Tyarla hesitated and looked less sure of herself, sinking back slowly to perch on the arm of a low-backed padded chair with fluffy pink and purple cushions. But her pride wouldn't allow her to back down yet. "What promises are you talking about?" she returned. "Who told you he promised anything?"
"Oh, let's be real," Elundi said, sounding impatient. "There had to be some motivation. What else? It's written across the whole situation."
"I . . . don't know." Tyarla looked up obstinately. "I need to think about it."
It was time for a woman-to-woman input, Lorili decided. After all, that was why she had been brought along.
"There may not be time for that," she said quietly. It was the first time she had spoken. The words and her tone took Tyarla by surprise, causing her to look around sharply.
"Why not?"
"Don't you realize that you could be in danger?"
"What are you talking about?"
"I know Jenyn too. I've known him a lot longer than you have. I knew him back on Venus. I know his anger and his instability, and I don't think I'm under any delusions as to where it could possibly lead. Think about this. If something were to happen to you now, can you see how convenient it would be for Jenyn? He would be free from any risk of being exposed by the one person who would be in a position to do it. And with the situation we've now got, it wouldn't take much for some people to ask who stood to gain from making sure you never got a chance to prove the things you've been saying, and jumping to the wrong answer, would it?"
"Lornod!" The surprise in Iwon's voice made it clear that such an angle had never occurred to him before either.
Lorili nodded. "Especially if it were helped along by a little rumoring, and maybe some convenient 'facts' leaked in the right places."
"Rig the evidence to point to your opposition," Elundi said. "That was a favorite Terran trick. They did it all the time. Jenyn thinks it was brilliant."
Tyarla's gaze darted from one to another of them. "You don't know any of this," she accused. "None if it has happened. It's just speculation, that's all it is. You're making it up."
"It's the way Jenyn operates," Lorili said. "I told you, I've know him a lot longer than you have." She snorted scornfully. "I was young, naive, vain, and full of myself with all the things I thought I knew." She paused just long enough for the unvoiced words just like you to assert themselves. "Do you want me to tell you exactly what he promised? Because I can, you know, and I will. Or would it be too embarrassing to be told in front of Elundi and Iwon? So suffice it to say that what he actually delivered was enough to make me want to come this far to get away from."
Tyarla licked her lips dryly, searching for a way to put the question. "Are you saying that something 'happened' to somebody before . . . back there?"
"No, I'm not saying that," Lorili replied evenly. "But I know him enough to have seen how he works and what he's capable of. I wouldn't put it past him."
"Why wait to find out the hard way?" Elundi interjected.
"There's only one way to be sure of being safe," Lorili concluded. "Come clean and put the truth on record before anything can happen. Then the whole situation would be turned around: There would be no case for Lornod to have to answer to; Jenyn would have nothing left to try and cover up, because it would be in the open; and he would have nothing to gain if anything were to 'happen.' But he would have a lot to lose."
There was nothing more to be added. Silence fell while Tyarla shifted her eyes from one to another of them. "Look, if it helps, none of us feels anything against you personally," Elundi said, more to relieve the strain.
"Why do you care?" Tyarla asked finally. She was still stalling.
Elundi pondered, then threw up his hand and made a face. "I guess I'm not like Jenyn. I believe truth and principle do matter. If you have to sacrifice them to get the results you want, then the results aren't worth it." Perhaps feeling that he was being a bit pompous, he added in an easier tone, "I suppose I'd never have made a Terran."
They waited. "I'm not admitting to anything, but I'll think about it," Tyarla said. "Give me until tomorrow. I'll talk to you again then." Her tone was final.
Elundi, Lorili, and Iwon looked at each other. They all read from the others' faces an agreement that there was nothing further to be done for now. Elundi rose, and the other two followed.
"Thanks for hearing us out," he said to Tyarla. "We'll leave it with you, then." For a moment Lorili feared he was going to spoil things with a final sermon, but he played it right, left it at that, and moved toward the door. Tyarla went ahead and held it open for them.
"Thanks for caring," she said almost in a whisper as Lorili, who was last in line, was about to step through. Lorili looked at her, hesitated, and grasped her hand briefly before Tyarla closed the door.
Outside, they stood looking at each other, each waiting for the others to find something appropriate. Finally Elundi hazarded, "Drink somewhere?"
"Good idea," Iwon agreed.
"Magic Carpet?" Lorili suggested.
Iwon looked dubious. "Too crowded. I'm not in the mood."
"I agree," Elundi said."How about the Caspian? It should be quiet there at this time."
The nods said the verdict was unanimous. They turned to head back the way they had come, toward the Central District. As they moved away, a figure that had been approaching from the opposite direction and stopped when they came out of Tyarla's door, emerged from the shadows of a stand of rhododendrons.
Derlen had told Tyarla that she would stop by later in the evening, but then found herself at a loose end and decided to make it earlier. Also, she was itching to learn the latest on this business that Tyarla had gotten herself involved in. But it seemed there were things going on that Derlen wasn't a part of. Maybe Tyarla would tell her about it now. But when Derlen went up to the door and rang after waiting a few minutes for the visitors' to be well gone, Tyarla seemed distracted and not all that pleased to see her.
"Yes, I know I said we'd go out somewhere," she told Derlen, "but something unexpected has come up. Can we make it another time?"
"Well, I guess so," Derlen said. She felt put out and didn't try to disguise it. If something like this were likely to happen, Tyarla could have called her and said so. She waited, but Tyarla didn't invite her in. "What kind of thing has come up?" she inquired.
"Oh, I can't go into it now. Could we just leave things for tonight? I need to be on my own to figure some things out. I'll give you a call, okay?"
No apology. No mention of whatever it was Elundi apparently already important enough in Tyarla's life to be involved in. Derlen hadn't been aware of any further dealings between Elundi and Tyarla since the night he had been with Jenyn in the Magic Carpet. As Derlen walked away, she remembered that Elundi had asked her not long ago for Tyarla's call code. He'd said it was because a friend had asked him if he knew any accountants who might be able to help with something or other. She was feeling angry and jealous. Something significant was going on, and Derlen was being left out.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Filaeyus Sherven, Honored Doctor of Science & Philosophy, sat at the desk in his spacious office of shelves and display screens, staring out through the glass wall at parts of Explorer 6's external structures silhouetted against the starfield. Many years ago now, when he was a student in Ulange, he had lodged for a while in the house of a widowed master carpenter, who was renting out a couple of the spare rooms. Sherven remembered a day when he had watched the carpenter taking out a piece from the mounting battens of a cabinet that he was building in a corner of the dining room. "Why are you taking that out?" the young Sherven had asked him.
"Oh, I must be getting careless. I cut the joint a bit slack."
"But it will be on the wall, at the back of everything. It won't show. Who would ever know?"
"I would know," the old man had told him.
If the most important part of "education" was acquiring standards to set oneself and cultivating good habits of t
hought, then those three words, he sometimes reflected, had contributed more to his own than many of the semesters spent absorbing facts about matters he had never had reason to think about since. The key to a settled life was learning to be honest with oneself and honest with the world.
He looked back at the revolting Terran display of gaudy art and self-obsessed, practically unclothed females being presented on one of the screens. Casselo had sent it through as an example of some of the image restoration techniques that one of the labs was developing. It had apparently been devised to persuade people that a cheap concoction of sugar and fruit flavoring was the key to a full and satisfying life, and induce them to purchase it. It seemed that exaggeration, falsification, and skill in the art of making things and people appear to be other than what they were had been much sought-after, highly rewarded professions.
Sherven was disturbed by the reports coming from Venus of growing political extremism and more exposures of distortions, outright lies, and the use of increasingly deplorable tactics. A former colleague there had mentioned in a private communication that investigators of the fire in the offices of the Korbisanian Counselor Weskaw were saying it looked like arson, although they were not making the fact public until they were more sure of their case. And now, closer to home, they had this ugly business about Gaster Lornod breaking out. Sherven didn't like the way things were trending at all.
The source back on Venus had expressed a personal suspicion that the Progressives were behind the arson. Weskaw was an outspoken critic of the movement, and in particular their demand for a direct universal franchise, which he
said would be akin to letting popularity votes decide professional accreditation. His continuing to serve on the Korbisanian congress testified that a solid majority of the population there had confidence in the judgment of the Electors who appointed him. Had it been otherwise, those Electors wouldn't have been there—anymore than a designer whose bridges fell down or a math teacher whose pupils couldn't transpose an equation. If this was the way things were heading, nothing good could come of it, whatever the anticipated ends. Ends were something imagined in the future; the means was the reality, now. At best it would lower the standards of leadership in the direction of the travesties of government that the Terrans had endured.
The way in which the Terrans had glorified their leaders left Venusians mystified. Perhaps it had been another triumph for the Terran image manipulators. Virtually without exception, from what the exo-historians had made of things so far, they had demonstrated no worthwhile learning, skill, or talent of any kind beyond the ability to insinuate and ingratiate themselves into the public awareness, seize and hold power by force and intimidation, and pander to the interests of influential minorities. The system of appointing them was such that gaining office demanded abilities that were the exact opposite of those that would be required of anyone occupying it, so the accusations of hypocrisy and insincerity that appeared to have been widespread were hardly to be wondered at.
On Venus, those eligible for government were drawn from a pool of qualified candidates who had met some of the highest educational standards demanded of any profession, and gained practical experience through a progression of more demanding public offices. They were appointed by a body of professional Electors, who in turn were elected by the people and accountable to the people for the performance of the governments they delivered, in the same way that any other professional body would be accountable if it chartered incompetents and authorized them to practice. Few things could have contrasted more sharply with the appalling Terran system of mob rule through misinformed masses. Every Venusian citizen got one base vote by right, and beyond that there was a scale for earning additional votes with greater educational attainments. Even the Terrans would never have dreamed of appointing their physicians, engineers, architects, and other professionals without seeing evidence of suitable aptitude and knowledge. How much more important was it, then, for the supreme profession of running an entire country safely and effectively?
Like the Korbisanian Counselor Weskaw, Sherven believed that the body socio-politic was a growing organism in its own right, guided by the same underlying formative principle that shaped all living things, and as such would mature in its own way, in its own time. Attempting to force it prematurely was like trying to induce a flower to blossom by prizing open the petals before they were ready, and likely to be as effective. Terran culture had brought itself to its final, logical conclusion. In the end, nobody, it seemed, could be believed or trusted. Nothing was what it appeared to be. Small wonder that it had culminated in ruin. Where else was there for it to go? The thought occurred to him that perhaps the purpose of the universe was to produce worlds on which to conduct experiments in life, which in turn yielded consciousness and generated structures of thought, reason, and intuitive knowledge. Perhaps it had been, then, that the Terrans, while physically robust and versatile, had not been very successful temperamentally. Might Venusians represent a more stable and hopefully longer-lasting model? It was an attractive thought, Sherven's wife, Pidrie, had agreed when he mentioned it to her one evening. She had asked why Vizek should concern itself with conducting such experiments. That was another question was all Sherven had been able to tell her in reply.
A tap sounded on the door. It opened a fraction, and Borgan Casselo stuck his head in, giving an inquiring look. He was spending some time on Explorer 6 before returning to his office in Rhombus. Sherven had asked Casselo to join him for lunch, primarily to get an update on developments."Yes, come in, Borgan." Sherven waved a hand.
"Emitte thought that Frazin might still be here."
"No, he's gone. An interesting theory of his about collective amnesia. What do you make of it?"
"I can't really see it," Casselo said, closing the door. "There's no plausible mechanism for it."
"I agree. I think it was cultural."
"Ah, I see you got the Terran beverage commercial," Casselo said, observing the mural screen. "The imaging people reconstructed it from dried-up fragments. Some clever frequency-spectrum transforms in infra-red. Not bad, eh?"
"Not bad at all, as far as the technique goes," Sherven agreed. "I wish I could say the same for the content. I mean, look at those four specimens they've got there.
Somewhat spectacular as far as the paint and the body parts go, I suppose, but hardly the brightest lights in town, I'd have thought. The Terrans were fixated on appearances and packaging, weren't they? Everything was phony. No ability to discern the actual substance of anything at all. "
"They were taught not to," Casselo said. He took one of the visitor chairs while Sherven tidied up his notes and papers from the morning.
"So how are things at Triagon," Sherven inquired.
"Kyal Reen has got his side of things together. He seems capable and energetic. I don't think we'll see any problems there. He's gotten himself involved with the linguists and the electronics people out there too, but Brysek says he gets on well with everybody. No complaints."
"Sounds like a chip off the old Jarnor Reen, all right," Sherven remarked. "How about those biochemistry people who moved there from E6?"
"They're settling in. I hear that Nostreny down in Rhombus wants to set something up in their old lab space up here."
"Genetic sequencing on the Terran corpses. I've already okayed it. A couple of his staff are transferring up here to take charge of it. In fact they're shuttling up today."
"That was quick," Casselo commented.
"Yes, well, Nostreny talked to me confidentially. Apparently it would relieve a personal situation that's developed down there concerning one of them—the principal. A Korbisanian woman. The other one is her assistant." Sherven arranged his folders into a stack but selected some sheets to keep separate. "They're eager to get on with it, in any case. Can't blame them, I suppose. How often do biochemists get a chance like this? It wouldn't do to be stifling initiative would it, Borgan?—never mind what the Progressives say about us."
"True. But I also think there might be more to it," Casselo said. "If it's who I think it is, there's a personal element in it, between her and Kyal Reen. They met in Russia, when he was on acclimatization leave. One of those instant attraction things, according to Kyal's partner."
Sherven's eyes twinkled. "Oh, really? Well, you get the best out of people when they're in situations like that. They're certainly not wasting much time about it."
"As you said, a touch of the old Jarnor Reen."
"Just before we go. . . ." Sherven touched the panel inset to one side of the desk and inclined his head to indicate another of the screens. It activated to show the pyramid-form structure that was being investigated some distance out from the main Triagon base. "What do you make of these latest reports of theirs?" Sherven asked.
Casselo nodded as he glanced over the view. "It seems to be what they say," he replied. "A discharge attractor for some kind of large, long-range vessel. It fits with everything else they've been finding with the other structures."
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