Mission to Minerva

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Frenua Showm met with Calazar in "Feyarvon," his official retreat away from Thurios-his counterpart of Showm's "eyrie," where he withdrew from the world of Thurien and its affairs. Its rooms and galleries rose around a central dome from terraces of gardens and groves bounded on the outside by an enclosing arcade-the whole forming a floating island drifting among Thurien's cloud tops. Showm was present physically, clad in the full purple robe and headpiece that signified her formal role. Calazar, likewise, was wearing his gold tunic and green cloak. By long custom this meant that their dealings were between the two offices that they represented, not the persons. Thuriens were able to separate such functions when necessity called for it. Private interests and preferences had no place in administering for the general good.

They walked slowly along beside the parapet wall above the perimeter arcade, flower banks and miniature fruit trees below them on one side, bottomless canyons disappearing down among cloud on the other. "I must say, such second thoughts are about the last thing I would have expected from you of all people," Calazar said. "You have always been one of the most intransigent when it comes to distrusting humans. I'll credit you with being the least surprised of all of us when we finally discovered the deceptions of the Jevlenese. And you were always of the opinion that the Terrans were more than willing pupils of the agents the Jevlenese infiltrated to set them against each other. Doesn't everything you've studied for this history you're working on uphold it? At one point you were all for writing them off as beyond hope, and going ahead with the containment option immediately. It's strange to hear you sounding as if you might be going soft now."

Yes, it was true. Calazar's last remark referred to a measure the Thuriens had been preparing to defend against the insatiable Terran lust for conquest that the exaggerated Jevlenese accounts had painted. It was not the Thurien way, nor in the Thurien nature, to meet a threat of violence with counter-violence. In accord with the colossal schemes they had devised when the occasion demanded, such as building webs of engineering around burnt-out stars, or power distribution grids that spanned sizeable portions of the Galaxy, their response had been to begin the construction of immense g-warp engines that would be positioned in a configuration to create an impassable shell of deformed spacetime enclosing and isolating the entire Solar System. And the Thuriens would have done it. As some previous episodes in Ganymean history had demonstrated, the same faculty that enabled them to divorce professional life from personal factors made them perfectly capable of setting sentiment aside when higher considerations depended on it.

"I admit it," Showm replied. "I don't know how much of Terran history you've studied yourself, Calazar. There are magnificent and stirring chapters, but most of what's recorded, century after century for millennia, is…" she shook her head, looking for a word, "horrifying. Even allowing for the Jevlenese distortions, I came to the conclusion that there was simply something inherently wrong in the human condition-Terrans, Jevlenese, all of them. Something innate and incurable, going back to the genetics involved in that biological experiment on Minerva long ago. If that were the case, then we owed it to ourselves and the other races that depend on us to be protected from it. It couldn't be allowed to break out into the Galaxy. But they are sentient living beings nevertheless, and we couldn't destroy them. It was ironic: Although the Jevlenese had been deceiving us to advance an agenda of their own, the solution that it induced us to devise was correct. Except that it didn't go far enough. I would have contained Athena as well." Athena was the star of Jevlen and its companion planets.

"Yes, I remember. So what has caused you to think again? The progress they seem to have been making in more recent times?" It had been Terrans, after all, notably those associated with the irrepressible Dr. Hunt, who had figured so much in the events concerning the Ganymeans. They had gone to extraordinary lengths to save the Shapieron from a Jevlenese plot to destroy it, made contact with Thurien, and it had been they who first awakened the Thuriens to what was going on.

It would have been easy for Showm to go along with the rationalization that Calazar was unintentionally offering. But to do so would have meant deceiving him. To speak or imply anything but the truth when functioning in a formal official capacity was unthinkable. Earth had seen periods of hope and apparent progress before, only to slide back again, sometimes to a worse state than had existed before. Their European culture of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had actually concocted a code of what they called "civilized" warfare to the point where by the end of that period some optimistic commentators had seriously believed the end of war and oppression as instruments of human affairs to be within sight… But the century that followed witnessed the two most savage and destructive wars ever, the perfection of industries of mass killing and mass destruction modeled on their methods of mass production, and some of the most murderous and repressive regimes the planet had ever seen. Even America, formerly hailed as the champion of individual freedom and the rule of law, had sunk for a while to plundering small and defenseless, resource-rich countries. It was now fashionable there to blame the Jevlenese and say that epoch was over. Showm would have liked to think so, but the cautious side of her nature overrode the temptation to wishful thinking. No, she couldn't pretend that she was convinced.

What way was there to explain that what had caused her outlook to change, and forced her to look again at habits of thought she had never before questioned, was listening to a lonely Terran woman of little consequence and no influence, tolerated by her cousin and regarded amiably but depreciatingly by her co-worlders as mildly eccentric? Showm replied finally, "We belong to a culture in which work that serves the well-being of all is morally fulfilling in itself. It gives us our sense of worth. To seek personal gain through the loss or detriment of others would be incomprehensible. In a world that lives by such an ethic, truth becomes the rule, and justice follows naturally. So naturally that we take it for granted. Thuriens have no concept of the brutality and suffering that can result from injustice. I hadn't, until I started delving into the story of Earth and saw what happens when injustice becomes not just the norm, but a mark of distinction for those possessing the power to inflict it-to be envied and emulated… I don't want us to risk being guilty of inflicting an injustice, Calazar."

They came to the end of the parapet and entered a small cupola marking an angle in the perimeter wall. Inside was a seat, an intriguing design of tiled mosaics on the walls, and a g-well going down to the arched cloister below. They emerged onto the continuing ambulatory on the far side. Calazar paused to admire the garden below, where one of the staff was cleaning the edge of a fish pond at the base of stepped lawns leading up to the house. Showm allowed him time to ponder on what she had said. He seemed to have no questions or demurrals so far. When they began moving again, she resumed.

"I believed that humans suffered from an inherent, ineradicable flaw. Now I find I can no longer be so certain. They have undergone cataclysms and traumas that our ancestors never knew. I suspect now that something else which once existed and should have flowered might have been destroyed. Something noble and magnificent, with the potential to transcend everything we have become, just as their ability to endure what they have defies our imagination. But it's still there. I see glimpses of it in their tenacity, their determination, the way they will always come back and rebuild again after the worst calamities the universe can throw at them, and refuse to give in against odds that every Thurien would know are impossible. And if so, then perhaps the damage can be undone. We abandoned them when we left them as primitive hominids on Minerva. We abandoned them to the savagery of Earth after Minerva was destroyed. They were denied their right to grow into what they could have become, just as Minerva was. Let us not abandon them again, Calazar. This time, let us show the patience and guidance that we failed to before. We owe it to them. Not the punishment of isolation from the rest of the universe."

"Profound words, indeed, Frenua," Calazar commented, clasping his hands behind his back and glancing out over the clouds.

"I've been doing some profound thinking."

Calazar looked down for a few moments longer, measuring his steps. "But we're not talking about isolating them now. That goes back to the time when we were laboring under the deceptions perpetrated by the Jevlenese."

"The stressors are still there at the construction centers-thousands of them. They're an abomination. It's to our shame that we ever could have conceived such a deed, let alone commenced implementing it. We went against our own nature and let ourselves be corrupted by the Jevlenese."

"They're no more than a precaution now…"

Showm shook her head firmly. "No, Calazar. They represent far more. Their existence says that we have yielded to the same arrogance of power that we condemn in the Jevlenese and in the Terrans: the right to impose our will; to equate superiority of force with superiority of virtue. For us to remain true to ourselves, they must be destroyed."

Calazar frowned and made an appealing gesture, in the manner of one reluctant to explain something that should have been obvious. "But you said yourself, you cannot be certain. The human problem could be impossible to rectify, something that goes all the way back to their origins. What would you have me do, Frenua? You, yourself had the strongest misgivings about our decision to adopt an open policy of making our knowledge available to the Terrans. You said it would only enable them to make more ghastly and powerful weapons. Are you saying now that we should leave them with that capability, but take away our one means of protecting ourselves, should our worst fears prove true? Would you want such weapons unleashed upon the Galaxy?"

"No, of course not. But what remains is a relationship that at the bottom is based on suspicion and distrust. What poisons it is uncertainty. If we knew for a fact that the cause was hopeless, we could avoid the disillusionment that would be inevitable sooner or later by going ahead with the containment option now, and at least be consoled in knowing there was no choice.

"But if we knew we were dealing with a sickness that was acquired, we could commit ourselves positively to a future grounded in optimism-which might well prove to be the most important ingredient for succeeding-without need for an escape option that we have to keep secret, the very existence of which demeans us. Terrans call it 'burning your boats.' It's a good phrase. It signifies determination and the commitment to press on, without the choice of being able to run back again."

"It could also be construed as signifying certifiable recklessness," Calazar pointed out. "It would be a bit late to decide you'd made the wrong guess when you've got planets being overrun, looted, despoiled, blown up, and who knows what else all the way from here to Sol and out to Callantares, wouldn't it? Your boats are gone, and a volcano just erupted in front of you. What do you do then?" Calazar threw out his hands. "We can't be certain. So we try to be prudent. We're giving the humans the benefit of the doubt, and yes, I agree we owe it to them. But we have insurance if we are wrong. We owe ourselves at least that much."

"All of which is inarguable on the basis of the premise that you advanced to support it," Showm conceded. "But the premise is invalid. There is a way in which we can be certain." She stopped, compelling Calazar to do likewise and face her directly.

Calazar's features creased into non-comprehension. "How. What way? What are you talking about?"

"The Multiverse project," Showm said. "What it points to, if it succeeds, is being able to contact other realms that exist-or have existed! And I think it will succeed. We already know that it's possible to reach the time of ancient Minerva." Showm looked at Calazar unwaveringly. She had never been as serious in her life. "What were the Lunarians like before Broghuilio and the Jevlenese arrived? Supposedly, they were industrious and cooperative, but nobody knows for sure. Were they, in fact, and was that the beginning of a chain of events that changed them? Or is it just a fable, and were they already showing traits that the Jevlenese merely exploited? Your argument presumes that we have to try and guess as best we can. But maybe we will soon possess the means to know for certain."