Entoverse

CHAPTER FOUR

Her name was Gina Marin. She was from Seattle, and she wrote books.

“What kind?” Hunt asked. “Anything I might have read?”

Gina pulled a face. “If only you knew how tired writers get of hearing that question.”

He shrugged unapologetically. “It comes naturally. What else are we supposed to say?”

“Not any blockbusters that you’d know as household names,” she told him candidly. Then she sighed. “I guess I have a habit of getting into those controversial things where whatever line you take will upset somebody.” She managed not to sound very remorseful about it. “Taking sides probably isn’t the smart thing to do if you want to be popular.” She shrugged. “But those are the things that make life interesting.

Hunt grinned faintly. “Isn’t there a German proverb about people preferring a popular myth to an unpopular truth?”

“Right. You’ve got it. Exactly.”

They were sitting drinking coffee in the lounge of his apartment, she on a couch by the picture window, he sprawled in the leather recliner by the fireplace. Alongside his recliner was the cluttered surface that served as a desk, elbow-distance bookshelf, breakfast bar, and workbench for a partly dismantled device of peculiar design and fabrication, which he had informed her was from the innards of a Ganymean gravitic communications modulator. The rest of the room was a casual assortment of easygoing bachelordom mixed with the trappings of a theoretical scientist’s workplace. A framed photograph of Hunt with a couple of grinning colleagues and a group of Ganymeans posing in front of a backdrop of the Shapieron was propped on top of the frame of a four-foot wallscreen showing a contour plot of some kind of three-dimensional wave function; a tweed jacket, necktie, and bathrobe hung all together on a cloakroom hook fixed to the endpiece of a set of overloaded bookshelves; there was a reproduction of a Beethoven symphonic score affixed to the wall next to several feet of a program listing hanging above a pile of American Physical Society journals.

“So, you take up unpopular causes,” Hunt said. “Not exactly a creature of the herd, I take it.”

Gina made a brief shake of her head to forestall any misunderstanding. “Don’t get me wrong. It’s not something that I set out to do deliberately, just to be different or anything like that. It’s just that I get interested in things that seem to matter.” She paused. “When you start taking the trouble to find out about things, it’s amazing how often they turn out not to be the way ‘everyone knows’ at all. But once you’re into it that far, you have to go with what’s true as you see it.”

Hunt pursed his lips for an instant. “Why worry? People are going to carry on believing what they want to, anyway. They don’t want truth; they want certainty. You won’t change that. Why burn your life away at both ends trying to?”

She returned a short, resigned nod. “I know. I’m not trying to change anybody. It’s more for me, really-you’ve got to be true to yourself. I’m just curious about the way the world really is. If it turns out to be not the way a lot of people think, then that’s just too bad. They won’t change reality, either.”

Hunt raised his coffee mug and regarded her over the rim. At least she wasn’t launching into one of the standard recitations that he had heard so often of how people rationalize their being at odds with the world. If she was a misfit, she had come to terms with the fact and was fully at ease with herself. Whatever the subject was that had brought her here, he decided that he had the time and the inclination to listen.

After a few seconds he said, “Maybe you’re in the wrong job. You’re beginning to sound as if you should have been a scientist.”

“You mean, to seek out what objective reality really is? That’s what scientists do, right?” Her impish raising of an eyebrow and the tongue pushing lightly in her cheek were just quizzical enough to stop short of skepticism.

“Okay… well, they’re supposed to, anyway.”

Gina’s eyes widened in mock surprise. “Oh, but they do. You only have to read the textbooks.”

Hunt grinned. He liked this kind of company. “I thought we were talking about reality,” he said.

“But isn’t that what you do?” Gina asked, maintaining the pretense. “Uncover reality?”

“Of course I do. Every scientist knows that he’s different.”

“So you know what’s really out there?”

“Sure.”

Gina moved her legs and sat forward to rest her chin on her hand, staring at him in a play of fascination. “Go on then, tell me. What’s really out there?”

“Photons.”

“That’s it?”

Hunt turned a palm upward. “That’s all that physics can tell you. Everything that’s out there reduces to photons interacting with atoms in nerve endings. That’s it. There isn’t anything else. Just wave packets of whatever, tagged with quantum numbers.”

“Not too exciting,” Gina commented.

“You did ask.”

“So what about the rest of this interesting world that I see?”

“What else do you see?”

She shrugged and motioned vaguely with a hand. “Cabbages and kings. Oceans and mountains, colors and shapes. Places with people in them, doing things that mean something. Where does all that come from?”

“Emergent properties of relationships manifesting themselves at progressively higher levels in a hierarchy of increasing complexity,” he told her, not really expecting her to make much out of it.

“Neural constructs,” she supplied, parrying him. “I create it in my head.”

Hunt raised his eyebrows and nodded his compliments. “Where else? We’ve already agreed what everything from outside is.”

“In the same way that every book that might ever be written is built up from the same twenty-six-letter alphabet. The qualities that we think we perceive aren’t out there in the symbols. The symbols are simply a coding system for triggering what a lifetime of living has written into our nervous systems.”

“You’ve got the idea. Sometimes I think it’s amazing that any two of us ever manage to perceive anything similar at all.”

“I’m not always so sure that we do,” Gina responded.

“Which from your point of view is just as well. If we all saw everything the same, you wouldn’t have anything controversial to write about.” He paused. “I don’t exactly get the feeling that all this is especially new.”

“I already told you, I get curious about things. And in any case, writers read a lot. It’s compulsive. The real reason they write is that it gives them an excuse for doing the research.”

Enough fencing, Hunt decided. She had held her own without getting defensive and turning the thing into a duel. He got up and took the mugs through to the kitchen, along with his breakfast dishes. “So what have you written that brought lynch mobs screaming out of the woodwork?” he asked over his shoulder as he loaded the dishwasher.

In the lounge, Gina rose from the couch and turned to study the view out of the picture window. She was a shade on the tall side of average, with a trim, firmly shaped figure that was right for the navy dress.

“Well, there was one I did awhile back about Earthguard and the no-growth lobby,” she said, without turning her head. “Have you had much to do with that?”

“Not a lot. I thought they went away years ago… Anyhow, haven’t the Thuriens pretty much blown them out of the water for good?”

“I wrote it before the Thuriens showed up.”

“Okay. So what were the doomsday brigade into this time?”

“Oh, our expansion out into the Solar System. Numbers were growing too fast, resources being depleted. Earth wouldn’t be able to feed an unchecked spacegoing population, and off-planet alternatives were either inadequate or impractical, et cetera, et cetera.”

Hunt poured coffee into two fresh mugs. “If we paid too much attention to that lot, we’d still be conserving flint for our grandchildren to make axes. I’ve got other things to do.”

“The trouble is, a lot of people who matter do pay attention to them. And they’re the ones who shape what everyone else thinks.”

“Well, I think you’ll find all that’s changing.”

“But look what it took,” she said. “Yes, now at last, the world’s beginning to realize that by all the measures that mean anything, growing populations are a sign of things getting better.” She turned as Hunt came back into the lounge, carrying the mugs. “Everyone’s got two hands and one mouth, right? People produce more than they consume.”

“I had a grandmother from Yorkshire who used to say something like that: You should always listen twice as much as you talk. ‘That’s why God gave thee two ears an’ one mouth, lad.’”

Gina frowned at him suspiciously. “Are you trying to tell me something?”

“No. What you said just reminded me of it. There’s-” Hunt broke off and looked up at her suddenly as he set down the mugs. “Wait a minute. Was it you who wrote that book-something about people being precious?”

“People, Priceless People,” Gina confirmed, nodding. “Did you read it?”

“Not all of it. Someone I used to work with showed me some of it-about how the real cost of just about every natural resource has been falling over the last couple of centuries, wasn’t it?”

“Which is a sign of a commodity that’s getting more abundant, not scarcer.”

“And how things like longer life expectancies and falling infant mortality add up to an environment that’s getting better, not worse. Yes, I remember it.” Hunt nodded and looked at her with greater interest. “What other heresies have you committed?”

“Oh… that the nuclear weapons of the twentieth century were the main thing that prevented World War III from happening on at least four occasions between 1945 and final disarmament. In other words, the Bomb and the Pentagon probably saved more lives than penicillin did.”

“The Russians more or less admitted that,” Hunt commented. “It ruled out major war as an option, and that was all they understood.”

“But how much of the public knows that they admitted it? Most people still think it was the peace demonstrators that did it.”

Hunt nodded. “That would stir up a few waves on the port beam. What about the starboard side of the ship? Did you start any storms there, as well?”

“Oh, yes… by suggesting that sex is probably better for teenagers than religion, and drugs aren’t a problem. You know-the usual prime-time family-hour stuff.”

“That’d do it, right enough. You’ve been busy.” Hunt himself seemed comfortable enough with everything she had said. He sat down in the recliner and leaned back with his fingers interlaced behind his head. “But you never got to be a millionairess out of it."

“Not that I noticed, anyhow.”

Hunt inclined his head to indicate the general direction outside, where her Peugeot was parked. “Not doing too badly, all the same, by the looks of things,” he remarked.

“Rented. From the airport.”

“So you’re just visiting.”

“Right.”

“Where are you staying?”

“At the Maddox-a small hotel on the east side of town.”

“Uh-huh.” Hunt watched her silently for a few seconds to let the preliminary talk fade into the background. “So,” he said finally, “now that you’re here, what can I do for you?”

“I’d like some help with a new book that I want to write.” Gina drew back from the window, but instead of sitting back down on the couch, she crossed the lounge and turned, arms folded, propping herself against the table carrying the comnet terminal. “About the Jevlenese. You’re one of the few original sources, and from what I’ve read, a pretty open and approachable one. So I’m approaching.”

Hunt had already guessed that it would be something like that. Her directness about it was refreshing. The public was already being deluged with popular material, most of it secondhand information and wild speculation, being churned out in the rush to cash in by people who didn’t know what they were talking about. Concocting plausible but unsubstantiated reasons why any historical figure that somebody disliked or disagreed with had been a Jevlenese agent had become something of a game in the popular media.

“There’s some awful stuff out there,” he agreed, anticipating her line. “People are being told all kinds of nonsense. So you decided to come to somebody who was in at the beginning.” He nodded in a way that said he couldn’t find anything to argue with in that.

But Gina shook her head. She went back to the chair that she had occupied before and sat down. “No, that isn’t quite it. I’m more interested in some of the things they’re not being told.”

Hunt stroked the side of his nose with a finger and looked at her curiously. “Go on.”

“Let’s make sure I’ve got the background correct.”

“Okay.”

“The Jevlenese and ourselves are both the same, equally human species, descended from the same ancestors, right?”

Hunt nodded. “The Lunarians, yes.”

“But the civilization on Jevlen is more advanced, which isn’t surprising since it grew up under the wing of the Thuriens. The early colony on Earth was almost wiped out and went back to barbarism.”

“Yes,” Hunt said, nodding again.

Gina leaned forward. “But before all that happened, the Lunarian civilization on Minerva also discovered the sciences rapidly and reached an advanced stage much faster than we did, without any Ganymean help. The reason we didn’t do the same was that the Jevlenese retarded Earth’s development by infiltrating agents to spread irrational belief systems and organize cults based on superstition and unreason. That’s why it took us two thousand years to get from Euclid to Newton.”

“It took the Lunarians closer to two hundred,” Hunt said.

Gina’s voice took on a curious, more distant tone. “Just think… nobody ever thought of Homer as a science writer before. The Iliad could all have been real-an authentic account of human contact with an alien race. Take Hesiod’s account of the origins of the universe. First there was Chaos: just dark, empty space and protoelements. Then Gaea, the fusion of Earth and Life, and Uranus, the star-filled heavens, were born from Eros, the force of attraction that causes all things to come together. Expressed in those terms, it does come interestingly close to the real thing, doesn’t it?”

“You’ve been doing some homework,” Hunt murmured.

“The gods that kept coming down and meddling in the Trojan War might actually have existed. Maybe the Biblical miracles really happened, and Velikovsky had a point after all. Is it any wonder that ideas of magic and the supernatural became so deeply rooted here? At one time, it really used to work.”

Hunt wondered where she was leading. Everything she had said so far was more or less public knowledge.

She waited for a moment, then tossed out a hand lightly. “Speculating on which figures in history may or may not have been Jevlenese provocateurs has become a popular pastime these days. But what I’d like to see is something on a few of the obvious candidates that people aren’t talking about.”

Hunt stared at her for a second to be sure he had followed, then nodded. It was not a thought that had eluded him completely. “Christ,” he muttered.

“Possibly. But probably not. My guess is that he was on the other side.”

Hunt had not meant it as a response to her implied question; it had simply been his reaction to the prospect of the wrench that he could see her throwing into the works of cherished belief systems everywhere, going back thousands of years and forming the foundations of entire cultures. What she was inferring threatened, in short, the demolition of virtually all traditionalism and the systems of authority based on it. Hunt did not want to guess at the outrage and unlikely closings of ranks which that would be likely to provoke. Perhaps he had been avoiding thinking about it himself because he had unconsciously glimpsed the implications.

“I, ah… I see now what you meant about getting into controversial subjects where you always end up upsetting somebody,” he said dryly.

“But you have to agree it gets interesting. Imagine-Euclid to Newton should have taken a couple of hundred years. How else might things have gone, do you think, if the Jevlenese had left us alone? Perhaps Newton would have formulated relativity. James Watt could have invented the nuclear reactor. The Wright brothers might have flown the first starship. But instead, we got headed off into the Dark Ages.”

Hunt was staring at her with an intrigued expression. He had discussed such possibilities with colleagues often enough, but they were specialists, linked through their own circles. Gina had put the conclusions together independently.

She was about to continue, when the call-tone from the comnet terminal next to her interrupted. “Excuse me,” Hunt said, getting up from the recliner and coming across to answer it. Gina stood up and moved aside. The screen activated to reveal a head-and-shoulders view of two longish, gray-hued countenances with deep blue eyes, large pupils, and dark, neck-length hair. Only someone who had been in a coma or a hermitage for the last year could have failed to recognize them as Ganymeans.

“Hello, Vic,” the male said. His mouth movements did not synchronize with the voice, which had a natural human intonation. Ganymeans spoke at a deep, guttural pitch that was incapable of reproducing human speech faithfully. The voice was familiar to Hunt as one that ZORAC synthesized in its role as interpreter.

“Garuth. Good to see you,” he replied. “And Shilohin.”

“It’s been awhile now,” the female acknowledged.

Gina, intrigued, moved around to come closer to Hunt, which brought her into the lens angle. “Oh, I didn’t realize you had company,” Garuth said. “I should have asked.”

“Don’t worry about it. This is Gina, a friend of mine. She writes books. Gina, meet Garuth and Shilohin.”

Gina was at a loss for a moment but recovered quickly. “Hello. I, er, I don’t get to do this every day.” The two Ganymeans inclined their heads in their customary greeting.

There were currently a number of Ganymeans at various places on Earth for various reasons, and Hunt guessed that Gina was assuming the two faces on the screen to be among them. Although it was no secret that the Thurien communications network managed by VISAR had been extended to Earth, only a few, select locations, such as Goddard, had connections into it. It would hardly have occurred to Gina that Hunt might have wrangled himself a private home extension. He made no mention of the fact, however, and asked casually, “So, how are things on Jevlen these days?”

A hand flashed for an instant in front of Garuth’s face. “As a matter of fact, not too good. That’s why we’re calling. We need some help on a problem that’s been developing here.”

“Oh really?” Hunt said. “What kind of-” The abrupt movement of Gina passing a hand across her brow made him look away.

“Wait a minute,” Gina whispered.

“Would you excuse us for a second?” Hunt said to Garuth.

“But of course. We intruded.”

Hunt looked inquiringly at Gina, his face an expression of forced innocence. She shook her head as if to clear it.

“Did you say Jevlen?” she asked.

“Yes. Garuth is the Shapieron’s commander. Shilohin is the chief scientist.”

“Those people are on Jevlen-right now?”

“Of course,” Hunt said, maintaining his nonchalant air. “That’s where the Shapieron is.”

Gina sat down on the arm of the couch, shaking her head bemusedly. “This isn’t real. I’ve known this guy for an hour. The phone rings, and it’s aliens calling from another star system? What happens next?”

“Oh, stick around and we’ll find out,” Hunt answered cheerfully. “Who knows? If you’re not burned at a stake in the meantime, or exiled to Pluto or somewhere, it might be the beginnings of a new book.”