“We have people back on Earth who feel the same, but the other way around. They hate the idea that the Cloud controls food supplies. They want to crush Cloudland and control the Outer System. But they’re all mad, both sides. If we went to war with you or cut off communications, it would be like men and women refusing to have anything to do with each other. We could do it, but our species would die out in a generation.”
“Paul said it wouldn’t work like that. After the collapse of the Inner System, there could be a new start for everyone. But it would need a group that was all ready for the takeover, with its own strong leader. He showed me a secret piece of recruiting material. I decided that the whole thing was crazy, and the leader—Ransome—was craziest of all. But apparently he’s terribly plausible and charismatic. Paul thought Ransome was wonderful. He said that Black Ransome had a secret weapon, something that made sure he would win, even if he didn’t have many followers. I could see that people were following Ransome’s ideas, even though they were wild.”
Sylvia had pushed her own plate away from her, but she was watching intensely as Bey continued eating. He found it disconcerting. There were odd undercurrents flowing beneath the conversation, a sense that he was performing some old, disgusting, and perversely erotic rite, when all he was doing was eating a dreary piece of synthetic protein.
“But then Paul disappeared,” Sylvia added at last. “And I feel sure he didn’t die, and he wasn’t captured. He’s somewhere in the Halo. Probably in the Kernel Ring—he’s an energy specialist. I think he’s working for Ransome. But I never found out what that ‘secret weapon’ might be.”
“Did you actually meet Ransome?”
“Not in person. But I saw his video image when he called with a message for Paul. He’s your Dancing Man, I’m quite sure of it.”
“If he’s the Dancing Man, I’ll never forget him. It’s burned into my brain, exactly what he looks like and sounds like. Do you know a way to reach him?”
“Not directly. He hides away in the Halo, but he has more and more influence all through the Outer System.” Sylvia had taken another sip from her beaker. She was peering at Bey’s moving jaws, her gray eyes glistening.
He stopped eating. “I believe what you’ve told me, Sylvia, but it doesn’t explain anything. I can accept the idea of Ransome as the leader of an organized terrorist group. I can even see how influential he might become in the Cloud. But I can’t see why he would appear on a crazy message to me.”
“Maybe he hopes to recruit you, too.”
“That’s ridiculous. For one thing, you don’t recruit people by sending messages that drive them crazy and that they can’t understand. For another, he has no idea who I am.”
“Cinnabar Baker told me you are very famous—the top form-change theorist in the Inner and Outer Systems.”
“That isn’t enough to make anyone famous. Sylvia, Earth has lots of form-change specialists. I’m just one of them. You have to remember there are five hundred times as many people in the Inner System as there are out here.”
“I know. If I had my way, we’d stay like that. Paul and I argued about this, too. He said the Cloud is underpopulated. I feel it’s just right. We don’t need more people. I don’t think I could stand to live in the Inner System.
“Ransome probably feels the same way. Out here, he’s a big bogeyman who’s trying to start a war. He steals ships, he has a secret weapon, he kills people.
“But to some, like Paul Chu, he’s a hero. Paul says Ransome started out as a Podder. He tried to do development deals with the Inner and Outer Systems, and he only became a renegade when he was betrayed by both.”
“Maybe he’s good, and maybe he’s bad. He’s certainly famous here. But back on Earth he’s just a bedtime story that people tell to their children. A lonely, mysterious outlaw, Captain Black Ransome, flying the Halo in a creaking, battered ship, solar sails tattered and decaying. He drifts silent and powers down whenever there’s a danger of discovery. He steals power, supplies, and volatiles wherever he can find them. He’s the space version of the Flying Dutchman.”
“Who is that?”
“An Earth legend. A man who sails Earth’s oceans, endlessly seeking redemption. Deep water is his home. He never finds a landfall. He’s not quite real, but he’s very romantic. That’s the way we think of Ransome, a combined myth and outlaw. If you suggested to someone from Earth that Ransome was trying to recruit me—a Sunhugger, a planet man who’s only happy at the bottom of twenty miles of atmosphere—they’d say, well, they’d say that you were losing it. Crazy.”
“You’re from Earth. Are you saying I’m crazy?”
Bey sighed. “Not crazy. Maybe a little strange and unpredictable. Come on, Sylvia, let’s get moving. I want to see the farm’s form-change systems before Aybee and Leo arrive.”
“I hope you’ll find something. You know, Aybee looked at the failed form-changes on the harvesters. He got nowhere, and he’s awful smart.”
“He certainly is.”
“And he’ll see this as a sort of contest, just the two of you. Do you think you can handle him?”
“I’ll bet on it.” Bey had finished eating. “I learned something a long time ago. My first boss wasn’t a good scientist, and he had dozens of political fights with bright young people from the general coordinators’ office. They were mostly right, but he won, every time. I asked him how he did it. He pointed out the sign on his office wall.” Bey allowed Sylvia to steer him out of the galley. “ ‘Old age and treachery will defeat youth and skill,’ he told me. It’s one of the world’s great truths. Aybee happens to be on the wrong side of the inequality.”
Chapter 11
Behrooz Wolf was four trillion kilometers from home, floating uncomfortably in free-fall in the territory of people who hated him, surrounded by a silence so total that it hurt his ears. In that environment, the familiar technology of form-change was his lifeline.
Sylvia had led him to a chamber containing four change tanks. Two of them were empty. The others contained the bodies of two dead farmers. At Wolfs request, they had been left untouched by their fellows until he arrived at the farm. He and Sylvia went at once to the transparent ports and peered in.
She took one look and turned away. Bey heard the sound of retching. He ignored it. He had seen too many illegal and unsuccessful form-change experiments to allow them to affect his stomach. He had work to do.
He rotated the two bodies using remote-handling equipment and examined their anomalies with the tank’s internal sensors. Both had originally been male, and according to the tanks’ settings both had been using the same program. The intended end point was a form with thickened epidermis, lowered metabolic rate, and eyes protected by translucent nictitating membranes. The men had been preparing for an extended mission outside, away from the farm’s main bubble. According to Sylvia, such missions were absolutely routine, and the form-change program that went with them had been used a thousand times.