Echoes of an Alien Sky

by James P. Hogan

  "I think maybe I hear a little of Jarnor Reen speaking here," Lorili said.

  Kyal nodded candidly. "Very likely so. He used to say that the young and the restless would spend their energies better by getting off the planet and into space. That probably had a lot to do with why he pushed so strongly for the Earth exploration mission."

  "It could be a way of getting the awkward ones out of the way, too," Lorili observed. Kyal wasn't sure how serious she was being. But she could certainly give as well as she got. She glanced across as if checking his reaction. "Do you not think that their way would permit better rewarding of ability and talent to those who deserved it?"

  Kyal made a face. "How can anyone be sure? . . . Well, we know what they said. But the ones who received the rewards would have more control over what people were told. And of course they would say that. But to those who didn't benefit from any rewards, it would look like exploitation by a parasitical minority, wouldn't it? So you get the periodic crises, wars, and revolutions. On Venus we've got the opposite. We're raised to believe that the most valuable way you can use your talent is serving the community. I don't think that's such a bad system."

  Lorili sniffed, evidently not conceding anything, but at the same time not needing to take it further at that point either. "Do you think you're perhaps being a bit unduly cynical?" she said.

  Kyal replied in a way that accepted the truce."It all depends on how you conjugate the verb. I am healthily skeptical; you are suspiciously cynical; he is psychotically paranoid." Lorili laughed delightedly and squeezed her arm through his. "Healthily skeptical is what seekers after reliable knowledge are supposed to be," Kyal pointed out.

  A tone sounded from his phone. He took it from his shirt pocket and answered. It was Borgan Casselo, calling from orbit aboard Explorer 6. "Master Reen. How are things down there? To your satisfaction, I trust?"

  "I'm honored that you should concern yourself. Its proving very welcome after the voyage."

  "Where are you now?"

  "In the western region of Europe—the city that was called Paris. There's lots to think about here."

  "I have been there. I understand your sentiments." Casselo pause for an instant. "Kyal, I've heard from Aluam Brysek at Triagon. He confirms that there are large underground spaces there as the scans indicated. But it seems you were right. They don't appear to be connected with power generation. I want to go out there and see things for myself. We have a transport leaving Explorer 6 for Luna tomorrow. If you and Fellow Zeestran can arrange your schedule to catch a shuttle up from Rhombus, we'll be able to travel on to Triagon together."

  "He's elsewhere just at present, but I'll call him right away and see if we can coordinate things."

  "It shouldn't be a problem. Shuttles up from Rhombus are pretty frequent. I can have someone from the staff here take care of it if you like."

  "I'm sure your people have other valuable work to get on with," Kyal said. "It will be my privilege."

  Vereth was waiting again to meet Kyal and Lorili when they arrived at Rhombus. Yorim's group had also returned from the Mediterranean coast. The vessel that would take them on to Luna was already docked at Explorer 6,and they were on a tight schedule to make the shuttle up. In fact its liftoff was being held at Sherven's request. Vereth had a site car waiting to rush Kyal straight across from the airfield to the launch service area. Lorili went with them to see him off. Yorim was already there, waiting.

  Kyal just about had time to say, "Well, so you two meet face-to-face finally. Lorili, this is Fellow Zeestram. Yorim, Madam Hilivar."

  "Hello, Yorim. Delighted."

  "Lorili. My pleasure."

  "Gentlemen, my apologies but they are waiting to close the door," Vereth interjected anxiously.

  Kyal and Lorili looked at each other for a second or two, and on the same impulse hugged each other hurriedly—and awkwardly; Kyal was holding his bag.

  "Stay in touch," Kyal murmured.

  "Of course I will."

  "And thank you for all your help, Vereth," Kyal said as he turned to follow Yorim through the gate to where a van was waiting to take them out to the pad.

  "My privilege."

  Lorili watched the van cross the open boundary area and waved after it halted, even though she couldn't make out their figures in the clutter of gantries and service structures around the nose of the shuttle protruding from its silo. As soon as the van had cleared the blast zone, the shuttle slid upward amid a wreath of flame accompanied by a roar the rolled over the base, and disappeared skyward balanced on a column of light.

  She turned away, finally, and saw that Vereth had been waiting a short distance back. "Can I offer you a ride back into town?" he said.

  "Oh! You're still here, Vereth. I hadn't realized. Yes. . . . Yes, that would be appreciated. Thank you."

  "My privilege."

  As they moved away through the mix of people toward the entrance outside which Vereth had parked, a lean, muscular figure with copper red hair who had followed Yorim emerged from behind a pillar on the far side of the hall, where he had been watching. The name had not been just a coincidence, Jenyn now knew. If she was here in Rhombus, she would be working somewhere in the biochemistry labs. It would be a straightforward matter to find out the rest.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Lorili felt deliciously—in her imagination she would have liked it to be outrageously—chic in a close-fitting sleeveless navy dress cut daringly low, and her black hair worn loose. The image captured the spirit of the new wave of youth, wild and independent, shaking itself free from stuffiness and suffocation.

  Jenyn was the Man of the Moment. The party was being thrown by the local chapter of the Progressives to celebrate his appointment as editor-in-chief for The Commentator, an influential Korbisanian news journal noted for its opinion columns on public affairs. The move would be a significant step forward in popularizing and advancing the Progressive political platform. All of their close friends from within the movement were there, along with numerous faces of campaign helpers from outlying areas that Lorili had not met personally before. The dance music was wild and free too, stirring them into the swaying, twirling abandon of things like the "catwalk" and the "rotary," that threw aside patterns and steps that bewildered seniors had learned for generations. A plentitude of high spirits was in evidence, of both the temperamental and the liquid kind.

  Muso, the self-appointed clown for the evening, emerged unsteadily from the throng and raised his glass in Jenyn's direction. "I drink his health. Our future commentator in The Commentator. . . . Have you got a job saved for me there, J?"

  "When I get them to add a comic-strip section," Jenyn said. Others who were nearby roared delight and approval. Lorili clung more tightly to his arm.

  "I think we should all drink a toast to Lemaril Aedua," another of the group cried out. "With ice. . . ." In the highest of Venusian traditions. "To . . . to . . . avarice and corruption!"

  "Avarice and corruption!" they chorused.

  "May they continue to serve us well," Jenyn said solemnly.

  Lemaril Aedua was the editor of a rival paper and had been Jenyn's leading rival, tipped as the front runner when word trickled around the Korbisanian publishing grapevine that the head-ed slot at The Commentator was being vacated. An outsider in Jenyn's position would not normally have ranked highly as a contender, but his case had gained enormously when Aedua's practice was exposed of buying works from contributors who agreed to giving her kickbacks in the form of a cut out of the payments they were made. It was hardly coincidental that the Progressives had been instrumental in uncovering the facts. Jenyn had exploited the politics of the situation skillfully, and his recognition as a champion of integrity and honesty was now confirmed.

  "It's unbelievable that it could happen in a reputable journal?" Lorili heard somebody say behind her. "Scandalous. What did Aedua have to say when it came out?"

  "Oh, she denied it. Totally brazen. But testimonials were produced. Jenyn
will soon restore the standards there. You can count on it."

  A man approached them that Lorili recognized vaguely as being from somewhere within the trade. "You've got a great opening for your Progressives now," he said to Jenyn. "And I know that someone like you isn't going to let the chance go by. So what's first on the agenda, eh? What are you going to be pushing us for?"

  Jenyn answered without hesitating. "The widening academic entry standards by direct grant awards. Basing it on somebody's ideas of performance is too restrictive. Who knows how much ability is squandered as a consequence?"

  "Hm. Of course, it would extend your base of popular support a lot as well, now, wouldn't it?"

  "Yes, there is that too," Jenyn agreed evenly.

  "But won't it lower standards in the long run? Open positions to bribery and favoritism?"

  Lorili had heard Jenyn answer this one many times. "It is anyway, by those who decide what qualifies as merit. So the process is hidden." Jenyn replied. "This way things will be out in the open, where they can be controlled by responsible authorities."

  "We need to go electronic, Jenyn," one of the campaign workers urged, joining them. "Become a voice all over Venus, not just on pages that intellectuals read."

  Jenyn had in fact been thinking in just this direction. However, he didn't involve himself personally in technical matters. "Do you have any ideas on how to go about something like that?" he asked the speaker.

  "It's what I do. I've got lots of ideas."

  "Good ones too," somebody threw in.

  Jenyn eyed him for a second or two. Let's talk," he said. "But this isn't the time. Call me in the next day or so. What's your name?"

  "Horan Ikles."

  "Ikles," Jenyn repeated, nodded, as if committing it to memory. "We should try to develop a dialog with the scientists involved in the Terran discoveries," he said, addressing Ikles but speaking loudly enough to take in the company in general. "They use electronic media all the time. It will spread everywhere eventually. The history of Earth that's starting to unfold is fascinating. It was a world of Progressive ideas."

  "I read somewhere that they had a much greater diversity of languages than we do," a young woman the other side of Jenyn said.

  "Jenyn is broadening his study of Terran languages, precisely to become better acquainted with their ideas," Lorili told her.

  "That's wonderful!"

  "You have to go to the original sources," Jenyn said.

  Lorili thought he looked resplendent and debonair in a semi-formal evening suit, with his rugged features and red hair. Life for her had taken some exciting turns recently. She could count on a successful career ahead as a cell biologist, and had been accepted by State Institute as a research project leader. Now she was acquiring some interesting social and political connections, along with a forceful, charismatic man to add some zest to it all. The contrast with the life she had grown up knowing at home couldn't have been sharper. She was still fond of them all, and they would doubtless continue to get along well enough; but a hidden part of herself seemed to be awakening that delighted anything new and shocking. She looked at Jenyn again as he talked to the group, pretending not to notice the envious looks that she caught on the faces of one or two of her friends. He was Man of the Moment; and Lorili was Woman of the Future.

  Later in the evening they found a moment alone together, when Jenyn steered them to the buffet table to sample some of the snacks and delicacies. They were both heady and exuberant, intoxicated as much by the mood and the atmosphere as by the liquor. She sensed him looking at her thoughtfully while she ran an eye over the table's offerings. "You know, you're just what my life needs to make the image complete," he said.

  She turned her head. "Well . . . I'm glad. What else should I say?"

  He leaned closer, still looking at her. His voice fell. "This needs to be a full-time thing. I can't afford any divided loyalty."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Birds fly when they're ready. You have to move way from that house. Let's set up together. I'll show you the person you really are, and make you everything you can be. But it won't happen while half of you is still in that old world."

  "I've never heard anything so outrageous!" Lorili's tone was jocularly reproachful. Inwardly, she was thrilled. But it would have been unbecoming for a lady to seem too eager. "We'll just have to wait and see," she said. But she could read in his eyes that he knew already he had won. "Shall I get us some more drinks?"

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The central complex of the original Terran facility at Triagon consisted of several interconnected domes and superstructures hiding among a jumble of broken crags and dusty ridges. Some blobs of color had been added to the scene in the form of the huddle of portable domes and huts that the Venusians had set up adjacent to house their operations. In addition, there were a number of outlying lattice-works and dishes, which had first given rise to the idea of its having been some kind of Farside astronomical observatory. The constructions that Kyal and Yorim had been brought in to investigate were spread over a more open area designated the "South Field," extending for roughly four miles on one side of the central complex.

  After the hours that Kyal had spent studying ground and overhead shots, close-ups, and measurements, they were easily recognizable as the lander from the orbiting transport braked into the final stage of its descent. The nearest took the form of a cluster of bunkers sprouting pylons supporting finned housings and pylons capped with dome, suggestive of a large electrical research facility. Beyond, partly sunken in the surface like immense donuts surrounding towers of curious metallic contours, were two toroids braided with helically wound bands of guides and conductors that looked suspiciously like variable-phase launch boost resonators. And further out were an assortment of shapes that could have been approach guide retro arrays and point attractors. For Kyal it was like seeing some of his own speculative design sketches come to life.

  "It's like that pyramid I was on when you called," Yorim said, leaning forward to peer through on of the ports—a lunar transport surface lander didn't boast the luxury of cabin wall screens. "Parts of it look as if they could be from Dakon." That was the test ground on Venus where they had worked on experimental models of some advanced space propulsion ideas.

  "Why would they come all this way to do it?" Kyal asked.

  "Secrecy?" Casselo offered. "We know they were obsessed with it. Very likely it had some military connection. Everything did."

  Watching the large toroidal radiators flatten out as the expanse of gray desolation outside rose toward the lander put Kyal in mind of the difficulties the Terrans had caused themselves by taking the fundamental entities of physics to be point particles. Any communications physics engineer knew that an antenna has to have some physical extent in space to radiate energy. Elementary particles were ring-structured.

  Luna was substantially larger than Froile, and far closer to spherical than Froile's peculiarly elongated, knobby shape. Its surface features, pattern of deep-running cracks and fissures, and evidence of residual heat—which would have been even more when the Terrans existed—all spoke of its having been involved in the catastrophic encounters that had affected Earth. Nevertheless, the Terrans managed to see it as having been a dead body for billions of years.

  One of the attractions that had brought Venusian researchers to Luna when it was discovered that there had been a Terran presence there—mainly on Nearside—had been the prospect of its yielding artifacts and structures better preserved than anything to be found on Earth itself. And sure enough it turned out to be so. Some items were so unchanged as to look as if they had been made practically yesterday. Triagon possessed the all the facilities that would be expected for a remote research and engineering facility: accommodation and living areas; an administrative and control center, workshops and storage space; a launch area and depot building for local ground and short-range surface-hopping vehicles. Abandoned vehicles and equipment, and the nature of d
amage evident on some of the structures, testified to violence in the final days of whoever had occupied the place, and a hasty departure.

  That much had been known since the preliminary visit by the ISA survey team, and since then the existence of deeper levels as Kyal had inferred from the sonar scans had been confirmed—which was what Casselo had called him about. It turned out that more had come to light more recently still—in fact, while they were on their way from Earth and Explorer 6. Aluam Brysek, the head of the ISA crew left to carry out a more detailed exploration, updated them over hot drinks inside the largest of the huts when they had completed the greetings and introductions.