"Your actions betray your words," Frenua Showm retorted. "If you believed that you had pacified a warlike planet, you would have been proud of the achievement. You would not have concealed the fact. But you did the opposite. You presented a falsified picture of Earth that showed it as warlike when in fact it was moving in exactly the direction that you should have considered desirable. You successfully delayed its advancement until its Minervan inheritance had been diluted sufficiently for it to advance wisely. But not only did you conceal that fact, you distorted it. How do you explain that?"
"A temporary aberration," Broghuilio replied. "Underneath nothing has changed. We altered the more recent development so that you would not be misled. A final solution to the problem was still called for."
Heller was thinking rapidly as she listened. The "final solution" had to mean that the Jevlenese had used Earth’s belligerence as an excuse to maintain their own military forces as she had suspected. It seemed to support another line of thought that her researches had caused her to wonder about, and here was an opportunity to test it. But to do so she would have to resort to bluff again. "I challenge that explanation," she said. "What I have described so far is only part of what the Jevlenese have been doing." All the heads in the room turned toward her. "By the time of the nineteenth century, it was obvious that Western civilization was rapidly spreading science and industrial technology across the globe in spite of all their efforts. At that point the Jevlenese changed their tactics. They actually began to stimulate and accelerate scientific discovery by leaking information in various quarters that precipitated major breakthroughs." She turned her head a fraction. "Dr. Hunt. Would you like to comment, please?"
Hunt had been expecting the question. He stood up and said, "The sharp discontinuities and nonlinearities that attended the major breakthroughs in physics and mathematics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have been a mystery for a long time. In my opinion, such conceptual revolutions could not have happened in the time they did without some external influence."
"Thank you," Heller said. Hunt sat down. She looked back at the Thuriens, more than a few of whom appeared puzzled. "Why would the Jevlenese do such a thing when their policy up until then had been to retard their rival? Because they were forced to accept the fact that they would not be able to keep Earth back any longer. Therefore, if Earth was about to become a high-technology planet anyway, the Jevlenese decided to use their already established infrastructure of influence to steer that advancement in such a direction that their rival would eliminate itself. In other words they set out to engineer events in such a way that the sciences which they themselves had helped develop would be used not to eradicate the scourges that had plagued mankind throughout history, but to wage war on a global scale and with unprecedented ferocity." She watched Broghuilio carefully as she spoke, and saw that she had hit the mark. Now was the moment to go for the kill.
"Deny that it was Jevlenese agents who infiltrated the European nobility at the end of the nineteenth century and created the rash of internecine jealousies that culminated in the horrors of the First World War," she challenged in a suddenly loud and cutting voice. "Deny that it was a Jevlenese-controlled organization that seized control of Russia after the 1917 revolution and developed the prototype for the totalitarian police state. And deny that you set up a Jevlenese group in the wreckage of postwar Germany to resurrect the hatreds that the League of Nations was formed to resolve by peaceful means. They were led by some very carefully selected and trained individuals, weren’t they? What happened to the real Adolf Hitler? Or perhaps you operated from behind the throne-Alfred Rosenberg, perhaps?" The three Jevlenese did not have to say anything. Their frozen postures and stunned expressions provided all the confirmation needed. Heller turned her head toward the Thuriens and explained, "World War II was supposed to be nuclear. The necessary scientific, political, social, and economic prerequisites had all been taken care of. It didn’t quite work as planned, but it came frighteningly close."
A new wave of mutterings broke out among the Thuriens. Heller waited for it to subside and then concluded in a quieter voice, "The tensions continued for over half a century, but despite the continuing Jevlenese efforts, the global catastrophe that they sought never quite took place." The next part was pure guesswork, but she continued without any change of tone. "They concluded that one day they would have to confront their rival themselves, and so embarked on a program of exaggerating Earth’s wars and armament developments to justify to the Thuriens their creation of a ‘protective’ strength of their own. At the same time they reversed their policy on Earth and used their network to defuse tensions, promote disarmament, and permit its people to develop their talents and resources creatively in the ways they had always wanted to. The object of this, of course, was to turn Earth into a defenseless target. To maintain the justification for increasing their own armed forces, they supplied the Thuriens with what gradually became a total fantasy manufactured inside JEVEX."
Heller paused again, but this time there was no sound. She wheeled around to point at the Jevlenese, and her voice rose to an accusing shout. "They accuse us of killing each other, when all the time they know full well that their agents have orchestrated the worst episodes of havoc and bloodshed in Earth’s history. They have murdered more people than all the leaders of planet Earth put together." Her voice fell to an ominous whisper. "But the unexpected arrival of the Shapieron threw all those plans into confusion. Here was a group of Ganymeans who would expose the lie if they were allowed to make contact with Thurien. Now we see the real reason why its existence was never disclosed." The color was draining from Broghuilio’s face. Wylott had turned scarlet and seemed to be having difficulty breathing, while on Broghuilio’s other side Estordu was dripping with perspiration and shaking visibly. Across the room Garuth, Shilohin, and Monchar were sitting forward tensely as they sensed the moment approaching for them to reveal themselves.
"And now we come to the question of the Shapieron ," Heller said. Her tone was almost soft, but menace was glittering in her eyes as she fixed them upon the Jevlenese. "We heard earlier a suggestion that Earth had sabotaged it. The suggestion is based on what we have seen to be lies. The Shapieron was never in any jeopardy at any time during the six months it was on Earth. On the contrary, our relationship with the Ganymeans was very friendly. We have ample records to prove that." She paused for a second. "But we do not have to rely on those records to prove that Earth did nothing to harm that ship or its occupants. We have far more convincing evidence than that." Across the room Garuth and his companions stiffened. Calazar was about to give the instruction to VISAR.
And the Jevlenese vanished.
The floor where they had been standing was suddenly empty. Surprised murmurs broke out on all sides. After a few seconds VISAR announced, "JEVEX is cutting all its links. I have no access to it at all. It is ignoring requests to reconnect."
"What do you mean?" Calazar asked. "You have no communications to Jevlen at all?"
"The whole planet is isolating itself," VISAR replied. "All the Jevlenese worlds are disconnecting. JEVEX has detached and become an independent system. No further conununications or visits within its operating zone are possible."