In the short time that had gone by, this couldn’t have come about through any process of gradual selection from random mutations. Rather, it pointed to the variability already having been there in the genomes, which was the conclusion the Kronians had been coming to for some time. This was what Vicki and Luthis, the biologist also from Dione, and Aztec’s senior scientist, were coming out to investigate further. Keene could picture her impatience on reading the latest reports from Earth. The Aztec was under way from Titan now but not due to arrive for another sixty days.
“Do you think that everything you ever experience is locked away inside somewhere, the way some people say?” Sariena asked Beth. “Nothing is ever lost?”
“More or less,” Beth replied. “But I don’t think memory is localized in any place. That’s why they were always having trouble finding it.”
“So what do you think?” Keene asked.
“The information could be held in interference patterns of some kind of wave process in the brain,” Beth said. “Kind of like a hologram.”
“Huge capacities,” Keene commented. He was intrigued.
“Yes, that’s my point.” Beth caught the faint smile on Sariena’s face that seemed to carry a mixed message of maybe . . . and then again, maybe not. “What do you think?” she asked.
“I’m not sure,” Sariena answered. “Maybe the information isn’t ‘in’ there in any way at all. What if the brain is just an organ that accesses it from somewhere else?” She gestured at a screen on one of the nearby consoles. It showed a view of Joburg, coming in from a camera mounted on one of the vehicles that was there currently, and had been left transmitting. Kurt Zeigler had gone out with a group to see the place and make himself known. “It would be like looking inside there for a permanent representation of those huts and people. But you won’t find any. The information that creates the picture is coming from elsewhere.”
“Are we back to where the Kronian designer lives?” Keene asked, smiling. He meant it to be flippant, but Sariena’s face remained serious.
“Maybe,” she conceded evenly. “You know, Lan, science as the Terrans conceived it ended up really as just bigger telescopes, faster computers . . . better and cheaper extensions of technology. And that’s wonderfully effective for understanding and manipulating the material, physical world. But only Terran scientists could have ended up believing that that’s all there is to reality. All children know it isn’t so.”
Keene grinned. “And Kronians?”
“You already know the answer to that. We think things are there for a purpose.”
Just then, Gallian, with Charlie Hu and several others just off the shuttle, entered from the level below, bubbling hellos and greeting to all. As was typical of Gallian’s style, he was wearing a maroon flight-deck jacket and could have passed for one of the shuttle’s crew instead of overall director of the mission. “Landen! Sariena!” he threw across, acknowledging their presence. And then, after an exchange with the Watch Officer and duty staff to check on the situation at Joburg and things in general, he came over to join them.
The puckish face was beaming as usual beneath the mantle of silver, wavy hair, but he was already puffing from the gravity and the stairs. “Well, so here we are back again. I’m not going to risk any comments, Landen—for fear of being in bad taste. But things have changed somewhat, yes?”
“I don’t think there’s much you could say that hasn’t been eclipsed by the reality, Gallian,” Keene said. “But for what it’s worth, welcome back to Earth.”
“Now you have to grow your Earth legs again,” Sariena told Gallian. “Somehow, it doesn’t seem so bad the second time.”
“Well, that’s good to know.” Gallian looked at Beth and inquired breezily. “And how are we making out in your new specialty field of shell-shock patients? Any signs of getting through to them yet?”
“It’s a slow business,” Beth replied. “There’s a lot of suspicion and suppressed hostility to deal with. But I think we’re learning.”
“On-the-job training. It’s the best kind. You didn’t think we brought you here for a vacation, did you? By the time you get back, you’ll be a seasoned psychologist with exclusive experience of dealing with Terran survivors. You’ll be known across all of Kronia.”