“You can see what the game plan is,” Cavan broke in from across the table. “The Kronians will be projected into roles of sincere but misguided children. After a few days of recuperation from the voyage, they’ll be taken on a whistle-stop tour of some selected spots around Earth. None of them can remember much of Earth, and some were never here at all. So we’ll see pictures of them gaping at the Grand Canyon and the Amazon, or gawking like tourists in London and Paris, with chaperones like myself pointing out this and explaining that. Earth will have been magnanimous; Earth will have been accommodating. But you see what it will do for their image. They arrive here naive, and we have to acquaint them with reality. The same image will carry over to what the world will perceive as the science, and their case won’t have a prayer.”
By now, Voler was expounding on details of various human migrations. Keene had heard enough and snapped the unit off. “And what about the evidence written all over the surface of this planet?” he demanded. “None of that counts?” He meant the anomalies in the geological, fossil, and climatic records—all independent of anything that any humans of long ago had to say. There were such things as marks of sudden sea level changes, in some cases measuring hundreds of feet, found the world over; agricultural terraces close to sea level when they were cultivated, now disappearing under the snow line eighteen thousand feet up in the Andes; the remains of millions of animals and trees, torn to pieces and broken, found piled in caves and rock fissures from Europe to China and across the Arctic, in some places forming practically the entirety of islands off northern Siberia; huge herds of mammoths, buffalo, horse, camel, hippopotamus, and other beasts wiped out abruptly a thousand miles or more from any vegetation growing today that could support them. And all in the middle of that same mysterious millennium that the writings of old had chronicled. Was all that to be ignored?
“They’ll stay away from all that if they can,” Cavan said. “The Kronians make some good points, and many scientists outside the political-academic orthodoxy are siding with them. Nobody argues much anymore that terrestrial catastrophes have happened. Where they’ll try and draw the line is with planetary catastrophes—that Venus could have been an earlier Athena. If that’s allowed, then the whole foundation of the economic power structure as we know it would have to change, which in effect is what the Kronians are saying. But of course that would be unacceptable. So the line will be to discredit the Kronian arguments by any means until Athena has disappeared out of the Solar System and been forgotten—apart from as an anomaly that will generate Ph.D. theses for years—and then we’ll all be able to get back to the safe, comfortable lives that we know.”
Finally, Cavan took back the compad. He went on, “The reason I wanted to talk to you before you meet them tomorrow, Landen, is that the Kronians need to be made aware of this. But I can hardly bring it up in my position. You, on the other hand, are not saddled with having to wear an official hat. And being in touch with the Kronians already . . .” He left the obvious unsaid.
“Sure, I’ll handle it,” Keene agreed. There really wasn’t anything to have to think about. He picked up his knife but sat toying with it.
“I was sure you would,” Cavan said. He paused and refilled Keene’s glass. “Oh, do stop staring and try some dinner, Landen. You’ve come all the way from Texas for it, and it looks so delicious.”
9
For a desk and a base to work from in the Washington area, Keene rented space at an agency called Information and Office Services. Shirley, who ran the facility and acted for him when he was away, had arranged several Monday appointments from the calls that had begun coming in on Friday. The first was not until 10:00, and Keene spent the first part of the morning returning other calls that Shirley had listed. One was to a David Salio, who described himself as a planetary scientist at the Aerospace Sciences Institute in Houston, which Keene had visited on occasion. The Kronians had been getting attention in the Web news groups and independent media of many like Salio who were not among the circle of academic and government scientists fearful of money being diverted into the space corporations. Salio had favored the young-planet theory of Venus for some time and possesed a sizable collection of facts and data supporting it from modern-day space and scientific researches, independent of what ancient writings said. Athena was a clear warning that action had to be taken along the lines that the Kronians were calling for, and he wanted to know what he could do to help. Keene was immediately interested to hear more and suggested stopping by on his way back to Corpus Christi, which would be via Houston in any case. He would let Salio know when he had a firm return date.