“Hmm.” Caldwell drummed on the desk again for a second. “I thought the UN sent a bunch of sociologists and psychiatrists there who were supposed to know about how to deal with that kind of thing. How come they’re not handling it?”
Hunt made a you-know-how-it-is gesture. “They’re out-of-work social engineers looking for new places to take their theories now that people here are managing their own lives instead of expecting governments to do everything for them. Apparently the experts are producing lots of reports and statistics, but when anything serious happens they head for cover and leave it to the riot police.”
“So why is Garuth coming to us? Our business is Ganymean physics, not Jevlenese psychology.” Caldwell already had a pretty good idea of the reason; he just wanted to hear Hunt’s reading of it.
“He’s worried that if things get worse and JPC starts to panic, he might be pulled out and replaced by a Terran military administration. They’ve been putting in a lot of work there, Gregg.”
Caldwell nodded. “Garuth doesn’t want to see it all go to waste,” he guessed, saving Hunt the need to spell it out. “Just when they might have been about to see some results?”
“That—and more.” Hunt motioned briefly with a hand. “He sounded as if he thought they were close to discovering something important about what’s screwing up the Jevienese—more than their simply being JEVEX cabbages. But putting in a Colonel Blimp—style board of governors there would blow any chance of getting to the bottom of it.” Hunt shook his head before Caldwell could ask. “He didn’t go into any more details.”
Caldwell paused a shade longer than would have been natural
before speaking—just enough to impart more currency into his question than its face value. “What do you think we should do?”
Properly speaking, there should have been no question. By all the formal rules and demarcation lines, it was none of Advanced Sciences’ business. Hunt knew that, Caldwell knew that, and both of them knew that Garuth did, too. The department had close working relationships with plenty of influential figures in both political hemispheres, and all that the situation called for was a friendly word to refer the matter to them.
But as Hunt wasn’t saying and Caldwell understood, there was more to it in reality. This was old friends appealing for help, and it couldn’t be let go at that. The first encounter with Garuth and the Ganymeans at Jupiter had been, strictly speaking, a “political” problem, too; yet the UNSA scientists on the spot had achieved a common understanding without complications while the professional diplomats on Earth were still conferring about protocols and arguing over rivalries of precedence. That was why Hunt had raised the matter in the way he had. Caldwell was very good at interpreting his terms of authority creatively. Properly speaking, even before the Ganymeans appeared, getting involved with the Lunarian mystery when it had first surfaced should not have been any of Navcomms’s business, either.
Hunt rubbed his chin and adopted an expression ,appropriate to weighing up a matter of considerable gravity. “You know, there could be a lot at stake here, Gregg. . . when you think about it. Our whole future relationship with what’s shown itself to be an erratic and temperamental alien culture. Even with the best of intentions, the wrong people could get things into a big mess.”
“I think so, too,” Caldwell agreed, nodding solemnly.
Hunt shifted in the chair and recrossed his legs the other way. “It’s not a time for taking risks with untried procedures. Tested methods would be safer, even if a little . . . irregular?”
“It ought to be played safe,” Caldwell affirmed.
“It wouldn’t be violating any precedent. In fact, it would be fully in accordance with the only precedent we’ve got.”
“Exactly.”
Hunt had wondered on and off whether Caldwell’s promotion to Washington might spell the beginnings of a slow ossification into the role of dedicated administrator, and a waning of the dynamism that had helped fling humanity across the Solar System. But as he stared
back across the desk, he saw the old light that came with anticipation of a challenge, still there as bright as ever beneath the bushy brows. Hunt dropped the pretense. “Okay. What do you want me to do?”