Entoverse

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

The Ganymeans were dubious that anything could be done to reconstruct the memories of Gina’s that had been overwritten. Nevertheless, she allowed VISAR to go over the recollections that now existed in her mind to see if it could find any seams. It processed, correlated, reinterpolated, and analyzed the data in every way that offered a shred of hope that some vestige of what she had actually experienced during the missing hours might be extracted, but the results were uniformly negative. Essentially, the elements of a pattern had been rearranged. The information carried in the previous arrangement was gone, and no amount of juggling could re-create it. As Hunt observed, it was like asking a position in a chess game to say something about the previous game played by the pieces.

All that could be said for sure was that from some time after leaving PAC with Baumer-which couldn’t be pinpointed since it was no longer possible to compare Gina’s story with his to establish where they diverged-to some time before she walked back into PAC, something had happened that was different from what she remembered. And that was probably all that would ever be known. But if a conclusive pointer existed anywhere to the organization that Cullen was looking for, that was where it lay concealed.

Then Calazar, on behalf of the Thurien-Terran Joint Policy Council for Jevlen, formally notified Garuth that a move to terminate the Ganymean custodianship of Jevlen was being actively considered. Nobody was blaming Garuth or his colleagues from the Shapieron, who, Calazar readily acknowledged, had made a magnificent attempt, under impossible circumstances, at a task whose problems had been greatly underestimated.

“We have to accept that our very different origins and the temperament that they confer do not equip us to comprehend this race, let alone direct its affairs,” Calazar said. “The entire history of our own dealings with the Jevlenese was insufficient to teach us what should have been obvious. Therefore we shall accept the counsel of those whose perception has been shaped by a better guide.”

Which was as direct an admission as could be asked for that henceforth the policies of JPC would be determined by humans, with the Thuriens effectively endorsing whatever they decided. Putting in a Terran occupation force would only be a matter of time after that.

An hour or so after Garuth announced the news, Hunt, Cullen, Danchekker, a dejected Garuth, and Shilohin assembled in Garuth’s office. Caldwell, who had confirmed to nobody’s surprise that General Shaw was a fiction, joined in from Goddard, appearing on a screen via a link through VISAR and ZORAC.

There was one last angle that Hunt could think of to try and stall things. “What are the chances, Gregg,” he asked, “of you getting back to JPC through UNSA somehow and seeing if we can get them to put a hold on it? I mean, you can see the kind of outfit we’re up against here: riots in the streets, assassinations, kidnapping and mind-editing, lethal chips in people’s heads. And Dell’s convinced he’s getting really close. It just needs another break. If this team is pulled out now, we’ll lose the lot.”

“This whole move by Eubeleus is a cover for something,” Cullen put in. “He’s not going to Uttan to grow daisies in some terraformed monastery. If we could get JPC to hold off on that, somehow, I’d feel a lot more comfortable.”

“But why would he have left at such a critical time?” Danchekker queried. “How could Uttan be more important if his designs have something to do with Jevlen?”

“That’s what I’m saying we need to find out,” Cullen answered. Then Caldwell said from the screen, “Aren’t you overlooking one small point?”

“What?” Hunt asked.

A hand flashed briefly before the image of the craggy, wirehaired face. “I’ve been sitting here listening to all this talk about whether this Eubeleus is crooked or straight, and what he plans to do on Uttan. And it’s all very interesting. But there’s one minor thing: I haven’t heard one piece of evidence, yet, that proves he had anything to do with what you’re talking about.” The others turned to exchange glances with each other. Caldwell went on. “All that we know he’s done is offer to take a big piece of the problem light-years away from the scene. That’s very nice, and it’s what JPC sees.” He gestured again. “Nothing connects him with the things that Dell’s worried about. There are only three witnesses who could have given a positive line back to him, but not one of them’s any good. Fayne’s dead; the Marin girl had her tape wiped clean; and Baumer’s a gibbering idiot. You see my problem? If Ebeleus’s aim was camouflage, he’s done a good job. I don’t have one solid fact to go back up through UNSA, trying to get the brakes put on JPC. I don’t like the feel of this either, but I can’t go stirring things up at that level on the basis of what we’ve got. There just isn’t a case.”

And he was right, Hunt conceded, slumping back in his seat. Politics was Caldwell’s business. He knew the system. If he started rocking the boat because he didn’t like the feel of things, but it turned out that he had nothing concrete to back it up, then nobody would take any notice when he did find something.

A heavy silence had overtaken the room. Garuth got up and moved across to the window to stare out at the dilapidated towers of Shiban. As a city it was falling apart; but he had developed a strange, inexplicable fondness for it. Perhaps it had something to do with its being the first place that had come anywhere near feeling like home since the Shapieron’s departure from Minerva. Had he been left in charge of it, he wouldn’t have imposed any sudden or drastic changes, he decided. He would have let it be, allowing it to seek out and evolve its own solutions at its own pace. Those were always the kinds of changes that endured, he had found. The worthwhile changes.

“And I still have the feeling that we were getting so close,” he said aloud.

Afterward, Hunt stopped by Gina’s suite to give her the news and to see how things were going.

“And when you go through it, Gregg could be right,” he told her. “Eubeleus may have nothing to do with it. We can’t make any case to JPC. Any junior lawyer with his name still wet on the door could make mincemeat out of it.”

Gina shook her head. “Surely there has to be some way to get further.”

“Probably true, but hardly constructive.”

“What about that office of Baumer’s, the one I went to? Mightn’t that turn up something?” she asked, reaching for a straw.

“It was broken into and ransacked. Whoever did it made a bonfire. There wasn’t enough paper left to write your name on. Now, wasn’t that convenient for somebody?” Hunt stretched back in his chair. “I don’t know, Gina. Why do people insist on complicating life like this? You’d think they’d learn to just enjoy the pleasant side of it, wouldn’t you? It’s short enough… Thinking about it, I might even go and join this monastery of Eubeleus’s. Now, wouldn’t that qualify as a genuine miracle?” He grinned tiredly across the room at her. “Anyway, how are you feeling? I never even thought to ask.”

“Oh, a bit like having a tooth out. It feels strange at first, but you get used to it. Pretty much the way you said.”

“That’s good to know, anyhow. Did you talk to Sandy?”

“Yes. She’s glad it worked out.”

ZORAC came through at that moment with a call for Hunt from Duncan Watt, who was at another JEVEX site with the Ganymean engineers. Further findings had corroborated the nonsensical conclusion of the first: not only was JEVEX evidently far smaller than the original design information said; if what the Ganymeans were discovering was typical, it was virtually nonexistent.

“Another one,” Watt announced.

Hunt was baffled. “Another fake?”

“Worse. I wanted you to see this one for yourself.”

“Where are you?”

“Traganon, city about three hundred miles north.”

“So, what have you found?” Hunt asked.

“Well, you know what we found at the other sites: usually some interfacing and i-space transmission gear that was real enough, and then streets of impressive-looking cubes and beamguides all doing nothing. But take a look at what we’ve got here. It beats the rest for sheer audacity.”

Watt stepped to one side to reveal the scene behind him. He had been standing in front of a wide window. It looked like that of a control room, facing out over a vast floor, dark in shadows. The floor was bare and dusty: just an empty expanse of untiled concrete, stretching away between lines of square, unadorned pillars into shadows cast by a few, weak, overhead lamps.

For a moment Hunt wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be looking at. “That’s it?”

“That’s it. Nothing. They didn’t even bother faking this one. Rodgar thinks it could have been like this for centuries.”

The camera moved, sliding Watt out of the frame completely and showing more derelict galleries. There were oddments of trash and debris scattered in places, and here and there a length of cable hanging from a roof support. Small animals were scurrying in the shadows. Hunt wondered if there had once been equipment installed there that had been moved elsewhere for some reason.

It seemed larger than most of the other vaults that Duncan had checked. Hunt tried to visualize it as the Thurien designers had intended: packed with tiers of crystalline slab stacked to the roof and serviced by access elevators and walkways-Hunt had “visited” some of the halls on Thurien where VISAR’s bulk-processing centers were located. The contrast between the desolation of the view on the screen and the image in Hunt’s mind took on an odd significance that he couldn’t quite pin down. He stared at the screen with a strange mixture of somberness and reverie.

“You’re getting around, anyway, Duncan,” he half heard Gina saying from across the room.

“If you think Shiban’s run down, come and see this place,” Watt answered.

Something moving caught Hunt’s eye-something bright, appearing and disappearing in the shadows higher up between two of the pillars. Several things, tiny white points. Hunt stared at the view, then realized that they were flying, insectlike creatures, crisscrossing through a shaft of light from one of the lamps. They looked like speeded-up images of stars orbiting in a black void, he thought to himself.

“Did you hear about the news from JPC?” Gina was asking Duncan.

“Not yet. What’s up?”

“Oh, it doesn’t sound too good…”

And then a strange superposition took place in Hunt’s mind of the scene he was looking at, and the picture in his imagination of what should have been there but wasn’t. He saw the void, but its volume filled in his mind’s eye with banks of Thurien processing crystal; the tiny points of light were still there, orbiting through the solid lattices. And suddenly he saw them no longer as stars, but as atoms.

Or as elementary quanta.

Quanta of what? Nobody knew. It could have been anything.

The quanta that a real, physical universe could evolve out of.