“But simply unhooking them from JEVEX doesn’t seem to be the answer,” Garuth went on. “Or at least, not enough of an answer. It seems to work for some of them. Those are the ones who are finding what needs to be done and doing it. That was how we hoped the majority would react, more or less as happened on Earth.”
“But they turned out to be relatively few,” Shilohin said.
Garuth continued. “The general mass of Jevlenese seem to suffer from a.. . you could call it a ‘predisposition’ toward irrationality that goes beyond anything seen on ancient Earth. They just don’t seem to possess any faculty for distinguishing possible from impossible, or the plausible from the ridiculous. So we get these cults of unreason flourishing across Jevlen, and we’re at a loss for an effective answer to them.” Garuth motioned in the air with a gray, double-thumbed hand. “We watch the intellectual degeneracy of what once showed every promise of maturing into an advanced technological civilization. It’s like a plague from somewhere, but one which affects the mind. We need you to help us find where it’s coming from.”
“That’s not all there is to it, though, is it?” Hunt queried. “Didn’t you say something when you called me in Washington, about being worried that JPC might be about to pull you out?”
“Some of the Terran representatives on JPC have been saying that the Ganymean administration here isn’t working, and that the situation is heading toward breakdown,” Garuth replied. “They’re not disagreeing with the Thuriens’ policy, but they believe that it’s going to need some kind of backing by force to make it work.”
Which would mean Terran-style force, Hunt understood; in other words, putting in a Terran military occupation. Ganymeans didn’t work that way.
“They may not be entirely wrong,” Hunt cautioned. “The Jevlenese stayed away from violence while they had the chance to exploit Thurien know-how. But they were going to end all that, as we all know, and they came frighteningly close. Now they don’t have that restraint anyway. Once they get themselves reorganized, there could be serious trouble.”
“I’m not disputing that,” Garuth conceded. “I accept the differences that set us and humans apart. But I’ve also studied enough of your history to have an idea of the kind of inflexibility that an authoritarian solution will lead to once it’s adopted. The cause of the Jevlenese problem won’t be important; all that will matter will be how to suppress the effects. And that would be a tragedy, because we’re convinced that at the bottom of this mass insanity there’s something important waiting to be uncovered, that we don’t understand. We know what sent Earth off into irrationality thousands of years ago. But none of that applies here.”
Garuth got up and moved a short distance across the room to stand staring for a moment at a framed picture of the Shapieron standing on the shore of Lake Geneva. He turned and faced the others again.
“This may sound strange to you, but in many ways I’m beginning to feel the same toward the Jevlenese as I did toward my own people aboard that ship, when I was their leader through all those years in space. I feel a responsibility for them, an affection, even. I’d like to see them develop the confidence and self—reliance that Earth is starting to display now. But that can’t happen until we find out what’s undermining them. And to do that, we need help from people who understand humans better than we do. Del Cullen is doing his best, but we know that none of us would make a very good Mac—” Garuth hesitated. “ZORAC, who was that famous Terran who wrote about intrigue and deceit?”
“Machiavelli?” the computer replied.
“Yes. Was he Scottish?” “No. Italian.”
“I thought ‘Macs’ were Scottish.”
“Not always.”
“Oh.” Garuth sighed. “Is there anything about Earth that’s completely consistent, ZORAC?”
“If there is, I haven’t found it.”
Garuth looked back at Hunt and Danchekker. “So those are my fears. If there’s a risk of our being replaced, there might not be very much time. That was why we came to Vie when we did, and in the way that we did.”