“Dr. Keene, I’d like you to meet General Claud Valcroix,” Grasse said. “One of the survivors like ourselves, before with the French defense ministry. We have worked together on and off over many years. We were with the same group that escaped together.” He meant in the Eurospace orbital lifter from Algeria.
Although Keene had little inclination to get involved in such matters, he knew Valcroix’s face from news screens and a few social functions that he had attended. Valcrois was emerging as spokesman for the Terran evacuees and representative of their interests in the Kronian political scene. The European clique had risen to prominence in this respect, a disproportionate number of their American political and military counterparts having been lost in incidents following the general escape from Earth.
Valcroix and Keene shook hands across the table. “I have heard your story,” the Frenchman said. “Amazing.”
“Amazing stories were happening everywhere in those times,” Keene answered. “I didn’t know mine was so famous.”
“Your friend, Leo Cavan, told me about it.”
Keene’s eyebrows rose. “Are you and Leo old friends from the past too?”
“We’ve had certain dealings since coming to Kronia,” Valcroix said.
That fitted. After younger years spent in the Air Force, Cavan had led a shady life as a denizen of the Washington political underworld, but as far as Keene knew his haunts hadn’t extended to the European scene.
“Your visit to LORIN 5 was useful?” Grasse inquired.
Keene nodded. “It answered a lot of questions that I’d been wondering about. More to do with the organizational aspects than anything technical.” He meant about operation of the Security Arm, which ran the LORIN stations and came closest to fitting a military role. It also functioned as something of a safety valve to disperse the excess energies of Kronians stifling from their life of containment and routine. Many of the younger Terran evacuees had volunteered for the Security Arm. Keene went on, “Did you know that their officers are appointed by consensus from below, not imposed from above?” General Valcroix nodded that he was aware of that, then shook his head in a way that said it made no sense.
The Austrian glanced at his watch. “Anyway, Dr. Keene, the reason I asked to talk to you has to do with matters that some of us feel concerns about. So I decided to invite the opinions of others as well.” Keene waited. Grasse cast an eye around as if making sure they were not being overheard. His voice dropped. “Our concerns are with the way of organization here in Kronia. You take my point? Not so much the day-to-day routines of things, but the idealizations that make the foundation underneath it all.”
He paused for a reaction.
“I’m listening,” Keene said.
Grasse waved a hand. “Their priorities here are in the reverse order of what they need to be if the right things are to get done. And the way of going about achieving them is impractical. I give you as examples—Urzin is again talking about bringing forward the time to send missions back to Earth. He wants a permanent base there. And then it will be bases.” Xen Urzin was President of the Triad that headed Kronia’s governing body, formally known as the Congress of Leaders. Grasse continued, “But why do they want to send these missions? As the first step to return and begin rebuilding Earth’s civilization? To survey for important resources?” Grasse shook his head. “No. It is for scientists to explore the changed surface and rewrite their geology textbooks. And the best scientists here on Kronia spend their time debating these things of how Venus was ejected from Jupiter and when the Earth was lost from Saturn, instead of how to support the population we will have fifty years from now. . . . I ask you, Doctor, is this a rational way that a tiny colony, isolated out here like this, should be thinking? The first need is to expand and consolidate our industries and their materials base. It is survival we are talking. That is what I mean by priorities.”
Keene’s drink arrived. Valcroix took up when the bartender had departed again. “The Kronians are making science a religion. Back on Earth, science served practical ends—because it was controlled by people who understood policymaking. But here there is no effective control. Instead, we have this insanity of multiple competing operations all duplicating each others’ efforts. We can’t afford that—certainly not at the present time. This colony is strung out to its limits. It doesn’t have the resources.”