In contrast, there were people-Hunt, for instance-whom she classed as shapers of the world. They didn’t pass judgments on it, but found niches that fitted them because they could come to terms with the reality they saw and make the best of the chances it offered. They could look the inevitability of death in the face, accept their own insignificance, and gain satisfaction from finding something useful to do in spite of it. The Baumers of life couldn’t, and that was what they resented. Unable to achieve anything meaningful themselves, they gained satisfaction from showing that nothing anyone else achieved could have meaning.
The difference was, however, that the Hunts were happy to get on with their own lives and let the visionaries enjoy their agonizings if that was what they wanted. But the converse wasn’t true. If the world didn’t want to change, then give the Baumers access to the power and they would make it change-because they saw more, and deeper. And the rack, the stake, the Gulag, and the concentration camp showed what could happen when they succeeded.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Hunt lit a cigarette and, easing himself back in the chair at the, desk built into a corner of his personal quarters, contemplated the screen showing the notes he had compiled thus far, along with a list of questions that just seemed to keep growing longer.
Why was Baumer, a Terran, spying for aliens that he had known less than six months, against an administration that had shown nothing but goodwill toward Earth? Because the Jevlenese were at least human, and Ganymeans weren’t? Hunt doubted it. Nothing that hinted of an anti-Ganymean bias had come across in anything Baumer had written or said, or anything he had told Gina. Surely an ideologue of his nature, who saw Jevlen as the potential utopia and its population as putty to be molded, would have sought to work as part of the potential government, not against it-unless he had reason to believe that the Ganymeans wouldn’t be running things for very much longer. That was a thought.
In that case, who was he helping, that he thought might be taking over? Not anybody who wanted the Ganymeans replaced by an occupation force from Earth; that would only be inviting in all the things that Baumer said he had come to Jevlen to get away from. Eubeleus and the Axis? That would have been Hunt’s first guess, but the latest business of wanting to move his whole operation to Uttan, right at the crucial time, flew in the face of it.
Which left the criminal underworld that Cullen had talked about-a conjecture that certainly gained further strength if Obayin’s death had been arranged, as Cullen suspected. But what kind of connection would somebody like Baumer have with a criminal organization? There would hardly be any shared ground in areas of ideology, morality, politics, social goals, or any of the other things that concerned Baumer. The only alternative that Hunt could see was that they had to have some kind of hold over him. It was hard to imagine any grounds for blackmail: Baumer seemed to have kept his nose clean, and he was here in an official capacity, not a fugitive like Murray. His life style was free of any obvious complications. What, then?
And finally there were the fundamental issues that had brought Hunt to Jevlen, which were still unscratched: What was the source of the “plague” that the Ganymeans believed was making the Jevlenese impervious to reason? Did the ayatollahs represent simply an extreme of a general human trait in the way that Danchekker maintained, or were they a case of something completely different? What was the significance of Uttan?
Lots of questions; not many answers. Gina had come away from her meeting with Baumer depressed by a feeling of failure. But he was still the only obvious lead; how to find out more about him wasn’t so obvious. Hunt reached out to the touchpad and called the transcript of Gina’s talk with Baumer onto a screen to study it again. Two Jevlenese had been leaving just as she arrived. From Gina’s description they sounded like thugs, which strengthened the suspicion that Baumer was connected with the underworld. What kind of business did Baumer conduct with them in his office outside, which he didn’t want brought into PAC?
Hunt read again what Baumer had said to Gina about the translation service wired across the city. Since Thuriens and Jevlenese had been dealing with each other for millennia, small, wearable translator chips to convert between their languages-similar in appearance to the stick-on interfaces to VISAR-had long ago been developed as standard. But Terran dialects-and the Shapieron brand of Ganymean, as well-were new, and the chips couldn’t handle them. So the conversation between Baumer and the Jevlenese had been translated by ZORAC.
Hunt stubbed his cigarette in an ashtray on the console and scratched an ear. “ZORAC?” he said aloud after studying the display for a few moments longer-ZORAC didn’t pick up subvocalized patterns.
“Yes, Vic?”
“What’s this thing that you’ve got going around the city on channel fifty-six? Something to do with a translation facility.”
“There’s still a general-purpose communications net running that wasn’t specifically a part of JEVEX,” ZORAC replied. “One of the channels is reserved for translating between the Jevlenese dialects and most Terran languages. So you and they can talk to each other just about anywhere.”
“It’s a service that you support?”
“Yes. I suppose you could call it people-interfacing.”
“Hmm…“ Hunt rubbed his chin. “I was thinking about that visit that Gina made to Baumer’s office in the city.”
“Yes?”
“There were a couple of Jevlenese leaving just as she got there. You must have done the translating for them. I, ah, I wonder if there might still be a record of it in your system somewhere that we might be able to get at?” Hunt knew that VISAR, programmed with its Thurien hangups, would never have done it. But ZORAC wasn’t VISAR. It seemed worth a try.
“It’s just a translation service,” ZORAC replied. “I don’t store any of it. I don’t even have a record that they were there.”
Hunt sighed resignedly-but it did open up the thought of further possibilities.
“So, when Terrans and Jevlenese talk to each other, you, from inside the Shapieron, have an ear into all their conversations, as it were, everywhere,” he said.
The implication was plain enough, and ZORAC was too logical not to see it. “Why not spell out what you’re asking?” the machine suggested.
“Hell, you know what I’m asking. Something’s going on. We need to find out what Baumer and these Jevlenese are up to before we have another war on our hands-maybe a real one this time. Gina got nowhere, and right now we don’t have another line.”
There was a short pause.
“I presume that your ultimate objective would be to frustrate any intended action on the part of a suspected political group, that might be directed at increasing their power over other people’s affairs,” ZORAC said finally.
Hunt turned his eyes upward briefly. “Well, if we always insisted on analyzing everything through to its final aims like that, we’d be lucky if we ever got around to actually doing anything-but yes, I suppose you could say it was that.”
“The argument being,” ZORAC persisted, “that you see their methods as a violation of certain rights and freedoms which you, from certain a priori moral principles that are nondeducible but taken as self-evident, consider it desirable for a society to guarantee?”
“Yes.” Hunt groaned beneath his breath as he saw where they were heading.
“So the goal would be to protect people from the violations of their rights that an intrusive and coercive governing system would subject them to?”
“Yes, yes, yes,” Hunt agreed impatiently.