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  As the Thuriens saw things, a misguided worldview resulting from the Lunarians’ predatorial origins had been the cause of the defects that drove them to the holocaust of Minerva. It wasn’t so much that the limited availability of resources caused humans to fight over them, as most Terran conventional wisdom supposed; rather, the instinct to fight over anything led to the conclusion that what was fought over had to be worth it, in other words, of value, and hence in scarce supply.

  But once the Lunarians absorbed the Ganymean comprehension that the resources of the universe were infinite in any sense that mattered, all that would be changed. Unrestricted assimilation into the Thurien culture and access to all the bounties that it had to offer would allay aggression, relieve insecurities and fears, curb the urge for domination and conquest, and build in their place a benign, homogeneous society founded on grateful appreciation. Freed, like the Thuriens, from want, doubt, and drudgery, the Jevlenese would unlock the qualities that were dormant inside them like the potential waiting to be expressed in a seed. No longer fettered by time or space, nor constrained to the things that one mere planet had to offer, they would radiate outward in a thousand life-styles spread across as many worlds to complete the upward struggle that had begun long before in Earth’s primeval oceans, and thence become whatever they were capable of.

  At least, that was the way the Thuriens had imagined it would be. But in all those millennia the Thuriens had learned less about human perversity than Garuth, former commander of the Ganymean scientific mission ship Shapieron, from ancient Minerva, had in six months on Earth.

  For self-esteem could only be earned, not given. Dependence bred feelings of inadequacy and resentment. The results were apathy, envy, surliness, and hate.

  The more ambitious minority who gained control of Jevlenese affairs had lied, schemed, and eventually gained control of the surveillance operation set up by the Thuriens for monitoring developments on Earth. They had intervened covertly to keep Earth backward while they built up a secret military capability, and almost succeeded in a plan that would have enabled them to overthrow the Thuriens. Although Thurien technology had been indispensable in thwarting the Jevlenese, what had actually saved the situation had been the Thuriens’ decision to open direct contact with the Terrans-when the Shapieron’s story from Earth contradicted the Jevlenese version-and thus involve other minds capable of working at comparable depths of deviousness.

  But the circumstances of the greater mass of Jevlenese were very different from those of the minority who rose to take charge. For them, the society that grew under the Thurien guidance became a protective incubator cocooning them until the grave. Smothered by largesse to the point where nothing they did or didn’t do could make any difference that mattered to their lives, they abandoned control of their affairs to impenetrable layers of nameless administrators and their computers, and either sank into lethargy or escaped, into empty social rituals of acting out roles that no longer signified anything, or into delusion.

  Under the collective name JEVEX-the processing and networking totality serving the system of Jevlenese-controlled worlds-the computers ran the factories and farms, mining and processing, manufacturing, distribution, transportation, and communications, along with all the monitoring to keep track of what was going on. JEVEX kept the records, stocked the warehouses, scheduled the repairs; it directed the robots that built the plants, serviced the machines, delivered the groceries, and hauled the trash. And it created the dreams into which the people escaped from a system that didn’t require them to be people anymore.

  And that, the Thurien and Terran leaders had concluded after the three-day Pseudowar that ended the self-proclaimed Jevlenese Federation, had been the problem. JEVEX had been modeled on the larger and more powerful Thurien complex, VISAR, which, while equipping JEVEX admirably for catering to Ganymean temperaments and needs, had done nothing to satisfy the very human compulsions to seek challenge and to compete.

  So, the thinking had gone, the key to remedying the situation would be to switch off all but JEVEX’s essential services for a time. By compelling the Jevlenese to take charge of their own affairs-and at the same time leaving them less opportunity for making mischief-they would stimulate them into learning to become human again. And the Ganyrneans from the Shapieron had agreed gamely to oversee and administer the rehabilitation program with its period of probationary decomputerization.

  Garuth was only now beginning to realize what they had taken on. He sat with Shilohin, a female Ganymean who had been the mission’s chief scientist, in his office in the Planetary Administration Center on Jevlen, the former headquarters of the local Jevlenese government at a city called Shiban. Before them an image floated, seemingly hanging in midair in the room. It was being transmitted from Barusi, another city situated several thousand miles away on the coast of one of Jevlen’s southern continents, with three towers of its central composition rising more than a mile into the pale green sky. But the scene that Garuth and Shilohin were watching was set against a background of drabness, the buildings shabby and most of the machines idle. A lot of the populace had moved into shanty camps thrown up around the city’s outskirts, where the simpler routines of living that they had been obliged to revert to were more easily organized-even an act like collecting and preparing food could turn out to be unexpectedly complicated when removed from the context of what had been a totally automatic, self-adapting environment.

  The view, taken from the Civic Center housing the Ganymean prefect and his staff responsible for the Barusi district, looked down over the tiered expanse of Sammet Square. A procession of Jevlenese numbering several thousand was spilling in from an avenue leading east out of the city, adding to a comparable number who had been gathering there through the afternoon. Virtually all of them had contrived to be wearing something of purple, and the bands spread at intervals through the parade came to the front as they entered, massing behind banners carrying the device of a purple spiral in a black circle on a red ground.

  The focus of all the activity was a figure waiting behind the speaker’s rostrum atop the steps facing the square, backed by a huge, hanging sign showing the purple spiral. As soon as the noise of the bands ceased, he launched into his harangue. His name was Ayultha. He wore a dark blue tunic with a purple cloak, and his face had a fierce, intense look, accentuated by heavy, dark brows and a short beard, which he directed this way and that at the crowd with sharp motions of his head as he spoke, punctuating his words with abrupt gestures of appeal and frequent drivings of a fist into the other palm. His amplified voice boomed across the sea of eager faces to sustained outbursts of roared approval.

  “Was it not we who believed in the Ganymeans? Was it not we who trusted them and came with them across light-years of space, willing to join their culture and learn their ways? It was the Terrans who spurned their offer and chose to go their own way.” A pause, with appealing looks to left and right, and a dramatic lowering of voice at the crucial point. “Perhaps the Cerians saw more even in those early days than we credited them for.” A sudden rise to crescendo. “It was not them who were betrayed!”

  Cries of outrage; shakings of fists. The speaker waited, glaring, until the noise abated.

  “I say again, betrayed! There was an agreement-a solemn covenant honored by us not just through a hundred years, not through centuries, even, but for millennia!” He was referring to the surveillance watch that had been kept over the developing Earth, which the Thuriens had entrusted to the Jevlenese. “We performed our duties faithfully. We fulfilled our obligation.” Another pause. Expectations were almost audible with the buildup of tension. Then, the explosive release: “The Ganymeans broke that covenant!”

  Thunderous ovation, unfurlings of banners, waves of upthrust hands.

  In the foreground to one side of the image, watching from inside the Barusi Civic Center, stood several more Ganymeans: angular, gray-hued, eight-foot-tall figures, with lengthened, narrowish heads compared to the vaulte
d human cranium, and protruding lower faces with skulls elongated behind. The nearest, whose name was Monchar, swung around to look out at the two Ganymeans watching from Shiban. Monchar had been second-in-command of the Shapieron mission that Garuth had led.

  “But he’s completely distorting what happened!” Monchar protested. “Yes, in the end the Thuriens opened a dialogue with Earth directly. But that was only after things they knew to be fact contradicted what the Jevlenese were telling them. The Jevlenese had been lying for centuries. They systematically falsified their reporting!”

  “The Thuriens were being betrayed long before they thought to question anything,” one of the other Ganymeans said.

  Monchar motioned with an arm to indicate the crowd outside. “But those people down there know all this. They have been acquainted with the facts. How can they react like this to what he’s telling them? Don’t they possess any critical faculties at all?”

  “I think we’re still a long way from comprehending the human ability to see and hear what they want to,” another Ganymean replied. “Facts don’t come into it.”

  Below, Ayultha was thundering, “But merely keeping bad faith was not enough. They deceived us by intercepting the Shapieron and bringing it secretly to Thurien after it left Earth, and then overwhelmed us through trickery.”

  “But they would have destroyed the Shapieron!” Monchar exclaimed, aghast. “If it weren’t for the Thuriens, we would all have been killed.” He turned back to look at Garuth again. “What are we supposed to do? They change the past to what they think it should have been, and then remember it as having happened. They can’t distinguish their myths from reality.”

  Beside Garuth, Shiohin shook her head. Even a year after meeting them, she was still bewildered by the politics of these strange, pink, brown, yellow, and black, aggressively inclined, alien dwarves. “Yet they’re human,” she said. “We got to know many humans well while we were on Earth. They can be excitable, I agree, but they’re not irrational. We know that.”

  “They can accept reason or not as it suits them,” Monchar said. In the square, Ayultha shouted, “And now they use the disruption caused by their own trickery as a pretext to impose this alien rule upon us, violating the most fundamental of our rights: the right of any people to determine their own affairs. They try to tell us that we would be unable to function without them. But we functioned well enough before JEVEX was withdrawn. And who withdrew JEVEX? They did themselves! So was not this whole situation planned and contrived with the Terrans all along, because they-they who break their covenant; they who deceive and betray; they who use trickery to impose themselves-they saw the Jevlenese Federation as a threat… A threat because of anything we had threatened? No! Because of anything we had done? No! But because we had committed no other crime than to exist!”

  At that moment, a group to one side of the crowd suddenly tore off their purple garments, produced green sashes that they had concealed about them, and began waving them as they broke into some kind of chant. Some of the purple-wearers who were nearest began jostling them and grabbing at the sashes. Squads of Barusi police who were lining the square waded in and made for the trouble spot, and a general scuffle broke out.

  In Shiban, Garuth stared at the scene in consternation. He had watched scenes like this on old Terran newsfilms during the time the Shapieron was on Earth and, more recently, on numerous occasions after taking up his present appointment, in the faint hope of getting some guidance on how to deal with the situations that had been arising on Jevlen. But he was at a loss… And trusting to the Jevlenese police and civic authorities to handle it wasn’t any answer. Human though they might be, it had already become clear that their loyalty was lukewarm at best; and in any case, initiative wasn’t one of their greater strengths.

  “There,” Monchar pronounced, watching. “Look, it’s started. I don’t understand it. Can they be so irrational? What good to anybody can come from it?”

  As the unrest spread, Garuth watched, then turned to Shilohin. “If this kind of thing starts breaking out all over Jevlen, people are going to get hurt,” he murmured. “Maybe killed. We couldn’t deal with it. It would need a different kind of response.”

  He meant with force-or the credible threat of being able to resort to force if necessary. That would mean replacing the Ganymeans with a Terran military occupation, since Ganymeans were psychologically unsuited to applying that kind of solution. Garuth didn’t like it any more than another of his kind would have; but enough history had shown that it was the only way to contain humans once they started running amok.

  Shilohin thought silently for a while. “Suppose it isn’t just irrationality?” she said at last. “Suppose it’s precisely what somebody wants?”

  “Who? Surely it couldn’t be in the interests of any of the Jevlenese,” Garuth replied.

  “I don’t think half the Jevlenese are capable of knowing what’s in their interests,” Shulohin said.

  “JPC rejected such a policy when it was proposed,” Garuth pointed out.

  “And now some of the Terran members are urging them to change their minds.”

  The Joint Policy Council, consisting of both Thuriens and Terrans, had been established following the Pseudowar and the collapse of the Jevlenese Federation to formulate the program that Garuth was attempting to implement. At that time, some of the Terran representatives, particularly from the West, had predicted problems of the kind that were now appearing and proposed setting up a Terran security force on Jevlen for Garuth to be able to call upon. JPC, however, heady with the euphoria of the moment and swayed by Thurien ideals, had turned the suggestion down. Garuth was beginning to worry that if demonstrations of the kind now breaking out were to get sufficiently out of hand, JPC, instead of merely installing an auxiliary force to supplement the Ganymean presence as had first been proposed, would order the Ganymeans to be replaced completely.

  And if that happened, all their work on trying to understand the Jevlenese problem would probably have been in vain, just when it seemed that they were onto something important. For Garuth was convinced that there was more to account for in the Jevlenese condition than just apathy and reality-withdrawal caused by overdependence on JEVEX. Something more serious was going on, and had been for a long time. Something about JEVEX had been sending the Jevlenese insane.

  Garuth slumped back in his chair wearily. “Fortunately, we do have some friends in political circles on Earth,” he said. “Perhaps we can find out from them what’s happening.”

  “I’m not so sure it’s their political people that we should be going to,” Shilohin answered in a distant voice.

  “No?”

  Shilohin shook her head. “Their affairs are so convoluted that none of us understand them. I was thinking, more, of somebody whom we know we can communicate with and trust-in fact, one of the very first of the Terrans that we met.”

  Garuth sat back, his face thoughtful and his eyes illuminated suddenly by a questioning light that seemed to ask why the idea had not occurred to him sooner. “You mean direct? We just forget about ‘proper channels’ and all that official business in between?”

  Shilohin shrugged. “Why not? It’s what he’d do.”

  “Hmm… And he does know them better Garuth thought about it, then looked at Shilohin and grinned. It was the first time she had seen him smile all day.

  “As you said yourself, people might start getting killed if we don’t,” she said. “We wouldn’t want to risk that.”

  “Of course not.” Garuth raised his voice slightly and addressed the computer-control intelligence built into the Shapieron. “ZORAC.”

  “Commander?”

  With JEVEX suspended, ZORAC had been coupled into the planetary net to monitor its operations and provide a connection to the Thuriens’ VISAR system.

  “Connect a channel into Earthnet for us, right away,” Garuth instructed.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Her name was Gina Marin. She was from Seattl
e, and she wrote books.

  “What kind?” Hunt asked. “Anything I might have read?”

  Gina pulled a face. “If only you knew how tired writers get of hearing that question.”

  He shrugged unapologetically. “It comes naturally. What else are we supposed to say?”

  “Not any blockbusters that you’d know as household names,” she told him candidly. Then she sighed. “I guess I have a habit of getting into those controversial things where whatever line you take will upset somebody.” She managed not to sound very remorseful about it. “Taking sides probably isn’t the smart thing to do if you want to be popular.” She shrugged. “But those are the things that make life interesting.

  Hunt grinned faintly. “Isn’t there a German proverb about people preferring a popular myth to an unpopular truth?”

  “Right. You’ve got it. Exactly.”

  They were sitting drinking coffee in the lounge of his apartment, she on a couch by the picture window, he sprawled in the leather recliner by the fireplace. Alongside his recliner was the cluttered surface that served as a desk, elbow-distance bookshelf, breakfast bar, and workbench for a partly dismantled device of peculiar design and fabrication, which he had informed her was from the innards of a Ganymean gravitic communications modulator. The rest of the room was a casual assortment of easygoing bachelordom mixed with the trappings of a theoretical scientist’s workplace. A framed photograph of Hunt with a couple of grinning colleagues and a group of Ganymeans posing in front of a backdrop of the Shapieron was propped on top of the frame of a four-foot wallscreen showing a contour plot of some kind of three-dimensional wave function; a tweed jacket, necktie, and bathrobe hung all together on a cloakroom hook fixed to the endpiece of a set of overloaded bookshelves; there was a reproduction of a Beethoven symphonic score affixed to the wall next to several feet of a program listing hanging above a pile of American Physical Society journals.