Bey would not take her word for it. He intended to go over that program instruction by instruction. But first he wanted to localize the problem area, and the only evidence for that was the end products in the tanks.
He studied the two corpses. Both men had experienced significant mass reduction—not called for by the program. The limbs had atrophied to stumps, and each torso had curled forward to leave the overgrown head close to the swollen abdomen. Death had come when cramped and shrunken lungs would no longer permit breathing.
“Did you ever see forms like that before?” Sylvia asked softly. She had herself under control and was hovering just behind him.
He shook his head but did not speak. It would take a long time to explain that the final form was close to irrelevant. His diagnosis of program malfunctions was based on more subtle pointers: the presence of hypertrophied fingernails and toenails on the flipperlike appendages, the disappearance of eyelids, the milky, pearl-like luster of the membrane-covered eyes, the severe scoliosis of the spinal column. To someone familiar with form-change, they were signposts pointing to certain sections of program code.
Bey began to call program sections for review. His task was in principle very simple. The BEC computers used in purposive form-change converted a human’s intended form to a series of biofeedback commands that the brain would employ to direct change at the cellular level. Human and computer, working interactively, remolded the body until the intended form and actual form were identical, and then the process ended. The chemical and physiological changes were continuously monitored, and any malfunction would halt the process and set emergency flags. The process could fail catastrophically in two ways: if the human in the tank did not wish to live, or if there were a major software problem.
Bey could rule out the idea of suicide—it always resulted in death without any physical change except biological aging. That seemed to leave nothing but software failure, but he could see one other complication: the equipment had not been provided by BEC. It was a hardware clone, and the programs that went with it were pirated versions. There could be hardware/software mismatches, something that only BEC guaranteed against. His job with this setup would be ten times as hard.
He began to examine a new section of code. Behind him, he was vaguely aware that Sylvia was leaving the room. That was a relief. She could not help, and she was a potential distraction.
Line by line he followed the programmed interaction, tracking physical parameters (temperature, pulse rate, skin conductivity) and system variables (nutrient rates, ambient gas profile, electrical stimuli). He did not check those parameters against any equipment performance specifications. He did not need to. The region of stability was well mapped, and over the years he had learned the limits of tolerable excursion from standard values. All the programs in use as they were swapped in and out of the computer provided their own audit trail, together with chemical readings and brain activity indexes. Reading and interpreting them was somewhere between an art and a science. It was something he had been doing for two-thirds of his life.
He sat there for six hours in a total trance. If anyone had asked him if he were enjoying himself, he could not have given a truthful answer. He was not happy, he was not sad. All he knew was that there was nothing in life that he would rather be doing. And when he found the first anomalies and began to piece together a picture, he could not have described the thrill. He had been provided with a precious broken ornament shattered into a thousand pieces. He had to recreate it. As he fitted those fragments together, one by one, tentatively and painstakingly, he sensed the skeletal outline of a total pattern. That was exhilarating. But no matter what he did, the picture remained tantalizingly incomplete. And that was unbearably frustrating. Not all of the pieces had been provided. Parts of the code were not in the system at all.
He was roused by the sound of Sylvia Fernald’s voice. She had entered the room with Aybee Smith and Leo Manx in tow. Bey turned and addressed his question to all three of them. “These form-change tanks aren’t completely self-contained, the way the BEC units would be and should be. Where’s the rest of the computation done?”
“That must be in the main computer system for the farm,” said Aybee at once. “It’s a lot less expensive to do some of the analysis there. BEC and the other manufacturers rip you off bad. They overcharge you ten times for storage in their units. Is there a problem to use distributed computing? We do it a lot.”
“It shouldn’t be a problem. On the other hand…” Bey gestured into the port of the form-change tank. Aybee came close and stared in, frowning, for thirty seconds. Leo Manx could not take more than one horrified glance.
“I’ve checked the code, line by line,” Bey went on. “And I’m convinced that the local programs here are working fine. It means that the problem has to be over in the main computer.”
“Or in the communications lines,” Aybee said.
“No.” Bey shook his head, and suddenly felt his exhaustion. “Redundant transmission should correct for electronic noise in the signal. Even if that somehow weren’t working, thermal noise or outside interference would give random errors. What we’re seeing here is definitely not random change. It was closely calculated.”
“But that makes it murder,” Leo Manx protested.
Aybee gave him a fierce grin. “I guess that’s exactly what the Wolfman is saying. And in that case, we’ll have to meet with the farmers.” He waved aside Sylvia’s objection. “Don’t tell me, Fern; I know they won’t want to do it. But for murder, they don’t have a choice. You real sure about this, Wolf?”
“Positive.”
“I mean, you wouldn’t like me to check your results?”
“I’d love you to—or at least, I’d like to see you try. If you were really lucky and smart, that would take you about a month.” Bey shook his head. “Aybee, it’s not a question of your ability—but I know this stuff, inside and out. Believe me, it would take you a week just to rule out impossible combinations of the main variables. We don’t have time for that. I’ll take your first suggestion. Let’s go meet with the farmers. Right now.”
“Hey, what about your Negentropic Man? That’s what me and Leo came here for, not to look at dead things that make you puke.”
“Plenty of time to look at that, too. We can do it while Sylvia talks to the farmers.” The interaction with Aybee was a fight with sharp weapons. The other was aggressive—and smart.
“More time than you think,” Leo added. “The farmers may not agree to meet with you, Mr. Wolf.”
“They have to,” Aybee insisted.
“With us, they have to,” Sylvia said. “They might be able to refuse to meet somebody from the Inner System, and get away with it.”
“Then don’t tell ’em where he’s from.” Aybee sounded impatient. “You and Leo can sort that out. The Wolfman and me need to see the stuff from inside his skull. Right? Let’s get at it.”
Chapter 12
“The Neg-en-trop-ic Man.” Aybee dissected the word, saying it slowly and thoughtfully. “And there he goes.”