Sheffield, Charles - Proteus Unbound

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Proteus Unbound (v2.1)
Charles Sheffield
PART ONE
"S = k.log W"
Epitaph of Ludwig Boltzmann (1844-1906), carved on his tombstone in Vienna
CHAPTER 1
"When change itself can give no more It's easy to be true."
-Sir Charles Sedley
They found Behrooz Wolf on the lowest levels of Old City, in a filthy room whose better
days were far in the past.
In the doorway, Leo Manx paused. He looked at the sweating, moldy walls and
cobwebbed ceiling, gagged at the rank smell, and retreated a step. The floor of the room
was covered with old wrappers and scraps of food. The man behind pushed on through. He
was grinning for the first time since they had met. "There's a breath of Old Earth for you.
Still sure you want him?"
"I have to have him, Colonel. Orders from the top." Manx tried to breathe shallowly as he
moved forward. He knew Hamming was goading him, as everyone had done since he had
arrived on Earth and explained what he wanted. Manx ignored Hamming; the mission was
too important to let small issues get in the way.
The furnishings were minimal: a single bed, a food tap, a sanitary unit, and one padded
chair. As Manx moved farther inside, the stink became stronger; it was definitely coming
from the man slumped in that chair. Bald, sunken-eyed, and filthy, he stared straight ahead
at the life-size holograph of a smiling blond woman that covered most of one spotted and
water-stained wall. The lower part of the holograph displayed a verse of poetry in letters
three inches high.
Ignoring both the man and the 'graph, Colonel Hamming crouched to inspect a little metal
box on the floor next to the chair. Plaited braids of multicolored wires ran from the box to
the electrodes on the seated man's scalp. Hamming peered at the settings, his nose just a
couple of inches away from the control knobs.
"You're in luck. It's so-so, a medium setting."
Manx stared at the seated man's lined, grimy neck. "Meaning what?"
"Meaning he's been emptying his bladder and his bowels when he needs to, and maybe
he ate something now and again, so he shouldn't need surgery or emergency care. But he
won't have bothered with much else."
"So I see." Leo Manx examined the man with more disgust than curiosity, knowing that in
a few more minutes he might have to touch that greasy, mottled skin. "I thought Dream
Machines were illegal."
"Yeah. So's cheating on taxes. All right, Doc, tell me when you're ready. When I turn this
off, he may get nasty. Violent. Losing all his nice dream reinforcement. I've got a shot
ready."
"Don't you want to check that we have the right man before we begin? I mean, I've seen
pictures of Behrooz Wolf, and this-he's- well ... "
The security man was grinning again. "Not quite up to your expectations? Don't forget
Wolf is seventy-three years old. You've probably only seen pictures when he's on a
conditioning program. We'll check the chromosome ID if you like, but I'll vouch for him
without that. It's not the first time, you know. He did this three other times, before he was
kicked out as head of the Office of Form Control. He always comes here, and he always
looks pretty much like this. Never quite so far gone before. When he still had his official
position, we came and got him earlier. Can't let a government bureaucrat die on the job."
"You mean this time, if I hadn't asked to find him ... "
"You, or someone else." Hamming shrugged. "I don't know how you Cloudlanders do it,"
he said, contempt in his voice, "but here on Earth a free citizen can die any damn way he
chooses. Get ready, now-I'm pulling the plug. We'll go cold turkey."
Manx hovered impotently near as the security officer flipped four switches in quick
succession, then ripped taped electrodes from the bald scalp. There was no sound from the
biofeedback unit, but the man in the chair shivered, gasped, and suddenly sat upright. He
stared wildly around him.
"Wolf. Behrooz Wolf," Manx said urgently. "I must talk-"
"Grab his other arm," Hamming ordered. "He's going to pop."
The man was already on his feet, glaring about with bloodshot eyes. Before Leo Manx
could act, Behrooz Wolf had spun around to pull free and was feebly reaching for him with
scrawny, taloned hands. The security officer was ready. He fired the injection instantly into
Wolf's neck and watched calmly as the scarecrow figure froze in its tracks. Hamming waved
a hand in front of Wolf's face and nodded as the eyes moved to follow it.
"Good enough. He's still conscious. But he has no volition; he'll do what we tell him."
Hamming was already turning to pack away the cables in the compact biofeedback kit. "Let's
get him aloft and dump him into his own form-control unit before he starts to get lively
again."
Manx could not take his eyes away from the frozen tormented face. Behrooz Wolf was still
glaring at the hologram, not interested in anything else. "Do you think that the form-control
unit will work? He has to want it to. He seems to want to die."
"We'll have to wait and see. Hell, you can't make somebody want to live. You'll know in a
few hours. Carry the feedback unit, would you?" Hamming took Wolf's arm and began to
walk him toward the door. "Oops. Mustn't forget her. It's the first thing he'll want if he
makes it through the form-control operation." He detoured to the wall and pointed to the
verse. "That's the way Wolf was feeling. And here-" He poked the projection of the woman in
her bare navel. "-is the reason for it."
Manx read the verse below the picture.
My thoughts hold mortal strife; I do detest my life, And with lamenting cries, peace to my
soul to bring, Oft call that prince which here doth monarchize, But he, grim-grinning king,
Who caitiffs scorns, and doth the blest surprise, Late having decked with beauty's rose his
tomb, Disdains to crop a weed, and will not come.
"Gloomy thoughts. What does it mean?"
"Damned if I know. Wolf was always a nut for old-fashioned things -poetry, plays, history,
useless crap like that. He must have thought the poem applied to him."
"That's terrible. He must have loved her very much to break down like this when he lost
her."
"Yeah." Hamming had switched off the projection unit and put the cube into his pocket.
He shrugged. "It's odd. I knew her, and she wasn't much of a looker. Good in bed, I guess."
"How long ago did she die?"
"Die? You mean Mary there?" Hamming had taken hold of Wolf's arm again and was
leading him firmly out of the room. He gave a coarse, loud laugh. "Who mentioned dying?
Mary Walton is alive and well. Didn't you know? She dumped him! Buggered off to Cloudland
with one of your lot, some guy she met on a lunar cruise. Me, I'd have said good riddance to
her, but he took it different. Come on, let's get Wolf up to his tank. I've had enough stink for
today."
CHAPTER 2
"A message is not a message until the rules for interpreting it are in the hands of the
receiver."
-Apollo Belvedere Smith
Ihey would not go away. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear, nothing to taste, to
touch, or to feel. Nothing. And yet there were the voices, whispering, prompting, nudging,
cajoling, commanding.
That way. It was a generalized murmur. That's where you are going.
"No. I don't want to change." He struggled, unable to move or speak as he tried to
identify the source of the sounds. The argument had been going on inside him forever, and
he was losing. The voices were invading him micrometer by micrometer.
This way. This way. Change. They were ignoring his wish to rest, pulling him, pushing
him, twisting nun, turning him inside out. He could feel them in every cell, growing stronger
and more confident. Change. A trillion voices merged. Blood rushed through clogged
arteries, organic detergents washing the dry, inelastic skin, the weak, flabby muscles, and
the old, tired sinews. Change. Liver and spleen and kidneys and testicles, ion balances on a
roller coaster, local temperatures anomalously high or low-too high, too low. He was dying
... Change. The delicate balance of endocrine glands: testes and thyroid and adrenals and
pancreas and pituitary. All disturbed, homeostasis lost, desperately seeking a new
equilibrium. Change. Change. CHANGE.
He cried out, a silent scream. "Leave me alone." The intruders ran wild in every cell. He
was helpless, fainting, fading before the assault of a chemical army.
CHANGE. All over his body: fluctuations in thermodynamic potentials, in kinetic reaction
rates, hormonal levels; energy rushing to dormant follicles, sloughing old tissues, redefining
organic functions, thrusting along capillaries. A ferment of cellular renewal boiled within the
changing skin. CHANGE. Solvents along sluggish veins and arteries, the sluice of plaquey
deposits, the whirl of fats and cholesterol ... CHANGE. Liver, spleen, kidneys, prostate,
heart, lungs, brain ... CHANGE. Fires along nerves, synapses sparking erratically, spasms of
motor control, floods of neurotransmitters, flickering lightnings of pain, crashing
thunderstorms of sensation, signals flying from reticular network to cerebral cortex to
hypothalamus to dorsal ganglia. A clash of arms at the blood-brain barrier ... CHANGE.
SYNTHESIZE. ACCOMMODATE.
And then, suddenly, all voices merged to one voice and faded, weakening, withdrawing,
drifting down in volume. He could hear it clearly. He listened to the murmur of that dying
voice and at last recognized it. Knew it. Knew it exactly. It was the mechanical echo of his
own soul, whispering final commands through the computer link: his physical profile,
amplified a billionfold, transformed in the biofeedback equipment to a set of chemical and
physiological instructions, and fed back as final commands.
The tide was ebbing. The changes shivered to a halt. In that moment, senses returned.
He heard the surge of external pumps and felt the wash of amniotic fluids as they drained
from his naked body. The tank tilted, and the front cracked open, exposing his skin to cold
air. There was a sting of withdrawn catheters at groin and nape of neck and a slackening of
retaining straps.
He felt a growing pain in his chest and a terrible need for air. As the pertussive reflex
took over, he coughed violently, expelling gelatinous fluid from his lungs and taking in a first
ecstatic, agonizing breath. Its cold burn inside him was simultaneous with the sudden full
opening of the tank. Harsh white light hit his unready retinas.
He shivered, threw up his forearm to protect his eyes, and sagged back in the padded
seat. For five minutes he moved only to lean forward and cough up residual sputum. Finally
he summoned his strength, stood up, and stepped out of the tank. He staggered forward
two steps, caught his balance, and stood swaying. As soon as he was sure of his own
stability he reached for the towel that hung ready by the tank, wrapped it around his waist,
and turned back to the form-change tank itself. Another moment to gather his will, then he
gripped the door and swung it firmly closed.
It was a final, ritual step, his first choice after the unspoken decision to live. He was
rejecting the idea of tranquilizing drugs to ease the rigors of transition. Instead he walked
across the room to a full-length mirror and stared hard at his own reflection.
The glass showed a nearly naked man about thirty years old, dark-haired and dark-eyed,
of medium height and build. The new skin on his body still bore a babyish sheen, though it
was pale and wrinkled from long immersion. Soon it would smooth and mature to deep
ivory. The face that peered back at him was thin-nosed and thin-mouthed, with a cynical
downward turn to the red lips and thoughtful, cautious eyes.
He examined himself critically, working his jaw, lifting an eyelid with a forefinger to
inspect the clear, healthy white around the brown iris, peering inside his mouth at his teeth
and tongue, and finally rubbing his fingers along his renewed hairline. He flexed his
shoulders, inflated his chest to the full, moved his neck in an experimental roll back and
forth, and sighed.
"And here we are again. But why bother?" He spoke very softly to his reflection. " 'What a
piece of work is a man. How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty. In form, in moving, how
express and admirable. In action, how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god. The
beauty of the world, the paragon of animals.' "
"Very good, Mr. Wolf," said a silky and precise voice from the communications device in
the corner of the room. "The Bard wrote it, and perhaps he believed it. But do you?"
Bey Wolf turned slowly and cautiously. The unit was showing no visual signal. He stepped
across and turned on its video and recorder. "You did not let me finish that quotation. It
goes on, 'Man delights me not, no, nor woman neither.' And let me point out that this is my
private apartment. Who are you, and how the devil did you get my personal comcode?"
"I brought you there." The voice was unembarrassed. "I helped to carry you up out of Old
City-for that, you may thank me or curse me. I set you up in that form-change tank. And I
stayed, long enough to turn on your communications unit and note its access code." The
screen flickered, and a man's image appeared. "I do not want to intrude on your privacy,
and you will note that I was not receiving visual signals until you just activated that channel.
I am sure you are still feeling fragile, but I must talk with you as soon as you are recovered.
My name is Leo Manx. I am a member of the Outer System Federation."
"I can tell that much by looking at you. What do you want?"
"That cannot be discussed over public channels. If I could return to your apartment, or if
you would agree to visit me at the embassy-my time is yours. I came all the way from the
Outer Cloud, specifically to seek you. Perhaps you could join me for dinner-if you feel able to
eat, so soon after so full a treatment."
Behrooz Wolf stared at the other man. Leo Manx had the piebald look of the fourth-
generation Cloudlander, brown freckles on a chalk-white hairless skin. His build was thin and
angular, with overlong arms and bowed, skinny legs. "I can eat," he said at last. "Provided
it's Earth food-none of your rotten Cloud synthetics."
"Very well," Manx replied without hesitation, but there was a sudden half-humorous twist
of the mouth and the flicker of an eyelid. Like any Cloudlander, Manx would be disgusted by
the thought of food made from anything beyond single-celled organisms. Bey Wolf had
insisted on an Earth meal more to gauge Manx's seriousness of purpose than anything else.
But now, on the basis of the flimsiest of evidence, he decided that he rather liked Leo Manx.
Nobody could be all bad who recognized Shakespeare.
"Why not?" he said. "I'll come and see you. I've nothing better to do, and I haven't been
outside for a long time."
"Then I await your convenience." Manx nodded and disappeared from the screen.
Wolf consulted his internal clock. Until that moment he had had no idea what time it was-
or what day or month it was. Midafternoon. If he left in the next half hour he could be at the
embassy before the evening shower. He skimmed his accumulated mail and messages but
found nothing worth worrying about. Better face it: since he had been fired by Form Control,
he had become a nonentity. He dressed quickly and dropped ten floors to street level. There
he worked his way over to the fastest slideway, threading his way easily through the crowds
and staring around him as he went.
A BEC catalog must have been issued since he had fled underground in Old City. The new
forms were already appearing on the streets: squarer shoulders, more prominent genitals,
and deeper-set eyes for the men; a fuller-bosomed, long-waisted look in the women. As
usual, BEC had chosen the styles with great care. They were diiferent enough to be
noticeable but close enough to the previous year's fashions for the form-change programs to
be just within the average person's price range.
As head of the Office of Form Control-;former head, he reminded himself-Bey Wolf
considered himself above the whims of fashion. He wore his natural form, with minor
remedial changes. That made him a rarity. More and more, the people on the slideways all
looked the same as one another. It was-soothing? No. Boring. After a few minutes he keyed
in his implant to receive the communication channels.
He had a lot of news to catch up on. With his retreat to Old City and his subsequent spell
in the form-change tank, he had missed a minor political battle over optimal population
levels, the EEC release of a spectacular new avian form, a revised species preservation act
that applied to all of Earth, impeachment of the head of the United Space Federation on
charges of corruption, and a heated new exchange of insults between the governments of
the Inner System and the Outer System concerning energy rights in the Kernel Ring.
He had also, though this was not news, missed seventy-five days of a perfect summer.
But why count time when he no longer had a job? The purposive feedback process could do
no more than respond to his will, so there was no doubt that he wanted to live, deep inside.
But for what?
"How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable ... " And at that very moment, before the
familiar words could complete themselves in his mind, the madness began again. The
slideways and the scene from the news broadcasts darkened as another image was overlaid
on them.
The Dancing Man. He was back. Dressed in a scarlet, skintight suit, . he came capering
across Bey's field of vision. He danced backward with jerky, doll-like movements of his arms
and legs. There was curious music in the background, atonal yet tonal, and the man was
singing in a tuneful, alien manner that sounded like Chinese. In the middle of the overlain
field of view, he paused and grinned out directly at Bey. His teeth were black and filed to
points, and his face was as red as his suit. He spoke again, seeming to ask a question, then
waved, turned, and danced backward out of the field of view.
Bey shivered and put his hand to his head. He had heard Hamming's words underneath
Old City, but the colonel had been wrong. Mary's loss had been desperately painful; he
thought of her every day, and he would carry her holograph with him always. But something
else had driven him over the edge to seek the solace of the Dream Machine: conviction of
his own growing insanity.
Since the Dancing Man had first appeared, he had checked every possible source of the
signal. No one else could see it-even when he or she was viewing the same channel as Bey.
Every test for outside signal had proved negative. He had mimicked the Dancing Man's
speech, all that he could remember of it, and had been told by specialists in linguistics and
semiotics that it corresponded to no known language. Worst of all, when Wolf went into
recording mode, the signal vanished. It was never there to be played back. Physicians and
psychiatrists were unanimous: the signal was generated within Bey's own head. He was
suffering "perceptual disturbance" of a "severe and progressive form, intractable and with a
strong negative prognosis."
In other words, he was going crazy. And no one could do a damned thing about it. And it
was getting worse. At first no more than a scarlet spot on the scene's horizon, the Dancing
Man was getting steadily closer.
And the ultimate irony: as long as he and Mary had lived together, he had been
concerned with her sanity, her mental stability! He had been the impervious rock against
which the tides of insanity would break in vain.
Wolf saw that he had reached his destination, the deep-delved embassy of the Outer
System. He fled for the express elevators-" ... then will I headlong run into the Earth; Earth
gape. Oh, no, it will not harbor me ... "-and plunged down, down, down, rejecting his own
frantic thoughts and seeking the cool caverns of underground sanctuary.
CHAPTER 3
"I fled him down the nights and down the days, I fled him down the arches of the years. I
fled him down the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind ... "
-Francis Thompson
The average surface temperature of real estate in the Outer System was minus two
hundred and fourteen degrees Celsius: fifty-nine degrees above absolute zero, where
oxygen was a liquid and nitrogen a solid. The mean surface gravity of that same real estate
was one four-hundredth of a g. Mean solar radiation was 1.2 microwatts per square meter,
weaker than starlight, a billionth as intense as the Sun's energy received by the Earth.
Faced with those facts, the designers of the Earth Embassy for the Outer System had a
choice: Should they locate the embassy off-Earth and face extensive transportation costs to
and from the surface for all embassy interactions? Or should they accept an Earth
environment uncomfortable and highly unnatural to the ambassador and staff? Since the
designers were unlikely to visit Earth themselves, they naturally took the cheaper option.
The embassy that Bey Wolf was visiting sat five hundred feet underground, where
temperature, noise, and radiation could all be controlled.
Gravity was another matter. He dropped with stomach-wrenching suddenness through
the upper levels. As he did so his surroundings became darker, quieter, and colder. Every
surface was soundproofed. At four hundred feet the hush became so unnatural and
disturbing that Bey found himself listening hard to nothing. He decided he did not like it.
Humans made noise; humans clattered and banged and yelled. Total silence was inhuman.
Leo Manx was waiting for him in a room so cold that Bey could see his own breath in the
air. The Cloudlander remained upright long enough to shake Bey's hand and gesture him to
a seat, then sank with a sigh of relief into the depths of a water chair that folded itself
around his thin body. The head that was left sticking out smiled apologetically. "I used a
form-change program to adapt me to Earth gravity before I left the Outer System." His
shrug emerged as a ripple of the chair's black outer plastic. "I don't think it was quite right."
A piece of your lousy software, by the sound of it, Bey thought. But he merely nodded
and waited.
Manx sat silent for a few moments and then said abruptly, "My visit to Earth, you know, is
for a very specific reason. To see you and to ask for your help-as the head of the (Mce of
Form Control and Earth's leading expert on form-change theory and practice."
"You're a bit late. I'm not with that office anymore."
"I know that is the case. I heard that you had ... resigned your position."
"No need to be diplomatic. I was fired."
The pale head bobbed. "In truth, I knew that also. You may be surprised to learn that
from our point of view, your dismissal offers advantages."
"None from my point of view."
"It is my task to convince you otherwise." Leo Manx stretched upward, his thin neck and
hairless head craning like a turtle from the black supporting oval of the chair, "To do so, I
must request your silence about what I am to tell you."
"Suppose I refuse to go along with that?" Wolf saw the other man's discomfort. "Oh, hell,
get on with it. I've spent my whole career not talking about things. I can do it for a while
longer."
"Thank you. You will not regret it." Manx subsided in the chair. "Mr. Wolf, there has arisen
in the Outer System a problem so serious that all knowledge of it is given only on a need-to-
know basis. In a few words, there has been a widespread breakdown in the performance of
form-change equipment, to the point where the process is being undertaken only in cases of
emergency, such as my own visit to Earth?"
"Widespread? Not just a machine or two?"
"Hundreds of machines, with rates of malfunction that have been growing rapidly. A year
ago, we could point to two or three cases of gross error in results. Today, we have case
histories of thousands."
"Then it has to be a general software problem. You don't want me for that. There are
others who know more and can give you better guidance."
Manx's eyes, startlingly round and hollow in the absence of eyebrows, looked away. "If
you are perhaps thinking of Robert Capman ... "
"I would, but he's on a long-term stellar mission. My suggestion is EEC themselves. Why
not call them in? They'll be as keen to sort this out as you are." Bey tried for an innocent
expression. It was as good a way as any of testing the honesty of the Cloudlander.
Manx looked pained. "We already approached the Biological Equipment Corporation. They
sent a team of experts, who reviewed everything we could show them and declared that
they could find no evidence of any problem. Unfortunately, we are not convinced that they
conducted as thorough a review as one might wish. There has been a long-term
disagreement with BEC as to the proper amount of royalties the Outer System is accruing for
the use of EEC's form-change hardware and software systems-"
"They say you stole their ideas, ignored their patents, and infringed their copyrights."
"Well, that is a little crudely put-but, yes, you have the gist of their argument." Manx
smiled ruefully. "I see that our own security is less than we are inclined to believe."
"In a case like that it is. BEC will tell anyone on Earth who'll listen that the Outer System
is robbing them blind."
"Which is certainly a-a-"
"Lie?"
"Exaggeration. A misrepresentation."
"You don't need to persuade me. I don't like monopolies, either, and BEC has one for the
Inner System. But you said they did a review of 'everything we could show them.' Like to be
more explicit?"
There was a raising of nonexistent eyebrows. "You are a very perceptive man. There were
a number of units that we could not and did not show to the BEC team."
"Pirated designs?"
"The Outer System prefers to think of them as independent developments. However, I
believe it would have made little difference. The anomalous behavior occurs with rather
greater frequency in BEC's own equipment. Yet they insist that everything is working
perfectly."
"Did your own engineers watch the BEC tests?"
"Yes. As BEC said, no anomalies were observed. As soon as they left, new peculiar forms
were again produced." Manx began to push away the enfolding arms of the chair. "If you
would be interested to see some of those forms, I have images here with me."
"No. You'd be wasting your time."
"These forms are extremely strange."
"Dr. Manx, odd forms don't do anything for me. I've seen so many of those over the
years, I doubt if you could surprise me." Bey stood up. "I accept that you have a nasty
problem, but it's not one that would justify dragging me partway to Alpha Centauri. I lost
my job, but I still like Earth. And I doubt if I could do anything to help you."
"How do you know that without personal observation?"
"I've been around form control for a long time. As I said at the beginning, you have a
software problem. The fact that BEC's team couldn't find it-or chose not to-makes no
difference. Call 'em again, ask for Maria Sun. If anyone can solve it for you, she can."
Manx stood up, too. "Mr. Wolf, it is my opinion that you underestimate both yourself and
the difficulty of this problem. But I cannot change your mind about that, here on Earth.
Rather, allow me to introduce a new variable into the equation. While you were on the way
here I asked for and read a copy of your dossier from the Office of Form Control. It is
something that I ought to have done earlier. I learned more of your personal
circumstances."
"You found out I'm going crazy."
"You are sick. If you know anything of the Outer System, you may know that we are
advanced in the treatment of mental illness. That happens to be my own field. If you would
agree to travel back with me -merely to observe the phenomena for yourself, for no more
than a few days-I will devote my best efforts to your personal problem."
"Sorry. It's still negative." Bey headed for the door, but Leo Manx made a great effort and
was there first.
"One more point, Mr. Wolf. And please excuse this importuning. You lived with Mary
Walton for seven years. Is it possible that your reluctance to visit the Outer System arises
from a fear that you may be obliged to interact with her there?"
Bey eased past the other man, trying not to touch him. "You're a conscientious and
persistent man, Dr. Manx. I don't resent that-I respect you for it. I can't answer your
question. Maybe I'm afraid I would meet Mary again. But in any case, I still refuse. Tell your
superiors that I am honored to be considered."
"Yes, of course. But if by chance you should change your mind,"
Manx called after Bey as he headed for the elevator, "I will be here on Earth for two more
daysl Call me, at any hour."
But Wolf was already out of earshot. The final question about Mary had gotten to him
more than it should have. Was he over her or wasn't he? Would he turn down a potentially
fascinating problem simply because he might be forced to see Mary with the man she had
chosen over him?
He was oblivious to the high-acceleration ride to the surface, oblivious to the evening
crowds that pushed at him on the slideways. Manx's offer of dinner had never been realized,
but in any case Bey had lost his appetite. He skipped dangerously across from high-speed to
low-speed track, exited the slideway, and hurried up to his apartment. He grabbed a
projection cube at random from the file-they were all of Mary, it made little difference-and
sat down to view it.
Predictably, it was one he hated to watch but also one he had viewed again and again.
Mary in an amateur musical, dressed in a long gown, bonnet, and parasol, singing in the
sweet, artificial little voice of a young girl. "Let him go, let him tarry, let him sink or let him
swim. He doesn't care for me, and I don't care for him. He can go and find another, that I
hope he will enjoy, for I'm going to marry a far nicer boy."
Bey felt his heart wither inside him as he watched. Nothing of her had faded; it hurt as
much as ever. He was reaching to cut the cube when Mary Walton's demure figure rippled
and darkened. A new scene was overlaid on the old and familiar one.
The Dancing Man, twisting and tumbling across the image, red-clad limbs akimbo. He
paused in the middle, nodded at Bey, and made a singsong questioning little speech that
could almost be understood. Then he was away, skating backward into the distance, head
bobbing and hands waving cheerfully.
The Dancing Man-even here! In the middle of a sequence that Bey had recorded
personally four years earlier. How could anyone possibly change that recording? Bey set the
projection again to the beginning and forced himself to watch it through again. This time
there was no Dancing Man. It was Mary all the way, to that intolerable final line when she
set her parasol over her shoulder and waved good-bye.
Bey watched to the bitter end. Then he went across to the communications unit and
called Leo Manx.
CHAPTER 4
"All isolated systems become less orderly when left to themselves." (This version of the
Second Law of Thermodynamics was offered by Apollo Belvedere Smith, age five, to explain
why his room was in such a mess.)
Here is one other thing you ought to decide before we embark." Leo Manx was inspecting
both his traveling companion and Bey Wolf's luggage.
"Namely?"
"Do you want to spend time in a form-change tank on the way out to the Cloud? If so, we
must make sure that the programs are available."
"You mean, switch to something more like your own form, for physical comfort?" Wolf
shook his head. "I like this form, and I know it tolerates low gravity and cold pretty well."
"That was not the reason for my suggestion." Manx took Bey Wolf's little traveling case
and floated it one-handed across the cabin to secure it in the cargo hold. "My concern is with
the response you may receive from Outer System citizens. It will be apparent to them that
you are from Earth, or at least from the Inner System. The two federations are not at war --
摘要：

ProteusUnbound(v2.1)CharlesSheffieldPARTONE"S=k.logW"EpitaphofLudwigBoltzmann(1844-1906),carvedonhistombstoneinViennaCHAPTER1"WhenchangeitselfcangivenomoreIt'seasytobetrue."-SirCharlesSedleyTheyfoundBehroozWolfonthelowestlevelsofOldCity,inafilthyroomwhosebetterdayswerefarinthepast.Inthedoorway,LeoMa...

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