Charles Sheffield - Proteus in the Underworld

“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 it’s 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 abruptly. “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 slightly from the pressure of the swollen mass within.