Proteus in the Underworld p-4

by Charles Sheffield

  But that could not be the whole story. The Fugates, like most of the colonies, conducted regular commerce with the rest of the Kuiper Belt and made use of imported systems and services. Other people, many of them as small or smaller than Aybee, must be regular visitors. They had to be able to work inside the colony without continuous Fugate assistance. That implied the presence somewhere of standard-sized data terminals and information systems. Trouble was, this chamber was so cluttered and so foggy inside that you couldn’t get a good look at most of it. Aybee went on the prowl, floating along past gigantic desks, doors, and transfer chutes. He finally found the data unit he needed over in the far right corner, hidden behind and dwarfed by a rack of space suits big enough to house Leviathan.

  It was an old-fashioned design and it didn’t seem to have been used for a while, but it responded promptly enough when Aybee turned it on. And sorts and searches, thank Knuth, were pure logic, not dependent on anything so material as physical size or equipment age. The Fugate general query system was also a little primitive, but five minutes of experiment located the record of Sondra Dearborn’s arrival at the colony. Her exact time of entry was shown: three days ago. After that it became a bit trickier. There was no sign that Sondra had left, so presumably she was still somewhere within the planetoid. But the file provided no indication of her present location. Chances were that she was working with form-change equipment, but which form-change equipment? The data bank showed thousands of tanks, set in many different parts of the colony.

  Aybee sighed. Work went a lot faster when you did it alone, but that no longer seemed an option. The record of Sondra’s arrival provided the names of two individuals who had been assigned to help her. He gave in, and asked the terminal to put him in touch with either Mario or Maria Amari.

  Patience was not Aybee’s strong point. He fidgeted and muttered for what seemed an interminable wait, while the colony communications system placed its calls.

  The result, when it finally came, did not seem promising. Sondra in her first meeting with the Fugates had been overwhelmed by flesh, by sheer physical size so great that she could not comprehend expressions on the giant faces. Aybee, seeing Mario Amari on a data screen no bigger than his hand, had an opposite first impression of a tiny, puzzled and slightly annoyed baby. The bulging cranium was far too big for the eyes and pursed mouth.

  There seemed no expression at all on that diminished countenance as Mario Amari listened to Aybee’s explanation of the reason for his call. At the end of it the puzzled look returned.

  “Let me be sure that I understand you correctly.” Amari’s rumbling voice was converted by the data line to the high-pitched, slightly squeaky delivery of a three-year-old. “You know that Sondra Dearborn is here on the colony, working on form-change equipment. You know that Maria and I met her, and showed her where everything is, and how it works. And you are worried about her?”

  “Well not exactly worried,” Aybee didn’t like the way the conversation was going. It was obvious that Mario Amari considered he was dealing with a half-wit. “I’d like to know where she is, and check what she’s doing.”

  “Are you a specialist on form-change methods?”

  “No.” Make that a quarter-wit. Amari was slowly nodding as Aybee continued, “Look, I don’t want to be a nuisance for you or anyone else on the colony, but I would like to see Sondra. So if you could just tell me where she is working, and how to get there … ”

  “Do you know your way around this world?”

  “Not really.”

  “Have you been to the colony before?”

  “No. Never.”

  “Then it is probably quicker and easier if I show you where she is. Stay exactly where you are, and do not leave that chamber. I will be with you shortly.”

  In other words, you shouldn’t be allowed to wander the colony without a keeper. Aybee cursed Bey Wolf while he waited. Bey had dragged him halfway across the Kuiper Belt for nothing. Sondra was certainly all right-there had been annoyance but not a trace of concern in Mario Amari s voice. How could she not be all right, safe inside the colony? Amari was casual and unworried when he finally came floating in.

  “We did not stay with her, because she did not want it.” Mario Amari, without asking Aybee’s permission, grabbed him in one great hand and headed at once for the colony interior. “In fact, Sondra Dearborn specifically requested that we permit her to work alone in her first analysis of our form-change equipment.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Since early yesterday. But she has access to ample food, and to a sanitation and rest area suitable for her needs. Small-form visitors to the colony regularly use the same facilities. If we had heard nothing from her in another day or so, Maria and I would probably have checked back here.”

  They had floated through a succession of huge rooms, each scaled to match the size of the Fugates, and were approaching yet another one. The doors between the other rooms had all been wide open. Aybee noted that this one was sealed.

  “Again, this was at Sondra Dearborn’s request.” Mario Amari sounded patient and even a little amused as he replied to Aybee’s question. If Aybee was unfortunate enough to be a terminal worrier, his voice said, then maybe he was more to be pitied than blamed. “She wanted to work without a suit, in that setting of lower temperature and pressure where she would feel most comfortable. Naturally, that required that this room be sealed off temporarily from the rest of the colony.”

  Aybee found himself nodding agreement, even as they approached the room’s great sliding door and he glanced at the monitors showing the chamber’s interior conditions. That first look brought him instantly to full attention. What he saw bristled the sparse hair on the back of his head.

  Air pressure: 40 millibars. Temperature: -68 Celsius. No human without a suit could survive more than a couple of minutes inside such a room.

  “This has been changed!” Mario Amari was staring at the gauges as though he could not believe what they said. “This is nothing like the control values that we employed—and the door has been sealed from outside. We left it set for internal control. Sondra Dearborn must have come out, and re-set the interior parameters. She cannot be inside.”

  But his actions suggested that he did not believe his own words. He had released Aybee. Now he grasped the door in one huge hand and began jerking at it wildly.

  “No, man! Don’t even try that.” Aybee decided he was not the only half-wit in the Fugate colony. “You got a two-atmosphere difference between the sides of that door. You have to equalize before you open it, or we get a big implosion.”

  Fortunately the room’s own safeguards agreed with him. It took another half-minute to flood the interior with air-compression effects would be the least of Sondra’s problems if she were inside-and equalize pressure enough for the door to slide open.

  Aybee floated inside, ahead of Mario Amari. His suit protected him from temperature shock, but he heard Amari gasp. The air pumped into the room was warm enough, but the walls and floor were still cold enough to burn anything that touched them.

  But maybe it was only a gasp of relief-because the room was empty. There was no sign of Sondra, dead or alive.

  “She’s not here. Thank Heaven, she got out.” Amari, like Aybee, was scanning the interior, with its array of form-change tanks. “She must have.”

  “Must have. But didn’t.” Aybee’s instincts had taken over as soon as he saw the tanks. “She’s still here, and she’s all right. Come on, man. I may need a little bit of local assistance for this.”

  Every trainee in the Office of Form Control was required to take practical tests. One of them called for form-change program modification with re-calibration of a form-change tank. But no trainee, ever, had been asked to do that in six hours or less, nervous, wearing a suit, and filled with the awful knowledge that you would soon be evaluating the quality of your work using your own body as test subject.

  Sondra had to make some working assumption
s. The chamber’s ambient temperature might drop close to absolute zero, and the air pressure to vacuum. A human, suitably changed, might survive in that situation for a couple of days. It called for total hibernation and a severe alteration to body chemistry. Re-vivication probability was down around ten percent.

  But that was the worst case. The tank itself would provide some thermal protection, maybe hold a little air. The chance of survival increased rapidly with every trace of oxygen and every degree of higher temperature.

  Sondra did all the calculations that she had time for. She knew they were not enough, but she would have to act based on what she had. She recalled Bey’s words: Intuition is what remains after all the facts have been forgotten. Fine. But pray that intuition was also something that guided you when there was no more time for calculation.

  She reviewed the program changes one more time; entered them into the tanks controller; climbed slowly into the tank; adjusted the sensors, electrodes, and catheters as best she could, to interact with an adult form a fraction of the size of a Fugate newborn; and then faced the final, most difficult judgment call.

  She could not make the form-change tank attachments to her own body while she remained inside her suit. When that suit was removed, she would have no more than a few minutes before anoxia robbed her of consciousness. And the longer she waited, and the lower the chamber air pressure became, the quicker anoxia would set in.

  Sondra lowered her internal suit pressure and switched to pure oxygen. She hyperventilated for a couple of minutes, until she felt her head swimming.

  Now. Before she had a chance to change her mind or think more about the implications of what she was doing. Suit off.

  Forty seconds.

  Into the tank harness.

  One minute twenty seconds.

  Connections-fourteen of them. Can’t afford to rush. Can’t afford to make a mistake.

  Two minutes twenty seconds.

  Sondra’s lungs were empty. She felt them collapsing within her rib cage. Five more connections, just five. Not much to ask. Her head was swimming again.

  Three minutes and thirty seconds.

  Two more attachments. Tank turning dark, have to work by feel.

  Four minutes something.

  Last one. Was that right? Can’t tell. No more feeling in fingertips. Spears of ice, down throat and into chest.

  Five …

  Total darkness. Personal darkness. Strange way to go. But when it came to the final moment, maybe every way seemed like a strange way to go. And go where? No one had ever managed to answer that question. Maybe she would do it, be the first. Sondra turned to solid ice, wondering if her personal darkness would ever end.

  When you plunged into a form-change that was both unplanned and desperately hurried, you gave little thought as to what you were likely to find waiting for you when you emerged. You were far more likely to be wondering if you would emerge.

  But if you did think about it, there were certain things you would not expect to see as you struggled back to consciousness. One of them was the smug face of Aybee, whom Sondra had left a few days earlier back on Rini Base at the other side of the Kuiper Belt. But there he was. He was lolling before the open form-change tank and chomping on some sort of sugary cake.

  He nodded to her in a self-satisfied way as soon as he noticed that her eyes were open. “Right on schedule. How you feeling?”

  Only a moron would ask a question like that. Sondra doubled over in agony as a first breath burned into her lungs. She could not speak, but her glare was intended to crisp Aybee’s skin.

  “The old Wolfman was right, you know.” Aybee went on as though he had not noticed her reaction. “I was sure he was talking through his hat when he asked me to fly out here, but he wasn’t. ’Course, you might say he was only half-right No real reason to worry. Even if I hadn’t come along, the Fugates would have took a look for you eventually. They’d have dragged you out. But you wouldn’t feel as good as you do now.”

  Good? She had to speak, even if it killed her.

  “I could have died here,” she rasped. “If I hadn’t known how to—” She ran out of air.

  “If you hadn’t.” Aybee finished the cake and licked his fingers. “But you did. Way I see it, it’s pretty straightforward. If you’re smart, you figure out you gotta do the form-change bit and crawl into the tank if you want to survive. If you’re not smart enough to do that, then you die and no big loss. Plenty of dummies in the system already, one more won’t be missed.”

  Sondra decided she was going to kill Aybee. She didn’t know when or how, but it was going to happen. Unfortunately, for the moment there were higher priorities.

  “Who did it, Aybee? Who sealed this room and changed the air and temperature settings so it would kill me?”

  “Dunno. The Fugates are working on that—they don’t like what happened any better than you do. No clues so far.”

  “And why would anybody try to kill me?”

  “That’s easier. You came here to find out why the Fugate form-change equipment said something was human that wasn’t I’d guess somebody didn’t want you passing that information on.” Aybee showed real interest for the first time since Sondra had awakened. “Except that don’t make logical sense, either. Someone wants to loll you, why do a half- assed job of it? Shoot you, or chop your head off, something final—don’t fool around with air and temperature. By the way, what did you find out?”

  “Nothing.” The feeling of failure that swept through Sondra was worse than her physical woes. “That’s why none of this makes sense. I have no information to pass on to anybody, because I didn’t find one thing wrong with the form-change system here in the Fugate Colony. The hardware is just as it came from the BEC factory, with its seals unbroken. The controller software passed every test I could give it.”

  “That so? Now you got me a little bit interested. You telling me there was no secret to hide?”

  “Nothing that I could discover. When this chamber locked up on me I should have been ready to give up. Except that I wouldn’t have. If I hung around, it was only because I couldn’t stand the idea of crawling back to Bey Wolf and admitting that whatever was going wrong here, I couldn’t find it.”

  “You telling me you’re ready to get out of here?”

  “No! I want to know who tried to kill me.”

  “I’m sure you do. But I’ll tell you right now, the chances of finding out here are just about zero. You don’t know this place. You don’t know the Fugates, you don’t know the colony’s geography, you don’t who’s been coming and going.”

  “What are you saying? That we shouldn’t even try?”

  “No. I’m saying that if someone on the colony had a go at you, the Fugates themselves will try to find out who it was. You already admit they don’t seem to have any form-change secrets. So how do you think they feel, when a visitor comes here to their turf and nearly gets knocked off? I’ll tell you. They’re as pissed as you would be if someone was murdered in your own house. They’ll try and find out who done it. It don’t matter if you’re here or not.”

  “That’s what I said. You’re telling me we’re useless—that there’s nothing we can do.” Sondra was beginning to feel better. She was also beginning to feel very peculiar inside, in a way that she found hard to analyze.

  “Didn’t say that.” Aybee scowled horribly at her. “You gotta listen better. I said there’s nothing useful to be done here. See, chances are whoever tried to do you in isn’t a Fugate at all. It’s somebody from outside. And if that’s true, you an’ me got lots to do. We zip outa here, lock into one of the big government data bases for the Kuiper Belt, and see who’s been coming and going.”

  “The Fugates could do that, too, working from here.”

  “They could. But for this the balance tilts the other way. They know this colony inside-out, but they don’t know the Belt. I do. An’ I’m smarter than a hundred Fugates. So let’s go do it. All right?”

  “I agr
ee. But one other thing first.” Sondra had finally identified the odd feeling inside her. It was starvation. The form-change tank had kept her alive and hydrated, but in doing so it had not provided any form of nutrients. After more than two days without food, her body was short about ten thousand calories. She stood up and stepped forward out of the tank. “No arguments on this one, Aybee. Before we go anywhere, or meet with anyone, or talk with anyone, or do anything I get to eat.”

  “Way to go!”

  Sondra watched drowsily as Aybee skipped through the transportation data bases of the Kuiper Belt. He did it effortlessly (and illegally, though that obviously did not worry him), without seeming to think, the way that sea-gulls flew or Bey Wolf evaluated the results of a form-change program. It was a thing of beauty, a joy to watch. At least it was a joy at the moment, for a person who had escaped death just a few hours ago, and who had even more recently stuffed herself with high-calorie food until her stomach rebelled and vetoed another bite.

  Maybe when her brain was fully engaged it would be time for feelings of her own inferiority. But for the moment, and for the next half-hour or so until she fell asleep …

  She jerked upright. She was doing it already. “Are you finding anything?”

  Aybee nodded at her question. He didn’t seem to mind that he was doing all the work. Actually, Sondra had the feeling he would be annoyed if she tried to help—and at the rate he worked, the most that she would do was slow him down. The Rini ship, through some method that Aybee did not attempt to explain, permitted real time access to the entire Belt transportation manifest, both cargo and people. Aybee was wandering now through a listing of ships and destinations, grunting to himself in disgust.

  “Too much.” He tapped a key, and a long list began to race through the display area. “You want to know how many people from BEC traveled to the colonies in the past month? Take a peek. There they are, all seven thousand of ’em. At least a hundred of those could have done a quick skip over to the Fugate Colony on ‘official’ business.”