Sundiver

30. OPACITY

Commissioner Abatsoglou: “Then it would be a fair statement to say that all of the Library-designed systems failed, before the end?”

Professor Kepler: “Yes, Commissioner. Every one eventually deteriorated to uselessness. The only mechanisms still working at the last were components designed on Earth, by terrestrial personnel. Mechanisms which, I might add, were declared superfluous and unnecessary by Pil Bubbacub and many others during construction.”

C.A. : “You aren’t implying that Bubbacub knew in advance…”

P.K.: “No, of course not. In his own way he was as much a dupe as the rest of us. His opposition was based solely on esthetics. He didn’t want Galactic time-compression and gravity-control systems crammed into a ceramic shell and linked to an archaic cooling system.

“The reflection fields and the Refrigerator Laser were based on physical laws known by humans back in the twentieth century. Naturally he objected to our ‘superstitious’ insistence on building a ship around them, not only because the Galactic systems made them redundant, but also because he considered pre-contact Earth science to be a pathetic accumulation of half-truths and mumbo-jumbo.”

C.A. : “The ‘mumbo jumbo’ worked when the new stuff failed, though.”

P.K.: “In all fairness, Commissioner, I’d have to say that that was a lucky break. The saboteur believed they’d make no difference, so he didn’t try to wreck them, at first. He was denied an opportunity to correct his error.”

Commissioner Montes: “There’s one thing I don’t understand, Dr. Kepler. I’m sure some of my associates here share my mystification. I understand the Sunship Captain’s use of the Refrigerator-Laser to blast out of the chromosphere. But to do so she had to boost at an acceleration greater than the surface gravity of the Sun! Now they could get away with this as long as the internal gravity fields held. But what happened when they failed? Weren’t they immediately subjected to a force that would squash them flat?”

P.K.: “Not immediately. Failure came in stages; first the fine-tuned fields used to maintain the gravity-loop tunnel to the instrument hemisphere, ‘flip-side,’ then the automatic turbulence adjustment, and finally a gradual loss of the major field which compensated internally for the pull of the Sun. By the time the latter failed, thley had already reached the lower corona. Captain deSilva was ready when it happened.

“She knew that to climb straight out after internal compensation failed would be suicide, though she considered doing it anyway to get her records out to us. The alternative was to allow the ship to fall, braking only enough to impose on the occupants about three gees or so.

“Fortunately, there is a way to fall towards a gravity sink and still get away. What Helene did was to try for a hyperbolic escape orbit. Almost all of the laser thrust then went into giving the ship a tangent velocity as it fell back again.

“In effect she duplicated the program that had been considered for manned dives decades before contact; a shallow orbit, using lasers- for thrust and cooling, and E.M. fields for protection. Only this dive was unintentional, and it wasn’t very shallow.”

C.A. : “How close did they go?”

P.K.: “Well, you’ll recall that they’d fallen twice before in all of the confusion: once when the g-thrust failed, and a second time when the Solarians lost their grip on the ship. Well during this third fall they came closer to the photosphere than on any of the previous occasions. They literally skimmed its surface.”

C.A. : “But the turbulence, Doctor! Without internal gravity or time-compression, why wasn’t the ship smashed?”

P.K.: “We learned a lot of solar physics from this inadvertent dive, sir. At least on this occasion the chromosphere was far less turbulent than anyone ever expected… that is anyone but a couple of my colleagues to whom I owe a few abject apologies… But I believe the most significant factor was the piloting of the ship. Helene quite simply did the impossible. The auto-recorder is being studied now by the TAASF people. The only thing greater than their delight with the tapes is their chagrin at not being able to give her a medal.” General Wade: “Yes, the condition of the crew was a cause of great distress to the TAASF rescue team. The ship looked like Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow ! With no one alive to tell what happened, you’ll understand our mystification until the tapes were played back.”

Commissioner Nguyen: “I can imagine. You seldom expect to get a special shipment of snowballs from hell. Can we assume, Doctor, that the ship’s Commander weighted the heat pump system on the cold side for the obvious reason?”

“In all honesty, Commissioner, I don’t believe we can. I think her reasoning was to keep the interior cold so that all of the records would survive. If the ReferLaser system erred too much the other way they’d have been fried. I believe her sole idea was to protect those tapes. She probably expected to come out of the Sun having roughly the consistency of strawberry jam.

“I don’t think the biological effects of freezing were on her mind.

“You see, in many ways Helene was a bit of an innocent. She stayed up to date in her field but I don’t think she knew about the advances in cryosurgery we’ve made since her day. I think she’s going to be very surprised, a year from now, when she wakes up.

“The others will probably take if as a routine miracle. Except for Mr. Demwa, of course. I don’t think Mr. Demwa would be surprised by anything… or consider his revival miraculous. The man is indestructible. I think by now, wherever his consciousness drifts in its frozen sleep, he knows it.”

31. PROPAGATION

In the springtime the whales go north again.

Several of the grey humps that broached and spumed in the distance had not been born when he last stood on a shore and watched a California migration pass by. He wondered if any of the grey whales still sang “The Ballad of Jacob and the Sphinx.”

Probably not. It never-was. a favorite of Greys anyway. The song was too irreverent, too… beluga for their sober temperament. The Greys were complacent snobs, but he loved them anyway.

The air boomed with the noise of the breakers, crashing into the rocks at his feet. It was wet with sea water and filled his lungs with the paradoxical satiated-hungry feeling that others got from breathing deep in a bakery shop. There was a serenity that came with the pulse of the ocean, plus an expectation that the tide would always wash up changes.

They’d given him a chair, at the hospital in Santa Barbara but Jacob preferred the cane. It gave him less mobility, but the exercise would shorten his convalescence. Three months after waking up in that antiseptic organ factory had left him desperate to get back on his feet, and to experience something that was pleasantly, naturally dirty.

Such as Helena’s way of talking. It defied all logic that a person born at the height of the old Bureaucracy would have so uninhibited a mouth as to make a Confederacy Citizen blush. But when Helene felt she was among friends her language became impressive and her vocabulary astonishing. She said that it came from being raised on a power satellite. Then she smiled and refused to explain any further until he reciprocated With acts she knew he wasn’t ready yet to perform. As if she was!

One month to go before the physicians would take them off of hormone suppressants, after the bulk of cell regrowth was completed. Another month before they’d be cleared for anything as rigorous as space flight. And yet she insisted on pulling out that dogeared copy of NASA Sutra, wondering teasingly if he would have the stamina!

Well, the doctors said that frustration helps recuperation. Sharpens the will to get back to normal, or some such nonsense.

If Helene keeps up her teasing much longer they’re all going to be surprised! Jacob didn’t believe much in timetables anyway.

Ifni ! That water looks good! Nice and cold. There has to be a way to make nerves grow faster! Something that helps even better than auto-suggestion.

He turned away from the rocks and slowly walked back to the patio of his uncle’s long, rambling house. He used the cane liberally, perhaps more than necessary, enjoying the dramatic touch. It made being ill slightly less unpleasant.

As usual, Uncle James was flirting with Helene. She encouraged him shamelessly.

Serves the old bastard right, he thought, after all the trouble he caused.

“My boy,” Uncle James threw up his hands. “We were just about to go after you, truly we were.”

Jacob smiled lazily. “No hurry, Jim. I’m sure our interstellar explorer here had plenty of interesting stories to tell. Did you tell him the one about the black hole, dear?”

Helene grinned nastily and made a surreptitious gesture, “Why, Jake, you yourself told me not to. But If you think your uncle would like to hear it…”

Jacob shook his head, Held handle his uncle himself. Helene could get a little rough.

Ms. deSilva was a great pilot and in the last few weeks she’d been an imaginative co-conspirator as well But their personal relationship left Jacob dizzy. Her personality was… powerful.

When she’d learned, on awakening, that the Calypso had jumped, Helene had signed onto the gang designing the new Vesarius II. The reason, she announced brazenly, was to have three years to subject Jacob Demwa to a full course of Pavlovian conditioning. At the end of said time she would ring a little bell and he would, supposedly, decide to become a Jumper.

Jacob had his reservations, but it was already clear that Helene deSilva had complete control over his salivary glands.

Uncle James was more nervous than he’d ever seen him. The usually imperturbable politician seemed decidedly ill at ease. The rakish Irish charm of the Al-varez side of the family was subdued. The grey head nodded nervously. His green eyes seemed unnaturally sad.

“Um, Jacob, my boy. Our guests have arrived. They are waiting in the study and Christien is looking after them.

“Now, I hope you are going to be reasonable about this matter. There really was no reason to invite that government fellow. We could have settled this ourselves.

“Now as I see it…”

Jacob held up his free hand. “Uncle, please. We’ve been through this.

“The matter has to be adjudicated. If you refuse the services of the Secrets Registration people, I’ll just have to call a family council and present the matter to them! You know Uncle Jeremy, he’ll probably opt for publicly announcing the whole thing. It’d make good press, all right, but the Department of Overt Prosecutions would have the case then, and you’d have five years with a little thing in your rump going ‘beep… beep… beep.’ ”

Jacob leaned against Helena’s shoulder, more for the contact than for support, and flashed both hands in front of Uncle James’ eyes. With each “beep” the man’s aristocratic face paled a little. Helene started to giggle, then she hiccupped.

“Excuse me,” she said demurely.

“Don’t be sarcastic,” Jacob commented. He pinched her then reclaimed his cane.

The study wasn’t as impressive as the one In Alvarez Hall, in Caracas but this house was in California. That made up for a lot. Jacob hoped he and his uncle still spoke after today.

Stucco walls and false beams emphasized the Spanish aspect. Display cases, containing James’ collection of Bureaucracy-era Samizdat publications, stood out prominently among the bookshelves.

In the mantle was carved a long motto.

Fagin fluted a warm greeting. Jacob bowed and went through a long, formal salutation, just to please the Kanten. Fagin had visited him regularly in the hospital. It had been difficult at first, between them — each convinced he was deeply indebted to the other. Finally they’d agreed to disagree.

When the TAASF rescue team had broken into the Sunship, as it hurtled outward on its laser-assisted hyperbolic orbit, they were amazed by the crumpled, frozen condition of the human crew. They didn’t quite know what to make of the smashed body of the Pring, on flip-side. But what amazed them most was Fagin, hanging upside down by those small sharp spikes in his root-pods while the laser still put out its potent thrust. The cold had not ruptured almost a quarter of his cells, as it had the humans, and he appeared to have come through the pounding ride through the photosphere unscathed.

In spite of himself, Fagjn of the Institute of Progress — the perpetual observer and manipulator — had become, himself, a unique personage. He was probably the only sophont alive anywhere who could describe what it was like to fly, hanging upside down, through the thick, opaque fire at the photosphere. Now he had a story of his own to tell.

It must have been painful for the Kanten. Nobody believed a word of his story until Helene’s tapes were replayed.

Jacob said hello to Pierre LaRoque. The man had regained much of his color since their last meeting, not to mention his appetite. He’d been wolfing down Christien’s hors d’oeuvres. Still confined to his chair, he smiled and nodded silently to Jacob and Helene. Jacob suspected LaRoque’s mouth was too full to talk.

The last guest was a tall, narrow-faced man with blonde hair and light blue eyes. He rose from the couch and offered his hand.

“Han Nielsen, at your service, Mr. Demwa. On the basis of the news reports alone I am proud to meet you. Of course, Secrets Registration knows everything the government knows, so I am doubly impressed. I assume, though, that you have called us in to deal with a matter that the government is not to know?”

Jacob and Helene sat on the couch across from him, their backs to a window overlooking the ocean.

“Yes, that’s correct, Mr. Nielsen. Actually, there are a couple of matters. We’d like to apply for a seal and for adjudication by the Terragens Council.”

Nielsen frowned. “Surely you must realize that the council is barely an infant at this point. The delegates appointed by the colonies have not even arrived! The Confederacy b… civil servants,” (Had he been about to say the dirty word ‘bureaucrats’?) “don’t even like the idea of having a supra-legal Secrets Registration to enforce honesty above secular law. The Terragens is even less popular.

“Even though it’s been shown that it’s the only way to deal with the crisis we’ve faced since Contact?” Helene asked.

“Even so. The Feds are reconciled to the fact that it will eventually take jurisdiction over interstellar and interspecies affairs, but they don’t like it and they’re dragging their feet every step of the way.”

“But that’s just the point,” Jacob said. “The crisis was bad before this debacle on Mercury, bad enough to force the creation of the council. But it was still manageable. Sundiver has probably changed that.” Nielsen looked grim. “I know.” “Do you?” Jacob rested his hands on his knees and leaned forward. “You’ve seen Fagin’s report on the probable reaction of the Pila to Bubbacub’s exposed pecadilloes on Mercury. And that report was written well before this whole business regarding Culla came to light!”

“And the Confederacy knows everything,” Nielsen grimaced. “Culla’s actions, his weird apologia, the whole capsule.”

“Well after all,” Jacob sighed. “They are the government. They make foreign policy. Besides, Helene had no way of knowing we’d live through that mess down there. She recorded everything.”

“It never occurred to me,” Helene said. “Until Fagin explained, that it might be better if the Feds never found out the truth, or that the Terragens Council might be better suited to handle this mess.”

“Better suited, perhaps, but what do you expect us the Council to do? It’ll take years to build up acceptance and legitimacy. Why should they risk it all by intervening in this situation?”

For a moment no one spoke. Then Nielsen shrugged. From his briefcase he pulled a small recording cube, which he activated and placed in the center of the room, on the floor.

“This conversation is under seal by the Secrets Registration. Why don’t you start, Dr. deSilva.” Helene ticked off points with the fingers of her hand. “One, we know that Bubbacub perpetrated a crime in the eyes of both the Library Institute and his own race by falsifying a Library report, and perpetrating a hoax on Sundiver; to wit: that he had communicated with the Solarians and had used his ‘Lethani relic’ to protect us from their wrath.

“We think we know Bubbacub’s motives for doing what he did. He was embarrassed by the failure of the Library to reference the Sun Ghosts. He wanted to rub the ‘wolfling’ race’s collective nose in its inferiority, as well.

“By Galactic Tradition this situation would resolve itself by both the Pila and the Library bribing Earth to ‘keep its mouth shut.’ The, Confederacy would be able to choose its reward with few strings attached, though the human race would have to face enmity from the Pila in the future simply because their pride had been hurt.

“They could still increase their efforts to remove pro-visionary-sophont status from our Clients, the chimps and dolphins. There has been talk of placing humanity under some sort of ‘adoptive’ Client status… ‘to guide us through this difficult transition.’ Have I summed up the situation fairly well, so far?”

Jacob nodded. “Fine. Except you left out my own stupidity. On Mercury I accused Bubbacub publicly! That little two-year pledge we signed was never taken seriously, and the Feds have waited too long to, put an emergency sequester on this case. Probably half of the spiral arm knows the story by now.

“That means we’ve lost what little leverage we would Have had with the Pila by blackmail. They’ll hold nothing back in their efforts to get us ‘adopted,’ and they’ll use ‘reparations’ for Bubbacub’s crime as an excuse to force us to accept all kinds of aid that we don’t want.” He motioned for Helene to continue. “Point number two; we now know that the one behind this fiasco was Culla. Apparently Culla never intended that humanity discover Bubbacub’s pecadillo. He had his own blackmail scheme in mind.

“By encouraging Jeffrey’s friendship he got the chimpanzee to try to ‘liberate’ him, thus enraging Bubbacub. Jeffrey’s subsequent death left Sundiver in such a state of confusion that Bubbacub would be encouraged to think that anything he did would be believed. It’s possible that Dwayne Kepler’s apparent mental deterioration was part of this campaign, induced by Culla’s ‘glare psychosis’ technique.

“The most important part of Culla’s plan was the hoax of the anthropomorphic Ghosts. That part was magnificently executed. It fooled everybody. With talents like those, it’s not hard to see why the Pring think they can take on the Pila in a bid for independence. They’re one of the most deceptively potent races I’ve ever come across or heard of.”

“But if the Pila were Patrons to the Pring,” James objected. “And if they uplifted Culla’s ancestors from near animals, why wasn’t Bubbacub aware of the possibility that the Ghosts were Culla’s hoax?”

“If I may be allowed to comment on this,” Fagin fluted. “The Pring were allowed to select the assistant who would accompany Bubbacub. My institute has independent information that Culla was a figure of some importance, on one of their terraformed planets, in an artistic endeavor that we have, until now, not been able to witness. We had attributed the Pring secretiveness on this matter to habit patterns inherited from the Pila. Now, however, we might conjecture that it is the Pila themselves who were not to witness the art. In their complacent superiority, the Pila must have cooperated unknowingly by denigrating their Clients’ endeavors.”

“And this art form is?”

“The art form must, logically, be holographic projection. It is possible that the Pring have been experimenting for most of, the hundred millennia of their sentience, in secret from their Patrons. I am in awe of the dedication it would have taken to keep a secret for so long.”

Nielsen whistled lowly. “They must want their release awful, bad. But I’still don’t understand, though I’ve listened to all of the tapes, why Culla pulled these pranks with Sundiver! How could the hoax of the anthropomorphic Sun Ghosts, the death of Jeffrey, or trapping Bubbacub into his error ever help the Pring?”

Helene glanced at Jacob. He nodded. “This is still your part, Helene. You figured most of it out.” Helene took a deep breath.

“You see, Culla never intended that Bubbacub be exposed on Mercury. He snared his boss into lying and pulling that stunt with the Lethani relic, but he expected him to be believed, here at least.

“If his plan had carried through he would have reported two assertions to the Library Institute; one, that Bubbacub was a fool and a liar who had been saved from embarrassment by the quick thinking of his assistant, and two, that humans were just a pack of harmless idiots and should be ignored. “I’ll cover the second point first. “On the face of it, it is obvious that no one out there would believe this crazy story of ‘man-shaped ghosts’ fluttering around in a star; especially when the Library has no mention of them.

“Imagine how the galaxy would react to a tale about plasma creatures which ‘shake their fists’ and miraculously” avoid having their pictures taken so there can be no proof they exist! Having heard that, most observers would never bother to examine the evidence we did have, the recordings of toroids and of the real Solarians!

“The galaxy on the whole looks on Terrestrial ‘research’ with amused contempt. Culla apparently wanted Sundiver to be laughed out without a hearing.”

Across the room, Pierre LaRoque blushed. No one said anything about the remarks he’d made on “Terrestrial research” over a year back.

“The quick explanation Culla gave, when he tried to kill us all, was that he faked the Ghosts for our own good. If we looked foolish we might make less of a splash when we announced life in the Sun… a splash that would give humanity more publicity in a time when we should be studying quietly to catch up with everyone else.”

Nielsen frowned. “He may have had a point.”

Helene shrugged. “It’s too late now.

“Anyway, it seems, as I have said, that Culla intended to report to the Library, and to the Soro, that humans were harmless idiots and, more importantly, that Bubbacub had been a party to that idiocy… that he had believed in the Ghosts and lied on the basis of that belief!”

Helene turned to face Fagin. “Is that a fair summary of what we discussed, Kant Fagin?”

The Kanten whistled softly, “I would think so. Trusting in the ‘seal’ of the Secrets Registration organization, I will state confidentially that my Institute has received intelligence regarding activities of the Pring and Pila that now make sense in the light of what we have now learned. The Pring are apparently engaged in a campaign to discredit the Pila. Therein lies an opportunity and a danger to humanity.

“The opportunity is that your Confederacy could offer evidence of Culla’s betrayal to the Pila, so that those sophonts may show how they have been manipulated. If the Soro then came down against the Pring, Culla’s race would be hard pressed to find a protector. They might be lowered in status, their colonies eliminated, populations ‘reduced.’

“There might be immediate rewards for humanity in this act, but it would do little to change the long range enmity of the Pil. Their psychology does not work that way. They might suspend their attempts to have humanity ‘adopted.’ They might be willing to accept restraints on the reparations they will insist on paying for Bubbacub’s crime, but in the long run it will not win their friendship. Owing humanity a debt will only increase their hatred.

“In addition, there is the fact that many of the more ‘liberal’ species, on whose protection humanity has so far relied, would not appreciate your providing the Pila with a Casus Belli for another of their Jihads. The Tymbrimi might withdraw their consulate from Luna.

“Finally there is the ethical consideration. It would take long for me to discuss all of the reasons. Some of them you would probably not understand. But the Institute of Progress is anxious that the Pring not be devastated. They are young and impulsive. Almost as much so as humanity. But they show great promise. For the entire species to suffer terrible depredations, because a few of its members engage in a scheme to end a hundred millennia of servitude, would he a terrible tragedy.

“For these reasons I would recommend that Culla’s crimes be placed under seal Certainly rumors would soon drift about. But the Soro will be aloof to rumors bandied about by the likes of men.”

Fagin’s chimes tinkled softly as a breeze came in the window. Nielsen was staring at the floor.

“No wonder Culla tried to kill himself and everyone else aboard the ship, when Jacob figured him out! If the Pila get official testimony on Culla’s actions, the Pring are probably doomed.”

“What do you think the Confederacy will do?” Jacob asked.

“Do?” He laughed humorlessly. “Why they’ll offer the evidence to Pila with bended knee, of course. Ifni ! It’s a chance to keep them from ‘giving’ us a full sector Library Branch and ten thousand technicians to staff it! It’s a chance to keep them from ‘giving’ us modern ships that no human engineer could possibly understand and no human crew could operate without ‘advisors.’ It’d put off indefinitely those damned ‘adoption procedures’!” He spread his hands. “And it’s pretty clear that the Confederacy won’t stick its neck out for the race of a sophont who killed one of our Clients, damn near wrecked our hottest project, and attempted to make humans look like idiots among the peoples of the galaxy!

“And when you get right down to it, could you blame them?”

Jacob’s Uncle James cleared his throat to gain their attention.

“We can try to put the entire episode under seal,” he suggested. “I am not without influence in some circles. If I put in a good word…”

“You can’t put in a good word, Jim,” Jacob said. “You’re a participant in this mess, in a minor way. If you try to involve yourself the truth will eventually come out.”

“What truth is that?” Nielsen asked.

Jacob frowned at his uncle then at LaRoque. The Frenchman had imperturbably begun to nibble on more hors d’oeuvres.

“These two,” Jacob said. “Are part of a cabal whose aim is to undermine the Probation laws. That’s the second reason I asked you to come. Something’s going to have to be done and Secrets Registration is a better first step than going to the police.”

At the mention of the police, LaRoque stopped nibbling at his tiny sandwich. He looked at it then put it down.

“What kind of cabal?” Nielsen asked.

“A society, consisting of Probationers and certain citizen sympathizers, dedicated to the secret manufacture of spaceships… spaceships with Probationer crews.”

Nielson sat upright. “What?”

“LaRoque is in charge of their astronaut training program. He’s also their chief spy. He tried to measure the calibration settings of a Sunship’s Gravity Generator. I have the tapes to prove it.”

“But why would they want to do such a thing?”

“Why not? It’d be the most powerful symbolic protest imaginable. If I were a Probationer, I’d certainly participate. I’m sympathetic, I don’t like the Probation laws one bit.

“But I’m also realistic. As it-stands the Probationers have been made into an underclass. Their psychological problems are a stigma that follows them everywhere: They react in a very human way, they gather together to hate the ‘docile and domesticated’ society around them.

“They say, ‘You Citizens think I’m violent, well then by damn I will be!’ Most of the Probationers would never do anything to hurt anybody, whatever their P-tests say. But faced with this stereotype they become what they’re reputed to be!”

“That may or may not be true,” Nielsen said. “But given the situation as it stands, for Probationers to get access to space…”

Jacob sighed. “You’re right, of course. It can’t be allowed to happen. Not yet.

“On the other hand, we can’t allow the Feds to whip up public hysteria over this either. It’d just aggravate matters and put off a later, more severe form of rebellion.”

Nielsen looked worried. “You aren’t going to suggest that the Terragens Council get involved in the Probation laws, are you? Why that’d be suicide! The public would never stand for it!”

Jacob smiled sadly. “That’s right, they wouldn’t. Even Uncle James would have to recognize that. Today’s Citizen won’t even consider changing the status of Probationers and as things stand the Terragens has no authority.

“But what is the domain of the Council? Currently it’s administration of extrasolar colonies. Eventually it’s to include supervision of all extrasolar affairs. And there’s where they can meddle in the Probation laws, symbolically at least, without threatening anyone’s peace of mind.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Well now I don’t suppose you’ve ever read Aldous Huxley, have you? No? His works were still popular when Helene was brought up, and my cousins and I were… required to study some of them in our youth — damned difficult at times; because of the strange period referents, but worth it for the man’s incredible insight and wit.

“Old Huxley wrote one piece titled Brave New World…”

“Yes, I’ve heard of it. Some sort of dystopia, wasn’t it?”

“Of a sort. You should read it. There are some uncanny prophecies.

“In that novel he projects a society with some unpalatable aspects but with, all the same, a self-consistency and its own form of honor — akin to the ethics of a hive, but ethics nonetheless. When man’s diversity keeps throwing up individuals who don’t fit into the conditioned pattern of the society, what do you suppose Huxley’s state does with them?”

Nielsen frowned, wondering where this was leading. “In a hivelike state? I’d guess that the deviants were eliminated, killed.”

Jacob raised a finger. “No, not quite. The way Huxley presents it, this state has wisdom, of sorts. The leaders are aware that they’ve set up a rigid system that might fall before some unexpected threat. They realize that the deviants represent a control, a reserve to fall back on in times of trouble, when the race would need all of its resources.

“But at the same time, they can’t keep them hanging around, threatening the stability of the culture.”

“So what did they do?”

“They banished the deviates to islands. There they were allowed to pursue their own cultural experiments undisturbed.”

“Islands, eh?” Nielsen scratched his head. “It is a striking idea. Actually, it’s the inverse of what we’re already doing with the Extraterrestrial Reserves, exiling the Probies from geographically controllable areas and then allowing E.T.’s in to mingle with the Citizens who come and go at will.”

“An intolerable situation,” James muttered. “Not only for the Probationers, but for the extraterrestrials, as well. Why, Kant Fagin was just telling me how much he’d like to visit the Louvre, or Agra or Yosemite !”

“All shall come in time, Friend-James Alvarez,” Fagin trilled. “For now I am grateful for the dispensation which enables me to visit this small part of California an undeserved and extravagant reward.”

“I don’t know if the islands idea would work that well,” Nielsen said thoughtfully. “Of course it’s worth bringing up. We can go into all of the ramifications another time. What I’m having trouble figuring out is what this would have to do with the Terragens Council.”

“Extrapolate,” Jacob urged. “It just might ameliorate the Probationer problem, somewhat, to set up some sort of island Coventry in the Pacific, where they could pursue their own path without the perpetual observation they undergo everywhere today. But it wouldn’t be enough. Many Probationers feel that they are emasculated from the start. Not only are their parentage rights limited by law, they are also excluded from the most important adventure mankind has ever undertaken, the expansion into space.

“This little imbroglio LaRoque and James were engaged in is a prime example of the problems we’ll face, unless a niche is found for them, so that they can feel they’re participating.”

“A niche. Islands. Space… good lord, man! You can’t be serious! Buy another colony and give it over to Probationers? When we’re still in hock up to our ears for the three we’ve got? You must be an optimist if you think that could pass!”

Jacob felt Helene’s hand slide into his own. He barely glanced at her, but the expression on her face was enough. Proud, alert, and just on the edge, as ever, of laughter. He twined his fingers with hers to cover the most area, and squeezed back.

“Yes,” he said to Nielsen, “I have become somewhat of an optimist, lately. And I think it could be done.”

“But where would we get the credit? And how do you salve the wounded egos of half a billion Citizens who want to colonize, when you’re giving space to non-Citizens?

“Hell, colonization wouldn’t work anyway. Even the Vesarius II will carry only ten thousand. There are almost a hundred million Probationers!”

“Oh not all of them will want to go, especially if they get a place on the islands as well. Besides, I’m sure all they’re looking for is fair treatment. A share. Our real problem is that there’s not enough colony room, or transport.”

Jacob smiled slowly. “Bat what if we could get the Library Institute to ‘donate’ the funds for a Class Four, colony, plus a few Orion type transports specially simplified for human crews.”

“How do you expect to persuade them to do that? They’re obligated to compensate us for Bubbacub’s hoax, but they’ll want to do it in a way that serves their purposes, like making us totally dependent on Galactic technology. In that they’d be supported by almost every race. What could make them change the form of their reparations?”

Jacob spread his hands. “You forget, we now have something they’ll want… something very precious that the Library Institute can’t do without. Knowledge!” — Jacob reached into his pocket and pulled out a slip of paper.

“This is a ciphered message I received a little while ago from Millie Martine on Mercury. She’s still restricted to a chair, but they wanted her back there so badly that they let her travel over a month ago.

“She says that full dives have been resumed in active regions. She’s already been down once, in charge of the effort to re-establish contact with the Solarians. So far she’s been able to avoid telling the Feds much about what she’s found, waiting instead to confer with Fagin and myself.

“Contact has been made. The Solarians talked to her. They are lucid and have a very long memory.”

“Incredible,” Nielsen sighed. “But I’m getting the impression you think this will have political implications relating to the problems we’ve discussed here?”

“Think about it. The Library will believe they can force us to take reparations on their terms. But if it’s handled right we can blackmail them into giving us what we want instead.

“The fact that the Solarians are talkative and can remember the distant past — Millie hints that they remember dives into the Sun by ancient sophonts, so long ago that they might have been the Progenitors themselves — means that we have found a prize of unprecedented proportions.

“It means that the Library must try to find out everything they can about them. It also means that this discovery will get a great deal of publicity.”

Jacob grinned.

“It’ll be complicated. First we’ve got to play to the impression they already have that Sundiver is one big fiasco. Get them to assign us a Library Investigation Patent to the Sun. They’ll imagine it will only make us look more idiotic. When they realize what we have, they’ll have to buy it from us at our price!

“We’ll need Fagin’s help to finesse it properly, plus all of the savvy of the Alvarez clan and the cooperation of you Terragens people, but it can be done. Uncle Jeremy, in particular, will be glad to know that I’m going to dust off my long dormant skills and get involved in ‘dirty polities’ for a while, to help.”

James laughed. “Just wait til your cousins heat! I can see them shuddering already!”

“Well tell them not to worry. No, I’ll tell- them myself when Jeremy calls a family council on this. I’m going to make certain that this whole mess is settled within three years. After that I’m retiring from politics, permanently.

“You see, I’ll be going on a long trip about then.”

Helene let out a small gasp and pressed her fingernails into his thigh. Her expression was indescribable.

“One thing I’m going to insist on,” he said to her, wondering if he could, or wanted to, suppress the urge to laugh or the roaring in his ears. “We’ll have to find a way to take along at least one dolphin. Her limericks are awfully dirty; but they may buy us supplies in a few ports while we’re out there.”