And finally there were the fundamental issues that had brought Hunt to Jevlen, which were still unscratched: What was the source of the "plague" that the Ganymeans believed was making the Jevlenese impervious to reason? Did the ayatollahs represent simply an extreme of a general human trait in the way that Danchekker maintained, or were they a case of something completely different? What was the significance of Uttan?
Lots of questions; not many answers. Gina had come away from her meeting with Baumer depressed by a feeling of failure. But he was still the only obvious lead; how to find out more about him wasn't so obvious. Hunt reached out to the touch-pad and called the transcript of Gina's talk with Baumer onto a screen to study it again. Two Jevlenese had been leaving just as she arrived. From Gina's description they sounded like thugs, which strengthened the suspicion that Baumer was connected with the underworld. What kind of business did Baumer conduct with them in his office outside, which he didn't want brought into PAC?
Hunt read again what Baumer had said to Gina about the translation service wired across the city. Since Thuriens and Jevlenese had been dealing with each other for millennia, small, wearable translator chips to convert between their languages—similar in appearance to the stick-on interfaces to visar—had long ago been developed as standard. But Terran dialects—and the Shapieron brand of Ganymean, as well—were new, and the chips couldn't handle them. So the conversation between Baumer and the Jevlenese had been translated by zorac.
"zorac?" Hunt said aloud after studying the display for a few moments longer—zorac didn't pick up subvocalized patterns.
"Yes, Vic?"
"What's this thing that you've got going around the city on channel fifty-six? Something to do with a translation facility."
"There's still a general-purpose communications net running that wasn't specifically a part of jevex," zorac replied. "One of the channels is reserved for translating between the Jevlenese dialects and most Terran languages. So you and they can talk to each other just about anywhere."
"It's a service that you support?"
"Yes. I suppose you could call it people-interfacing."
"Hmm . . ." Hunt rubbed his chin. "I was thinking about that visit that Gina made to Baumer's office in the city."
"Yes?"
"There were a couple of Jevlenese leaving just as she got there. You must have done the translating for them. I, ah, I wonder if there might still be a record of it in your system somewhere that we might be able to get at?" Hunt knew that visar, programmed with its Thurien hangups, would never have done it. But zorac wasn't visar. It seemed worth a try.
"It's just a translation service," zorac replied. "I don't store any of it. I don't even have a record that they were there."
Hunt sighed resignedly—but it did open up the thought of further possibilities.
"So, when Terrans and Jevlenese talk to each other, you, from inside the Shapieron, have an ear into all their conversations, as it were, everywhere," he said.
The implication was plain enough, and zorac was too logical not to see it. "Why not spell out what you're asking?" the machine suggested.
"Hell, you know what I'm asking. Something's going on. We need to find out what Baumer and these Jevlenese are up to before we have another war on our hands—maybe a real one this time. Gina got nowhere, and right now we don't have another line."
There was a short pause.
"I presume that your ultimate objective would be to frustrate any intended action on the part of a suspected political group, that might be directed at increasing their power over other people's affairs," zorac said finally.
Hunt turned his eyes upward briefly. "Well, if we always insisted on analyzing everything through to its final aims like that, we'd be lucky if we ever got around to actually doing anything—but yes, I suppose you could say it was that."
"The argument being," zorac persisted, "that you see their methods as a violation of certain rights and freedoms which you, from certain a priori moral principles that are non-deducible but taken as self-evident, consider it desirable for a society to guarantee?"
"Yes." Hunt groaned beneath his breath as he saw where they were heading.
"So the goal would be to protect people from the violations of their rights that an intrusive and coercive governing system would subject them to?"
"Yes, yes, yes," Hunt agreed impatiently.
"One of them being the right to the enjoyment of noninterference and privacy. But if it is to be a genuine guarantee, with nobody having a privilege to decide whom it shall or shall not be granted to, then—"
Hunt's patience snapped. He knew that when zorac went off into one of these excursions, it could create knots that would have taken Aristotle volumes to untangle. "Look, they cremated Ayultha prematurely, and probably took care of Obayin, too. And if what we're up against is what I'm beginning to think it might be, they're the same forces that burned the libraries of Alexandria and Constantinople, brought on the Dark Ages, operated the Inquisition, and for all I know engineered the Black Death. We didn't."
"Algorithmically, it reduces to an interesting circumvolution of the logical calculus," zorac commented. "Using the same structure, you could argue that early suicide is the best preventative of cancer, or that the most effective way of protecting people against slavery is extermination."
"Forget it, then, and think of the question this way," Hunt suggested. "You're a ship's computer, right? Not a huge, interstellar regulator of social affairs like visar. Moralizing isn't your business. Your primary, overriding concern is the safety of the Shapieron and its occupants. You've told me as much yourself."
"I only said it was an interesting question logically," zorac interjected.
"All the better. I said a minute ago that from the way things are going we could end up with a shooting war. That means that Garuth, Shilohin, Monchar, Rodgar, and all the other Ganymeans from the ship would be caught here in the middle of it. Your best way of safeguarding them is to help prevent it from happening. So circumvolute that."
"Agreed. But Garuth, as the ship's commander, is the final authority. He'd have to approve."
"Then let's find Garuth and talk about it," Hunt said.
Eubeleus and his lieutenant, Iduane, sat in one of the private rooms in the SoA's Shiban "Temple," talking to a screen showing Scirio, who among other things ran the illicit headworld couplers in that part of the city. He also provided the go-betweens to Baumer, avoiding any direct involvement of the SoA. Scirio ran through a number of routine matters and then came to Baumer's meeting with Gina.
"Baumer wasn't suspicious?" Eubeleus repeated. The plan was at a critical phase, and he wasn't leaving anything to chance. Somebody that he didn't know suddenly appearing out of nowhere and questioning one of his sources was something that would have made him suspicious at any time.
"He thinks she's what she says: a starry-eyed broad with big ideas about being a book writer," Scirio said. "They talked politics. He gave her some names to check out that she could have found in the directory."
"She is registered as an author in the hotel at Geerbaine," Iduane offered in a tactful attempt to support Scirio. "She's there independently under her own name, and she traveled on her own from Seattle, USA."
"I say she's clean," Scirio said. "Hell, we've got a lot to do."
Eubeleus remained dubious, but didn't take the matter further for the moment. Afterward, however, he said to Iduane, "I'm not happy about that woman. Check with our other sources in PAC and see if they have anything on her. Get back to me on it today."
Hunt made a gesture of appeal across the desk in Garuth's office. Del Cullen, whom Hunt had rounded up and brought with him for moral support, watched from one side. "Look, I know it's underhanded and not the kind of thing that a Ganymean feels comfortable about, but we have to find out what they're doing," Hunt urged. "Hell, the Jevlenese eavesdropped on our whole planet for fifty thousand years! What right do they have to get upset over a few tapped wires arou
nd one city?"
"We need better sources," Cullen agreed. "A break like this isn't quite an intelligence man's dream, but you play with what you've got."
Garuth had just heard from Calazar that JPC's reaction to Eubeleus's offer to remove to Uttan was favorable. Eubeleus had made the point that if the object was to defuse the tensions on Jevlen, one small demonstration of good faith now would have more effect than a torrent of good intentions and promises of doing things later. To emphasize his own sincerity, he was prepared to move himself away from the scene immediately, with a token advance guard of followers. The Thuriens thought his offer magnanimous and were arranging for a ship to be sent to Jevlen to take them. Privately, Calazar had confessed to Garuth that he wasn't completely comfortable about it, but it seemed that the farther away from Jevlen Eubeleus was in the immediate future, the less mischief he would be able to do.
Garuth didn't trust Eubeleus any more than Hunt did, but at least the relocation would remove the man from being Garuth's responsibility for the foreseeable future, and so Garuth had no reason to object. Meanwhile, he would be able to concentrate on his own problems. All the other lines they had tried had drawn blanks. A clue could only come from out there in the city. Distasteful as he found the suggestion, it was a human problem to do with a human world, and it probably required human methods.
"Very well. Do it," he instructed zorac.
Hunt grinned faintly. But it really wasn't a lot to go pinning hopes on. All it meant was that Baumer, and maybe another Terran or two out in the city, might say something to a Jevlenese that was useful. The situation was purely passive. Hunt could tell that Cullen found it as unsatisfying as he did. He looked across and pulled a face.
"What else can you do?" Cullen said.
"Oh, I don't intend just sitting here, waiting for something to come in," Hunt told him. "We've already agreed where the answers are. I think it's about time that we went out and looked for them. Tomorrow morning, I'm going out to talk to some people I know in the city. We'll see what I can find out there."
Late that evening, Eubeleus and Iduane met again. "Yes, she was there," Iduane said. "The day before she went to see Baumer, she was at PAC. And she returned to PAC afterward. There is a UNSA scientific group there that she met on the Vishnu."
"Ah. So what kind of a book is she writing, and who for?" Eubeleus asked.
"Maybe what she says. They'd be able to get her some help. She's a stranger here. Wouldn't it be natural for her to go to people she knew?"
"Well, I've been doing a little checking of my own," Eubeleus said. "And do you know who this UNSA group are?" The look on Iduane's face said that he didn't. Eubeleus nodded. "Then I'll tell you. Have you ever heard of Dr. Victor Hunt? Or Professor Christian Danchekker? Just scientists, you think? They were the ones who uncovered the Earth surveillance and brought down the Federation. The man they both reported to was a UNSA chief by the name of Caldwell. He was also one of the architects of their strategy in what they call the `Pseudowar.' And do you know who sent them to Jevlen now? The same Caldwell. Now do you think I'm being overcautious? They are dangerous, and so is anyone connected with them."
Iduane emitted an uneasy breath. "What do you want to do?" he asked.
"Let's get the woman here and find out for ourselves what she's up to," Eubeleus replied.
"Shall I get Scirio to arrange something?"
Eubeleus thought for a moment, then shook his head. "No. We'll leave him to just run Baumer. If she's that well in, I'd rather we took care of her ourselves. Perhaps you could handle it personally. Use the German, since she knows him already, but through a different contact. I don't want Scirio's people involved."
"I'll get working on it right away," Iduane promised.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The next day, while Hunt was away in the city, Gina and Sandy had lunch together in a drab cafeteria on the level below PAC's residential sector. The food was plain and monotonous. When anyone complained to the Jevlenese catering staff about it, they were told that the supply system was messed up. It had become usual to attribute every failure and discomfort to jevex's being shut down.
"Squid shit and processed shoebox again," Sandy said, looking down at what was supposed to be a sandwich. "It's not really what you'd expect when you come all this way, is it? Our guys did better down the ice hole on Ganymede."
"How did you ever end up at a place like Ganymede?" Gina asked curiously.
"When you work with people like Chris and Vic, anything's possible."
"Yes . . . I think I can believe it."
"Well, look at you. You've known Vic for a week. Here you are."
Gina looked around. "You're right. It's sure a lot different from the Vishnu, I have to admit."
"Although I think zorac is, somehow . . . `cuter' than visar. It cracks jokes. Did you ever hear of a computer that cracks jokes before?"
"Maybe being stranded in space for twenty-five years affected it," Gina said. "The Ganymeans would be okay. They could handle it. I'm beginning to get the feeling that a lot of things that would completely screw us up in the head don't bother them at all." She inspected a peculiar-looking yellow fruit with orange lobes. "Although we still have the direct link to visar here."
They munched in silence for a while, exchanging grimaces over their respective dishes.
"I haven't been near visar since we arrived," Sandy said.
She spoke in an odd, pointed tone, as if she were trying to convey something deeper to test Gina's reaction. It took Gina a few seconds to register the fact. Her expression changed, but before she could say anything, Sandy went on. "How well did you get to know visar when we were on the ship? It's not just zorac with a different I/O system, you know. Did you take any time to . . . experiment with it at all?"
Gina stopped eating and stared across the table, interrogating Sandy's face silently. "Experiment with it?" she repeated.
"Yes."
"It depends what you mean."
Sandy answered in a way that sounded as if she had been wanting to bring the subject up with somebody for a long time. "Do you have any idea of just how weird that thing is, once you get into it? You're so right: the Thuriens must be a lot different from us up here." She tapped the side of her head. "People don't realize how different."
Gina sat back in her seat and took in the tenseness that had come over Sandy suddenly. She knew now what Sandy was getting at, but she replied in a way that evaded the point. "Do you mean how they can live with that universal bugging system everywhere, and not be bothered by it? Yes, I agree that's strange. It would bother me . . . And all that pointless detail they have to go into. Maybe they have a different notion of reality."
Sandy shook her head. "No. That wasn't what I meant. I was talking about the way it puts information into your head. It's not just that it can make you think you're somewhere else and not know the difference. It can manufacture places—whole worlds, whatever—that don't exist at all. And they're just as real—I mean, there's no way you can tell the difference. It can be anything you like."
"Go on," Gina said, not willing to commit herself just yet.
Sandy put down her fork and gestured briefly, then brushed her hair aside. Whatever recollections she was bringing to mind seemed to be troubling her. "But it goes a lot farther than just creating things that you tell it to. It can go right into your head and pull out things you didn't even know were there—things about yourself that you didn't know existed. Or maybe if you did, you buried them down deep somewhere because life has enough problems that you can do something about, without wasting time hassling yourself over things you're not gonna change anyhow. But can you imagine what it's like to find them staring you in the face?"
Gina held her eye and nodded slowly. "Yes, I know," she confessed finally. "I fooled around with it, too. I know what you're talking about."
"You did?"
"Yes."
"And how did it . . ." Sandy left the question hanging and showed an e
mpty hand.
"Terrifying," Gina said. "I haven't gone near it again, either."
Sandy nodded. It was woman-to-woman now. They understood each other without need of secrets. She looked at Gina and pulled her zip-up sweater tighter around herself. "Want to know something? I can kill people." Despite herself, Gina couldn't prevent a startled look from crossing her face. Sandy nodded as if seeing Gina's reaction provided a source of relief. "That's something I found out. Want to know something else? I get a kick out of it. How's that for finding that what you thought you were all your life isn't you?"
Gina saw that Sandy had paled and was trembling. She leaned forward to lay a reassuring hand on her arm. "Don't worry. Everyone has something. Look, if it's any—"
Sandy pulled her arm away defensively. "It's a psychic fucking Freud with a one-million IQ, for chrissakes. Maybe Thuriens don't have things they'd rather not know, or maybe they can deal with them—I don't know. But . . ." Her voice trailed off. She looked up at Gina and sighed. "I'm sorry. I guess I was looking for someone to dump on."
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