Echoes of an Alien Sky (22 page)

"One, hears rumors." He regarded her challengingly.

If he already knew something of her situation, denying it wasn't going to help matters, she told herself. In any case, it wasn't her style. She looked him back in the face.

"Personal reasons," she said.

"In that case, yes. I'll see what can be done. Leave it with me, Lorili. I'll talk with Sherven to get his approval on the use of the space up there. If he goes along with it, I'll authorize the arrangements right away. . . . And you'd better talk to Mirine."

A stranger was waiting for her with Iwon when Lorili returned to the lab. He looked to be somewhere in his late twenties, with straight dark hair worn shoulder-length and a smooth, olive complexion. His expression was serious, though not unpleasant. Iwon introduced him as Elundi. He was a linguist who worked with Jenyn. Elundi was the person who had alerted Iwon on the night when Iwon had called Lorili, warning her that Jenyn was heading her way and likely to cause trouble. "We need to talk privately with you, Lorili," Iwon said.

Lorili's mind had still been on her meeting with Nostreny when she walked in the door, and she was momentarily disoriented.

"It would probably be best if we weren't seen talking together, if it can be avoided," Elundi told them. The lab was otherwise empty just at that moment, but anyone could have walked in.

"There's a storage room downstairs," Iwon suggested. "We keep equipment just down from orbit there, before it's distributed." Elundi nodded.

Mystified, Lorili walked with them a short distance along the corridor outside the lab, and through a side door to the rear staircase of the building. Something in Elundi's quick, tense pace telegraphed an urgency about the business that had brought him.

"I apologize for this intrusion into your personal affairs, " Elundi said to Lorili after Iwon had closed the door. "But there is reason to believe that a scandalous injustice is being done. We would be failing in our duty by not delving deeper if that proves to be the case. You might be able to help us.

"Well, of course . . . if I can," Lorili said.

Elundi came straight to the point. "I understand that you have known Jenyn for some time."

Lorili nodded. "Yes. For quite a number of years—back on Venus."

Elundi took a moment to compose his words. "I take it you've heard the story that's been going around concerning Gaster Lornod, who is standing as a nominee to represent the Progressives?"

"Yes." Lorili looked from one to the other. "It would be difficult to miss."

"What's your reaction?" Iwon asked her.

"I was surprised. I don't know Lornod, but it's out of character with the impression I'd formed of him." Lorili hesitated for a moment, then added, "If you want my honest opinion, I think the world goes too far in making things like that its business. If Lornod is at fault, it's in showing poor judgment, considering his position. But it's society's customs that make it that way."

"Some of us think the story is false," Elundi said. "And that Jenyn is behind it. Have you had many dealings with him since you came to Earth?"

"Not since he began bothering me again recently. You obviously already know about that. I've only been here for four months, and for most of that time I believe Jenyn was in the Americas." Lorili made an apologetic shrug. "So I'm not really sure that I will be able to help you. I don't know very much about what he's been doing. If he is mixed up in this thing that you're talking about, I don't know anything about it at all."

"Oh no, I wasn't meaning to imply anything like that," Elundi said hastily. "Im just looking for some sort of corroboration from someone who knows him better that my suspicions are at least believable, before we go jumping in and making it even more noisy."

"We?"

"There are others involved, who feel equally concerned. The allegation about Lornod that started the whole thing came from a person called Tyarla Yiag."

"Yes, I'm familiar with the name from the news reports," Lorili said.

"I've met her," Elundi said. "But more to the point, she's obviously known Jenyn for some time. If I may be permitted to be critical in someone's absence, she strikes me as a somewhat naive parson, also vain, and ambitious. She appears to idolize Jenyn and believes he is the key to a lifestyle that she evidently craves."

Lorili laughed, humorlessly and bitterly. "Believe me, I do understand."

Elundi gestured in a way that conveyed there was no more to be said. "I work with Jenyn, and I know something about how he thinks. I have seen him and this lady together, and the way they act. And what I immediately find myself thinking when I hear these things about a rival who has been sounding very threatening is that Jenyn put her up to it. I have shared these thoughts with certain others that I trust, and we agree that the subject must be pursued. So that is what I am doing. We have no desire to compound the situation further if my fears are groundless. So I'm collecting as much background information as I can. Jenyn has mentioned your name on occasions, which is how I was aware that you knew him. So what I am asking from you is a 'character assessment,' if that's the right way to put it. From what you know of him, could the kind of thing that I've intimated could be true, would you say? Is it plausible?"

Lorili was already ahead of him and answered without having to think about it. "More than plausible. It's exactly his style," she said.

"Be careful, Lorili," Iwon cautioned. "This is a pretty serious matter. You're sure of what you're saying?"

She nodded. "Oh yes. In fact something very like it happened before, on Venus. He framed a rival contender for an important editorial position, using a girl who was a former lover. But it blew up in his face. It wouldn't surprise me if that was what drove him to Venus."

"I see." Elundi drew a long breath, looking from her to Iwon and then back again. "Thank you. I'm sorry to have had to ask such questions. But I think you've done the right thing."

"So what are you going to do?" Lorili asked him.

Elundi gave a helpless shrug in a way that said there was no choice. "Confront Jenyn and try to persuade him to admit it."

"He won't," Lorili said flatly.

"From what I've seen, you're probably right," Elundi agreed with a sigh. "But as a first step, it has to be tried."

"What then?" Iwon asked.

"I suppose we decide that when and if we come to it," Elundi answered.

Lorili bit her lip while she thought, wondering how this might impact her own plans. "Are you going to want me involved in this?" she asked Elundi. She shifted her gaze to take in Iwon. "You might as well know this now. I've just been talking to Nostreny. There's a good chance I'll be moving out very soon, going to
Explorer 6
. I put a proposal to him about setting up a sequencing lab there for the Triagon finds. He's for the idea and is putting it to Sherven."

Iwon raised his eyebrows. "Oh dear! You'll be leaving?"

But Lorili knew he wouldn't be totally surprised. She had confided something to him of the situation she was in.

"Were you pushing the preprogrammed universal genome line?" he asked.

"What else?"

"So what did he think?"

"He didn't make his mind up about anything ahead of the evidence. Just agreed it should be tested."

Iwon nodded, but his mind seemed more on other things just then. "What made you put it to him? Did this situation with Jenyn have something to do with it?" he asked her.

"Yes, a lot," Lorili admitted candidly. She looked back at Elundi. "Or should I start thinking it terms of maybe needing to stay on down here for a while longer?"

Elundi was looking uncomfortable. "Really, I don't think there's need for that," he said. "You've been all the help that you can, and I'm grateful. I only wanted your opinion, off the record. I don't want to implicate you in any of this. It sounds as if life is complicated enough for you as things are. We can handle things from here. If we do find we need you for anything further, we'll contact you."

Counselor Corrio Weskaw was a senior member of the Korbisanian governing congress back on Venus. A staunch traditionalist, he was known for his outspoken opposition to the Progressive movement. He particularly ridiculed their demand for direct universal franchise, which he compared to letting popular celebrities design bridges and teach mathematics. And the herd continued in its placid, unquestioning way to let others do their thinking for them by repeatedly returning the Electors who appointed him to office. But it seemed there were elements of the population who were running out of patience. The news from Venus reported that the Counselor Weskaw's offices had been destroyed in a serious fire that had gutted part of an official building. Although the material damage and loss of records was severe, the blaze had taken place over a weekend, when the premises were unstaffed. More alarming, however, was the conclusion by police and insurance investigators that the fire appeared to have been the result of deliberate arson. That public affairs could descend to such a level was causing widespread shock, and the media were clamoring with demands for the speedy uncovering of whoever was responsible.

Jenyn reread the account with satisfaction. He still had a cadre of loyal and capable associates back home who were preparing the way. The trail the forensic experts would put together contained some apparently careless failures to obscure the evidence and would point to the campaign group supporting a certain Torag Ryalees, who happened to be the Progressive nominee for southern Korbisan and potentially Jenyn's biggest obstacle when he returned from the triumph he would have scored at Earth.

One of the benefits that came with working in the Clearing & Correlation section of Linguistics was the access it gave him to examples that had been collected of the Terrans' mastery of political subterfuge and pragmatism. So-called "false flag" operations had been one of the standard ploys used by virtually all groups and nations, so simple in concept, yet one of the most consistently effective. An outrage calculated to provoke fury and calls for retaliation—the assassination of a popular public figure, maybe, or a bomb planted in a public place—would be made to look like the work of one's opponents and depicted as such in lurid terms by the controlled media. And the average Terrans, even with their centuries of experience to draw on, had seemed incapable of noticing that it was the alleged perpetrators who stood to lose in terms of image, sympathy, support for their cause, and in just about every other way, while their accusers made all the gains. Yet nobody had asked the obvious questions. Perhaps it showed the skill of the Terran perception-management industries in conditioning the masses to accept as real only what they were officially told was real.

Yes indeed, Jenyn conceded, there was much that he could learn from the Terrans. He faulted himself for still having too much of the inbred Venusian tendency to moderation. The great things that he planned would never come about through half measures. A fire in some empty offices over a weekend was pretty tame fare compared to the examples of boldness and audacity that he read in some of the translated files. Terrans would have blown the whole building up—with Weskaw and his entire staff of prattlers and muddlers inside it!

The door opened, and Elundi came in. He hung his coat and went to his desk on the other side of the room without saying anything, depositing the document folder that he was carrying. He seemed to be preoccupied. There had been a tension and remoteness about his manner all day. He sat down and turned to look across the table separating them. Jenyn sensed something about to come to a head and raised his head inquiringly.

"This business about Gaster Lornod," Elundi said.

"Moderates!" Jenyn retorted derisively. "I've always said he was a hypocrite. "The quieter and more reasonable they try to sound, the more they've got to hide."

Elundi ignored it. "The girl who's making the accusations is the one we met in the Magic Carpet—Tyarla Yiag. Your old friend. A very close friend, by the sound of it."

"I know. She was trying to get me involved too." Jenyn met Elundi's gaze evenly. "It says something about the veracity and good judgment of the opposition, then, doesn't it? Also about the loyalties of some seeming followers. I was right to keep her at a distance."

"I've talked to a number of people who have know Lornod for a long time. They don't believe it. I had one of them call Ms. Yiag. She couldn't even describe Lornod. That story was fabricated." Elundi stared at Jenyn pointedly. "Wasn't it?"

Jenyn returned his gaze coolly. "How would I know?"

"Wasn't it, Jenyn?"

"If you're trying to say something, then come out and say it. Don't sit there hiding behind innuendos."

"I heard the way she talks. She thinks you can make her a big name one day, back on Venus. She's the kind that your line appeals to: delusions of unrecognized abilities that aren't there, being held back by a system that isn't affirmative enough. But you'll change the system. I'm saying I think you put her up to it."

"You think? So it's just some wild idea that's come into your head? Why shouldn't I 'think' that maybe you're just jealous because you don't get invited to interesting parties? Where's your proof?"

"Look, Jenyn, this isn't because I
want
to take it any further. I'm just asking to admit it. And if you can't bring yourself to do that, call it off, now, before the consequences get serious." Elundi waved a hand. "I don't want to know, okay? Just get her to retract. Tell her to say it was a stupid bet or something. That'll be embarrassing, sure, but there's no totally clean way. Letting it go on will be worse."

"How can I admit what I don't know anything about?" Jenyn replied obstinately. He gave Elundi a long, hard look, then went on to add, "And even if it were true, I wouldn't apologize. "As you say, it's a serious business. Results are what counts. You can't evade problems forever by pretending that Vizek will take care of them. Sometimes the real world just isn't for the squeamish."