Ben Bova - New Earth

Adri seemed stunned. “You don’t trust us.”

Jordan said, “This is a new situation for us. We’ll have to talk it over amongst ourselves.”

“I understand,” said Adri. But Jordan thought he looked disappointed, hurt.

Adri led the little group around the administrative building, heading for the dormitory. “We have prepared quarters for you all. Perhaps you can discuss the matter there.”

“Thank you,” said Jordan. “We will.” But he was thinking that Adri would be able to hear every word they said. The buildings are all monitored, he remembered. Then he wondered, Why did Aditi show me their monitoring system, then? Was she trying to warn me, or does she really think there’s no harm in it?

Keeping his thoughts to himself, Jordan followed Adri into the dormitory building. His companions kept an uneasy silence as Adri showed them their rooms. Jordan saw that he and his brother would be housed in the same two-bedroom suite as before, the others in single rooms. Not that Elyse will use her room, he grumbled to himself.

They all came back to the sitting room of Jordan’s suite, and Adri left them to themselves.

“Until dinner,” he said. To Jordan, he added, “Aditi will join us then.”

Adri hesitated at the door. Looking directly at Thornberry, he said, “I hope you decide to accept our education system. Its only function is to teach, not to manipulate you.”

Thornberry nodded unhappily. But Brandon replied, “Teaching is manipulation of a sort, isn’t it?”

Adri said nothing. He pulled his furry little pet from his robe and left.

As soon as the door slid shut behind Adri’s departing back, Thornberry said, “I feel like Dr. Faustus.”

“Making a deal with the devil?” Longyear quipped.

“He’s making a damned tempting offer,” said Thornberry. “To learn how those energy screens work. I could go back to Earth and make a fortune!”

“Is that what you want?” Jordan asked.

Thornberry broke into a rueful grin. “I wouldn’t refuse a fortune, you know. But what I really want is to know . To understand.”

“But they might brainwash you while you’re under their stimulator,” de Falla objected.

Glancing around the sitting room, Jordan suggested, “Why don’t we go into the plaza, outside, to continue this conversation?”

Brandon immediately caught his implication. “You think the rooms are bugged?”

“I know they are. Aditi showed me the center where they monitor everything.”

“Everything?” Elyse asked.

Jordan almost smiled at the alarm on her face. “Almost everything,” he assured her. “Come on, let’s go outside. It’s a pleasant day and we have a major decision to make.”

The plaza was empty of other people. They’re giving us some privacy, Jordan thought. If they’re bugging us here they’d have to plant cameras in the trees, I suppose, or up on the rooftops. He led the little group to the center of the plaza and sat down on the grass. The sun felt warm and good on his shoulders. The others sat, too, in a circle. Like a Neolithic band, Jordan thought. All we need is a campfire.

“So what do we do about this?” Thornberry asked.

Jordan replied, “Mitch, are you willing to be a guinea pig?”

“An experimental animal?”

“Yes,” said Jordan. “We won’t be able to tell if Adri’s brain stimulator is nothing more than an educational tool or not unless one of us allows them to use it on him.”

Thornberry shrugged. Then he muttered, “To learn how those energy shields work…”

“Dr. Faustus,” Longyear reminded him.

Elyse said, “I’m going to ask their astronomers to show me their evidence for the gamma burst. I won’t need brain stimulation for that.”

“Evidence can be faked,” de Falla pointed out.

“I suppose so,” said Elyse. “I’ll just have to see what they’ve got and make up my own mind.”

“Without brain zapping,” said Brandon.

She shuddered.

With his old quizzical smile, Thornberry conjectured, “So I take their brain zapping, and I come out knowing all things and able to speak with the tongues of men and of angels. How could that harm us?”

“It could prejudice you in favor of whatever Adri’s trying to pull over on us,” said Brandon.

“But I won’t grow fangs, will I?” Thornberry joked.

“This isn’t a laughing matter,” Brandon insisted.

Jordan muttered, “ Davehr’yay noh praver’yay .”

“What?”

“It’s an old Russian saying: Trust, but verify. Diplomats use the term a lot.”

“Trust, but verify,” Elyse repeated.

“Which means you don’t really trust them at all, doesn’t it?” said Brandon.

Jordan shook his head. “We allow Mitch to undergo their brain stimulation. Then we see if anything’s different about him afterward.”

“I’ll be different,” Thornberry said. “I’ll be smarter.”

“You’ll know more,” Longyear corrected.

“Meanwhile,” Jordan said, trying to get the conversation back on track again, “Elyse will try to determine if this story of a gamma ray burst is true. If the evidence is reliable.”

“So I’m the one showing the trust,” Thornberry said, tapping the front of his wrinkled shirt.

“And I’m the one who verifies,” said Elyse.

“And the rest of us will try to decide if we can really trust Adri and whether or not we should act on the information he’s giving us.”

“Tall order,” de Falla said.

Jordan nodded agreement. “But I don’t see anything else we can do. Do you?”

He looked at the five of them, sitting on the grass in a circle around him, their faces grave as they faced up to the responsibility. No one spoke. Brandon looked disgruntled, sullen, but he said nothing.

“I really believe we hold the fate of the human race in our hands,” Jordan said.

No one disagreed.

Dinner with Adri and Aditi was pleasant, but Jordan felt strains pulling him in different directions. He wanted to believe Adri, he wanted to believe everything Adri and the Predecessor had told him. But it was so enormous! So mind-boggling. And, he had to admit to himself, it just might all be a ploy to manipulate us, for some reason they haven’t chosen to reveal to us.

God help us, he thought, Meek might be right. Then he realized, Meek’s been right all along, about a lot of things. This planet isn’t natural. Adri, Aditi, all the other people here, they were constructed to resemble us. Manufactured.

But is Meek right about their motives? That’s the key to everything. Are Adri and the Predecessor telling me the truth about why they’ve done all this?

Brandon was unusually quiet through the meal, and Longyear and de Falla talked with each other, but had hardly a word to say to Adri or Aditi. So be it, Jordan sighed inwardly. One step at a time.

Then Thornberry announced that he had decided to undergo the brain stimulation, and Adri broke into a broad, beaming smile.

“I’ll set up the procedure first thing in the morning,” he promised.

Before Elyse could speak up, Adri turned to her and added, “And you’ll want to meet with our astronomers at the observatory.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Fine,” Adri said. “Fine.”

“Dr. Longyear, are you ready for a stimulation session?”

Longyear shook his head. “I’ll … wait until later.”

“I see,” Adri said, with a glance in Jordan’s direction.

As they filed out of the dining hall, Jordan took Aditi’s arm. “It’s good to see you again.”

“I missed you,” she whispered.

“I missed you, too.” And he led her down the corridor toward his suite.