"Emergent properties of relationships manifesting themselves at progressively higher levels in a hierarchy of increasing complexity," he told her, not really expecting her to make much out of it.
"Neural constructs," she supplied, parrying him. "I create it in my head."
Hunt raised his eyebrows and nodded his compliments. "Where else? We've already agreed what everything from outside is."
"In the same way that every book that might ever be written is built up from the same twenty-six-letter alphabet. The qualities that we think we perceive aren't out there in the symbols. The symbols are simply a coding system for triggering what a lifetime of living has written into our nervous systems."
"You've got the idea. Sometimes I think it's amazing that any two of us ever manage to perceive anything similar at all."
"I'm not always so sure that we do," Gina responded.
"Which from your point of view is just as well. If we all saw everything the same, you wouldn't have anything controversial to write about." He paused. "I don't exactly get the feeling that all this is especially new."
"I already told you, I get curious about things. And in any case, writers read a lot. It's compulsive. The real reason they write is that it gives them an excuse for doing the research."
Enough fencing, Hunt decided. She had held her own without getting defensive and turning the thing into a duel. He got up and took the mugs through to the kitchen, along with his breakfast dishes. "So what have you written that brought lynch mobs screaming out of the woodwork?" he asked over his shoulder as he loaded the dishwasher.
In the lounge, Gina rose from the couch and turned to study the view out of the picture window. She was a shade on the tall side of average, with a trim, firmly shaped figure that was right for the navy dress.
"Well, there was one I did awhile back about Earthguard and the no-growth lobby," she said, without turning her head. "Have you had much to do with that?"
"Not a lot. I thought they went away years ago . . . Anyhow, haven't the Thuriens pretty much blown them out of the water for good?"
"I wrote it before the Thuriens showed up."
"Okay. So what were the doomsday brigade into this time?"
"Oh, our expansion out into the Solar System. Numbers were growing too fast, resources being depleted. Earth wouldn't be able to feed an unchecked spacegoing population, and off-planet alternatives were either inadequate or impractical, et cetera, et cetera."
Hunt poured coffee into two fresh mugs. "If we paid too much attention to that lot, we'd still be conserving flint for our grandchildren to make axes. I've got other things to do."
"The trouble is, a lot of people who matter do pay attention to them. And they're the ones who shape what everyone else thinks."
"Well, I think you'll find all that's changing."
"But look what it took," she said. "Yes, now at last, the world's beginning to realize that by all the measures that mean anything, growing populations are a sign of things getting better." She turned as Hunt came back into the lounge, carrying the mugs. "Everyone's got two hands and one mouth, right? People produce more than they consume."
"I had a grandmother from Yorkshire who used to say something like that: You should always listen twice as much as you talk. That's why God gave thee two ears an' one mouth, lad.'"
Gina frowned at him suspiciously. "Are you trying to tell me something?"
"No. What you said just reminded me of it. There's—" Hunt broke off and looked up at her suddenly as he set down the mugs. "Wait a minute. Was it you who wrote that book—something about people being precious?"
"
People, Priceless People,
" Gina confirmed, nodding. "Did you read it?"
"Not all of it. Someone I used to work with showed me some of it—about how the real cost of just about every natural resource has been falling over the last couple of centuries, wasn't it?"
"Which is a sign of a commodity that's getting more abundant, not scarcer."
"And how things like longer life expectancies and falling infant mortality add up to an environment that's getting better, not worse. Yes, I remember it." Hunt nodded and looked at her with greater interest. "What other heresies have you committed?"
"Oh . . . that the nuclear weapons of the twentieth century were the main thing that prevented World War III from happening on at least four occasions between 1945 and final disarmament. In other words, the Bomb and the Pentagon probably saved more lives than penicillin did."
"The Russians more or less admitted that," Hunt commented. "It ruled out major war as an option, and that was all they understood."
"But how much of the public knows that they admitted it? Most people still think it was the peace demonstrators that did it."
Hunt nodded. "That would stir up a few waves on the port beam. What about the starboard side of the ship? Did you start any storms there, as well?"
"Oh, yes . . . by suggesting that sex is probably better for teenagers than religion, and drugs aren't a problem. You know—the usual prime-time family-hour stuff."
"That'd do it, right enough. You've been busy." Hunt himself seemed comfortable enough with everything she had said. He sat down in the recliner and leaned back with his fingers interlaced behind his head. "But you never got to be a millionairess out of it, eh?"
"Not that I noticed, anyhow."
Hunt inclined his head to indicate the general direction outside, where her Peugeot was parked. "Not doing too badly, all the same, by the looks of things," he remarked.
"Rented." .
"Ah."
"From the airport."
"So you're just visiting."
"Right."
"Where are you staying?"
"At the Maddox—a small hotel on the east side of town."
"Uh-huh." Hunt watched her silently for a few seconds to let the preliminary talk fade into the background. "So," he said finally, "now that you're here, what can I do for you?"
"I'd like some help with a new book that I want to write." Gina drew back from the window, but instead of sitting back down on the couch, she crossed the lounge and turned, arms folded, propping herself against the table carrying the comnet terminal. "About the Jevlenese. You're one of the few original sources, and from what I've read, a pretty open and approachable one. So I'm approaching."
Hunt had already guessed that it would be something like that. Her directness about it was refreshing. The public was already being deluged with popular material, most of it secondhand information and wild speculation, being churned out in the rush to cash in by people who didn't know what they were talking about. Concocting plausible but unsubstantiated reasons why any historical figure that somebody disliked or disagreed with had been a Jevlenese agent had become something of a game in the popular media.
"There's some awful stuff out there," he agreed, anticipating her line. "People are being told all kinds of nonsense. So you decided to come to somebody who was in at the beginning." He nodded in a way that said he couldn't find anything to argue with in that.
But Gina shook her head. She went back to the chair that she had occupied before and sat down. "No, that isn't quite it. I'm more interested in some of the things they're
not
being told."
Hunt stroked the side of his nose with a finger and looked at her curiously. "Go on."
"Let's make sure I've got the background correct."
"Okay."
"The Jevlenese and ourselves are both the same, equally human species, descended from the same ancestors, right?"
Hunt nodded. "The Lunarians, yes."
"But the civilization on Jevlen is more advanced, which isn't surprising since it grew up under the wing of the Thuriens. The early colony on Earth was almost wiped out and went back to barbarism."
"Yes," Hunt said, nodding again.
Gina leaned forward. "But before all that happened, the Lunarian civilization on Minerva also discovered the sciences rapidly and reached an advanced stage much faster than we did, without any Ganymean help. The reason we didn't do the same was that the Jevlenese retarded Earth's development by infiltrating agents to spread irrational belief systems and organize cults based on superstition and unreason. That's why it took us two thousand years to get from Euclid to Newton."
"It took the Lunarians closer to two hundred," Hunt said.
Gina's voice took on a curious, more distant tone. "Just think . . . nobody ever thought of Homer as a science writer before. The
Iliad
could all have been real—an authentic account of human contact with an alien race. Take Hesiod's account of the origins of the universe. First there was Chaos: just dark, empty space and proto-etements. Then Gaea, the fusion of Earth and Life, and Uranus, the star-filled heavens, were born from Eros, the force of attraction that causes all things to come together. Expressed in those terms, it does come interestingly close to the real thing, doesn't it?"
"You've been doing some homework," Hunt murmured.
"The gods that kept coming down and meddling in the Trojan War might actually have existed. Maybe the Biblical miracles really happened, and Velikovsky had a point after all. Is it any wonder that ideas of magic and the supernatural became so deeply rooted here? At one time, it really used to work."
Hunt wondered where she was leading. Everything she had said so far was more or less public knowledge.
She waited for a moment, then tossed out a hand lightly. "Speculating on which figures in history may or may not have been Jevlenese provocateurs has become a popular pastime these days. But what I'd like to see is something on a few of the obvious candidates that people
aren't
talking about."
Hunt stared at her for a second to be sure he had followed, then nodded. It was not a thought that had eluded him completely. "Christ," he muttered.
"Possibly. But probably not. My guess is that he was on the other side."
Hunt had not meant it as a response to her implied question; it had simply been his reaction to the prospect of the wrench that he could see her throwing into the works of cherished belief systems everywhere, going back thousands of years and forming the foundations of entire cultures. What she was inferring threatened, in short, the demolition of virtually all traditionalism and the systems of authority based on it. Hunt did not want to guess at the outrage and unlikely closings of ranks which that would be likely to provoke. Perhaps he had been avoiding thinking about it himself because he had unconsciously glimpsed the implications.
"I, ah . . . I see now what you meant about getting into controversial subjects where you always end up upsetting somebody," he said dryly.
"But you have to agree it gets interesting. Imagine—Euclid to Newton should have taken a couple of hundred years. How else might things have gone, do you think, if the Jevlenese had left us alone? Perhaps Newton would have formulated relativity. James Watt could have invented the nuclear reactor. The Wright brothers might have flown the first starship. But instead, we got headed off into the Dark Ages."
Hunt was staring at her with an intrigued expression. He had discussed such possibilities with colleagues often enough, but they were specialists, linked through their own circles. Gina had put the conclusions together independently.
She was about to continue, when the call-tone from the comnet terminal next to her interrupted. "Excuse me," Hunt said, getting up from the recliner and coming across to answer it. Gina stood up and moved aside. The screen activated to reveal a head-and-shoulders view of two longish, gray-hued countenances with deep blue eyes, large pupils, and dark, neck-length hair. Only someone who had been in a coma or a hermitage for the last year could have failed to recognize them as Ganymeans.
"Hello, Vic," the male said. His mouth movements did not synchronize with the voice, which had a natural human intonation. Ganymeans spoke at a deep, guttural pitch that was incapable of reproducing human speech faithfully. The voice was familiar to Hunt as one that zorac synthesized in its role as interpreter.
"Garuth. Good to see you," he replied. "And Shilohin."
"It's been awhile now," the female acknowledged.
Gina, intrigued, moved around to come closer to Hunt, which brought her into the lens angle. "Oh, I didn't realize you had company," Garuth said. "I should have asked."
"Don't worry about it. This is Gina, a friend of mine. She writes books. Gina, meet Garuth and Shilohin."
Gina was at a loss for a moment but recovered quickly. "Hello. I, er, I don't get to do this every day." The two Ganymeans inclined their heads in their customary greeting.
There were currently a number of Ganymeans at various places on Earth for various reasons, and Hunt guessed that Gina was assuming the two faces on the screen to be among them. Although it was no secret that the Thurien communications network managed by visar had been extended to Earth, only a few, select locations, such as Goddard, had connections into it. It would hardly have occurred to Gina that Hunt might have wrangled himself a private home extension. He made no mention of the fact, however, and asked casually, "So, how are things on Jevlen these days?"
A hand flashed for an instant in front of Garuth's face. "As a matter of fact, not too good. That's why we're calling. We need some help on a problem that's been developing here."
"Oh really?" Hunt said. "What kind of—" The abrupt movement of Gina passing a hand across her brow made him look away.
"Wait a minute," Gina whispered.
"Would you excuse us for a second?" Hunt said to Garuth.
"But of course. We intruded."
Hunt looked inquiringly at Gina, his face an expression of forced innocence. She shook her head as if to clear it.
"Did you say Jevlen?" she asked.
"Yes. Garuth is the
Shapieron
's commander. Shilohin is the chief scientist."
"Those people are on Jevlen—right now?"
"Of course," Hunt said, maintaining his nonchalant air. "That's where the
Shapieron
is."
Gina sat down on the arm of the couch, shaking her head bemusedly. "This isn't real. I've known this guy for an hour. The phone rings, and it's aliens calling from another star system? What happens next?"