Charles Sheffield - Proteus in the Underworld

Then his sense of humor returned. He was no great prize. It would probably be days before anyone bothered to look for him. But they would certainly search for Trudy Melford. Bey had noted Jarvis Dommer’s discomfort when Trudy headed for the surface. Dommer was a company man (Bey knew no worse insult) and the Empress of BEC was his guaranteed lifetime meal ticket. If Dommer had his way he would keep her in a maximum safety environment and coddle her all the time. It must be hell for him, working for someone as independent and impulsive as Trudy.

Bey, on the other hand, approved of her more and more. They had exchanged only a handful of remarks and questions since arriving at the surface, but that was good. He liked people who did not feel a need to talk.

He worried a little about that, too. Start to like a woman, and you became vulnerable to other forces. It had happened to Bey too often in his life for him to pretend that he was immune to manipulation.

Another flash of fire appeared in the sky to their left. This one struck close to the western horizon. Bey realized that if an arriving object was to strike Mars at a west-to-east tangent, it had to arrive close to local sunrise. As the day wore on the turning planet would take them clear of the impact zone until the dawn of the following day. The firework display at this longitude was ending.

He turned to Trudy. “How far north are we going?”

She had been sitting companionably at his side, watching the ground glide past beneath them. She had lifted the faceplate of her suit right after takeoff and motioned Bey to do the same. They were flying low, at no more than three hundred meters.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Sometimes very close to here, sometimes almost all the way to the impact zone. Dawn is the best time.”

She did not volunteer any more information on what they were looking for. Bey did not need it. He had guessed. But he was certainly curious to see for himself.

It took another few minutes. Then as they were flying over a broken terrain of rock spires and deep crevasses, Trudy suddenly pointed east. “The Chalice and the Sword. We’re in luck. See them?”

Bey stared into the sun. He saw a narrow spire of rock, jutting straight up, and next to it a curious shallow basin forming the top of another rock tower.

“This is one of the best places,” Trudy continued. “See? There.”

Bey saw nothing. He squinted harder into the rising sun. The ground shadows were long, dark, and confusing, and he needed a few seconds to make out movement next to them.

“Can we land?”

“No. Too rough.”

“Can we get closer?”

“Doing it now.”

Trudy had taken over manual control. The car banked to the right and descended. Bey leaned forward as they swooped in low, wishing that he had some kind of telescope.

There were five of them. Large-headed, fat-bodied, thick-legged, and bipedal, they bounced across the ground with the long, springing leaps of kangaroos, covering fifteen meters and more at each bound. Chameleon-like, their skins were black on the side that faced the sun, white everywhere else. Good strategy for heat absorption and conservation. Their feet seemed to be both hoofed and clawed, for insulation from the frozen ground and purchase on slippery thawed rock.

They showed no sign of alarm. As the car passed right overhead two of them stopped and stared upward. Bey saw big deep-sunk eyes fringed with thick lashes, bulging noses, and ear cavities with padded flaps that could move to cover them.

Trudy was turning the car to make a second run. But she was going to be too late. Bey saw the five creatures take a last look in their direction, then move toward the shadow of a ledge of rock. One of them gave a little wave as they disappeared from view. The thin Mars atmosphere scattered very little light. Even flying directly above the rock shadow, all that Bey could see below was blackness.

“Is it worth sticking around?” He was hungry for more.

“Not today. When they head out of sight like that it means they don’t want visitors.”

“How about on foot?”

“That’s possible. But not if you stay on Mars for only one day.”

Bey shook his head. Trudy had set the bait. Now she wanted to see how firmly he was on the hook. “I have to get back to Earth.”

“Do you realize what you were seeing?”

“Sure. I won’t pretend I’m not fascinated. It’s a form-change job, no doubt about it—you’ll notice that there were no signs of air-tanks, and there’s no way that an animal form could adapt so fast to such extreme conditions. Those are humans down there.”

“BEC had nothing to do with this.”

“I guessed as much.”

“But we might like to.”

“I guessed that, too. I thought before I came that it would be new forms down in the Underworld, but this is much more intriguing.”

“And potentially valuable.” Trudy had returned control to the car, which was arrowing back to the south ten times as fast as it had headed out. The ground was a blur beneath them. “Illegal, do you think?”

“Sure.”

Bey did not bother to offer his personal philosophy; illegal forms were always the most interesting; and legality was often no more than a matter of being willing to plow through the right application process. “The big question is the form-change tanks. Where are they? Where did they get them?”

“I’m more interested in the second question. Either they were stolen from BEC, or they infringe on our patents.” The car was already descending for a landing. Trudy reached up to drop her faceplate back into position, but before she closed it she turned to Bey. “I might be willing to reach an accommodation on the question of theft.”

She said nothing more. She did not need to. It was a standard BEC strategy. The question of theft would never be pursued-provided that BEC could make the right deal with the developers of the new form. Bey followed her out of the car onto the raw Mars surface. He peered around him with a new eye. The place when he first saw it had seemed wild, harsh, frigid, and inhospitable. It was still all of those, but now he knew that it was far more. It was habitable. Something could live here, something far more interesting than the veneer of tailor-made photosynthetic algae or oxide-breaking microorganisms that clung to the naked rock. He wanted to know a lot more about the Mars surface forms.

Bey had swallowed the bait, all the way down. But he was not about to admit that to Trudy Melford. “Very interesting. Now I have to head back to Earth.”

And if she was disappointed at his response, she was not about to show it to him, either. “Of course. But won’t you at least stay at the castle long enough to have a meal with me?” She sensed his question before he had time to voice it. “Alone with me. I value the services and loyalty of Jarvis Dommer, but not his company.”

“That sounds fine.”

Bey had traveled a hundred and twenty million kilometers since breakfast, give or take the odd few hundred thousand, using everything from his own legs to the Mattin Link.

He had earned an hour or two off.

Back at the castle Bey realized that Trudy had certainly not given up trying. She dropped him off at a suite on the twelfth floor, suggesting that he relax for half an hour while she changed and gave final instructions for their lunch.

It took him only a couple of minutes to realize that the whole suite he was in had been designed and equipped for Bey’s particular taste and convenience. Trudy had not only visited Bey’s house on Wolf Island—she had taken careful notes there. Everything from bathroom fixtures to wall decorations had been modeled on what she had seen, presumably with the idea of matching his personal tastes. Trudy didn’t want to give him any reason to refuse to stay.