Sitting off to one side of a room in the Government Center at Thurios with the others from McClusky, Hunt waited tensely for the confrontation with the first Jevlenese they would meet face to face, who were due to appear at any second. Garuth and his two companions from the Shapieron formed another small group on the far side; and Calazar, Eesyan, Showm, and a few more Thuriens were clustered at one end. The Ganymeans were still somewhat shaken by what they had learned of deception and subterfuge that went beyond their wildest imaginings. Even Frenua Showm had conceded that without the apparently uniquely human ability to penetrate such deviousness, it was doubtful that the Ganymeans would ever have reached the bottom of it. It seemed that being suspicious of another’s motives was something that came with the conditioning of predatorial thinking, and Ganymeans simply were not predators. "On Earth they say you must set a thief to catch a thief," Garuth had remarked. "It appears just as true that to catch a human you must set a human."
"They might be great scientists, but they’d make lousy lawyers," Karen Heller murmured in Danchekker’s ear. Danchekker snorted and said nothing.
Calazar was curious to see how far the Jevlenese would go in their fabrications if fed sufficient rope; also, there was more that he hoped to learn from them before exposing just how much he knew. For these reasons he did not want to confront them immediately with the presence of the Terrans and the Shapieron Ganymeans. He therefore instructed VISAR to edit out of the data-stream sent to JEVEX, and hence to the participants on Jevlen, all information pertaining to those two groups. It meant that Hunt, Garuth, and their companions would, after a fashion, be there, but remain completely invisible to the Jevlenese. Such a tactic was a flagrant violation of good manners and Thurien law, and unprecedented throughout the many centuries for which VISAR had been in use. Nonetheless Calazar decreed that by their own actions the Jevlenese had warranted making this occasion an exception. Hunt was looking forward to the consequences.
"Premier Broghuilio, Secretary Wylott, and Scientific Advisor Estordu," VISAR announced. Hunt stiffened. Three figures materialized at the end of the room opposite Calazar and the Thuriens. The one in the center had to be Broghuilio, Hunt decided at once. He stood six-foot-three at least, and had dark eyes that blazed fiercely from a face made all the more intimidating by a mane of thick, black hair and a pugnacious mouth surrounded by a short, cropped beard. His body was clad in a short coat of gold sheen worn over a mauve tunic covering a barrel-like chest and powerful torso.
"What of the Shapieron ?" Calazar demanded in an unusually clipped voice. Hunt would have expected that for one of Broghuilio’s rank some form of opening formality would have been appropriate. The flicker of surprise that he caught on the faces of the other two Jevlenese seemed to say so too. One of them looked directly at where Hunt was sitting and stared straight through. It was a strange feeling.
"I regret the intrusion," Broghuiio began. His voice was deep and harsh, and he spoke stiffly, in the manner of somebody performing a duty that demanded a greater show of feeling than he could muster readily. "We have just received news of the most serious nature: all traces of the ship have disappeared from our tracking data. We can only conclude that it has been destroyed." He paused and cast his eyes around the room for effect. "The possibility that this could be the result of a deliberate act cannot be dismissed."
The Thuriens stared back in silence for what seemed a long time. They did not attempt playacting any show of concern or dismay. . . . or even surprise. The first glimmer of uncertainty crept into Broghuilio’s eyes as he searched the Ganymean faces for a reaction. Evidently this was not going as he had anticipated.
One of the other two, also tall, dressed somberly in dark blue and black, with icy blue eyes, slicked-back silver hair, and a florid face that tended toward puffiness, seemed not to have read the signs. "We tried to warn you," he said, spreading his hands imploringly in a good imitation of sharing the anguish that the Thuriens were presumably supposed to be feeling at that moment. "We urged you to intercept the ship before now." That was hardly true; possibly he placed a lot of faith in his powers of suggestion. "We told you that Earth would never allow the Shapieron to reach Thurien."
Across the room Garuth’s eyes turned steely, and his expression was about as close to malevolence as that of a Ganymean could get. "Patience, Garuth," Hunt called out. "You’ll get your shots in before long."
"Luckily Ganymeans possess plenty of that," Garuth replied. The Jevlenese didn’t hear a thing. It was uncanny.
"Really?" Calazar responded after a pause. He sounded neither convinced nor impressed. "Your concern is most touching, Secretary Wylott. You almost sound as if you believe your own lies."
Wylott froze with his mouth hanging half open, obviously taken completely aback. The third Jevlenese, who had to be Estordu, was a lean, thin-faced man with a hooked nose, wearing an elaborate two-piece garment of light green embroidered with gold over a yellow shirt. He threw up his hands in shock. "Lies? I don’t understand. Why do you say that? You have been tracking the ship yourselves. Hasn’t VISAR confirmed the data?"
Broghuilio’s expression darkened. "You have insulted us," he rumbled ominously. "Are you telling us that VISAR does not corroborate what we have said?"
"I’m not disputing the data," Calazar told him. "But I would advise you to think again about your explanation for it."
Broghuilio drew himself up to his full height to face the Thuriens squarely. Evidently he was going to brazen it out. "Explain yourself, Calazar," he growled.
"But we are waiting for you to explain yourself ," Showm said from one side of Calazar. Her voice was low, little more than a whisper, but it held the tension of a tightly wound spring. Braghuilio jerked his face around to look at her, his eyes darting suspiciously from side to side as a sixth sense told him he had walked into a trap. "Let’s forget the Shapieron for a moment," Showm went on. "How long has JEVEX been falsifying its reports of Earth?"
"What?" Broghuilio’s eyes bulged. "I don’t understand. What is the-"
"How long?" Showm asked again, her voice rising suddenly to cut the air sharply. Her tone and the expressions of the other Thuriens spelled out clearly that any attempt at a denial would have been futile. The hue of Broghuilio’s face deepened to purple, but he seemed too stunned to form a reply.
"What grounds do you have for such an accusation?" Wylott demanded. "The department that conducts the surveillance is responsible to me. I consider this a personal attack."
"Evidence?" Showm uttered the word offhandedly, as if the demand were too absurd to take seriously. "Earth disarmed strategically in the second decade of its current century and has pursued peaceful coexistence ever since, but JEVEX has never mentioned it. Instead JEVEX has reported nucleonic weapons deployed in orbit, radiation projectors sited on Luna, military installations across the solar system, and a whole concoction of fictions that have never existed. Do you deny it?"
Estordu was thinking frantically as he listened. "Corrections," he blurted suddenly. "Those were corrections, not falsifications. Our sources led us to believe that Earth’s governments had discovered the surveillance, and they had conspired to conceal their warlike intentions. We instructed JEVEX to apply a correction factor by extrapolating the developments that would have taken place if the surveillance had not been discovered, and we presented these as facts in order to insure that our protective measures would not be relaxed." The stares coming from the Thuriens were openly contemptuous, and he finished lamely, "Of course, it is possible that the corrections were. . . . somewhat exaggerated unintentionally."
"So I ask you again, how long?" Showm said. "How long has this been practiced?"
"Ten, maybe twenty years. . . . I can’t remember."
"You don’t know?" She looked at Wylott. "It’s your department. Have you no records?"
"JEVEX keeps the records," Wylott replied woodenly.
"VISAR," Calazar said. "Obtain the records from JEVEX for us."
"T
his is outrageous!" Broghuilio shouted, his face turning black with anger. "The surveillance program is entrusted to us by longstanding agreement. You have no right to make such a demand. It has been negotiated."
Calazar ignored him. A few seconds later VISAR informed them, "I can’t make any sense of the response. Either the records are corrupted, or JEVEX is under a directive not to release them."
Showm did not seem surprised. "Never mind," she said, and looked back at Estordu. "Let’s give you the benefit of the doubt and say twenty years. Therefore anything reported by JEVEX before that time will not have been altered. Is that correct?"
"It might have been more," Estordu said hastily. "Twenty-five thirty, perhaps."
"Then let’s go back further than that. The Second World War on Earth ended eighty-six years ago. I have examined some of the accounts of events during that period as reported by JEVEX at the time. Let me give you some examples. According to JEVEX, the cities of Hamburg, Dresden, and Berlin were devastated not by conventional saturation bombing but by nuclear weapons. According to JEVEX, the Korean conflict in the 1950s escalated into a major clash of Soviet and American forces; in fact, nothing of the kind took place. Neither were tactical nuclear devices used in the Middle East wars of the ‘60s and ‘70s, nor was there an outbreak of Sino-Soviet hostilities in the 1990s." Showm’s voice became icy as she concluded, "And neither was the Shapieron taken into captivity by a United States military garrison on Ganymede. The United States has never had a military garrison on Ganymede."
Estordu had no answer. Wylott remained immobile, staring straight in front of himself. Broghuilio seemed to swell with indignation. "We asked for evidence! " he thundered. "That is not evidence. Those are allegations. Where is your proof? Where are your witnesses? Where is your justification for this intolerable behavior?"
"I’ll take it," Heller said, rising to her feet beside Caldwell. There was no way she was going to let him beat her to it this time. From where Hunt was sitting nothing appeared to change, but the way the three Jevlenese heads snapped around to gape at her left no doubt that VISAR had suddenly put her on stage.
Before any of them could say anything, Calazar spoke. "Allow me to introduce somebody who might satisfy your requirement- Karen Heller, Special Envoy to Thurien from the State Department of the United States."
Estordu’s face had turned white, and Wylott’s mouth was opening and closing ineffectively without producing any sound. Braghuilio was standing with his fists clenched and paroxysms of rage sweeping in visible tremors through the length of his body. "We have many witnesses," Calazar said. "Nine billion of them, in fact. But for now, a few representatives will suffice." The Jevlenese’s eyes opened wider as the remainder of the Terran delegation became visible. None of them glanced in the opposite direction, indicating that Calazar had not yet instructed VISAR to reveal Garuth and the others from the Shapieron.
Karen Heller had compiled a long list of suspicions concerning Jevlenese manipulations of events on Earth, none of which she could prove. The opportunity for bluffing the confirmation from the Jevlenese would never again be quite what it was at that moment, and she plunged ahead without giving them a second’s respite. "Ever since the Lambians were taken from Luna to Thurien after the Minervan war, they have never forgotten their rivalry with the Cerians. They have always seen Earth as a potential threat that would one day have to be eliminated. In anticipation of that day, they took advantage of their access to Ganymean sciences and devised an elaborate scheme to insure that their rival would be held in a state of backwardness and prevented from reemerging to challenge them until they had absorbed the last ounce of the knowledge and technologies that they thought would make them invincible." She was unconsciously addressing her words to Calazar and the Thuriens as if they were judge and jury, and the proceedings were a trial. They remained silent and waiting as she paused for a moment to shift to a different key.
"What is knowledge?" she asked them. "True knowledge, of reality as it is, as opposed to how it might appear to be or how one might wish it to be? What is the only system of thought that has been developed that is effective in distinguishing fact from fallacy, truth from myth, and reality from delusion?" She paused again for a second and then exclaimed, "Science! All the truths that we know , as opposed to beliefs which some choose blindly to adopt as if the strength of their convictions could affect facts, have been revealed by the rational processes of applied scientific method. Science alone yields a basis for the formulation of beliefs whose validity can be proved because they predict results that can be tested. And yet . . ." Her voice fell, and she turned her head to include the Terrans sitting around her. "And yet, for thousands of years the races of Earth clung persistently to their cults, superstitions, irrational dogmas, and impotent idols. They refused to accept what their eyes alone should have told them-that the magical and mystical forces in which they trusted and which they aspired to command were fictions, barren in their yield of results, powerless in prediction, and devoid of useful application. In a word, they were worthless , which of course made any consequences harmless. And this, from the Lambian, or Jevlenese, viewpoint, constituted a remarkably convenient situation. It was too convenient to be just a coincidence." Heller turned her head to look coldly at the Jevlenese. "But we know that it was not merely a coincidence. Far from it."
Danchekker turned an astonished face to Hunt, leaned closer, and whispered, "How extraordinary! I’d never have believed I’d hear her make a speech like that."
"I’d never have believed it, either," Hunt muttered. "What have you been doing to her?"
Still looking at the Jevlenese, Heller went on, "We know that the early beliefs in the supernatural were established by miracle workers whom you recruited and trained, and injected as agents to found and popularize mass movements and countercultures based on myth, and to undermine and discredit any tendencies toward the emergence of the rational systems of thought that could lead to advanced technology, mastery over the environment, and a challenge to your position. Can you deny it?" She could read on their faces that her bluff had succeeded. They were standing rigid and unmoving, too numbed with shock to respond. Feeling more confident, Heller looked over at the Thuriens and resumed, "The superstitions and religions of Earth’s early cultures were carefully contrived and implanted. The beliefs of the Babylonians, the Mayas, the ancient Egyptians, and the early Chinese, for example, were based on notions of the supernatural, magic, legend, and folklore, to sap them of any potential for developing logical methods of thought. The civilizations that grew upon those foundations built cities, developed arts and agriculture, and constructed ships and simple machines, but they never evolved the sciences that could have unlocked true power on any significant scale. They were harmless."
Low mutterings and murmurs were rippling among the Thuriens as some of them only began to realize for the first time the full extent of what the Terrans had uncovered. "And what of Earth’s later history?" Calazar asked, mainly for the benefit of those Thuriens who had not been as involved in everything as he.
"The same pattern traces through to modern times," Heller replied. "The saints and apparitions who created legends by conveying messages and performing miracles were agents sent from Jevlen to reinforce and reassure. The cults and movements that perpetuated beliefs in spiritualism and the occult, in paranormal sciences and other such nonsenses that were in vogue in Europe and North America in the nineteenth century, were manufactured in an attempt to dilute the progress of true science and reason. And even in the twentieth century, the so-called popular reactions against science, technology, positive economic growth, nuclear energy, and the like were in fact carefully orchestrated."
"Your answer?" Calazar demanded curtly, staring at Broghuilio.
Broghuilio folded his arms, drew a long breath, and turned slowly to face directly toward where Heller was standing. He seemed to have recomposed himself and was apparently far from conceding defeat yet. He glared defiantly at the Terra
ns for a few seconds and then turned his head toward Calazar. "Yes, it was so. The facts are as stated. The motive, however, was not as described. Only a Terran mind could conceive of such motives. They are projecting into us their own evils." He threw out an arm to point at the Terrans accusingly. "You know the history of their planet, Calazar. All the violence and bloodthirstiness that destroyed Minerva is preserved today on Earth. I do not have to repeat to you their unending history of quarrels, wars, revolutions, and killing. And that, mark you, was despite our efforts to contain them! Yes, we planted agents to steer them away from the sciences and from reason. Do you blame us? Can you imagine the holocaust that would be sweeping across the Galaxy today if they had been allowed to return into space tens of thousands of years ago? Can you imagine the threat that it would have posed to you as well as to us?" He looked again at where the Terrans were sitting, and scowled distastefully. "They are primitives. Insane! They always will be. We kept their planet backward for the same reason that we would not give fire to children-to protect them as well as ourselves, and you too. We would do the same again. I have no apologies to offer."
"Your actions betray your words," Frenua Showm retorted. "If you believed that you had pacified a warlike planet, you would have been proud of the achievement. You would not have concealed the fact. But you did the opposite. You presented a falsified picture of Earth that showed it as warlike when in fact it was moving in exactly the direction that you should have considered desirable. You successfully delayed its advancement until its Minervan inheritance had been diluted sufficiently for it to advance wisely. But not only did you conceal that fact, you distorted it. How do you explain that?"
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