Worlds in Chaos (23 page)

“I don’t know, Lan,” he sighed. “Sometimes you wonder what it’s all about. You think you’re getting somewhere, actually making a difference to something that matters, and then one day you wake up and look around, and you realize that all you’ve really been doing is hanging in there while most of what you made ends up in other pockets, and that’s about the way it’s always gonna be.” He took a gulp of coffee and shrugged. “And that’s it. That’s what it’s all about. And you find that some dumb ball game is the high point that you look forward to in your week. It doesn’t feel right. Does it to you? Don’t you get this feeling inside that we were meant for bigger things, better things? . . . What kinds of things could we be doing if we weren’t wiping ourselves out just trying to make ends meet all the time?”

Starting cathedrals to be completed two generations later, Keene thought to himself. Bringing a universe to life. He drank from his own mug and looked around. Three young children at a nearby table were laughing and giggling, having stopped in for an afternoon ice cream with their mother. Workers from a power-company truck parked along the street outside were closing off one of the traffic lanes with orange cones. “I guess if you leave things even a little bit better than you found them, it means it was worthwhile,” he said, looking back and trying to inject something positive. “Philosophers ask the wrong question. They spend years wanting to know if humanity is perfectible. Then, when they finally arrive at the conclusion that the answer is no—which should have been obvious in the first place—they get depressed and commit suicide or something.”

“So what should the question be?” Les asked.

“Whether humanity is improvable. And since the answer will always be yes, there’s always something worthwhile to be doing.”

Urkin stared hard as if trying to fault it, apparently couldn’t, and settled for a snort. “All right. So how do we improve this situation we’ve been talking about?” he asked. “Have you figured out what’s going on? It isn’t science.”

“Now you want me to play psychologist. That’s not my line, Les. I build nuclear drives for spaceships.”

“I’d still like to hear your take, anyhow.”

“Well . . .” Keene drew a long breath while he thought about it. “I guess it’s the old story of the in-club being threatened by a heresy that’s getting attention. You could lose your standing as the official church and all the gravy that comes with it, and then your disciples will desert to the other side. So you fight it with everything you’ve got.”

“Everything?” Urkin objected. “You mean scruples don’t matter? I thought there were supposed to be civilized rules of discourse and conduct.”

“Oh, those only apply between gentlemen who are in the club,” Keene explained. “They don’t count if you’re on the outside.”

“But we’ve got flagrant censorship going on. Suppression of facts. What happened to all this I heard about impartial weighing of evidence; seeking objective truth?”

Keene waved a hand. “Like with all religions: it was a nice thought in the early days. Then different people move in and take over, and in the end it’s the power dynamics that matter. The rest makes good reading for indoctrinating the initiates.”

Urkin looked across curiously. “But that’s not true with everyone, is it?” he said. “I mean, how about you? You still seem to care about those things.”

“Sure. And that’s why I run a five-person office that works with a maverick outfit somewhere in the south of Texas instead of handing out the contracts in Washington. But at least that gives me a reason. What’s yours?”

Urkin just shook his head in a way that gave up trying to understand it.

Keene knew he was drifting into being flippant again. It was his reflex defense mechanism while he absorbed the impact of what had happened to Salio and the other things he had heard. But underneath it, now, he could feel his anger rising, like the slow building up of wind before a storm. And he wasn’t going to accomplish anything to alleviate it here, or with people like Salio, or by talking to the Kronians, or flying stunts around the planet. The only place to take it was where the source of the problem lay.

Could Cavan have really seen this coming all along?

18

Keene arrived at Protonix the next morning with a mood that hung over the office like a temperature inversion. The girls got on with their tasks and stayed out of the way.

He was in the kind of situation that irked him the most: of not being in control of the things that affected him the most profoundly. His professional future was tied to the fortunes of Amspace, which hinged on decisions that would eventually come out of Washington, and he had done all he could do to influence the process that would determine those decisions. And the premonitions he was getting weren’t good. To make matters worse, the focus of priorities at Amspace had shifted for the time being from engineering matters that involved him to internal administrative details of getting Montemorelos ready to relaunch the shuttle that had landed there, giving him no ready outlet for his energies.

His approach to life had always been to suspect himself as the first candidate for blame when things went wrong—which put the capacity for learning something and doing whatever needed to be done squarely in his own hands. That was the first prerequisite to being in control of one’s life as opposed to a helpless victim of it. The Kronian affair was as far as he was prepared to go in knocking himself out, he decided. If this didn’t work out, then to hell with it. He would chuck it all in and go back with them when the
Osiris
departed.

He was still mulling over the thought when Vicki came into his office holding a blue folder and set it down open in front of him. One of the pages showed a contour map of rugged terrain with various locations marked by crosses, squares, and other shapes. The facing sheet had reproductions of what looked like a piece of pottery, a slab that could have been from the base of a statue, and a section of mural relief carving, all with lines of peculiar symbols inscribed, fragmented and obliterated in some parts, others tolerably clear.

“There,” she announced, indicating the symbols. Keene stared at them. He knew what she was getting at but acted dumb and looked at her questioningly. “That’s where I saw them,” she said. “Robin’s science project on the Joktanians. I’m sure they’re like that script that Sariena showed us on the
Osiris.
I can still picture some of them. The similarities can’t be coincidental. They have to be related.”

Keene could only point out the obvious. “I’m sure you mean it, Vicki, but I don’t have to tell you it’s preposterous. How are artifacts from Arabia supposed to have gotten to Saturn? Ancient sea-going cultures making accurate maps of Antarctica before the Ice Age, I can buy. But are they supposed to have built—”

Vicki raised a hand for him to stop. “I know, Lan. I know it’s crazy. All I’m telling you is what I saw. I do ad graphics. I’ve got an eye for things like that.”

He made a conciliatory gesture, indicating that he wasn’t going to argue about it. “So, what do you want me to do?” he asked, leaning back from the desk.

“I’m not really asking you to do anything. But I saw the way you looked at me when I mentioned it in the chopper yesterday, and I just wanted you to know that I hadn’t been having hallucinations or something.”

Keene nodded obligingly. “Okay. . . . So you weren’t being daffy-headed after twenty-four hours in orbit. But I never thought that anyway.” He waited for her to nod, having made her point, pick up the folder, and leave. She didn’t.

“Although . . .” She looked at him as if something had just occurred to her, which Keene didn’t believe for a moment.

“What?”

“Well, it’s got me curious. You said you met this woman from the Smithsonian when you were in Washington, who’s involved in the excavations and so on. . . .”

“Catherine Zetl?”

“Right. Couldn’t we get those images sent through for her to have a look at? Surely that would settle it. If I’m wrong, then that’s the end of it. But if not . . .” Vicki didn’t have to complete it. It would add a whole new dimension of impossibility to something already complex enough.

Keene was not enthusiastic. “I’m not sure it’s our place to go showing that material around,” he said. “Even Sariena checked with Gallian first, remember. And I don’t really know Zetl well enough to go involving her in something like that. We exchanged a few words at a cocktail party. I can see your point, all right, but . . .” He finished with another wave.

Vicki straightened up, looked at him reluctantly for a few seconds, then sighed. “You’re right. We’re not even involved officially, I guess. It’s just . . . Well, it’s so darned bewildering!”

“Yes, I know, I know.” Keene drummed his fingers on the desk. “Tell you what I’ll do. Sariena said those images had been sent ahead, so people here will already be going over them. If there really are similarities to the Joktanian script, surely you can’t have been the only one to spot it. Let’s wait and see what’s said next week when the Kronians bring the artifacts up at the talks. Once their existence has been made public knowledge anyway, I’d feel better about bringing it to Zetl’s attention if nothing else is mentioned—because then it would seem very strange. Asking questions would be legitimate. How would that sound?”

“You mean I have to wait a whole week?”

“Think you can stand it? Come on—I fix you a visit to a spaceship from Saturn and all I get is a hard time? What is this?”

“Well, if you put it like that, I suppose—” The call tone from Keene’s desk screen interrupted.

“Excuse me,” he said, sitting forward to accept. “Hello?”

“Catch you later, Lan.” Vicki picked up the folder and left, closing the door.

The caller was Jerry Allender from Kingsville. He was red-faced and shaking his head, and had to wave a hand in the air several times before he could speak. “Lan, do you know what’s happened? They’re throwing them out . . . just tossing them out as inadmissable! It’ll be like they never happened. They won’t even be a factor to take into consideration—not even worth a can of beans.”

“Jerry, calm down. What are you talking about? Who are throwing what out?”

Allender paused to collect his breath. “I just got word from an astronomer called Tyndam, who’s on the scientific committee that’ll be meeting with the Kronians next week—chaired by somebody called Voler.”

Keene nodded tersely. “And?”

“The orbital calculations that we ran. They aren’t accepting them.”

“
What?
”

“Voler has ruled that until corroboration can be provided by properly organized studies and review, they’re not material to the case. And you know how long that could take for anyone with a mind to stretch things out. But in any case it means that as far as next week is concerned, forget it.”

Keene felt himself trembling in outrage. “The Kronians ran them.
We
already corroborated them! There’s no reason not to accept them tentatively. Every precedent demands it. Is he trying to say that we and the Kronians are both incompetent? . . . Or worse: that we faked it?”

Allender mouthed awkwardly for a second or two, as if choking on something, and then nodded. “I think so, Lan. That was how it came across to me—and what they’re maybe putting around. I think they
are
insinuating just that.”

Minutes later, Keene exploded into the reception area, startling Karen, who was sifting through the morning’s mail at her terminal. “Yale University, Connecticut,” he barked. “I want to talk to Professor Herbert Voler, who runs their astronomy faculty. Either get me through to him or a number that’s close to wherever he is. I don’t care if he’s at his grandmother’s funeral. Find him.”

Vicki appeared, framed in the doorway of her own office behind him. “Lan, don’t you think it might be an idea to let it cool for half an hour before—”

“It’s gone far enough. First we get shoddy science. Then the kind of dirty tricks you’d expect in some tin-pot dictatorship somewhere. Now this.
We
are being accused of incompetence or dishonesty . . .” He shook his head, left the sentence unfinished, and stalked back into his own office, slamming the door. A moment later, he opened it again long enough to throw out, “
By them!”