Proteus Unbound (6 page)

"Come on, Sylv—you're stalling." Aybee Smith grinned fiercely at Wolf. "How about a space dog—a blood-red hound running across Sagittarius, filling five degrees of the sky? It was reported from Spanish Station, on the other side of the Sun. Would you believe that?"

"No, I wouldn't." Wolf looked at Cinnabar Baker, but her face was serious, and she showed no sign of interrupting. "It's ridiculous."

"Right. So how about a flaming blue sword, down near the edge of the Halo? Or a rain of blood, sleeting across Orion. Or a great snake, wrapped around the Kernel Ring and swallowing its own tail?"

"How many people reported seeing these?"

"People?" Aybee Smith shook his head in disgust. "Wolfman, people are flaky. They'll see anything, or say they do. Look at you; you prove my point. You've been having visions, but they're right there inside your skull—no one else sees 'em, right? Right So if it was just
people
, I'd say the hell with it, they're all crazy—no offense—and who cares what they say they see. But this is different. These were
instrument
readings, not people babble. Sensors
recorded
this stuff. People only saw it later, when they looked at the files. We're talking serious here, not just crazy. You know what a lot of the people who've heard about this say? They don't say phenomena, they say
portents
. How do you like that?"

Bey was listening, but half his attention was elsewhere. Again, something was not adding up. It took a few seconds to recognize what it was and turn again to Cinnabar Baker. "This has been going on for years?"

"More than two years. But getting worse, bit by bit. It sounds like nonsense, I know, but with everything else going on, I have to take it seriously." She paused. "You're skeptical. I'm not surprised. But believe me, neither Sylvia Fernald nor Aybee is exaggerating or inventing."

"I do believe you. But I think we're still both playing games. Let me tell you something you may not care to hear." Wolf nodded at Leo Manx. "When he asked me to take a look at your form-change problems, I refused. Then an hour later I called him up and agreed. So why did I change my mind? I'm not an idiot, even though you may think I act like one. Well, I left Earth because I knew if I didn't, I'd be back in Old City in less than a week. I came to a place where I couldn't do that, even if I wanted to. I was going crazy there—maybe I'm still going crazy."

"I do not agree." Leo Manx sounded comfortingly confident.

"We'll see. Either way, I didn't feel I was cheating you. Crazy or not, I know form-change theory and practice as well as anyone. So I would get away from Earth, and maybe lose my hallucinations—you can dismiss them as nothing, but I couldn't. And maybe you would get help with your problem. That would be a fair exchange. Except that you haven't been honest with me. You're having trouble with form-change, sure, but now you're admitting your problem is much more general.
All
your signals and communications are screwed up. Form-change just happens to be unusually sensitive; signal distortions show up there first."

"That is probably correct." Cinnabar Baker was not embarrassed.

"So now let's look at things from your point of view. I know form-change, but I sure as hell won't solve your other problems. You ought to have experts in bifurcation theory, in optimal control theory, in signal encoding and error correction, in catastrophe theory. Those are not my fields."

"I agree."

"So why don't you get the right people, people who already know the Outer System?"

"For this reason." Cinnabar Baker gestured to Aybee Smith, who took a thin card from his pocket and passed it to Bey. "Do you recognize any of those names, Mr. Wolf?"

Bey scanned it briefly, noting his own name halfway down. "I know two-thirds of them. You're certainly on the right track. The ones from the Inner System are top people. If the ones from here are comparable, you've got the best systems talent of the Solar System on that list."

"I'm glad you agree with Aybee's judgment. He made the list; it's good to know he gets something right." Baker waited for Apollo Smith's indignant snort, then continued. "We tried to obtain the services of all those people. Every one."

"And they refused to help? I'm surprised, if you told them what you've just told me."

"No, Mr. Wolf." The real Cinnabar Baker was showing through, powerful and deadly serious. "They did not refuse. They had no opportunity to do so, because we had no chance to tell them. Of the twenty-seven names on that list, twelve are dead. Seven are hopelessly insane. And seven have disappeared. Our attempts to trace them, assisted when appropriate by officials of the Inner System, have all failed. That makes twenty-six. You, Mr. Wolf, are the twenty-seventh."

She stood up slowly, a massive and massively determined woman. "And now I am holding nothing back from you. You know what we know, except for the details. Do you agree with my view—that you have special motivation to work on and solve this problem?"

CHAPTER 7

"The emitted particles have a thermal spectrum corresponding to a temperature that increases rapidly as the mass of the black hole decreases. For a black hole with the mass of the Sun the temperature is only about a ten-millionth of a degree above absolute zero. The thermal radiation leaving a black hole with that temperature would be completely swamped by the general background level of radiation in the universe. On the other hand, a black hole with a mass of a billion tons would release energy at the rate of 6,000 megawatts, equivalent to the output of six large nuclear power plants."
—Stephen Hawking

The builders, caretakers, and first inhabitants of the harvesters worked around the clock, without thought of rest. Bey Wolf was beginning to wonder if the human occupants were expected to follow the same schedule.

When the conference with Cinnabar Baker was over, he had been settled into a huge but pleasant set of rooms complete with form-change unit and extended library access. Leo Manx, who had taken him there, pointed out that the quarters provided a fortieth of a g sleeping environment. He obviously expected Wolf to be delighted. Bey, knowing that the source of the local gravitational field could only be a power kernel no more than thirty meters below his feet, was not pleased. The triple shielding on a Kerr-Newman black hole had never failed—yet—but according to Sylvia Fernald, several in Cloudland had recently come close. At thirty meters, a few gigawatts of hard radiation would not just kill him, it would dissolve him, melt his flesh from his bones before he knew what was happening.

Bey was tired by the journey and the novelty of the harvester, and glutted with new information. He wanted to he down for a while and digest what he had learned, but Leo Manx showed no signs of leaving.

"Sylvia Fernald and Aybee Smith will both be excellent colleagues," he said. He had stretched himself out on Bey's bed, just lengthy enough for him, and closed his eyes. "But there are things about them that you should know before we begin. Aybee is extremely able but a little immature."

The bed was apparently very comfortable. Bey coveted it. "He's just a kid."

"Exactly. Nineteen years old, but more knowledgeable and scientifically creative than anyone else in the Outer System. You may rely on him for science, but not for judgment."

"I'll remember. What about Sylvia Fernald?"

"She is more mature and also more complex. Her judgment on some of the subjects we discussed today may not be sound."

"Fifty-five years old?"

Manx lifted his head from the bed to stare at Wolf. "Fifty-six, as I recall. Are you able to do that with anyone?"

"I don't know. Probably. I've had lots of form-change experience. Why is she suspect?"

"You saw the list of names of people who died or disappeared. One of them, Paul Chu, was Sylvia's consort for many years. I believe they planned to become parents. But he vanished without a trace six months ago on a routine trip to the edge of the Halo."

"The Halo again."

"I know. I have had the same thought But without evidence . . ."

"We'll have to look for evidence."

"Certainly." Manx lay silent, eyes closed, for another minute or two. He sighed. "You know, I was originally very doubtful about my trip to Earth, but it was a very good idea. Before I went, I always suspected that deep inside I was by nature an Earthman. Your history is so fascinating, and Earth is the origin of all the worthwhile cultures and arts. But not until I had made a journey there for myself did I realize that it was not for me. It was not home.
This
is home." He patted the bed and lapsed into another and longer silence.

"I think I'll have a sign made for that far wall," Bey said at last.

"Indeed?"

"Yes. It will say, 'If you have nothing to do, please don't do it here.'"

Manx frowned and opened his eyes. "You wish for privacy?"

"I wish for sleep."

Manx sat up reluctantly. "Very well. Then I will leave. But I must mention one other matter of importance to you. I have completed my analysis of your own difficulties."

Fatigue changed to a tingle of anticipation. "The hallucinations? You think you can stop them?"

"No. On the contrary, I am sure I cannot. Because I am convinced that what you have been seeing are not the distorted constructs of your brain. They have been imposed from
without
."

"That's impossible. I've been in situations where I saw that Red Man, and there were other people watching the same broadcast. They saw nothing. I've seen him on a recorded program, too, then played the same program through a second time. He didn't reappear. And anyway, why would anyone
want
to make me crazy?"

"I don't know. However, I believe that if we can answer the first problem, of
method
, we will have gone far toward answering the second one, of intention. And an induced effect is a
technological
problem, not a psychological one. That offers us recourse. I propose to present the idea at once to Apollo Smith. If I know Aybee, it will intrigue him." He levered himself off the bed, sighed, and nodded to Bey. "And so to bed. Sleep well."

Which, of course, Leo Manx had now made out of the question. Bey turned off the light and lay on the bed, but he no longer felt sleepy. Induced effects, he thought. He had considered that idea when the Dancing Man had first appeared, but he had dropped it for two good reasons: he could not see how it might be done, and he could not imagine why anyone would want to do it.

After five useless minutes, during which he again concluded that he knew of no way to turn Leo Manx's opinions to useful facts, Bey rose, dumped his clothes into the service hopper, and went through to the shower room. It was sinfully big, the size of a five-person apartment on Earth; no wonder Leo Manx had been crowded there. After a minute of juggling with unfamiliar controls, Bey ran the water as hot as he could stand, then accidentally switched it to an icy downpour. He jumped out of the spray with a scream and turned on the hot air.

As soon as he was dry he realized he had made another mistake. The only clothes offered by the dispenser were more of the pale yellow one-piece suits, too long and too narrow for his body. His own clothes had been eaten by the service hopper, and he could find no sign of shoes anywhere.

Finally he stuffed himself into one of the suits and managed to engage the fasteners. Looking at himself in the mirror was an unwise decision, but he suspected he was already as ugly as he could get by Cloudland standards. Bey left his quarters barefoot and headed along a corridor that spiraled slowly away from the kernel. He had no idea where he was going, but he felt confident that he could find his way home. There was not likely to be another kernel in the interior of the harvester, and as long as he followed the kernel's gravity gradients "up" and "down," he could not get lost.

After a few minutes of wandering he found himself in a broad accordion-pleated passage that was pouched and folded like the alimentary canal of some giant beast. That similarity went beyond appearances. Bey knew that the harvesters prowled the Oort Cloud, seeking bodies high in volatiles and complex organic materials. Once found, they were ingested by the comet-sized maw of the harvester for transfer to the interior. They were heated with energy extracted from the power kernel, thawed, and dropped into the internal lake-sized vats, to be stirred and aerated by jets of carbon dioxide and oxygen. In that enzyme-seeded brew, the prebiotic molecules of the fragments—porphyrins, carotenoids, polypeptides, and cellulose—were converted to edible fats, starches, sugars, and proteins.

Bey stood by a viewing port and peered into a bubbling sea of pale yellow-green. Close by him, there was a shudder of moving machinery. A great valve had opened. Hundreds of thousands of tons of broth went streaming along helical cooling tubes, on the way to extraction of water, chlorophylls, and yeasts. This batch was near its final stages. Most of the final product would be compressed, packaged into spaceproof containers, and launched on the long journey to the Inner System. The harvesters fed the population of the Cloud itself, but more important, their products were essential to the survival of everyone closer to the Sun. The same food products were the working capital that funded the outflow of technology and finished goods from the teeming Inner System.

And if there were a war or an embargo? As Bey left that enormous production plant, he could not help wondering what would happen if the supply line failed.

At first, nothing would be noticed at the destination. The payloads were transported to the Inner System at only a fraction of a g acceleration, so they took a long time to get there. There would be food in the pipeline of the delivery system for at least ten years, even if the supply from the harvesters were cut off at once. But then the Inner System would be in real trouble—as much trouble as the Cloud would suffer if the Inner System were one day to cut off the supply of power kernels or refuse to ship out manufactured goods. With such total interdependency of the two groups, any talk of war or of breakdown of commerce between them seemed ludicrous. And yet Bey knew that such talk was growing more and more common, more and more strident.