Sight of Proteus (3 page)

. . . BEC will sell you a low-cost experimental package. Includes everything that you need to create your very own form-change program . . .

True. But now read the fine print.

. . . BEC takes no responsibility for reduced life expectancy or unstable physical-mental feedback resulting from form-change experiments made with BEC equipment . . .

Of course, if you are that one in a million, lucky and clever enough to hit on a really successful form, it will have to be sold through BEC. Your royalty is factored into their prices. Lucky BEC.

It is interesting to look at a few statistics. Licensed form-change experimenters: one-and-a-half million. Living millionaires from new form inventions: one hundred and forty-six. Deaths per year directly attributed to form-change experiments: seventy-eight thousand.

Form-change experiment is a risky business.

The Minutes Secretaries didn't realize it, but in the final petition board they saw only the cream of the crop—the ones that could still walk and talk. Less than one in fifty made it to the board. Many of the failures finished in the organ banks.

"We should include a summary on the humanity-test proposal, Gina."

"I guess so. I sketched out a short statement while they were still debating it. How about this? 'The proposal that the humanity test could be conducted at two months instead of three months was tabled pending further test results.' "

"I think it needs a bit more detail than that. Doctor Capman pointed out what an argument the present humanity test caused among the religious groups when it was first introduced. BEC had to show success in a hundred thousand test cases, before the Council would approve it."

He skimmed rapidly through the record. "Here, why don't we simply use this quote, verbatim, from Capman's remarks? 'The humanity tests remain controversial. Unless an equally large sample is analyzed now, showing that the two and three month test results are identical, the proposal cannot be forwarded for consideration.' "

They were both much too young to remember the great humanity debates. What is a human? The answer had evolved slowly and taken many years to articulate clearly, but it was simple enough: an entity is human if and only if it can accomplish purposive form-change using the bio-feedback systems. The definition had prevailed over the anguished weeping of millions—billions—of protesting parents.

The age of testing had been slowly pushed back, to one year, to six months, to three months. If BEC could prove its case, the age would soon be two months. Failure in the test carried a high penalty—euthanasia—but resistance had slowly faded before remorseless population pressure. Resources to feed babies who could never live a normal human life were simply not available. The banks never lacked for infant organs.

Gina had locked her recorder. She pushed back her blonde hair with a rounded forearm and threw a smoldering look at her companion.

"Still not quite right," he said critically. "You should droop your eyelids a bit more, and get a better pout on that lower lip."

"Damn. It's hard. How will I know when I'm getting it right?"

He picked up his recorder. "Don't worry. I told you before, you'll know from my reaction."

"You know, I ought to try it on Doctor Capman—he'd be the ultimate test, don't you think?"

"Impossible, I would have said. You know he only lives for his work. I don't think he has more than two minutes a day left over from that. But look"—only half joking—"if the hormones are running too high in that form, I might be able to help you out."

Gina's response was not included in the conventional Marilyn data base.

* * *

The tell-tales on the experiment stations glowed softly. The only sounds were the steady hum of air and nutrient circulators and the click of the pressure valves inside the tanks. Seated at the control console, the lonely figure looked again at the records of experiment status.

It had been necessary to abort the failure on the eleventh station—again the pain, the loss of an old friend. How many more? Fortunately, the replacement was doing very well. Perhaps he was getting closer, perhaps the dream of half a century could be achieved.

He had not chosen his outward form lightly. It was fitting that the greatest scientist of the twenty-second century should pay homage to the giant of the twentieth. But how had his idol borne the guilt of Hiroshima, of Nagasaki? For that secret, he would have given a great deal.

Chapter 4

The unexpected loss of the data set containing the unknown liver ID had nagged all night like a subliminad. By the time Bey Wolf reached the Form Control offices his perplexity was showing visibly on his face. As they set off together for Central Hospital, Larsen mistook Wolf's facial expression for irritation at being called out on a wasted mission the previous night.

"Just another hour or two. Bey," he said, "then we'll have direct evidence."

Wolf was thoughtful for a moment, chewing at his lip.

"Maybe, John," he said at last. "But don't count on it. I don't know why it is, but it seems that whenever I get involved in a really interesting case, something comes along and knocks it away. You remember how it was on the Pleasure Dome case."

Larsen nodded without comment. That had been a tough one, and both men had come close to resigning over it. Illegal form-changes were being carried out in Antarctica, as titillation for the jaded sexual appetites of top political figures. Starting from a segment of ophidian skin picked up in Madrid, Wolf and Larsen had followed the trail little by little and had been close to the final revelation when they had suddenly been called off the case by the central office. The whole thing had been hushed up and left to cool. There must have been some very important players in that particular game.

While the slideways transported them towards the hospital, both men gradually became more subdued. It was a natural response to their surroundings. As the blue glaze of the newer city's shielded walls became less common, the buildings seemed drab and shabby. The inhabitants moved more furtively, the dirt and the refuse became noticeable. Central Hospital stood at the very edge of Old City, where wealth and success handed over to poverty and failure. Much of the world could not afford the BEC programs and equipment. In the depths of Old City, the old forms of humanity lived side-by-side with the worst surviving failures of the form-change experiments.

The bulk of the hospital loomed at last before them. Very old, built of grey stone, it stood like a massive fortress protecting the new city from Old City. Inside it, the first BEC developments had been given their practical tests—long ago, before the Fall of India, but the importance of the hospital's work lived on, deep in human memory. All moves to tear it down and replace it with a modern structure had failed. Now it seemed almost a monument to the progress of form-change.

Inside the main lobby, the two men paused and looked about them. The hospital ran with the frantic pace and total organization of an ants' nest. The status displays in front of the receptionist flickered all the colors of the rainbow, constantly, like the consoles of a spaceport control center.

The young man seated at the controls seemed able to ignore it completely. He was deep in a thick, blue-bound book, his consoles set for audio interrupt should attention be needed. He looked up only when Wolf and Larsen were standing directly in front of him.

"You need assistance?" he asked.

Wolf nodded, then looked at him closely. The face, now that it was no longer turned down to the pages of the book, looked suddenly familiar—oddly familiar, but in an impersonal way. Bey felt as though he had seen him on a holograph, without ever seeing the man in person.

"We should have an appointment with Doctor Morris of the Transplant Department," said Larsen. "I called him first thing this morning to arrange some ID tests. He told us to come at ten, but we are a little early."

While Larsen was speaking, Wolf had managed to get a closer look at the book sitting on the desk in front of them. It had been a while since he had seen anyone working from an actual, bound volume. He looked at the open pages; very old, from the overall appearance, and probably made of processed wood pulp. Bey read the title word by word, with some difficulty since the page was upside down; 'The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus', by Christopher Marlowe. Suddenly, he was able to complete the connection. He looked again at the man behind the desk, who had picked up a location director, keyed it on, and handed it to Larsen.

"Follow the directions on this as they come up. It will take you to Doctor Morris' office. Return it to me when you leave, please. To get back here, all you have to do is press 'Return' and it will guide you to the main lobby."

As Larsen took the director, Wolf leaned over the desk and asked, "William Shakespeare?"

The receptionist stared at him in astonishment. "Why, that's quite right. Not one visitor in ten thousand recognizes me, though. How did you know? Are you a poet or a playwright yourself?"

Wolf shook his head. "I'm afraid not. Just a student of history, and very interested in faces and shapes. I assume that you get a positive feedback from that form, or you wouldn't be using it. Has it helped a lot?"

The receptionist wrinkled his high forehead in thought, then shrugged. "It's too soon to tell. I'd like to think it's working. I thought it was worth a try, even though I know that the form-change theorists are sceptical. After all, athletes use the body forms of earlier stars for their models, so why shouldn't the same method work just as well for an artist? It was a hassle changing to it, but I've decided to give it at least a year. If I don't see real progress in my work by then, I expect I'll change back to my old form."

Larsen looked puzzled. "Why not stay as you are? The form you have now is a good one. It's—"

He stopped abruptly in response to a quick kick from Bey, below desk-level. He stared at Wolf for a second, then looked back at the receptionist.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I seem to be a bit dense this morning."

The receptionist looked back at him with a mixture of amusement and embarrassment. "Don't apologize," he said. "I'm just surprised that either of you could tell. Is it all that obvious?" He looked down ruefully at his body.

Bey waved his hand. "Not at all obvious," he said reassuringly. "Don't forget we're from the Office of Form Control. It's our job, we're supposed to notice forms more than other people do. The only thing that tipped me off was your manner. You still haven't adjusted that totally, and you were behaving towards us more like a woman than a man."

"I guess I'm still not completely used to the male form. It's more difficult than you might think. You can get used to the extra bits and the missing bits in a few weeks, but it's the human relationships that really foul you up. Some day when you have a few hours to spare, I could tell you things about the adjustment in my sex life that other people find hilarious. Even I laugh at it now—mind you, I never saw the humor at the time."

Wolf's own interests extended to anything and everything and quite overshadowed his tact. He found that he couldn't resist a question. "People who've tried both usually say they prefer the female form. Do you agree?"

"So far, I do. I'm still learning to handle the male form properly, but if it doesn't pay off in my writing, I'll be very pleased to change back."

He paused and looked at the panel in front of him, where a cluster of yellow and violet lights had suddenly started a mad blinking.

"I'd like to talk to you about your job, sometime, but right now I have to get back to the board. There's a stuck conveyor on the eighth level, and no mechanics there. I'll have to try and borrow a couple of machines from Parthenogenetics two floors down." He began to key in to his controller. "Just go where the location director tells you," he said vaguely, already preoccupied completely with his problem.

"We're on our way. Good luck with the writing," said Wolf.

They went over to the elevators. As they continued up to the fifth floor, Larsen could see a trace of a smile on Wolf's thin face.

"All right, Bey, what is it? You only get that expression when there's a secret joke."

"Oh, it's nothing much," said Wolf, though he continued to look very pleased with himself. "At least, for the sake of our friend back there I hope that it's nothing much. I wonder if he knows that for quite a while there have been theories—strong ones—that although the face he is wearing may have belonged to Shakespeare, all the plays were written by somebody else. Maybe he'd be better off trying to form-change to look like Bacon."

Bey Wolf was a pleasant enough fellow, but to appeal to him a joke had to have a definite twist to it. He was still looking pleased with himself when they reached the office of the Director of Transplants. One thing he hadn't mentioned to John Larsen was the fact that a number of the theories he had referred to claimed that Shakespeare's works had been written by a woman.

* * *

"The liver came from a twenty-year-old female hydroponics worker, who had her skull crushed in an industrial accident."

Doctor Morris, lean, intense and disheveled, removed the reply slip that he had just read from the machine and handed it to John Larsen, who stared at it in disbelief.

"But that's impossible! Only yesterday, the ID tests gave a completely different result for that liver. You must have made a mistake, Doctor."

Morris shook his head firmly. "You saw the whole process yourself. You were there when we did the micro-biopsy on the transplanted liver. You saw me prepare the specimen and enter the sample for chromosome analysis. You saw the computer matching I just gave you. Mr. Larsen, there are no other steps or possible sources of error. I think you are right, there has been a mistake all right—but it was made by the medical student who gave you the report."

"But he told me that he did it three separate times."

"Then he probably did it wrong three times. It is no new thing to repeat a mistake. I trust that you are not about to do that yourself."