Sight Of Proteus Part 4

"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 La.r.s.en 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 b.u.t.ton. La.r.s.en 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 acombination lock built into the face. Wolf looked at it for a few seconds, then turned to La.r.s.en.

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

La.r.s.en walked up to the vault door and studied it quietly for a few minutes, then nodded. He began to move the jeweled 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 La.r.s.en, 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 La.r.s.en 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 layout, 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 La.r.s.en said quietly: "You are telling us that there are human children in those tanks. That's monstrous. How can a child a.s.sess 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 missingrecords. 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."

"What do you think it is, Doctor?" asked Bey. "I know you can't tell us exactly, but can you get even a rough idea?"

Morris looked dubious. "I'll be reading it out of context, of course. It looks like a straightforward delay loop. The effect is to make each program instruction execute for a preset number of times before moving on to the next one. So everything would be slowed down by that same factor, set by the user."

"But what would it do?"

"Heaven knows. These programs are all real-time and interactive, so it would be nonsensical to slow them all down." He paused for a second, then added, "But remember, these programs were presumably designed by Robert Capman. He's a genius of the first rank, and I'm not. The fact that I can't understand what is being done here means nothing. We need Capman's own notes and experimental design before we can really tell what he was doing."

Wolf was pacing the control room, eyes unfocused and manner intent.

"That's not going to be easy. Capman has left the hospital, I'll bet my brains on it. Why else would he have given us free run of the place? I don't understand why he did that, even if he knew we were on to him. Somehow he must have tracked what we were doing and decided he couldn't stop us. But unless we do trace him, we may never know what he was doing here."

He turned to La.r.s.en in sudden decision, "John, go and get a trace sensor. It's my bet that Capman has been here, in this room, in the past hour. We have to try and go after him, even if it's only for his own protection. Can you imagine the public reaction if people found out he had been stealing human babies for form-change experiments? They'd tear him apart. He must have taken the children by faking the results of the humanity tests. That's why their IDs aren't on file."

La.r.s.en hurried out of the vault. As he left, Morris suddenly looked hopeful.

"Wait a minute," he said. "Suppose that Capman was working with subjects that had failed the humanity tests. That wouldn't be as bad as using human babies."

Wolf shook his head. "I had that thought, too. But it can't work. Remember, the whole point of the humanity test is that nonhumans can't perform purposive form-change. So they must be humans he's using, by definition. Not only that, remember that the liver we found came from a twelve-year-old. Capman didn't just have experiments, he had failed experiments, too. The organ banks were a convenient way of disposing of those, with small risk of discovery."

He continued to pace the room impatiently, while Morris sat slumped in silent shock and despair.

"G.o.d, I wish John would hurry up," said Wolf at last. "We need the tracer.

Unless we can get a quick idea where Capman went, we're stuck."

He continued his pacing, looking at the fittings of the control room. The communicator set next to the control console looked like a special purpose unit, one of the old models. All the response codes for setting up messages had changed since they were used-which meant any dial code might key different responses. Bey thought for a moment, then entered the eight-digit dial code that had been left for him by Capman at the main lobby. This time, instead of the earlier message requesting cooperation with Form Control, a much longer message scrolled steadily into the viewer. Bey read it with steadily increasing amazement.

DEAR MR. WOLF. SINCE YOU ARE READING THIS, YOU ARE IN THE PRIVATE VAULT AND.

HAVE, AS I FEARED AFTER OUR FIRST MEETING, DEDUCED THE NATURE OF MY WORK HERE.

I HAVE KNOWN FOR MANY YEARS THAT THIS DAY MUST COME EVENTUALLY, AND I HAVE.

RESIGNED MYSELF TO THE FACT THAT THIS WORK WILL PROBABLY NOT BE COMPLETED.

UNDER MY DIRECTION. MR. WOLF, YOU MAY NOT KNOW IT YET, BUT YOU AND I ARE TWO.

SPECIMENS OF A VERY RARE BREED. IT WAS APPARENT TO ME VERY QUICKLY THAT THIS.

WORK WOULD PROBABLY END WITH YOUR INVESTIGATION. I REGRET IT, BUT ACCEPT IT.LONG AGO, I DECIDED THAT I WOULD PREFER TO LIVE OUT MY LIFE IN QUIET.

ANONYMITY, SHOULD THIS WORK BE DISCOVERED, RATHER THAN ENDURE THE EXTENSIVE.

AND WELL-MEANING REHABILITATION PROGRAM THAT WOULD BE INFLICTED ON ME AS.

PUNISHMENT FOR MY CRIMINAL ACTS. TO MOST, THESE DEEDS MUST APPEAR UNSPEAKABLE.

TO YOU, LET ME SAY THAT MY WORK HAS ALWAYS HAD AS ITS OBJECTIVE THE BENEFIT OF.

HUMANITY. TO THAT END, A SMALL NUMBER OF HUMAN LIVES HAVE UNFORTUNATELY BEEN.

SACRIFICED. I FULLY BELIEVE THAT INTHIS CASE THE END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS.

IN ORDER TO ACHIEVE THE ANONYMITY I DESIRE, IT WILL BE NECESSARY FOR ROBERT.

CAPMAN TO VANISH FROM THE EARTH. IT IS UNLIKELY THAT WE WILL MEET AGAIN. THE.

RISK FOR ME WOULD BE TOO GREAT, SINCE I SUSPECT THAT YOU AND I WOULD ALWAYS.

RECOGNIZE EACH OTHER. AS HOMER REMARKS, SUCH KNOW EACH OTHER ALWAYS. MR. WOLF,.

LEARN MORE FORM-CHANGE THEORY. YOUR GIFT FOR THE PRACTICAL IS ASTONISHING, BUT.

ITS TRUE POTENTIAL WILL BE WASTED UNTIL YOU MASTER THE THEORETICAL ALSO. DO.

THAT, AND NOTHING WILL BE BEYOND YOU.

THIS MORNING I COMPLETED ALL THE NECESSARY PLANS FOR MY DEPARTURE, AND NOW I.

MUST LEAVE. BELIEVE ME, THERE IS A POINT WHERE FAME IS A BURDEN, AND A QUIET.

LIFE AMONG MY RECORDINGS AND HOLOTAPES IS DEVOUTLY TO BE WISHED. I HAVE.

REACHED THAT POINT.

SINCERELY, ROBERT CAPMAN.

That was the end. Wolf and Morris watched the screen intently, but nothing further appeared.

"I'm beginning to understand why you people in the hospital regard him as omniscient," said Wolf at last. "But I'm sure you realize that I can't let him get away. If I can track him down, I have to do it. As soon as John La.r.s.en gets here, we'll try and follow him-no matter where he's gone."

Morris did not reply. He seemed to have had more shocks than he could take in one day. He remained at the seat of the control console, slack-jawed and limp, until La.r.s.en appeared at last through the great vault door.

"Sorry that took so long, Bey," he said. "I thought I'd better go by Capman's apartment and train the sensor on a couple of his clothing samples. It should be pretty well tuned now to his body chemistry. We can go any time, as soon as we get a faint scent. The sensor kept pointing this way, so somehow he must have been able to exit from here. See any signs of a concealed way out?"

The two men began to search the wall areas carefully, while Morris looked on listlessly and uncomprehendingly. Finally, John La.r.s.en found the loose wall panel behind an air-conditioning unit. Working together, they lifted it aside and found that beyond it lay a long, narrow corridor, faintly lit with green fluorescence. La.r.s.en held the trace sensor in the opening, and the monitor light glowed a bright red. The trace arrow swung slowly to point along the corridor.

"That's the way he went, Bey," said La.r.s.en. He turned to Morris. "Where will this lead?"

Morris pulled himself together and looked around him. "I'll have to think. The elevator was in the west corner of the study. So that would mean you are facing just about due east."

Bey Wolf pinched thoughtfully at his lower lip. "Just about what I expected,"

he said. "Where else?" He turned to La.r.s.en. "That's the way we'll have to go, John, if we want to catch Capman. See where we'll be heading?-straight into the heart of Old City."

CHAPTER 7.

Jake the toughest and seediest of the twentieth-century urban ghettos. Age it for two hundred years and season it with a random hodgepodge of over- and underground structures. Populate it with the poorest of the poor and throw in for good measure the worst failures of the form-change experiments. You have Old City, where the law walked cautiously by day and seldom by night. Bey Wolf and John La.r.s.en, armed with cold lights, stun guns, and trace sensor, emerged from the long underground corridor just as first dusk was falling. They lookedaround them cautiously, then began to follow the steady arrow of the tracer, deeper into Old City.

The evidence of poverty was all around, in the cracked, garbage-strewn pavements, the neglected buildings, and the complete absence of slide ways.

Travel was on foot, or in ancient wheeled vehicles without automatic controls or safety mechanisms.

"Let's agree on one thing, John," said Wolf, peering about him with great interest. "While we're hunting Capman, we'll not be worrying too much about the usual forbidden forms. For one thing, I expect we'll see more of them here than we've ever seen before. Look there, for example."

He pointed down the side alley they were pa.s.sing. La.r.s.en saw a hulking ursine form standing next to a tiny, rounded man no more than two feet tall. They had a reel of monofilament thread, which they were carefully unwinding and attaching to a frame of metal bars. Wolf kept walking.

"Run into that," he said, "and it would shear you in two before you knew you'd been cut. They're obviously setting a trap. It's not for us, but we'd better watch how we go in here."

La.r.s.en needed no reminding of that fact. His eyes tried to move in all directions at once, and he kept his hand close to his stun gun.

"They don't look much like failed attempts at the usual commercial forms, Bey," he said. "I suppose that's what happens when some poor devil who's really twisted in the head gets hold of a form-change machine."

Wolf nodded. "They probably try and fight against taking those forms with their conscious minds, but something underneath dictates their shapes. Maybe in another hundred years we'll understand what makes them do it."

As he spoke, Wolf was coolly a.s.sessing all that he saw and storing it away for future reference. Old City was off limits for all but real emergencies, and he was making the most of a rare opportunity. They hurried on through the darkening streets, becoming aware for the first time of the absence of streetlights. Soon, it was necessary to use the cold lights to show their path. The tracer arrow held its steady direction. As night fell, the inhabitants of Old City who shunned the day began to appear. La.r.s.en held tighter to the handle of his gun as the sights and sounds around them became more alien.

They finally reached a long, inclined ramp, leading them again below ground level. La.r.s.en checked the tracer, and they continued slowly downward. Their lights lit up the tunnel for ten yards or so, and beyond that was total blackness. A gray reptilian form with a musty odor slid away from them down a side pa.s.sage, and ahead of them they heard a chitinous scratching and scuttling as something hurried away into the deeper shadows. Wolf stopped, startled.

"That's one to tell them about back at the office. Unless I'm going mad, we've just seen someone who has developed an exoskeleton. I wonder if he has kept a vertebrate structure with it?"

La.r.s.en did not reply. He lacked Wolf's clinical att.i.tude, and he was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with their quest. They moved on, and the surroundings became damp and glistening as the ramp narrowed to an earth-walled tunnel with a dirt floor. Ahead of them, a slender figure mewled faintly and slithered away with a serpentine motion down another side pa.s.sage.

Wolf suddenly stopped and fingered the metal shaft of the tracer he was holding. "d.a.m.n it, John, is it my imagination or is this thing getting hot?"

"Could be. I think the same thing is happening to the gun and the flashlight.

I noticed it a few yards back."

"We must have run into an induction field. If it gets any stronger, we won't be able to carry metal with us. Let's keep going for a few more meters."