“That was not intentional,” Calazar replied. “We have already expressed our regrets. Your colleague will be back to normal very soon.’,
The exchange did not have the connotations that it would have
if this confrontation were taking place on Earth, Hunt knew as he listened. Because of their origins Ganymeans simply didn’t seek to intimidate nor did they respond to intimidation. They didn’t think that way. Calazar was simply stating the facts of the matter, no more and no less. The standards and conditioning of human culture did not apply to this situation. Caidwell knew it too, but somebody had to be seen to set the limits.
“So let’s get down to some straight questions and answers,” Caidwell said. “You said that our two races have evolved separately until now. That’s not entirely true-the two lines come together a long way back in the past. Since the story you’ve been getting about us seems to have become confused somewhere, it might help clear up a lot of uncertainty and save us some time if I sum up what we already know.” Without waiting for a response he went on, “We know that your civilization existed on Minerva until around twenty-five million years ago, that you shipped a lot of terrestrial life there, possibly to attempt a genetic-engineering solution to the environmental problems, and that the Lunarians evolved from ancestors included among them after you left. We also know about the Lunarian war of fifty thousand years ago, about the Moon being captured by Earth, and about ourselves having descended from Lunarian survivors that came with it. Are we talking the same language so far?”
A ripple of murmurings broke out among the Ganymeans. They seemed surprised. Evidently the Terrans knew a lot more than they had expected. That could put an interesting new perspective on things, Hunt thought.
Frenua Showm, the female ambassador of Thurien, who had been introduced at the commencement of the proceedings, replied. “If you already know about the Lunarians, you shouldn’t have any difficulty in finding the answer to one of the questions that you have no doubt been asking,” she said. “Earth has been under surveillance because of our concern that it might go the way of its Lunarian ancestors and become a technically advanced, belligerent planet. The Lunarians destroyed themselves before they spilled out of the solar system. Earth might not have. In other words we saw in Earth a potential threat to other parts of the Galaxy, and perhaps, one day, to all of it.” Showm gave the impression that she was far from convinced, even now, that it wasn’t so. Definitely not a Terranophile, Hunt decided. The reason did not
come as a surprise. With the Ganymeans being the way they were and the Lunarians having been the way they had, it had to be something like that.
“So why all the secrecy?” Heller asked from beside Caldwell. Caldwell sat down to allow her to take it from there. “You claim to represent the Thurien race, yet it’s obvious that you don’t speak for everybody. You don’t want this dialogue brought to the attention of whoever is responsible for the surveillance. So are you what you say you are? If so, why do you need to conceal your actions from your own people?”
“The surveillance is operated by an autonomous . . . shall we say, ‘organization’ within our system,” Calazar replied. “We had reason to suspect the accuracy of some of the information being reported. It became necessary for us to verify it . . . but discreetly, in case we were wrong.”
“Suspect the accuracy!” Hunt repeated, spreading his hands in an imploring gesture around the table. “You’re making it sound like just a minor aberration here and there. Christ. . . they didn’t even tell you that the Shapieron had returned and was on Earth at all-your own ship with your own people in it! And the picture you got of Earth wasn’t just inaccurate; it was systematically distorted. So what the hell’s been going on?”
“That is an internal affair of Thurien that we will now be in a position to do something about,” Calazar assured him. He seemed a little off., balance, perhaps as a result of his having been unprepared for the Terrans knowing as much as Caldwell had revealed.