The room had the basic furnishings of an office but was bare and devoid of the personal effects that denoted permanent occupancy. It looked like a room set aside for use by visitors, chosen for privacy. What was Voler, dressed this casually, doing here at such an hour, looking as if he too had been up all night? Keene waited.
“So now you know,” Voler said.
“I’d phrase it the other way around,” Keene replied. “It’s what we’ve been telling you for years happened once before. Now you know.”
Voler held up a hand as if to stay an attack. “Very well. Before we waste time getting into accusations, I admit to them. We refused to see what might threaten the things we had come to regard as the whole point of existence. Since losing them was unthinkable, we were unable to think it. Does that satisfy you? The collective psychology would doubtless make a fascinating study, but it will be a long time before this world will enjoy the luxury of being able to embark on serious psychological studies again.”
“Maybe so. I don’t have much time to think about it just now,” Keene said.
“Of course you don’t. So what are you going to do?”
“It’s funny, I was just asked the same thing upstairs. I don’t know.”
“It should be obvious to you by now that the President has no understanding of the scale of what’s going to happen,” Voler said. “None of them do. Oh yes, they’re counting their candles and checking the first-aid boxes like good Boy Scouts, but none of it is going to make a nickel’s worth of difference one way or another. It’s over, Dr. Keene—the works, the whole ball of wax. Before long, the surface of this planet may not be habitable for anything much bigger than cockroaches. Is that how you want to die—choking on smoke while you grub under rocks or fight over roots for something to eat?”
Keene answered woodenly, “I said, I haven’t had time to think much about it. You do what you can do, and that’s it. What’s your solution—find a friend in Congress who’ll cut you a better deal? That won’t work this time, Herbert.”
“There is one place where at least the semblance of civilized life will be able to continue,” Voler said. “I tried to be realistic about it the other night, but the minds involved weren’t capable of grasping what is necessitated. You’re not like them, Keene. You understand reality too, even if we have seen it from different sides in the past.”
Even now, Voler could consider himself among the rare few able to perceive reality—after he had been blocking it out for years? Again, Keene found himself listening to a distortion that he couldn’t quite believe. The psychology at work was indeed fascinating. “Are you talking about Kronia?” he asked.
“Of course I am. Look, the only people who are going to survive this with any chance of a life worthy of the word, and perhaps raise a generation with a hope for any kind of future, will be the ones who can make it there. And the only means of getting there is the one that’s in orbit over our heads right now.” Keene was already staring incredulously. Voler raised a hand before he could say anything. “I admit that the suggestion of using coercive measures to gain the cooperation of the Kronians was imprudent and hasty. There’s no need for anything so drastic. We can make a bargain with them that would be in their own best interests. Their ship has space available. We can offer knowledge and abilities invaluable to their colony, as well as other material resources that they’ll probably never get the chance to see again. All it would need is a competent mediator whom the Kronians know and trust. Someone such as yourself, for example. . . . You see my point.”
Keene did, quite clearly. Voler was unable to conceive of a situation that was beyond his ability to manipulate. He actually believed he could induce Keene to bargain a passage on the Osiris for himself and his friends. Keene remembered the military and intelligence people who had seemed close to Voler at the White House meeting. He was beginning to see now where the idea of sending a boarding party up to the Osiris had come from.