ENTOVERSE

The view, taken from the Civic Center housing the Ganymean prefect and his staff responsible for the Barusi district, looked down over the tiered expanse of Sammet Square. A procession of Jevlenese numbering several thousand was spilling in from an avenue leading east out of the city, adding to a comparable number who had been gathering there through the afternoon. Virtually all of them had contrived to be wearing something of purple, and the bands spread at intervals through the parade came to the front as they entered, massing behind banners carrying the device of a purple spiral in a black circle on a red ground.

The focus of all the activity was a figure waiting behind the speaker’s rostrum atop the steps facing the square, backed by a huge, hanging sign showing the purple spiral. As soon as the noise of the bands ceased, he launched into his harangue. His name was Ayultha. He wore a dark blue tunic with a purple cloak, and his face had a fierce, intense look, accentuated by heavy, dark brows and a short beard, which he directed this way and that at the crowd with sharp motions of his head as he spoke, punctuating his words with abrupt gestures of appeal and frequent drivings of a fist into the other palm. His amplified voice boomed across the sea of eager faces to sustained outbursts of roared approval.

“Was it not we who believed in the Ganymeans? Was it not we who trusted them and came with them across light—years of space, willing to join their culture and learn their ways? It was the Terrans who spurned their offer and chose to go their own way.” A pause, with appealing looks to left and right, and a dramatic lowering of voice at the crucial point. “Perhaps the Cerians saw more even in those early days than we credited them for.” A sudden rise to cre­scendo. “It was not them who were betrayed!”

Cries of outrage; shakings of fists. The speaker waited, glaring, until the noise abated.

“I say again, betrayed! There was an agreement—a solemn cove­nant honored by us not just through a hundred years, not through centuries, even, but for millennia!” He was referring to the surveil­lance watch that had been kept over the developing Earth, which the Thuriens had entrusted to the Jevlenese. “We perf6rmed our duties faithfully. We fulfilled our obligation.” Another pause. Expectations were almost audible with the buildup of tension. Then, the explosive release: “The Ganymeans broke that covenant!”

Thunderous ovation, unfurlings of banners, waves of upthrust hands.

In the foreground to one side of the image, watching from inside the Barusi Civic Center, stood several more Ganymeans: angular, gray-hued, eight-foot-tall figures, with lengthened, narrowish heads compared to the vaulted human cranium, and protruding lower faces with skulls elongated behind. The nearest, whose name was Mon­char, swung around to look out at the two Ganymeans watching from Shiban. Monchar had been second-in-command of the Shap­ieron mission that Garuth had led.

“But he’s completely distorting what happened!” Monchar pro­tested. “Yes, in the end the Thuriens opened a dialogue with Earth

directly. But that was only after things they knew to be fact contra­dicted what the Jevlenese were telling them. The Jevienese had been lying for centuries. They systematically falsified their reporting!”

“The Thuriens were being betrayed long before they thought to question anything,” one of the other Ganymeans said.

Monchar motioned with an arm to indicate the crowd outside. “But those people down there know all this. They have been ac­quainted with the facts. How can they react like this to what he’s telling them? Don’t they possess any critical faculties at all?”

“I think we’re still a long way from comprehending the human ability to see and hear what they want to,” another Ganymean replied. “Facts don’t come into it.”

Below, Ayultha was thundering, “But merely keeping bad faith was not enough. They deceived us by intercepting the Shapieron and bringing it secretly to Thurien after it left Earth, and then over­whelmed us through trickery.”

“But they would have destroyed the Shapieron!” Monchar ex­claimed, aghast. “If it weren’t for the Thuriens, we would all have been killed.” He turned back to look at Garuth again. “What are we supposed to do? They change the past to what they think it should have been, and then remember it as having happened. They can’t distinguish their myths from reality.”

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