Hidden Variables (22 page)

"So let me repeat my question," said Green. "What do we do next, and where do we go from here? Advertising for Capman won't solve the problem—he'll be treated as a mass murderer if he ever does show up alive."

"I think I can produce a message that Capman will recognize and be intrigued by, but others won't," answered Wolf."As for protecting him if he does show himself, I'm not worried about that. I'm sure that he'll have found a way to cover himself in the past six years. I've got another worry of my own. We have no way of knowing how urgent this thing is. It could be a once in a lifetime accident or the start of a general plague. Until we know which, I have to look on it as the hottest thing on my list of problems. Let me take a cut at the message to Capman."

The final announcement was short and simple. It went out on a general broadcast over all media to the eight billion on Earth, and by special transmission to the scattered three million members of the United Space Federation.

'To R.C. I badly need the talents that caused me to pursue you six years ago through the by-ways of Old City. I promise you a problem worthy of your powers. Behrooz Wolf.'

* * *

Troubles were mounting. Bey spent a couple of hours with a representative of BEC, who insisted on presenting more confidential records to prove that the company had no connection with the monster forms found in Guam. The Central Coordinators sent him a terse message, asking him if there would be other deaths of the same type, and if so, when and how many? Park Green was getting the same sort of pressure from the U. S. F. Unlike Bey Wolf, the big man wasn't used to it and spent a good part of his time in Bey's office, gloomily biting his nails and trying to construct positively worded replies with no information content.

Two days of that brought a stronger response from Tycho City. Bey arrived in his office early and found a small, neatly dressed man standing by the communicator calling out U. S. F. personnel records. He turned at Bey's entry, with no sign of embarrassment at his intrusion, and looked at Bey for a second before he spoke.

"Mr. Green?" The voice was like the man, small and precise.

"He'll be in later. I'm Behrooz Wolf, head of Form Control. What can I do for you?" Bey was somewhat conscious of his own casual appearance and uncombed hair.

The man drew himself up to his full height. "I am Karl Ling, special assistant to the U. S. F. Cabinet. Here are my credentials." The tone was peppery and irascible. "I have been sent here to get some real answers about the deaths of three of our citizens here on Earth. I must tell you that we regard the explanations given so far by your office and Mr. Green as profoundly unsatisfactory."

"Arrogant bastard," thought Bey, while he looked for a suitably conciliatory answer.

"We have been doing our best to provide you with all the facts, Mr. Ling," he said. "It seemed unwise to present theories until they can be definitely verified. I'm sure you realize that this case is complex and has features that we haven't encountered before."

"Apparently." Karl Ling had taken a seat by the communicator and was tapping his thigh nervously with a well-manicured left hand. "For example, I see that you are giving the cause of death as asphyxiation. But you tell us also that the dead men had plenty of air in their lungs, and that there were no poisonous constituents. Perhaps you would like to present your theory on that to me."

Dealing in the past with officious government representatives, Bey had found an effective method of subduing them. He thought of it as his saturation technique. The trick was to flood the nuisance with so many facts, figures, reports and data that he was inundated and never seen again. He went over to his desk and took out a black record pad.

"This has the data entry codes that will allow you to pull all the records on this case. I suggest that you use my office here and feel free to use my communicator to reach Central Files. Nothing will be hidden from you. This machine has a full access code."

The little man stood up, a gleam in his eyes. He rubbed his hands together.

"Excellent. Please arrange it so that I am not disturbed—but I do want to see Mr. Green when he arrives."

Far from being subdued, Ling was clearly delighted at the prospect of a flood of information. Bey escaped with relief and went to give the bad news to Park Green.

"Karl Ling?" Green looked impressed. "Oh, I know him—not personally, but by reputation. He's the U. S. F. leading expert on Loge. He's a fanatic on the subject, really. I saw a holovision program he made a couple of years ago where he traced the whole history of Loge. He began way back, five hundred years ago—"

* * *

(Cameras move from model and back to Ling, standing.)

"School-capsules give the 1970's as the first date in Loge's history. We can find him much further back than that. All the way back in 1766, when a German astronomer came up with a scheme to define the distances of the planets from the Sun. Johann Titius' work was picked up and made famous a few years later by another German, Johann Bode. The relation is called the Titius-Bode Law."

(Cut to framed lithograph of Bode, then to table of planetary distances.)

"Bode pointed out that there was a curious gap in the distance formula, between Mars and Jupiter. When William Herschel discovered Uranus in 1781—"

(Cut to high resolution color image of Uranus, with image of Herschel as insert on upper left. Cut back to Ling.)

"—he found it fitted Bode's law also. The search for a missing planet began. In 1800 the asteroid Ceres was discovered at the correct distance from the Sun. The first piece of Loge had been found."

(Cut to high resolution image of Ceres. Zoom in on Ceres City. Cut to diagram showing planetary distances, then back to Ling.)

"As more and more asteroids were found, the theory grew that they were fragments of a single planet. In 1972 the Canadian astronomer Ovenden provided the first real proof. Using the rates of change in the orbits of the planets, he showed they were consistent with the disappearance from the Solar System of a body of planetary mass, roughly sixteen million years ago. He estimated that the missing planet was about ninety times the mass of the Earth. Loge was beginning to take on a definite shape."

(Cut to image of Ovenden, then to artist's impression of the size and appearance of Loge, next to image of the Earth on same scale.)

"The next part of the story came just a few years later, in 1975. Van Flandern in America integrated the orbits of very long period comets backwards in time. He found that many of them had periods of about sixteen million years and had left from a particular part of the Solar System, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Parts of Loge were coming home."

(Cut to diagram showing cometary orbits, intersecting Solar System diagram at point between Mars and Jupiter. Cut back to Ling.)

"We now had the modern view of Loge. A large planet, a gas-giant about ninety Earth masses, disintegrated about sixteen million years ago in a cataclysm beyond our imagining. Most of Loge was blown out of the Solar System forever. A few parts of the planetary core remain as the asteroids, other fragments from the outer crust drop back into the Solar System from time to time as long-period comets."

(Move in to close-up of Ling, face and shoulders only.)

"That looked like the end of the story, until we picked up the first pieces of the long-period cometary fragments in the twenty-first century and found they were high in trasuranic elements. The mystery of Loge remains. Why should Loge, alone of all the Solar System, contain transuranic elements? Their half-lives are less than twenty million years. Were they formed in the explosion of Loge? If so, how? To those questions, we still do not have answers."

(Cut to image of Loge, feed in beginning of fade-out music, low volume.)

"One final and tantalizing fact. Sixteen million years is like yesterday on the cosmic scale. When Loge disintegrated there were primates already on the Earth. Did our early ancestors look into the skies one night, and see the fearful sight of Loge's explosion? Will other planets ever suffer a similar fate?"

(Fade out as image of Loge swells, changes color, breaks asunder. Final music crescendoes for ending.)

* * *

"—but it puzzles me why Ling should be appointed to this investigation. He writes his own ticket, of course. Maybe he knew one of the dead Grabbers—he certainly knew everything and everyone connected with Loge in any way." Green fell silent, then shook his head. "I suppose I'd better get in there and find out what he wants me to do. I hope I'm not being demoted to messenger boy."

Together Green and Wolf went back into Bey's office. Karl Ling was oblivious of their entry, deeply engrossed in his review of autopsy records of the three dead crew members of the 'Jason.' Wolf's saturation technique didn't work on Ling. He became aware of them only when Bey Wolf spoke.

"Mr. Ling, we are ready to give you a briefing when you want it. This is Mr. Green, from U. S. F."

Ling looked up briefly, then returned his attention to the medical records. "Good. Answer one basic question for me. The three dead men have clearly been through a form-change process. Where are the bio-feedback machines located that were used for that?"

"We don't have an answer to that, Sir," replied Wolf. "Though of course we recognize its importance."

Ling looked up again. For some reason it seemed to be the response he was hoping for. "No answer, Mr. Wolf? I thought that might be the case. Would you like me to enlighten you?"

Bey felt a minor urge to go over and choke Ling but managed a cool reply. "If you can. Though it is hard for me to imagine that you could have reached a conclusion on such a brief inspection of the records."

"I did not. I knew before I left the Moon." He smiled briefly and stood up. "You see, Mr. Wolf, I have no doubt that you and the other members of Form Control here on Earth are proficient in your work. But this particular situation requires something that by definition you do not possess—the ability to think as a U. S. F. citizen. For example, if you were a millionaire, where on Earth would you choose to go for your entertainment? Remember, you may choose freely without thought of cost."

"Probably to the Great Barrier Reef, in a gilled form."

"Very good." Karl Ling turned to Park Green. "You are a Belter, Mr. Green, and suddenly a millionaire. Where on all of Earth would you want to go—what is the Belter's dream of a place for all the most exotic delights?"

Green scratched his chin thoughtfully. "Why, I guess it would be Pleasure Dome. That's the place we hear about, though I've never been there."

"Of course you haven't," responded Ling impatiently, "and neither has anyone else who is not extremely rich. But it's the Belter's idea of Paradise—and part of the reason you would want to go there would be to prove how rich you were."

He went over to the large map display on the far wall and called out a South Polar projection.

"Let's take this a little further. Look at the geography. The crew of the 'Jason' landed here at the Australian space port. Within easy ground transport distance of the North Australian Mattin Link. One transfer gets them to New Zealand, a second one puts them to Cap City in Antarctica. Now Pleasure Dome, as I am sure you know, Mr. Wolf, though perhaps Mr. Green does not, lies directly beneath Cap City in the Antarctic ice cap. Total travel time from the space port—an hour or less."

Park Green nodded slowly. "I guess so. I'm not yet used to the number of Link entry points you have here. I don't see where that gets us, though. We need a place with sophisticated form-change equipment. I didn't see Cap City or Pleasure Dome on any list of labs that Mr. Wolf showed me."

Karl Ling smiled ironically. "I'm sure you didn't. You saw the legal list." He turned to Bey, who had some idea what was coming and felt a growing excitement. "Pleasure Dome offers
all
pleasures, does it not, Mr. Wolf? Even the most exotic. Would it be safe to assume that a number of those pleasures involve the use of form-changes?"

"It certainly would. We know there are illegal form-changes going on there, for some of the more debauched physical tastes. But we've never had trouble with them, and they are very discreet. We keep a kind of informal truce. I don't have to tell you, Mr. Ling, how much power the managers of Pleasure Dome have when it comes to silent influence in high places."

Ling touched the map display control and a new image appeared. "Then this must be our next stop—Cap City and Pleasure Dome. We still have not answered the basic question: how did those three men become three dead monsters? Mr. Green, you should remain here and be available to answer the inquiries from Earth and Moon authorities. Please make travel arrangements now for Mr. Wolf and myself. Don't worry, Mr. Wolf," he added, seeing Bey's questioning look. "I can call on the full financial resources of the U. S. F. in pursuing this enquiry."

"That's not my worry at the moment, Mr. Ling. I was wondering why the Mariana Trench was chosen to dispose of the bodies. Can you explain that also?"

"I have a speculation, certainly. After the crew of the 'Jason' died, I think the proprietors of Pleasure Dome looked at their identifications and realized they were in trouble. They know the U. S. F. looks after its own. The plan was to get the bodies off-Earth. They were taken to Australia through the Mattin Link. When the Pleasure Dome people found that security regulations on space access are very tight, that plan was dropped and they were forced to improvise. One further transfer through the Link System took them to the Marianas. Hasty planning—and an inadequate knowledge of local geography—led to a botching of the disposal job."

Ling looked pleased with his analysis. "It is only a deductive argument, I admit. But I suspect it has a very high probability of being right.

"Now, quickly, have preparations made and let us be on our way."

Green hurried out, but Wolf lingered a moment. Ling looked at him questioningly.

"You have further business, Mr. Wolf? I have a great deal of work still to do on the records and not much time to do it."