Sight of Proteus

by Charles Sheffield

  The chamber that they entered was enormous. It occupied at least half of the whole metal sphere. Bey looked around him in vain for the familiar tank fittings. At first he could see nothing that he recognized. Then, suddenly, what he was looking at made sense. He gasped. It was a tank, but the proportions on the service modules were unbelievable. Nutrient feeds and circulators were massive pipes, each two meters in diameter, and the neural connectors were heavy clusters of wave guides and thick fiber optic bundles. Bey looked around for the origin of the voice, but it was all a complex series of interlocking vats, each one large enough to hold several men. He could see nothing to tell him where to focus his attention.

  "Where are you?" he said at last. "Are you in one of the vats?"

  "Yes and no." The voice now seemed to come from all sides, and again there was a hint of detached amusement in the tone. "I am in all the vats, Mr. Wolf. This experiment has been going on here for a long time. My total body mass must be well above a hundred tons by now, but of course it is distributed over a large volume."

  Green, mouth gaping open, was goggling around him like a startled frog. Bey felt that his own expression must be much the same. "Are you human, or some kind of biological computer?" he said at last.

  "A good question, indeed, and one that has exercised my mind more than a little over the past few years. I am tempted to say simply, yes."

  "You're both? But then where is your brain located?" asked Green.

  "The organic part is in the large tank straight in front of you, at the rear of the chamber. You can pick it out easily by the number of sensor leads that feed into it. The inorganic part—the computer—is in a distributed network extending through most of the sphere. As you will gather, Robert Capman has shown that the idea of man-machine interaction can go a good deal further than a computational implant."

  "But how do you . . .?" Wolf paused. His mind was seeing a hundred new possibilities, and a hundred new problems to go along with them.

  "If there is no one else here," he went on, "how can you get the nutrient supply that you need? And how can you ever change back? I assume that you began as a human form." Another disturbing possibility suddenly suggested itself. "How did you get to be like this? Was it voluntary, or were you forced to take this form?"

  "Questions, questions." The voice sighed. "Some of then, I have promised not to answer. Their replies, if you want them, must come from Robert Capman himself. One thing I can guarantee, a reverse form-change would be very difficult. On the other hand, by the time that I expect to be interested in such a thing, I feel sure that the capability will be well-established—perhaps even forgotten. Enough of that. If you would please turn around . . ."

  The voice, for all its bizarre origin, sounded cheerful and rational, even amused. As Wolf and Green turned to look behind them, a screen flashed into color on the nearer wall of the tank.

  "How do I obtain my nutrients, you ask? Very efficiently. My whole life-support system is completely self-contained. Look at the screen, and let me take you on a brief tour of Pearl. We are leaving now, and heading out to the inner surface."

  The screen showed the output of a mobile vidicon that was moving steadily out along one of the connecting cables that led to the inside wall of the asteroid. Seen close up, it was clear that many of the cables were much more than simple supporting members for the sphere. They included tubes, communication guides, and flexible connection points onto which other cables could easily be joined. As the vidicon came closer to the wall, it was again obvious that the image on the screen showed something more complex than the smooth, glassy surface that appeared from a distance. Some patches were lighter than the background, and transmitted a light distinctly greener in color.

  "Algal tanks!" said Park Green suddenly. "Just like the ones in the Libration Colonies. But these must be cut into the surface of Pearl. See how green the light looks."

  "Quite right," said the disembodied voice. "You can see what a great convenience it is to have an asteroid that was almost designed by Nature for our purpose. The algae are the source of both my air and my nutrients. We are one closed system, including all the circulation equipment. The thermal gradients do all the work. It is no longer necessary for Capman—or anyone else—to be here to provide services to me. That control console you saw outside is no longer needed here. In fact, I control it myself, through the computer network. The whole of Pearl is a single, self-contained environment."

  Long experience had inured Bey to just about every conceivable form, but Park Green was much less comfortable with what he was seeing and hearing. He seemed horrified by the implications of the conversation.

  "Capman did this to you, did he?" he finally burst out. "Surely he knew what he was creating. You can't move from here, you're tied to Pearl, you can't do a reverse form-change. You don't even have anyone here to talk to or relate to. You, whatever you once were, don't you see what he's done to you? Didn't you know he's a murderer? How can you stand it?"

  "Still more questions." For the first time, the voice sounded irritated. "My name, for what it matters, is Mestel. I need pity from no one. For your other remarks, perhaps I should point out that you are completely captive in your body, at least as much as I am in mine. Who is not? And I possess a degree of control over my own movement, care and protection that you certainly are lacking. How can you stand it?"

  "Movement?" Bey picked up on the word. "You mean vicarious movement, through the remote sensors?"

  "No—though I have that too. I mean physical movement, as a whole. Wait and see, Mr. Wolf. I admit that I am bound to Pearl for an indefinite period. But why should that be considered a disadvantage? If I can believe the newscasts that I have picked up in the past few weeks, Pearl may soon be the only place left with a decent level of civilization. Or has old Laszlo become even more of a pessimist than usual?

  "Perhaps that is enough talk." Mestel's voice became sharper in tone. "I suppose that I do miss the opportunity for conversations without light-time delays. Now I have another duty to perform. Your arrival here was expected, but it was not clear when you might come, or how many of you there would be. I thought you would arrive alone, Mr. Wolf. Robert Capman believed that Mr. Green would arrive also, and John Larsen insisted on it." A curious amplified noise came from the speaker. Mestel had sniffed. "Whatever it is that makes up the Logian form, there is formidable intellect there. With all the computer assistance that is built into me, I expect to out-think anyone except Capman. Others abide the question, but he is outside normal experience. Now it seems that Larsen can think rings round both of us."

  "That's my feeling, too," said Bey. "I knew John very well before the change, and it's not being unkind to say that he was no great intellect. Now, he's something special. Robert Capman has always been something special."

  "I know you think that. Now let me ask a question that you alone can answer. You have pursued Capman steadily since your first meeting, down the nights and down the days, down the arches of the years. If you wish to pursue him further, there will now be a significant risk to you. You will also be away from Earth for many months. Do you want to proceed on those terms?"

  "Wait a minute," said Green. "What about me? I've been in on this from the beginning, at least as far as the Logian forms are concerned. I'm not going to be left out of things now."

  "You will not be left out, Mr. Green. You and I, for our sins, will be embarking on a different mission. It is a crucial and a demanding one, but it does not include a meeting with Robert Capman. That encounter is not necessary for us. But there are reasons why Behrooz Wolf needs one more meeting with Larsen and Capman."

  Wolf was listening very closely. He was intrigued by the intonation in Mestel's voice, and by the slightly old-fashioned and formal manner of phrasing and address. He looked around him again at the tank. Apart from the sheer size, it showed an individual taste in the layout, a little different from the standard arrangement.

  "Mestel," he said at last. "Is the layo
ut of this place your work, or did Capman do it for you?"

  "Capman and a work crew arranged for the physical labor. That was before I had full control of the remote handling equipment, so I still needed help. Now, I could do the whole thing with my waldos. I did all the specifications, though—Robert never did care at all what his surroundings looked like, he lived inside his head."

  Wolf was nodding in satisfaction. "Then I'd like to ask you a couple more questions. How old are you, and are you male or female?"

  Green looked at Wolf in astonishment. But Mestel was laughing heartily, a musical gale of sound that swept out of a hundred speakers inside the great tank.

  "Male or female? Come, Mr. Wolf, is it not apparent that the question is now purely academic? I presume you mean, was my original form male or female? Full marks. My name is Betha Mestel, and I was for many years a female—but never, I'm glad to say, a lady. Robert Capman told me that you have an unmatched talent for reading through an exterior form. I see he did not exaggerate. Can you go further? On the basis of what I have already said, would you like to attempt further deduction?"

  Bey was nodding thoughtfully, dark eyes hooded by the half-closed lids. "Betha is not a name much used now. It had a big vogue a hundred and twenty years ago, and you said you are an old friend of Capman." He paused. "I think I am beginning to see a whole lot of things that should have been obvious to me a long time ago. Is it possible that you—?"

  "Never, as they said in the old days, ask a woman her age." Beneath the flirtatious tone of Betha Mestel's voice there was an undercurrent that was anything but casual. "As you surmise, the answer would take us far afield. I must return to my question, and ask again: Mr. Wolf, are you willing to take the risk that a meeting with Robert Capman would entail?"

  "Definitely." Wolf's voice was firm, his resolution increased by the implications of Betha Mestel's words. "How do I get to him?"

  Wolf paused. The far side of the room was suddenly indistinct, a blur of color in front of his eyes.

  "I will get you to him. Mr. Green and I will not go with you; we have our own duties to perform, back in the Inner System." The voice was fainter, further away. "Let me apologize to you for what is about to happen. There are good reasons for this, also. Relax, both of you."

  Neither Park Green nor Bey Wolf had heard Mestel's final sentence. Two of the handling waldos came forward, and gently carried the two unconscious forms back towards the control room.

  * * *

  One hundred million kilometers above the ecliptic, there is an isolation that is more complete than anything found in the plane of the planets. There were no observers to watch Pearl, as the asteroid moved steadily on her three-year circuit around the Sun. The nearest inhabited object was Horus, with its fifty-man mining outpost. That group was far too busy to spend any of their time heavens-watching. In any case, at thirty million kilometers distance, Pearl was at the resolution limit of their best telescopes.

  No one saw the great lock in the side of Pearl iris open, and the ship emerge from it, like a small, bright minnow darting from the shelter of a hollow rock. The ship fell freely for a while, until it was a safe distance from the asteroid. Then the fusion drive went on. The ship began to move out and down, dipping towards the ecliptic on a trajectory that headed further from the Sun. The single passenger knew nothing of the motion. He was cocooned deep within the form-change tank at the ship's center.

  Soon afterwards, the mechanical handlers emerged from Pearl's smaller lock. They went across to the ship that Bey Wolf and Park Green had arrived in. It had remained close to Pearl's surface, with the auxiliary thrusters making the tiny adjustments necessary to hold it at a precise fifty meters from the asteroid. The handlers moved it gently towards the lock, electronically over-riding the command sequence that held the ship's position. Once moved inside, the ship was secured firmly by supporting cables that threaded the faintly-lit interior.

  The currents began to flow through superconducting struts and cables. The interior configuration of Pearl became rigid, constrained by the intense electromagnetic fields within. When the fields had stabilized, the main lock opened again, to reveal a power kernel, shielded and held in position by the same powerful controls.

  The propulsion unit went on. Plasma was injected into the ergosphere of the kernel, picked up energy, and emerged as a highly relativistic particle stream. Little by little, the orbit of Pearl responded to the continuing thrust. It began to change, to shift inclination and semi-major axis.

  Betha Mestel was moving house.

  Chapter 22

  It had been added to the air of the room. Asfanil, probably, judging from the lack of general side effects. There was no headache or uneasiness in the stomach. And yet . . .

  Bey Wolf frowned. Something didn't feel quite right. He ran his tongue cautiously over his upper lip. There was a faint taste there. No, not a taste, a feeling, like a slight stickiness. He breathed deeper, and the air felt oddly different, hot in his lungs. At last, he ventured to open his eyes.

  —and was suddenly completely awake. He was still sitting in the form-change tank, but he knew from long experience that the process had already run its course. The change was complete. The monitors were still, the electrodes inactive against his skin.

  Full of a sudden alarming notion, Bey reached out a hand in front of him. He looked at it closely. Normal, except for the color, and that was an effect of the lighting. He breathed again, half relief, half disappointment, and looked up at the odd, blue-tinted lamps above his head.

  He was no longer on Pearl. That was obvious as soon as he emerged from the tank. He was on board a ship. It could be the vessel they had seen in Pearl's interior, but the backdrop outside the viewports was of open space, not the gleaming inner surface of the asteroid.

  Not on Pearl, and form-changed. But to what?

  Bey inventoried his body, and could find no changes there. He sat down by the viewport to think things through. His body was the same, but his senses felt subtly different. The noise of the ship's engines was wrong, a high-pitched scream of power up at the limit of his hearing. It sounded quite different from the familiar drone of a fusion drive. He looked aft. The equipment was conventional enough, and he could not believe that Capman and Betha Mestel had invented a completely new propulsion system.

  Wolf stared out of the port, his face vacant with concentration. Where was he? Where was Pearl, Betha Mestel, Park Green?

  He switched on the other viewing screens, and tried to gain an idea of the direction in which he was being carried. The Sun was the first reference point. It lay far astern, much reduced in size and brilliance. Its color was changed to a peculiarly intense violet-blue. He peered at it in perplexity. Was it the Sun? It seemed more like a strange star, alien and remote.

  Bey looked for other information. Through one of the side screens, a brilliant planet was visible, quite close to the ship. Surely that had to be Jupiter—but it too was the wrong color. The ship was swinging past it, using the planet's gravitational field to pick up free momentum, and the planet itself was only a few million kilometers away. Bey turned up the magnification of the screen with strangely uncoordinated hands, focussing on the satellites that orbited the brilliant primary.

  It was Jupiter all right. There were the four Galilean satellites, all clearly visible, and there was the Red Spot, itself changed to a peculiar lime-green color. He watched in silence for a few minutes. Io was close to occultation by the great mass of the planet. The satellite's angular separation from the main body was steadily decreasing as he looked on. Just before Io vanished, Bey sat up straight in his seat. He looked again at the Sun, and at the lamps inside the ship. Suddenly, he understood exactly what had happened. He swore to himself. It should have been obvious to him long before. He looked at the plotter set by the display screen. He had a suspicion what he would find as the end-point of the calculated trajectory.

  * * *

  Farside Watch tended to be quiet. No parties, no peo
ple, not even VIP inspections to provide an irritating relief from tedium. Tem Grad and Alfeo Masti had pulled it three times in four months, and they were beginning to suspect that the random duty selector was loaded against them. Once the big antennae had been recalibrated at the beginning of the residence period, there was nothing to do for the next fourteen days, except an occasional personal message from a friend in the Outer System when, as now, Nearside was facing the Sun.

  They had run through the usual pastimes left by former duty officers, the first couple of times they had been assigned to Farside. Those were few enough, and not too enthralling at that. Now they had retired to opposite ends of the main monitor room, Tem to listen to music and Alfeo to play bridge with the computer. Even that wasn't much fun as far as Alfeo was concerned. He was getting very annoyed with the machine. It was supposed to adjust its game, so that the three hands that it was playing represented players with roughly Alfeo's level of skill. Instead, he was being slaughtered, and he couldn't even curse his partner with any pleasure. After two hours, he was looking darkly at the screen and wondering if the random hands that the computer was supposed to be generating were as open to suspicion as the selection procedure for Farside Watch assignments.

  It was a surprise and a positive relief when the communications monitor began its soft call for attention. A ship was approaching Farside, asking for trajectory confirmation as it neared the Moon. At this time of the month, it had to be coming from Mars or beyond. Alfeo hit the button that cancelled his latest losing hand and activated the display screen. The computer uttered a low whir of changing peripherals, like a mutter of protest at Alfeo's poor sportsmanship for quitting when he was behind.

  It took a few seconds to get a visual fix on the ship. The computer took range-rate information from the Doppler shift in the communications band signals, used that to compute a relative position, and finally pointed the biggest telescope to line up on the approaching ship.