Echoes of an Alien Sky

by James P. Hogan

  The mask turned itself off, and Jenyn's face hardened. "Oh, you were busy, weren't you. Quite the little spy, eh?"

  "When rumors like that start coming around, you follow them up. Did you expect me not to care?"

  "Yes, to care about the movement, the idea, the big picture. We got a say in The Commentator. Sometimes it's what you have to do. It got the results."

  Loril stared at him incredulously. "But you lied!. What kind of better world is supposed to come out of that? A world where everything is turned into manipulated images. Where nobody can believe anything anymore. And what would you have to turn people into for it to work? A world of mindless sheep?"

  Jenyn checked the flash of meanness that had started to show, and became mocking again. "Now you're almost sounding like a trad. Just who have you been talking to, Lorili?"

  "There are just some basic values that you don't try to change. The idea was about building a better world on the old, not tearing it down."

  "Sometimes, to build a new house, you have to dig new foundations."

  "Not your kind of house, where it's all right to bend everything if it serves an immediate need. The principle has to come first."

  "Everything changes with time. Those values were appropriate to a small, struggling society in a harsh environment with limited resources. We're a growing civilization now. It can afford to be less self-sacrificing. In fact, it's going to have to learn to be. The ones who learn to compete are going to come to the top now. Those are going to be the new rules. You either play by them or go under."

  "Well, you came to a planet with the right history to learn about all that, didn't you?" Lorili said. She couldn't refrain from adding sarcastically, "Or was it because they were onto you back home? How come you're still not on the editorial board at The Commentator?"

  Jenyn was on his feet. For an instant Lorili thought he was going to strike her, but she squared to him, daring him to try it. "So what made you run here and hide?" he asked her. "Were you one of the ones who put them up to it?"

  They stood glaring at each other for several seconds. She saw the anger flaming in his eyes, and then abate gradually as he fought it under control. He could be violent and impassioned, she knew, but he was not stupid. He knew there was nothing to be gained here now, just at the moment.

  Lorili let her voice fall to defuse the tension. "I think you'd better go."

  Jenyn stared at her for a second or two longer, as if seeing it too, but unable to back down. She held her breath. Then, mercifully, he moved away, toward the door. "Think about it when you've calmed down," he said. "It wasn't a bad thing we had going. And we will again. You know I never give up."

  "Just go," she repeated.

  He opened the door, stepped through, then turned and looked back. Lorili stood staring stonily. "Why make life tough on yourself, when you could be riding with it?" He closed the door, and was gone.

  Loril swallowed and sank down into one of the chairs. She put her hands to her mouth and found that she was shaking. His ego was at stake. The only thing of importance to him now would be that he win. No other matter, nor anybody else, would be of importance. She realized that this wasn't going to go away.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  New discoveries followed quickly on lunar Farside. The heavy power generating plant that Kyal had looked for beneath the main Triagon complex was found in a subterranean extension of one of the larger outlying bunker constructions on the South Field. Tracing the distribution grid, and further study of the other structures spread out across the area, as well as their associated equipment and control rooms, confirmed the site to have been an experimental facility for developing and testing electrical space propulsion technology. Why it should have been hidden on the remote rear reaches of the Moon, permanently out of sight from Earth and conceivably defended against overflights by unwanted observation satellites, could only be left as matters better comprehended by minds schooled in Terran military mystique and paranoia.

  Opening up the newly discovered lower levels at the main part of Triagon revealed a whole, hitherto unsuspected section of the base, with access from the familiar part apparently restricted to the one steel-shuttered corridor. It was as if the two sections had served different purposes and been kept functionally separate. They were designated, accordingly, the Upper Complex and Lower Complex.

  When the exploration crew pushed to the farthermost extreme of the Lower Complex, they made a further discovery. An internal lock chamber—a standard feature of Terran lunar constructions, affording emergency isolation like bulkhead doors in a ship—led to a further, smaller extension consisting of some rooms and corridors and larger space that seemed to have been a depot for vehicles, with a ramp going up to a lock that opened to the outside. So there was indeed another entrance to the whole place that could be used in emergencies, as Kyal had speculated on the day he and Yorim arrived. Egress to the surface was concealed in a steep-sided gully in the broken terrain on the far side of a ridge running behind the main facility, which was why it hadn't been found from the outside. The extension beyond the Lower Complex was named the Rear Annexe.

  The internal lock connecting the Lower Complex to the Annexe was closed when the exploration crew found it. Testing before opening it up, however, showed hard vacuum conditions on the far side, which turned out to be due to both inner and outer doors of the surface access lock at the top of the vehicle ramp having been opened. It could only be presumed that this was how the Terrans had left it. Going through the various parts of the Rear Annexe yielded more Terran corpses, scores of them this time—sixty-eight, to be precise, male and female, including children. Unlike the corpses found earlier on the surface, there were no indications of their having died violently. They were laid out in rows in several of the rooms, transforming them into oversize, improvised morgues—as if the whole place didn't have enough of a macabre side to it already. Brysek decided not to extend the sealing and ventilating operation into the Annexe, but to leave the finds in the original conditions of lunar vacuum in which they had been discovered. The biologists would know best how they should be handled, and he didn't pretend to be a biologist.

  The size and nature of the Lower Complex, with its lavish provisioning for storage and self sufficiency, reinforced the notion of its having been a survival center. This immediately brought to mind a refuge for some kind of privileged elite from the endless and progressively more destructive Terran wars. The space had obviously been intended to accommodate far more people than the number of bodies found, and ubiquitous signs of day-to-day wear, along with the variety of clothing and personal effects found through testified that at one time the facility had been used to capacity. Its coexistence with the propulsion research installation represented by the Upper Complex and the South Field structures suggested a connection between them. The most likely conclusion seemed to be that a new, embryonic technology had been seized upon and developed to support an evacuation program involving numbers beyond the capability of the conventional chemical propulsion methods in use at the time. When the emergency had passed, the evacuees—or conceivably their descendants—had used the same means to return. Indeed, what other means could they have used, since Luna would have been incapable of supplying the fuel required for chemical rockets, even with its relatively smaller gravity well? Such an interpretation was supported by the fact that there was no trace of any vessel employing the electrical techniques that the South Field constructions pointed to, and the landing and launch area contained no other kind of functional Terran craft. The several wrecks found in the vicinity were all conventional, chemically propelled, short-range types suitable for surface ferrying.

  Walls and columns at strategic points around the interior of Triagon had charts showing the levels and floor plans. Other signs marked the entrances to certain rooms and sections. Whatever the specific details, they all carried the generic heading: "Terminus." Some documents, still readable, recovered from a crashed Terran vessel ten miles or so
out from the base yielded references to "Terminus Ground Control frequency," and a "Terminus beacon," along with some numbers that hadn't been interpreted. This led to the not unreasonable conclusion is that "Terminus" had been the facility's Terran name.

  In an endeavor to find further support for the conjecture, Brysek had, fairly early on, sent a request to the Linguistics center on Explorer 6, who were coordinating inputs from translation groups at Rhombus and in other places, for a search to be run for other references to "Terminus" in such a context. In this, the linguists had an ambiguity problem to deal with, since "terminus" was also a regular Terran word meaning "endpoint" and sometimes "railroad station," so it could be expected to appear in all kinds of places that were irrelevant. But that was all part of the job, and the task was run with as many constraints as possible to filter out wrong leads.

  One of the first responses to be flagged was from an archeological base on the western side of the northern American continent. Among the excavations of what had been identified as a Terran military space launch center, some pieces of shipping crates had been found with the word "Terminus" marked as part of the destination code. Another item came from a report detailing the investigation of an abandoned Terran base on lunar Nearside. A chart had been found that mapped the various Terran lunar sites and showed Terminus at the correct location on Farside. Interestingly, the accompanying summary description showed it a research facility only, with only the subsurface levels that formed the Upper Complex. There was no indication of the extensive Lower Complex, which from engineering considerations and the general layout could not have been excavated later. It all added to the impression of secrecy and deception at work. Whatever had gone one at Terminus had not been the world in general to know about.

  After all the jaunting out from the main base area in open surface buggies, and poking around among metal structures and concrete foundations, Kyal was getting to feel quite at home, finally, in a surface and extra-vehicular suit. The isolation of being confined in one added to the sense desolation imparted by everything about this dead and silent world. Yet the Terrans had brought their compulsion for violence and conflict with them this far. Even here, where one would have thought that the knowledge of being fellow creatures from the same distant home should have assumed a significance that would override all else, still they hadn't been able to desist from killing each other.

  He voiced the thought when he was out with Yorim and Casselo at one of the large Terran toroids on the South Field, loading equipment and samples into a buggy before heading back. They had been out at the site for twelve hours, initially with a work crew who had departed earlier. Kyal was looking forward to a hot shower in the huts that served as living quarters, the evening meal, and an evening of face-to-face company and conversation without suits. It was his turn to send Lorili a letter too. The regular phone net did connect to Luna, but most people found the two-and-a-half-second round-trip signal delay from Earth and its vicinity disconcerting. It was difficult to resist the impulse to jump in with another line before the response to the last one came back, with the result that conversations tended to get hopelessly out of synch. Having to say "over" and wait all the time was stinting and tedious.

  Casselo hoisted a pack containing a portable waveform analyzer into the rear of the buggy and then rested himself back against a stanchion securing the end of a tension line to an antenna mast. His breathing sounded from the speaker in Kyal's helmet. Although things might weigh less in lunar gravity, they still had normal inertia; maneuvering massive objects like test gear and pieces of machinery about in ways that involved velocity changes could still take some effort. The trick was to avoid stops and starts and keep them moving along steady curves rather than around corners, but it took practice.

  "They were all psychotic." Yorim's voice came over the circuit. He was still inside the control room in a sunken area at the foot of the mast, packing away the last of the tools they had been using. "Who can ever know why psychotics do what they do?"

  "There might have been reasons," Casselo said in a curious voice.

  Kyal turned from where he had been standing with an arm draped along the side wall of the buggy's rear section, staring out across the waste of rock and dust. "Reasons? Why Terrans were the way they were, you mean?"

  "Yes."

  "What reasons?"

  Casselo brought a gauntleted hand up to brush something off the sleeve of his suit. "Somebody from Rhombus was up at Explorer talking about it while you were in Europe. He thinks it might have to do with the different way they saw the organizing power that's responsible for life."

  "You mean Vizek?"

  "That's what we call it for convenience, anyway. But what do we mean by it, really? What would be your definition?"

  Kyal shrugged to himself inside his suit. It was a common enough question. "It's just a way of acknowledging that there's more going on behind it all than we see. We're a part of something bigger, that's no doubt being acted out for reasons. What else can you say?"

  "Do you know what the reasons are?" Casselo asked.

  "No," Kyal said. "I know some people think they know, but I've never been convinced. We might get to find out one day, after checkout time, the way other people say. . . . If so, I can wait till then."

  Yorim, wearing a yellow EV suit and carrying the tool bag, appeared at the opening from the bunker below. Brysek's crew had cut the lock door away, since the Terran power source to open it had long since died. "I knew a guy back home who said the reason was to test social systems," Yorim's voice came in. "He figured that Vizek is really plural, and they're not as smart as most people assume. They have their own problems in getting along too, so they seed all these planets with genetic prototypes and let them develop to see if they come up with something that might be the answer. It's like the best way to get a good computer program or solve a lot of problems is often to let a thousand people loose and just leave them to it." Yorim made the top of the steps in a series of slow, easy bounds and added the tool bag to the items in the back of the buggy.

  "He can't know," Kyal commented.

  "I never said he did. He said he did."

  Casselo came back in. "But the Terrans had a very different view, that was practically universal. Even Yorim's friend wouldn't have thought that Vizek—or I suppose I should say these 'Vizeks' of his—concerned themselves with his own personal day-to-day business."

  "Not at all," Yorim said. "Why would they? Like I said, it was just to see what different kinds of social dynamics came out."

  "But the Terrans imagined wrathful, vindictive supernatural beings who did concern themselves," Casselo said. "Who judged, punished, and rewarded what humans did. From some of the things that Terrans said, you'd think that worrying about the antics of humans was their prime preoccupation. Why the difference, do you think?"

  Yorim turned back and swung from side to side, checking for stray items left lying around. "Who knows? They were an older race, I guess. Maybe they just had longer to get paranoid and work on it."

  "Different origins? Genetics?" Kyal hazarded.

  "We don't think so," Casselo said. His face turned to gaze skyward inside his helmet. He half-raised an arm. "Look at those stars up there," he invited. "People come to Earth and see clear skies for the first time, and they talk about how fantastic it is. But down there, it's nothing like this, is it?" That was one of the first things Kyal had noticed on setting foot outside at Luna. The stars were unwavering and brilliant, crowded everywhere in uncountable numbers greater than anything seen on even the clearest of night on Earth. Casselo went on, "The planets are insignificant pinpoints. Most people couldn't find them. And yet, from what we've put together of old Terran legends from the beginnings of their history, they saw the planets as objects of awe and terror. Practically universally. It was the same across peoples and races everywhere. Early Terrans thought they were the supernatural beings that decided the fate of individuals and nations. They built temples to them, and
had whole priesthoods that dedicated their lives to watching them and plotting their movements. Why should those tiny, remote specks have become objects of such obsessions?"

  Kyal looked back over the moonscape and up at the starfield again. He had never thought about it that way before.

  "Well, I guess they must have lived in one of the unstable periods," Yorim said. He meant of the Solar System, which Venusians accepted occurring irregularly but the Terrans hadn't appreciated. "Disruptions happen. We've only just found out Froile wasn't there when the Terrans were around."

  "You're on the right track, Yorim," Casselo said.

  Kyal thought back to the evening that he and Lorili had spent talking to the archeologists and geologists at Moscow. They had spoken then about enormous cataclysms in Earth's past, unleashing death, destruction, and violence on a scale beyond anything Venusians had ever experienced. The most recent had occurred during Earth's early historic period, they had said, and the survivors had left records in their myths and legends of the things they had seen. The strange thing was that the symbolism was obvious to Venusians, even from the fragments they had found aeons afterward. But Terrans, who lived in the aftermath, with not only the records in abundance but the physical evidence all around them, couldn't see it. Lorili had commented that their ability to see only what they wanted to see went all the way back to their beginnings, and wondered if it was a genetic trait.