"Yes," Sherven agreed. "But it's the 'large, long-range' that I was specifically interested in. Have you seen this?" He pushed across the papers that he had kept aside. Casselo picked them up and ran an eye over them. "From a Terran scientific journal that Parigel's group at the Ulangean Institute have been working on." Sherven meant the Ulangean institute for Terran studies, set up to concentrate on such work. "It talks about work that was going on in the American region."
"A star probe?" Casselo read aloud.
"A study for such a program anyway," Sherven said. "And some other references too. it talks about new electrical propulsion physics to harness trans-galactic currents." He looked at Casselo curiously. "Maybe they weren't as far behind after all, as we thought. What do you think?"
Casselo turned to the next page. "Did anything actually happen? Or was it just a theoretical exercise?" he asked. "Does it say?"
"Parigel isn't sure. I asked him the same thing. From the limited material they've got to go on, the details are obscure. If it had military potential, it might have been kept vague deliberately."
"Or maybe invented as a cover for what was going on at Farside . . . in case anything leaked out," Casselo mused.
"Yes, that's another possibility, I suppose."
Casselo sat back in his chair and thought for a moment. He nodded toward the Farside pyramid, still showing on the screen. "You know, Kyal did say how he was struck by some of the similarities between that and the things he envisaged in his own speculations about future star travel systems."
Several seconds went by while each waited for the other to voice the implication. "That can't have been their destination, surely?" Sherven said at last. "If Triagon was a staging base to somewhere else, as Kyal has been saying." He was thinking of storage space for lots of equipment and supplies; agricultural machinery; pens for animals; hydroponic setups for what the biologists were now saying the thought were for cloning plant seeds.
"It couldn't have been, surely," Casselo repeated.
And yet, repeatedly, the Terrans had showed themselves capable of making the most amazing advances suddenly, in spite of all their destructive compulsions and craziness.
Casselo was evidently thinking the same thing. "If they did have the technology, maybe another star system makes more sense than anywhere here," he said.
"But is it even plausible?" Sherven asked.
"Their priorities were different. With the focus on military matters and secrecy, there could have been more going on than we've uncovered. . . . Well, obviously there was. I mean a lot more. Has Parigel been able to put together anything else that correlates with it?" Casselo motioned with the papers in his hand. "Can we say for sure whether any of the vessels it talks about here were ever launched—or even built?"
"Not really," Sherven admitted. "A major global conflict erupted at around the time it was going on. It seems to have been the final one, involving Euro-Russia and the Muslims against Americans and Chinese. They never recovered as a civilization. Records from after the war are practically nonexistent. Anyway, we can talk about it over lunch. I've asked Frazin to join us."
"Fine."
Sherven was just about to rise, when a call sounded from the desk panel. It was from his assistant in the outer office. He touched a key to activate the channel on voice only.
"Yes, Emitte?"
"I was away for a few minutes. Did Borgan arrive?"
"Yes, he's here."
"I have Chief Provost Huiano, from Rhombus on the line. He apologizes for intruding but requests a moment."
"Certainly." Sherven glanced at Casselo. "Excuse me."
Huiano's features appeared on the desk-panel screen a moment later. "My apologies for the interruption, Director Sherven," Huiano said again.
"There is no need. What can I do for you?"
"It's about the allegations concerning Gaster Lornod."
Sherven sent Casselo a exasperated look. He really could have done without being dragged into this kind of thing. But he had asked Huiano to contact him if there was any further news. "Yes, Chief Huiano?"
"The girl who started it all, Tyarla Yiag."
"What about her?"
"She came in here earlier and has confessed that it was a fraud. She says she was put up to it by a Jenyn Thorgan."
Sherven frowned. "I don't think I know that name."
"He works with Linguistics. He was away in the Americas for a period and has only recently returned. He's already become known here as a militant Progressive activist. He was also a rising star in the movement some years ago back on Venus. It appears that he promised Madam Yiag a prominent and lucrative position with the Progressives if she cooperated. She also claims he threatened her if she refused, but I think that might be to cover herself. There ah . . . would also appear to be something of a personal element in their relationship."
Sherven was livid. "This is exactly what I didn't want," he muttered to Casselo. "Progressive politics and intrigues undermining the mission's work. They're causing enough trouble back on Venus." And then back to Huiano, "Is she still there?"
"Yes. I asked her to stay here pending your instructions."
"Has she gone public with any of this?" Sherven asked.
"She says not. She came straight here this morning, when she decided to come clean."
"Well, that's something, anyway."
"What do you want us to do?" Huiano asked.
Sherven thought for a moment or two. "Let's keep everything like that for now," he answered. "What I'd like is a closed-door session to try and resolve the whole business in private without a public circus. Have them both, Yiag and this . . . what was his name?"
"Jenyn Thorgan."
"Thorgan. Have them both sent up here on the next shuttle out. We'll hear them out up in Explorer, and hopefully get rid of this whole mess. There are other things going on that are what I'm supposed to be here for." He glanced at Casselo and shook his head with a sigh. "And they're a lot more interesting too."
"I will make the necessary arrangements," Huiano promised.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Elundi sat working through the references to the latest list of word searches requested by the people at Triagon, on lunar Farside. Their work had been given a high priority One of the hot items was "Providence," which was thought to be the code word for a Terran program to amass a large inventory of equipment and supplies there. Even Sherven was getting involved, sending memos to various people on his staff querying progress and requesting for details. They were excited over a current theory that Triagon might have been not just an evacuation shelter for elites as previously thought, but a staging base for onward migration to somewhere else. Elundi wasn't sure why that should be such a big issue. The problem from the linguists' standpoint was that Terran code designations with military connections were usually chosen from common words in order to be innocuous, which meant that they would also occur in countless other contexts that had no connection with the particular example of interest. Weeding out the irrelevant flags that the search programs listed was a tedious business.
It would be a good application for a decent Artificial Intelligence system, Elundi thought to himself. Recognizing correct context—what was appropriate; what was relevant—he believed, was the essence of intelligence. It came from that "common sense" faculty that humans recognized in each other as a result of growing up and forming their conceptual associations in the same shared reality, from the physical space they moved around in that inspired so many metaphors of common speech, to their cultural heritage—and computers didn't. He recalled with amusement how the AI pioneers back on Venus had confidently predicted full, human-level automatic translation of natural language within five years. That had been twenty-five years ago, and they were still not even close. Misled my the ease with which programs could disassemble and convert their own artificially created symbolic languages, they had assumed that the meanings carried by natural speech could be extracted from the syntax. But
the meanings that humans were able to perceive instantly, even from infancy, were not there in the syntax of the message to be extracted. The words and phrases merely triggered what was already inside the heads of the recipients. Even some of the widely quoted experts didn't seem to have grasped it, and continued to construct ever-more-elaborate syntax analyzers that continued to return wrong, way-out, and frequently hilarious results. But they were five years away from the real thing at most, they assured the world. Doing it the right way was what he would devote himself to when he returned to Venus, Elundi had decided. The experience he was gaining on Earth was ideal preparation for it.
The next item on his screen was from the Terran electronic records that the engineers up at Triagon had managed, amazingly, to reactivate. It was filed under the name of an engineering company that had been involved in the Providence program, and stated that one of their inspectors had flown from Santa Cruz to perform post-delivery tests and was back in the Bay area by evening. There was nothing sensational about it that would warrant alerting the researchers, but the fact that the record had come from Triagon indicated that the "Providence" reference was in the category that they were interested in. Elundi sent it across for routine incorporation into the consolidation file that Jenyn was working on. On the far side of the table, Jenyn moved his head as the item flag appeared on one of his screens. From the corner of his eye, Elundi was aware of Jenyn turning toward him. He carried on working and pretended not to notice. The air had been cool between them since their confrontation over the Lornod business, and the things Elundi had learned since, in his visit to Tyarla's with Iwon and Lorili, had only exacerbated matters.
"Have you seen anymore of this pal of yours in Biochem?" Jenyn asked. His tone was mildly taunting, deliberately nonchalant as if challenging Elundi to come out and say what was bothering him—as if Jenyn didn't know.
"Not really," Elundi murmured without looking away from the screen he was working on.
"I need to straighten things out with that partner of his," Jenyn said, obviously meaning Lorili. "Think you can put a word in for me? You know what they're like when they get funny and sulky. Makes it difficult to talk to them direct. Maybe this friend of yours who works with her could get the message across."
"I don't think it's really any of my business," Elundi said.
"Aw, come on. Just a small favor. I thought you might get them to meet you somewhere, socially. Then I could accidentally show up and—"
"Look." Elundi swung his chair around and faced Jenyn directly across the table. "You're wasting your time. Iwon told me she's fixed up with a physics guy who's not long in from Venus, that she met while she was in Russia. Okay? So why don't you just drop it? I told you, it isn't any of my business. And if you want my opinion, it's a sleazy way to operate. I wouldn't want any part of it anyway."
Jenyn's face darkened as he dropped the game-playing. Elundi braced himself for the row that had been brewing to finally come to a head. But before anything happened, a call-mode tone sounded from Jenyn's terminal. He picked up the handset and said curtly, "Yes? . . . Who? . . . What does she want? . . . Yes, I'll be right out." He got up and left, breathing heavily, without saying more. Elundi returned his attention to his work. This couldn't go on, he told himself. He'd talk today to Girelandi about getting a transfer to another office—maybe another location, even. He thought he was beginning to see why Lorili had decided to get herself up off the planet completely.
The item mentioning Santa Cruz and the Bay Area remained flagged but unprocessed on Jenyn's screen.
Derlen was waiting for Jenyn in the reception area at the entrance to the linguistics offices. She beckoned him aside, away from the desk, and spoke closely to him in a low voice. "I think you might be in trouble. Can we talk outside?"
Jenyn looked at her searchingly. The interplay of emotions on her face was too confused for him to read. He nodded and followed as she turned back toward the door. Outside was a covered foyer with steps going down to a paved court dotted with a few shrubs in planters.
"Tyarla came to see me late last night," Derlen said. "She told me the story about Gaster Lornod wasn't true. She said she was going to the provost's office to tell them the whole thing." Jenyn drew in a sharp breath. Derlen looked at his face with an expression that was half questioning, half fascination. "She, ah . . . she said that you asked her to do it."
Jenyn swore inwardly. "Is she going to tell them that too?"
Derlen made a slight suggestion of a shrug. "I don't know. I guess so." She watched Jenyn's face, but his mind was already racing, barely aware of her. He was angry at himself. Why had he trusted somebody like that? He'd known she was the kind that was all phony and fake and would fall apart. "I tried to talk her out of it. I really did." Derlen's eyes were earnest, but the words had a cracked ring. Jenyn had the feeling that a part of her was relishing it. He sensed a jealousy of Tyarla surfacing that had been simmering for a long time. Derlen was excited by him. He knew the signs. Being defensive would only detract from the image.
"Did she say what changed her mind?" he asked, not bothering to deny anything. "No. But I was by her place earlier, and I saw Elundi coming out . . ."
"Elundi? What was he doing there?"
"He was with two other people. They didn't see me. One was a tallish guy, with kind of light hair and a mustache under his nose—you know, like the Terrans had. The other was a woman."
Jenyn looked up abruptly. "Describe her," he said.
"Oh . . . a bit older than me. I didn't really see her face. She had, let me see . . . pants and a dark jacket. But very black hair, long, about down to here." Derlen indicated a point halfway between her shoulder and her elbow .
The woman was obviously Lorili. The other person with them had to be Elundi's friend who worked with her. So Elundi had sat there all morning, acting so cool and disinterested, while all the time he had betrayed Jenyn, probably because Jenyn disturbed his comfort and petty little dreams of burying himself in computer labs when he got back to Venus; because Jenyn made him think about things that mattered.
And as for Lorili, who had already turned on him back at Venus after he'd made her everything she was, and then run away to Earth, and after he had given her a second chance. . . . Now she was throwing back in his face and playing the same tricks behind his back again to get him out of the way to make room for her new infatuation with this physicist.
The rush of anger that he had felt toward Tyarla and at himself for trusting her was gone now, and in its place he could feel a slow rage building deep inside, consuming him slowly like an acid. Nobody did things like this to him without feeling the consequences. The first thing was to stop Tyarla getting to the provosts. He would take care of that himself right away. After that, there would be the score to settle with Lorili. He would attend to Elundi later.
Jenyn looked again at Derlen's eyes. They were bright, hopeful. He recognized a willing helper, just waiting the word to step into Tyarla's shoes. and take over the glamorous image, savor the hint of danger. "A pity," he said. "I thought Tyarla had more nerve. I guess that's how you find out, eh?"
"What are you going to do?" Derlen asked him.
"Do you want to help?" Jenyn regarded her with an expression that was at the same time both a challenge and a promise. "I don't think you're a phony." Derlen returned a quick nod. "I know who the woman is," he said. "Her name is Korili Hilivar. She's in the ISA Molecular Genetics lab. She's had a grudge against me since a long time ago back on Venus. I want you to contact her and say you're a friend of Tyarla. Tell her that Tyarla want to meet her and talk some more. Okay? Then call me and let me know when and where."
"What are you going to do?" Derlen asked again.
"I've got something else I have to take care of first. I'll see you later today. Get moving and track Lorili down for me. Set up a meeting, and then let me know." Jenyn's voice fell. "You're smart. I have bigger things going on back home than you know. You won't regret this."
&
nbsp; He watched her leave the court and then turned to go back inside. The thought of confronting Elundi again checked him. He couldn't risk anything developing between them now that might introduce a delay. Changing his mind, he followed the way Derlen had gone and came out onto the street. She was just disappearing around the corner at the end of the block.
Jenyn's anger had crystallized into a cold determination to get even. It was the test of him as a man to be reckoned with. No other consideration mattered for now. He took out his phone and checked the news channel for the latest on Lornod. Nothing had changed since that morning. No new announcements. The important thing was to stop Tyarla before she said anything that would connect him with her.
Moving briskly, Jenyn set off in the direction of Tyarla's apartment. The scheme of how he would play it was already forming in his mind. With Tyarla out of the way, only Elundi and Lorili would know that she had implicated Jenyn—he discounted Elundi's friend, whom he took to be just a go-between. If either of them voiced it, his position would be that Tyarla had set him up out of spite after he refused her overtures to use him as a ticket into the upper ranks of the Progressives. What other motive would she have had for making up the story about Lornod? That left Derlen as the only other person who would know. And he thought he would be able to handle Derlen without too much trouble.
Echoes of an Alien Sky Page 21
