Sight of Proteus (6 page)

"Less tangible!" Larsen snorted in disgust, but Wolf was not about to stop.

"Didn't you find it peculiar, John, the way that Capman 'dropped in' on our meeting with Morris? He had no reason to—unless he wanted to get his own feel for what we were doing on the investigation. I don't know how aware of it you were, but he looked at the two of us as though he had us under a microscope. I've never had such a feeling before of being weighed and measured by someone.

"One final point, then I'm done. Capman has had absolute control of that hospital for forty years. Everybody there knows he's a genius and they do whatever he wants without questioning it much. If I know anything at all about human psychology, he probably thinks by this time that he's above the ordinary laws."

Larsen was looking at him quizzically. "That's all very nice, Bey. Now give me some real evidence. You have a lot of circumstantial points. With one piece of solid fact about the case, I'd even be convinced. But everything you've said is still guesswork and intuition. I'll be the first to admit that you're rarely wrong on this sort of hunch, but—"

He was interrupted by the soft buzz of the intercom. Wolf keyed his wrist remote and fell silent for a few seconds, listening to the private line accessing his phone implant. Then he cut the connection and turned to Larsen.

"Real evidence, John? Here's your solid fact, as hard a one as you could ask for. That was Steuben himself on the phone, and he was relaying a message from two levels higher up yet. There is a request for our services—the two of us, specifically, by name—to help investigate a form-change problem for the USF on Tycho Base."

"When?"

"At once. We have orders to drop any other cases that we're working on—Steuben didn't say what they were, and I doubt if he even knows—and leave tomorrow for the Moon. Apparently the request came direct from the office of the General Coordinators. When does coincidence get to be past believing?"

"I don't know anybody at all in the General Coordinators' office, Bey, and I'm pretty sure they don't know me. Do you know people there?"

"Not a soul. But somebody there—or one of their special consultants, such as you-know-who—seems to want us off the case we're on now. So somebody knows us and what we're doing. Like to take a bet?"

Larsen's face had begun to flush red. He looked again at the display of the Central Hospital organization, with its glowing lines leading to Capman, and swore softly.

"Bey, I won't take that twice. The business with Pleasure Dome was the last time I'll let them call me off. But they've got us trapped on this. We can't refuse a valid assignment—and for all we know the Tycho Base job is a real one. If only we had more time here. What can we do in one day?"

Wolf looked pale, but he was ready for a fight. He rose to his feet. "We can do at least one thing, John, before they can stop us. We can take a look at Capman's private lab."

"But we'd need a search warrant from head office before we can do that."

"Leave that to me. It reveals exactly what we're doing, but that can't be helped. We have to get over there this afternoon, while Morris is still on duty. I don't know how far we'll get, but we may need some assistance."

"What are you expecting to find, Bey?"

"If I could tell you that, we wouldn't need to go. I feel the same as you do—I'm not willing to be pulled off a case so easily this time, no matter where the order comes from. I want to know how those projects in the missing files—Proteus and the rest of them—tie in to that unidentifiable liver in the Transplant Department. We don't have much time. Let's plan to get out of here half an hour from now."

Chapter 6

On the way to the hospital, Larsen became silent and uncommunicative. Wolf noticed that he was listening intently to his phone implant, and guessed at the reason.

"Any change on the situation at home, John?" he asked, when Larsen finally cut the connection.

Larsen looked somber. He shook his head. "Nothing new, I'm afraid. She's still going down fast. She knows it, too. She's using the machines all the time but it's not doing any good."

He drew a deep breath, then added, "How do you tell someone you love that the best solution now is to go gracefully?"

Wolf could not give him an answer. It was a problem that every family dreaded. Just as BEC's work had provided an answer to the old question of defining humanity, it also provided a definition of old age. Life expectancy was still about a century for most people; fertile, healthy years spent in peak physical condition. Then one day the brain lost its power to follow the profile of the bio-feedback regimes. Rapid physical and mental decline followed, each reinforcing the other. Most people chose to visit the Euth Club as soon as they realized what was happening. An unfortunate few, afraid of the unknowns of death, rode the roller-coaster all the way down.

Larsen finally broke the silence. "You know, Bey, I've never seen old age before. Can you imagine what it must have been like when half the world was old? Losing hair and teeth and eyesight and hearing." He shuddered. "A couple of hundred years ago, I suppose it was all like that. How could they stand it? Why didn't they become insane?"

Wolf looked at him closely. With a difficult time coming at Central Hospital, he had to be sure that Larsen was up to it.

"They had a different attitude in those days, John," he said. "Aging used to be considered as normal, not as a degenerative disease. In fact, some of the signs used to be thought of as assets—proof of experience. Imagine living a couple of hundred years before that, if you really want to scare yourself. Life expectancy in the thirties—and no anesthetics, no decent pain-killers, and no decent surgery."

"Sure, but somehow you can't really think of it. You only really know it when you see it for yourself. It's like being told that in the old days people lived their whole lives blind, or with a congenital heart defect, or missing a limb. You don't question it, but you can't imagine what it must have been like."

They moved on, and finally Wolf spoke again.

"Not just physical problems, either. If your body and appearance were fixed at birth, think how many emotional and sexual problems you might have."

The outline of Central Hospital was looming again before them. They left the slideways and stood together in front of the massive granite columns bordering the main entrance. Each time they entered, it seemed that old fears were stirred. Both men had taken the humanity-tests here, although of course they had been too young to have any memory of it. This time it was Larsen who finally took Wolf by the arm and moved them forward.

"Come on, Bey," he said, "They won't test us again. But I'm not sure you'd pass if they did. A lot of people in Form Control say part of you isn't human. Where did you get the knack of sniffing out the forbidden forms the way you do? They all ask me, and I never have a good answer."

Wolf looked hard at Larsen, before he at last relaxed and laughed. "They could do it as well as I can if they used the same methods and worked at it as hard. I look for peculiarities—in the way people look, or the way they sound and dress and move and smell—anything that doesn't fit. After a few years it gets to be subconscious evaluation. I sometimes couldn't tell you what the giveaway was on a forbidden form. I'd have to give it a lot of thought, after the fact."

They were through the great studded doors. The same receptionist was on duty. He greeted them cheerfully.

"You two seem to have caught Doctor Capman's fancy. He gave me this code for you. You can use it anywhere in the hospital—he said you would need it when you got here."

He smiled and handed an eight-digit dial-code to Wolf, who looked at Larsen in surprise.

"John, did you call and say we were coming?"

"No. Did you?"

"Of course not. So how the devil did he—?"

Wolf broke off and walked quickly to a wall query-point. He entered the code and a brief message at once flashed onto the viewing screen. 'Mr. Wolf and Mr. Larsen are to be given access to all units of the hospital. All staff are requested to cooperate fully with Office of Form Control investigations. By order of the Director, Robert Capman.'

Larsen frowned in bewilderment. "He can't have known we'd be here. We only decided it half an hour ago."

Wolf was already walking towards the elevator. "Believe it or not, John, he knew. We'll find out how some other time. Come on."

As they were about to enter the elevator, they were met by Doctor Morris, who burst at once into excited speech. "What's going on here? Capman cancelled all his appointments for today, just half an hour ago. He told me to wait here for you. It's completely unprecedented."

Wolf's eyes were restless and troubled. "We don't have time to explain now, but we need help. Where is Capman's private lab? It's somewhere on this floor, right?"

"It is, along this corridor. But Mr. Wolf, you can't go in there. The Director has strict orders that he is not to be disturbed. It is a standard—"

He broke off when Wolf slid open the door, to reveal an empty study. The other two followed him as he went in and looked around. Wolf turned again to Morris.

"Where's the private lab?"

"Through here." He led the way into an adjoining room that was equipped as a small but sophisticated laboratory. It too was empty. They quickly examined both rooms, until Larsen discovered an elevator in a corner closet of the lab.

"Doctor, where does this lead?" asked Wolf.

"Why—I don't know. I didn't even know it was there. It must have been left over from the time before the new lift tubes were installed. But that's over thirty years ago."

The elevator had only one working button. Larsen pressed it and the three men descended in silence. Morris was counting to himself. When they stopped, he thought for a moment and nodded.

"We're four floors underground now, if I counted them correctly. I don't know of any hospital facilities this deep under the building. It has to be very old—before my time here."

The room they stepped out into, however, showed no signs of age. It was dust-free and newly-painted. At its far end stood a large vault door, with a combination lock built into the face. Wolf looked at it for a few seconds, then turned to Larsen.

"We don't have too many options. Good thing it's not a new model. Think you can handle it, John?"

Larsen walked up to the vault door and studied it quietly for a few minutes, then nodded. He began to move the jewelled key-settings delicately, pausing at each one. After twenty minutes of intense work, with frequent checks on his percomp, he drew a deep breath and carefully keyed in a full combination. He pulled, and following a moment's hesitation the great door swung open. They walked forward into a long, dimly-lit room.

Morris pointed at once to the line of great sealed tanks that ran along both walls of the room.

"Those shouldn't be here! They're special form-change tanks. They are like the ones we use for infants with birth-defects, but these are ten times the size. There shouldn't be units like this anywhere in this hospital."

He moved swiftly along the room, inspecting each tank and examining its monitors. Then he came back to Wolf and Larsen, eyes wide.

"Twenty units, and fourteen of them occupied." His voice was shaking. "I don't know who is inside them, but I am quite certain that this whole unit is not part of the hospital facilities. It's a completely unauthorized form-change lab."

Wolf looked at Larsen with grim satisfaction. He turned again to Morris.

"Can you tell us just what change work is going on in here?"

Morris thought for a moment, then replied, "If this is the usual lay-out, there has to be a control room somewhere. All the work records on the changes should be there—computer software, experimental designs, everything. It's not at this end."

They hurried together along the length of the room. Morris muttered to himself in satisfaction when he saw the control room there. He went to the console and at once began to call out records for each of the experiment stations in turn. As he worked, his face grew paler and his brow was beaded with sweat. At last he spoke, slowly and in hushed tones.

"There are missing records, but I can already tell you something terrible—and highly illegal—has been going on here. There are humans in fourteen of those tanks. They are being programmed to adapt to pre-specified forms, built into the control software. And I can tell you one other thing. The subjects in the tanks are definitely of an illegal age for form-change work—my rough estimate puts them between two years old and sixteen years old, all of them."

It took a few seconds for that to sink in. Then Larsen said quietly. "You are telling us that there are human children in those tanks. That's monstrous. How can a child assess the risks that go with form-change?"

"They can't. In this case, the question of knowing the risk does not arise. The arrangement is a very special one, never used legally. We've known how to apply it, in principle, for many years. The stimulus to achieve a programmed form-change is being applied directly to the pleasure centers of their brains. In effect, they have no choice at all. These children are being forced to strive for the programmed changes by the strongest possible stimulus."

He leaned back in the control console chair and put both hands to his perspiring forehead. When he finally spoke again, his voice was slurred and weary.

"I can't believe it. I simply can't believe it, even though I see it. In Central Hospital, and with Capman involved. He's been my idol ever since I left medical school. He seemed more concerned for individuals, and for humanity as a whole, than anyone I ever met. Never cared for money, or possessions. Now he's mixed up in this. It makes no sense. . . ."

His voice cracked and he sat hunched and motionless in his chair. After a few seconds, Wolf intruded on his troubled reverie.

"Doctor, is there any way that you can tell us what form-changes were being used here?"

Morris roused himself a little and shook his head. "Not without the missing records. Capman must have kept those separately somewhere. I can get the computer listings through the display here, but it would be a terrible job to deduce the program purpose from the object listings. Even short subroutines can take hours to understand. There's a piece of code here, for example, that occurs over and over in two of the experiments. But its use is obscure."