Charles Sheffield - Proteus in the Underworld

“Hello.” Bey raised his suited arm in greeting. “Can you speak?” Even as he said the words they sounded inane.

“Of course I can speak,” The voice was faint and distorted, carrying to Bey partly through the thin Martian air and partly as ground vibration. It sounded impatient and irritated. Bey noticed that there was no cloud of frozen vapor emerging from the broad mouth to accompany the words. The form did not waste warmed air with valuable oxygen merely to produce speech. A smart design would pass it over the vocal chords and then return it to lung storage. And if this form had anything, it was a smart designer.

“My name is Behrooz Wolf. I am a visitor to Mars. I would like to speak with you. I mean, with the ones of your kind who are most appropriate.”

“Sure. Take me to your leader. Why don’t you just say it? I didn’t volunteer for this job anyway. Come on.” The form turned. “My name is Dmitri Seychel,” it said over its shoulder as it headed deeper into the shadow, “though I’m sure you don’t give a damn about that. What took you so long? I’ve been waiting for you ever since your car landed.”

Not it. He. Bey was sure he would have determined that for himself after a few more seconds. There were a hundred clues as to the innate sex of a form, and most of them had nothing to do with appearance or dress.

He studied Dmitri Seychel as he walked along behind him. His only previous opportunity to examine the surface forms had come from above and far away. Now he could confirm or deny those first impressions.

The body was a little taller than Earth-human average and far fatter. The bulky torso, arms, and upper legs were covered with a pouched suit of gleaming white. Bey suspected that, like the visible parts of the body itself, the suit changed color depending on its surroundings. It was white now, to minimize loss of heat, but it would change to black when exposed to sunlight. The fat body wobbled with each step that Seychel took. Almost certainly it bore an inches-thick layer of protective blubber as thermal insulation.

The extremities were less clearly human. The feet, encased in snug-fitting boots that came half-way up kangaroo-like legs, had thick well-separated toes. Bey noticed that Seychel had no trouble at all in strolling along in front of him like any other human. But those same limbs, from what Bey had seen on his last visit to Mars, permitted surface travel in great twenty-meter bounds. More evidence of clever form-change design.

The hands were either bare and lacking in nails, or covered in long gloves that followed every fold and wrinkle of the skin beneath. The fingers, like the toes, were thick and splayed.

All interesting enough, yet all offering no real surprises. The first evidence of those came in the head. Dmitri Seychel’s cranium was big and thickly-haired. Below it his face pushed far forward into a long broad muzzle. That, together with the brown, thick-lashed eyes, gave Dmitri’s head something of the look of an irritated Earth camel.

And still all those elements were trivial, the simple superficial changes to an Earth form that might be performed by any sophisticated cosmetic form-change program. The work that interested Bey lay deep within. There must be massive and complex reconstruction hidden inside the head and torso-functional reconstruction. Some body organ—a new one, or perhaps lungs with basic modifications—had to extract oxygen from the super-thin Mars air while the body lay dormant. It must somehow ignore the air’s carbon dioxide. And it must store the extracted oxygen for many hours, until needed during the active period.

The long muzzle had seen changes of just as fundamental a nature. A whole extra set of air passages must reside there. For one thing, speech had been separated from exhalation. Vocal chords could be exercised without the loss from the body of precious, warm, moisture- laden air. Bey had no proof of it, but he was also willing to bet that somewhere within that long, bulky nose sat an organ that absorbed every trace of water and oxygen from used air. What was finally released to the atmosphere of Mars would be almost pure, dry carbon dioxide.

If Trudy Melford had any notion of the sophistication of the Mars surface forms, there was no wonder she was excited. A genius of a designer had been at work here. Trudy liked to collect geniuses, and turn them to BEC’s exclusive service.

That last thought left Bey more than a little uneasy. He was supposedly independent, supposedly retired, and working if he worked at all only on his own projects—all at the moment sadly neglected. Yet here he was, lured somehow to Mars and doing exactly what Trudy wanted him to do. Had she deliberately made herself unavailable when he arrived at Melford Castle, knowing that he would then head at once for the surface, and fly here? The car had been all ready and waiting for him.

Well, duped or not, here he was. And oddly excited. The old curiosity for any strange new form-change development was strong within him. Maybe Trudy Melford knew Bey better than he knew himself.

They were winding their way now down a long ramp, with fixed red lights on the tunnel walls. It looked more and more like the inside of a building, except that there was no air but the ambient Mars atmosphere. Dmitri Seychel had not once looked back to see that Bey was following, or offered one more word of conversation. Bey felt like kicking him in that amply- padded blubber-laden behind. If that was typical, what the Martian form needed in addition to any physical modification was a booster shot of sweetness and light.

“Here you are.” Dmitri halted at a rectangular opening in the tunnel. “Home of the big cheese, Georgia Kruskal. Have fun.”

He went off along the tunnel without another word, leaving Bey hesitating at the entrance of the room.

“Come on in.” The thin voice was cheerful, as though visitors from Earth or Old Mars dropped in every day of the week.

Perhaps they did. Bey walked in, and found himself in a room that could easily have been an office back on Earth. There was a desk, a table and chairs, a data terminal, and even half a dozen potted plants. But the plants were all different, and all strange. Some were warty black cacti, others hugged the red soil or turned thin, sail-like leaves to face always to the light.

“Experiments, of course.” The being seated at the desk could at first glance have changed places with Dmitri Seychel, and Bey would not have known the difference. “Sit down and make yourself comfortable. I’m Georgia Kruskal, and I get the blame for this madhouse. Tell me who you are, and why you’re here instead of skulking in the Old Mars burrows.”

“I’m Behrooz Wolf. I’m not from Old Mars. I’m from Earth, formerly with the Office of Form Control.” Bey hesitated. Now for the tricky bit. Might as well lay it on the line. “I’d like to know more about the form you are using, because I think I might be able to help you to improve it.”

“Oh-ho.” The camel snout turned to face Bey more directly, and the liquid brown eyes stared at him. “It’s nice to run into someone with real gall. Improve us, eh? Fine. Quem dea vult perdere, prius dementat.”

“ ‘Whom God would destroy, she first makes mad.’ ” Bey did not even blink. He could play that particular game all day long.

Georgia Kruskal was nodding. “First points to you, hombre. Maybe you will improve us after all. Why don’t you tell me how?”

“I need to have some questions answered first.”

“I’ll bet you do. So do I.” Kruskal leaned back in her chair, which was contoured to fit her bulky body. “All right, your turn first. Fire away.”

“Thank you. First of all, are you pure human?”

“You better believe it. One hundred percent, no artificial additives. You and I could get together and start a bambino tonight, Behrooz Wolf.”