Echoes of an Alien Sky (4 page)

Sherven nodded. "Yes, of course. It will be done. I'll make sure that Borgan passes this information on, and has them make a start. You may forget the matter for now and enjoy your well-earned vacation."

"I'm most grateful."

Silence fell for a short while. On the far side of a gap outside, in the shadows at the base of a wall of windows and metal culminating in a turret bristling with antennas, Kyal noticed a group of figures in yellow EV suites restrained by safety tethers, floating around an opened housing. Sherven got up and moved to the window, standing for a while with his back to the room, hands clasped loosely behind him, as if prefacing a change of subject and allowing time for the mood to change. Evidently there was more.

"There's a maintenance crew outside down there," he commented. "Looks as if they're doing something with one of the cosmic ray monitors."

"Yes, I'd noticed."

"Did you know I was a friend of your father's?"

"To be honest, I hadn't, sir, until Deputy Director Casselo mentioned only now, over lunch."

"The privilege was mine, to have known him. You have a first-class record of career background and credentials too, Master Reen. Every indication of being a solid, and reliable addition to the enterprise here. A piece of the old Jarnor Reen, without doubt. He would have been proud, I'm sure."

The tone and use of the informal second person signaled a relaxing of protocols, inviting closeness and frankness. It was a gesture if trust from a senior rare for a first meeting. Kyal said nothing, wondering where this was leading. Sherven turned and moved back to the desk. He sat down again, picked up a blue file that had been lying with some papers to one side, and opened it to turn briefly through the top few sheets of its content.

"About this Gallendian . . . Fellow of Applied Sciences, Electrogravitics, Yorim Zeestran." Sherven looked up. "He would appear to have, shall we say, a more volatile history and temperament. How much do you know about him?"

"I've worked with Yorim for over five years now, sir. I've always found him totally dependable. His scientific approach is first-class, with a solid grounding in engineering practice. I would trust him without reservation."

"Hm. Very commendable," Sherven complimented. All the same, he didn't seem very happy. "I'll be frank. I wasn't in favor of this selection, you know. I went along with it on the strength of your own insistence—if that's not too strong a word—and out of respect for your father and his work. We are a small community, isolated and far from home, held together by dedication to our common goals. Maintaining an atmosphere of stability and harmony is one of the first imperatives to facilitate getting the work done." Sherven set the file down and leaned back in his chair, propping his elbows on the rests and steepling his fingers under his chin. "Nevertheless, signs of the radicalism that has been disturbing all facets of existence back home for some years are starting to make themselves felt here. I trust that I make myself clear."

Kyal nodded that there was no need to spell anything out. Sherven was referring to a social-political movement known as the "Progressives" that was gaining ground internationally, particularly among younger elements of the population. Essentially, the Progressives were questioning the traditional pattern of letting social and professional institutions, and the organizations that dispensed learning structure themselves in whatever ways reflected the loyalties and recognitions of merit displayed by the individuals who composed them, rather than conform to any notions of hierarchy imposed from above. According to the Progressives, such reliance on the "emergent dynamic"—to use the term employed by those who studied such matters—was wasteful and inefficient, and discriminated against people who were not gifted with popularity or a flair for attracting professional support. Stronger coordination and control, under the direction of more clearly designated authority, would, they contended, not only produce results faster and more efficiently, but broaden opportunity by making appointment and advancement more accessible to those judged to be deserving than being left to chance and whim.

Sherven went on, "You colleague has the kind of profile that one can't help speculating might lead him to become active in such a respect here." He indicated the file briefly. "For instance, did you know that he helped run a college newspaper that made a case for panels of scientific peers having a say in what kind of research ought to be published and funded? The piece argued that only specialists are fit to decide within their own discipline." Sherven shrugged as if nothin further needed to be said. "We all know that by the time experts qualify as professors, they're likely to have become walled in by their assumptions and lost their ability to think creatively. I'm not saying that Zeestran wrote it, but it gives and indication, perhaps, of the direction his inclinations point in." It sounded like Yorim, sure enough, Kyal thought. But you had to know him to understand that he was about as far from being driven by ideology as it was possible to get, and would happily take either side of any argument just to test the reactions. Sherven's brow creased. "He was also mixed up at one time with a political advocacy group that seemed to think that matters of private relationships should be coercively regulated by the state, and that a standardized code of personal ethics should be included in the educational curriculum."

Kyal couldn't mistake the thinly veiled hint that such an association might not have the most desirable effects on those whose reactions might affect his own image and prospects. One of the unfortunate things of life was that what drove events was not reality but people's perceptions of it. Sherven was just doing his job and trying to honor a loyalty.

"I appreciate the Director's candor," Kyal replied. "And I understand your concerns and responsibilities. However, from my own experience, I know Fellow Zeestram to be simply his own free person. He explores all of the world and is curious about everything. With all respect, I would regard the things you mentioned as due to that nature, rather than anything that should cause concern."

Sherven gave Kyal a searching look and nodded finally, but still seeming dubious. "You do see my point? We have a vitally important mission to think of, far from home, with never enough people and slender resources. We can't afford the kind of agitation that we see in the news from back home. We don't bring people this distance to spend their time promoting disruptive agendas that have no place here. I trust that we can count on you to watch for any signs, and if necessary impress whatever cautions are necessary to nip them in the bud."

"Of course." Kyal nodded that he understood.

His own position on such matters was divided. On the one hand, who could disagree with the suggestion that more efficient use of resources in a harsh environment like that of Venus, and a fairer recognition of talents constituted desirable aims? He didn't see that concerted moves to bring about improvement could ever be a bad thing. At the same time, he couldn't deny holding a certain respect for the values enshrined in the traditional principles of open debate, freedom of individual choice, and in the end letting everyone follow the direction that their reason and their consciences dictated. Such things hadn't come to be accepted lightly, but only after generations of trial and experience. They shouldn't be thrown away lightly or impetuously either. It was the kind of attitude that Jarnor had brought to his science: using the tried and tested methods for as long as they seemed favored,, but not hesitating to abandon them when facts, evidence, and not uncommonly feelings and an indefinable intuition too, said the time had come to move on. It was also the way he lived his life—and no doubt, too, one of the strongest influences that had guided Kyal in forming his own view of the world.

Although there had apparently been some who tried to point out the obvious, the mainstream of Terran science had refused to recognize that Venus was a much younger planet than Earth—even after sending down surface probes of their own when its surface and atmosphere were still forming. The maturer conditions of Earth had proved so much more hospitable that several Venusian researchers had suggested, not always jokingly, that they should consider moving their whole culture there.

The Terrans' error was another consequence of their assumption of gravity being the sole means of shaping the Solar System, and missing the importance of electrical forces involved in causing ejection of lesser objects from gas giants by fission. This led them to construct a theory in which all bodies had formed together out of a collapsing dust cloud, and hence had to be the same age. When data started coming back from Venus clearly telling of the hot, primordial conditions there, they invented a notion of a runaway atmospheric greenhouse to account for it.

In this they revealed an extraordinary capacity for self-delusion that resulted from their tendency to twist the evidence to fit a theory that they had convinced themselves had to be right—as if fervency of belief could somehow affect the fact. This typified the negation of science as it was taught on Venus, and as Kyal had learned it from Jarnor, where one of the essential disciplines to be mastered at the outset was learning to recognize and suppress desires and preconceptions, and simply follow where the evidence led.

Emur Frazin, the psychobiologist among the company on the ship out, had held this to be the most significant psychological difference setting Terrans and Venusians apart. Looking for reasons for it was a big part of the work that had brought him here. The same underlying philosophy pertained too to the managing of Venusian political and social affairs. Or at least it did traditionally. And this would explain Sherven's reservations toward militant demands for changes in public policy from quarters he saw as allowing thinking to be dominated more by ideologies of how things ought to be, instead of by the simple and practical lessons that experience taught of what worked and what didn't.

Even thought the views from orbit had prepared them, the pageant of detail unfolding as the lander descended toward the surface awed Kyal and left even Yorim speechless. Despite all the images they had seen, to fully grasp the extent of Earth's oceans, you had to actually see one down there, through an atmosphere as clear as crystal, stretching all the way to the rim of a quarter of a planet and beyond. As the landscapes of colored daubery rose, expanded, and resolved into plains, valleys, rifts, and snow-topped mountains of stupefying dimensions, the age of the planet became visible too. They could sense the aeons of history written into every fold, river channel, and crumbling ridgeline taking shape among the bastions of ancient rock.

"It makes home look a bit like a factory slag dump," Yorim offered finally.

Rhombus, by now a small if cluttered and somewhat inelegant town, had grown from one of the earliest surface bases. The most geographically widespread Terran language, de facto standard for business and most other international dealings, and hence the one that Venusian linguists were concentrating on, had been that known as English. It took its name from the dominant of a diverse collection of squabbling tribes who inhabited a group of islands off the northwest of the main planetary land mass, where it had emerged as an impossibly irrational amalgam of various ancestral languages brought by successive waves of foreign invaders, all of whom added to and further complicated the makeup of the final population. Untangling the history was still a bewilderment to Venusian scholars, but it appeared that the English had inherited their various contributors' proclivities for conquest as well as their languages, for they went on to establish an empire of their own which for a short time girdled the entire world. Either the language itself somehow instilled a tendency toward aggression—or perhaps was an expression of it—or there was some peculiar genetic connection between the two. One of the principal regions colonized by the English—after invasion by a number of rival groups and virtual extermination of the natives—was the northern part of the double-continent Americas across the ocean to west. Having adopted the language, the Americans then became the major world power and proceeded in turn to begin attacking and invading everybody else.

Rhombus was situated in what had been known as Iran, part of an area called the Middle East, which the first Venusian explorers had selected for a base on account of its central position in the main Afro-Euro-Asian land mass. The initial consideration was proximity to a wide range of geology and climates. However, this was followed by rapid expansion to accommodate just about every line of research when the region was recognized as having been where many of the major Terran cultures and racial divisions met. Perhaps not coincidentally, it had also been the focus of the Central Asian War, which had been one of last great conflicts to be fought before the Terrans died out.

The town derived its name from the shape of the main building of the original base of fifteen years previously, still discernible among the sprawl of launch and transportation installations that formed the outskirts on the east side. That was also where most of the scientific complexes were concentrated, having grown from the first field cabins and laboratory shacks. Subsequent development became more orderly as it spread westward and now constituted the central district, with residential precincts, services, amenities, and supporting industries that had quickly come into existence to ease the burden on the supply ships from Venus. On the western periphery was an animal and plant breeding station, where attempts were being made to re-domesticate what were thought to be the descendants of former artificial Terran strains that had reverted to wild.

A white, dust-covered bus brought Kyal, Yorim, and a batch of other arrivals to a reception building in the service area clear of the launch areas. It was their first taste of being out of doors since leaving Venus. Kyal had never seen a landscape of such dazzling clarity under the clear blue sky. The Sun was noticeably smaller than he was used to, but impressively radiant. Venusian days were hazy even when the cloud cover broke, which was seldom. The other striking thing was the dryness of terrain, extending away as a brown, dusty plain on the far side of the launch area to craggy hills rising in the distance. Venus was humid and soggy everywhere. Supposedly, Earth had been like that once. He tried to imagine the surroundings without the launch gantries, servicing hangars, or any of the other constructions, empty and desolate, as it had been fifteen years ago when Armin Harra set the first Venusian foot on the surface of Earth. There wasn't a Venusian who had never seen the recording of that memorable moment, or a schoolchild who couldn't recite the immortal line that had gone down in history. It was only years later that the diligent research of a zealous student journalist established that the first words actually uttered on the surface of Earth had been, "Is the camera running yet?"