New Earth (28 page)

“It only looks like Earth on the surface.”

“Yeah.”

Jordan could see that Brandon was despondent, deeply disappointed that the laser had run into a problem he couldn’t understand.

“Well,” he said, as brightly as he could manage, “perhaps you’ve run into a new kind of planetary structure. You might become just as famous as that
fellow who discovered continental drift.”

“Wegener,” Brandon answered dully.

“You ought to call de Falla and see if any of the other drills have run into the same problem,” Jordan suggested.

Cheering up a bit, Brandon said, “Good idea.”

Jordan walked toward the borehole, where the two robots were working the equipment that was slowly hauling the laser head up to the surface. Fourteen kilometers,
he recalled. It’ll take several hours to get the laser up here and then a camera down again.

Brandon came over beside him. “De Falla says none of the other drills have gone as deep as we have yet.”

“The perils of the pioneer,” Jordan said, trying to lighten his brother’s mood. “Being first and all that.”

Brandon huffed. “Somebody once said that pioneering is just finding new ways to get yourself
killed.”

“Oh, come on now, Bran. You’ve run into something new, something unprecedented, perhaps. You should be elated. It’s a chance to learn new things about planetary structures.”

His brother nodded bleakly. “Maybe.”

It was late afternoon by the time the robots got the camera down to the level where the laser had stopped. De Falla phoned to tell them that two of the other drilling rigs had
stopped, as well.

“At what depth?” Brandon asked.

“Fourteen klicks,” answered the geologist. “Give or take a dozen meters.”

“Something’s down there,” Brandon said tightly. He was sitting at the console again. Its central screen showed a murky view from the still-descending camera. Jordan saw from the data bar alongside the screen that the camera had almost reached the depth where the laser
had been stopped.

In the phone’s screen, de Falla looked more puzzled than dejected. “Something’s down there, all right,” he agreed. “But what?”

“I’ll call you back,” Brandon said. “We’re starting to get a camera view.” He clicked the phone shut and tucked it into his shirt pocket.

Jordan looked over his brother’s shoulder at the console’s main screen. The two robots stood behind him, silent
and still. Yet Jordan couldn’t help feeling that they were peering over his shoulder, straining to see what was down there, just as he was.

The lights that accompanied the camera brightened to full intensity. Jordan blinked at what he saw. He heard Brandon grunt.

“It looks like metal,” Brandon muttered.

“Smooth,” said Jordan. “As if it were polished.”

“It
is
polished,” Brandon said. “And there
isn’t even a scorch mark from where the laser beam hit it.”

“Polished metal?” Jordan wondered aloud.

“It’s artificial,” said Brandon, with absolute certainty.

CONFIRMATION

They sent the camera’s view back to de Falla, at his digging site, and the geologist excitedly reported running into the same metallic barrier at the same depth.

Brandon looked sulky, almost angry. Jordan had seen that expression on his brother’s face many times before: when Brandon couldn’t get what he wanted, he pouted.

“A layer of polished metal at a depth of fourteen kilometers
below the surface,” Jordan mused. “That’s…” He struggled to find a word.

“All across the planet,” Brandon said, almost growling.

“Only six points,” Jordan pointed out.

“Jordy, we could dig six hundred boreholes. Or six thousand, six million. We’ll find the same thing in every one, guaranteed.”

Jordan thought that nothing they had yet found on New Earth could be guaranteed.

“Come on,” Brandon
said. “Let’s pack it all in and get back to the base camp. I want to talk to Adri about this.”

“Yes,” Jordan agreed. “He has some explaining to do.”

*   *   *

It was twilight when their rocketplane touched down at the base camp. De Falla was already there, waiting impatiently as they came down the metal ladder from the plane’s hatch.

“I left the robots to pack up,” the geologist said. “Hazzard’ll
fly them all back here tomorrow.”

“Why the rush?” Brandon asked.

Leading them straight to the bubble tent that housed the geology lab, de Falla said, “I wanted to run the data about this metal layer through the profile program, see what comes up.”

Brandon nodded. “Makes sense.”

Meek, Thornberry, and Elyse joined them as they practically trotted toward the tent.

Brandon reached out his hand
to Elyse as he asked her, “You came back from the city?”

“Once Adri told me you were returning from your field excursion, yes,” she said, smiling happily at him.

“What do you make of this latest finding?” Meek asked Jordan.

“Harmon, I’m merely an unemployed administrator. I don’t make scientific judgments. That’s your department.”

“It can’t be natural,” Brandon said.

De Falla, leading their
little parade, said over his shoulder, “That’s my conclusion, too. A sheet of polished metal fourteen kilometers deep isn’t natural.”

Jordan expected Meek to be glowing with triumph. Instead, he looked worried, frightened. “How could there be a layer of polished metal fourteen kilometers below the surface?”

“We’ll have to ask Adri,” said Jordan.

“And if he doesn’t know?”

“He knows,” de Falla
said, with grim certainty. “The question is, will he tell us?”

*   *   *

Jordan phoned Adri, who immediately agreed to come to the camp to answer their questions. Jordan wondered if Aditi would come with him, but hesitated to ask in front of all the others.

They ate dinner together while they waited for the alien, all nine of them, bouncing unanswerable questions around the table, making guesses,
suppositions. Jordan listened to them in silence. Scientists, he thought; they can’t simply sit and admit they don’t know what’s going on. They have to try to find an answer. Or invent one.

A scrap of poetry came to his mind. Robert Frost, he remembered:
We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the
secret
sits in the middle and knows.

It was full night by the time Adri reached the camp, walking
briskly in his usual befigured robe. Jordan’s pulse quickened when he saw that Aditi walked beside him, looking fresh and happy in a knee-length skirt of dark green and a short-sleeved white blouse.

The night was lit by the Pup, casting a silvery moon glow over the tall, silent trees and the round white domes of the camp.

“Good evening, my friends,” said Adri, his thin voice carrying through
the shadows. “It’s good to see you all once more.”

As his brother had done with Elyse, Jordan held out a hand to Aditi. She came to him and clasped it warmly.

But Brandon said sharply, “We need some answers from you, Adri.”

“Of course. I will be glad to tell you anything I can.”

De Falla said, “Let’s go over to the geology lab. The computer should be finished with the profile by now.”

“By
all means,” said Adri.

As they started toward the tent, Jordan whispered to Aditi, “I missed you.”

Her smile lit up the landscape. “I missed you, too.”

De Falla led the little procession through the camp’s bubble tents to the geology lab. Jordan noticed that Meek walked several paces behind Adri, with Longyear beside him. Both men wore tight-lipped expressions, taut with hostility. Brandon
walked alongside Elyse, of course, chatting happily with her, nearly oblivious of the others.

Once in the geology tent, de Falla called up his computer’s profile of the planet’s structure while Adri sat on one of the stools lining the worktable. The others clustered around the table, looking expectantly at the computer’s big flat display screen.

“As you know,” de Falla said, his round, beard-fringed
face utterly serious, “we’ve been digging boreholes at several locations.”

“To determine the structure of this planet, I presume,” Adri said.

De Falla went on, “And we’ve hit an anomaly.”

A wisp of a smile appeared on Adri’s age-creased face. “An anomaly?”

The display screen lit up, showing a graph that depicted a cross section of the planet’s structure. The metal layer appeared in blazing
red at the fourteen-kilometer depth. Below it was nothing but a dull gray, indicating that the deeper structure of the planet was unknown.

De Falla began, “There seems to be a layer of polished metal—”

“At a depth of fourteen kilometers,” Adri interrupted. “Yes, that is correct.”

“It can’t be natural.”

“It’s not.”

Jordan felt his breath catch in his throat. Meek looked like a prosecutor who’s
just heard his suspect confess. Longyear looked angry, almost, de Falla stunned, despite his previous attitude. Even Thornberry’s usual quizzical smile was gone, replaced by a suspicious scowl.

Brandon snapped, “You know about this?”

“Yes, of course,” said Adri.

They clustered around him, as taut and stressed as a lynch mob. All they need is a rope, Jordan thought.

Brandon asked, “There’s
a shell of metal fourteen klicks deep?”

“Yes.”

“All around the planet?”

“Yes,” said Adri, as if it was the most natural thing in the universe. “Of course. It’s the structural base for New Earth’s crust and biosphere.”

Meek found his voice. “Look here, are you telling us that the upper layers of this planet have been … landscaped? You’ve deliberately shaped this upper section of the planet,
this entire biosphere?”

In a placatingly calm voice, Adri replied, “New Earth has been constructed to resemble your world as closely as possible.”

“Constructed?” Longyear squeaked.

Adri’s smile turned slightly rueful. “We had no intention of deceiving you, my friends. Our policy has been to allow you to discover the truth at your own pace.”

Jordan said, “Are you telling us that this entire
planet has been built, deliberately constructed to resemble Earth?”

With a nod, Adri said, “And placed close enough to your world so that you would find us, and come to examine us.”

Elyse gasped, “Red Sirius!”

“What?”

“Naked-eye observations of Sirius made more than two thousand years ago, around the time of Christ,” she said, almost breathless. “They reported that the star had turned red.”

Adri said, shamefaced, “I’m afraid that was due to the construction operation,” he admitted. “I’m sorry if it confused your astronomers.”

“You
constructed
this planet?” Meek asked, in obvious disbelief. “This entire planet? You
built
it?”

“Not I,” said Adri. “Our Predecessors did.”

Meek said, “But why? How?”

Adri glanced at Aditi, then turned back to Meek and explained, “Our race is much older
than yours. Our technology, as you’ve seen for yourselves, is considerably in advance of yours.”

“Then you do have spaceflight,” Thornberry said. “You’re not from this planet, you came from somewhere else.”

“Our civilization does have the capability for spaceflight, yes,” Adri said. “But we—myself, Aditi, all the others you have seen here on this world—we have lived on this planet since our
conception. We have never been anywhere else.”

“But to build an entire planet,” Jordan objected. “It’s fantastic!”

“Who built it?” Brandon demanded. “If you and your people have been born here, then who the hell built this planet?”

“Our Predecessors,” said Adri.

“Your ancestors?”

“Our Predecessors,” Adri repeated.

“Why would they do such a thing?” Meek demanded again. “What’s the purpose
of it all?”

“Why, to bring you here. To encourage you to make contact with us.”

Frowning, Brandon said, “Wouldn’t it have been easier for you to come to Earth and announce your presence?”

“And what would your reaction be if suddenly a starship appeared in your skies? Even if we beamed messages to you, instead of sending a starship, your world would be in turmoil, wouldn’t it?”

Jordan almost
chuckled. Glancing at Meek, he said, “There are plenty of people on Earth who’d be terrified, true enough.”

“What would you do?” Adri repeated.

Meek answered, “Why, we … we’d try to ascertain who you are, of course. And what you want.”

With a sad shake of his head, Adri replied, “The shock of such a meeting would be traumatic for you. Why, even now, on Earth there are people who claim there
can be no other intelligent races in the universe!”

“So we have a few benighted fanatics,” Thornberry said.

“They deny the possibility that the indigenous life in Jupiter’s ocean could be intelligent,” Adri pointed out.

“The leviathans,” Elyse murmured.

Adri went on, “We have studied your history very thoroughly. We have seen the dreadful consequences of sudden contact between two of your
own cultures.”

Longyear muttered, “Wounded Knee.”

“And a hundred other tragedies,” said Aditi. “The Aztecs and Incas. The Polynesians. Even the Chinese went through centuries of exploitation and humiliation.”

“That is why,” Adri resumed, “we decided to make our contact with you as gentle as possible. We did not go to your planet and announce ourselves. Instead, we encouraged you to come here,
to us.”

“You lured us here,” said Meek.

“If you wish to use that term,” Adri replied gently. “The point is that only a small group of you has come here, as we expected. And we have allowed you to discover the truth about us in your own time, at your own pace.” Turning once again to Meek, he added, “And even so, we face suspicion, hostility, and outright fear.”

Jordan said, “You’re telling us
that we have nothing to be afraid of.”

“Oh no,” said Adri. “You have much to be afraid of. And so do we.”

CULTURE SHOCK

“What do you mean by that?” Meek demanded.

Adri hesitated, then replied, “Contact between two intelligent cultures is fraught with dangers.”