“But not all were taken to Earth,” Danchekker concluded. “Another group was taken back to Thurien, and have since become the Jevienese.”
“It was so,” Calazar confirmed.
“Even after all that had happened,” Showm explained, “the Cerians and the Lambians were unmixable. Since the Lambians had been the cause of the trouble, the Ganymeans of that time considered that more good would come out of the Lambians being taken to Thurien and-it was hoped-being integrated into Ganymean ways and society. The Cerians were taken to Earth at their own request. They were offered ongoing aid to rebuild, but they declined. So a surveillance system was set up instead to keep an eye on them-as much for their own protection as anything.” Hunt was surprised. If the surveillance system had been in place that long, the Ganymeans would have known about the collapse of the colony which they themselves had helped found. Why had they let it happen?
“So how did the others make out-the Lambians?” Heller asked. “They couldn’t have been running the surveillance that far back. How did they get their hands on it?”
Calazar emitted a heavy sigh. “They caused a lot of problems for the Thuriens of that time, so much so that when Luna came to be captured by Earth and caused widespread catastrophes that demolished the fragile beginnings of the new Cerian society that had started to take root there, it was decided to leave things be. With troubles of their own at home, the Thuriens were not eager to see another human civilization rushing headlong toward advancement, perhaps to repeat the Minervan disaster.” He shrugged as if to say that right or wrong, that was the way it had been, then resumed, “But as time went by and further generations of Lambians came and went, the situation seemed to improve. Signs appeared that
they could be integrated fully into Ganymean society, so the Ganymean leaders adopted a policy of appeasement in an attempt to accelerate the process. As a result the Jevlenese, as the descendants of the Lambians were called by then, acquired control of the surveillance program.”
“A mistake,” Showm commented. “They should have been exiled.”
“With hindsight, I think I agree,” Calazar said. “But that was long before either my time or yours.”
“How about telling us something about this system,” Hunt suggested. “How does it work?”
Eesyan answered. “Mostly from space. Until about a century ago, it was comparatively simple. Since Earth entered its electronics and space era, the Jevlenese have had to be more careful. Their devices are very small and virtually undetectable. Most of their information comes from intercepting and retransmitting your communications, such as the laser links between Jupiter and Earth. At one time in the early years of your space program they manufactured instrument packages to resemble pieces of your own space debris, but they had to stop when you started clearing things up. That experiment had its uses though; that was where we got the idea of building a perceptron that looked like a Boeing.”
“But how could they fake the reports as well as they did?” Hunt asked. “They must have something of their own like VI5AR. No Mickey Mouse computer did that.”
“They have,” Eesyan told him. “Long ago, when there seemed reason to feel optimistic about the Jevlenese, the Thuriens helped them establish their own autonomous world. It’s called Jevlen, on the fringe of our developed region of space, and it’s equipped with a system known as JEVEX, which is VI5AR-like but independent of VISAR. Like VISAR, JEVEX operates across its own system of many stars. The surveillance system from Earth is coupled into JEVEX, and the reports that we receive are transmitted indirectly from JEVEX through VISAR.”
“So it isn’t difficult to understand how the fabrications and distortions were engineered,” Showm said. “So much for philanthropy. They should never have been allowed to operate such a system.”
“But why did they do it?” Karen Heller asked. “We still don’t have an answer. Their reports were pretty accurate up until about
the time of World War II. The problems of the late twentieth century were somewhat exaggerated, but for the last thirty years it’s turned into pure fiction. Why would they want you to think we were still heading for World War Ill?”