Echoes of an Alien Sky (31 page)

"Good to see you again, Emur," Kyal said. "Your name keeps coming up. You seem to have gone straight into the thick of things here."

"There's enough to be done," Frazin agreed. "You haven't exactly been idle yourselves. Why else are we here?"

"Fascinating ideas about Terran mythology," Yorim said, referring to Frazin's recent work.

A bespectacled, wispy-haired figure was looking at Kyal from Frazin's far side. "Have you said hello to Lorili yet?" he asked. "I'm the person she worked with down in Rhombus up until a few days ago."

"Garki Nostreny?"

"Yes. A privilege to meet you."

"Oh. No, mine entirely. She's mentioned you many times. No, we came here directly after docking. That's the first thing on the list later."

"I'll have to stop by her new lab myself before we go back, to see it's looking," Nostreny said. He'd just had time to introduce a fair-haired woman next to him as Acilla Jyt, a translator, also up from Rhombus, when Sherven called the meeting to order.

In keeping with is characteristically terse style, he went through the formal introductions, reiterated the subject matter from a summary note that he had circulated in advance, and handed the proceedings over. Since Yorim had been the first to suggest the idea, Kyal had conceded that his was the first right to present it. Yorim, however, was happy to defer to the senior partner. Addressing prestigious groups wasn't really his style, he said. He'd let Kyal do it. With the pace of events, Kyal had been able to provide only a few sheets of background information to supplement Sherven's note, instead of a more comprehensive overview as he would have preferred. Since not everyone present would have had reason to follow them events in detail, he began by outlining the order of events so far.

"We have established that the code word 'Providence' is associated with a large inventory of supplies and equipment. It showed up first in the Terran records recovered at Triagon, and later in related references found in various places down on Earth. Our first thought was that it referred to a stockpile of materials accumulated at Triagon as part of the 'Terminus' evacuation program. But then it became evident that many of the items contained in the lists wouldn't have been any use there." Kyal turned up his palms and looked around the table. "Combustion-driven agricultural tractors. . . . Seed stocks. . . . What good would they be on an airless moon? Weapons. . . . For use against whom?"

Nobody had any comment at that point. He continued, "The lunar constructions that Yorim here and I came from Venus to investigate indicated that the Terrans were developing an electrical form of space propulsion technology—something they had previously been thought not to possess. This led to the suggestion that Terminus had perhaps meant more than just an evacuation program—that it was the staging operation for a migration elsewhere. Then the linguistics people began finding instances of 'Providence' carrying a geographical connotation—as if it were associated with a particular place. The pieces seemed to fit. We had Triagon on Luna as the departure point for a migration; a stockpile of materials that wouldn't have been suitable for Luna; and those materials being talked about in connection with a specific place." Kyal looked around, inviting the obvious completion.

Casselo voiced it. "The place where the migration was heading." Heads here and there around the table nodded, intrigued.

"These weapons." The speaker was a young exo-historian called Lewen, whom Sherven had introduced as working closely with Frazin. "Couldn't they have been just a provision for their own internal security? I mean . . ." he looked around with a wry expression, "we are talking about Terrans, after all."

"Not really, if you look at the kinds of things it lists," Kyal replied. "There was practically enough there to start one of their wars. It had to be a contingency against possible external threats."

"Was it going to be a migration, or an invasion?" somebody quipped.

There were no further points. Kyal resumed, "But as more was discovered, the idea of Providence being supplies for a migration started to look less credible. The amounts were too vast—more than they could believably have transported to Luna."

"More than Triagon could have held," Sherven murmured. He had been one of the first to express doubts.

Mellios Chown, a geographer based on
Explorer 6
, who was cataloging Terran place names, asked, "Why would they have to take all of it? Maybe in a situation like that you'd hoard large stocks of everything yu could get while it was available, and be selective later about what you actually wanted to take with you."

"Why ship all of it to Luna?" Yorim queried. "It would make more sense to do the selecting first."

Casselo added, "And if they did do the selecting at Triagon, where's all the stuff they didn't take? It's not there."

Chown bunched his mouth and nodded in a way that said there was no arguing with that.

"It's funny how often the obvious is the last thing to occur to us, isn't it?" Kyal said to the table.

"Oh, not really," Sherven remarked breezily. "It's for the same reason that something you've lost always turn up in the last place you look: Who's going to carry on looking after they've found it?" It produced a few smiles.

"Well, it was Yorim who finally saw the obvious," Kyal said.

"Only because of something Mirine said," Yorim put in.

"Mirine? You mean Lorili Hilivar's assistant?" Nostreny looked astonished.

"Yes," Yorim confirmed.

"Well, who would have thought it?" Nostreny waved vaguely to take in the table. "Is she aware that this is all her doing?"

"You know, I don't think she is," Kyal said.

"Oh dear. We'll have to put that right," Sherven told them.

Kyal came to the point by motioning with the copy of Sherven's summary note that he had been toying with while he spoke. "What we're proposing now, instead, is that Providence was not an exotic supply program for beginning a new life somewhere else at all, but a survival cache that had been left back on Earth. That does away with the problem posed by the sheer volume of it. And when you put yourself in the position of the Terrans, it makes perfect sense. If the reason for the Terminus program in the first place was to escape the consequences of a war that threatened to be globally devastating, what kind of prospect would they have faced coming back to? Wouldn't one of the first provisions of any competent planner be to make sure they would have the means to survive and get started again?" Kyal glanced at Lewen, the exo-historian. "And there's your reason for including some heavy-grade weaponry. You wouldn't know what to expect from the survivors." Lewen nodded without comment.

A planetary physicist called Hiok observed, "So the possibility of migration isn't ruled out." He sounded as if he hoped not. "A survival cache set up back on Earth could just as easily have been to provide for a forced return from anywhere, not just a planned return from Luna."

"It's not ruled out," Casselo agreed. "There's just no reason for introducing it."

Nostreny shifted in his chair, rubbed the back of his neck dubiously, and looked at Sherven. "To be honest, I was never really keen on that starship idea, Fil. Even if they did have a more advanced propulsion technology than we thought, as Fellow Reen said, at best it seems they were still
developing
it. Why in secret, and why on the back of their moon, I don't know—but that's Terrans. Would they have entrusted themselves to something like that? I don't think I would have. It just sounded too farfetched."

"We have records of several star-probe studies," Sherven replied. "And there is some evidence that they were engaged in active development." It was one of his pet ideas, and he wasn't going to let go of it lightly. But his tone was resigned.

Hiok took up Nostreny's point. "Unmanned probes, yes. But that's a very different matter from supporting a viable human colony. And as far as I'm aware, we don't have any proof that they ever actually launched anything."

"That's true," Sherven had to admit.

Hiok gestured apologetically. "And even if they did, there wouldn't have been enough time for them to receive any reconnaissance information back. They would have been going blind into something completely unknown. Is that really credible?"

"Not for us, probably," Sherven said, and left it at that.

Yorim came in again. "Nothing specifically connects the star-probe studies with the electromagnetic work at Triagon," he reminded everyone. "They could have been coincidental. If Terminus was a migration program, it could still have been to somewhere in the Solar System that has changed radically. We think the Solar System has remained essentially unchanged since the time of the Terrans, but it's not certain."

"Right," Hiok said. "We know they made a couple of manned visits to Mars. Maybe there was more going on there than we've realized. Perhaps we should be thinking about looking at Mars more closely." He sent Sherven an inquiring look.

"Perhaps," Sherven agreed neutrally.

"The Terrans' records show it as being not very different from the way it is now," Casselo pointed out.

"I'm still not convinced about the idea of them migrating
anywhere
," Nostreny said. "I mean, why take all the risks associated with going out somewhere totally unknown, when all they had to do was wait it out and go back to Earth? It doesn't make any sense to me—especially if, as we're now hearing, this whole Providence thing was a survival cache waiting back there for them anyway."

"We're only saying that its being a survival cache on Earth doesn't rule migration out, Garki," Casselo reminded him.

"I know, I know. I was just making the point," Nostreny said.

Kyal waited until they had settled down again. "All of those possibilities are valid. But the crucial point is this.
If
any Terrans did in fact return to Earth, they would have formed a colony that existed somewhere—for a while at least—
after
the final war, which is where all the records that we have at the moment cease. So, if we can locate where Providence was, the chances are that it will give us a source of invaluable information on the last days of the Terrans—maybe far more complete and of better quality than the fragments we've been forced to work with up until now." He paused to let them take that in.

"It might give us some clues on what exactly did wipe the Terrans out, finally," Lewen mused, half to himself.

"A good example," Kyal agreed.

An assortment of odd looks, exchanged glances, and then murmurs greeted him as one by one the others saw the implication of what he had been leading up to. He sat back, allowing them to reflect on it. Lewen frowned at his hands, then looked along the table. "If they did return, wouldn't we already know about it?" he said.

"How so?" Kyal invited.

"I'd have thought there would be evidence of it. The place would have been opened up. With all the orbital reconnaissance and aerial surveys we've done over the years, wouldn't we have found it by now?"

"I'm not so sure we would," Kyal replied. "Think about it. If you were leaving a world that was on the verge of a major Terran-style war, would you want it to be common knowledge where you had left your cache of supplies and equipment for when you come back? Of course not. It would be the first place that survivors would raid and loot. So you'd make sure it was well hidden, probably in some out-of-the-way area. And you certainly wouldn't advertise it with lights and signs. But you've got a point. If we can find where Providence was, its condition will tell us if anyone returned to it."

"Not necessarily." Chown came back in. "Even if it were opened up, it could still have been by survivors from the war who just stumbled on it."

"That's possible," Kyal agreed. "But if was opened by the people who set it up returning, I'd expect there to be a good chance of finding evidence that would identify them."

"The only way we'll ever know is by locating Providence," someone else said. "That has to be the first priority. Fellow Reen is right."

Reactions were becoming positive. It was time to move things along, Kyal decided. "And here's something that might give us a start." He used his phone to bring up on the central wall screen a copy of the pilot's log that he and Yorim had first looked at in the Decoding Room at Triagon, with the reference:
Simulator Test P37-G. Gulf Map
,
Sheet 172

And text:

11 o'clock approach midway between La Paz and coast
,
homing peak bearing checks at 5.778

Following right-hand shore

Landfall 0
.
384

1
^st
marker 0
.
577

2nd marker 0
.
715

GZ on visual at 0
.
838
.
Approach too steep
.
Almost overshot into High Lake
.

"This was recovered from some reactivated Terran electronics at Triagon," he informed the company. "They appear to be flight notes made by the pilot of an aircraft. From the mentions of coast and shore, it evidently describes somewhere on Earth. And from the header, it's connected with Providence. At first—when we thought Providence was part of the Terminus program on Luna—we didn't attach any great significance to this item. Our guess was that it referred to a supply or collection point somewhere, that was involved in the general Providence operation. But if Providence was located somewhere on Earth, this could have a whole new significance."

All eyes turned back toward the screen as the listeners took in its content from this new perspective. "You're saying this could refer to the location of Providence itself," Emur Frazin said eventually. It was the first time he had spoken. This latest turn had evidently aroused his interest.

"Right," Kyal confirmed.

"A moment ago it was a—what did you call it?—a supply or collection point for onward shipping somewhere," Lewen pointed out. "Why should it suddenly mean the location of Providence?"

"It might not," Kyal conceded. "But at least it becomes a possibility that didn't exist before—if Providence wasn't on Earth."