Proteus in the Underworld

CHAPTER 3

Bey Wolf understood form-change theory and practice better than any human alive. Sondra admitted that, without reservations. What he didn’t understand so well, maybe not at all, was people.

Back on Wolf Island he had made it sound logical and easy. Go to Denzel Morrone, head of the Office of Form Control. Explain that a visit was needed to the Carcon Colony. If necessary, cite Behrooz Wolfs own assertion that the journey was essential if Sondra was to find out why a clearly non-human caged form had somehow passed the humanity test.

In the real world it wasn’t so simple. Sondra had waited in the ante-room to Denzel Morrone’s office for more than two hours while a succession of senior officials from the Planetary Coordinators swept in and out. The whole Form Control department had recently moved to an expensive new building, all airy columns of carbon composite and transparent outer walls. Sondra, perched above a thousand feet of open space, could see all the way across an ocean of smaller buildings to the dull grey bulk of Old City. The Office of Form Control had come a long way—physically as well as financially—since Denzel Morrone took over two years ago.

It had also changed in other, more subtle ways. Sondra, finally admitted to Morrone’s presence, told him at once that she would like to travel out to the Carcon Colony. Morrone, dressed in the smart new uniform that he had designed for members of the Form Control office, listened carefully as she explained her reasons: she must make a direct on-site inspection of the biofeedback equipment used in performing the humanity test. The tests that she had performed on Earth had all shown the caged form unable to interact with form- change equipment. It should never have passed the humanity test. Therefore a problem, hardware or software, existed within the colony’s form-change tanks.

As she concluded with a repeat of her request to visit the Carcon Colony, Morrone slowly shook his head.

“I understand your position, Sondra. But I don’t think you understand mine. What you have described sounds like a purely technical problem. It isn’t. It’s also politics. Solar system politics.”

“I wouldn’t be doing anything political in the Carcon Colony.”

“Nothing overtly political. But the colony is in the Kuiper Belt, and that lies in the transition zone between the Inner and Outer Systems. Anything involving the Outer System is politics. If I request that you make a visit there it’s another way of saying that we don’t think they are competent to evaluate the performance of their own equipment.”

To a political mind, everything is politics. Bey Wolf would probably have said just that. Sondra was shrewd enough to keep the thought to herself.

Morrone was continuing, a soothing smile on his big, pleasant face. “I’m not saying I won’t grant your request. I may. What I am saying is that I need to think about it further. Keep this whole thing in perspective, Sondra. The humanity test is given to every baby. That’s nearly three hundred thousand tests every day. And here, after centuries of use, we have one isolated failure. On a statistical basis we don’t have a problem at all.”

And on a statistical basis there was no need for an Office of Form Control. By definition, the office was concerned only with the anomalous: the form-change failures, the illegal forms, the investigation and labeling of borderline cases.

It wouldn’t help to say that either. Sondra changed tack. “I spoke to Behrooz Wolf about this. He feels that I ought to go out to the Carcon Colony as soon as possible.”

Morrone’s face froze. “Why did you talk to Wolf?”

Sondra, ready to mention that Bey was a distant relative of hers, decided that a statement of kinship would be a bad idea.

“I met him. Socially.”

Not quite a lie. She had stayed to dinner.

But Denzel Morrone was shaking his head. “The discussion of our problems with someone outside the office shows very poor judgment. I expect discretion on the part of my staff. Wolfs opinions on this subject are not relevant. He is no longer part of the Office of Form Control.”

“But he ran it for almost half a century!”

“He did.” Morrone snapped out the words. “And what happened? Under his guidance it remained an obscure component of a small and insignificant department. It should hardly be necessary to point out to you that the growth of influence of this office—and with it your own opportunity for employment and advancement—came after Behrooz Wolf had retired.”

Sondra wanted to snap back, that when it came to solving form-change problems everyone said one Bey Wolf was worth a hundred Denzel Morrones. She bit her tongue. Morrone obviously knew office opinion. He had his own inferiority complex, otherwise he would not have reacted so violently when she quoted Wolf’s suggestion. And everything that Morrone said was also true. The office had seen a spectacular growth in funding and influence since he took over.

“I’m sorry.” Sondra did her best to sound contrite and truly apologetic. “My job is very important to me. I really want to understand, what caused this form-change problem, even if it turns out to be no more than an isolated case.”

“We all want to understand what happened.” Morrone’s self-control had returned and he was smiling again. “As I said, I’m not refusing your request. I merely want time to think it over.” He touched the surface of his desk and the door of the office slid open. Sondra’s meeting was ending. “But let me offer you a piece of advice. According to your record you have traveled little beyond the Inner System, In particular you have never been to the Carcon Colony. That is not a place for casual visits. I suggest that you learn more about it and confirm that you actually wish to go there. And if you change your mind, I won’t be surprised.”

As Sondra left Morrone’s office and began the eighty-floor drop chute descent toward ground level she reviewed the meeting. Using Wolfs name had been a disaster. Bey obviously had no idea how much his successor resented his fame. But in spite of that, Sondra had not been given an actual refusal She would certainly do what Morrone suggested and find out more about the Carcon Colony. She had been assuming that it was just another of the thousand small groups who populated the Kuiper Belt and the Halo. Apparently there was something more to the colony than she had realized.

“Strange territory, strange people,” Bey Wolf had said. How strange? And strange how?

As she reached the ground floor, Sondra noticed something else. More and more of the staff she passed looked like male and female versions of Denzel Morrone. Apparently his internal campaign for an Office of Form Control identity that went well beyond clothing was succeeding.

Sondra had been born on Earth. She had been given a rather standard planetary education, which meant that she knew a great deal about the Inner System out to Pluto, and less and less about the rest of Sol’s retinue as the distance from the Sun increased.

She had spent tourist time on Mars and Ceres and cruised the Europan deep ocean. She had flown past the off-limits planet of Saturn, with its Logian forms busy on projects beyond the comprehension of any human. She had visited the moons of Uranus, and in derived reality aboard a deep submersible she had watched the Ergatandromorphs, constructed synthetic forms, as they worked on the Uranian Link deep within their mother planet.

And there her first-hand experience ended. Beyond the Inner System, in order, came the Kuiper Belt, the Kernel Ring, and the vast extended region of the Oort Cloud. Cloudland, diffuse and under populated (by Inner System standards, not by its own) reached out to a full third of a light-year from the Sun. Beyond that, and last of all, came the Dry Tortugas. Those arid, volatile-free shards of rock marked the edge of Sol’s domain and shared their gravitational allegiance with other stars.

Sondra knew that the regions were all different, with their own inhabitants and customs and life-styles. The Kuiper Belt almost qualified as part of the Inner System. It was a collection of planetoids and cometary fragments, orbiting from the distance of Persephone, only fifty times Earth’s distance from the Sun, to about six times that far. The inhabitants of its numerous colonies preferred to wear the forms of the Inner System, rather than the skeletal and elongated shapes of the Cloudlanders.

Or at least, most of them did. Sondra, connected to the Form Control general data bank, watched in astonishment as numerical, descriptive, and pictorial information flowed in about the Carcon Colony.

The Carcon Colony (employ directed hyper-trail reference OP/M), a contraction of Carbon- silicon Colony, was established in 2112. Its founders rejected the philosophical dualism that separates carbon-based intelligences (e.g. humans, Logians) from silicon intelligences (e.g. computers, Ergas; employ directed hyper-trail reference HI/AI). They argued that the path of evolution dictates a direct synthesis of the two forms, and they set out to create that synthesis within their own persons and progeny. The assignment of functions, both physical and mental, was to be made on the basis of efficiency, not prior prejudice or historical roles. The resulting organisms are true Cyborgs, although the residents of the Carcon Colony reject this designation, preferring to use the term Optimorphs.

Sondra followed the trail keys and found before her the Optimorph image bank. The displayed entities were not, as she had expected, a bizarre mixture of elements-human trunks, maybe, with mechanical arms and legs and glittering inorganic eyes. They were superficially human. But the torsos and heads bulged in strange places.

The skulls had foreheads that came far out over the eyes.

Limbs possessed what looked like second joints between shoulder and elbow, and between hip and knee.

It would take a long time to study the contents of the hyper-bank in the detail that they deserved. Sondra began to download the descriptive and pictorial data for later analysis.

It was a task that could be done without much concentration. As she worked another thought came drifting into her head. The Carcon Colony used form-change equipment, but its needs were likely to be very different from the standard applications on Earth. Different how? That knowledge was surely vital to anyone trying to solve the problem of the feral form.

So why hadn’t anyone before Bey Wolf mentioned to Sondra the importance of knowing just what went on in the Carcon Colony?

She was beginning to worry about that question when the display that she was using suddenly went blank. An interrupt appeared in place of the Carcon Colony index and grabbed her attention.

Sondra hardly read the rest of the message. She was receiving it through a high-level override of her standard communication channel. That, along with the office’s internal routing, implied something else: responsibility for sorting out the problem with this form, like the feral one that she had shown to Bey Wolf, would be hers.

The new form was being dumped right into her lap.

She cringed at that particular mental image, even as another thought rushed in: now not even Denzel Morrone could point to the wild form as an isolated, unique, never-to-be- repeated incident.

Sondra felt out of her depth. Just when she was hoping to understand the Carcon Colony, a new form and a new place had been thrown at her.

At least she had heard of the Carcon Colony—vaguely—before the first form appeared; but what and where was the Fugate Colony?

Sondra resisted the urge to dash off to Transportation and seek the most rapid way of getting to space. The new form would not arrive at Earth orbit for another twenty-four hours. And this time she intended to know a lot more about its origin before she was forced to confront it.

Fugate Colony. History, location, size, inhabitants.

Sondra remained at her terminal and set the data trail.

While the key words were being pursued and the information collected, she had time to wonder again about the value of her training. Two years ago her doctorate in form-change theory, with its dissertation on the Capman C-forms and the Wolf multiforms, had seemed the perfect preparation for a career in the Office of Form Control. Now it appeared useless. Particularly in view of the information that was flashing onto her display.

The Fugate Colony was established by the followers of the psychologist and physician Reuben Mikhlin.

Mikhlin argued that (1) the size of the human brain at birth produces a head that is almost too wide for the birth canal; (2) there is a tendency for babies to be born prematurely to reduce this problem; (3) thus the actual size of a baby’s brain is less than it should be; (4) the human brain would continue to increase in size if it were not constrained by the birth process and by the rigid bone structure of the skull; (5) an increased mature body size would be required to support the larger brain size (employ directed hyper-trail for GIANTISM); (6) large body sizes can be supported only in a low-gravity or water environment.

The development of form-change techniques, simultaneously with easy space travel, permitted the followers of Reuben Mikhlin to proceed beyond theory to practice. The Fugate Colony was established in 2131 in the Transition Zone, close to the outer boundary of the Kuiper Belt.

The information went scrolling on, but Sondra didn’t even see it—because the image viewing area had become active. The original images had been taken in free-fall, without scale, but some careful archivist had added in a reference image of an Earth human. Sondra saw a huge body, sixty feet long and broad in proportion, floating whale-like in the field of view. The hairless skull was full-sized with respect to the body, but oddly soft and amorphous in appearance, as though bone had been replaced by soft and flexible cartilage.

Sondra stared at it for a long time. And then, almost against her will, she saw her fingers move to the communications palette. She found herself dialing Behrooz Wolf.

Sondra got at least one thing right. She had not expected Wolf to be pleased to hear from her. And he was not.

“You can’t possibly have been there and back.” His voice was accusing. “Not even on the fastest ship in the fleet.”

“I haven’t. I’m still on Earth.”

“So why are you bothering me?” Wolf was standing in a large white-painted room, part of the house that Sondra had never seen before. “I told you, the answer to your problem lies in the Carcon Colony.”

“It used to. Not any more.” Sondra waved her hand at the screen, although she knew it was invisible to him. “There’s been another one. Out in the Fugate Colony.”

“The what?”

“Fugate Colony.” Sondra felt better. She wasn’t the only one who didn’t know everything. “It’s out in the Kuiper Belt, same as the Carcon Colony. This form passed the humanity test, just like the other one. Then they lost control of it.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. The form is on the way to Earth orbit—but it can’t land on the surface. Will you come and look?”

“No, I won’t. Why aren’t you on the way to the Carcon Colony?”

“Denzel Morrone didn’t approve my request.”

“What?” Wolf was frowning. “I told you to tell him I said it was essential.”

“I did. But that made it worse. He hates your guts.” There, she had said it.

“Nonsense! Why, I got him that job. They consulted me before they made him head of the office.”

“Then that explains just why he hates you. Look, never mind all that”—Bey was scowling horribly at her—“there are more important things to worry about. Can I come to Wolf Island and see you again? I’ll bring everything I can get about the new form, and about the Fugate Colony.”

“No. I told you, it’s your problem.” Wolf reached out to cut the connection, then hesitated. A thoughtful look came into his eyes. “Has this new wild form been assigned to you, too?”

“Yes. Deciding what’s happening is going to be my responsibility.”

“And you say that the form can’t land on Earth. Why not?”

“I don’t know.” Her first direct lie to Behrooz Wolf. “But I promise you this: if you let me come and see you, I’ll find out before I arrive.”

Wolf was nodding slowly. “You can come and see me. On one condition: you come here unofficially, and you do not tell anyone in your office you are doing it.”

He cut off communication without another word. Sondra found herself staring at a blank screen.

She had won. She could visit Bey Wolf again. It was the reason that she had called him. It was exactly what she wanted.

So why didn’t it feel like success? Why did she feel as though Behrooz Wolf was seeing something in this whole situation that remained invisible to Sondra Dearborn?