Charles Sheffield - Proteus in the Underworld

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.

It was thirty-three hours since Bey had slept. He watched Sondra’s departure, lifting off safely into dark afternoon rain clouds; and then he returned to his bedroom to rest. Or pretend to. He lay staring at the ceiling, while the overhead displays flickered in spiraling colored patterns designed to soothe and relax. One touch of his right hand to the control panel by the bedside would take a more direct step. He would be eased into programmed sleep.

His hand remained at his side. Too many mysteries; they were creeping around the base of his subconscious mind. He needed to name and catalog them before he could relax.

Begin with Sondra. He had checked her records at the Office of Form Control. She had done extremely well in everything theoretical, but her practical experience was woefully inadequate. And she was very junior. He would never have given her an assignment as difficult as a failure of the humanity test in a remote and unfamiliar location. The Carcon and Fugate colonists were notoriously tough on outsiders. Without help her chances of success were low indeed.

But she was seeking help—his help, as a family member. Had someone else counted on that? Did someone in the Office of Form Control already realize that she and Bey were related when she was assigned to the case? That was unlikely. The connection lay so many generations in the past. Bey had noticed that her name in the official files was Sondra Dearborn, not Sondra Wolf Dearborn. She had identified herself to Bey as a fellow Wolf only because she was trying to enlist his support.

But if no one had known of their relationship when the project was assigned to her, it was Bey’s guess that this was no longer the case. Sondra was now tagged as a Bey Wolf relative—with whatever that implied.

What else? He had told her to come and see him without telling anyone else in the Office of Form Control. But certainly someone had learned of her latest visit, because Denzel Morrone had known enough to send a message to Sondra here, on Wolf Island.

Mystery, or trivial incident? Bey had asked her not to talk about her visit-but he had not told her to keep it secret. A crucial distinction.

One person who had surely not known that Sondra would arrive on Wolf Island was Trudy Melford. Her surprise had been genuine. But how much else of what she had to say was true? If Bey’s instincts were good for anything, Trudy held a whole hand of cards that she was not willing to show—until he did what she wanted, and went to Mars. Perhaps not even then.