by Paul Preuss
Mays took himself quite seriously, of course; he was nothing if not opinionated. Like Arnold Toynbee and Oswald Spengler before him, he had reduced the whole of human history to a recurrent and predictable pattern. In his view, as in his predecessors’, the elements of that pattern were societies having their own life cycles of birth, growth, and death, like organisms. And like organisms—but with the aid of rapid cultural change rather than sluggish biological adaptation—societies evolved, he claimed. Just what human society was evolving toward, he left as an exercise for the viewer to determine.
The historical and ethnographic establishments assailed him for his primitive ideas, his dubious interpretations of fact, his loose definitions (What distinguished one society from another? Why, for Mays, did Jews constitute a society wherever they lived but not, for example, expatriate Hungarians?), but a dozen eminent scholars mumbling in their dewlaps were not enough to deflate public enthusiasm. Randolph Mays had something better than academic approval, something better than logic; he had an almost hypnotic presence.
That first series ran to numerous repeat screenings and set record videochip sales; the BBC begged him for another. Mays obliged with the proposal for “Overmind.”
The proposal gave even its BBC sponsors initial pause, for in it Mays set out to prove that the rise and fall of civilizations were not, after all, a matter of chance evolution. According to him, a superior intelligence had guided the process, an intelligence not necessarily human, which was represented on Earth by an ancient, most secret cult.
The first dozen programs of “Overmind” adduced evidence for the cult’s existence in ancient glyphs and carvings and papyrus scrolls, in the alignments of ancient architecture and the narratives of ancient myth. It was a good story, persuasive to those who wanted to believe. Even unbelievers were amused and entertained.
As Mays knew, and as his immense audience was about to find out, tonight’s episode went well beyond ancient texts and artifacts. It brought Grand Conspiracy into the present day.
But Randolph Mays was nothing if not a shrewd showman. His viewers were forced to sit through almost the whole ensuing hour of review, during which Mays rehearsed all the evidence he had developed in preceding weeks, thriftily using the same locations and replaying bits of preceding shows; only the skeptic viewer would have noted that his thesis was thus reduced from thirteen hours to one.
Finally he came to his point. “They called themselves the Free Spirit, and by a dozen other names,” Mays asserted—appearing in person now, close up, swiping at the air. “These people were almost certainly among them.”
The next image was static, taken by a photogram camera: a fit but aging English gentleman in tweeds stood in front of a massive stone house, a shotgun crooked in his arm. His free hand stroked an aviator’s flamboyant mustaches.
“Rupert, Lord Kingman, heir to ancient St. Joseph’s Hall, director of a dozen firms—including Sadler’s Bank of Delhi—who has not been seen for three years…”
Next, a woman with sleek black hair and painted red lips glared at the camera from astride a sweating polo pony, its bridle held by a turbaned Sikh.
“Holly Singh, M.D., Ph.D., chief of neurophysiology at the Board of Space Control’s Biological Medicine Center, who disappeared at precisely the same time as Lord Kingman…”
Next the screen showed a tall, lugubrious man whose fine blond hair fell across his forehead.
“Professor Albers Merck, noted xeno-archaeologist, who attempted to murder his colleague, Professor J. Q. R. Forster—and in the same attempt killed himself. He failed to kill Forster, of course; he succeeded, however, in destroying the unique Venusian fossils housed on Port Hesperus…”
Next, a publicity still showed two strapping big blond young people in technicians’ smocks, smiling at the camera from their instrument consoles.
“Also on the same date, astronomers Piet Gress and Katrina Balakian both committed suicide after failing to destroy the radiotelescope facility at Farside Base on the moon…”
Next, a square-built man with a sandy crewcut, wearing a pinstripe suit: he was caught scowling over his shoulder as he climbed into a helicopter on a Manhattan rooftop.
“And again on the same date, the Martian plaque disappeared from the town hall of Labyrinth City on Mars. Two men were killed. Later the plaque was recovered on the Martian moon Phobos. Within hours, Mr. John Noble, founder and chief executive of Noble Water Works of Mars, whose space plane was used in the attempted theft, vanished and has been missing ever since…”
The next image was not of a person but a spacecraft, the freighter Doradus. The camera slowly tracked the big white freighter where it lay impounded in the Space Board yards in Earth orbit.
“This is the Doradus, whose crew attempted to remove the Martian plaque from Phobos—it was called a pirate ship by the media, but I assert that the Doradus was in fact a Free Spirit warship—although the Space Board would have us believe the vessel’s true ownership has never been traced farther than a bank. Yes, Sadler’s Bank of Delhi…”
When the next image came on the screen, Ari put a hand on the commander’s arm—giving support, or seeking it.
“Inspector Ellen Troy of the Board of Space Control,” Mays reminded his audience, although there could have been few who did not recognize the woman’s picture. “Not long ago, a household name because of her extraordinary exploits. She it was who rescued Forster and Merck from certain death on the surface of Venus. She it was who prevented the destruction of Farside Base, and she who snatched the Martian plaque from the grasp of Doradus. Then she too vanished—to reappear, under circumstances that have never been explained, at the very moment of the Kon-Tiki mutiny—only to vanish again. Where is she now?”
The haunting image of Amalthea reappeared on the screen; in Jupiter’s reflected light, the moon was swathed in mist the color of buttermilk.
“The Space Board have declared an absolute quarantine within 50,000 kilometers of the orbit of Amalthea. The only exception granted is on behalf of this man, of whom we have already heard so much.”
The media had often described J. Q. R. Forster as a banty rooster, but the newsbite Mays showed of him made him look like a jaunty miniature astronaut, breezily bounding up the steps of the Council of Worlds headquarters in Manhattan, ignoring the mediahounds who pursued him.
“Professor Forster is now on Ganymede Base, in the final stages of preparation for his expedition to Amalthea—an expedition approved by the Space Board only a few short months before that moon revealed its idiosyncratic nature.”
Sir Randolph returned to the screen in person. For a moment he was quiet, as if gathering his thoughts. It was a bold actor’s moment, showing his mastery of the medium, focussing the attention of an enormous audience on his next words.
He leaned forward. “Is Inspector Ellen Troy there too, on Ganymede, a part of Forster’s plan?”
He lowered his voice further, as if to force his watchers to lean even closer, his huge hands pulling at the air with spread fingers to draw them further into his intimate net. “Is Amalthea the focus of centuries of Free Spirit scheming? Is the mighty Board of Space Control itself a party to this grand conspiracy? I believe so, and though I cannot prove it tonight”—Mays drew back, straightening his gaunt frame—“I give you my word of honor that I will discover the common thread that links these events which I have brought to your attention. And having done so, I shall expose these ancient secrets to the light of reason.”
Ari said, “Turn off,” her voice loud in the quiet cabin. As the final credits were rolling up the screen, the image faded to black and the videoplate folded itself into the paneled wall.
Rain fell steadily on the porch roof; brick-red coals crumbled in the fireplace. The commander broke the silence. “A bit anticlimactic.”
“He got one thing wrong, at least,” Ari said. She didn’t have to say what she meant: Ellen Troy was not on Amalthea.
Footsteps scraped on the boards
of the porch. The commander stood up, alert. Ari threw her lap robe aside and went to open the door.
3
The man who came into the room was damp and tweedy; his thinning gray hair stuck out in wet clumps, giving him the look of a baby bird just emerged from the egg. He gathered Ari into his arms and hugged her enthusiastically; she laughed and stroked his wet hair. They were not much alike, but they looked well together, he in his tweeds and she in her flannel. They’d been married for decades.
“Something to warm you, Jozsef? We are having tea.”
“Thank you. Kip has told you of our adventures?”
“Not yet,” said the commander.
“We watched Mays pontificate. The final episode of ‘Overmind.’”
“Oh no, am I so late?” Jozsef was stricken.
“When has it been otherwise?” Ari said. “Don’t worry, I recorded it.”
“A waste of your time,” said the commander.
Jozsef sat heavily on the couch. Ari handed him a cup and moved the tea tray to the low pine table in front of him. “Except for one thing. Mays has connected Linda with the Free Spirit.”
“With Salamander?”
“He doesn’t know anything about Salamander,” said the commander.
“It’s all speculation,” Ari agreed.
“Nevertheless he’ll be on his way to Amalthea on Helios, to poke around.”
“You can confirm that?” Jozsef asked the commander, who nodded. Jozsef slurped a mouthful of the hot tea and carefully resettled the cup on its saucer. “Well, it can hardly make a significant difference. Half the reporters in the solar system, it seems, are already there, eager for news.”
Ari settled beside him and rested her hand on his knee. “Tell me about your trip.”
“It was quite wonderful.” Jozsef’s eyes lit with enthusiasm. “If I were a jealous man, I should be jealous that Forster came unaided to his great discoveries. He fired me with his own enthusiasm—I believe he is a heroic figure.”
“He was hardly unaided.” Ari was defensive on her husband’s behalf. “You—and Kip and I—have been of critical help to him.”
“Yes, but he had nothing like the Knowledge to guide him. By himself he deciphered the Venusian tablets, and then the Martian plaque—and from that he deduced the nature of Amalthea.”
“Its presumed nature,” said Ari.
“All without hints from any ancient secrets,” Jozsef insisted, “which confirms our own belief that the truth needs no secrets.”
Ari looked uncomfortable, but like the commander she said nothing, unwilling to contradict Jozsef’s version of the creed.
“But let me tell you what I saw,” Jozsef said, recovering his enthusiasm. He settled himself deeper into the couch cushions and began to speak in the relaxed manner of a professor opening a weekly seminar.
“What we North Continentals call Ganymede is popularly known to those who live there as Shoreless Ocean, a poetic way of referring to a moon whose surface consists almost entirely of frozen water. The same name applies to Ganymede City, and it’s written over the pressure portals in half a dozen languages. I was in trouble almost before I’d gotten through the gates.
“As I left the formalities at entry control—all on my own, and somewhat bewildered—a strange young Asian persistently beckoned to me from beyond the barrier. His eyes showed a pronounced epicanthic fold, his hair was glossy black, pulled straight back into a ponytail that reached below his waist, and he was sporting quite a diabolical mustache. With that and his costume of tunic and trousers and soft boots, he could have been Temujin, the young Genghis Kahn. I tried to ignore him, but once I was through the gates he followed me through the crowd, until I turned on him and loudly demanded to know what he wanted.
“He made noises about being the best and least expensive guide a stranger to Shoreless Ocean could find, but between these declarations—for the benefit of the people around us—he commanded me in an urgent whisper to stop drawing attention to myself.
“As you have guessed, it was Blake. His remarkable disguise was necessary because, as he picturesquely phrased it, a pack of newshounds had driven Professor Forster and his colleagues to ground and now kept them in their den. Blake, being the only one of them who could speak Chinese, was the only one who could move freely in the town.
“I had thought I would need no disguise, of course; no one had the slightest idea who I was or how I had got here, the Board of Space Control having smoothed my passage. Blake took my luggage—which weighed very little, for although Ganymede is larger than Earth’s moon it is still less massive than a planet.
“The city of Shoreless Ocean is less than a century old but appears as exotic—and as crowded—as Varanasi or Calcutta. We were soon lost in the crush. After pushing through corridors which, as it seemed to me, became narrower and louder and smellier with every turn, it was all I could do to keep up with Blake, and I suspect he became somewhat exasperated with me. He hailed a pedicab and whispered something to the rangy boy who drove it. Blake pushed my bags into it, then me, and said he would meet me where the cab let me off; I need say nothing to the driver, for the fare had already been arranged.
‘The cab took me through corridors which grew rapidly less crowded as we moved away from the commercial and residential quarters of the city. A final long run down a dim, cold tunnel—whose walls, seen through bundles of shining pipe, were slick with ice—brought me to my destination, a plain plastic door in a plain plastic wall with a single caged red light burning above it. There was nothing to indicate what sort of place this might be, except that it had some industrial purpose. As soon as I got myself and my luggage out of the cab the boy pedaled away, blowing his breath in clouds before him, anxious to be out of the cold.
“I shivered alone for several minutes, peering about me at the vast steel manifolds that formed the ceiling and walls of the ill-lit tunnel. Finally the door opened.
“Blake had brought me a heavy parka. Once I was dressed for the cold he led me inside the plant, along clacking plastic-mesh catwalks and up ladders, through other doors, other rooms. Pressure hatches and sealed doorways warned of possible vacuum, but our route had been fully pressurized.
“Through a little hatch we entered a huge drainpipe of shiny metal, titanium alloy by the look of it, and climbing up I found that we were in a cavernous space, bizarrely sculpted into what seemed like a great curving watercourse of black ice. I was reminded of the dripping ice caves that feed streams running beneath glaciers, like those I entered on the alpine treks of my youth, or of a polished limestone cave, the bed of an underground river. Unlike a glacial cave, these ice walls did not radiate the brilliant blue of filtered sunlight, nor did their frozen surfaces reflect the warmth of smooth limestone, but instead absorbed all the light that fell upon them, sucking it into their colorless depths.
“We clambered over the scalloped edges of a frozen waterfall into a bell-shaped hall, and suddenly I understood that the cavern had not been carved out by running water, but by fire and superheated steam. We were inside the thrust-deflection chamber of a surface launch facility. Its walls, fantastically swashed by repeated bursts of exploding gases, were draped in veils and curtains of transparent ice.
“High above us the pressure dome was sealed, trapping air and cutting off any view of the bright stars and moons and the disk of Jupiter. Inside the dome, lowering over our heads like a stormcloud made of steel, was a Jovian tug. The vessel squatted on sturdy struts and was webbed about with gantries, but what commanded my gaze were the triple nozzles of the main rocket engines and the three bulging spherical fuel tanks clustered around them.
“Beneath this intimation of the refiner’s fire—this sword of Damocles poised to flash downward—stood Professor J. Q. R. Forster and his crew, bundled against the cold. Over titanium deflection scoops a scaffold of carbon struts and planks had been erected; tool benches and racks of electronics stood about, and someone had draped a large hardcopy schematic ove
r a lathe. As Blake brought me into their midst, Forster and his people were bent over this diagram in spirited discussion, like a Shakespearean king and his lords debating their battle plan.
“Forster turned on me almost fiercely—but I quickly realized he was displaying a smile, not a grimace. I was familiar with holos of him, of course, but since Kip had thought it wise to keep us from meeting before this moment, I was unprepared for the man’s energy. He has the face and body of a thirty-five-year-old, a man in his prime—a result of the restoration they did on him after Merck’s attempt on his life—but I venture that his authority stems mainly from the experience gained whipping several decades’ worth of graduate students into line.
“He introduced me to his crew as if each were a mythic hero: Josepha Walsh, pilot, an unruffled young woman seconded from the Space Board; Angus McNeil, engineer, a shrewd and portly fellow who studied me as if reading gauges inside my head; Tony Groves, the dark little navigator who had steered Springer to his brief, glorious rendezvous with Pluto. I solemnly shook hands with them all. All of them are as well known in their own circles as Forster in his—and none of them is Asian—and therefore all are sentenced to shiver in hiding so long as Forster wishes to avoid the press.