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Authors: James P. Hogan

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BOOK: Echoes of an Alien Sky
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Sherven was livid. "This is exactly what I
didn't
want," he muttered to Casselo. "Progressive politics and intrigues undermining the mission's work. They're causing enough trouble back on Venus." And then back to Huiano, "Is she still there?"

"Yes. I asked her to stay here pending your instructions."

"Has she gone public with any of this?" Sherven asked.

"She says not. She came straight here this morning, when she decided to come clean."

"Well, that's something, anyway."

"What do you want us to do?" Huiano asked.

Sherven thought for a moment or two. "Let's keep everything like that for now," he answered. "What I'd like is a closed-door session to try and resolve the whole business in private without a public circus. Have them both, Yiag and this . . . what was his name?"

"Jenyn Thorgan."

"Thorgan. Have them both sent up here on the next shuttle out. We'll hear them out up in
Explorer
, and hopefully get rid of this whole mess. There are other things going on that are what I'm supposed to be here for." He glanced at Casselo and shook his head with a sigh. "And they're a lot more interesting too."

"I will make the necessary arrangements," Huiano promised.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Elundi sat working through the references to the latest list of word searches requested by the people at Triagon, on lunar Farside. Their work had been given a high priority One of the hot items was "Providence," which was thought to be the code word for a Terran program to amass a large inventory of equipment and supplies there. Even Sherven was getting involved, sending memos to various people on his staff querying progress and requesting for details. They were excited over a current theory that Triagon might have been not just an evacuation shelter for elites as previously thought, but a staging base for onward migration to somewhere else. Elundi wasn't sure why that should be such a big issue. The problem from the linguists' standpoint was that Terran code designations with military connections were usually chosen from common words in order to be innocuous, which meant that they would also occur in countless other contexts that had no connection with the particular example of interest. Weeding out the irrelevant flags that the search programs listed was a tedious business.

It would be a good application for a decent Artificial Intelligence system, Elundi thought to himself. Recognizing correct context—what was appropriate; what was relevant—he believed, was the essence of intelligence. It came from that "common sense" faculty that humans recognized in each other as a result of growing up and forming their conceptual associations in the same shared reality, from the physical space they moved around in that inspired so many metaphors of common speech, to their cultural heritage—and computers didn't. He recalled with amusement how the AI pioneers back on Venus had confidently predicted full, human-level automatic translation of natural language within five years. That had been twenty-five years ago, and they were still not even close. Misled my the ease with which programs could disassemble and convert their own artificially created symbolic languages, they had assumed that the meanings carried by natural speech could be extracted from the syntax. But the meanings that humans were able to perceive instantly, even from infancy, were not there in the syntax of the message to be extracted. The words and phrases merely triggered what was already inside the heads of the recipients. Even some of the widely quoted experts didn't seem to have grasped it, and continued to construct ever-more-elaborate syntax analyzers that continued to return wrong, way-out, and frequently hilarious results. But they were five years away from the real thing at most, they assured the world. Doing it the right way was what he would devote himself to when he returned to Venus, Elundi had decided. The experience he was gaining on Earth was ideal preparation for it.

The next item on his screen was from the Terran electronic records that the engineers up at Triagon had managed, amazingly, to reactivate. It was filed under the name of an engineering company that had been involved in the Providence program, and stated that one of their inspectors had flown from Santa Cruz to perform post-delivery tests and was back in the Bay area by evening. There was nothing sensational about it that would warrant alerting the researchers, but the fact that the record had come from Triagon indicated that the "Providence" reference was in the category that they were interested in. Elundi sent it across for routine incorporation into the consolidation file that Jenyn was working on. On the far side of the table, Jenyn moved his head as the item flag appeared on one of his screens. From the corner of his eye, Elundi was aware of Jenyn turning toward him. He carried on working and pretended not to notice. The air had been cool between them since their confrontation over the Lornod business, and the things Elundi had learned since, in his visit to Tyarla's with Iwon and Lorili, had only exacerbated matters.

"Have you seen anymore of this pal of yours in Biochem?" Jenyn asked. His tone was mildly taunting, deliberately nonchalant as if challenging Elundi to come out and say what was bothering him—as if Jenyn didn't know.

"Not really," Elundi murmured without looking away from the screen he was working on.

"I need to straighten things out with that partner of his," Jenyn said, obviously meaning Lorili. "Think you can put a word in for me? You know what they're like when they get funny and sulky. Makes it difficult to talk to them direct. Maybe this friend of yours who works with her could get the message across."

"I don't think it's really any of my business," Elundi said.

"Aw, come on. Just a small favor. I thought you might get them to meet you somewhere, socially. Then I could accidentally show up and—"

"Look." Elundi swung his chair around and faced Jenyn directly across the table. "You're wasting your time. Iwon told me she's fixed up with a physics guy who's not long in from Venus, that she met while she was in Russia. Okay? So why don't you just drop it? I told you, it isn't any of my business. And if you want my opinion, it's a sleazy way to operate. I wouldn't want any part of it anyway."

Jenyn's face darkened as he dropped the game-playing. Elundi braced himself for the row that had been brewing to finally come to a head. But before anything happened, a call-mode tone sounded from Jenyn's terminal. He picked up the handset and said curtly, "Yes? . . . Who? . . . What does she want? . . . Yes, I'll be right out." He got up and left, breathing heavily, without saying more. Elundi returned his attention to his work. This couldn't go on, he told himself. He'd talk today to Girelandi about getting a transfer to another office—maybe another location, even. He thought he was beginning to see why Lorili had decided to get herself up off the planet completely.

The item mentioning Santa Cruz and the Bay Area remained flagged but unprocessed on Jenyn's screen.

 

Derlen was waiting for Jenyn in the reception area at the entrance to the linguistics offices. She beckoned him aside, away from the desk, and spoke closely to him in a low voice. "I think you might be in trouble. Can we talk outside?"

Jenyn looked at her searchingly. The interplay of emotions on her face was too confused for him to read. He nodded and followed as she turned back toward the door. Outside was a covered foyer with steps going down to a paved court dotted with a few shrubs in planters.

"Tyarla came to see me late last night," Derlen said. "She told me the story about Gaster Lornod wasn't true. She said she was going to the provost's office to tell them the whole thing." Jenyn drew in a sharp breath. Derlen looked at his face with an expression that was half questioning, half fascination. "She, ah . . . she said that you asked her to do it."

Jenyn swore inwardly. "Is she going to tell them that too?"

Derlen made a slight suggestion of a shrug. "I don't know. I guess so." She watched Jenyn's face, but his mind was already racing, barely aware of her. He was angry at himself. Why had he trusted somebody like that? He'd
known
she was the kind that was all phony and fake and would fall apart. "I tried to talk her out of it. I really did." Derlen's eyes were earnest, but the words had a cracked ring. Jenyn had the feeling that a part of her was relishing it. He sensed a jealousy of Tyarla surfacing that had been simmering for a long time. Derlen was excited by him. He knew the signs. Being defensive would only detract from the image.

"Did she say what changed her mind?" he asked, not bothering to deny anything. "No. But I was by her place earlier, and I saw Elundi coming out . . ."

"Elundi? What was he doing there?"

"He was with two other people. They didn't see me. One was a tallish guy, with kind of light hair and a mustache under his nose—you know, like the Terrans had. The other was a woman."

Jenyn looked up abruptly. "Describe her," he said.

"Oh . . . a bit older than me. I didn't really see her face. She had, let me see . . . pants and a dark jacket. But very black hair, long, about down to here." Derlen indicated a point halfway between her shoulder and her elbow .

The woman was obviously Lorili. The other person with them had to be Elundi's friend who worked with her. So Elundi had sat there all morning, acting so cool and disinterested, while all the time he had betrayed Jenyn, probably because Jenyn disturbed his comfort and petty little dreams of burying himself in computer labs when he got back to Venus; because Jenyn made him think about things that mattered.

And as for Lorili, who had already turned on him back at Venus after he'd made her everything she was, and then run away to Earth, and after he had given her a second chance. . . . Now she was throwing back in his face and playing the same tricks behind his back again to get him out of the way to make room for her new infatuation with this physicist.

The rush of anger that he had felt toward Tyarla and at himself for trusting her was gone now, and in its place he could feel a slow rage building deep inside, consuming him slowly like an acid. Nobody did things like this to
him
without feeling the consequences. The first thing was to stop Tyarla getting to the provosts. He would take care of that himself right away. After that, there would be the score to settle with Lorili. He would attend to Elundi later.

Jenyn looked again at Derlen's eyes. They were bright, hopeful. He recognized a willing helper, just waiting the word to step into Tyarla's shoes. and take over the glamorous image, savor the hint of danger. "A pity," he said. "I thought Tyarla had more nerve. I guess that's how you find out, eh?"

"What are you going to do?" Derlen asked him.

"Do you want to help?" Jenyn regarded her with an expression that was at the same time both a challenge and a promise. "I don't think you're a phony." Derlen returned a quick nod. "I know who the woman is," he said. "Her name is Korili Hilivar. She's in the ISA Molecular Genetics lab. She's had a grudge against me since a long time ago back on Venus. I want you to contact her and say you're a friend of Tyarla. Tell her that Tyarla want to meet her and talk some more. Okay? Then call me and let me know when and where."

"What are you going to do?" Derlen asked again.

"I've got something else I have to take care of first. I'll see you later today. Get moving and track Lorili down for me. Set up a meeting, and then let me know." Jenyn's voice fell. "You're smart. I have bigger things going on back home than you know. You won't regret this."

He watched her leave the court and then turned to go back inside. The thought of confronting Elundi again checked him. He couldn't risk anything developing between them now that might introduce a delay. Changing his mind, he followed the way Derlen had gone and came out onto the street. She was just disappearing around the corner at the end of the block.

Jenyn's anger had crystallized into a cold determination to get even. It was the test of him as a man to be reckoned with. No other consideration mattered for now. He took out his phone and checked the news channel for the latest on Lornod. Nothing had changed since that morning. No new announcements. The important thing was to stop Tyarla before she said anything that would connect him with her.

Moving briskly, Jenyn set off in the direction of Tyarla's apartment. The scheme of how he would play it was already forming in his mind. With Tyarla out of the way, only Elundi and Lorili would know that she had implicated Jenyn—he discounted Elundi's friend, whom he took to be just a go-between. If either of them voiced it, his position would be that Tyarla had set him up out of spite after he refused her overtures to use him as a ticket into the upper ranks of the Progressives. What other motive would she have had for making up the story about Lornod? That left Derlen as the only other person who would know. And he thought he would be able to handle Derlen without too much trouble.

She called him when he was halfway to Tyarla's.

"Hello, Jenyn,"

"Yes?" Well, she certainly hadn't wasted much time, he told himself.

"I tried calling this Lorili Hilivar, but her personal code is turned off. So I tried the number at Molecular Bio where she's listed. The guy I talked to was the same one I told you about with the mustache who was at Tyarla's place. He says she's moving out today—something about moving to a new laboratory. He wouldn't tell me where."

"Okay. . . . Thanks," Jenyn acknowledged shortly.

"What do you want me to do now?"

Jenyn sighed and thought hard. "There isn't a lot else you can do for now," he answered. "Don't get me wrong—you've done just fine. As much as you could. But I right now I have to finished something else. If you can find out where she's going, that would be a big help. Work on that. Otherwise, I'll call you later today. Maybe we can get together."

"Okay, Jenyn."

"Trust me, eh." He winked and shut off the phone.

Lorili, true to pattern, he told himself as he began walking again. Just like the last time, ratting on him and then running away. He was angry for letting himself be taken in by her a second time. Sometimes he could be too forgiving. That was half his problem. That kind of weakness wouldn't do for the future leader of the worldwide Progressive movement that would one day call the tunes on Venus. It was something he was going to have to work on. But Lorili Hilivar was going to find out. She would find out that he was someone to be reckoned with.

BOOK: Echoes of an Alien Sky
3.07Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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