Charles Sheffield - Proteus in the Underworld

Bey himself had that gift. So did Georgia Kruskal. He knew it, and so did she. Within a quarter of an hour of first meeting they had moved to a shared concentration so deep that Bey had no other memories of their time together. Had he eaten, or drunk anything? Had she? It was not important. The only important thing was the ideas that had flowed between them.

“You are free to stay here as long as you like,” she said. “I do not have to tell you that. We can easily renew your suit supplies.” Georgia gestured around her at the sea of notes and drawings. “I will not say that I am humbled—that is not within my compass of feelings but I will admit that I have learned something.”

“Me too.” Bey stood up and stretched. “But I must go. Other work to do.”

“I am sure there is. Projects of your own are awaiting your return.” Georgia Kruskal also rose.

It was a comment, not a question. She was merely acknowledging the importance of Bey’s own work. The effect was to make him feel guilty and slightly resentful. No one else knew it, but he had been doing important work back on Wolf Island—as important as the surface form project here on Mars. Somehow he had been persuaded to put it to one side.

Or rather, for some reason still unclear to him, he had persuaded himself that he should come to Mars. It was his own conviction of something new and profoundly important that had allowed his work on Earth to be interrupted. No man is demolished save by himself.

“I will walk with you to your car.” Georgia had taken him by the arm and was already leading die way, back through the dim-lit corridor. “It will take a little while to learn how the ideas you have given us work out in practice. I hope you will return here to see for yourself. You will of course be welcome at any time. Even”—she paused, and swept Bey from head to foot with an evaluating stare—“to move here permanently. New Mars is the future. Old Mars, like Earth itself, is the past.” The muzzle turned to face him. “I see that you are smiling.”

“Probably.” They were already at the surface, and Bey saw what he should have realized before they left Georgia’s office. Fifteen hours after dawn brought you to the early part of the Martian night. He faced a blind flight to Melford Castle, lit only by stars and the wan inadequate gleam of Phobos and Deimos. “You see,” he went on, “what you are saying is something I have heard all around the solar system, everywhere from Cloudland to the Kernel Ring to the Kuiper Belt. And now from Mars: Earth is history, it’s over and done with. A new idea from Earth is a contradiction in terms.”

“Perhaps you hear it because it is true.”

“Perhaps. Or maybe it’s just like the bumble-bee.”

“Bumble-bee?” They were close enough to the aircar for Bey to see it as a faint shape in front of him. Georgia had paused, her thick-fingered hand tight on his arm. “I have heard that word. But I have never seen one.”

“It’s an Earth insect. A big, fat-bodied bee with little short wings. From an aerodynamic point of view, a bumble-bee cannot possibly fly.”

“So?”

“The bumble-bee is stupid. It does not understand aerodynamics. So it flies anyway.” Bey opened the door of the car and stepped up into it. “And the people on Earth are too stupid to realize that they cannot have wise ideas. So … ”

Georgia was invisible on the dark ground. Bey heard her thin chuckle in the darkness. “I hear you. But here on Mars, your bumble-bee truly cannot fly. While a man from Earth, as you have so clearly proved, can have new ideas. Your design of an organic radio for vacuum communication is totally new to our thinking, and may be hugely valuable. More important still are your ideas on form stabilization. You belong here, Behrooz Wolf, here on this new frontier. Think about that. Go and do your Earth work. But as soon as it is finished, return—and stay.”

The car door closed on her final words. Bey gave the command to return to the home hangar. Thirty unnerving seconds followed, of lurching, swaying movement in total darkness; then suddenly the car was airborne, lifting steadily and turning in its path.

Presumably it knew what it was doing. If not, Bey was in no position to over-rule its decisions. He crouched low in his seat, peered into blackness, and was aware of a nervously growling stomach.

Hunger? It had to be. That sort of indulgence would have to wait until he was out of his suit and inside Melford Castle. He pushed away thoughts about his insides. Other matters had priority. Come to Mars, Behrooz Wolf. It was the third proposition of that land in just a few weeks. Rafael Fermiel and the policy council had tried to recruit him to their cause, the protection of the interests of Old Mars. Georgia Kruskal wanted him to join her project, the creation of a New Mars on the surface.

And Trudy Melford wanted him on Mars—for what?

In his years with the Office of Form Control Bey had met a fair number of fanatics, individuals whose life revolved around a single issue. Sometimes they were easy to spot. Anyone who had ever looked into the glowing, magnetic eyes of Black Ransome would know at once that this was a man obsessed by power. But Cinnabar Baker, who controlled much of Cloudland, seemed at first meeting a relaxed and easy-going woman. You had to see a lot of her before you felt the formidable will-power and the dedication. Georgia was a fanatic, too, of the second land. Easy-going on the surface, but she would do anything to further the cause of New Mars. And she had a huge ego—even by Bey’s own standards.

Rafael Fermiel did not seem like a fanatic at all. He acted like an ordinary, worried man. Unless he was far more subtle and devious than he appeared, someone or something stood behind him and the Old Mars policy group, driving them on. And, if Bey’s instincts meant anything, that same someone was providing the vast funding that supported the Old Mars terraforming efforts. It was a strange contradiction, that Old Mars stood for transforming the planet until it was just like Earth, while New Mars wanted a world without additional changes.

And Trudy Melford?

As before, Bey’s thought came to this point, and stopped dead. If Trudy was fanatical about anything, it was a need beyond Bey’s understanding. She owned EEC, and that made her the richest woman in the solar system. It did not prove anything. Sometimes wealth and power merely created the desire for more of the same. But neither money nor power seemed to drive Trudy.

Anger?

Revenge?

Deep insecurity?

Bey sighed. Maybe Georgia Kruskal was right. He ought to be back on Earth, doing what he knew how to do. Instead he was far from home, trying to do what he didn’t know how to do. The aircar was feathering down through the quiet night sky of Mars, closing on what he hoped was an invisible runway.

Bey was tired, more than ready for food and sleep. It was just as well that he didn’t know what he was going to get.

The flight back had not been exactly frightening, but any silent, sightless run above a surface so inhospitable to a standard human form carried with it at least a little tension.

Bey felt easier at once when the car landed and rolled on to place itself in the hangar. The walk in the dark that followed called for the help of a flashlight taken from the car, but it did not take long. The first half of the ride down the escalator was nothing more than boring. By the time he reached the way-station lock and could at last remove his suit, most of his attention was already looking ahead to an early visit to the Melford Castle dining-room.

A little sign stood at the way-station lock exit when Bey emerged from it:

MAINTENANCE WORK SCHEDULED FOR ESCALATOR. ALTERNATIVE ROUTE AVAILABLE VIA CARGO CHANNEL, WITH POSSIBLE DELAY.