Sight of Proteus

by Charles Sheffield

  "A couple of days! Park, I have no intention of being here in a couple of days. I want to be well on the way to the Cluster. When can the ship leave? I hope it's today."

  Green stopped and looked at Wolf quizzically. "Bey, you're dreaming. You just don't know the problems. First, there's no way they can get a ship ready in less than seventy-two hours. Damn it, it has to be equipped to support the two of us on a two-year trip—that's how long the Grand Tour can take. I know we're not really going on that, but they're getting her ready for it. Second—"

  "What do you mean, support the two of us? Park, I'm not dragging you on this trip. It's a risky game, that far out of the usual System ship routes, and it may all be a complete waste of time. I'm going solo."

  Green had listened calmly, towering way above Wolf. He shook his head.

  "Bey, you're a real expert on form-change, I'll be the first to admit that. But you're a baby when it comes to space operations. Oh, don't say it—I know very well that you have your license. That's just the beginning. It means you're toilet-trained in space—not that you're ready to hare off around the System on your own. I'm telling you, no matter how confident you feel about your ability to look after yourself, the owners wouldn't agree. There's no way they'd even let you get near that ship unless I go with you—not once around the Moon, never mind the Grand Tour. It's got to be me, or you'll find they push some other USF pilot on to you—somebody you don't even know."

  Wolf looked at Green's calm confidence. It was obvious that the big man was telling the truth. He shrugged, and resigned himself to the inevitable.

  "It wasn't what I had in mind, Park. I wasn't proposing to drag you into all this when I asked you to help in checking Ling's records up here."

  Green smiled slightly, and shook his head. "Bey, you still don't understand it, do you? I'm not going along because I'm a kind-hearted martyr. I'm going along because I want to. Damn it, don't you realize that I've been itching to know what's been going on with John back on Earth, since the minute that I set out to come back to Tycho City? You could almost say that it was my fault that John ever got changed to a Logian form. If I'd been a bit smarter, and known what was happening, I might have been able to talk him out of injecting Logian DNA into himself. Get rid of the idea that I'm going along for your sake."

  Wolf was staring up at the other's earnest face. "Sorry, Park," he said in a subdued voice. "I let my own compulsions blind me to everybody else's. You deserve to come along. I still wish we could beat that figure of seventy-two hours. I didn't plan on spending anything near that long here in Tycho City."

  Green was smiling again. "You'll need that much time to prepare. And you still owe me some explanations. Your message from the ship set a new high for being cryptic. We're getting ready to go right out of the System and you still haven't told me why. I heard that John has disappeared, and I know the two things are connected."

  "We're not going out of the System, Park, just to the Egyptian Cluster."

  "Same thing, to a USF-er. Technically, you're right, of course. The System goes all the way out to the long-period comet aphelia. But so far as anybody in the USF is concerned, when you go to an orbit plane that far off the plane of the ecliptic, you might as well be right out of the System. The delta-v you need is so big, and there are so few things of interest up there. We just don't bother to do it very often. Do you know, I've never even met anybody who has been to a member of the Egyptian Cluster. I've been looking up the facts on it ever since you called me from the ship. I still can't imagine why you want to go there."

  They were approaching the big, hemispherical chamber that marked the city edge. Beyond it, slideways led to the separate centers for manufacturing, maintenance, utilities and habitation. Agriculture and power were located back up on the surface, thirty-five hundred meters above their heads.

  "I'll brief you on all the background as soon as we're settled in here," said Bey. "That won't take me more than a few hours. I don't know what plans you have to spend the rest of the time before we can leave, but I'd like to have another go at the data banks. There may still be things in there that I missed last time, on Capman's activities here as Karl Ling."

  "You'll have time for that. There will be other things, too." Green pointed ahead of them, to where a small group of men and women was standing by a wall terminal. "There's your fan club. I'm sorry, Bey, but I couldn't stop it. Those are the Tycho City experts on regeneration methods. They want to hold a reception later in your honor, and nothing I've said has managed to dissuade them. You see the price of fame? Now, are you too tired, or shall we be nice to them while you're here?"

  Chapter 19

  The Explanatory Supplement to the Ephemeris, 2190 Edition, lists the mean orbital inclination for the asteroids of the Egyptian Cluster as fifty-eight degrees and forty-seven minutes to the plane of the ecliptic. The Cluster's physical data are given at the very end of the reference section, a fair measure of its relative importance in the planetary scheme of things. All Cluster members have perihelion distances of about three hundred million kilometers, strongly supporting the idea of a common origin even though any clustering in a purely spatial sense has long since been dissipated. Pearl, with an almost circular orbit, crosses the ecliptic near the first point of Aries. Unfortunately she was riding high, far south of that, when Wolf and Green finally set out.

  "Nearly a hundred and thirty million kilometers, Bey," grumbled Green, hunched over the displays. "It will take more fuel to get us there than it would to take us to Neptune. I hope you're right in all those guesses."

  Wolf was prowling restlessly through the ship, savoring the half-gee acceleration and inspecting everything as he went.

  "You say it would take just as much fuel, Park, if Pearl were heading through the ecliptic right now. All we would save is a little time. If I'm wrong on the rest of it, we'll have wasted a few weeks each."

  He paused by the radiation-shielded enclosure, eyeing it speculatively.

  "It's a pity that doesn't have a form-change tank inside it," he went on. "This ship is plenty big enough to carry the equipment, if there were a suitable tank."

  Green looked up briefly. "Remember, Bey, C-forms are still illegal here."

  "I know. I was just thinking that we could really use one now, to slow down our metabolisms a few times. The Timeset form would do us nicely. How's the fuel supply look? Any problem?"

  "No. We could do this twice if we had to. I told the provisioners that we might want to do some unusual out-of-ecliptic maneuvers during the trip. They gave us the biggest reserves the ship can hold."

  Green finished his final checking of the trajectory, and straightened up. He looked at Wolf, who was still eyeing the closed compartment.

  "Eyes off, Bey. You know the USF is ultra-cautious on the use of C-form experiments. Really, you can't blame us. People are precious out here. We don't have a few billion to spare, the way that you do down on Earth. We'll let you do the wild experiments. It will be a few years before we're ready to play with the form Capman developed in Project Timeset. Meanwhile, we've got our own methods. Did you take a good look yet at the sleeping quarters?"

  "A quick look. They're tolerable. I was going there next, to look at a few bits of equipment that I didn't recognize. The place looked very cluttered. Why not use one compartment, and save on space?"

  "That's what I mean, Bey." Green switched off the display, and swung the seat around. The legroom at the trajectory monitor had been meant for someone two feet shorter. He stretched his long limbs straight out in front of him.

  "You see," he went on, "back on Earth you've been forced to develop methods that let people live on top of each other, millions of you where naturally there should only be thousands. Well, we have a different problem here in the USF. We have a lot of space, and not many people, but we've still had to worry about the situation where a small number of people live for a long time in very close contact—in a ship, or a mining colony, or an Outer System settlement. It's
even worse than Earth, because there's no chance to vary the company you keep. You have to be able to live for months or years, without murdering each other."

  Green swivelled his chair around to face Wolf, and looked at him with a strange expression. "Bey, answer me honestly. Just what do you think of me?"

  Wolf, puzzled by the sudden change in subject, pulled up in mid-prowl. He looked at Green thoughtfully for a moment before he replied. "I think I know where you're heading, Park, but I'll play the game. An honest answer, eh? All right. You're good-natured. You're a bit of a worrier. You're not stupid—in fact, you're pretty shrewd—but you're also a little bit lazy. You bore easily, and you hate things that are too theoretical and abstract for your taste. We're off to a devil of a beginning here for a long trip together, but you did ask me."

  "Right." Green sniffed. "I have trouble with that evaluation—it all rings much too true. Now, let me tell you what you're like. You're as smart as Satan, but you're a bit of a cold fish, and that sometimes throws off your judgment when it comes to people. In fact, you prefer ideas to people. You really love puzzles. You're stubborn, too. Once you get started on something, there's no way of shaking you off it. You're obsessive—but not about the usual human frailties. I'll hazard a guess, but I suspect that you've never formed a permanent link of any kind with either man or woman."

  Bey had winced at the accuracy of some of the comments, but he was smiling at the end.

  "Park, I didn't realize that you knew me so well—better in some ways than I know myself. So what's the punch-line? I presume that you are not proposing that we spend the next few weeks exchanging character assessments. If so, I'm not impressed with your USF ideas on the way to pass the time on a long trip."

  Green stood up carefully, looking with annoyance at the low ceiling. "Not at all. Here, Bey, follow me." He started forward, stooped over. "This ship wasn't built for somebody my size. You should have no trouble, but watch your head anyway. I want to show you a few features of this ship that you weren't aware of on your first inspection. We just exchanged character comments, Bey, and we weren't complimentary. But we're still behaving in a civilized way towards each other—even though I'm sure neither one of us greatly enjoys having some of our defects pointed out, even though we know them well enough for ourselves.

  "Let me assure you, though, what would happen if you and I were to be cooped up together for six months or a year, with no outside contacts and no one else to speak to without a half-hour light-time delay. You may not believe me, but the USF has a couple of hundred years experience on this one. Things would change. Little things about me that you don't like would seem to get bigger and bigger. After three months, I'd strike you as impossibly soft and stupid, incredibly big and clumsy, unendurably lazy. And in my eyes you'd be a cold monster, an untrustworthy, calculating madman. Do you find that hard to swallow?"

  "Not really." Wolf followed Green through into the separate sleeping quarters, quite large but full of odd pieces of equipment. "I've read about the effects of prolonged small-group contacts, particularly where the people are short of real work to do. Are you telling me that the USF have developed a solution to that?"

  "Three solutions. In my personal opinion, none of them is as good as use of the C-forms. Here's the first."

  Green reached up above one of the bunks and carefully took down a large padded headgear from its recessed storage area.

  "See the contact points, here and here? You attach them to the skin, and put the cups over your eyes. It looks similar to the equipment they used in the early form-change work, doesn't it?"

  "Close to it." Bey stepped forward and peered at the micro-electrodes in the interior of the cap. "It won't permit real bio-feedback, though—there's no adaptive control here."

  "It's not intended for that. All it does is monitor purpose and wish, just the same as the form-change equipment. But instead of providing form-change feedback, it gives sensation feedback. It's connected to the computer, and that profiles a sensation response for you, maximized for relaxation and peace of mind."

  "What!" Wolf was looking at the headgear in disgust. "Park, I don't know if you realize it, but you've just described a Dream Machine. They're illegal on Earth. Once you get hooked on one of these, it takes years of therapy to get you back to a normal life."

  "I know. Don't get excited, Bey. This only gets used as a last resort, when somebody realizes that they're going over the edge mentally." Green's voice was grim. "Which would you rather do, Bey? Go under one of these when you start to crack, and take a chance that they will get you back to normal—or be like Maniello on the first Iapetus Expedition, flaying his partner and using Parker's skin to re-cover the seat of the control chair? I'm telling you, the ship environment does funny things to people. Are you beginning to see why there's more to flying the System than a pilot's license?"

  Wolf was looking chastened. "Sorry, Park. One of the problems of living down on Earth—we tend to get the idea that the USF is still a bit backward. For some things, it's just the other way round. What else have you worked out here to help you keep sane?"

  "These others are the ones that we prefer to use. The first one I showed you is strictly for desperate cases." Green pulled a large, blue plastic cover, shaped like a man, from a panel under the bunk. "This one is an inferior version of a Timeset C-form. It's called a hibernator. We inject a combination of drugs to lower body temperature. It kills you, if you want to sound melodramatic about it. The suit holds you in a stable condition at about five degrees above freezing. The effective rate of aging is about a quarter of normal. You can go into it for about a week at a time, then you have to be revived. The suit does that automatically, too. See the monitors on the inside? After four or five days to get the muscle tone back up, you can go under again."

  "I don't like the sound of that. You lose a week out of four, completely, while you're in there. Why not use a cryo-womb, and make it really cold?"

  Green shrugged. "This is safer. The fail-rate on cyro-revivals is up near two percent."

  "More like one percent, with the latest systems."

  "All right, one percent. This thing is just about fool-proof. I admit, it's the poor man's version of a Timeset C-form. I expect we'll be using that in a few years. Meanwhile . . ." Green shrugged.

  Bey slid open the suit fasteners and looked at the array of sensors running along the whole inside. "Any reason why we shouldn't both use it on this trip? We could cut the subjective time down more if we were both under at once."

  Green coughed. "Well, when I said just about fool-proof, I only meant that. I would rather that we weren't both under at once. Once in every few thousand times, there's a problem with the revivication process. It's nice to have somebody who's awake, waiting around to see if the suit does its job properly, and helping out if it doesn't. With both of us under, there's a very small chance that we'd find ourselves on a much longer trajectory than we're planning. Unless we apply the correct thrusts when we get to Pearl, we'll drop back into the Solar System in about seven hundred thousand years. I'd rather not rely on whoever is around at that time to come along and get us out of our suits."

  Wolf looked at him closely and decided that Green was only half-joking. He looked at the suit, then began to fold it up. "What else do you have? So far I'm not too enthusiastic."

  Green shrugged. "I told you, none of these methods are as good as a working C-form." He reached up again into the recess above the bunk and pulled down another helmet, this one smaller and lighter than the first. "This has similar connections to your 'Dream Machine', but it has a different working principle."

  He turned it over. "See these leads? They link to the computer, and also to the helmet in the other sleeping area. It still provides a sensation feedback, but in this one it's modulated by what the other person in the system is thinking and dreaming. The computer is programmed to modify those thoughts, before the feedback, to make our impressions of each other more favorable. All the time that we have th
e helmets on, we are sharing each other's thoughts and emotions. It would be much harder for us—so the theory goes—to develop any hatred for each other. It would almost be like hating yourself."

  "I do that anyway, sometimes." Wolf was looking at the helmet with a good deal of distaste. "Speaking personally, Park, I find this device disgusting. It's no reflection on you, but I don't like the idea of somebody else sneaking in on my dreams. Some of the things I think just don't bear to be shared. Whoever thought up this one had a diseased mind—worse than mine."

  Green nodded sympathetically. "It's odd that you should say that. Most people don't seem to mind the idea, but I have an instinctive dislike of it. It must feel like a two-way computerized seduction, creeping into each other's hidden territories. Anyway, which one do you want to use on this trip—or would you rather not try any of them?"

  Bey looked at the helmet he was holding. "It's not much of a choice, is it? I suppose the hibernator is least bad. I don't mind sleeping for a week, provided we don't feel too bad afterwards."

  "All right. We'll take it in turns to go under. Really, though, for this trip we don't have to use these things at all. They're not even recommended for trips under a month, and they don't become mandatory until you're going to be six months between stops. Want to skip it completely?"

  "Let's see if we get bored at all. You know, Park, I wish the USF was more broad-minded about form-change work. For a start, I feel sure I could set up a system that would work with somebody in the hibernator, and use bio-feedback to keep good muscle tone. That has to be easy. In fact"—Bey was beginning to sound enthusiastic—"I'll be willing to make a bet with you. I'll wager that I can take a Dream Machine helmet and a hibernator, and make a system from them that will do just what I said—and I'll have it finished before we get to Pearl. What's the capacity of the on-board computer?"