So how did a man whose energy had been legendary turn into a remote idler untouched by a unique new twist on purposive form-change? How did the ascetic fit with the array of epicurean courses that were appearing before them?
Sondra had no answers, but she noticed something during the seventh course. Wolf had described every dish to her in detail and made sure that both of them were served generous portions, but he hardly touched anything on his own plate. Instead he distracted Sondra with easy, fluent talk about the island and its history—and he watched her.
She finally pushed away her plate, the latest course untasted. “I didn’t travel eight thousand miles for you to study me while I eat. And I have no more interest in fancy food than you do. I came here to talk to Behrooz Wolf.”
“You can learn more about a person by watching them eat one meal than by listening to them speak for a whole day.”
“And?”
“You like food well enough, but you don’t worship your stomach. That’s good.” Wolf pushed his plate away from him but he kept his eyes turned down toward it. “You say you came to talk to me, Sondra Wolf Dearborn.” Her middle name was slightly emphasized. “So, talk to me. Then it will be time for you to go home.”
Since she had already lost, Sondra had nothing more to lose.
“I’m terribly disappointed in you.” She blurted it out. “I’d heard about you from my family ever since I was a small child. I’ve read about all your most famous cases, here on Earth, out in the Horus Cluster, off in Clouding and the Kernel Ring. You’re the reason I joined the Office of Form Control. And you’re still a legend in that office”—there, she had used the word she had sworn never to use—“as a man who can solve any form-change mystery, no matter how strange.”
“I am not to be held responsible for office gossip, nor for your own preconceptions. If that’s all you have to say to me, you should go.”
“I don’t believe that it is gossip. I believe it’s true. Three years ago you’d have had that poor creature out of its cage and been examining it in two seconds. You’ve changed. I want to know why you changed. You can hide away here on your island, but there’s still a real world out there with real problems to be solved.”
“There is indeed.” Wolf was smiling. She had hoped to break through to him, but he remained as cool and unemotional as ever. “As there has always been. I have had”—he paused, and gave her another careful inspection—“fifty-one years more than you to work on such problems.”
Evidence of humanity from Wolf at last, in the form of a touch of wounded ego. Like most people, Sondra held her physical appearance at age twenty-two. She was actually twenty- seven and a half, and somehow Wolf had read that. With his last statement he was just pointing out to her that his mistake about the age of the caged form-change failure was an exception.
But he was continuing: “You say I hid away. I say, I need solitude. It is also time for me to move out of the way and allow the next generation—yours—to spread its wings. Crabbed age and youth cannot live together.”
It was one of his damnable old quotations, she was sure of it. Sondra didn’t know who had said it-and she certainly didn’t care. “That’s rubbish. We need your experience. You talk about being old, but unless you have an accident you’ll be around for another fifty good years. You developed the multiforms just four years ago, and that was your best work ever.”
“In whose opinion? Yours?”
“Mine and everyone’s. The multiforms add a whole new dimension to form-change. You are still at your peak and it was criminal of you to retire. Do you think you are going to sit loafing in your rocking-chair and staring at the ocean for another half century? Next thing you know you’ll dodder around in your garden, growing vegetables and keeping bees.”
She realized that she was pushing hard, still trying to goad him to a response that was more emotional than rational. And finally he was frowning. But it was in wry amusement, not anger.
“You need my experience?” he said. “Very well, you will have it. And then you must go. You said that the creature in the cage was shipped to you. From where?”
“From the Carcon Colony. Out on the edge of the Kuiper Belt.”
“I know the region. Strange territory. Strange people. Have you been there?”
“No. It’s a long journey and an expensive one. My cheapskate boss—or rather, my boss’s boss—is hoping I can find the answer here, without making the trip out.”
“Who is your boss’s boss?”
“Denzel Morrone.”
“I know him. He smiles pleasantly, but don’t turn your back on him.” Wolf was standing up. “Morrone knows me, too. Go back and tell him that you talked to Behrooz Wolf. Say that Wolf told you the chances of solving your problem without visiting the Carcon Colony are close to zero.”
“Suppose he asks me why?”
“Just tell him that if it were my problem—which it isn’t—I’d be on the next ship out. You don’t need to tell Morrone this, but chances are it’s a software problem in the form- change equipment used for the original humanity test. You need to check the routines first- hand and in person. Until you do that you are lacking basic information. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.” Wolf led Sondra toward the back door, where he had placed the cage with its feral contents. Twilight was well advanced and the creature inside was quiet, perhaps cowed less by coming darkness than by the presence of the two mastiff hounds. They lay stretched out on opposite sides, guarding it.
Wolf picked up the cage without giving the creature inside a second look. As he led the way around the house toward the jetty where the skimmer was moored, he jerked his head to the row of brown conical boxes that Sondra had noticed when she arrived.
“Know what those are?”
“Not really. They look like bird houses, but I don’t see any way in to them.”
“There is a way in—if you’re small enough.” And, when Sondra stared, first at him and then back at the nearest cone, “You had it right earlier. Those are beehives. I keep honey bees. And I do grow my own vegetables—or at least, the garden servos do it for me.”
“You live here alone? No regular visitors?” It was absolutely none of Sondra’s business, and she was not sure why she was asking.
“Alone. No regular visitors.” They were approaching the jetty, its black rock almost invisible against the dark water. “No irregular visitors, either, until you came.” Wolf stepped into the skimmer and lowered the cage carefully to die deck. “Go to the Carcon Colony, Sondra Dearborn. That is my only advice.”
“Sondra Wolf Dearborn. I’ll ask Denzel Morrone if I can go. If I do, can I come back here and tell you what I find?”
He remained silently crouched over the cage for so long that Sondra wondered if he had seen something new inside. But at last he straightened and shrugged.
“Why not? If you wish to return, and if you believe that what you have will interest me. And with one other condition: next time, give me advance notice of any possible visit. The hounds are not dangerous, you know that.” Wolf started the skimmer’s engine, then quickly stepped ashore. “But it could be fatal to assume that nothing on this island is dangerous to an unexpected visitor.”