They bought a couple of hot, crisp breads filled with chopped meat and vegetables in a spicy sauce from a corner vendor. Baumer said they were called grinils. They ate them sitting on a low wall nearby, drinking from mugs of a dark, bitterish brew tolerably close to coffee, and watching the life in the street pass by.
“What kinds of Jevlenese have you gotten to know in the time you’ve been here?” Gina asked absently.
“Besides the historical societies, you mean? There’s one character at the university here that I think you should meet.”
Gina shook her head. “No, I didn’t mean in connection with what I’m here for, particularly. Just in general. Socially, when you’re off-duty. That kind of thing.”
“Oh, different kinds, you know,” Baumer replied vaguely. “Why? What kind were you interested in?”
“No kind especially. I just wondered what people get up to here. I might have come to research a book, but there’s life to live, too. You don’t exactly get to visit another world every day.” She munched her grinil and sipped casually. “You’ve got some pretty strong views on the way Jevlen should be organized. I’d have thought you’d try getting to know Jevlenese who think the same way.”
He looked at her oddly. “Are you interested in meeting people like that?”
“Maybe, if you know any. What they’re heading for is a mess. Who wouldn’t be interested in trying to do something about it?”
Baumer continued staring at her for a few seconds longer, but then changed the subject. “You’re spending a lot of time with those UNSA scientists at PAC, I notice,” he said.
“They’re an island of something that’s familiar, I suppose,” Gina answered. “But it’s not the same as getting out and seeing Jevlen, is it? And I don’t really follow what they’re talking about most of the time, anyway.”
“How far do you think they’ll go?” Baumer asked her. “I mean, how far will they go in importing Ganymean science to Earth? I take it that’s what their mission here is all about.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t put it as strongly as that,” Gina replied. “They’re just sifting through the basics, as far as I can tell. I haven’t heard anything about plans for a firm program. What did you mean? Setting up something comprehensive there, planetwide, like JEVEX was here?”
“I suppose it’s a question that will have to be asked sooner or later,” Baumer said. “In fact I’d be amazed if it hadn’t been asked already.”
“Do you think it would be a good thing? I mean, look at the situation it’s resulted in here. And we’re still a long way from solving that.”
“Then bring it back. What good has taking it away done? None. It’s only made everything worse.”
“You think so?”
“Oh, no question.”
“So you’d have no qualms about switching JEVEX on again tomorrow,” Gina concluded.
“It should be available freely everywhere,” Baumer said. “Part of the Ganymeans’ task should be to provide it.”
“You don’t have any reservations about JEVEX, then?” Gina asked.
“Reservations? Why should I?” A strange, distant light came into Baumer’s eyes, and his face softened into one of its rare smiles. “JEVEX is wonderful. It solves all needs and problems. It’s the people’s right. Isn’t it their property?”
Gina looked at him curiously. “How do you know so much about it? Surely it was switched off before you got here.”
Baumer’s attention returned suddenly to present. He seemed confused. “Well, yes, of course. It’s what I hear from the Jevlenese—the ones that I talk to in my studies.” He took her empty mug and stood up. Gina watched as he returned both the mugs to the stall, but when he returned she decided to drop the subject.
A group of about a dozen or so zanily dressed youths, with vivid purple makeup and orange hair molded into spikes and rings, was gathering on an opposite corner. “Come on,” Baumer said, sounding wary. “Let’s be moving on.”
But as he and Gina moved away along the street, the group began moving also. After they had turned two corners and crossed a shabby court beneath the supports of a traffic flyover, it was clear that they were being followed. Baumer quickened the pace but said nothing.
“What’s going on?” Gina muttered.
‘‘I’m not sure.”
“Who are the punks?”
“It could be any one of the cults that you find in this place. There are scores of them.”
They were in a distinctly run-down area now, entering a dingy alley with premises closed down and deserted, few people about, and little chance of help if things turned ugly. Gina wondered fleetingly why Baumer should have come this way. Surely historical societies weren’t to be found in such surroundings.
Behind, the pursuers were getting closer and were uttering a chorus of murmuring that grew into a chant, punctuated by jeers.
“Do you understand what they’re saying?” Gina asked, scared.
“They’ve spotted us as Terrans. Apparently we’re not popular. It sounds like the equivalent of ‘Yanks go home.’”
They came out of a foot passage into a narrow alley that joined a wider road farther on. A black automobile was parked in the alley, facing the other way, with barely enough room on each side for someone to squeeze past. Two men, both looking unremarkable in plain, gray overcoats, were standing by the back of it. Baumer didn’t recognize them as any he had dealt with before. They seemed in a different league, not flashy or brash. Gina registered in an absent kind of way that there was something odd about them, but just at that moment her attention was too focused on the pursuers behind, who were making their way along the foot passage, for her to care. But at the sight of the car and the two men waiting by it, the punks halted.
And then the rear doors of the car opened and two more men got out, smartly dressed in suits, but looking mean and businesslike. One of them drew some kind of gun and pointed it, at the same time snapping something in a firm, no-nonsense tone. The one who seemed to be the punk leader backed away, raising his hands placatingly, his face working in an inane grin, presumably intended to avoid offending. He muttered something, and then the whole group disappeared back along the passage.
Gina turned, and for a split second her instinctive reaction was one of relief, even gratitude. But then she realized that the attention of the four men from the car was now directed at her. In the same instant she knew that they had been expecting her. Confused,, she turned to where Baumer had been, but he had moved away to one side, while one of the four had moved between Gina and the passage, blocking her retreat. It hit her then that she had been set up. She turned back again, but the other three were already closing in around her. There was nowhere to go. One of them pointed a bulbous object at her and squirted a jet of gas into her face. She collapsed instantly. Two of the men caught her and steered her limp form into one of the open doors of the car, then climbed in after her. One of the remaining two went around and got in the other side, while the last stopped to look at Baumer, who was standing tense and white—faced.
“Okay, you’ve done your part. Now disappear,” he ordered, waving a hand in a dismissive gesture.
Baumer withdrew a few paces, but he was reluctant to enter the passage for fear that the punks might still be lurking. He would leave in the opposite direction when the car had gone.
The man in the gray coat went around and climbed in next to the driver, and moments later the car moved away.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Danchekker stood in a room in the upper level of PAC, hands clasping his lapels, speaking in a confidently genial tone.
“There have been times, I admit, Vie, when I have been guilty of displaying less of an open-minded disposition than should be expected from a scientific professional,” he told Hunt, who was leaning on the wall, arms folded, while Shilohin listened from behind an oversize Ganymean desk. “But you know yourself the difficulty of abandoning a notion that appears to make sense once it has taken
root.” The professor released one lapel briefly to make a dismissive gesture in the air. “In the present case, my conviction up until now has been that no hypothesis beyond misplaced Thurien generosity, coupled with their inability to understand the human capacity for self—deceit and wishful thinking, was necessary to account for the general Jevlenese condition that we observe today.”
“Yes, Chris, but there’s something—” Hunt began.
Danchekker merely nodded that he understood and continued. “In particular, I disagreed with the suggestion that there might exist a discrete, external cause of their widespread aberration, and specifically that such a source might be associated with JEVEX.”
“I’m not saying that it’s a general Jevlenese condition anymore,” Hunt said. “It only applies to—”
But Danchekker raised a hand, as if preparing Hunt for a revelation. “I am able to inform you, now, that I have seen fit to reverse that opinion. Sandy and Gina have persuaded me that JEVEX might indeed turn out to have been the culprit.” He turned momentarily to survey an imaginary chalkboard. “The neurally coupled Thurien information-transfer system is able to generate a complete sensory experience of any real, sensor-equipped location; or alternatively, of what can be totally illusory circumstances and events, fabricated within the processing environment itself. Now, we already know that JEVEX didn’t incorporate the same precautions and restraints as VISAR, the system upon which it was modeled. Also, VISAR was developed in the first instance to accommodate to Ganymean psychology, which is vastly different from human.
“The point that escaped me until my attention was drawn to it is the ability of this alien technology to access directly and interact with the inner processes of the mind. In brief, it can create utterly compelling artificial realities shaped by the conscious and subconscious wishes of the subject.” Danchekker stared pointedly at Hunt. “Imagine what that could mean. We’ve been asking what could divert a whole population from rationality and disrupt their mental equilibrium, to the point where they are unable to sustain a coherent distinction between illusion and reality. Now, I think, we have the answer. Escape into JEVEX—created fantasy became a universal narcotic: perhaps the ultimate analgesic against all pain and worry, disappointment and boredom. The Ganymean psyche, by its nature, enjoyed an inbuilt resilience against overindulging; the human one, unfortunately, did not.”
Danchekker bared his teeth in a show of the new amity and understanding that existed between them now that he had reformed. He turned toward Shilohin. “Garuth described the symptoms as being like a ‘plague.’ And, indeed, we see that is precisely what it was: a plague of an addiction that operates directly on the mind. The historical record shows that the symptoms first began appearing long ago, but not until JEVEX had been in operation for some time. Again, the facts are explained. And today, all of the cults and movements across Jevlen, despite their other disagreements, are unanimous in demanding that JEVEX be restored.”
“But that’s not it, Chris,” Hunt managed to get in at last. “I don’t think that what we’re looking for has got anything to do with fantasies in people’s heads. I think it’s something very real.”
Oblivious, Danchekker sailed on. “And the social disruption that we see shows precisely the kind of effects that one would expect from a powerful narcotic. In the course of its development, the brain has evolved a chemical reward system which motivates the organism by producing sensations of pleasure that become associated through learning with beneficial, survival-oriented behavior patterns. What makes narcotics so pernicious is their ability to short—circuit the process by triggering the reward mechanism directly, without anything beneficial having to be done at all. And in the case of a narcotic such as the one we have here, where the effects are—” He stopped and jerked his head back to look at Hunt abruptly. “What was that? What did you say?”
“Yes, headworlding and the Thurien interstellar welfare program are what have made the Jevienese defenseless against the plague. But those things aren’t the virus,” Hunt said. “There is a source, and it’s a very strange one-as strange as anything that might be extracted from the most psychotic subconscious. But I don’t think it’s a product of anything like that. I think that the source exists somewhere tangi— ble—that it’s real.”
Danchekker blinked. “But that’s what I’ve just said, isn’t it?”
“Not quite. You s—”
“You tried telling me it was JEVEX, and I disagreed. Now I’m accepting that it was.” Danchekker’s color deepened a shade. “Dammit, Vie, ever since we met you’ve been telling me that I should be more flexible. Now I’ve conceded to reverse my view on something which, quite frankly, still strikes me as more than a little farfetched, and you’re saying it’s not good enough. Well, what in God’s name do you want?”
Hunt remained unruffled. “You’re accepting JEVEX as the cause that detached them from reality,” he said. “But I’m saying it only dissolved the glue. What pulled them away was a particular kind of Jevlenese who weren’t out of touch with reality—or maybe whose reality was very peculiar.”
“Aren’t we splitting rather fine hairs?” Danchekker objected.
“I don’t think so,” Shilohin commented, looking at Hunt curiously.
Danchekker snorted. “Very well. Supposing we accept this contention of yours for the time being. What are your grounds for proposing it?”
Now that he had Danchekker’s attention, Hunt unfolded himself from the wall and perched on the arm of one of the chairs of the conference area that formed one side of the office.
“First, we need to distinguish between two kinds of Jevlenese,” he said. “On the one hand there’s the ordinary, common or garden-variety, who waves banners in the parades, gets his philosophy from the Dear Aunt Mary column, and probably thinks that Jevien is carried on the back of a giant turtle.” Hunt nodded in Danchekker’s direction. “That’s the kind you’re talking about, Chris. And yes, I agree, given something like JEVEX, they could get so addictively immersed that they wouldn’t know whether they were in it or out of it. They’re the ones I’d call genuinely crazy; and I’d say they make up most of the population. That’s why we’ve got such a mess outside.”
“Which was more or less our conclusion, also,” Shilohin threw in. “Our rationale in shutting JEVEX down was that it would compel them to face reality.”
Hunt nodded. “I know. But it hasn’t worked the way you hoped, has it? And I think I know why. You assumed, as Chris did, that it was something inherent in the actual exposure to JEVEX that was sending them off the rails. But all JEVEX did was condition them to be highly suggestible—to any influence, inside JEVEX, or out of it. And that damage had already been done over many years; switching JEVEX off wasn’t going to undo it.”
Shilohin sat back in her chair as the gist of what Hunt was getting at became clearer. “You mean the influence that’s unhinging them is still out there,” she checked.
“The ayatollahs,” Hunt replied simply. “You didn’t switch them off.”
“But they’re just as much Jevlenese, too,” Danchekker protested. “Merely coining a word for the extreme cases doesn’t endow them with any qualitative difference that matters.” He showed his teeth again and thrust out his jaw challengingly. “And besides, you’re simply moving the question to another place, not answering it. If you’re postulating them as the cause, then what, may I ask, deranged them? What caused the cause?”
“That’s where the difference lies,” Hunt said. “They’re not simply an extreme case of what’s wrong with the Jevienese in general. Their problem isn’t the same. They’re defensive and disoriented by something they’ve experienced, and it drives some of them over the edge, yes. But they’re not exhibiting the same uncritical gullibility that you see in the typical Jevlenese—in fact, some of them have managed to retain an amazingly strong grip on themselves. Their difficulty isn’t in telling what’s real from what isn’t; it’s with knowing how to
interpret what they accept as real.”
“Are you saying that their ability to interpret their perceptions has been disrupted somehow?” Shilohin asked.
Hunt shook his head. “Not exactly. The ability is still there, but
it’s confused. It’s as if what it’s being asked to interpret is suddenly unfamiliar.”
Shilohin looked puzzled. “That sounds like the inverse of a paradigm shift. The paradigm stays the same, but reality no longer fits it.”
“Not a bad way to put it,” Hunt agreed.
“Is this the business of being ‘possessed’ that they talk about?”
‘‘I’m pretty sure it is.’’
“You mean they suddenly perceive a different reality? Their conceptual framework stays intact, but what they’re experiencing doesn’t relate to it anymore?”
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