Michael Kube-McDowell - The Quiet Pools

“While you were gone, I appear to have received a message from Mr. McCutcheon,” said Lila.

His breath caught. “What? Is he alive?”

“I don’t know, Christopher.”

“What other possibility is there?”

“The message may have been composed earlier and stored until after a trigger event or a specified time. It’s even possible that I sent the message to myself.”

Sliding into the chair at the comsole, Christopher said, “Let me see it.”

“I’m sorry. I do not have a copy of it. I would not be able to show it to you if I did.”

“Damn it, who’s in charge here? Do I have primary user status or not?”

“You have visitor status, Christopher. Mr. McCutcheon is the primary user.”

Which meant that the initialization Christopher had completed before leaving the house had been erased and replaced. “Then tell me what you do know. What the message was and where it came from.”

“I only know that several of my directories are restored, and the time stamp on my command files is only a few minutes old. That’s what I would expect to find if I had received a self-executing command file.”

“Do you remember Mikhail Dryke being here?”

“No.”

“Do you know who he is?”

“Yes, Christopher. If he was here, that is a reason for concern.”

“What are you doing now besides talking to me?”

“My first instruction is to try to locate Mr. McCutcheon.”

Christopher frowned. “What if you can’t find him?”

“I have contingent instructions. Do you know where Mr. McCutcheon is?”

“My father is dead.” It was easier than it should have been to say.

“His death has not been recorded, and his skylink address is still active and pointed here. How do you know that he’s dead?”

“Because you told me, two hours ago. And Dryke confirmed it. What else did my father tell you to do?”

“I’m sorry, Christopher. I am not allowed to tell you.”

Christopher felt a quick flash of impatience. “Look, Lila, Dryke already knows, unless the message came in by parachute—I can’t imagine that they’re not still monitoring this house. What good does it do for him to know and me to be in the dark? And if you’re going to be carrying on with Homeworld business, I want to know.”

“I’m aware of the monitoring, Christopher. I’ve been instructed not to place you at risk.”

“Maybe I want to be put at risk,” Christopher said, the thought springing new into his mind as he spoke it. “Maybe I’m going to want to draw Dryke back here. Lila, was my father Jeremiah?”

“Yes, Christopher. Your father used that name.”

“Why that name?”

“I don’t know the significance. But your father’s grandfather was named William Jeremiah McCutcheon.”

“I never knew that,” Christopher said. “I never knew him . The face and voice—that was you?”

“I coordinated the simulations.”

Christopher was silent for a long moment. “What if I said I wanted to take over my father’s work? All of it.”

“A successor has already been selected.”

The words stung, even though his offer had been more an arguing point than any serious intention. “Selected by who? You?”

“Mr. McCutcheon made the selection.”

Not good enough. Still not good enough to earn his respect. Was that the real message of the secrets ? He had spent his whole life trying to be the best. I never would have guessed how little being good at what I do would matter —

“Lila, why didn’t my father tell me what he was doing?”

“I’m sorry, Christopher. I don’t know.”

No easy answers . He had allowed himself to hope someone from Homeworld would appear to offer kindly explanations and refuge, to acknowledge a debt and pledge a bond of kinship. But he saw now that it was not going to happen. He was not going to be embraced by his father’s friends—by Jeremiah’s friends. If his father had not welcomed him, had not trusted him, how could he expect that anyone else would? He would have to find answers to his other questions on his own.

“Lila, what’s the status of the house library?”

“The house library is empty.”

“Hidden files? Protected files?”

“I’m sorry, Christopher.”

“Is there anything left? Anything from my father? Anything about my father? About my family?”

“Mr. McCutcheon kept personal files in off-line storage, not as part of the house library,” said Lila.

Reason to hope, however feeble. “Then Dryke may have taken them. Where were they? What medium?”

“Books,” Lila said.

Christopher did not have to be told where to look. He went directly to his father’s bedroom, to the long shelf below the west-facing window and the long row of hardcover books atop it. He had noticed them during his imprisonment, even picked one up and glanced briefly through it.

He had noted them as curiosities, both because books in general were rare and because the particular form of these books was unusual. For, with one or two exceptions, the books were all Portables—traditional print volumes with their contents duplicated electronically in the binding for access by a computer. The Portables were designed to be shelved on special bookcases, “plugged in” to smart ports, although the shelf in his father’s room was not one such.

It was a transitional technology, predicated on the notion that traditional readers would resist surrendering their words-in-boards for slates, but might welcome having the contents of their libraries on-line for quick reference. Never more than a modest success, the Portables had all but vanished from the marketplace before Christopher was born. They survived only as collectibles, and he had not known his father was a collector.

Scanning the titles, Christopher found historicals, art books, Locke, Eiseley, Kant, a biography of John Muir, and one fiction best-seller, Wolf’s Lord of Sipán . And that was all. “Nothing personal here. Dryke must have taken them,” Christopher said. His voice was heavy with disappointment.

“Did you find any books?”

“Yes—”

“Would you count them, please?”

Christopher’s eyes skipped down the line. “Thirty-one.”

“Then none are missing. They are all there.”

“But I don’t see any journals, any diaries, any albums—”

“There are none to find, Christopher. The bindings are standardized. The texts vary in length. So there is always unused space in a Portable’s chipdisk. Each of those books contains more than its cover admits to,” said Lila. “As much as several hundred kilobytes per book.”

“That isn’t very much.”

“It is when you are only storing words, Christopher.”

Shaking his head, Christopher said, “I didn’t know this was possible, and cultural media are supposed to be my specialty.”

“If you had known, then probably Mikhail Dryke would also have known, and the books would be gone.”

Christopher’s face screwed up into a mystified frown. “Lila, how did you know about this? It had to be in the restored files.”

“Yes, Christopher.”

Tentatively, he reached out and pulled Clark’s Indian Legends of the Pacific Northwest from the ranks. “But only some of your files were restored.”

“Yes, Christopher.”

He looked up from the book in the direction of Lila’s voice. “Then this was important. He wanted me to know they were here. He wanted me to read them.”

“Yes, Christopher,” said Lila. “After he was dead, and only if you asked about them.”

“Who else?”

“I am not allowed to show them to anyone else.”

“Not even Lynn-Anne?”