Sight of Proteus (9 page)

He left, leaving Wolf alone in the long room. On impulse, Bey went and switched off all the lights, then returned to the window overlooking the eastern side of the city.

Search if you want, John, he thought. I'm pretty sure you won't find any signs of Robert Capman. What was it his message to me said? 'It will be necessary for Robert Capman to vanish from the Earth.' I'm inclined to take that quite literally.

So where does that leave me? Let down again, with the same old sense of disappointment? I don't think so. I have to take it one step further. This isn't the end, it's the beginning.

If Robert Capman is what I think he is—and if I am what he thinks I am—then I must also assume that Capman fully expected me to see through his 'death'. So what does he expect me to do now? Pursue him? Then he must also assume that he has a hiding-place where I will not be able to follow him. What else? 'Learn more form-change theory', his message said. He must have had a reason for suggesting that, and I think it was more than just general advice.

Capman was experimenting with human children, monstrously; or Capman was a great humanitarian, who cared for individuals more than most people. The two statements are not consistent. So what was Capman really doing in his experiments? I still don't know, and he doesn't want to tell. But I'm sure we don't have anything like the whole story—and it may be a long time before we do. When the time for that explanation arrives, I want to be prepared to understand it.

I feel like a man who's been given a brief glimpse of the Promised Land. What I'd really like to be doing is working with Capman, wherever he is; exploring the new forms—a whole, unknown world of changes.

Wolf's thoughts ran on, drifting, speculating on when he would next meet with Robert Capman. The first rays of the coming dawn were striking through the window, high in the hospital. Below, still hidden in darkness, lay the forbidding mass of Old City. Behrooz Wolf watched in silence until the new day had advanced into the streets below, then he turned and left the room. Capman had disappeared, but the data banks still had some questions to answer. Wolf was ready to ask them.

Chapter 9

Sunshine Setting,
Mail Code 127/128/009
Free Colony.
Dear Mr. Wolf,

First off, let me say how sorry I am that I took so long to reply to you. I had your inquiry, then I mislaid it among some of my other things, and I only found it again two days ago. I was going to send you back a spoken answer, but these days they tell me that I tend to ramble on and repeat myself, so I thought that this way would be better. Say what you like about the feedback programs, when you get older they don't let you keep the memory you once had. Just last week, I couldn't find my implant plug for a long time, and then finally one of my friends here reminded me that I had sent it off for service. So I thought it would be better if I sent you a written answer.

Well, one thing is certain. I certainly remember Robert Capman all right, maybe because I met him so long ago. Most of the things that you mentioned in your letter are true, and I was a little surprised that you couldn't rely on what the public records said for the facts on his life. Maybe you are like me, though, and have trouble with the computer call-up sequences.

I'll never forget Capman, and I even remember quite clearly the first time we ever met. We went to study at Hopkins the same year, and we arrived there on the same day—in the fall of '05. It was before they had introduced all that chromosome ID nonsense, and we had to sign in the book together when we arrived. He signed before me, and I looked at his name as he was picking up his case, and I said, joking, "Well, we ought to get on well together, we cover the whole range between us." What I meant was, with his name being Capman and my name being Sole, we had the whole body, from head to toe, between us. Then I said, "Better let me help you with that case," because he was just a little shrimp compared to me. I mean, he was nearly ten years younger than I was. I was twenty-five and he hadn't quite reached sixteen and was small for his age. I didn't know it at first, but I should have guessed that he was something special—that was the year they put the year for college entrance up to twenty-six, and I was squeaking in myself under the legal limit. He had taken the entrance tests and left his age-mark blank, so they didn't find out how old he was until after they had already read his exam papers. By then, they were ready to do something outside the rule book to let him into the college.

You know how it is when you are in a strange place, any friendship seems bigger than usual. After that first introduction, we hung around together for the first week or so, and when it came to the time to assign quarters we agreed that we would share, at least for the first few months. As it turned out, we eventually shared for over two years, until he went off for an advanced study program.

In a way, I suppose that we might have seen even more of each other than we did if we hadn't shared quarters. As it was, one of us had to be on the night shift for using the bed (Hopkins was even tighter for accommodation in those days than they are now) and the other had to take a daytime sleep period. Robert took the day sleep period—not that he ever did much sleeping. He never seemed to need it. Many times I've seen him, when I'd be coming home from one of my classes. He'd be still sitting at the desk, after working all day on some problem that interested him, and he didn't seem to be in the least bit worried that he'd had no sleep. "I'll just nap for half an hour," he'd say, and he'd do that and then be ready to go off to his classes, perfectly awake again.

You ask what he studied. Well, he was doing biochemistry, same as I was, but he was the very devil for theory. Things that nobody else would worry about—that weren't ever on any examination—he'd tear away at. I used to hear the teachers talking to each other, and they weren't sure whether they were very pleased to have him as a student, or just plain nervous about it. You see, with him they could never get away with a glib answer, and they found that out pretty quickly. He'd be back the next day with chapter and verse on the most obscure points if they didn't give him good answers.

I'm not sure how much more description you want. Certainly, the basic facts that you quoted are correct. He was at Hopkins from '05 to '09, to my personal knowledge, and then he went off to one of the European colleges—I think it was Cambridge—for two years, and then he came back again to serve as a research assistant to the Melford Foundation. That's where he became famous, a few years later, when he published the taxonomy of permissible forms. It didn't start then, of course. He was developing the theory long before, in his first years at Hopkins. He would come over to the rest of us with these long lists of symbols on big sheets, and try and explain them to me and the other bio students. I don't know about the rest of them, but I didn't have any idea what he was talking about.

As for close relationships, he didn't have many at Hopkins, and I suppose of all the people he knew I must have been the closest to him. He didn't show much sexual interest in men or women, and I don't think he ever formed any sort of bond in the time that I knew him. The nearest he ever got to a contract bond was with Betha Melford, when he was working for the Melford Foundation. She was quite a few years older than he was, but they were very close. The two of them, along with a group of others who lived in different places around the world, formed a sort of society. They called it the Lunar Society, but I guess that was some sort of joke, because it had nothing at all to do with the Moon. There were some pretty important people in that group, either important then or important later, but I don't think any of them had a close physical relationship that lasted more than a few weeks. We thought they were a bunch of cold characters.

I wouldn't want that last comment to be misunderstood. Robert Capman was a fine man, a man that I would trust with my life. I say that, although we haven't seen each other in the flesh for about forty years. I heard all that talk up from Earth, about his killing people in experiments, but I don't believe it. It's the usual sensation-mongering, the news services will say anything for an effect. As I always say, they are not just holo-people, they are hollow people. I don't think that you can believe what they say now, any more than you could believe what they said about Yifter's disappearance, back in '90. I remember that well, too.

Of course, all these things are a long time ago, but I remember them all very clearly, the way you do remember things that happen when you are very young. Nowadays, I don't find things so memorable, but I'll be having my hundred and ninth birthday next week, and I'm enjoying good health, so I mustn't grumble. I'm sorry to have taken so long to get this off to you, but I thought it would probably be better to give you a written answer. You said that you were asking a number of Robert's friends about him, and I wanted to mention that if any of them want to get in touch with me I hope that you will give them my address. It would be nice to see some of them again, and talk about old times, with people who lived through them. Of course, I can't go to any place that has a high-gravity environment, but maybe some of them could visit me up here.

I hope this letter will be useful to you, and I hope that the rumors about Robert Capman can be stopped.

Ludwig Plato Sole, D.P.S.

Bey read the letter through to the end, then placed it on top of the stack. It was the last reply to his enquiries, and he'd been lucky to get it. Attached to it was a brief note from the chief physician at Free Colony, pointing out that Ludwig Sole was rapidly losing the ability to use the biofeedback machines, and thus the information in the letter came from a man of failing faculties. No further information was likely to come from Sunshine Setting. Fortunately, thought Bey, no more was needed. Sole's letter covered much the same ground as some of the others, though he had been closer than anyone during the Hopkins' years.

In the eight months since the disappearance, Wolf had painstakingly located forty-seven surviving acquaintances and close contemporaries of Capman. The oldest was one hundred and ten, the youngest almost ninety.

The summary before him, culled from all the replies to his inquiries, was complete but baffling. Nowhere could Bey read any signs of cruelty or megalomania in their descriptions of Capman. Oddness, yes; but oddness that hinted at the solitary mental voyaging of a Newton or an Archimedes, at the lonely life of a genius. Had some chance event, twenty-seven years ago, tipped the balance? 'Great wits are sure to madness near allied', no denying it—but Robert Capman wouldn't fit the pattern.

Bey turned to the yellowed sheet that was pinned to the back of Sole's letter. It was faded and almost unreadable, a relic of an earlier age, and it would need special treatment before it could be fully deciphered. It seemed to be an old transcript of Capman's academic records, and it was curious that Sole had made no reference to it in his letter. Bey increased the strength of the illumination on the sheet and varied the frequency composition of the light sources until he had the best conditions for reading the thin blue print.

Robert Samuel Capman. Born: June 26th, 2090.

Date of entry: September 5th, 2105. Category: BIO/CH/PHY/MAT.

Bey bent closer to the page. Below the general biographical data a long list of numbers was faintly visible. He hadn't seen anything quite like it, but it looked like a psych profile output, one in a different format. He linked through to the Form Control central computer, and added an optical character reader as a peripheral. The scanner had trouble with the page that Bey placed beneath it, but after a few iterations, with help and corrections from Bey for doubtful characters, it flashed a confirming message and performed the final scan.

Bey called for character enhancement. He waited impatiently while the computer performed its whirl of silent introspection. The months since Capman's discovery and flight had not lessened the eagerness to trace him, in fact if anything Bey's determination had strengthened. He was resigned to the fact that it would probably take years. All the evidence suggested that Capman was nowhere on Earth, and it was not practical to pursue him across the Solar System—even if the USF were to cooperate, which they showed little wish to do. Meanwhile, there was form-change theory. It was more evident, every day, how appropriate Capman's advice had been. New vistas were opening to Bey as he advanced, and there was evidence that he was still in the foothills. At least he had begun to learn how—and how well—Capman's mind worked.

The computer was finally satisfied with its work on character recognition. While Bey looked on impatiently, the screen slowly filled with the final interpretation of the transcript. It was all there, in a slightly different format from the modern displays, but quite recognizable. Intelligence, aptitudes, mechanical skills, associative ability, subconconscious/conscious ratios, paralogic, nonlinear linkages—they were all listed, with numerical measures for each one.

Bey looked through them quickly at first, puzzled by the low scores in some areas. About half-way through, he began to see a familiar pattern. He stopped, suddenly dizzy with the implications. He knew the overall profile very well. It was different in detail, as any two people were different, but there were points of resemblance to a psych profile that Bey Wolf knew by heart, as well as he knew his own face in the mirror.

* * *

Wolf was still sitting motionless in front of the screen when Larsen returned from the central trouble-shooting area upstairs. He ignored Bey's pensive attitude and broke out at once into excited speech.

"It's happened, we've had a break on the salamander form. The Victoria office uncovered a group of them, still coupled. If we leave at once we can get the Link entry that Transport is holding for us. Come on, don't just sit there, let's go."

Bey roused himself and stood up. As always, work demanded first priority. He looked unhappily at the display that still filled the screen, and then followed John Larsen from the room.