“Logical enough, and eminently sensible,” Cavan agreed. “But the powers who run things here can’t think like that.”
It didn’t need to be spelled out further. Keene stared at his glass and sighed. “So what’s the line going to be? The one we’ve been hearing for a while: The whole Kronian venture was ill-conceived from the start; imagining that a society could function viably at that kind of distance was ridiculous all along . . . ?”
Cavan was already nodding. “And now they’re waking up to reality and finding themselves overextended,” he completed. “This story about supercomets and the end of the world is a concoction dreamed up to exploit the Athena event and milk support from Earth’s governments. That’s our line. And naturally the establishment’s scientific big guns will have their act coordinated to back it. We wouldn’t want to let down the people who ladle out the honors and write the checks, after all, now, would we?” Cavan spooned the last of his soup into his mouth—thin and straight, sparing on the lips—and watched, seemingly until Keene was just recovering sufficiently to tackle his food again. Then he added, “One of the big guns they’ll be wheeling up is a certain professor of astronomy and faculty head at Yale, recently nominated for the presidency of the International Astronomical Union. I wouldn’t imagine he needs any introduction.”
“You don’t mean Voler?”
“I do, of course.”
Keene’s fork dropped slowly back to his plate. For Herbert Voler was the paragon of perfection that his own former wife, Fey, had fled to and later married when Keene confounded her social ambitions by abandoning the prospect of scholastic accolades to return to the grubby world of engineering.
“I’m not quite sure how that might be relevant at this stage,” Cavan confessed. “But conceivably the situation could take a turn whereby the social connection offers possibilities unavailable in the purely formal context. In any case, it was an option that would apply to nobody else, so my first thought was to approach you.”
Keene made an inviting motion with his free hand. “Approach me for what, Leo? You still haven’t told me what this is all about.”
“Let me first give you an idea of how they intend playing it,” Cavan suggested. “Then it will be clearer. The softening-up program to condition the public has already been going on for a while. Did you see your friend Voler on TV yesterday?”
“No, I have been kind of busy, as you pointed out. What was this?”
“He gave a talk at Columbia, ridiculing the claims about all those ancient records. . . . But it was planned months ago to coincide with the Kronians’ arrival.” Cavan produced a compad from his jacket pocket. “Let’s watch him.” He activated the unit, fiddled with commands to retrieve a stored playback from the net, then turned it the right way around for Keene to see and passed it across. Keene’s features remained neutral as he gazed at the familiar figure.
Voler was fortyish, maybe—on the young side for the titles and credentials that he was able to brandish. He had a full head of black hair styled collar-length like a media celebrity, and a tanned complexion which with his pugnacious jaw emphasized a strong set of white teeth that his mobile features put to good effect, constantly splitting into broad smiles and grimaces. To Keene, he had always come across as a little too smooth and slick for a figurehead of academic excellence—but then, perhaps such qualities helped the political image equally necessary to attaining the rarified heights. Keene could have seen him as a pushy prosecution counsel, maybe, or a hustler on Wall Street. Behind him on the screen was a chart carrying names of planets and ancient deities, presumably referred to earlier. Keene turned the volume up just enough to avoid being an annoyance to nearby tables.
” . . . four ways in which the same legend could come to be found among widely separated cultures. One, Common Observation: all of the cultures witnessed a common event and interpreted it in a similar way. Two, Diffusion: the legend originated in one place but traveled to others with the wanderings of humankind. Three, Commonality of Psychology: Humans everywhere are so alike that their brains create similar legends reflecting common hopes and fears. And Four, Coincidence.” Voler paused, grasping the podium, and surveyed his audience. “I think everyone would agree with me that we can reasonably discard the last. And we simply don’t know enough to propose number three, Common Psychology, with any confidence—although in my view it seems unlikely.” Due court having been paid to reasonableness and modesty, the focus narrowed to the brass tacks. Voler’s confident smile broadened, stopping just short of open derisiveness. “The Kronians, of course, are saying that we are therefore forced to accept the Common Observation hypothesis, as if it were the only alternative. But in this they are surely dismissing far too casually—one hopes in their impetuousness—the second possibility, namely that as various peoples dispersed across the globe, they took their myths and legends with them, just as they did their languages, their religions, and their technical skills. . . .”