The Two Worlds

by James P. Hogan

  "But not all were taken to Earth," Danchekker concluded. "Another group was taken back to Thurien, and have since become the Jevlenese."

  "It was so," Calazar confirmed.

  "Even after all that had happened," Showm explained, "the Cerians and the Lambians were unmixable. Since the Lambians had been the cause of the trouble, the Ganymeans of that time considered that more good would come out of the Lambians being taken to Thurien and—it was hoped—being integrated into Ganymean ways and society. The Cerians were taken to Earth at their own request. They were offered ongoing aid to rebuild, but they declined. So a surveillance system was set up instead to keep an eye on them—as much for their own protection as anything." Hunt was surprised. If the surveillance system had been in place that long, the Ganymeans would have known about the collapse of the colony which they themselves had helped found. Why had they let it happen?

  "So how did the others make out—the Lambians?" Heller asked. "They couldn't have been running the surveillance that far back. How did they get their hands on it?"

  Calazar emitted a heavy sigh. "They caused a lot of problems for the Thuriens of that time, so much so that when Luna came to be captured by Earth and caused widespread catastrophes that demolished the fragile beginnings of the new Cerian society that had started to take root there, it was decided to leave things be. With troubles of their own at home, the Thuriens were not eager to see another human civilization rushing headlong toward advancement, perhaps to repeat the Minervan disaster." He shrugged as if to say that right or wrong, that was the way it had been, then resumed, "But as time went by and further generations of Lambians came and went, the situation seemed to improve. Signs appeared that they could be integrated fully into Ganymean society, so the Ganymean leaders adopted a policy of appeasement in an attempt to accelerate the process. As a result the Jevlenese, as the descendants of the Lambians were called by then, acquired control of the surveillance program."

  "A mistake," Showm commented. "They should have been exiled."

  "With hindsight, I think I agree," Calazar said. "But that was long before either my time or yours."

  "How about telling us something about this system," Hunt suggested. "How does it work?"

  Eesyan answered. "Mostly from space. Until about a century ago, it was comparatively simple. Since Earth entered its electronics and space era, the Jevlenese have had to be more careful. Their devices are very small and virtually undetectable. Most of their information comes from intercepting and retransmitting your communications, such as the laser links between Jupiter and Earth. At one time in the early years of your space program they manufactured instrument packages to resemble pieces of your own space debris, but they had to stop when you started clearing things up. That experiment had its uses though; that was where we got the idea of building a perceptron that looked like a Boeing."

  "But how could they fake the reports as well as they did?" Hunt asked. "They must have something of their own like visar. No Mickey Mouse computer did that."

  "They have," Eesyan told him. "Long ago, when there seemed reason to feel optimistic about the Jevlenese, the Thuriens helped them establish their own autonomous world. It's called Jevlen, on the fringe of our developed region of space, and it's equipped with a system known as jevex, which is visar-like but independent of visar. Like visar, jevex operates across its own system of many stars. The surveillance system from Earth is coupled into jevex, and the reports that we receive are transmitted indirectly from jevex through visar."

  "So it isn't difficult to understand how the fabrications and distortions were engineered," Showm said. "So much for philanthropy. They should never have been allowed to operate such a system."

  "But why did they do it?" Karen Heller asked. "We still don't have an answer. Their reports were pretty accurate up until about the time of World War II. The problems of the late twentieth century were somewhat exaggerated, but for the last thirty years it's turned into pure fiction. Why would they want you to think we were still heading for World War III?"

  "Who can understand the contortions of human minds?" Showm asked, using the general term unconsciously.

  Hunt just caught the look that she flashed involuntarily at Calazar as she spoke. There was something more behind it all, he realized—something that the Thuriens were not divulging even now. Whatever it was, he was just as certain in that same split second that Garuth and Shilohin didn't know about it, either. But he didn't feel this was the time to force a confrontation. Instead he steered the discussion back into technicalities as he remembered something else. "What kind of archives does jevex have?" he asked. "Do they go all the way back to the Ganymean civilization on Minerva, like visar's?"

  "No," Eesyan replied. "jevex is of much more recent vintage. There was no need to load it with visar's complete archives, which concerned only Ganymeans." He studied Hunt curiously for a few seconds. "Are you thinking about the anomalies in the displacements of background stars that visar noticed in the shots of the Shapieron?"

  Hunt nodded. "That explains it, doesn't it. jevex couldn't have known about the displacements. visar had access to the original design data for the ship; jevex didn't."

  "Correct," Eesyan said. "There were a few other anomalies too, but all similar—all to do with an old Ganymean technology that jevex couldn't have known very much about. That was when we became suspicious." At which point everything that had ever come from jevex would be suspect, Hunt saw. But there would have been no way of checking any of the rest without bypassing the Jevlenese completely and going straight to the source of the information—Earth. And that was precisely what the Thuriens had done.

  Calazar seemed anxious to move them away from the whole topic. When a lull presented itself, he said, "Garuth wanted me to show you another sequence that he thought you would find interesting. visar, show us the Ganymean landing at Gorda."

  Hunt jerked his head up in surprise. The name was familiar. Danchekker was looking incredulous as well. Heller was looking from one to the other of the men with a puzzled frown; she was less conversant with Charlie's story than they were.

  Don Maddson's linguistics team at Navcomms had eventually succeeded in deciphering a notebook of Charlie's that had remained a mystery for a long time. It gave a day-to-day account of Charlie's experiences as one member of a rapidly diminishing band of Cerian survivors making a desperate trek across the lunar surface to reach a base that offered their last hope of escape from the Moon, if any hope remained at all. The account had covered events up to the point of Charlie's arrival at the place at which he had been found, by which time attrition of various kinds had reduced his band to just two—him, and a companion whose name had been Koriel. Charlie had collapsed there from the effects of a malfunctioning life-support system, and Koriel had left on a lone bid to reach the base. Apparently he had never returned. The base was called Gorda.

  A new image appeared above the center of the floor. It was of a wilderness of dust and boulders etched harshly beneath a black sky thick with stars. The landscape had been seared and churned by forces of unimaginable violence to leave just the twisted and mutilated wreckage of what could once have been a vast base. Amid the desolation stood a single structure that appeared to have survived almost intact—a squat, armored dome or turret of some kind, blown open on one side. Its interior was in darkness.

  "That was all that was left of Gorda," Calazar commented. "The view you are seeing is from a Thurien ship that had landed a few minutes before."

  A small vehicle, roughly rectangular but with pods and other protuberances cluttering its outside, moved slowly into view from behind the camera, flying twenty feet or so above the ground. It landed near the dome, and a group of Ganymeans wearing space suits emerged and began moving cautiously through the wreckage toward the opening. Then they stopped suddenly. There were movements in the shadows ahead of them.

  A light came on from somewhere behind to light up the opening. It revealed more figures, also in suits, standin
g in front of what looked like an entrance leading down to an underground section of whatever the dome had been part of. Their suits were different, and they stood a full head and shoulders shorter than the Ganymeans facing them from a few yards away. They were carrying weapons, but they appeared unsure of themselves as they looked nervously at one another and at the Ganymeans. None of them seemed to know what to do or what to expect. None of them, except one . . .

  He was standing in front of the others in a blue space suit that was plastered with dust and grotesquely discolored by scorch marks, his feet planted firmly astride, and a rifle-like weapon held unwaveringly in one hand to cover the leading Ganymean. With his free arm he made a gesture behind him to wave the others forward. The movement was decisive and commanding. They obeyed, some moving up to stand on either side of him, others moving out to cover the aliens from protected positions among the surrounding debris. He was taller than the others and heavy in build, and the lips of the face behind his visor were drawn back in a snarl to reveal white teeth that contrasted sharply with his dark, unshaven chin and cheeks. Something unintelligible came through on audio. Although the words meant nothing, the tone of challenge and defiance was unmistakable.

  "Our surveillance methods were not as comprehensive then," Calazar commented. "The language was not known.'"

  In the scene before them, the Ganymean leader was replying in his own tongue, evidently relying on intonation and gesture to dispel alarm. As the exchange continued, the tension seemed to ease. Eventually the human giant lowered his weapon, and the others who had taken cover began emerging again. He beckoned for the Ganymeans to follow, and as the ranks behind him opened to make way, he turned away to lead them down into the inner entrance.

  "That was Koriel," Garuth said.

  Hunt had already guessed that. For some reason he felt very relieved.

  "He succeeded!" Danchekker breathed. Elation was showing on his face, and he swallowed visibly. "He did get to Gorda. I'm—I'm glad to know that."

  "Yes," Garuth said, reading the further question written across Hunt's face. "We have studied the ship's log. They did return, but Koriel's companion had already died. They left him as they found him. They did manage to rescue some of the others who had been left strung out along the way, however."

  "And after that?" Danchekker queried. "Another thing we have often wondered is whether or not Koriel was among those who finally reached Earth. It seems now that he may well have been. Do you happen to know if he in fact was?"

  In reply Calazar called up another image. It was a view of a settlement formed from a dozen or so portable buildings of unfamiliar design, situated on a river bank against a background of semitropical forest with the hazy outline of mountains rising in the distance beyond. On one side was what looked like a supply dump, with rows of stacked crates, drums, and other containers. A crowd of two or three hundred figures was assembled in the foreground—human figures, dressed mainly in simple but serviceable-looking shirts and pants, and many of them carrying weapons either holstered at the waist or slung across the shoulder.

  Koriel was standing ahead of them, huge, broad-shouldered, with dense, black hair, unsmiling features, and his thumbs hooked loosely in his belt. Two lieutenants were standing on either side and a pace behind him. Some of the arms in the crowd began rising in a farewell salutation.

  Then the view began to fall away and tilt. The settlement shrank quickly and lost itself among a carpet of treetops, which in turn faded to become just a hazy area of green on a patchwork of colors taking form as the scale reduced and more of the surrounding landscape flowed into view from the sides. "The last view from the ship as it departed from Earth to return to Thurien," Calazar said. A coastline that was recognizable as part of the Red Sea moved into the picture and shrank to become part of a familiar section of Middle East geography despite being distorted at the periphery by perspective. Finally the edge of the planet itself appeared, already looking distinctly curved.

  They watched in silence for a long time. Eventually Danchekker murmured, "Imagine . . . the whole human race began with that tiny handful. After all that they had endured, they conquered a whole world. What an extraordinary race they must have been."

  This was one of the few occasions on which Hunt had seen Danchekker genuinely moved. And he felt it too. He thought back again to the scenes from the Lunarian war and the visions that the Jevlenese had created of Earth stampeding toward exactly the same catastrophe. And yet it had almost come true. It had been close—far too close. If Earth had not changed course when it did, just two or three decades more would have made that come true. And then Charlie, Koriel, Gorda, the efforts of the Thuriens, the struggles of the handful of survivors that he had just seen—and all that they endured after that—would have been for nothing.

  It brought to mind Wellington's words after Waterloo: "It was a close-run thing, a damned close-run thing—the closest-run thing you ever saw in your life."

  Chapter Twenty-One

  After hearing Norman Pacey's account of the events at Bruno, Jerol Packard lodged a confidential request with an office of the CIA for a compendium of everything that had accumulated in its files over the years concerning Sverenssen and, for good measure, the other members of the UN Farside delegation as well. Clifford Benson, the CIA official who had dealt with the request, summarized the findings a day later at a closed-door session in Packard's State Department office.

  "Sverenssen reappeared in Western Europe in 2009 with a circle of social and financial contacts already established. How that happened is not clear. We can't find any authenticated traces of him for about ten years before then—in fact from the time he was supposed to have been killed in Ethiopia." Benson gestured at a section of the summary charts of names, photographs, organizations, and interconnecting arrows pinned to a wallboard. "His closest ties were with a French-British-Swiss investment-banking consortium, a big part of which is still run by the same families that set up a network of financial operations around Southesast Asia in the nineteenth century to launder the revenues from the Chinese opium trade. Now here's an interesting thing—one of the biggest names on the French side of that consortium is a blood relative of Daldanier. In fact the two names have been connected for three generations."

  "Those people are pretty tightly knit," Caldwell commented. "I don't know if I'd attach a lot of significance to something like that."

  "If it were an isolated case, I wouldn't, either," Benson agreed. "But look at the rest of the story." He indicated another part of the chart. "The British and Swiss sides control a sizable part of the world's bullion business and are connected through the London gold market and its mining affiliations to South Africa. And look what name we find prominent among the ones at the end of that line."

  "Is that Van Geelink of the same family as Sverenssen's cohort?" Lyn asked dubiously.

  "It's the same," Benson said. "There are a number of them, all connected with different parts of the same business. It's a complicated setup." He paused for a moment, then resumed, "Up until around the first few years of this century, a lot of Van Geelink-controlled money went into preserving white dominance in the area by undermining the stability of black Africa politically and economically, which is one reason why nobody seemed interested in backing resistance to the Cuban and Communist subversions that were going on from the '70s through '90s. To maintain their own position militarily in the face of trade embargoes, the family organized arms deals through intermediaries, frequently South American regimes."

  "Is this where the Brazilian guy fits in?" Caldwell asked, raising an eyebrow.

  Benson nodded. "Among others. Saraquez's father and grandfather were both big in commodity financing, especially to do with oil. There are links from them as well as from the Van Geelinks to the prime movers behind the destabilization of the Middle East in the late twentieth century. The main reason for that was to maximize short-term oil profits before the world went nuclear, which also accounts for the orchest
rated sabotage of public opinion against nuclear power at around the same time. A side effect that worked in the Saraquezes' interests was that it boosted the demand for Central American oil." Benson shrugged and tossed out his hands. "There's more, but you can see the gist of it. The same kind of thing shows up with a few more who were on that delegation. It's one happy family, in a lot of cases literally."

  Caldwell studied the charts with a new interest once Benson had finished. After a while he sat back and asked, "So what does it tell us? What's the connection with what went on at Farside? Figured that out yet?"

  "I just collect facts," Benson replied. "I leave the rest to you people."

  Packard moved to the center of the room. "There is another interesting side to the pattern," he said. "The whole network represents a common ideology—feudalism." The others looked at him curiously. He explained, "Cliff's already mentioned their involvement in the antinuclear hysteria of thirty or forty years ago, but there's more to it than that." He waved a hand at the charts that Benson had been using. "Take the banking consortium that gave Sverenssen his start as an example. Throughout the last quarter of the 1900s they provide a lot of behind-the-scenes backing for moves to fob the Third World off with `appropriate technologies,' for various antiprogress, antiscience lobbies, and that kind of thing. In South Africa we had another branch of the same net pushing racism and preventing progressive government, industrialization, and comprehensive education for blacks. And across the ocean we had a series of right-wing fascist regimes protecting minority interests by military takeovers and at the same time obstructing general advancement. You see, it all adds up to the same basic ideology—preserving the feudal privileges and interests of the power structure of the time. What it says, I guess, is that nothing's changed all that much."