David Brin: Sundiver

Jacob shook his head, Held handle his uncle himself. Helene could get a little rough.

Ms. deSilva was a great pilot and in the last few weeks she’d been an imaginative co-conspirator as well But their personal relationship left Jacob dizzy. Her personality was… powerful.

When she’d learned, on awakening, that the Calypso had jumped, Helene had signed onto the gang designing the new Vesarius II. The reason, she announced brazenly, was to have three years to subject Jacob Demwa to a full course of Pavlovian conditioning. At the end of said time she would ring a little bell and he would, supposedly, decide to become a Jumper.

Jacob had his reservations, but it was already clear that Helene deSilva had complete control over his salivary glands.

Uncle James was more nervous than he’d ever seen him. The usually imperturbable politician seemed decidedly ill at ease. The rakish Irish charm of the Al-varez side of the family was subdued. The grey head nodded nervously. His green eyes seemed unnaturally sad.

“Um, Jacob, my boy. Our guests have arrived. They are waiting in the study and Christien is looking after them.

“Now, I hope you are going to be reasonable about this matter. There really was no reason to invite that government fellow. We could have settled this ourselves.

“Now as I see it…”

Jacob held up his free hand. “Uncle, please. We’ve been through this.

“The matter has to be adjudicated. If you refuse the services of the Secrets Registration people, I’ll just have to call a family council and present the matter to them! You know Uncle Jeremy, he’ll probably opt for publicly announcing the whole thing. It’d make good press, all right, but the Department of Overt Prosecutions would have the case then, and you’d have five years with a little thing in your rump going ‘beep… beep… beep.’ ”

Jacob leaned against Helena’s shoulder, more for the contact than for support, and flashed both hands in front of Uncle James’ eyes. With each “beep” the man’s aristocratic face paled a little. Helene started to giggle, then she hiccupped.

“Excuse me,” she said demurely.

“Don’t be sarcastic,” Jacob commented. He pinched her then reclaimed his cane.

The study wasn’t as impressive as the one In Alvarez Hall, in Caracas but this house was in California. That made up for a lot. Jacob hoped he and his uncle still spoke after today.

Stucco walls and false beams emphasized the Spanish aspect. Display cases, containing James’ collection of Bureaucracy-era Samizdat publications, stood out prominently among the bookshelves.

In the mantle was carved a long motto.

Fagin fluted a warm greeting. Jacob bowed and went through a long, formal salutation, just to please the Kanten. Fagin had visited him regularly in the hospital. It had been difficult at first, between them — each convinced he was deeply indebted to the other. Finally they’d agreed to disagree.

When the TAASF rescue team had broken into the Sunship, as it hurtled outward on its laser-assisted hyperbolic orbit, they were amazed by the crumpled, frozen condition of the human crew. They didn’t quite know what to make of the smashed body of the Pring, on flip-side. But what amazed them most was Fagin, hanging upside down by those small sharp spikes in his root-pods while the laser still put out its potent thrust. The cold had not ruptured almost a quarter of his cells, as it had the humans, and he appeared to have come through the pounding ride through the photosphere unscathed.

In spite of himself, Fagjn of the Institute of Progress — the perpetual observer and manipulator — had become, himself, a unique personage. He was probably the only sophont alive anywhere who could describe what it was like to fly, hanging upside down, through the thick, opaque fire at the photosphere. Now he had a story of his own to tell.

It must have been painful for the Kanten. Nobody believed a word of his story until Helene’s tapes were replayed.

Jacob said hello to Pierre LaRoque. The man had regained much of his color since their last meeting, not to mention his appetite. He’d been wolfing down Christien’s hors d’oeuvres. Still confined to his chair, he smiled and nodded silently to Jacob and Helene. Jacob suspected LaRoque’s mouth was too full to talk.

The last guest was a tall, narrow-faced man with blonde hair and light blue eyes. He rose from the couch and offered his hand.

“Han Nielsen, at your service, Mr. Demwa. On the basis of the news reports alone I am proud to meet you. Of course, Secrets Registration knows everything the government knows, so I am doubly impressed. I assume, though, that you have called us in to deal with a matter that the government is not to know?”

Jacob and Helene sat on the couch across from him, their backs to a window overlooking the ocean.

“Yes, that’s correct, Mr. Nielsen. Actually, there are a couple of matters. We’d like to apply for a seal and for adjudication by the Terragens Council.”

Nielsen frowned. “Surely you must realize that the council is barely an infant at this point. The delegates appointed by the colonies have not even arrived! The Confederacy b… civil servants,” (Had he been about to say the dirty word ‘bureaucrats’?) “don’t even like the idea of having a supra-legal Secrets Registration to enforce honesty above secular law. The Terragens is even less popular.

“Even though it’s been shown that it’s the only way to deal with the crisis we’ve faced since Contact?” Helene asked.

“Even so. The Feds are reconciled to the fact that it will eventually take jurisdiction over interstellar and interspecies affairs, but they don’t like it and they’re dragging their feet every step of the way.”

“But that’s just the point,” Jacob said. “The crisis was bad before this debacle on Mercury, bad enough to force the creation of the council. But it was still manageable. Sundiver has probably changed that.” Nielsen looked grim. “I know.” “Do you?” Jacob rested his hands on his knees and leaned forward. “You’ve seen Fagin’s report on the probable reaction of the Pila to Bubbacub’s exposed pecadilloes on Mercury. And that report was written well before this whole business regarding Culla came to light!”

“And the Confederacy knows everything,” Nielsen grimaced. “Culla’s actions, his weird apologia, the whole capsule.”

“Well after all,” Jacob sighed. “They are the government. They make foreign policy. Besides, Helene had no way of knowing we’d live through that mess down there. She recorded everything.”

“It never occurred to me,” Helene said. “Until Fagin explained, that it might be better if the Feds never found out the truth, or that the Terragens Council might be better suited to handle this mess.”

“Better suited, perhaps, but what do you expect us the Council to do? It’ll take years to build up acceptance and legitimacy. Why should they risk it all by intervening in this situation?”

For a moment no one spoke. Then Nielsen shrugged. From his briefcase he pulled a small recording cube, which he activated and placed in the center of the room, on the floor.

“This conversation is under seal by the Secrets Registration. Why don’t you start, Dr. deSilva.” Helene ticked off points with the fingers of her hand. “One, we know that Bubbacub perpetrated a crime in the eyes of both the Library Institute and his own race by falsifying a Library report, and perpetrating a hoax on Sundiver; to wit: that he had communicated with the Solarians and had used his ‘Lethani relic’ to protect us from their wrath.

“We think we know Bubbacub’s motives for doing what he did. He was embarrassed by the failure of the Library to reference the Sun Ghosts. He wanted to rub the ‘wolfling’ race’s collective nose in its inferiority, as well.