As soon as our people who've been working on regeneration methods found out that you were heading for Tycho City, they started to flood me with calls. They all want to know how long you'll be staying, what you'll be doing, the whole bit. I had a hard time stalling them. They want to meet you and talk about the work that you began a couple of years ago on transitional forms."

  Wolf was a little startled. "They know about that work up here? I didn't think it was particularly surprising. All I did was follow up some of the clues that were buried in Capman's work. He had the idea."

  "People up here don't seem to agree. If the clues were there, they must have been well hidden. Are you willing to spend some time with them? All they—"

  "Look, Park, in other circumstances I'd be glad to," broke in Bey, "but we have no time for that now. Did you get the ship?"

  "I think so—it will be a few hours before I know for certain. I've had a proble
m with that, too. All the forms I've filled out require an actual destination before you can get clearance for any trip longer than a couple of hundred hours. I checked your license, so at least that seemed all right."

  "What did you tell them for a destination? Nothing specific, right?"

  "I think that should be easy enough. I booked for the Grand Tour, all the way through the Inner, Middle and Outer System, right out to the Halo. Once that's approved, there'll be enough fuel and supplies on her to take her anywhere in the Solar System. One thing you ought to know, I charged it all to you—I don't have the credit for it."

  "How much?"

  Wolf winced at the figure.

  "If all this works out," he said, "I'll get everything back. Otherwise, I'll be a slave to the USF for the rest of my life. Well, let's worry about that later."

  As they spoke, Green led the way through the long corridor that led to the final clearing section before the main living quarters. He was sliding along in the fast, economical lope that all USF people acquired in early childhood. Wolf, not too successfully, tried to imitate it. The floor of fused rock felt slippery beneath his feet, and he had the curious feeling that the lunar gravity was a little lower than it had been on his last trip to Tycho City, many years before.

  "No," said Green in answer to his question. "I think that physics here may be a little ahead of anywhere else in the System, but we still don't have an efficient generator. Gravity's one thing we haven't tamed so far. McAndrew came up with a method, a long time ago, for using shielded kernels for local gravity adjustments, and that's as far as anyone has been able to go. Nobody's willing to try even that much, down on a planetary surface. What you're feeling is a change in oxygen content. We put it a fraction of a percent higher about three years ago. You'll find that you get used to it in a couple of days."