Or at least, that was what the construction plans that had been handed down for centuries said.
The party came to the control center, with rows of consoles on rising tiers, banks of displays, and rooms on all sides filled with auxiliary equipment. And they descended to the vast halls below, where rows of huge, cubical cabinets, and luminescent blocks of molecular—array crystal, each the size of a boxcar, stretched away into the distance in tight, geometric formations. Just from looking, Duncan could sense the stupendous scale of the operations it was all brought together to manage.
But it was all an illusion. For what the Ganymeans had discovered was that the entire installation was a dummy. The massive runs of lightguide cables and databeam buses leading from the communications level above went nowhere. The arrays of densely stacked holocrystals in the cabinets endlessly recirculated meaningless patterns of numbers. The displays and status indicators flickering and changing around the control floor were simulations. The whole portion of JEVEX that was supposed to reside here, in other words, didn’t exist.
The Ganymeans showed Watt an opened cabinet in the control
center. It was empty except for a few arrays of optronic wafers in a partly filled rack maybe three inches high. “This is what’s generating all the images that you can see in this room,” one of the Ganymeans said.
“But … this is impossible,” Watt stammered, staring incredulously.
“I know. That’s why we wanted you to see it for yourself.”
Jassilane wheeled around to confront the Jevlenese chief engineer responsible for the site, who was staring straight ahead, blank-faced. “What do you know about this?” he demanded.
“I don’t know anything.”
“How long has it been like this?”
Silence. Another part of the conspiracy. They weren’t going to get anywhere.
Watt looked at another empty cabinet that was winking a few lights and shook his head uncomprehendingly. All the calculations said that JEVEX had to be much bigger than the official designs showed. Yet if this was typical of the general situation, it hardly existed at all. But something had to have been supporting the Jevlenese-managed worlds.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Gina finished hanging her dresses in the closet of her new quarters inside PAC and lodged the empty suitcase in the space at the rear. She was still shaken from her confrontation with Cullen on arrival, which had been short and to the point: enough to thoroughly confuse her, and not at all illuminating. He had produced the report that she had left inside the book, which Koberg had brought back, and informed her that Marion Fayne had been working for a Jevlenese organization that was not the khena, but which maybe had connections with it.
To Gina’s surprise, he hadn’t condemned her or shown any of the rancor that she would have thought natural in the circumstances. She couldn’t form any clear idea of what it meant. Surely General Shaw couldn’t have been really working for the wrong side? Maybe the mysterious organization that Cullen had referred to had found out about Gina’s meeting with Shaw in Shiban and substituted their own contact. Cullen had given no clue. Gina felt foolish and embarrassed, like an amateur who had been caught way out of her depth. Which was exactly what she was. And that made it all the more galling.
“Who did you think she was working for?” Hunt asked from the couch, where he was lounging casually, nursing a Coors that the suite’s autochef had miraculously conjured up from whatever behind-the-scenes sources its supplies came from.
She assumed that they were sparing her a formal interrogation and letting Hunt try a low-key, psychological approach instead. So now she felt like a guinea pig, on top of everything else. And the worst thing about it was that she had no grounds for complaint. They had trusted her; she had deceived them and been found out. They had every right to ask questions. In fact, they were giving her a much easier time than might well have been the case. In some ways she’d have preferred it if they hadn’t.
Hunt went on. “Well, if you want to know, the first guess from the path lab is that they pressed a button somewhere to blow a fuse that had been put inside her head. Nice people . . .“ He half raised a hand. “Okay, we’re not saying that you knew you were dealing with an outfit like that. But who did you think you were working for? Come on, no one’s passing judgment or blaming you, because we think there could be a lot more to it than you know about. But you owe us that much.”