The Gentle Giants of Ganymede g-2

by James P. Hogan

  "I'm Vic Hunt," he called to the crowd in a loud voice. "I have traveled with these people all the way from Jupiter. This is Garuth, commander of the Ganymean ship. He and his companions have come to meet you all personally and at their own request. Let's make them feel at home."

  Still the people seemed to shrink back. Some seemed to want to make a welcoming gesture, but everybody was waiting for somebody else to take the first step. And then a boy at the front of the crowd wrenched his hand free from his mother's, marched forward and confronted Garuth's towering frame boldly. Wearing stout mountain boots below a pair of alpine-style leather shorts, he was about twelve years old with a tangle of fair hair and a face covered with freckles. His mother started forward instinctively, but the man standing next to her restrained her with his arm.

  "I don't care about them, Mr. Garuth," the boy declared loudly. "I wanna shake your hand." With that he confidently extended his arm upward. The Giant stooped, his face contorting into an expression that could only be a smile, grasped the hand and shook it warmly. The tension in the crowd evaporated and they began surging forward jubilantly.

  Hunt looked around and saw that the scene had suddenly transformed itself. In one place a Ganymean was posing with an arm around the shoulders of a laughing middle-aged woman while her husband took a photograph; in another, a Giant was accepting a proffered cup of coffee while behind him a third was looking down dubiously at a persistent, tail-wagging Alsatian dog that one family had brought along. After patting it experimentally a few times, the Giant squatted down and began ruffling its fur, to be rewarded by a frenzy of licks on the tip of his long, tapering face.

  Hunt lit a cigarette and sauntered across to join the Swiss police chief, who was mopping copious perspiration from his brow with a pocket handkerchief.

  "There--it didn't go badly at all, Heinrich," he said. "Told you there was nothing to worry about."

  "Maybe, Dr.'unt," Heinrich answered, still not sounding too happy. "All ze same, I will be much ze'appier when we can,'ow you say in ze America. . .'get ze'ell out of'ere'."

  Hunt spent a couple more days in the Earthmen sector of Ganyville helping the liaison bureau get organized and taking his own share of rest and relaxation. Then, having voted himself a spell of special leave for conduct which, he was sure, was well beyond the call of duty, he collected Yvonne, hitched them both a ride into Geneva on one of the still-shuttling VTOL jets, and embarked on a spree in the city. Three days later they tumbled out of an eastbound groundcar that stopped on the main highway running along the perimeter, slightly disheveled, distinctly unsteady on their feet and deliriously happy.

  By that time--over a full week since the day the Shapieron had landed--the liaison bureau had got things fully under control and parties of Ganymeans were already beginning to leave to make visits and attend conferences all over the world. Some groups, in fact, had been gone for some time and news reports were already coming in on how they were faring.

  Small parties of eight-foot-tall aliens, together with their ever-vigilant police escorts, had become accepted, if not yet commonplace, sights in Times Square, Red Square, Trafalgar Square and the Champs-Elysйes. They had listened appreciatively to a Beethoven concert in Boston, toured the London Zoo with a mixture of awe and horror, attended lavish receptions in Buenos Aires, Canberra, Cape Town and Washington, D.C., and paid their respects at the Vatican. In Peking their culture had been complimented as the ultimate exemplification of the communist ideal, in New York as that of the democratic ideal, and in Stockholm as that of the liberal ideal. And everywhere the crowds thronged to greet them.

  The reports from around the globe told of the aliens' total amazement at the variety of life, color, vitality and exuberance that they saw all around them wherever they went. Everybody on Earth, they said, seemed to be in a hurry to live a whole lifetime each day, as if they feared there might not be sufficient hours in a mortal span to accommodate all the things to be seen and done. The Minervan cities had been bigger in terms of engineering constructions and architecture, but had offered nothing that compared even remotely with the variety, energy and sheer zest for living that teemed day and night in the metropolises of Earth. The Minervan technology had been further advanced, but its rate of advancement was paltry compared to the stupendous mushrooming of human civilization that resulted from the hustling, bustling, restlessness exploding outward from this incredible planet.

  Speaking at a scientific conference in Berlin, a Ganymean told his audience: "The Ganymean theory of the origin of the universe describes a steady equilibrium in which matter appears, quietly acts out its appointed role, and then quietly vanishes--a slow, easy-going, evolutionary situation that goes well with our temperament and our history. Only Man could have conceived the catastrophic discontinuity of the Big Bang. I believe that when you have had an opportunity to examine our theories more closely, you will discard your Big Bang ideas. And yet I feel it singularly appropriate that Man should have formulated such a theory. You see, ladies and gentlemen, when Man visualized the cataclysmic expansion of the Big Bang Model, he was not seeing the universe at all; he was seeing himself."

  After he had been back on Earth for ten days, Hunt was contacted again by UNSA, who conveyed their hopes that he had enjoyed his leave. But some people at Houston knew him better than he thought and suggested that it might be a good idea if he began thinking about coming back.

  More to the point, UNSA had made arrangements through the bureau for a Ganymean scientific delegation to visit Navcomms Headquarters at Houston, primarily to learn more about the Lunarians. The Ganymeans had been expressing a lot of interest in Man's immediate ancestral race for some reason and, since the Lunarian investigations had been controlled from Houston and much of the work had been done there, it was the obvious place to bring them. UNSA suggested that since Hunt was due to return to Houston anyway, he could act as organizer and courier for the delegation and insure their safe arrival in Texas. Danchekker, who was also due to return to Houston to resume his duties at the Westwood Biological Institute, decided to fly with them.

  And so, at the end of his second week home, Hunt found himself in a familiar environment: the inside of a Boeing 1017 skyliner, fifty miles up over the North Atlantic and westward bound.

  Chapter Twenty

  "When I sent you off to Ganymede, I just wanted you to find out a little bit more about the guys. I didn't expect you to come back with a whole shipful of them." Gregg Caldwell chewed on his cigar and looked out across his desk with an expression that was half amusement and half feigned exasperation. Hunt, sprawled in the chair opposite, grinned and took another sip of his scotch. It was good to be back among the familiar surroundings of Navcomms HO again. The inside of Caldwell's luxurious office with its murals and one wall completely dedicated to a battery of view-screens; the panoramic view down over the rainbow towers of Houston--nothing had changed.

  "So you've got more than your money's worth, Gregg," he replied. "Not complaining, are you?"

  "Hell no. I'm not complaining. You've done another good job by the way things are shaping up. It's just that whenever I set you an assignment, things seem to have this tendency to kinda. . . get outa hand. I always end up with more than I bargained for." Caldwell removed his cigar from his teeth and inclined his head briefly. "But as you say, I'm not complaining."

  The executive director studied Hunt thoughtfully for a few seconds. "So. . . what was it like to be away from Earth for the first time?"

  "Oh, it was. . . an experience," Hunt answered automatically, but when he looked up he saw from the mischievous twinkle that danced in the eyes below the craggy brows that the question had been more than casual. He should have known. Caldwell never said or did anything without a reason.

  "Know thyself," Caldwell quoted softly. "And others too, maybe, huh?" He shrugged as if making light of the matter, but the twinkle still remained in his eyes.

  Hunt's brows knitted for a split second, and then his eyes slowly wi
dened as the cryptic message behind this turn in the conversation became clear. It took perhaps two seconds for the details to click into place in his brain. In the early days of the Lunarian investigations, just after Hunt had moved to Houston from England, his relationship with Danchekker had been caustic. Progress toward unraveling the mystery was more often than not hampered because the two scientists dissipated their energies fruitlessly in personal conflicts. But later on, in the wilderness of Luna and out in the void between Earth and Jupiter, all that had somehow been forgotten. It was then that the two scientists had begun to work in harmony, and the difficulties had crumbled before the powerful assault of their combined talents, which was what had been needed to solve the Lunarian problem. Hunt could see that clearly now. Suddenly, he also realized that this state of affairs had not come about through mere accident. He stared at Caldwell with new respect, and slowly nodded ungrudging approval.

  "Gregg," he said, in a tone of mock reproach. "You've been pulling strings again. You set us up."

  "I did?" Caldwell's voice was suitably innocent.

  "Chris and me. It was out there we began to see each other as people and learned to pool our marbles. That's what cracked the Lunarian riddle. You knew it would happen. . ." Hunt pointed an accusing finger across the desk. "That's why you did it."

  Caldwell compressed his heavy jowls momentarily into a tight-lipped grin of satisfaction. "So, you got more than your money's worth," he threw back. "Not complaining, are you?"

  "Smooth operator," Hunt complimented, raising his glass. "Okay, we've both had a good deal. That's how I think business ought to be. But now to the present and the future--what have you got lined up next?"

  Caldwell sat forward and rested his elbows on the desk. He exhaled a long stream of blue smoke. "What about this bunch of alien guys you brought back from Europe; are you still tied up most of the time with looking after them?"

  "They've been introduced over at Westwood now," Hunt told him. "They're interested in the Lunarians and particularly want to have a look at Charlie over there. Chris Danchekker is handling that side of things, which leaves me fairly free for a while."

  "Fine. What I'd like you to start giving some thought to is a preliminary overview of Ganymean science," Caldwell said. "What with this ZORAC machine of theirs and all the conferences and discussions they're having all over the place, there's more information coming across than we can handle. When all the excitement dies down there's going to be one hell of a lotta work to get through with all that. When you were coordinating the Charlie business you operated a pretty good network of channels to most of the leading scientific institutions and establishments around the world. I'd like you to use those channels again to make a start at cataloging and evaluating everything that's new, especially things that could be of particular use to UNSA--like their gravitics. We may find we want to revise a lot of our own research programs in light of what these big guys have got to tell us. Now seems as good a time as any to begin."

  "The group stays intact for a while then?" Hunt guessed, referring to the team that he had headed during the Lunarian investigations and which had continued working under the supervision of his deputy, mainly to tidy up the unresolved details, during his time on Ganymede.

  "Yep." Caldwell nodded. "The way they work seems set up for the job. Have you said hello to them yet?"

  Hunt shook his head. "Only got back this morning. I came straight on here."

  "Do that then," Caldwell said. "There are probably a lot of old friends around here that you want to see. Take the rest of this week to settle in again. Then make a start on what we just talked about on Monday. Okay?"

  "Okay. The first thing I'll do is go see the group and give them an idea of what our next job's going to be. I think they'll like it. Who knows . . . they might even have half of it organized for me by Monday if they start thinking about it." He cocked an inquiring eye at Caldwell. "Or is that what you figure you pay me to do?"

  "I pay you to think smart," Caldwell grunted. "That's called delegation. If you wanna delegate too, that's what I call thinking smart. Do it."

  Hunt spent the rest of that day with his own staff, familiarizing himself with some of the fine points of how they had been getting on--he had kept in touch with them almost daily for the general things--and outlining for them his recent directive from Caldwell. After that there was no getting away; they quizzed him for hours about every scrap of information that he had managed to absorb on Ganymean scientific theory and technology, kept him talking all through lunch, and succeeded in extracting a commitment from him to arrange for a Ganymean scientist or two to come and give them an intensive teach-in. At least, he reflected as he finally, left for home at nine o'clock that night, he was not going to have any problems with motivation there.

  Next morning he made a point of avoiding that part of Navcomms HQ building that contained his own offices and started his day by paying a call on another old friend of his--Don Maddson, head of the linguistics section. It was Don's team, working in cooperation with several universities and research institutes all over the world, that had played one of the most important roles in the Lunarian saga by untangling the riddle of the Lunarian language, using documents found on Charlie's person and, later, a library of microdot texts from the remains of a Lunarian base that had come to light near Tycho, Without the translations, it would never have been possible even to prove conclusively that the Lunanans and the Ganymeans had come from the same planet.

  Hunt stopped outside the door of Maddson's office, knocked lightly and entered without waiting for a reply. Maddson was sitting behind his desk studying a sheet from a stack of the innumerable pieces of paper without which his office would never have seemed complete. He glanced up, stared incredulously for a second, and then his face split into a broad ear-to-ear smile.

  "Vic! What the. . ." He half rose from his chair and began pumping Hunt's proffered hand vigorously. "It's great to see ya. I knew you were back on Earth but nobody told me you were Stateside yet. . ." He beckoned Hunt toward an easy chair on the other side of the desk. "Sit down, sit down. When did you get in?"

  "Yesterday morning," Hunt replied, settling himself comfortably. "I had to see Gregg and then I got tied up completely with the Group L bunch. Gregg wants us to start thinking about writing a compendium of Ganymean science. They're all dead keen to go on it. . . kept me talking till heavens knows what time last night in the Ocean Bar."

  "Ganymeans, eh?" Maddson grinned. "I thought maybe you'd have brought us one back."

  "There's a load of'em over at Westwood with Chris Danchekker right now."

  "Yeah. I know about that. They're due to pay us a call here later. Everybody around here's getting keyed up with the suspense. They can't wait." Maddson sat back in his chair and regarded Hunt over interlaced fingers for a few seconds. At last he shook his head. "Well, I dunno where to start, Vic. It's been all this time . . . there are so many questions . . . I guess there's enough to keep us talking all day, huh? Or maybe you're getting tired of people asking all the same things all the time, over and over?"

  "Not at all," Hunt said. "But why don't we save all that for lunch? Maybe some of the others might like to join us and then I'll only need to say it all to everybody once; otherwise I might end up getting tired of it, and that wouldn't do."

  "Great idea," Maddson agreed. "We'll reserve the topic for lunch. In the meantime, have a guess what we're into now?"

  "Who?"

  "Us. . . the section. . . Linguistics."

  "What?"

  Maddson took a deep breath, stared Hunt straight in the eye and proceeded to deliver a string of utterly meaningless syllables in a deep, guttural voice. Then he sat back and beamed proudly, his expression inviting Hunt to accept the implied challenge.

  "What the hell was that all about?" Hunt asked, as if doubting his own ears.

  "Even you don't know?"

  "Why should I?"

  Maddson was evidently enjoying himself. "That, m
y friend, was Ganymean," he said.

  "Ganymean?"

  "Ganymean!"

  Hunt stared at him in astonishment. "How in God's name did you learn that?"

  Maddson waited a moment longer to make the most of Hunt's surprise, then gestured toward the display unit standing on one side of his desk.

  "We've got ourselves a channel through to ZORAC," he said. "There's been a pretty fantastic demand for access into it ever since it was hooked into the Earthnet, just as you'd imagine. But being UNSA we qualify for high priority. That sure is one hell of a machine."

  Hunt was duly impressed. "So, ZORAC's been teaching you Ganymean, eh," he said. "It fits. I should have guessed you wouldn't let a chance like that slip by."

  "It's an interesting language," Maddson commented. "It's obviously matured over a long period of time and been rationalized extensively--hardly any irregular forms or ambiguities at all. Actually, it's pretty straightforward to learn structurewise, but the pitch and vocal inflections don't come naturally to a human. That's the most difficult part." He made a throwing-away motion in the air. "It's only of academic interest I guess. . . but as you say, a chance we couldn't resist."

  "How about the Lunarian texts from Tycho," Hunt asked. "Been making progress on the rest of those too?"

  "You bet." Maddson waved toward the piles of papers covering the desk and the table standing against the wall on one side of his office. "We've been pretty busy here all around."