Charles Sheffield - Proteus in the Underworld

“Humans are judged non-human?”

“Right. I mean, it’s no big deal if an occasional feral form is passed as human, like the ones in the colonies. That’s a pretty trivial problem.”

Bey ignored Sondra’s outraged gasp of protest. A lopsided pyramid of rock had come into view, jutting above the swelling ocean surface, and he was staring at it with satisfaction.

“It’s the other way round that’s intolerable,” he continued. “Babies, genuine humans with unusual talents and mental powers, dumped into the organ banks. They have odd psych profiles, and when they’re different enough to exceed program tolerances the test judges them non-human.”

“But if that’s true how come no one has ever noticed?” The idea of babies slaughtered and dissected for the organ banks sent chills up Sondra’s spine. “I mean, you’re saying these are unusually smart people.”

“They are. But they’re babies. They never have a chance to prove themselves. And if they were the smartest people in the world, how would we recognize their absence? It’s hard to notice what isn’t there.” Beys manner had become unusually grim. As the skimmer docked the two hounds stood at the jetty, wagging their tails madly. But Bey fondled their heads absently and led the way straight toward the house.

“Lop the top-end tail off the distribution of human intelligence and creativity,” he went on, “and it would make no measurable difference to the population. Only one person in a billion is out beyond the six-sigma level. That’s what we’re talking about here, But eventually those one-in-a-billion make a huge difference. Ninety-five percent of all human progress comes from less than one thousandth of one percent of the population.”

To Sondra, he was suddenly nervous as she had never seen him before. On the journey back from Melford Castle he had become increasingly serious and preoccupied. He had refused to tell her what came next, answering her questions only with a terse, “Wait and see.”

Could it be his vow to have Denzel Morrone fired as head of the Office of Form Control? Sondra had been dreading her own next meeting with Morrone—she had disobeyed his direct orders-but it was hard to believe that Bey had any such worries. Trudy Melford had promised Bey anything he asked, and she had such political clout that the dismissal of a medium-level official from a government department ought to be child’s play to her.

But if it wasn’t that, then what was it?

Bey was heading downstairs and straight for his communications center. He nodded to Jumping Jack Flash, who peered up at him with perplexed brown eyes as Bey at once sat down and entered a call sequence unfamiliar to Sondra.

“I’m afraid we have to wait a while,” he said. “Maybe three hours or more. Why don’t you help yourself to some food, or have—”

Bey paused. The terminal was already flashing a response. While Sondra was still wondering who—or what—could be three hours’ signal time away and yet provide an instant reply, the image display area came alive. She found herself staring at a familiar figure. There was no mistaking the massive head with its ropy strands of hair and luminous eyes.

Bey seemed even more surprised than she was. “How the devil can you—”

Capman’s head bobbed forward, in the Logian smile. “No magic today, Behrooz Wolf. Not even unfamiliar science. I have been expecting and waiting for your call.”

“But where are you?”

“Very close by—look up to your north, and you could in principle see my ship. I am parked in Earth geostationary orbit.”

“You couldn’t possibly know that I wanted to speak to you!”

“I made no such statement. Perhaps it was I who wished to speak with you.” The Logian’s face was quite unreadable, at least to Sondra. “However, your last remark suggests that you in fact do wish to talk with me. I am curious to learn the subject.”

“I don’t believe that. I believe you already know very well why I placed my call.”

“If that is the case, then there can be no possible reason for delaying discussion.” The great head bowed forward to Bey and Sondra. “I await your remarks with interest.” Bey bowed in return and stayed with head bent for a long time. At last he sighed and straightened.

“This will be more questions than comments. But first let me tell you what I know. You are familiar with the Mars terraforming operation, to make the planet more like Earth?”

“The whole solar system is aware of it.”

“Right. But I said familiar with it. Most people know about the project the way I did before I went to the Mars Underworld. Superficially. In other words, they don’t really think about it at all.”

“Assume that I am, as you put it, familiar with the project.”

“Then lets get right to the central question: Who is paying for the terraforming effort? Someone pays for everything, no matter what the project is.”

“The terraforming project is funded by the Old Mars policy group, seeking to fulfill the intent of the Mars Declaration.”

“That’s what everyone believes. But that’s not really an answer, is it? The cost of a full- scale terraforming project is prodigious—everything from purchase of Cloudland comet fragments, to the flying of the volatiles to Mars impact, to the creation and use of bespoke organisms for the absorption of atmospheric carbon dioxide and release of bound oxygen. The Old Mars contingent is wealthy by Mars standards, but nowhere near rich enough to pay for everything that’s going on.

“As soon as I had been out on the surface of Mars and seen the scale of the operation for myself, I had my doubts. I wondered if maybe BEC had a hand in it somewhere. The company could afford such a thing if it decided it was important enough to BEC operations.

“But I couldn’t make sense of that, either. First of all, Trudy Melford went to Mars only recently, three years ago, and for reasons nothing to do with terraforming.”

“Reasons which I presume that you now understand.” The Logian stared curiously at Sondra, standing by Bey’s side. “May I ask, did you make that deduction, Miss Dearborn?”

“Not really.” Sondra stared back, and wondered to what extent that hulking form in its methane—rich atmosphere was still the human Robert Capman. “I got part of it right—a little bit.”

“You got most of it,” Bey corrected. “And Sondra would have deduced the rest if she had been able to look at Errol Melford’s picture, as I did, in Trudy’s private quarters at Melford Castle. But don’t let me get sidetracked. Trudy went to Mars long after the terraforming effort was started. Also, she has a real interest in the surface forms, and BEC’s commercial gain would be maximized if the terraforming stopped, because if Mars becomes like Earth anyone can live on the surface without needing form-change. The modification developed by Georgia Kruskal is able to colonize the surface as it is today, but only with extensive and continuing use of form-change equipment.

“So I had a mystery. But I still didn’t rule out BEC funding for the Old Mars efforts, because Trudy seemed so oddly sympathetic to them. We found out why when we learned about Errol Melford. And that was when Trudy, with no more reason to lie about it, flatly denied that she was funding the Old Mars terraforming project.

“Dead end. But somebody was pouring resources into changing Mars to be like Earth. Who was it? Who had the resources? An even better question, who had the motive?

“You can count the candidate groups on one hand. First, Earth could do it. They have the money, and they would quite like Mars to become another Earth. New land, new living space, a new sphere of influence. But I’m in the heart of Earth’s information networks, and there’s no way that anything this size could be happening without my learning of it. So I had to cross Earth off the list.