Charles Sheffield - Proteus in the Underworld

“What are you saying? That we shouldn’t even try?”

“No. I’m saying that if someone on the colony had a go at you, the Fugates themselves will try to find out who it was. You already admit they don’t seem to have any form-change secrets. So how do you think they feel, when a visitor comes here to their turf and nearly gets knocked off? I’ll tell you. They’re as pissed as you would be if someone was murdered in your own house. They’ll try and find out who done it. It don’t matter if you’re here or not.”

“That’s what I said. You’re telling me we’re useless—that there’s nothing we can do.” Sondra was beginning to feel better. She was also beginning to feel very peculiar inside, in a way that she found hard to analyze.

“Didn’t say that.” Aybee scowled horribly at her. “You gotta listen better. I said there’s nothing useful to be done here. See, chances are whoever tried to do you in isn’t a Fugate at all. It’s somebody from outside. And if that’s true, you an’ me got lots to do. We zip outa here, lock into one of the big government data bases for the Kuiper Belt, and see who’s been coming and going.”

“The Fugates could do that, too, working from here.”

“They could. But for this the balance tilts the other way. They know this colony inside-out, but they don’t know the Belt. I do. An’ I’m smarter than a hundred Fugates. So let’s go do it. All right?”

“I agree. But one other thing first.” Sondra had finally identified the odd feeling inside her. It was starvation. The form-change tank had kept her alive and hydrated, but in doing so it had not provided any form of nutrients. After more than two days without food, her body was short about ten thousand calories. She stood up and stepped forward out of the tank. “No arguments on this one, Aybee. Before we go anywhere, or meet with anyone, or talk with anyone, or do anything I get to eat.”

“Way to go!”

Sondra watched drowsily as Aybee skipped through the transportation data bases of the Kuiper Belt. He did it effortlessly (and illegally, though that obviously did not worry him), without seeming to think, the way that sea-gulls flew or Bey Wolf evaluated the results of a form-change program. It was a thing of beauty, a joy to watch. At least it was a joy at the moment, for a person who had escaped death just a few hours ago, and who had even more recently stuffed herself with high-calorie food until her stomach rebelled and vetoed another bite.

Maybe when her brain was fully engaged it would be time for feelings of her own inferiority. But for the moment, and for the next half-hour or so until she fell asleep …

She jerked upright. She was doing it already. “Are you finding anything?”

Aybee nodded at her question. He didn’t seem to mind that he was doing all the work. Actually, Sondra had the feeling he would be annoyed if she tried to help—and at the rate he worked, the most that she would do was slow him down. The Rini ship, through some method that Aybee did not attempt to explain, permitted real time access to the entire Belt transportation manifest, both cargo and people. Aybee was wandering now through a listing of ships and destinations, grunting to himself in disgust.

“Too much.” He tapped a key, and a long list began to race through the display area. “You want to know how many people from BEC traveled to the colonies in the past month? Take a peek. There they are, all seven thousand of ’em. At least a hundred of those could have done a quick skip over to the Fugate Colony on ‘official’ business.”

“I don’t think the Fugate trouble had anything to do with BEC.”

“Makes things worse. If it’s not just BEC you can multiply my number by a thousand. Let me try something else, see who came out here hi-speed from the inner system.” Aybee began to enter another query string. “And while I’m doing that, maybe you can tell me something. The Wolfman says you listened in on his chit-chat with Robert Capman, when Capman said to look at the history of elliptic functions. What did you make of it?”

That took thought—far more thought than Sondra was capable of at the mo ment She shook her head. “I didn’t make anything of it. Not a thing. Did you say Bey talked to you about it?”

“Well, more like he asked me about it.”

“What did you tell him?”

That question was a mistake. Sondra realized it within twenty seconds, as Aybee started to talk about people and times and concepts that she had never heard of. Abel, Jacobi, and Gauss … invert the problem … doubly periodic and analytic … theta function … ” She lolled back in her seat, listened to the babble of words, watched Aybee’s agile fingers rippling across the control panel, and knew that she was going under. It was peaceful and pleasant and satisfying, nothing like the black descent into unconsciousness of the previous day, but it was just as certain.

Aybee’s sudden exclamation forced her closing eyes to blink open again.

“Hey! Look at that.” He froze the display. “There’s one to think about, from just a couple of weeks ago. Ultra-high transit, Mars orbit to the Belt. Destination, Samarkand.”

“Mmm? S’markan.” That meant, don’t talk to me any more, I’m too far gone. But Aybee didn’t interpret it right.

“Yeah, Samarkand. Old-fashioned Belt colony, one of the originals. But that’s not the weird bit. Take a peek at the ship logo. GZM. Know what that stands for? GZM is Gertrude Zenobia Melford—it’s the flagship of the whole Melford fleet. So what’s old Trudy been doing, zipping out to Samarkand and back? Isn’t that the last place in the Belt you’d expect to find her? Isn’t it? Hey, you!”

He moved in front of Sondra and pushed his face close to hers. She did not move. Aybee glowered down at her.

“That’s really great. Stuff yourself like a pig, then pass out on me. Wait ’til I talk to the Wolfman. For this one he owes me bigtime.”

He pushed Sondra’s seat away from the vertical, and her limp body rolled back with it like a rag doll. Aybee gave her a final glare, then turned back to the console.

He was not really annoyed that Sondra had passed out on him. Rather the opposite. All real work was done solo, everybody knew that, and given his choice he didn’t even like to be watched.

Cross your fingers. With any luck she would sleep for a long time; that way, by the time she woke up he should have a decent mapping of those make-no-sense travel patterns through the Kuiper Belt.

Every inch of space on the desk was occupied. A jumble of diagrams and flow charts and scribbled notes had been produced and discarded, until they covered the desktop and overflowed onto the floor. Around the walls of the room, every display held its own nested set of schematics.

Bey felt totally at home. The setting possessed the totally organized chaos of his own office. It was the shocking intrusive voice in his ear that felt alien: “Six hours remaining air supply at moderate activity level. Replenishment recommended.”

He heard the warning of the suits internal monitor with astonishment. It insisted that he had been on the surface of Mars for fifteen hours. To him, it was no time at all since he had followed that trail of flattened vegetation toward the overhanging rock.

Georgia Kruskal noticed his change of posture. She paused in her explanation of a flow- chart detail and looked up at him questioningly. Bey was learning to read the expressions in those thick-lashed, liquid eyes.

“My suit” He tapped on the helmet with a thin-gloved hand. “Telling me I ought to go. I’ve been here longer than I thought.”

The broad camel’s mouth stretched wide into a smile. “Time flies when you’re having fun.” Bey nodded. It was more than a joke. There was nothing in the world—in any world—more satisfying than digging into the heart of a new form, grasping it as a whole, turning it around in your mind, and sensing its shape. Not its physical shape, which anyone could see; its logical shape, with its envelope of possibilities and future potential.