Worlds in Chaos (27 page)

But the rest was drowned in the rising pandemonium coming from all sides. Keene had no answer to offer anyway. Anything he tried to say would have sounded lame. The Kronians, too, were sitting in silence, stunned. Keene was vaguely aware of figures coming forward into the space below, jabbering, shouting, and gesticulating. Somehow, Cavan’s face materialized out of it all. “It isn’t true, Leo,” Keene said, still feeling this had to be some kind of dream. “You know it didn’t happen that way. I can’t explain it. Where do we start with something like this?”

“I don’t know either,” Cavan told him. “But I think that for the time being you need to forget any more arguing with scientists. What you’re going to need is a firm of lawyers.”

21

Until Voler’s allegations were either proved or refuted there could be no continuance under the guise of a scientific debate, and the conference was suspended until further notice. Marvin Curtiss was as bewildered by it all as Keene. It was bad enough that public attention should be so completely diverted from the original issue at this crucial juncture; but even worse was Amspace’s being implicated, calling into question the credibility and integrity of all the interests that the company was associated with. “Everything’s turned into a political show trial,” he groaned over the phone when Keene was finally able to talk to him. “It will take twenty years for this to wear off.”

Carlton Murray, the head of Amspace’s legal department, left on an afternoon flight from Texas with two of the firm’s lawyers. They would meet with Keene that evening, and the following day make arrangements for representation by the company’s Washington law firm. An outraged Catherine Zetl issued a public denial and announced her intention to sue, which raised the possibility of acting jointly. After a brief conference in a private room at the AAAS building, Gallian, for once noncommittal and subdued, told Keene to let him know what the lawyers wanted the Kronians to do after Keene met with them that evening. Gallian and the rest of the Kronians then retired to the Engleton for the remainder of the day. Keene told Vicki to expect to be effectively in charge of Protonix for a while, and then stopped by Information and Office Services in D.C. to have Shirley take care of everything there. For the sake of privacy and sanity he changed his hotel to the one that the Amspace lawyers would be checking into and forbade Shirley from revealing to anyone where he had gone. Jerry Allender offered to stick around, but Keene told him the whole business had moved way out of his field and there was little further that he would be able to do. Allender left, accordingly, on the last flight that night connecting to Corpus Christi.

The two lawyers accompanying Murray turned out to be Sally Panchard, an old hand who had been with Amspace for years, and Cliff Yeaks, a relatively new recruit from law school but bright, personable, and enthusiastic. Only when he was able to sit down with them in his room, finally removed from the frenzy that had followed him all day, was Keene able to give any real thought to what it all meant.

And what it meant was shattering. The accusations against himself, damaging as they would probably be to the public perception of the Kronians and which constituted Curtiss’s main concern, were not what bothered him. Murray was confident that Voler had carried his theatrics too far, and if the true story were as Keene maintained, systematic investigation of the facts would eventually establish it. That didn’t mean that somebody else hadn’t taken the artifacts up to the
Osiris
, of course. It was hard to imagine any of the others on the minishuttle being involved, but Curtiss had authorized discreet background checks of all of them as a precaution. But all kinds of official craft had been shuttling up and down between the surface and the
Osiris
since its arrival, so there was plenty of room for the culprit to be elsewhere.

So did Voler really believe the line he had strung together about Keene? Or had he simply seized an opportunity to derail the Kronians when a convenient set of coincidences presented themselves, knowing that he would be able to admit hastiness and extract himself later? At this stage, it didn’t really matter. What remained—unless some of the world’s foremost experts were unable to tell terrestrial rocks and the work of an ancient human culture from things that had originated in another realm entirely—was that regardless of who had taken or sent them up to the
Osiris
, the artifacts
had
come from Earth, which could only mean that the story of their being found on Rhea was a fabrication. And if that were so, then what reliance could be placed on the probe data also? That, of course, had been Voler’s real point. The rest, as likely as not, had been staged to grab some limelight for himself and embarrass Keene and Amspace at the same time.

In all his dealings with them, it had never crossed Keene’s mind to question the integrity of the Kronians. Was it possible that he could have judged so wrongly? And if so, what else might he be wrong about? Maybe the Kronian colony
was
as stretched to its limit as the politicians and advisors on Earth had been saying all along, and desperation to the point of perpetrating a deception such as this was the result. Whatever their reasons or their situation, the fantasy Keene had toyed with of going back with them had exploded. His only desire now, after transferring all dealings to the lawyers, was to leave things in their hands from here on, get away from everything for a while, and then do some serious thinking about what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. First, however, it would be necessary for him to introduce the lawyers to the Kronians.

Although he had the direct personal calling codes that the Kronians had been assigned for the duration of their visit, matters were more formal now and he called the general number for the suite. A security man answered, and after verifying Keene’s authentication put him through to the floor above. Vashen took the call, and when he saw that it was Keene, passed it over to Sariena. She was sleepy and not very communicative, which was hardly surprising. After checking with Gallian, she confirmed that tomorrow morning would be fine for a meeting with the lawyers. Since everything on their schedule had been canceled, there was little else for the Kronians to do anyway.

The next morning after breakfast, Keene was waiting in the hotel lobby, where he had arranged to meet the lawyers, when three men detoured by him while on their way toward the main doors.

“Aren’t you the guy who was all over the news yesterday—the one who took the fake tablets up to the space ship?” one of them said.

Keene was momentarily taken aback. “Excuse me? . . . Oh. No, what they said wasn’t true. There’s a lot to be uncovered. Don’t believe anything you hear at this stage.”

“Oh yeah? Well, you tell those kook friends of yours that if they want to go back where they came from and freeze, that’s okay. But don’t come here expecting us to make it work for them, because it can’t work. Especially when they have to lie about it. Okay?”

The three walked away before Keene could respond further. Just a month ago, he’d been a space hero taking on the Air Force. Already, he’d turned into a lackey of alien interests. Celebrity, it seemed, could be a short-lived thing.

The mood in the Kronians’ suite at the Engleton was very different from what Keene remembered of the last time he was there. Instead of a party atmosphere and optimistic talk of exciting changes to come, the tone was set by somber-suited lawyers with laptops, heavy briefcases, and legal pads. No longer did the Kronians joke about the strange sights and experiences of Earth. Instead, they were listless and reticent, volunteering little beyond what they were asked, giving the impression of going along with something they had no choice in but being already resigned to the futility of it.

Keene didn’t have a large part to play after making the introductions, having given his own story the evening before. Murray opened with general preliminaries, explaining Amspace’s relationship with the Washington law firm, and since Amspace and the Kronians were implicated together, outlining the advantages of arranging comprehensive representation for all of them. However, that would depend on the outcome of talking with partners of the Washington firm, which he hoped to do later that day or tomorrow. The Kronians had no real questions, and Murray got down to the business of going over the reports and transcripts of the previous days’ conference item by item to get the Kronians’ version and their verification where quotes were attributed to them. All the time, Sariena kept giving Keene curious looks, while he did his best to avoid her gaze. Gallian’s answers to the lawyers’ questions became shorter and more strained. He seemed to be containing himself only with difficulty against rising impatience.

Finally, Murray leaned back in his chair, his pen held lengthwise between his fingertips, and contemplated Gallian for several seconds as if weighing how to make a delicate point. Gallian scowled back unhelpfully. “Look, I appreciate that ways of going about things might be different where you’re from, and I’ve tried to allow for that,” Murray said. “But I have to say, the answers you’ve been giving aren’t exactly going to serve your best interests. You don’t seem to understand how the system here works. We are not your adversaries in this. We’re on your side. Our job is to put together a strategy that will get us through with the minimum of damage. But to do that, we need complete cooperation.”

Gallian’s jaw tightened. “I’m sorry. I thought we were cooperating,” he replied.

Sally Panchard put in, “I think what Carlton’s trying to say is that whatever else is admitted publicly,
we
need to know where those artifacts came from. But as far as the case itself is concerned, our position will depend on what we think the other side is able to prove. In other words, we give nothing away. Without proof, how can anyone know for sure if the artifacts were ever up in the
Osiris
at all? If they were given to you by someone here on Earth after you landed, who
said
they’d come out of the container that was shipped down, then Lan Keene, you, and everyone in your mission would be exonerated.”

“Yes, yes. Those are just the lines I was thinking along,” Murray interjected.

Sally went on, “There would still be the images that were beamed from Kronia to account for, but they could have originated here and been turned around. So the whole thing could have been engineered between a group of unknown parties here and in Kronia, and you were all used unwittingly.”

Vashen was shaking his head, trying to follow. “But that wouldn’t change what Voler was trying to say yesterday. You’d just be making others guilty instead of us.”

“That’s our job,” Cliff Yeaks said. “You and Dr. Keene are our clients. The other guys are not. If Voler can’t prove who did it, that’s his problem. The thing that matters is, you guys will be off the hook.”

Gallian emitted a loud sigh suddenly, got up from his seat, and stamped over to the window to stare out at the Washington rooftops. “ ‘
The thing that matters
,’ ”
he repeated. “All this posturing and antagonism, obsessions over who will win and who will lose. When will the people of this world ever learn to stop fighting each other and do things together? Doesn’t it occur to anybody that the thing that matters might be
truth
?” He turned back to face the room. “Which side are you people on? All I’m hearing is nonsense about legal contortions and antics that don’t interest me that can be dragged out to divert attention from the real issue forever. Is that what you want? I thought this was supposed to be a scientific matter. When are we going to get back to that? The only one among you who speaks that language is Landen, and he has said practically nothing. So why don’t we stop talking about what stories we can invent and try concentrating on asking what really did happen?”

Keene answered, since Gallian was still staring at him. “I think that’s what Carlton is trying to do. As he said, he needs to know exactly at what point those objects—the actual objects, not some kind of container that they were supposed to be in—came into your hands.” Keene paused, then added as the thought struck him, “Come to that,
did
you ever actually see them outside of a container?”