The room she led him to had rack after rack of clothing, all gaudy, varied, and extreme. Bey hesitated, then shrugged. “I’ve no idea. You know how to make me blend in. Pick something.”
Within two minutes she had selected a pair of skintight peacock-blue suits with matching footwear and tall egg-shaped hats. They seemed designed to make Bey look even taller and thinner and were, in his opinion, the most ridiculous outfits he had ever seen.
He stared in disbelief at his reflection. “We can’t go out in public like this. Everyone in the harvester will laugh at us.”
“They won’t even notice. Not in this harvester.”
“But the people we saw as we came in from the ship didn’t look like this.”
“They were maintenance and operations crews. In uniform. You wouldn’t know them if you saw them off duty.”
Bey started for the door, then paused for a last look in the mirror. “Are you sure?”
“Trust me. You look quite handsome.” Sylvia tucked her arm in his and led the way. “Remember, until you get the hang of that body in low g, you let me set the pace. Pretend we’re a couple. Don’t talk much at first, and if you don’t know how to move, just let me drag you along.”
They set off along a mysterious zigzag of corridors and stairways. Bey knew he was lost within one minute; in ten minutes, he knew why the Cloudlanders had picked their preferred forms. He was shaped just right for a low-g environment. He could pivot his top-heavy body around its center of mass and use his long arms to control the direction of his movement, unhindered by excess muscle or fat. Even the air somehow smelled better, but whether that was his new physiology or his imagination he could not tell.
The hall they came to was crowded for a room on a harvester. Bey’s initial worry—that it was too public a first appearance for his new body—vanished when he saw the general behavior. A peculiar sense of panic and excitement filled the air. No one took any notice of Bey and Sylvia. A couple of hundred noisy people were milling around a dais at one end, and as Bey looked at them he felt reassured. He was one of the most conservatively dressed. Pink sequined pantaloons and curved-toe slippers competed and clashed with scarlet tunics and glittering black hose. Earth taste was nonexistent.
At a gesture from Sylvia, Bey slipped into an eating cubicle at the back of the room. Sylvia in the next cubicle was out of sight unless she stood up to look over the partition, and one-way glass in the front wall allowed both of them to see the rest of the hall. Most of the crowd was clustered around a scarecrow of a man with a blue skullcap, a long white robe, and a mask that covered the lower half of his face.
“You have a choice!” He had a muffled, booming voice, echoing from the room’s bare white walls. “I can give you a choice. If you do not like the idea of form-change, if you do not care to face the terror of the tanks, there are other ways. Ancient secrets, the mysteries of Earth’s antiquity, means of treating illness that do not depend on the use of form-change tanks.”
“Nothing good comes from Earth!” The shout came from somewhere in the throng of people.
“From today’s Earth, you are right.” The man on the platform turned to that part of the crowd. “I think we ought to destroy Earth and all the Inner System.” There was a roar of approval from the crowd. “But that does not mean that the knowledge of Old Earth is useless. All our ancestors once lived there! I have learned Earth’s old secrets.”
Bey spoke to Sylvia, busy ordering food in her cubicle from the table server. “What’s he talking about?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing. He said something about knowledge coming from ancient Earth.”
“The distilled wisdom of long-dead ages,” the booming voice was continuing. “Three hundred years ago, the knowledge that I possess was tightly held by a small group of people. When form-change came in, the need for their skills disappeared. They lost their power. Their special learning vanished. But not forever! By intense research, I and my assistants have repossessed those lost skills. We are the New Aesculapians.” He held up two clear bottles, one filled with a cloudy green liquid and the other filled with small white spheres. “Whatever your ailment, we can help you! One of these will be the answer.”
“Oh, my God.” Bey had been chewing on a bland yellow wedge of material that Sylvia had ordered. He almost choked, then spoke with his mouth full. “I never thought I’d see this.”
“What is he offering?”
“Pills and potions. Panaceas. He’s saying he’s a doctor!”
“You mean a—a physician?” Sylvia groped for the old word. “There are no such people in the Cloud.”
“Nor on Earth, anymore—there hasn’t been for two hundred years. I didn’t think there ever would be again, anywhere.” Bey was ecstatic. “Before purposive form-change was developed, there were thousands of them. They were enormously powerful, just like a priesthood. Those clothes and masks he’s wearing were their robes. I wonder he isn’t spouting the Hippocratic oath and writing prescriptions.”
“Writing what?”
“Purchase approval for chemicals. They used to treat diseases with chemicals, you know—and with surgery, too.”
“Surgery. Isn’t that cutting—”
“Right. Cutting people open. Before it was outlawed, they were allowed to do that. I hope he’s not proposing it here.”
The white-coated man was being mobbed by people shouting out their problems. He had been joined by half a dozen acolytes, who were beginning to hand out vials and packages. Sylvia opened the door of her cubicle and stepped out. “I have to tell Cinnabar Baker about this. We can’t allow it.”
“No.” Bey came out quickly to grab her sleeve and restrain her. “First we get samples, have them analyzed. I’ll bet they’re totally harmless. Come on.”
They had not finished eating, but the food and drink had been enough to produce another mood change. Bey was getting a little sleepy and extremely cheerful. He began to make his way toward the center of the crowd. Sylvia caught up with him and pushed in front. “Not you. I’ll do it. I can move easier than you. You stay right there.”
She eeled into the mass of people and returned a couple of minutes later with a bottle in one hand and a packet in the other. She held them up triumphantly, but just before she reached Bey, she halted and her expression changed. She was looking right past him.
“Here comes your real test.” She leaned close and spoke rapidly. “If you pass this one, you’re home free.”
Bey slowly turned. Heading toward them across the room was a smiling woman dressed in a cloudy dress of flaming pink. “Sylvia! I had no idea you were here.”
“I just arrived.” Sylvia squeezed the woman’s hands in both of hers, then stepped back. “Andromeda, this is Behrooz. He’s also visiting the harvester. Bey, this is an old friend of mine, Andromeda Diconis. We studied optimal control theory together, many years ago.”
“Too many. But Sylvia was always better at it than I was. That’s why I’m here, in my boring little job, while Sylvia roves the system.” The woman had taken Bey by the hand and was giving him a head-to-toe stare. Her glittering blue eyes and full mouth held an odd and unreadable expression. “Very nice clothes you have—you both have. Perfectly matched. What are you doing here?”
“Behrooz works on communications equipment,” Sylvia said before Bey could speak. “He’s an expert on it.”