by David Brin
He turned away from the rocks and slowly walked back to the patio of his uncle’s long, rambling house. He used the cane liberally, perhaps more than necessary, enjoying the dramatic touch. It made being ill slightly less unpleasant.
As usual, Uncle James was flirting with Helene. She encouraged him shamelessly.
Serves the old bastard right, he thought, after all the trouble he caused.
“My boy,” Uncle James threw up his hands. “We were just about to go after you, truly we were.”
Jacob smiled lazily. “No hurry, Jim. I’m sure our interstellar explorer here had plenty of interesting stories to tell. Did you tell him the one about the black hole, dear?”
Helene grinned nastily and made a surreptitious gesture, “Why, Jake, you yourself told me not to. But If you think your uncle would like to hear it…”
Jacob shook his head, Held handle his uncle himself. Helene could get a little rough.
Ms. deSilva was a great pilot and in the last few weeks she’d been an imaginative co-conspirator as well But their personal relationship left Jacob dizzy. Her personality was… powerful.
When she’d learned, on awakening, that the Calypso had jumped, Helene had signed onto the gang designing the new Vesarius II. The reason, she announced brazenly, was to have three years to subject Jacob Demwa to a full course of Pavlovian conditioning. At the end of said time she would ring a little bell and he would, supposedly, decide to become a Jumper.
Jacob had his reservations, but it was already clear that Helene deSilva had complete control over his salivary glands.
Uncle James was more nervous than he’d ever seen him. The usually imperturbable politician seemed decidedly ill at ease. The rakish Irish charm of the Al-varez side of the family was subdued. The grey head nodded nervously. His green eyes seemed unnaturally sad.
“Um, Jacob, my boy. Our guests have arrived. They are waiting in the study and Christien is looking after them.
“Now, I hope you are going to be reasonable about this matter. There really was no reason to invite that government fellow. We could have settled this ourselves.
“Now as I see it…”
Jacob held up his free hand. “Uncle, please. We’ve been through this.
“The matter has to be adjudicated. If you refuse the services of the Secrets Registration people, I’ll just have to call a family council and present the matter to them! You know Uncle Jeremy, he’ll probably opt for publicly announcing the whole thing. It’d make good press, all right, but the Department of Overt Prosecutions would have the case then, and you’d have five years with a little thing in your rump going ‘beep… beep… beep.’ ”
Jacob leaned against Helena’s shoulder, more for the contact than for support, and flashed both hands in front of Uncle James’ eyes. With each “beep” the man’s aristocratic face paled a little. Helene started to giggle, then she hiccupped.
“Excuse me,” she said demurely.
“Don’t be sarcastic,” Jacob commented. He pinched her then reclaimed his cane.
The study wasn’t as impressive as the one In Alvarez Hall, in Caracas but this house was in California. That made up for a lot. Jacob hoped he and his uncle still spoke after today.
Stucco walls and false beams emphasized the Spanish aspect. Display cases, containing James’ collection of Bureaucracy-era Samizdat publications, stood out prominently among the bookshelves.
In the mantle was carved a long motto.
“The People, United, Shall Never Be Defeated.”
Fagin fluted a warm greeting. Jacob bowed and went through a long, formal salutation, just to please the Kanten. Fagin had visited him regularly in the hospital. It had been difficult at first, between them — each convinced he was deeply indebted to the other. Finally they’d agreed to disagree.
When the TAASF rescue team had broken into the Sunship, as it hurtled outward on its laser-assisted hyperbolic orbit, they were amazed by the crumpled, frozen condition of the human crew. They didn’t quite know what to make of the smashed body of the Pring, on flip-side. But what amazed them most was Fagin, hanging upside down by those small sharp spikes in his root-pods while the laser still put out its potent thrust. The cold had not ruptured almost a quarter of his cells, as it had the humans, and he appeared to have come through the pounding ride through the photosphere unscathed.
In spite of himself, Fagjn of the Institute of Progress — the perpetual observer and manipulator — had become, himself, a unique personage. He was probably the only sophont alive anywhere who could describe what it was like to fly, hanging upside down, through the thick, opaque fire at the photosphere. Now he had a story of his own to tell.
It must have been painful for the Kanten. Nobody believed a word of his story until Helene’s tapes were replayed.
Jacob said hello to Pierre LaRoque. The man had regained much of his color since their last meeting, not to mention his appetite. He’d been wolfing down Christien’s hors d’oeuvres. Still confined to his chair, he smiled and nodded silently to Jacob and Helene. Jacob suspected LaRoque’s mouth was too full to talk.
The last guest was a tall, narrow-faced man with blonde hair and light blue eyes. He rose from the couch and offered his hand.
“Han Nielsen, at your service, Mr. Demwa. On the basis of the news reports alone I am proud to meet you. Of course, Secrets Registration knows everything the government knows, so I am doubly impressed. I assume, though, that you have called us in to deal with a matter that the government is not to know?”
Jacob and Helene sat on the couch across from him, their backs to a window overlooking the ocean.
“Yes, that’s correct, Mr. Nielsen. Actually, there are a couple of matters. We’d like to apply for a seal and for adjudication by the Terragens Council.”
Nielsen frowned. “Surely you must realize that the council is barely an infant at this point. The delegates appointed by the colonies have not even arrived! The Confederacy b… civil servants,” (Had he been about to say the dirty word ‘bureaucrats’?) “don’t even like the idea of having a supra-legal Secrets Registration to enforce honesty above secular law. The Terragens is even less popular.
“Even though it’s been shown that it’s the only way to deal with the crisis we’ve faced since Contact?” Helene asked.
“Even so. The Feds are reconciled to the fact that it will eventually take jurisdiction over interstellar and interspecies affairs, but they don’t like it and they’re dragging their feet every step of the way.”
“But that’s just the point,” Jacob said. “The crisis was bad before this debacle on Mercury, bad enough to force the creation of the council. But it was still manageable. Sundiver has probably changed that.” Nielsen looked grim. “I know.” “Do you?” Jacob rested his hands on his knees and leaned forward. “You’ve seen Fagin’s report on the probable reaction of the Pila to Bubbacub’s exposed pecadilloes on Mercury. And that report was written well before this whole business regarding Culla came to light!”
“And the Confederacy knows everything,” Nielsen grimaced. “Culla’s actions, his weird apologia, the whole capsule.”
“Well after all,” Jacob sighed. “They are the government. They make foreign policy. Besides, Helene had no way of knowing we’d live through that mess down there. She recorded everything.”
“It never occurred to me,” Helene said. “Until Fagin explained, that it might be better if the Feds never found out the truth, or that the Terragens Council might be better suited to handle this mess.”
“Better suited, perhaps, but what do you expect us the Council to do? It’ll take years to build up acceptance and legitimacy. Why should they risk it all by intervening in this situation?”
For a moment no one spoke. Then Nielsen shrugged. From his briefcase he pulled a small recording cube, which he activated and placed in the center of the room, on the floor.
“This conversation is under seal by the Secrets Registration. Why don’t you start, Dr. deSilva.”
Helene ticked off points with the fingers of her hand. “One, we know that Bubbacub perpetrated a crime in the eyes of both the Library Institute and his own race by falsifying a Library report, and perpetrating a hoax on Sundiver; to wit: that he had communicated with the Solarians and had used his ‘Lethani relic’ to protect us from their wrath.
“We think we know Bubbacub’s motives for doing what he did. He was embarrassed by the failure of the Library to reference the Sun Ghosts. He wanted to rub the ‘wolfling’ race’s collective nose in its inferiority, as well.
“By Galactic Tradition this situation would resolve itself by both the Pila and the Library bribing Earth to ‘keep its mouth shut.’ The, Confederacy would be able to choose its reward with few strings attached, though the human race would have to face enmity from the Pila in the future simply because their pride had been hurt.
“They could still increase their efforts to remove pro-visionary-sophont status from our Clients, the chimps and dolphins. There has been talk of placing humanity under some sort of ‘adoptive’ Client status… ‘to guide us through this difficult transition.’ Have I summed up the situation fairly well, so far?”
Jacob nodded. “Fine. Except you left out my own stupidity. On Mercury I accused Bubbacub publicly! That little two-year pledge we signed was never taken seriously, and the Feds have waited too long to, put an emergency sequester on this case. Probably half of the spiral arm knows the story by now.
“That means we’ve lost what little leverage we would Have had with the Pila by blackmail. They’ll hold nothing back in their efforts to get us ‘adopted,’ and they’ll use ‘reparations’ for Bubbacub’s crime as an excuse to force us to accept all kinds of aid that we don’t want.” He motioned for Helene to continue. “Point number two; we now know that the one behind this fiasco was Culla. Apparently Culla never intended that humanity discover Bubbacub’s pecadillo. He had his own blackmail scheme in mind.
“By encouraging Jeffrey’s friendship he got the chimpanzee to try to ‘liberate’ him, thus enraging Bubbacub. Jeffrey’s subsequent death left Sundiver in such a state of confusion that Bubbacub would be encouraged to think that anything he did would be believed. It’s possible that Dwayne Kepler’s apparent mental deterioration was part of this campaign, induced by Culla’s ‘glare psychosis’ technique.
“The most important part of Culla’s plan was the hoax of the anthropomorphic Ghosts. That part was magnificently executed. It fooled everybody. With talents like those, it’s not hard to see why the Pring think they can take on the Pila in a bid for independence. They’re one of the most deceptively potent races I’ve ever come across or heard of.”
“But if the Pila were Patrons to the Pring,” James objected. “And if they uplifted Culla’s ancestors from near animals, why wasn’t Bubbacub aware of the possibility that the Ghosts were Culla’s hoax?”
“If I may be allowed to comment on this,” Fagin fluted. “The Pring were allowed to select the assistant who would accompany Bubbacub. My institute has independent information that Culla was a figure of some importance, on one of their terraformed planets, in an artistic endeavor that we have, until now, not been able to witness. We had attributed the Pring secretiveness on this matter to habit patterns inherited from the Pila. Now, however, we might conjecture that it is the Pila themselves who were not to witness the art. In their complacent superiority, the Pila must have cooperated unknowingly by denigrating their Clients’ endeavors.”
“And this art form is?”
“The art form must, logically, be holographic projection. It is possible that the Pring have been experimenting for most of, the hundred millennia of their sentience, in secret from their Patrons. I am in awe of the dedication it would have taken to keep a secret for so long.”
Nielsen whistled lowly. “They must want their release awful, bad. But I’still don’t understand, though I’ve listened to all of the tapes, why Culla pulled these pranks with Sundiver! How could the hoax of the anthropomorphic Sun Ghosts, the death of Jeffrey, or trapping Bubbacub into his error ever help the Pring?”
Helene glanced at Jacob. He nodded. “This is still your part, Helene. You figured most of it out.” Helene took a deep breath.
“You see, Culla never intended that Bubbacub be exposed on Mercury. He snared his boss into lying and pulling that stunt with the Lethani relic, but he expected him to be believed, here at least.
“If his plan had carried through he would have reported two assertions to the Library Institute; one, that Bubbacub was a fool and a liar who had been saved from embarrassment by the quick thinking of his assistant, and two, that humans were just a pack of harmless idiots and should be ignored. “I’ll cover the second point first. “On the face of it, it is obvious that no one out there would believe this crazy story of ‘man-shaped ghosts’ fluttering around in a star; especially when the Library has no mention of them.
“Imagine how the galaxy would react to a tale about plasma creatures which ‘shake their fists’ and miraculously” avoid having their pictures taken so there can be no proof they exist! Having heard that, most observers would never bother to examine the evidence we did have, the recordings of toroids and of the real Solarians!
“The galaxy on the whole looks on Terrestrial ‘research’ with amused contempt. Culla apparently wanted Sundiver to be laughed out without a hearing.”
Across the room, Pierre LaRoque blushed. No one said anything about the remarks he’d made on “Terrestrial research” over a year back.
“The quick explanation Culla gave, when he tried to kill us all, was that he faked the Ghosts for our own good. If we looked foolish we might make less of a splash when we announced life in the Sun… a splash that would give humanity more publicity in a time when we should be studying quietly to catch up with everyone else.”
Nielsen frowned. “He may have had a point.”
Helene shrugged. “It’s too late now.
“Anyway, it seems, as I have said, that Culla intended to report to the Library, and to the Soro, that humans were harmless idiots and, more importantly, that Bubbacub had been a party to that idiocy… that he had believed in the Ghosts and lied on the basis of that belief!”
Helene turned to face Fagin. “Is that a fair summary of what we discussed, Kant Fagin?”
The Kanten whistled softly, “I would think so. Trusting in the ‘seal’ of the Secrets Registration organization, I will state confidentially that my Institute has received intelligence regarding activities of the Pring and Pila that now make sense in the light of what we have now learned. The Pring are apparently engaged in a campaign to discredit the Pila. Therein lies an opportunity and a danger to humanity.
“The opportunity is that your Confederacy could offer evidence of Culla’s betrayal to the Pila, so that those sophonts may show how they have been manipulated. If the Soro then came down against the Pring, Culla’s race would be hard pressed to find a protector. They might be lowered in status, their colonies eliminated, populations ‘reduced.’
“There might be immediate rewards for humanity in this act, but it would do little to change the long range enmity of the Pil. Their psychology does not work that way. They might suspend their attempts to have humanity ‘adopted.’ They might be willing to accept restraints on the reparations they will insist on paying for Bubbacub’s crime, but in the long run it will not win their friendship. Owing humanity a debt will only increase their hatred.
“In addition, there is the fact that many of the more ‘liberal’ species, on whose protection humanity has so far relied, would not appreciate your providing the Pila with a Casus Belli for another of their Jihads. The Tymbrimi might withdraw their consulate from Luna.
“Finally there is the ethical consideration. It would take long for me to discuss all of the reasons. Some of them you would probably not understand. But the Institute of Progress is anxious that the Pring not be devastated. They are young and impulsive. Almost as much so as humanity. But they show g
reat promise. For the entire species to suffer terrible depredations, because a few of its members engage in a scheme to end a hundred millennia of servitude, would he a terrible tragedy.
“For these reasons I would recommend that Culla’s crimes be placed under seal Certainly rumors would soon drift about. But the Soro will be aloof to rumors bandied about by the likes of men.”
Fagin’s chimes tinkled softly as a breeze came in the window. Nielsen was staring at the floor.
“No wonder Culla tried to kill himself and everyone else aboard the ship, when Jacob figured him out! If the Pila get official testimony on Culla’s actions, the Pring are probably doomed.”
“What do you think the Confederacy will do?” Jacob asked.
“Do?” He laughed humorlessly. “Why they’ll offer the evidence to Pila with bended knee, of course. Ifni ! It’s a chance to keep them from ‘giving’ us a full sector Library Branch and ten thousand technicians to staff it! It’s a chance to keep them from ‘giving’ us modern ships that no human engineer could possibly understand and no human crew could operate without ‘advisors.’ It’d put off indefinitely those damned ‘adoption procedures’!” He spread his hands. “And it’s pretty clear that the Confederacy won’t stick its neck out for the race of a sophont who killed one of our Clients, damn near wrecked our hottest project, and attempted to make humans look like idiots among the peoples of the galaxy!
“And when you get right down to it, could you blame them?”
Jacob’s Uncle James cleared his throat to gain their attention.
“We can try to put the entire episode under seal,” he suggested. “I am not without influence in some circles. If I put in a good word…”
“You can’t put in a good word, Jim,” Jacob said. “You’re a participant in this mess, in a minor way. If you try to involve yourself the truth will eventually come out.”
“What truth is that?” Nielsen asked.
Jacob frowned at his uncle then at LaRoque. The Frenchman had imperturbably begun to nibble on more hors d’oeuvres.