Charles Sheffield - Proteus in the Underworld

“That was delicious.” (Not really a lie. He had hardly noticed the food, but he was sure that Melford Castle served only the system’s finest.) “Now I have to be getting back to Earth.”

Trudy came really alive for the first time since they had sat down at the table. “You’ll consider my offer?” She was staring at him anxiously.

“I am already considering it.”

“If there is anything else that you need to know, or want to add to make it more attractive … ”

“Nothing. I would like one small favor before I leave. I’d like to place a call to Wolf Island.”

“But you said no one is there.”

“True. I want to check my message center.”

“No problem.” Trudy stood up. “You can use my personal communication system.” She led the way out of the dining-room and back up to the fifth floor, this time taking the other direction when they came to the top of the stairs. Bey realized that her living quarters must consist of the whole fourth floor. Only blind luck had led him earlier straight into her private dressing-room.

They walked along a hallway filled with Melford family portraits, most of them dark and brooding, until Trudy stopped and opened a paneled door of polished oak. She smiled and ushered him in. “This is it. Make yourself at home. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

She stayed outside, closing the door.

Surprised? Bey walked over and examined the console. It was a conventional enough communication system, no better than the one installed on Wolf Island. He sat down and queried for Earth-Mars response time. He expected to see a number around thirteen minutes, the round-trip travel time for bodies that were currently about a hundred and twenty million kilometers apart.

What he got was nonsense. The Earth-Mars response time was cited as 1.5 seconds.

Bey shrugged. If this element of the system was not working, there was a good chance that the rest might be no better. He entered his personal code and sat down to wait for an indication that the query was being relayed through to Earth. Before he knew it, the system was responding. His own ID appeared on the screen and his message center’s voice was saying, “There are three messages for you. Do you want to hear them, or do you need some other service?”

“I’ll hear my messages. Oh Lord. I get it!”

Sondra Dearborn’s face appeared on the screen, but Bey hardly noticed her. He had realized what must be happening. Trudy was making use of her Earth-Mars link to provide signal communications. His outgoing message would be sent to a recorder on Mars, right next to the link; then the recorder shuttled through the link and down-loaded to an Earth- based planetary communication system for transmission to Wolf Island. The response would be stored on the same recorder, shuttled back through the link, and placed into the Mars system. Finally it would be sent on to him.

The process could be done almost instantaneously, since the main reason for delay in shipping humans was the simple need to equalize ambient air pressure. Message units didn’t require that. They would operate happily at any pressure, even in vacuum.

Why had no one used the same sort of system for communications on Earth? Simple. Even using satellite relays, the signal delay was only a fraction of a second, and satellite transmission was a lot cheaper than a Martin link. But there would be a real market when the natural signal travel time was minutes or hours—as Bey knew from experience, there were few things in the world more frustrating than waiting ten minutes for the answer to an urgent question. Trudy Melford had again showed the Midas touch. In opening an Earth-Mars Martin link for her own convenience, she had tapped a whole new potential market. The United Space Federation would certainly want to use it for urgent USF business.

Bey realized that Sondra was still talking. He had not been listening. He sent his own signal, telling the processor at his house to start over.

It didn’t work. She went on talking, and she looked ghastly. He swore, hit the command sequence again, and finally noticed that he was receiving a real-time transmission. It was not a recording. Sondra had somehow managed to override his house system and replace its signal with her own—even though Bey’s earlier experience with Jarvis Dommer had led him to make a specific change to rule out that form of interruption.

“Sondra? How did you manage to do that?”

There was a delay, of perhaps two seconds. In that interval Bey had another revelation. In the background, behind Sondra’s framed head and shoulders, he could see a wall-chart.

He recognized it: it was a taxonomy of form-change routes. He had made the chart himself. And hung it on his own study wall.

“What the devil are you doing inside my house?” he burst out. “You’re supposed to be on your way to the Carcon and Fugate colonies.”

This time even the two second delay was intolerable, until Sondra finally answered “Weren’t you listening to me at all?” There was horror on her face but no hint of embarrassment. “There’s been another one—in the same region of the Kuiper Belt” Her voice rose to an anguished squeak. “Bey, I just have to talk with you about this—as soon as you can possibly get back to Wolf Island.”

Sondra’s mood had changed on her way back to the Office of Form Control. Her meeting with Bey Wolf, or maybe it was her spat with Trudy Melford—had been the final straw. She steadily became more and more angry. She was going to prove she was as good as anyone, in BEC or out of it, when it came to solving form-change mysteries. As for Denzel Morrone, with or without his permission she would head for the Kuiper Belt just as soon as she could arrange a flight. She would do it with her own savings, and on her own time, and to hell with the office.

She did not go to headquarters as she had originally intended, but hurried instead to the apartment that she shared with two other Form Control employees. The place was supremely disorganized—as usual—and locating the must-have items for her trip took a little time. She was still hunting and cursing when her partners in messiness walked in.

“Well?” Gipsy and Dill came into the bedroom and perched on the high stool by the dressing table. They were testing an experimental multiform and had finally reached the stable commensal stage that preceded body cross-over. The combined form watched Sondra as she pawed through a big pile of freshly-laundered clothing, heaped randomly on the floor. “So tell us. How was he?”

“What do you mean?” Sondra knew from the question that Gipsy was speaking, even though the commensal was in Dill’s body. Dill herself must be in dormant mode. “How was who?”

“That’s what me and Dill are waiting for you to tell us. Who?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh, come off it, Sondra. All of a sudden you get secretive with your friends about what you’re doing. You disappear for days at a time without telling anybody, then you come back all wild and woolly like you just spent a weekend with Tarzan. Go look at yourself in a mirror. You’re flushed and straggled and wiped out. If that doesn’t spell s-e-x, I don’t know what does.”

“You’ve got it all wrong.” Sondra thought for a moment She had not told anyone where she was going, but they had known it anyway. Denzel Morrone had reached her easily enough. Secrecy was a waste of time. “I’ve been to visit Behrooz Wolf. Twice.”

“Really?” Gipsy eased Dill’s body off the stool and walked over to help Sondra assign the underclothes to their right owners. “The Great Bey himself. We always thought you were kidding when you said he was one of your relatives. I repeat the question with even more interest. How was he?”