Entoverse

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The team spent the rest of the day relaxing, adjusting to local Jevlen time, and catching up on their rest. The next morning, Hunt and Danchekker met with Garuth and Shilohin in Garuth’s suite in the Ganymean offices. The items of equipment and other effects that they had brought from Earth had arrived, and Sandy and Duncan were busy getting things organized in the UNSA labs. The two Ganymeans summarized what they had learned after six months with the Jevlenese.

“We thought we might draw a lesson from the dismantling of socialism on Earth,” Garuth said, speaking from behind his huge Ganymean desk, which was also an elaborate console. “It seemed that the JEVEX dependency here could be thought of as analogous to the over dependency that developed there on the too-protective state.”

“A lot of people on Earth have been saying the same thing,” Hunt commented.

“But simply unhooking them from JEVEX doesn’t seem to be the answer,” Garuth went on. “Or at least, not enough of an answer. It seems to work for some of them. Those are the ones who are finding what needs to be done and doing it. That was how we hoped the majority would react, more or less as happened on Earth.”

“But they turned out to be relatively few,” Shilohin said.

Garuth continued. “The general mass of Jevlenese seem to suffer from a… you could call it a ‘predisposition’ toward irrationality that goes beyond anything seen on ancient Earth. They just don’t seem to possess any faculty for distinguishing possible from impossible, or the plausible from the ridiculous. So we get these cults of unreason flourishing across Jevlen, and we’re at a loss for an effective answer to them.” Garuth motioned in the air with a gray, double-thumbed hand. “We watch the intellectual degeneracy of what once showed every promise of maturing into an advanced technological civilization. It’s like a plague from somewhere, but one which affects the mind. We need you to help us find where it’s coming from.”

“That’s not all there is to it, though, is it?” Hunt queried. “Didn’t you say something when you called me in Washington, about being worried that JPC might be about to pull you out?”

“Some of the Terran representatives on JPC have been saying that the Ganymean administration here isn’t working, and that the situation is heading toward breakdown,” Garuth replied. “They’re not disagreeing with the Thuriens’ policy, but they believe that it’s going to need some kind of backing by force to make it work.”

Which would mean Terran-style force, Hunt understood; in other words, putting in a Terran military occupation. Ganymeans didn’t work that way.

“They may not be entirely wrong,” Hunt cautioned. “The Jevlenese stayed away from violence while they had the chance to exploit Thurien know-how. But they were going to end all that, as we all know, and they came frighteningly close. Now they don’t have that restraint anyway. Once they get themselves reorganized, there could be serious trouble.”

“I’m not disputing that,” Garuth conceded. “I accept the differences that set us and humans apart. But I’ve also studied enough of your history to have an idea of the kind of inflexibility that an authoritarian solution will lead to once it’s adopted. The cause of the Jevlenese problem won’t be important; all that will matter will be how to suppress the effects. And that would be a tragedy, because we’re convinced that at the bottom of this mass insanity there’s something important waiting to be uncovered, that we don’t understand. We know what sent Earth off into irrationality thousands of years ago. But none of that applies here.”

Garuth got up and moved a short distance across the room to stand staring for a moment at a framed picture of the Shapieron standing on the shore of Lake Geneva. He turned and faced the others again.

“This may sound strange to you, but in many ways I’m beginning to feel the same toward the Jevlenese as I did toward my own people aboard that ship, when I was their leader through all those years in space. I feel a responsibility for them, an affection, even. I’d like to see them develop the confidence and self-reliance that Earth is starting to display now. But that can’t happen until we find out what’s undermining them. And to do that, we need help from people who understand humans better than we do. Del Cullen is doing his best, but we know that none of us would make a very good Mac-” Garuth hesitated. “ZORAC, who was that famous Terran who wrote about intrigue and deceit?”

“Machiavelli?” the computer replied.

“Yes. Was he Scottish?”

“No. Italian.”

“I thought ‘Macs’ were Scottish.”

“Not always.”

“Oh.” Garuth sighed. “Is there anything about Earth that’s completely consistent, ZORAC?”

“If there is, I haven’t found it.”

Garuth looked back at Hunt and Danchekker. “So those are my fears. If there’s a risk of our being replaced, there might not be very much time. That was why we came to Vic when we did, and in the way that we did.”

There was a short pause. Then Danchekker clasped his fingers together, his elbows resting on the arms of his chair, and cleared his throat. “Can you be sure that there really is an identifiable cause of this ‘plague,’ as you put it, waiting to be tracked down?” he asked. “We know that in the case of Earth, the Jevlenese deliberately introduced nonsensical belief systems thousands of years ago and engineered supernatural workings to support them. But the Jevlenese have always been under the totally rational guidance of the Thuriens, which, one would suppose, should produce exactly the opposite results. That turns out not to have been the case, however.”

“Naturally, we wondered about that, too,” Shiohin said. “Do you have an explanation?”

Danchekker took off his spectacles and proceeded to wipe them with a handkerchief. “Only that possibly you’re thinking too much like Ganymeans, and not making sufficient allowance for the limitless human capacity for sheer, pigheaded obstinacy. The reason why socialism fell apart on Earth wasn’t because its ideals were unachievable-Ganymeans achieve them as a matter of course, instinctively. It failed because they are alien to human nature. And when its advocates tried to change human nature to make the fact fit their theory, people resisted. The social engineers didn’t understand that Newton’s third law applies to social forces as well as to physical ones.”

“Go on,” Garuth said, listening attentively.

Danchekker showed a hand in a reluctant acknowledgment that he, too, had no choice but to accept the facts as he found them. “And I can see humans, any humans, reacting in the same way to the kind of enticement by which the Thuriens tried to shape them-” He gestured at Garuth. “-and to the kind that you are attempting now. In other words, couldn’t what you’re up against be simply a fundamental, ineradicable human trait? Are you sure that what you’re looking for actually exists at all?” He drew a pad and pencil from his pocket and began scribbling some notes.

Garuth returned to his desk and sat down again. “We asked ourselves that, but we don’t think it’s the case,” he answered. “You see, there’s a distinct category of Jevlenese that the infection seems to spread from. They account for practically all of the cult founders and the agitators. All the trouble seems to emanate from them.”

“You mean like the one all these purple people have been getting into a frenzy over since yesterday?” Hunt interjected. “What was he called, Ayatollah, or something?”

“Ayultha,” Shilohin supplied.

“Oh, yes.”

“There’s something very unusual about them,” Garuth said. “Something that can’t be explained as simply an extreme of some general human characteristic. There’s too much of a pattern, too much that’s systematic for it to be coincidental aberration.”

ZORAC interrupted. “Excuse me. I have a call for Professor Danehekker.”

Danchekker’s pencil broke, and the color drained visibly from his face.

“Who is it, ZORAC?” Hunt asked.

“Sandy, from the UNSA labs.”

“Put her through.”

“Oh, sorry to interrupt, but we’re wondering where to put your personal things, Professor,” Sandy’s voice said cheerfully. “Do you want to be out in the lab? Or I thought maybe one of the smaller offices would be better for privacy.”

Danchekker nodded rapidly and licked his lips. “Yes… yes, that would be preferable, thank you,” he agreed in a shaky voice.

“Okay.”

“Hold any more non urgent calls until we’re through, ZORAC,” Garuth instructed.

Hunt looked back at Garuth. “You were saying that there’s too much of a pattern to these ayatollahs,” he said.

Garuth nodded. “For one thing, they’re all very unscientific. Chronically unscientific. I don’t mean simply low in aptitude; they lack the basic conceptual machinery that makes any rational account of an objective world possible. They don’t seem to share the ordinary, commonsense notions of causality and consistency that you have to have, even to begin understanding the universe. You’d almost think they weren’t from this universe at all.”

“Can you give some instances?” Hunt asked.

“Fundamental things-things that any six-year-old wouldn’t think twice about,” Garuth answered. “We take it for granted, for example, that objects remain unaltered by changes in location or orientation; that things measure the same in the evening as they do in the morning; that the same causes always produce the same results. Children grasp such fundamentals naturally. But the-what did you call them?”

“Ayatollahs,” Hunt said. He shrugged at Danchekker. “Sounds like a good name for them, to me.”

“They don’t seem to see anything natural about predictability at all,” Garuth went on. “They act as if it were mysterious. Machines baffle them.”

“They talk instead about magic and mysticism,” Shilohin said.

Garuth made a gesture of incomprehension. “They believe it,” he said. “As if that was how their perceptions of reality had been conditioned. Hence my question: We know who performed the conjuring tricks that spread such beliefs on Earth. But who did it to the Jevlenese?”

Danchekker stared at him. “I have no idea. Have you?”

Garuth waited for a moment, then nodded. “Possibly. We think it could have something to do with JEVEX. But we’re not sure exactly how.”

“JEVEX evolved under the same influences that plotted to overthrow Thurien and Earth,” Shilohin pointed out. “Conceivably the qualities of its creators were somehow embodied into its nature-and the ayatollahs are frequently violent and excitable. They are suspicious of everyone, and pathologically insecure, hence their obsessive urge to control others and impose their will-what else do these cults of theirs express? The insecurity also manifests itself as an insatiable lust for wealth, on a scale beyond the comprehension of normal people.”

“Hm, we’ve seen more than a few like that back on Earth,” Hunt remarked. He was thinking of a ring that had been broken up after the Pseudowar and its revelations. Maybe Earth held more undercover Jevlenese than had been realized.

“A completely circular argument,” Danchekker objected. “You begin by postulating JEVEX as the cause, then conclude by deducing Jevlenese origins as a consequence. A simple observation of the commonality of human nature to both situations would be far more to the point, would it not?”

“Maybe,” Hunt conceded.

Garuth was not so sure. “There is other evidence of a distinct, external cause at work: the suddenness with which the ayatollahs are affected. The condition doesn’t seem to be present from birth, or something that develops progressively through life. It appears suddenly, as if the victims were being possessed.”

“At a similar point in their lives?” Hunt queried.

“No. It can happen at any age.”

“There are practically no records of childhood cases, though,” Shilohin mentioned.

“Yes, that’s correct.”

Hunt reflected for several seconds. “What kind of evidence is there for these ‘possessions’?” he asked finally. “Is it just anecdotal, or what?”

“It’s an acknowledged fact among the Jevlenese, occurring as far back as records go,” Garuth said. “Shilohin has conducted a study of their history.”

Shilohin took up the details. “A number of common themes reappear continually beneath the superficial differences of what the various cults preach. They go back a long way, and cut across boundaries of nation, race, creed, geographic area and historical age. One of them is this notion we’ve already mentioned of persons being suddenly ‘possessed,’ somehow. It’s always in the same kind of way: they usually switch to a new life-style; their value system and their conceptual world model change; and they lose rationality.”

“So it’s not as if they never had it,” Hunt said.

“Exactly. And it isn’t only we who see the difference. All the native Jevlenese languages have terms that set them apart as a class- usually translating as ‘Emerged’ or ‘Arisen,’ or something vaguely synonymous. They talk about having ‘escaped’ from an ‘inner world,’ or something recognizably similar.”

When Shilohin had finished, Danchekker twiddled the pen that Hunt had handed him between his fingers and stared down at his notes in silence for a while. Finally, he exhaled heavily and shook his head. “I still think you’re reading meaning where none exists,” he said. “Essentially the same concepts are also encountered widely on Earth. The most economic answer is that they are merely simplistic expressions of the hopes, fears, and doubts that underlie the workings of primitive mentalities anywhere. No unifying explanation of the kind you are seeking is called for.”

“ZORAC, what’s your evaluation?” Garuth asked.

“Logically, the professor is correct. But past experience says Vic’s hunches are the way to bet.”

“Then let me throw one more thing at you, Professor,” Garuth said. “The pattern doesn’t extend back to the earliest stages of the Jevlenese past. There was no hint of it in Lunarian history. And the descendants of the Lambian survivors brought from Minerva didn’t show it until long after they established themselves on Jevlen.”

Shilohin completed the point for him. “It was only after JEVEX had been up and running for some time that the first ayatollahs appeared, spreading notions of mysticism and magic. Before then, nothing of the kind had been heard of. In fact, that was where the Jevlenese got their idea for sabotaging Earth. That’s why we think that JEVEX was the culprit, somehow. And it could also explain why all of the cults, regardless of their superficial bickerings and hair-splittings, are united in calling for JEVEX to be restored.”

At that moment ZORAC came through again. “Excuse me, but I’ve got Del Cullen. He says it’s urgent.”

“Go ahead,” Garuth said.

Cullen’s face appeared on one of the screens by Garuth’s desk, looking tense. “Ayultha has been assassinated,” he announced without preliminaries.

Gasps of disbelief came from around the office. Garuth was stunned. “When? How?” he stammered.

“A few minutes ago, at the rally they were having in Chinzo today. We’re not exactly sure how. Look-this is what happened.”

Cullen’s face was replaced by a view of Ayultha treating a frenzied gathering to one of his harangues. He seemed to reach some kind of a crescendo, standing dramatically with his arms raised while the crowd thundered in unison. Then a figure scrambled up onto the edge of the platform, shouting something, then pointed an accusing finger-and Ayultha exploded. There was a burst of incandescence, and then all that remained where he had stood an instant before was a smoldering patch on the platform. Pandemonium broke out all around. A purple-spiral banner that had formed the backdrop was blazing, and some people at the front of the crowd seemed to have been burned.

“My God!” Danchekker whispered, staring numbly.

Hunt watched the screen, grim-faced. “They might be crazy, Chris. But we’re not dealing with any Hare Krishnas,” he muttered. “Whatever’s going on here, those guys are serious.”