The Two Worlds (24 page)

A new image appeared above the center of the floor. It was of a wilderness of dust and boulders etched harshly beneath a black sky thick with stars. The landscape had been seared and churned by forces of unimaginable violence to leave just the twisted and mutilated wreckage of what could once have been a vast base. Amid the desolation stood a single structure that appeared to have survived almost intact—a squat, armored dome or turret of some kind, blown open on one side. Its interior was in darkness.

"That was all that was left of Gorda," Calazar commented. "The view you are seeing is from a Thurien ship that had landed a few minutes before."

A small vehicle, roughly rectangular but with pods and other protuberances cluttering its outside, moved slowly into view from behind the camera, flying twenty feet or so above the ground. It landed near the dome, and a group of Ganymeans wearing space suits emerged and began moving cautiously through the wreckage toward the opening. Then they stopped suddenly. There were movements in the shadows ahead of them.

A light came on from somewhere behind to light up the opening. It revealed more figures, also in suits, standing in front of what looked like an entrance leading down to an underground section of whatever the dome had been part of. Their suits were different, and they stood a full head and shoulders shorter than the Ganymeans facing them from a few yards away. They were carrying weapons, but they appeared unsure of themselves as they looked nervously at one another and at the Ganymeans. None of them seemed to know what to do or what to expect. None of them, except one . . .

He was standing in front of the others in a blue space suit that was plastered with dust and grotesquely discolored by scorch marks, his feet planted firmly astride, and a rifle-like weapon held unwaveringly in one hand to cover the leading Ganymean. With his free arm he made a gesture behind him to wave the others forward. The movement was decisive and commanding. They obeyed, some moving up to stand on either side of him, others moving out to cover the aliens from protected positions among the surrounding debris. He was taller than the others and heavy in build, and the lips of the face behind his visor were drawn back in a snarl to reveal white teeth that contrasted sharply with his dark, unshaven chin and cheeks. Something unintelligible came through on audio. Although the words meant nothing, the tone of challenge and defiance was unmistakable.

"Our surveillance methods were not as comprehensive then," Calazar commented. "The language was not known.'"

In the scene before them, the Ganymean leader was replying in his own tongue, evidently relying on intonation and gesture to dispel alarm. As the exchange continued, the tension seemed to ease. Eventually the human giant lowered his weapon, and the others who had taken cover began emerging again. He beckoned for the Ganymeans to follow, and as the ranks behind him opened to make way, he turned away to lead them down into the inner entrance.

"That was Koriel," Garuth said.

Hunt had already guessed that. For some reason he felt very relieved.

"He succeeded!" Danchekker breathed. Elation was showing on his face, and he swallowed visibly. "He
did
get to Gorda. I'm—I'm glad to know that."

"Yes," Garuth said, reading the further question written across Hunt's face. "We have studied the ship's log. They did return, but Koriel's companion had already died. They left him as they found him. They did manage to rescue some of the others who had been left strung out along the way, however."

"And after that?" Danchekker queried. "Another thing we have often wondered is whether or not Koriel was among those who finally reached Earth. It seems now that he may well have been. Do you happen to know if he in fact was?"

In reply Calazar called up another image. It was a view of a settlement formed from a dozen or so portable buildings of unfamiliar design, situated on a river bank against a background of semitropical forest with the hazy outline of mountains rising in the distance beyond. On one side was what looked like a supply dump, with rows of stacked crates, drums, and other containers. A crowd of two or three hundred figures was assembled in the foreground—human figures, dressed mainly in simple but serviceable-looking shirts and pants, and many of them carrying weapons either holstered at the waist or slung across the shoulder.

Koriel was standing ahead of them, huge, broad-shouldered, with dense, black hair, unsmiling features, and his thumbs hooked loosely in his belt. Two lieutenants were standing on either side and a pace behind him. Some of the arms in the crowd began rising in a farewell salutation.

Then the view began to fall away and tilt. The settlement shrank quickly and lost itself among a carpet of treetops, which in turn faded to become just a hazy area of green on a patchwork of colors taking form as the scale reduced and more of the surrounding landscape flowed into view from the sides. "The last view from the ship as it departed from Earth to return to Thurien," Calazar said. A coastline that was recognizable as part of the Red Sea moved into the picture and shrank to become part of a familiar section of Middle East geography despite being distorted at the periphery by perspective. Finally the edge of the planet itself appeared, already looking distinctly curved.

They watched in silence for a long time. Eventually Danchekker murmured, "Imagine . . . the whole human race began with that tiny handful. After all that they had endured, they conquered a whole world. What an extraordinary race they must have been."

This was one of the few occasions on which Hunt had seen Danchekker genuinely moved. And he felt it too. He thought back again to the scenes from the Lunarian war and the visions that the Jevlenese had created of Earth stampeding toward exactly the same catastrophe. And yet it had almost come true. It had been close—far too close. If Earth had not changed course when it did, just two or three decades more would have made that come true. And then Charlie, Koriel, Gorda, the efforts of the Thuriens, the struggles of the handful of survivors that he had just seen—and all that they endured after that—would have been for nothing.

It brought to mind Wellington's words after Waterloo: "It was a close-run thing, a damned close-run thing—the closest-run thing you ever saw in your life."

After hearing Norman Pacey's account of the events at Bruno, Jerol Packard lodged a confidential request with an office of the CIA for a compendium of everything that had accumulated in its files over the years concerning Sverenssen and, for good measure, the other members of the UN Farside delegation as well. Clifford Benson, the CIA official who had dealt with the request, summarized the findings a day later at a closed-door session in Packard's State Department office.

"Sverenssen reappeared in Western Europe in 2009 with a circle of social and financial contacts already established. How that happened is not clear. We can't find any authenticated traces of him for about ten years before then—in fact from the time he was supposed to have been killed in Ethiopia." Benson gestured at a section of the summary charts of names, photographs, organizations, and interconnecting arrows pinned to a wallboard. "His closest ties were with a French-British-Swiss investment-banking consortium, a big part of which is still run by the same families that set up a network of financial operations around Southesast Asia in the nineteenth century to launder the revenues from the Chinese opium trade. Now here's an interesting thing—one of the biggest names on the French side of that consortium is a blood relative of Daldanier. In fact the two names have been connected for three generations."

"Those people are pretty tightly knit," Caldwell commented. "I don't know if I'd attach a lot of significance to something like that."

"If it were an isolated case, I wouldn't, either," Benson agreed. "But look at the rest of the story." He indicated another part of the chart. "The British and Swiss sides control a sizable part of the world's bullion business and are connected through the London gold market and its mining affiliations to South Africa. And look what name we find prominent among the ones at the end of that line."

"Is that Van Geelink of the same family as Sverenssen's cohort?" Lyn asked dubiously.

"It's the same," Benson said. "There are a number of them, all connected with different parts of the same business. It's a complicated setup." He paused for a moment, then resumed, "Up until around the first few years of this century, a lot of Van Geelink-controlled money went into preserving white dominance in the area by undermining the stability of black Africa politically and economically, which is one reason why nobody seemed interested in backing resistance to the Cuban and Communist subversions that were going on from the '70s through '90s. To maintain their own position militarily in the face of trade embargoes, the family organized arms deals through intermediaries, frequently South American regimes."

"Is this where the Brazilian guy fits in?" Caldwell asked, raising an eyebrow.

Benson nodded. "Among others. Saraquez's father and grandfather were both big in commodity financing, especially to do with oil. There are links from them as well as from the Van Geelinks to the prime movers behind the destabilization of the Middle East in the late twentieth century. The main reason for that was to maximize short-term oil profits before the world went nuclear, which also accounts for the orchestrated sabotage of public opinion against nuclear power at around the same time. A side effect that worked in the Saraquezes' interests was that it boosted the demand for Central American oil." Benson shrugged and tossed out his hands. "There's more, but you can see the gist of it. The same kind of thing shows up with a few more who were on that delegation. It's one happy family, in a lot of cases literally."

Caldwell studied the charts with a new interest once Benson had finished. After a while he sat back and asked, "So what does it tell us? What's the connection with what went on at Farside? Figured that out yet?"

"I just collect facts," Benson replied. "I leave the rest to you people."

Packard moved to the center of the room. "There is another interesting side to the pattern," he said. "The whole network represents a common ideology—feudalism." The others looked at him curiously. He explained, "Cliff's already mentioned their involvement in the antinuclear hysteria of thirty or forty years ago, but there's more to it than that." He waved a hand at the charts that Benson had been using. "Take the banking consortium that gave Sverenssen his start as an example. Throughout the last quarter of the 1900s they provide a lot of behind-the-scenes backing for moves to fob the Third World off with `appropriate technologies,' for various antiprogress, antiscience lobbies, and that kind of thing. In South Africa we had another branch of the same net pushing racism and preventing progressive government, industrialization, and comprehensive education for blacks. And across the ocean we had a series of right-wing fascist regimes protecting minority interests by military takeovers and at the same time obstructing general advancement. You see, it all adds up to the same basic ideology—preserving the feudal privileges and interests of the power structure of the time. What it says, I guess, is that nothing's changed all that much."

Lyn appeared puzzled. "But it has, hasn't it?" she said. "That's not the way the world is these days. I thought this guy Sverenssen and the rest were committed to just the opposite—advancing the whole world all over."

"What I meant was that the same people are still there," Packard replied. "But you're right—their underlying policy seems to have shifted in the last thirty years or so. Sverenssen's bankers provided easy credit for Nigerian fusion and steel under a gold-backed standard that couldn't have worked without the cooperation of people like the Van Geelinks. South American oil helped defuse the Middle East by leading the changeover to synthetic hydrocarbon liquid substitutes, which was one of the things that made disarmament possible." He shrugged. "Suddenly everything changed. The backing was there for things that could have been done fifty years earlier."

"So what about their line at Bruno?" Caldwell asked again, looking mystified. "It doesn't fit."

There was a short silence before Packard proceeded. "How's this for a theory? Controlling minorities never have anything to gain from change. That explains their traditional opposition to technology all through history, unless it offered something to advance their interests. That meant it was okay as long as they controlled it. Hence we get the traditional stance of their kind through to the end of the last century. But by that time it was becoming obvious from the way the world was going that if something didn't change soon, somebody was going to start pressing buttons, and then there wouldn't be any kind of pond left to be a fish in. The only choice was nuclear reactors or nuclear bombs. So this revolution they made happen, and they managed to maintain control in the process—which was neat.

"But Thurien and everything it could mean was something else. This group would have been swept away by the time the dust from that kind of revolution finally settled. So they cornered the UN handling of the matter and put up a wall until they got some ideas about where to go next." He threw out his hands and looked around the room to invite comment.

"How did they find out about the relay?" Norman Pacey asked from a corner. "We know from what Gregg and Lyn said that the coded signals had nothing to do with it. And we know Sobroskin wasn't mixed up with it."

"They must have been involved with getting rid of it," Packard replied. "I don't know how, but I can't think of anything else. They could have used some personnel of UNSA who they knew wouldn't talk, or maybe a government or commercial outfit that operates independently to send a bomb or something out there . . . probably as soon as the first signal from Gistar came in months ago. So what they've been doing is stalling things until it got there."

Caldwell nodded. "It makes sense. You've got to hand it to them—they almost had it tied up. If it wasn't for McClusky . . . who knows?"