Three weeks later, in the evening, she was traveling in the first-class cabin for the trip to Preben, the major city in Saharia, to be followed by another supersonic flight to Australia. She had arranged four days at the University of Borigine. It was not terribly far from an ancient town named Darwin, a name still familiar after so many thousands of years. She took subsonic rail from the terminal, seventy kilometers away, to get her to the university minutes later.
It was noon and hot, the sun almost directly overhead, fierce in its heat. She was tired after half a day of travel and wanted to rest. She checked in at a new on-campus high-rise and dropped her bag in her room on the fifty-seventh floor. Rather than sleep, she left in search of the archival access section of the library.
The campus sprawled for miles, it seemed. Buildings of all ages were here. Some looked hundreds of years old to her. The library was fairly new and gleamed as it loomed high among other tall buildings. The campus, in addition to being large and tall, was crammed with students and others. Spreading banyans and other trees provided a canopy over most of her route. It took longer to walk the one-half kilometer to the library than it took to come seventy kilometers from the terminal. She was sweating when she entered the building, wishing she had found a cooler route.
Archival access was near the top of the building. Porliche smiled inside, expecting it to be in the fourth level of the basement. She was the only person left on the elevator when it stopped on the eighty-first floor. She presented her credentials, including her funding card, which were verified within a few seconds. She got a temporary ID and computer access codes. She was then allowed to roam where she wished. Most of the computer bays were vacant. She took one, did a fingerprint sign-in, and attached her drive to the computer. After the computer scanned the drive for viruses, she began looking for the Gwolono references she needed. Each was a restricted access requiring a fingerprint sign-in and a fee deducted from the funding card. These documents were mostly scanned papers at extremely high resolution with microscopic accuracy and full color. She was allowed to acquire only one verified copy of each that were encoded such that if unauthorized copies were found, she could be readily identified as the source. Cha-ching. She stored the needed information on her drive.
After a few hours, she could not keep her eyes open. It was middle of the night according to her circadian rhythms. She had enough to review back in her room. She made the walk through a hotter but less congested campus back to her place and crashed fully clothed on the bed.
What seemed like a few minutes later, repetitive knocking at her door gradually awakened her. Looking at the time, it was early evening, three hours since she fell asleep. The knocking persisted, so she opened the door. There stood a tall woman who extended her hand as she spoke.
“Hi. I’m Nin, a professor of religious history. Is this an inconvenient time to talk?”
Nin was dressed like so many others at this university. She wore a one-piece, skintight, dark-blue suit that looped around her neck, leaving her shoulders and arms bare, and extended to her upper thighs. It appeared that undergarments were optional in Australia. Her hair was straight and light blond with a mane that extended down her neck and onto her back. It was a trait, Porliche knew, that began naturally in the brief ice age. Many liked the look and the practicality and underwent genetic engineering so their offspring would have the advantage of more warmth and style. Nin, whose hair was long enough to reach below her waist, extended an ID badge with her holographic photo and name.
“I’m really tired. What’s this about?”
“It’s about the documents you researched today.”
“I had permission.”
“It’s not about that. I would like to talk about the reasons you are looking at Gwolono materials and references, that’s all. Let me buy you dinner. You must be hungry as well as tired.”
“Give me a minute. Come in.”
A few minutes later, they were on the top floor of the hotel in an informal restaurant. Nin shook her head as she sat so as not to sit on her longest stands of mane. They each ordered a glass of Australian Bordeaux wine.
“You have come a long way,” Nin said, “to work on your dissertation. That’s admirable. So your interest is not religious?”
“You look young to be a professor,” she said, adjusting her glasses.
“Clean living or chemistry, you’re wondering. I’m over forty, unfortunately. What’s your theme?”
“In general, it is in how religious events alter history.”
“Big topic. Religion has shaped history as much or more than has knowledge. Gwolono and his followers had a negligible effect on world history, but it had some effects on Saharia. It was a brief and tiny movement, lasting a few hundred years.”
“But the notion, the possibility, that mankind found a planet like ours where we could live as we do here would be a sentinel historical event.”
“I agree. It would be if it happened. It was never verified.”
“I am not certain about that. What I suspect is that no credence was given to these people who found the Bunker. They were branded as religious zealots by both the Saharian and Atlantican governments and dismissed, possibly as a way of continuing the shaky peace agreement between them.”
The restaurant was half empty and quiet. Porliche’s voice carried, and several diners turned. Both of them noticed and scooted their chairs closer together.
“A conspiracy? You think the people in power suppressed this information?” Nin whispered, and the heads around them turned away.
“They were politicians and, almost by definition, corrupt.”
“You are a historian.” Nin smiled at her own joke.
“I don’t know if there was a cover-up, and that’s not my main interest.”
“It would be mine,” Nin interrupted.
“I think there may be a way to figure out whether any messages were received on these instruments.”
“How?”
“Bhat, my husband and a scientist of sorts,”—she exaggerated slightly—“thinks it strange that no memory card or chip recorded the signal. There might be some obscure declassified reference to that in the information here or in Atlanticus.”
The server arrived, and they ordered dinner.
“What about finding the chip or whatever?” Nin asked.
“Bhat is certain they would have erased it.”
“If they found it,” Nin added. The topics wandered as they chatted idly as they ate, Porliche learning about life on this side of the world and vice versa. The crowd was a diverse bunch, clearly coming from all corners of the globe to this tower of academia. Toward the end of the meal, Nin asked, “Are you religious?”
“No.”
“I am a Reaper.” Nin spoke intensely, leaning forward and looking Porliche in her eyes as if searching for a visceral response. “That is why I am interested in your topic.”