Sight of Proteus (21 page)

"You see," he went on, "back on Earth you've been forced to develop methods that let people live on top of each other, millions of you where naturally there should only be thousands. Well, we have a different problem here in the USF. We have a lot of space, and not many people, but we've still had to worry about the situation where a small number of people live for a long time in very close contact—in a ship, or a mining colony, or an Outer System settlement. It's even worse than Earth, because there's no chance to vary the company you keep. You have to be able to live for months or years, without murdering each other."

Green swivelled his chair around to face Wolf, and looked at him with a strange expression. "Bey, answer me honestly. Just what do you think of me?"

Wolf, puzzled by the sudden change in subject, pulled up in mid-prowl. He looked at Green thoughtfully for a moment before he replied. "I think I know where you're heading, Park, but I'll play the game. An honest answer, eh? All right. You're good-natured. You're a bit of a worrier. You're not stupid—in fact, you're pretty shrewd—but you're also a little bit lazy. You bore easily, and you hate things that are too theoretical and abstract for your taste. We're off to a devil of a beginning here for a long trip together, but you did ask me."

"Right." Green sniffed. "I have trouble with that evaluation—it all rings much too true. Now, let me tell you what you're like. You're as smart as Satan, but you're a bit of a cold fish, and that sometimes throws off your judgment when it comes to people. In fact, you prefer ideas to people. You really love puzzles. You're stubborn, too. Once you get started on something, there's no way of shaking you off it. You're obsessive—but not about the usual human frailties. I'll hazard a guess, but I suspect that you've never formed a permanent link of any kind with either man or woman."

Bey had winced at the accuracy of some of the comments, but he was smiling at the end.

"Park, I didn't realize that you knew me so well—better in some ways than I know myself. So what's the punch-line? I presume that you are not proposing that we spend the next few weeks exchanging character assessments. If so, I'm not impressed with your USF ideas on the way to pass the time on a long trip."

Green stood up carefully, looking with annoyance at the low ceiling. "Not at all. Here, Bey, follow me." He started forward, stooped over. "This ship wasn't built for somebody my size. You should have no trouble, but watch your head anyway. I want to show you a few features of this ship that you weren't aware of on your first inspection. We just exchanged character comments, Bey, and we weren't complimentary. But we're still behaving in a civilized way towards each other—even though I'm sure neither one of us greatly enjoys having some of our defects pointed out, even though we know them well enough for ourselves.

"Let me assure you, though, what would happen if you and I were to be cooped up together for six months or a year, with no outside contacts and no one else to speak to without a half-hour light-time delay. You may not believe me, but the USF has a couple of hundred years experience on this one. Things would change. Little things about me that you don't like would seem to get bigger and bigger. After three months, I'd strike you as impossibly soft and stupid, incredibly big and clumsy, unendurably lazy. And in my eyes you'd be a cold monster, an untrustworthy, calculating madman. Do you find that hard to swallow?"

"Not really." Wolf followed Green through into the separate sleeping quarters, quite large but full of odd pieces of equipment. "I've read about the effects of prolonged small-group contacts, particularly where the people are short of real work to do. Are you telling me that the USF have developed a solution to that?"

"Three solutions. In my personal opinion, none of them is as good as use of the C-forms. Here's the first."

Green reached up above one of the bunks and carefully took down a large padded headgear from its recessed storage area.

"See the contact points, here and here? You attach them to the skin, and put the cups over your eyes. It looks similar to the equipment they used in the early form-change work, doesn't it?"

"Close to it." Bey stepped forward and peered at the micro-electrodes in the interior of the cap. "It won't permit real bio-feedback, though—there's no adaptive control here."

"It's not intended for that. All it does is monitor purpose and wish, just the same as the form-change equipment. But instead of providing form-change feedback, it gives sensation feedback. It's connected to the computer, and that profiles a sensation response for you, maximized for relaxation and peace of mind."

"What!" Wolf was looking at the headgear in disgust. "Park, I don't know if you realize it, but you've just described a Dream Machine. They're illegal on Earth. Once you get hooked on one of these, it takes years of therapy to get you back to a normal life."

"I know. Don't get excited, Bey. This only gets used as a last resort, when somebody realizes that they're going over the edge mentally." Green's voice was grim. "Which would you rather do, Bey? Go under one of these when you start to crack, and take a chance that they will get you back to normal—or be like Maniello on the first Iapetus Expedition, flaying his partner and using Parker's skin to re-cover the seat of the control chair? I'm telling you, the ship environment does funny things to people. Are you beginning to see why there's more to flying the System than a pilot's license?"

Wolf was looking chastened. "Sorry, Park. One of the problems of living down on Earth—we tend to get the idea that the USF is still a bit backward. For some things, it's just the other way round. What else have you worked out here to help you keep sane?"

"These others are the ones that we prefer to use. The first one I showed you is strictly for desperate cases." Green pulled a large, blue plastic cover, shaped like a man, from a panel under the bunk. "This one is an inferior version of a Timeset C-form. It's called a hibernator. We inject a combination of drugs to lower body temperature. It kills you, if you want to sound melodramatic about it. The suit holds you in a stable condition at about five degrees above freezing. The effective rate of aging is about a quarter of normal. You can go into it for about a week at a time, then you have to be revived. The suit does that automatically, too. See the monitors on the inside? After four or five days to get the muscle tone back up, you can go under again."

"I don't like the sound of that. You lose a week out of four, completely, while you're in there. Why not use a cryo-womb, and make it really cold?"

Green shrugged. "This is safer. The fail-rate on cyro-revivals is up near two percent."

"More like one percent, with the latest systems."

"All right, one percent. This thing is just about fool-proof. I admit, it's the poor man's version of a Timeset C-form. I expect we'll be using that in a few years. Meanwhile . . ." Green shrugged.

Bey slid open the suit fasteners and looked at the array of sensors running along the whole inside. "Any reason why we shouldn't both use it on this trip? We could cut the subjective time down more if we were both under at once."

Green coughed. "Well, when I said just about fool-proof, I only meant that. I would rather that we weren't both under at once. Once in every few thousand times, there's a problem with the revivication process. It's nice to have somebody who's awake, waiting around to see if the suit does its job properly, and helping out if it doesn't. With both of us under, there's a very small chance that we'd find ourselves on a much longer trajectory than we're planning. Unless we apply the correct thrusts when we get to Pearl, we'll drop back into the Solar System in about seven hundred thousand years. I'd rather not rely on whoever is around at that time to come along and get us out of our suits."

Wolf looked at him closely and decided that Green was only half-joking. He looked at the suit, then began to fold it up. "What else do you have? So far I'm not too enthusiastic."

Green shrugged. "I told you, none of these methods are as good as a working C-form." He reached up again into the recess above the bunk and pulled down another helmet, this one smaller and lighter than the first. "This has similar connections to your 'Dream Machine', but it has a different working principle."

He turned it over. "See these leads? They link to the computer, and also to the helmet in the other sleeping area. It still provides a sensation feedback, but in this one it's modulated by what the other person in the system is thinking and dreaming. The computer is programmed to modify those thoughts, before the feedback, to make our impressions of each other more favorable. All the time that we have the helmets on, we are sharing each other's thoughts and emotions. It would be much harder for us—so the theory goes—to develop any hatred for each other. It would almost be like hating yourself."

"I do that anyway, sometimes." Wolf was looking at the helmet with a good deal of distaste. "Speaking personally, Park, I find this device disgusting. It's no reflection on you, but I don't like the idea of somebody else sneaking in on my dreams. Some of the things I think just don't bear to be shared. Whoever thought up this one had a diseased mind—worse than mine."

Green nodded sympathetically. "It's odd that you should say that. Most people don't seem to mind the idea, but I have an instinctive dislike of it. It must feel like a two-way computerized seduction, creeping into each other's hidden territories. Anyway, which one do you want to use on this trip—or would you rather not try any of them?"

Bey looked at the helmet he was holding. "It's not much of a choice, is it? I suppose the hibernator is least bad. I don't mind sleeping for a week, provided we don't feel too bad afterwards."

"All right. We'll take it in turns to go under. Really, though, for this trip we don't have to use these things at all. They're not even recommended for trips under a month, and they don't become mandatory until you're going to be six months between stops. Want to skip it completely?"

"Let's see if we get bored at all. You know, Park, I wish the USF was more broad-minded about form-change work. For a start, I feel sure I could set up a system that would work with somebody in the hibernator, and use bio-feedback to keep good muscle tone. That has to be easy. In fact"—Bey was beginning to sound enthusiastic—"I'll be willing to make a bet with you. I'll wager that I can take a Dream Machine helmet and a hibernator, and make a system from them that will do just what I said—and I'll have it finished before we get to Pearl. What's the capacity of the on-board computer?"

"Ten to the tenth directly-addressable. About a hundred times that as low-speed back-up."

"That's ample. Even if we don't find what I'm looking for, maybe we can take something back with us that will interest the USF."

Green looked at Bey warily, and shook his head. "Experiment as much as you like. There's a spare set of helmets and a spare hibernator. But I don't like that mad-scientist look in your eye. I'm telling you now, you don't have a volunteer as a test subject, if you think you have it working. When I hear you talk, I sometimes think you're as bad as Capman must be—form-change is the most important thing in the world to both of you." He was silent for a moment, then he sighed. "I only hope I still have a job when I get back. The USF Government doesn't take kindly to sudden extended absences, without a real explanation. But I'll tell you one thing, Bey, your obsession with Robert Capman seems to be infectious. I just can't wait to get to Pearl."

Chapter 20

More than ninety-nine percent of all the mass in the Solar System lies close to the plane of the ecliptic. Of the remainder, the Halo of kernels accounts for all but the tiniest fraction; and that Halo is at the very outer edge of the System, never visible from Earth or Moon with even the most powerful optical devices. For all practical purposes, Pearl and her sisters of the Egyptian Cluster swim in a totally empty void, deserted even by comparison with the sparse population of the Outer System.

The ship climbed steadily and laboriously up, away from the plane of the ecliptic. Finally, the parallax was sufficient to move the planets from their usual apparent positions. Mars, Earth, Venus and Jupiter all sat in constellations that were no part of the familiar Zodiac. Mercury was cowering close to the Sun. Saturn alone, swinging out at the far end of her orbit, seemed right as seen from the ship. Bey Wolf, picking out their positions through a viewport, wondered idly how the astrologers would cope with such a situation. Mars seemed to be in the House of Andromeda, and Venus in the House of Cygnus. It would take an unusually talented practitioner to interpret those relationships, and cast a horoscope for the success of this enterprise.

Bey turned the telescope again to scan the sky ahead of them, seeking any point of light that could be separated from the unmoving star field. It was no good. Even though the computer told him exactly where to look, and assured him that rendezvous would be in less than an hour, he could see nothing. He was tempted to turn on the electronic magnifiers, but that was cheating as he had been playing the game.

"Any sign of her yet?" said Green, emerging from the sleeping area.

"No. We should be pretty close, but I can't see anything. Did you pick up your newscast?"

"Just finished watching it. It was a terrible picture, though, the signal-to-noise ratio was so bad. I don't understand how they can pick up those broadcasts all the way out to Uranus, with a receiving antenna no bigger than the one we have. We're only a tenth of that distance, but the signals seem to be right at the limit of reception."

"We're just picking up one of the power side lobes, Park. Nearly all the real power in the signal is beamed out along the main lobe, in the ecliptic. It's surprising in a way that we can pick up anything at all here. Anyway, what's in the news?"

"What I heard didn't sound good." Green's voice was worried, and he didn't want to meet Bey's eye. "It's Earth again. All the social indicators are still pointing down. I know old Dolmetsch is a prize pessimist, but I've never heard him sound so bleak before. He was being interviewed in Lisbon, and he's projecting everything going to hell before the General Coordinators can damp out the swings in the social parameters. He looked as though he was going to say more, and tell us the swings couldn't be damped at all, but the interview was cut off short at that point."