Hogan, James - Giant Series 04 - Entoverse (v1.1)

by Entoverse [lit]

  “So you do know him,” Hunt said.

  “You get to know what’s going on. And there aren’t that many Terrans in Shiban. People talk.”

  “So who are these people he’s mixed up with?” Hunt asked, sitting down in the chair by the window image and producing his cigarettes.

  “From what Murray says, you have them on Earth: people who supply things that are wanted, but which are illegal. He was doing the same kind of thing with chemical drugs.”

  “You mean a black market?”

  “Is that what you call it? Okay.”

  “I thought things like that didn’t really happen seriously here,” Hunt said. “There isn’t too much that’s illegal.”

  “But the changes in recent times have had effects.” Nixie turned, holding two glasses. She came over to hand Hunt one of them, and picked up his cigarette pack curiously from the sill of the fake win­dow. “Can I try one of these?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Nixie selected one and leaned forward to let Hunt light it for her. “This is what you call tobacco, right?”

  “Yes.’’

  She went over to the bed and sat down, swinging her legs up and leaning back against the headboard. “Let’s see if I understand this thing that Murray calls supply and demand. When you make some­thing illegal, the price goes up, isn’t that it? Murray said the U.S. Government made him a lot of money—I never understood why,

  since they were trying to take it away from him. . . But anyhow, stopping people from doing what they want makes other people rich. Is that how it works?”

  “It’s not supposed to, but . . .“ Hunt shrugged. “Well, yes, I suppose that’s the way it turns out more often than not.”

  Nixie gestured with the cigarette. “This is smooth . . . got a nice kick. Hits your throat.”

  “Not all kinds. Some brands will take the lining off.”

  “Is tobacco illegal on Earth?”

  Hunt shook his head. “It makes the right people rich.”

  Nixie thought about it. “I guess they have to be the ones who make the rules, then, eh?”

  “That’s about it.”

  Nixie nodded. “Anyhow, as I was saying . . . on Jevlen the Ganymeans have created a black market.”

  Hunt looked down at his drink. It was amber, with pyramids of light green ice, and tasted like spicy Drambuie with a lemony base. Not bad. He thought he knew what she was getting at, but decided to play dumb. She was trying to help. Why spoil it? “I’m not sure I follow,” he said, looking back at her and drawing on his cigarette.

  “Ask yourself, what’s been shut down for the last six months that everybody took for granted all their lives, and a lot of people don’t know how to get along without?

  Hunt frowned. “You mean JEVEX?”

  ‘‘What else?’’

  Hunt appeared to consider the proposition. “That sounds strange,” he answered. “I mean, there might be a demand all right, but where’s the supply? You just said, it’s shut down.”

  Nixie shook her head and sipped from her glass without taking her eyes off him. “The main system that ran the planet and what-have-you might be down, but the whole thing isn’t dead. There are still parts of it ticking over.”

  “Well, yes, that’s right—there’s a core system still running for maintenance and . . .“ He let his voice trail off, as if he had just seen the implication for the first time. “What are you saying? That there’s some way of getting people access to that capacity?”

  “Yes, exactly. For the junkies, but at a price.”

  It still didn’t explain everything, though. “Okay.” Hunt leaned back, still frowning. “But what product is it that they’re selling, exactly? I mean, you’re making it sound like a dependency situation.

  What is it that these junkies are dependent for? It can’t be simply to have the planet run for them again. What would there be for an individual that was worth paying for?”

  Nixie smiled and watched the smoke from her cigarette. “You still don’t understand what JEVEX does, do you, Vie?”

  That was something that Hunt had not been prepared for. He spread his hands and shook his head. “It’s an integrated processing and communications network. It runs the planet.”

  “That’s like saying that colanta wets your throat and flows down. I’m not talking about how JEVEX functions, but what it does.” She read the baffled look on Hunt’s face. “It creates fantasies—anything that anyone wants can come true. Dreams that are real, which you can make do whatever you like just by wanting them to. Do you wonder why the Jevlenese can’t deal with reality? They’ve never needed reality.” She threw back her head and laughed. “The girls love the Ganymeans. Our business has never been better since they switched JEVEX off. They wiped out the competition.”

  Hunt stared at her for a long time. A lot of things were making more sense now. If that was really the problem, then perhaps the Ganymean cure of several years’ planetary cold turkey would turn out to be the answer after all. The secondary problems would just have to be dealt with by conventional, time-tried methods, as some mem­bers of the Thurien-Terran Joint Policy Council seemed to have been saying. It would also explain why whoever was profiting in the meantime would want to keep the administration off the trail for as long as possible.

  What did not make sense was why Nixie should want to rock the boat if business was so good.

  “I don’t understand why you’re telling me this,” Hunt said.

  “That isn’t what I followed you for,” Nixie answered. “When we were with Murray, the other thing you asked about was the ayatol­lahs.’’

  “He didn’t seem to know much about them.”

  “He doesn’t. He’s not a Jevlenese. But I do.”

  Hunt hesitated, checking mentally for something he might have missed. “Is there a lot more to explain about them?” he said. “It sounds as if they’re just extreme cases of this—this fantasy—addiction that you just described. Ones that have pulled their anchors up from reality completely.”

  Nixie shook her head. “No. That can happen to the headworld

  junkies, yes. But the ayatollahs are not the same. Their situation is something else.”

  Hunt nodded and raised his eyebrows. So Garuth had been right in his classifications. “There is something definitely very different about them, then?” he asked. “Something that sets them apart?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “You can be sure? They’re not simply suffering from delusions? Or some kind of breakdown, possibly, induced by stresses encountered in these fantasy realities?”

  “The ayatollahs aren’t products of any fantasies,” Nixie said, speaking somberly. “They aren’t junkies at all.”

  “Then what makes them crazy?”

  “Crazy?” Nixie stared at him strangely. “They’re bewildered~” she replied. “And very often scared, confused, lost, and hysterical. If a lot of them act demented, it’s because of things like that. And yes, maybe some of them do lose their orientation completely. But it’s not from getting too involved with some fairyland. They come from some­where that’s real. But it’s somewhere very strange-at least, it would be strange to anyone who’s used to this. . .“ She gestured around her vaguely.

  “You mean Jevlen?” Hunt said.

  “And Earth, too. Everywhere. The whole universe.”

  Hunt’s brow knitted. “I’m not sure what you’re saying. Where do they come from?”

  “They don’t know. That’s what screws them up—or at least, it screws a lot of them up. But some manage to handle it and keep their act together. They’re not all crazy.” Nixie lifted her glass again and gave Hunt a long, appraising look over the rim. “At least, I hope you think they’re not all crazy. You see, you’re the first scientist I’ve met here. And you’re sane. The reason I followed you was that you look like someone who might be able to find the answers.”

  “Is it really that important to—” Hunt began, and his eyes wid­ened as he realiz
ed what she was saying.

  Nixie nodded, reading his expression. “Yes,” she said. “That’s right, Vie. To me, it’s very important. You see, I’m one of them.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  In the night, everything lay hidden beneath the blackness of a sky deserted by the gods. Even Pamur, the god whose lantern was the sun, was turning away, reducing Waroth’s days to twilight gloom, Snow blanketed the mountains and choked the passes. Herders and hill people were moving into the valleys as cold crept down across the land.

  High in the midst of the Rinjussin wilderness, the Master, Shingen-Hu, and a select group of adepts from his school ascended a rocky peak for the ceremony of reconsecrating the Altar of Arising, from whence those who arose with the currents departed from the world. The currents had been running very weak of late, and they were too high to be drawn down. The purpose of the rite was to get Nieru’s blessing for better conditions.

  The chanting and incantations were of particular significance to Thrax, for Shingen-Hu had chosen him as the next to ascend, when the signs and the currents became favorable. In his devotions he had already, on several occasions, captured the wisps of current that sometimes came low, bringing images into his mind. He recalled the images now, as he stood clad in heavy robes and a cowled cloak upon the peak, gazing at the scattering of remnant stars flickering wanly above, as if beckoning, somehow . . . Images that he had seen of Hyperia.

  Of lawfulness reigning indefinitely through time and over unimagi­nably vast regions of space.

  Of things that spun.

  Of huge cities of permanent matter, sculpted into fantastic shapes that soared into the sky.

  Of the strange beings that inhabited them, whose wondrous de­vices could operate themselves directly, without any intervention of mind.

  It would be as one of those strange beings that he would emerge, Shingen-Hu had told him. Most of the abilities that he knew would be lost. But he would find, as he persevered and learned, that he didn’t need them. For the inhabitants of Hyperia knew none of the gods that held sway over Waroth. They didn’t need to bother with prayer, and the few gods that they did worship in their own mysteri­ous ways were as nothing ever revealed to any Warothian. The Hyperians delegated their powers to complex magic objects, which they were able to fashion as effortlessly as a Master could project a firebolt; thus they freed themselves to devote their time to such higher things as amusement and bodily comforts, without the daily drudgery of cultivating mystical insights and developing powers of unaided thought.

  But to begin with, he would feel lost and helpless when he emerged. He would search in vain for reassurance from things that were familiar, knowing that until he developed new powers of com­prehension and came to terms with the revelations which those new insights would open up, there would be no way back. That would be when he should seek the security of his own kind among those bearing the emblem of the purple spiral.

  But he had been thoroughly trained. He was ready. Others were not so fortunate, Shingen-Hu had said. In former times, when the currents had been abundant and strong, it often happened that new initiates, or even novices, would emerge into Hyperia ignorant and unprepared, without even having glimpsed what lay ahead. Usually they were solitary learners, unschooled and impatient.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Baumer had suggested a tour of the environs of PAC to give Gina a start at getting her bearings in Shiban. After that, he said, he would introduce her to some of the associations of Jevlenese and Terran historians engaged in organizing the information coming to light on past Jevienese meddlings with Earth. They left PAC by the main entrance and crossed a plaza, where one of the battery of escalators below the transportation terminal took them down several levels to emerge into one of the major thoroughfares traversing the district between PAC and the city center.

  They passed an exchange market for used furniture, clothes, and household junk that was situated in an open area between facing lines of dilapidated storefronts and lesser buildings. Above, enormous ribs of an architecture that belonged to a different scale soared and merged, enclosing a space vast enough to hold a small mountain—a monument to a vision in an alien mind that had leapt above the commonplace as surely as the lines seemed to break free from gravity

  . . . now stark and bare against the pale, orange-smeared green of the sky, their original function long forgotten. A stream connecting ornamental pools built on a series of terraces had run dry and become a trash dump. Jevlenese in blue costumes were dancing to a strange, repetitive chant, vaguely reminiscent of medieval plainsong, while a crowd looked on apathetically. Insensible figures lay sprawled against walls along the sidewalks.

  It reminded Gina of a trip she had made to parts of the eastern Mediterranean some years previously, off the regular tourist circuit. There, she had seen peasants tending goats amid the ruins of what had once been splendid temples, and crude village hearths made of stones taken from palaces. Once more she was looking at the promise of genius lost to unreason and sunken into apathy.

  The agitators and cult leaders who talked to the people blamed it all on the Ganymeans. It was the result of withdrawing the services performed by JEVEX, they said, and they called for the full function­ality of the system to be restored. In fact, the stagnation had begun long before the events that led to JEVEX’s being shut down. But the people had been conditioned to have short memories, and they believed what the demagogues told them.

  “This is what you get when degeneracy sets into a society,” Baumer told her. “There’s never been any order or discipline. I blame it on the Thuriens for not instituting any proper system of control. But then, they don’t have any concept of the word them­selves.’’

  The reason for Baumer’s sudden change of mood still was not clear. He had no interest in the kind of work that Gina had described, and he didn’t come across as the kind of person who would rush to do favors for strangers, or who would put any great value on sociabil­ity. Her first inclination had been to assume the attraction to be therefore mainly physical—he had, after all, been away from home and his own kind for almost half a year; but his manner showed no hint of it, and the passion in his eyes when he spoke burned only for visions of Jevlen’s future. So if Baumer didn’t have a reason, the reason had to be someone else’s—and that could only be the Jev­lenese that Baumer was working for. Del Cullen had asked her to try and find out what it was that gave them a hold over him.

  Her approach was still to affect a more sympathetic attitude toward his views than she felt. “Maybe the Federation people had the right idea,” she said. “But they only played at being leaders. They never had to learn about real survival. They only had Thuriens to deal with.”

  “Absolutely,” Baumer agreed.

  At one point he stopped and pointed at the entrance to a solid-looking frontage on the thoroughfare that they were passing along. It had large double doors, and two men who looked like guards could be seen inside. One of them was in the act of opening an inner door to admit a man carrying a wrapped bundle under his arm. “People are getting nervous,” Baumer said to Gina. “They’re putting their valu­ables in deposit banks that are springing up, like that one, and the receipts are becoming negotiable currency.” Evidently he didn’t approve. “A few profit from the insecurity of many. Manipulators of money. . . We know what it leads to. We’ve seen it all before, on Earth.”

  With JEVEX no longer coordinating the planet’s distribution sys­tem, the flow of supplies and commodities into Shiban and its vicinity had become erratic. However, some entrepreneurial spirits were emerging among the Jevlenese, and had organized workforces of mechanics to recover and fix all kinds of defunct vehicles from the piles abandoned around the city. Others were setting up retail outlets and building up a growing trade with various sources, near and far, that they had sought out and worked deals with. “Exploiting people’s needs,” Baumer sneered. “Everyone has a right to eat. The Gany­means should be taking care of all that.”r />
  Looking into a store displaying extravagant jewelry and clothes in what appeared to be a fashionable quarter, he seethed. “They could have been building a just society, based on equality. But everyone has to be made to work together for it to succeed. The Ganymeans can’t see it. They haven’t got the background. Somehow we have to get the authority to put the right people in control.”

  Gina had heard it all before. It was the envy and rage of the frustrated intellectual at the capriciousness with which a system based on free choice bestowed its rewards. Traditional patterns of privilege, right, and might didn’t matter. Who would succeed and who would fail was decided, often with little discernible logic or reason, by the collective whims and preferences of everyone. But those who could produce nothing that would sell in the marketplace, and who had nothing of appeal to offer at the ballot box, were unable to compete. Their only recourse was coercion. If their worth and wisdom went unrecognized, they would use the state and its legislative power to make people need them.