“We’ll see about that. If you’d worked for Gertrude Zenobia Melford as long as I have, you’d know how pushy she is. Whatever Trudy wants … you’re the one who’ll need the good luck.”
Maria nodded knowingly and cut the connection. She left Bey with a lot to ponder. After three quiet years on Wolf Island, he had suddenly found himself interrupted daily—almost hourly.
Coincidence?
Bey sat down at the circular table. Time to think.
He did not move for more than three hours. The failed experiment in the form-change tank in front of him, with its steadily dispersing swarm of bees, was ignored.
Sondra Dearborn had been correct in her assessment of Bey’s personality. He was interested in ideas, things, and people—in that order. But people were not immune from natural laws. Such laws included the laws of probability. Bey understood very well that coincidences had to happen, that odd events involving people must sometimes occur in runs.
He had known that fact for many years. He would accept it now; but only when all other possible explanations for the sudden change in his own circumstances had been eliminated.
For the next two days it seemed as though Bey had been worrying over nothing. No one called. No one tried to visit. He had sixty quiet hours to think about and work on a different form-change experiment, one that he had been planning for a long time. Peace ended on the third day, when a major southerly gale brought biting cold air from the Antarctic ice-cap all the way to Wolf Island. A mixture of snow and sleet was falling by mid-morning. Bey had heard the rising gale from deep within the basement of the house. He went directly outside from the form-change lab where he had been working all night and set off along the shore. He walked three full circuits of his domain, bowing his head against the biting south wind. The hounds needed the break as much as he did. Janus and Siegfried, running on ahead, splashed into the water far enough to wet their paws. Then they retreated to the sand. Apparently even the sea was freezing.
Bey hurried back to the house at midday. He was driven not by fatigue or hunger, but by the thunderstorm that swept in without warning from the open ocean. It brought with it a barrage of rattling hailstones as big as marbles. The sky was dark where it was not lit by lightning, and thunder rolled all around the horizon as Bey ran for home.
He heard the buzz of the message center as soon as he was inside the upper level of the house. He muttered to himself when he inspected the log. Five messages, in less than eighteen hours. Might as well be living in Chat City. He was more annoyed than interested when he called for playback.
The first three were sound-only. They were all from Sondra Dearborn.
“It arrived in Earth orbit,” she said without introduction. “I have the initial reports, but Denzel Morrone won’t let me send them to you! He says they’re office confidential.”
Until that moment Bey had felt little interest in seeing records of anything to do with the feral forms. Now he did.
The second message had been sent five hours later, in the middle of Bey’s night. Sondra’s breathless voice on the machine was saying, “I’m on my way to see it. I wish you could come with me.”
And finally, six hours ago, “It’s terrible, absolutely terrible.” Her voice was nervous and quavering. “I have a lot more information about the Fugate Colony form, but I don’t know what to do with it. Can I come and show you? If only you’d answer! Mr. Wolf? Bey? Are you there?”
There was a long silence, until he thought she must have disconnected. Then, in a more resolute tone: “You told me to warn you in advance if I wanted to come and see you again. So I’m warning you. I’m coming! I’ll be at Wolf Island as soon as I can get there. Expect me around midday.”
Before Bey had time to become furious the machine clicked again and the next message began reading out. It was just four hours old. This time it was audio-visuaclass="underline" Jarvis Dommer, grinning like a demented ape. “Hi, Mr. Wolf. I’m sure you’ll agree that BEC—”
Bey slapped the Cancel-and-Delete button.
The final message had been left three hours ago, and it was again both sound and vision. Or it was supposed to be. Bey found himself viewing the image of a dark-haired woman. She stared serenely into the recording unit without speaking. Bey knew what she must be seeing. His answering system responded to incoming calls with his own voice message and picture, and they would be showing on her screen.
Bey stared also, analytically. Although Maria Sun had been right when she mocked his ignorance of general news, that did not include form-change fashions. From long habit he always studied those closely. This year’s top female fashion represented quite a change. Low, broad foreheads and slanting devil’s eyebrows were in. So were high cheekbones and slightly retroussй noses, along with a sullen, full-lipped mouth and firm chin. Eyes were brown and thick-lashed. Hair was black or honey-colored, long, thickly-growing and almost straight, tumbling down in profusion to cover large ears. Fuller breasts were recommended. Waists were not so slender, hips fuller, legs strong, long, and well-muscled. There was more sway and swing to the walk. The overall effect that the BEC designers had been aiming for was the sexy peasant look, a primitive woman deliberately far in image from last year’s languid sophisticate.
Bey had been impressed when he first saw the form. Not by the problem of its design—he was beyond such trivia—but by the commercial cunning of EEC. The new shape was different enough from the old one for the change to be expensive. How much would it cost? He could guess: exactly as much as BEC believed that people could afford to pay to be in fashion.
At first glance, the woman who showed head and shoulders on the screen was following the new look. But a closer look revealed differences. Her nose was not quite straight and a fraction too big, her mouth too wide and generous. Eyebrows were thicker and darker than convention permitted. Most noticeable of all, her eyes were not brown but a clear, startling blue-green.
“Good morning, Mr. Wolf.” The icon in the display at last came alive. “Before you disconnect me or delete me, let me say my piece. It must be obvious to both of us that Jarvis Dommer has been getting nowhere. So if the mountain won’t come to Mohammed … ” The broad mouth smiled. “That’s right, Mr. Wolf. In ten minutes I will Link in from Mars to Earth. I will reach Wolf Island at midday. I hope that you can find the time to meet with me.”
Bey was more surprised than he was willing to admit. Not so much by the quirky form—he had seen every human shape that could live, and many that could not—but by the fact that Trudy Melford was on her way to Wolf Island. When she had arrived three years ago for the signing of the multiform licenses he had been told that it was a unique event. The value of her time was incalculable.
And so, in Bey’s view, was the value of his time.
She said she would arrive at midday. He glanced at the clock. Already it was well past noon, with no sign of Trudy. But suddenly a clatter of hard shoes came from outside, running like the devil through the storm.
A sodden Trudy Melford appeared, bursting in through the front door without knocking. Long hair hung down in black rats’ tails, snowflakes whitened her thick eyebrows, water ran down her prominent nose. She stood dripping on the threshold.
“What a welcome!” She laughed, full-throated and infectious. “Head winds, thunderstorms, hailstones, snow, high waves, low cloud. If I had a suspicious mind I’d think you were hoping to keep me out with weather control.”
She walked forward, wiping melted sleet from her forehead with the back of her hand. Her pale green dress was soaked and clinging. Bey could see that she was following current fashion when it came to body style, warm and sturdy and complaisant.