Worlds in Chaos (22 page)

Sariena nodded, keeping her eyes ahead. “A number of items and fragments like this were discovered in the ice fields there. Obviously they are artifacts. We have no idea what the markings mean. There is no life there today, nor even the conditions to permit the emergence of any, let alone an advanced race. So what are these objects doing there?” She turned her head finally to regard the two visitors. “You see what this means. The Solar System
hasn’t
been the same for billions of years as your scientists believe. Some things about its past were very different from what we see today. And if that’s true, they could become very different again.”

17

After eight hours of sleep aboard the
Osiris
, the visitors breakfasted with the Kronians before departing. The descent back to the surface and landing at the new Montemorelos facility went smoothly, and an Amspace plane flew the passengers and crew back to the San Saucillo site in Texas. After the postflight debriefings and changing back into their own clothes, Keene and Vicki were among the group that left by helicopter to return to Kingsville, where they had left Keene’s car on the way out. The demonstrators were gone by then, since the mission had terminated elsewhere, and work crews were busy around the site and along the sides of the approach road, clearing up the trash left behind.

“Courtesy of our friends of the environment,” Keene quipped to Vicki, who was staring fixedly out as the helicopter rose and headed north. She didn’t seem to hear. He moved a hand up and down in front of her face. “Hello. Earth to Vicki. You can come back now. The rest of you is already here.” She blinked and smiled faintly. “Where were you—still up in the
Osiris
?” Keene asked.

Vicki didn’t answer at once. “In a way. . . . I was thinking about those markings on the things Sariena showed us from Rhea. I know this sounds crazy, Lan, but I’m sure I’ve seen them before . . . or something close. I just can’t put my finger on where.”

That
was
crazy. How could she have seen markings from objects only discovered within the last year that hadn’t even arrived at Earth yet? “Maybe they got into some transmission from Kronia somehow, that you saw,” was the only thing he could think of to suggest.

Vicki shook her head. “No, I’m sure it wasn’t anything like that. It was in a book or something. I’ve been dabbling in so many different things lately: Venus and Mars, dinosaurs and mammoths, Biblical history, ancient legends. . . .”

“Yes, but it couldn’t possibly have been—” The phone in Keene’s pocket beeped and cut him off. “It’s started already,” he sighed, taking it out and activating it. “Hello, Landen Keene here.”

“Lan, it’s Judith. You should be down by now. Are you anywhere near getting away yet?”

“We’re on our way to Kingsville in a chopper right now.”

“Vicki’s there?”

“Of course, sitting right next to me.”

“How’d it all go?”

“Just great. But that obviously isn’t whatever couldn’t wait. What’s up?”

“I just heard from Jerry. He’s finished the preliminary run and sent me the figures. They’re dynamite. I’m on my way over to Kingsville right now to see the complete outputs. So I guess I’ll see you there.”

“All
right
!” Keene pocketed the phone and clapped Vicki’s shoulder. “That was Judith. Jerry’s finished the first run. She’s leaving the office now and coming up to Kingsville. It sounds as if there might be some interesting news.”

After clearing more formalities at Kingsville, Keene and Vicki went straight to Jerry Allender’s section. Judith still hadn’t arrived from Corpus Christi, but Allender took them into his office and showed them the preliminary results. Essentially, tidal pumping induced through combined electrical and gravitational forces in a hot plastic body of the kind Venus was theorized to have been would drive an initially eccentric orbit toward a minimum-energy state, circularizing it much more rapidly than anything in conventional theory permitted. It didn’t prove that Venus had originated that way; but it showed that it was possible.

Keene was jubilant. Added to what he and Vicki had seen aboard the
Osiris
, this was a powerful argument for taking the Kronians seriously. Judith arrived and joined them while Allender was still expounding on the details. Keene, however, had already seen enough. Leaving the others still poring over the printouts and putting more images up on the screens, he went into an empty office and called Les Urkin at the downtown building.

“Hey, Les. First, I just wanted to let you know that we brought Jenny back okay. We’re at Kingsville now, in case you haven’t heard from her already. It went well. She did real good.”

“Yes, she called me about half an hour ago. . . .”

“The other thing, Les: I’ve just talked to Jerry, who’s got the results of those computations. It really puts the whole thing on a solid foundation. Jerry says the buzz is going around among the astronomers already. I think we should try for some good general coverage at the same time to tie in with the start of the Kronian talks. Let’s get some exposure for Salio, Charlie Hu at JPL, all the other guys we’ve been talking to who don’t buy the party line, and . . .” Only then did Keene register the solemn expression on Urkin’s face, and that he wasn’t reacting to Keene’s enthusiasm. Keene’s expression changed. “What is it, Les?”

On the screen, Urkin shook his head and looked bleak. “It’s all changed, Lan. Things have been going on that I don’t understand. We’ve lost Salio. He’s not going to be in it anywhere. And I don’t think he’ll be the only one either. I—”

“
Lost
him? What do you mean, lost him? How can we . . . ?”

“He—” Somebody interrupted Urkin from one side. He looked away and muttered something. More voices sounded indistinctly in the background. “Lan, look, I’m sorry but we’re right in the middle of something right now. Why don’t you give him a call, and I’ll talk to you about it later—say, thirty minutes to an hour. Can we do that?”

“Why, sure, Les. . . . Shall I call you back?”

“Sure. . . . Or we could grab a sandwich. I still haven’t had lunch.”

“Okay. Want me to come into town?”

“If you wouldn’t mind. My treat.”

“See you then, Les.”

Keene got the number from the directory in his pocket phone and called Salio right there via the office unit he was using. Salio was at once awkward, as if he had been expecting the call and not looking forward to it. There was no point in beating around the bush. “I’m just down from orbit and talked to Les,” Keene said. “He tells me there’s some kind of trouble.”

“There isn’t going to be any appearance on Coast-to-Coast, Dr. Keene,” Salio said heavily.

“Why not? What’s happened? Are you saying you were dropped?”

Salio shook his head. “It was me. I canceled out. . . . I got a letter from the university in England raising questions about my legitimacy to conduct what they termed ‘serious scientific investigation,’ and hinting not very subtly that the invitation for the two-year sabbatical might be subject to reconsideration.” He looked embarrassed. “It’s more than just a job. Jean’s got her heart set on going there, and it would be so valuable for the children. . . . I know it’s important to you, but . . .” Salio shook his head. “I’m sorry, Dr. Keene. I don’t think I can help you. I’m sure you won’t have too much trouble finding someone else.”

Vicki looked up from studying a plot of field intensity contours when Keene came back out into the main computing lab. “This is astounding, Lan. If we’d had probes out there too, our scientists would have known about this too, months ago.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Oh. And Judith says that Karen is probably going to be leaving us. It seems the current boyfriend is from Dallas and can get a job for her, so she’ll be moving there. Just when she was beginning to fit in and get the hang of things, too. It’s a pity. She’s been doing a good job. I guess we have to start going through the replacement routine again.”

“Um. How long have we got?”

“About two months, apparently, so it could be worse. . . .” Vicki saw that Keene was only half listening. “Lan, what is it, Lan?”

“I’ll tell you later. Look, can you get a ride back with Judith? I’ve changed my plans. I have to dash into town to see Les.”

“It’s not just with Salio,” Urkin said tiredly across the table of the booth. They had walked a block from the headquarters building to a coffee and sandwich shop that a lot of the downtown Amspace staff used. “There’s a campaign being orchestrated from somewhere to kill our side of the story. And it’s not just your neighborhood eco club saving bugs or weeds. Look how high they went to persuade Salio to back off—and were able to get attention.”

Keene had a pretty good idea where from. He nodded grimly. “Okay. So what else have we got?”

Urkin tossed up a hand while he stirred his coffee. “Two talk-show appearances mysteriously canceled at the last minute in the last few days. You remember that guy Herrenberg that I told you about—the astronomer from Hawaii that we were putting on last Saturday night?”

“The one Charlie Hu organized. Yes, sure.”

“We’d flown him into LA. He was actually waiting in the green room when the interview was scratched.”

Keene was incredulous. “You’re kidding!”

“Herrenberg was just as much in the dark too. He was just told that there had been a schedule change, and he was paid off. Obviously, somebody got leaned on by somebody somewhere with a lot of weight. I couldn’t get anything out of them that made any sense when I called, although the producer’s assistant let something slip about one of the science agencies in Washington. . . . Oh yes, and you know the book that we were waiting for to appear this month?”

“Seymour’s book?” Keene said. Entitled
Gods, Myth, and Cataclysm,
it was a popular-level treatment supporting the Kronian cause, which had been scheduled months before to hit the stores when the subject was topical.

“Right. Well, now it looks as if it’s being put on hold because scientific buyers are threatening to boycott the publisher’s textbook division, which is a big line with them. They’re also being subjected to a letter and e-mail campaign protesting about the book. . . . And listen to this. I got the name of one of the scientists who sent in the letters—a geologist in Minnesota, called Quine—and I called him out of curiosity to ask what it was, specifically, in the book that he objected to. Want to know what he said, Lan? He admitted he didn’t know too much about it. He never got an advance copy, so he’d never actually read it.”

“
What?
Then how . . .”

“He said he tried to tell them that, but they said that was all right. They’d write the letter; all he had to do was sign it.

“ ‘
They
’? Who’s ‘they’?” Keene demanded.

“He wouldn’t tell me. He just said they included someone who sits on the review committee of just about everything Quine gets published. You see what he was being told, Lan: his career could be on the line.”

Urkin sat back in his seat and toyed indifferently with his salad, while Keene munched silently on a sandwich. Les was normally upbeat and buoyant, managing to keep up an image that went with his PR function, but today all that had gone out of him. He stared morosely through the window by the booth at the early-afternoon mix of people out on the street, and then looked back at Keene. They had been pals socially for a number of years, mutually available for helping out with the fixing of cars and other new-improved-model gadgets, downing a few beers in the Bandana every now and again, and getting in the occasional game of golf. Also, when the pressures built up, Les sometimes used Keene’s male preserve across town as a temporary refuge from marital domestic bliss.