CHAPTER 5
Bey had watched the whole interaction with a good deal of satisfaction.
He had left the room, but he had not gone far. During his fifty-plus years with the Office of Form Control he had lived at the center of a web of data collection whose gossamer threads extended right through the solar system. It was unthinkable that he would give up that addiction simply because he had retired; and it was natural that his house communications center would track what was happening anywhere on Wolf Island.
The exchange between the two women did not make him feel sorry for either of them. They had invaded his privacy and interrupted his work. Sondra had done it twice. Trudy had done it once only, but she had also inflicted on Bey the unspeakable Jarvis Dommer. They both deserved a little suffering.
He was surprised and pleased with Sondra. It required real nerve to take on the most powerful woman in the solar system, and she had done it rather successfully. True, her mouth was quivering and her hands were shaking, but that could be more the chill of her arrival than a loss of nerve.
More importantly, the meeting had done what Bey hoped it might do. The Empress, clawing and snarling at Sondra, was less imperial. Trudy had lost at least a little of her absolute control.
When the two turned away from each other and apparently decided to speak no more, Bey at once headed back into the room.
"I'm sorry." He shrugged at Sondra. "I don't have anything in the house that would fit you." A perfectly true statement, as it happened. There were no women's clothes in his house at all.
Sondra glanced at Trudy Melford before she answered. "You know me, Bey. One of your old shirts will do just fine. But I have to dry myself before I freeze."
"Of course. Help yourself to anything you find in the guest suite." He gestured along the hallway. Sondra squelched away, turning only once to look back.
"An interesting young lady." Trudy arched her slanting eyebrows. "Your assistant?"
She was fishing. Bey ignored the bait. "You said earlier that you couldn't explain what you wanted me to do until I saw something for myself. You obviously don't have that something with you. Is it on Mars?"
"Of course."
"A new form?"
"That, and much more." Trudy Melford leaned forward. "Will you help me? This is more important than I can say. It's not a question of money, but if you do help you will find me . . . more than generous."
The Melford reputation was of a woman remote and quite untouchable. It was hard to accept that idea as warm hands enveloped Bey's and aquamarine eyes, deep and knowing as the sea, transfixed him. "Will you help me, Bey Wolf?"
"How long will it take?"
"On Mars? Just one day. If that is not enough to interest and persuade you, a longer stay cannot help. Will you do it?"
"I'm not sure. I'll let you know."
"When?"
"Within one week."
"But you have nothing to—" She stopped and took a deep breath. Bey could see the angry response being bottled up. An Empress must be accustomed to instant gratification.
"If you're hoping I'll say yes," he added, "you'd better keep Jarvis Dommer out of my hair. I don't want him pestering me for an answer."
"He is loyal and hard-working." Trudy was still holding Bey's hands. "Why do you despise him so?"
"My Persian ancestors had a saying: 'A stupid man is one who is willing to die for a cause that he does not understand.' "
"That could also be a definition of a loyal employee. You are not like that?"
"I guess not."
"Ah. A pity. Very well. One week, and if I have not heard from you I will call you myself." Trudy finally released Bey and stood up. She took her grey bag, opened it, and handed him a silver card. "To reach me at any time, use this on your message center. It will give you direct access, wherever I am. It will also cover any travel expense in reaching Mars. Do you wish to discuss other compensation?"
"No."
"I thought that's what you would say." Trudy managed to smile, a rueful lop-sided quirk of the mouth that Bey found highly attractive. "What a pity. It is much easier, don't you think, to deal with people who are motivated by money?"
Bey found himself walking with her toward the entrance. "Easier, and in my experience less productive. What you don't pay for is usually more valuable than what you do."
"And certainly more enjoyable." She waited as he slid open the door and held it. The wind howled in and around them, molding her robe to her body. The storm had become more violent than ever.
"Do you think it's safe to travel while its like this?" He had to shout to be sure that she could hear him.
"Given the right staff and the right equipment, it's perfectly safe." Trudy gestured toward the beach. Bey saw, shining in the gloom, the pale violet outline of a mobile link entry point.
"I have to be back on Old Mars in half an hour." Trudy was leaning close. She patted Bey's arm in a proprietary way. "Goodbye. Next time we meet, I hope it will be there."
Bey watched as she bent low to face the wind and headed toward the beach. It was like a conjuring trick. Trudy reached and entered her carrier. There was a brief pause. Then the whole carrier lifted and moved into the Link portal. And finally the temporary portal closed, swallowing both the carrier and itself. There was nothing on the beach to reveal that either of them had ever been there.
Bey slid his outer door closed. That was what real money could do, as opposed to mere millionaire-class wealth. Trudy, bypassing the usual Link points, would have been transported instantly to Mars. Chances were she was already walking into Melford Castle, even as he headed to his living room.
He settled back into the chair where he had been sitting less than half an hour ago. His unfinished drink was waiting, its ice still only half-melted. Bey picked up the glass. The contents appealed greatly. He closed his eyes. He had been up all night and was beginning to feel it. He had earned a rest; and he had also earned the luxury of pondering a little bit on the curious behavior of Trudy Melford.
What did she really want? He was cynical enough to dismiss her compliments, and experienced enough to discount whatever oddities might be waiting on Mars. BEC kept a permanent staff to analyze just such future business potential. They could do anything that he could.
Well, almost anything. He smiled to himself. They couldn't say no to Trudy Melford.
He smelled Sondra before he saw her. A distinct, flowery perfume came wafting into his nostrils. He sensed that she was standing close to him.
He opened his eyes. And blinked.
He had told her to help herself to anything that she found, but her appearance went beyond eccentricity. She had found a short-sleeved purple shirt, long enough to cover her body only to mid-thigh. She had drawn it in tightly at the waist with a broad black belt, which made it even shorter. Her feet were bare, her long hair was carefully styled and piled on top of her head, and she was wearing make-up for the first time since he had met her.
Oddly enough, the combination worked perfectly. Bey nodded approval. "You didn't need to go to such trouble, you know, just for me."
Sondra gave him a withering glare. "Don't kid yourself. Where is she? Where did she go?"
"Trudy Melford?"
"Who else?"
"She already left. For Mars."
"Well, damnation." Sondra flopped into a chair opposite Bey. "All this for nothing. That bitch. Did you invite her to come and see you?"
"No."
"So what was she doing here?"
"Apparently not everyone who comes to Wolf Island waits for my invitation."
Irony was wasted. Sondra glowered at him. "What did she want?"
"To recruit me. To bribe me out of retirement. To get me to go to Mars and work for her."
"I knew it!" Sondra stood up again abrupdy. "That fancy form she was using, and those sexy clothes. She was stalking you, couldn't you tell? If I hadn't arrived when I did . . . I assume you told her to go to hell?"
"No. As a matter of fact I told her I would think seriously about her offer."
Sondra put her hands on her hips. "You did what! You'd consider leaving here to work for her, for BEC and all its money?—when you won't even help one of your own relatives."
"We can talk about relatives later. Meanwhile"—Bey sighed and stood up also. Any hope of peace was gone. "I didn't think you came here to feud with Trudy Melford. I thought you came here to tell me about the wild form that was shipped from the Fugate Colony. Was I wrong?"
"No. I have all the records." Sondra clutched at her waist, and was briefly panic-stricken until she realized that the data device was still in her dress pocket. "I'll get them now and we'll go over them together."
"No!" Bey had to call after her—she was already racing off along the hallway, a flash of purple shirt and long bare legs. "You give them to me, and I'll review them. Then we'll go over them together."
He muttered to himself while he was waiting for her to return. What was the Office of Form Control coming to? Hadn't she been taught standard operating procedure? Everyone knew that separate reviews were performed before combined reviews.
Or they knew when I was there. Bey caught the logical next line before it could fully emerge, and grinned to himself. The youngsters all knew better when Bey Wolf was running the show.
The standard old-timers' complaint and boast. It had certainly been right to retire when he did.
* * *
The Fugate Colony was one of hundreds of small groups scattered through a vast, near-empty region extending from the Kuiper Belt to the limits of Cloudland. All those groups were on the face of it extremely diverse; and yet in one way many of them were remarkably similar.
Bey had seen it happen a score of times. A colony would be founded because its core members shared some common oddity or belief that set them apart from the rest of humanity. After a generation or two, that singular world-view might fade. The colony would then dwindle and die, or be re-absorbed to the human mainstream. But sometimes separation widened the gap. Differences, physical or mental, became more extreme.
The Fugates were a fine example. Begin with the belief that the human brain could and should be bigger; add to it a requirement that bigger brains need bigger bodies; and after a century or two you would have—this.
Bey gazed at the image swimming in the field of view. The shape was undeniably human, with a soft, rounded body and shortened limbs. Its head was large in proportion, like a typical human baby.
But now came the differences. The body was nine meters long and massed more than four tons. The head was three meters from the chin to the top of the cranium. Two-thirds of that length—more than Bey's own height—was above the eyes. X-rays showed that the fitted bony plates of a normal skull had been usurped by a web of soft cartilage, bulging slightiy from the pressure of the swollen mass within.
As Bey watched, the diminutive arms and legs moved in unison. The great head bobbed forward. His first impression was reinforced. Swimming was the right description. The immature Fugate form was curiously reminiscent of a whale, and he could imagine that in future generations those arms and legs might shrink away like rudimentary cetacean limbs.
The warning that had come from the Fugate Colony was also appropriate. The leviathan that Bey was viewing appeared so helpless, so harmless, so in need of care. But the record showed that the maximum-security chamber and the soft mesh of cables holding the form in position were fully necessary. The chubby body and dimpled limbs possessed a whale-like strength, while the bulging skull contained a brain of reptilian ferocity and random impulse.
It was fascinating; it was disturbing; and it was not at all revealing.
Bey finally sighed and leaned away from the viewer. He shook his head.
"Well?" Sondra had returned to his side, and she was looking at him hopefully.
"It's everything that you said it is. And I can't deduce anything more than you can."
"But you have so much more experience . . ."
"That's not the issue. If there has been post-natal form-change, what we are seeing is just the form-change end-point. There are a million ways to get to any given form. What you need is the whole record—every step of every interaction between the original form and the form-change programs. All the two-way information transfer. That should be in the permanent files. The form passed the humanity test, we know that. What we don't know is if there were marginal areas, places where the form showed definite oddities but just squeaked through. You also need something else that you don't have: you need to know the typical form and behavior of a Fugate Colony member. I think you have been regarding this one as a monstrosity. It isn't. Physically, I suspect it's very close to the norm for a standard Fugate modification. The differences are all in the brain—where we can't see them."
"So what do we do now?" Sondra's bright outfit contrasted with her dejected posture. She sat slumped forward in the chair, elbows on bare knees, chin in hands, staring at the viewer.
"We? We don't do anything. I told you already, this isn't my problem. It's yours. You have to find a way to persuade Denzel Morrone to let you make a trip out to the Fugate and Carcon Colonies."
"That's easy for you to say, but Morrone is already mad as a coot at me because I came out here to see you. A message just came through on your message center, chewing me out, while you were sitting here."
Bey was frowning at her, as though this was the most important news of the day. "For you? But I told you not to tell anyone that you were coming to Wolf Island."
"I didn't tell Morrone or anyone else. I chartered the flier myself. Seems Morrone found out anyway. But are you sure that going to the colonies is the right next step?"
"It's what I would do in your situation. Unless you have a bright idea?"
"I do. We should call Robert Capman on Saturn." And, when Bey did not respond, she went on, "I've read everything that you've ever written about him. According to you he was the absolute master of form-change theory, the greatest intellect of the century—and he became even more capable when he assumed a Logian form and moved to Saturn."
"All quite true. And all, I suspect, irrelevant. The Logian forms, deliberately, do not involve themselves in human affairs."
"Not the average human problem, maybe. But for a form-change problem, Capman's own special field—and if the request were to come from Bey Wolf, rather than Sondra Dearborn . . ."
"Ah. I see." Bey swung his chair around, to peer knowingly at Sondra through half-closed eyelids. "Why didn't you admit this earlier?"
"Admit what?"
"That you tried to call Capman, yourself, before you ever came to see me."
"It didn't seem relevant." Sondra would not meet his eyes.
"Why not? He is still alive, you know that. Messages beamed to Saturn reach him. Your message must have reached him. If he were interested in your problem he certainly had the means to reply."
"That's not the point, is it?" She sat up straight and glared at him with new energy. "You are the one who worships the fusty old writers. You are the literature and quotation junkie. So try and finish this one. 'I can summon spirits from the vasty deep.' "
"Maybe you have been doing some homework—at least on me." Bey leaned back and thought for a moment. "It's Shakespeare. Glendower says it. And Hotspur answers: 'Why so can I, and so can any man. But will they come when you do call for them.' I see. Anyone can call Robert Capman on Saturn—"
"But only Behrooz Wolf will get a reply. I sent a message and I didn't hear one word back. But you would. You were his fair-haired boy. If you called him, he'd talk to you."
"He might. He probably would. But I think I know what he'd tell me." "What?"
"Exactly what I am telling you. Go and solve it for yourself. I'm busy enough with my own work."
"You don't have any work. You've said it a dozen times, you retired three years ago."
"To pursue my own interests. Not yours, or anyone else's."
"You were ready enough to run off to Mars, when Trudy Melford wandered in and blinked her big blue eyes at you. But you won't help one of your own relatives."
"That argument again?" Bey sighed. "Let's dispose of it, once and for all. Then I need rest—you may not care, but I have been up all night. Working. Come on."
He led the way along another hallway, to a part of the house that Sondra had not seen before. It was an odd combination of bedroom and study. The displays in the ceiling and the controls beside the bed would allow someone to work or sleep with equal comfort. Bey went to a wall unit, where a complex chart was displayed.
"You have assured me several times that you and I are related, as though this entitles you to special consideration."
"We are related."
"Indeed we are. But how closely? I took the trouble to determine that. Here is my genealogical chart, displayed together with yours. If we were identical twins we would share one hundred percent of our genetic material. If we were total strangers, unrelated in any way, we would share zero percent. From this lineage diagram you can determine for yourself our common genetic heritage."
Sondra stared at the family tree. She shook her head. "I don't know how to do that."
That earned another stare, this one more puzzled than knowing. "I am suitably appalled by your ignorance. But let me tell you how. Assuming there has been no inbreeding between distinct lines, the procedure is quite simple. Let's start with me. We go back through the tree, to every common ancestor that you and I share. Here we go." He stepped up through the generations. "Your great-great-grandfather was my great-grandfather, Dieter Wolf. He is our closest common ancestor. I was actually quite surprised to find that we share another, nine generations back, but that's so long ago I'm not sure I trust the results. Let's ignore it for the moment. We start with you. You share one hundred percent of genetic material with yourself. Now we go back toward our first common ancestor. At each generation, we multiply by one half. Your father was Soltan Dearborn. One half. His mother was Amelia Wolf. One quarter. Her mother was Cynthia Wolf-Stein. One eighth. And her father was Dieter Wolf. One sixteenth. You have one-sixteenth of Dieter Wolf's genetic material.
"Now we come back down the tree. And at each generation, we multiply by one-half again. Dieter Wolf was my great-grandfather. Dieter Wolf's son was Seth Wolf. We're now at one thirty-second, a half of one-sixteenth. Seth Wolf's son was Hector Wolf. One sixty-fourth. And finally we get to me, because Hector Wolf was my father. One one-hundred-and-rwenty-eighth. You and I share less than one percent of our genetic material. If I throw in the other common ancestor, nine generations back, I simply add that to the other number. It makes hardly any difference—one part in five hundred thousand. Do you follow this?"
Sondra was scowling. "I follow it, but I'm not sure I believe it. Or see why it's relevant."
"Try it for some cases you know already. Brothers: two common ancestors—mother and father. Go back one generation from brother to mother, and down again from mother to other brother. That gives one quarter. Do the same for the father, another quarter. Add. Brothers share half their genetic material. Half-brothers share a quarter, cousins share one eighth. You and I share one one-hundred-and-twenty-eighth. Now come with me. I want to show you something."
Bey was smiling to himself as he led the way out of the bedroom and descended two levels to the basement laboratory. Sondra followed, totally confused. Bey had a habit of subject change and digression unlike anything she had encountered in her studies or in the Office of Form Control. It sounded as if he were simply trying to annoy her, but she sensed that there was more to it than that.
He was walking along past a set of closed metal doors with external cipher locks. At the fourth one he stopped, dialed in a combination, and swung it open.
"Come in."
Sondra followed and squeaked in alarm and surprise when a small brown figure jumped across the room and grabbed her by the hand.
"Don't be scared. That's Jumping Jack Flash, and he's as friendly a chimp as you'll find anywhere."
Sondra looked down and found herself staring into a pair of solemn and knowing brown eyes.
"I just wanted to introduce the two of you," Bey went on. "And here's a question that I know you can answer, because it's in the standard form-control briefings. How much genetic material do a human and a chimpanzee have in common?"
"Ninety-nine percent. Actually, a bit more than that."
"Quite right." Bey reached down, and the chimp swung itself up his arm and to his shoulders in one easy movement. "That means you and I have less in common genetically than you and the chimp."
"That's absolute nonsense!"
"Of course it is, and I'm glad to hear you say so. I'll leave it to you to explain why it's nonsense."
It wasn't done simply to annoy. Sondra recalled another part of the Bey Wolf legend at the Office of Form Control. He was a unique teacher. Come to him with a problem, and he almost never provided a straight answer. Instead he did something apparently unrelated, something that made you think and figure out the answer for yourself.
He was trying to make her think. And she was thinking—but not about genetics and probabilities.
Sondra stared at the chimp, draped affectionately around Bey's neck. Jumping Jack Flash did not look quite right. His huge, grinning teeth were pure chimp, but his skull was higher than usual and his nose had more cartilage. Then she thought of the form-change tanks that they had passed as they walked through the basement lab, and another thought leaped into her mind from nowhere.
"Bey." (She was calling him Bey, just as if she was on the terms of familiarity with him that she had pretended to Trudy Melford. Why?) "Bey, don't do it. Please. Don't even think of it."
She expected an argument, perhaps a pretence that he did not understand what she was talking about. Instead she received a lightning flash from dark eyes that were suddenly wide open.
"How do you know what I was thinking of doing?"
"I'm a Wolf, too. I really am. All your genetic calculations don't mean a thing. I'm a Wolf."
He was studying her again, as though he saw her for the first time. "Maybe you are at that."
"Promise me you won't. It's a first step on the road to hell."
" 'Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.' Sorry. Quoting is a lifelong habit, I find it hard to shake. All right, I promise you I'll put this experiment on the back-burner."
"Not enough."
Bey grimaced, with annoyance or resignation. "All right, I promise you I will not pursue experiments with Jack Flash—or with any other chimp that has been given a human DNA boost—unless I first discuss it with you."
"Any other organism with a human DNA boost."
"Any other organism."
"Thank you."
"No need for thanks." Bey stood silent for a moment, the chimpanzee lying silent like a great fur scarf around his neck. "And if you can tell me why I would make such a promise, I will be most grateful."
"I don't know." But I think I do. Sondra stared around the room. It was not anything like an animal cage. It was an apartment, as good as the one that she lived in. "I have to go now. I have to get back as soon as the weather allows. I'm going to change clothes, then I'm leaving."
What she did not say, what she could not say, was that she was suddenly hideously uncomfortable with what she was wearing. She was revealing too much skin, too much length of leg.
But too much for whom?
She headed for the door. As she reached it she turned. "May I come back and see you again?"
"If you wish."
"I may not have results."
Bey nodded. "I know. Come anyway. Keep me from the road to hell."
The moment stretched. Neither spoke. Then Sondra had turned and was fleeing—back to the upper level of the house, back to the psychological safety of the murderous storm outside.