The Quiet Pools

“But what does that mean to you?” Tidwell said. “I half believe that you’ve been watching for it to happen.”

“We have been watching for certain signs,” said Sasaki. “Some time ago, the sociometric unit prepared a study of the rising curve of opposition to the Diaspora. It contained a multi-stranded prediction, specifying several checkpoints and watershed events. Malena’s murder and your assessment of the situation in Houston both fit the projection.”

“Why was this study kept from me?” asked Tidwell.

Sasaki showed a flash of annoyance. “As you said yourself, your province is the past, not the future. It was not kept from you. It was simply not relevant to your work.”

“I would like to have made that judgment myself,” said Tidwell, somewhat chastened. “In any case, I now understand your concern.”

“Our concern is long-standing.” She gestured with her right hand, her simple metal bracelet gleaming. “To date, all is as predicted—the changing political and social climate, the drop in options and acceptances, and now the violence.”

Tidwell’s expression was a troubled one. “What lies at the end of the curve? What does this mean for Knossos?”

Sasaki was slow to respond, and it seemed to those in the room with her at Prainha that it was less for lack of an answer than for her reluctance to voice it.

“I suppose that circumstance has now made the study relevant to your office,” she said at last. “If the projection continues to hold, we will never build Knossos.”

“What!”

“Or Mohenjo-Daro, or Teotihuacan,” Sasaki continued. “The Diaspora will end with Memphis. That, Mr. Tidwell, is why Malena Graham is so important.”

“Then I will hope that fortune-telling is a less exact science than history,” Tidwell said. “Good night, Director.”

“May I ask him one more question?” It was the woman to Sasaki’s right.

Sasaki gestured her assent.

“This boy you were talking to that night—the archie you left Malena for. Did you learn anything from him?”

Eyes haunted, Tidwell slowly shook his head. “That cuts the deepest,” he said. “There was nothing he could tell me, because he didn’t know himself.”

When Tidwell was gone, there was an uneasy silence in the garden room. Sasaki rose wordlessly and crossed the room to the dispenser for a cup of Japanese tea. One of the men stood at the window-wall at the far end of the room, looking out at the lights of the spaceport.

“That’s it, then,” he said finally. “We’ve crossed a threshold.”

No one spoke.

“I’m surprised you told Dr. Tidwell as much as you did,” said the woman when Sasaki rejoined them.

“It was time for him to know.”

“But not the whole story.”

“He is my barometer,” she said. “He now knows as much as he needs.”

“I don’t think you should have soft-pedaled it,” said the man at the window, returning to his chair. “The truth is, we’ll be lucky if they don’t find a way to stop Memphis.”

“I can’t accept that,” said Matt Reid, skylinked from Takara. “We can’t just sit still and let them come get us.”

“The study makes clear that we can only hasten our decline by matching their tactics,” said Sasaki. “We have seen already, in the Singapore incident, that we are judged by stricter standards.”

“Maybe I’m the only one here,” said the supervisor, “but I don’t take the study as gospel. I’m not seeing any of this up here. And I hate like hell to hear this kind of negativism on the committee.”

“Takara is a special population,” said the woman. “It will reach there last.”

“I don’t see why we can’t fight this,” the supervisor persisted. “And I’d put finding some way to silence this Silverman at the top of the list. It shouldn’t be too hard to find someone willing to go head-hunting.”

“No,” Sasaki said forcefully. “It is already too late for that. Mr. Silverman made his statement with his hands. His words are merely echoes, and you cannot silence an echo.”

“So we’re going to do nothing,” said the supervisor, disgusted.

“We will do what we planned to do, three years ago,” said Sasaki. “We prepared for a contingency no one wanted to believe in. Mr. Marshall”—she nodded toward the man by the window—“said that we would laugh at ourselves for fools the day that Knossos sailed. Is there anyone on the committee who truly believes we will see that day?”

She looked at each of them in turn. No one spoke.

“I accept the inevitability of the inevitable, the reality of the real,” she said. “But this is no surrender. Memphis must sail. We cannot allow the success of the Diaspora to depend on a single ship.”

“Is there any better news from Ur?” asked the woman.

Sasaki shook her head. “The trouble continues. There is no danger to the ship at present, and apparently little danger any more that they will turn back. But the new governor holds out little hope for a return to normalcy.”

Marshall shook his head. “If he can’t deliver, then we may have picked the wrong boy to overthrow Milton.”

“The truth is that there is little we can do from here to influence events onUr,” said Sasaki. “The threat of a communications embargo is rather a feeble lever. Our focus must be on that which we can control—the future of Memphis.”

“Are you putting Contingency Zero in effect?” asked Marshall.

“Yes. As of this meeting. Your individual responsibilities are contained in locked files which were transferred to your private libraries earlier this evening. The key is ‘Lights out.’ ” She smiled wryly at Marshall. “That was your phrase, as I recall.”

“Last one on the planet, turn out the lights,” Marshall said. “Yes. That was me.”

Sasaki continued, “When you review your files, keep in mind that the first priority will be to establish a firm timetable for the move—”

The slate on Sasaki’s lap suddenly began to chirp insistently. At the same time, the skylink displays blanked to white, and the black-bordered box of a flash alert appeared in the center of each. In the center of the box appeared C. Gustav Feist, site director for the Munich center. His face was flushed, and his hands slashed the air as he spoke.

“Director Sasaki,” he said hoarsely. “Where is Dryke? He won’t answer his page. Where is he?”

“He’s gone to bed, I presume. He may be off-net. What is happening, Mr. Feist?”

Feist’s eyes were pleading with the committee. “The gateway was closed, just as he instructed. Closed! Not thirty minutes. The com staff swears to it. None too soon, I thought. Now this.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You haven’t been told?” Feist looked away from his camera as he listened to someone off-screen. “Gott in Himmel. It’s still going on.”

“What’s going on?” Marshall demanded.

“It must be Jeremiah,” Feist said agitatedly. “There’s a virus in the engineering network, tearing up the development systems. We can’t freeze it, we can’t kill it, and it won’t let us shut down. I’ve got to go. We’re being brain-burned, Director. Brain-burned while we’re talking.”

CHAPTER 22