Charles Sheffield - Proteus in the Underworld

White membranes slid down and hooded the luminous eyes. Capman’s head sank to his chest. After a few seconds he looked again at Sondra and nodded slowly. “Speak. Tell your story.”

The moment of truth. She had one shot, and she had to get it just right. She had rehearsed what she wanted to say over and over on the flight to the inner system. According to Aybee it was a miracle that she was getting even this chance with Robert Capman.

The good news was that one shot with the Logian form was apparently all it ever took. Capman was super-bright even by Aybee’s snooty standards, and he would catch on to everything instantly.

Aybee had offered one other piece of advice: “Provide more data and raw facts than you think anyone could possibly need or want or be able to take in. You can’t flood a Logian.”

Sondra started at the very beginning, when the news had first been given to her that she had a new assignment, and ground on through every event with what she felt to be stupefying detail. She showed all the data she had on the Carcon and Fugate forms. She spoke of her meetings with Bey, and of her unsuccessful attempt to enlist his direct assistance. She mentioned Beys conversation with Capman, and was ready to skip over its content-after all, Capman had heard it for himself—until her audience interrupted: “Your recollection, please. Exactly as you remember it.”

Sondra did her best, most uncomfortable when she spoke of Bey’s evaluation of her brains—or lack of them. Capman clearly did not care. He sat impassive and focused. She plowed on, and finally came to her trip to the Kuiper Belt, then her close call on the Fugate Colony and her “rescue,” though he would not admit it as that, by Aybee.

Capman neither moved nor spoke until the very end, when Sondra was summarizing Aybee’s careful but inconclusive analysis of ship movements in and around the Kuiper Belt, with emphasis on trips to and from the colonies. She had been tempted to omit this information as irrelevant, but suddenly Capman was sitting up a little straighter. Did she imagine it, or was there also a gleam of speculation in those hard-to-read eyes?

“The record indicating trips by Gertrude Zenobia Melford’s flagship to Samarkand.” Capman’s thick-fingered paw lifted in the murky, methane-rich air on the other side of the glass panel. “In full detail, if you please.”

Sondra backed up, considerably puzzled, and presented the mass of data. With Aybee as a grumpy observer she had run through those records a dozen times. They had both agreed that the trips were odd and apparently meaningless. They seemed just as meaningless now, as she plowed through the thousands of entries for Capman’s benefit.

“Curious.” Was it imagination, or was Capman truly interested for the first time? One hand was touching his fringed mouth. “Curious, and anomalous.”

He was silent for maybe ten seconds; according to what Sondra had heard about Logians, that was a long, long time. Difficult problems a Logian solved at once. Impossible ones took a little longer.

Finally Capman nodded. “I now have a question. Most of the calls made to and by Behrooz Wolf since your first visit to him form part of the general data records for the inner system. Have you reviewed those calls?”

“No. I didn’t see how they could have anything to do with this.”

“They are data. ‘It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.’ ”

“That’s exactly what Bey Wolf said to me!”

“No doubt. We both cite a higher authority. But now, if you will, continue.”

“There’s nothing to continue with. That was the end.”

“I thought as much. Very interesting. And in its way quite entertaining.” Capman bowed, the thick body tilting forward a fraction. “Perhaps we will meet again. I cannot say that I approve of Behrooz Wolfs interest in you, but I do understand it.”

He was turning, moving toward the chamber door.

“Wait. You can’t leave.” Sondra banged her fist on the glass, realizing too late that could be a dangerous act. “You haven’t let me ask you anything.”

The broad head turned and bobbed. Capman was laughing—laughing at her.

“Did I not inform you at the outset that our rules do not permit Logians to become involved in human affairs? However, Sondra Dearborn, I am going to bend that rule.”

“You are? Then do it!”

“I do so when I make this statement: Based upon what you have told me and what I have told you, you have enough information to complete without assistance from anyone the task assigned to you by the Office of Form Control.”

He bowed again and turned. The door in the adjoining chamber slid open and the great Logian body drifted out through it. One minute later, Sondra felt the slight jolt as the two ships separated and the Logian vessel headed for Saturn re-entry.

Sondra was alone again in space; not sure what she was supposed to have learned, but convinced, deep inside, that whatever she had learned would not be enough.

The scene was much as Sondra had imagined it in conversation with Aybee: Bey on Mars, lying waiting in the ornate bed. Trudy Melford, scantily-clad and breathless, hovering over him.

But there were certain major differences. Trudy’s arms and legs were bare, because that was her standard Martian day outfit. She was panting hard because she had run up eight flights of stairs rather than wait a few seconds for an elevator. And although Bey was waiting, it was not for anything that Trudy might do.

He was trussed and wrapped like a mummy, with swathes of bandages on his left arm, leg, head, and chest; a pair of annoying tubes ran into his nostrils, a line of electrodes nestled along the back of his neck, IVs dripped into his good arm, and catheters had been inserted into body locations that he preferred not to think about It was depressing to feel like this, and be told that he was doing well. He was waiting impatiently for the medical equipment, clucking and countering at his bedside, to take a closer look and refute that optimistic assessment “I downloaded from your message center.” Trudy sat on the other side of the bed from the robodoc, her breasts still heaving disturbingly. “Nothing important. You should certainly stay at the castle until you are fully recovered. I can bring the best medical services in the solar system to you right here.”

Bey reached out his right hand and picked up the little message transfer unit that Trudy had dropped carelessly onto the bed. Her definition of important might not coincide widi his.

“Did you find out what happened?”

“We’re not sure.” Trudys blue-green eyes met Bey’s for a moment, then darted away. “It looks like an accident the whole bottom section of the escalator had been removed for routine service. There should have been a notice that warned of scheduled maintenance.”

“There was. I ought to have been more careful.”

“Not really. There’s no way that the escalator should ever have been running. The machines always stop it during repairs. Someone had to start it again, deliberately. I said, it looked like an accident; but I don’t believe it was.”

“Then what was it?”

“Sabotage.” Trudy’s gaze came back to meet Bey’s. “A deliberate attempt to kill you.”

“I’m not worth killing. In any case, no one knew that I was up there on die surface. Not even you, until the machines hauled me back to the castle.”

“That’s not true. At least one person did.” Trudy gestured to the message unit. “You’ll hear it on that. There’s a call from Rafael Fermiel, asking you to contact him, in his words, ‘as soon as you return from your trip to the surface.’ How did he know you were going there?”