“Thanks.” He forced down the lump in his throat, sought to cover with information the emotions he was feeling. “The Syrax supplied me with an enormous amount of usable information. I drew on this store without being aware of it. The rest subsequently became available when I was made aware of my origins at GATE Station and when the now obliterated transmitter in my brain was activated.
“I’ve had a lot of time to run through those implanted memories. Some of it I don’t understand. My perspective is too human. Much of it is fairly comprehensible, like mathematics and other nonabstracts.
“The Syrax are a very old race, Jeeter. Travel through space via starship is a long, tedious process, but they’ve been at it for thousands of years. Some of their drone ships have taken that long to reach their programmed destinations and return. Some are still outbound after millennia and won’t return until all of us are long dead.
“Why do you think they’ve been trying so hard to steal the secret of the GATE? Because they’ve amassed a catalog of habitable worlds, worlds that would take hundreds of years for colonizing ships to reach. Since their society abjures war, and is far more moral than ours, there’s little they can do except try to buy the secret from WOSA, or bend their rules to the breaking point by attempting to steal it.”
“Why not just make a fair trade for the information?”
“They’re a little bit afraid of humankind, I believe, and they’d like very much to keep us pinned down on Earth and its two colonies. That’s another decision that’s caused them a lot of moral anguish. They’re at once contemptuous, fearful, and intrigued by us. One day we’ll either be friends, or there’ll be a war which I fear mankind might lose.
“Included in their catalog are a number of worlds suitable for human occupation. Some are more than merely suitable. The one I have in mind might as well be named Paradise.”
“If they think you’ve gained access to all your stored information after having turned your back on them, the Syrax must consider you the most dangerous being alive. They must be worried to death that after accepting your humanity, you’ll turn your information over to human authorities.”
“I suspect that’s exactly what they think, but I don’t think they’re worried. They must know by now that I’ve fled beyond human as well as Syrax reach. Of course, human authorities feel exactly the same way about me.”
“Isn’t it nice to be popular,” Jeeter muttered sarcastically.
“I’m sure they’re not worried,” Eric went on. “Disappointed that their device failed them, but not worried. Colonists and supplies are still coming through the GATE here at regular intervals. If the Syrax believed I’d fallen into the hands of human scientists, I don’t think the GATE or much of anything else would be operating normally anymore.”
Jeeter stared into his friend’s eyes. “Tell me something, Eric. If the Syrax arrived here and approached you, would you turn over the information they want?”
“No. I owe them nothing, just as I owe mankind nothing. Neither has any claim on me. All I want is the chance to live out my life with Lisa as quietly and inconspicuously as possible. I’ve made real friends here—you, Madras, others. In my opinion, you owe the governments of Earth no more than I do. We’ve all been lied to and we’ve all been used.”
“True enough.” Jeeter leaned close. “Tell me more about this paradise world you’ve found inside your head.” Eric noticed the rest of the barn’s staff moving close to listen.
“It’s farther from Earth than either Eden or Garden, much farther. I know its coordinates well enough to translate them into figures the GATE Terminus could use. The computations are complex, but I could work them out, especially if I had help."
“Some of the finest practical engineers alive are here on Eden,” someone in the crowd pointed out.
“I know,” Eric told the speaker. “I’ve been working with some of them."
Suddenly Jeeter’s excitement faded. “None of which does us a damn bit of good, since there’s no way you can turn a receiving terminal into a broadcast terminus.”
Eric nodded in agreement. “The power requirements alone place it beyond reach of any colony’s resources, not to mention the fact that a transmitter must be placed in free space beyond gravitational and magnetic interference. “However,” he announced quietly, as though giving the temperature outside, “it is possible to reverse the polarity from either end, so long as sufficient power is available.”
A rising murmur from the crowd filled the barn. Jeeter spoke for all of them.
“Come on, Eric! We all know that traffic through the GATE system is strictly one-way.”
“One way at a time,” Eric corrected him. “I’ve been working on the problem ever since I got here, and I’ve had access to Syrax as well as human knowledge. In theory, there’s no reason why it can’t be done.”
“That would mean,” Jeeter said slowly, “that we could all return to GATE Terminus, to Earth, if we wanted to. All of us.”
“I asked if you thought people would do that, given the opportunity. You said they wouldn’t.”
“I say it again, though I suppose a few might prove me wrong. But you’re no physicist, Eric. The GATE’S been in operation for a century and a half. It seems incredible that you’d stumble across something so important where dozens of engineers who’ve made the GATE their life’s work would miss it.”
“What makes you think they missed it?” Eric asked him softly.
He might as well have set off a paralysis bomb in the barn. The silence ended with a flurry of angry, explosive questions.
When the first fury had vented itself and the room had quieted down, Eric continued.
“Do you think that, after stealing the lives of your parents and grandparents, WOSA or the Colligatarch would risk letting the disenchanted and the tricked return to Earth? There’s too much at stake, from their point of view.
“Earth is threatened by its own burgeoning population, old tribal rivalries, new diseases, and off in the background, the Syrax. The two colonies are safety valves. You’ve been planted here to ensure the survival of the human race should the mother world be visited by catastrophe. If it’s necessary to lie to make certain the colonies are properly populated and stay that way, do you think the government’s not going to do it?
“I’m sure the secret of two-way travel via the GATE system is known only to a very few top scientists and leaders. Certainly the GATE Station crew isn’t aware of it. Too dangerous to let them in on it. Some disgruntled engineer might want to bring back a friend or two. Much better to make it plain that GATE travel is strictly a one-way trip. Jeeter, would your grandparents have stuck it out on this icebox if they could have returned home?” Murmurs of agreement rose from the crowd.
“I doubt it, too,” Eric went on. “The colony would never have grown, and it was important for it to grow, for the reasons I just alluded to. You’ve all been lied to and used.”
After a solemn pause Jeeter asked hesitantly, “And you can modify the receiving terminal here to permit travel back to GATE Terminus?”
“I think so. There’s some risk.”
From the back of the crowd an engineer declared, “The GATE is always powered up. It’s too expensive to shut down.”
“Then there’s no reason why we can’t reverse the polarity and make the GATE swing both ways,” Eric insisted.
“That doesn’t get us to this paradise of yours,” another technician pointed out.
“True. But we can realign the system and project a receive unit like this one”—he gestured at the framed darkness nearby—“to a new world. We can go from Eden to GATE Station, and then from GATE Station to—”
“Paradise?” someone else finished for him.
“How do we know,” asked the engineer who’d spoken first, “if any of what you’re telling us is the truth, that it’s not part of some greater Syrax plot to get you back to GATE Station so they can pick you up and milk your mind?”
