Jack McDevitt - Coming Home

During the next few days, he spoke to every living relative who’d had any kind of connection with Baylee. Most hadn’t known him very well. “He was away all the time,” they said. A few weren’t even aware of his connection with the Golden Age. Others knew, but it had no real significance for them. He had spent so much time away that no one had maintained contact with him. And we found nobody who had even heard of a Corbett transmitter.

I got a call one afternoon from Juanita Biyanca while I was closing up. “I represent the Capella Families,” she said. “Is Alex available?” She was probably well into her second century. And she looked like a woman on a mission.

“What is the Capella Families?”

“It’s exactly what it sounds like. The families are coming together. We don’t trust the government to handle the rescue properly. We don’t want them trying anything that will get everybody killed.”

I could hear Alex in the kitchen. “Hold on a second, Juanita. Let me see if he’s back yet.” I signaled Jacob to ask Alex whether he wanted to take the call.

Moments later, he walked into my office. “Hello, Juanita. What can I do for you?”

“Mr. Benedict, it’s becoming obvious they are not going to be able to get everyone off when the Capella comes back. We want to make sure they don’t do something silly and maybe lose the ship altogether. Consequently, we’d like you to sign a petition demanding they take no chances. That they do not touch the engines. Would you be willing to do that?”

He looked my way with a pained expression. “Juanita, I understand your concern, and I know John Kraus will take no risks with the passengers’ lives. But the issue is more complicated than you make it sound. I’m sorry, but I won’t be able to help you with that.”

“I see.” She let him see she was disappointed. “I’m sorry to hear it.”

“I don’t think you need to worry about them taking unnecessary chances.”

“There’s something else. We’re soliciting for two volunteers to board the ship and stay with it when it goes down again. We need to let the passengers know what’s happening. You’ve been a significant figure in this business from the start, and we were hoping you would be willing to help.”

“You mean you want me to go on board?”

“It could save the situation, Mr. Benedict.”

I looked at him and shook my head no . Don’t do it. He rolled his eyes. “Juanita, I don’t think it’s a good idea. The SRF will have radio contact with Captain Schultz, and I think you can trust them to inform her about what is happening.”

“Well,” she said, “you have more confidence in these people than I do.”

“I may know them a little better.”

She broke off with a cold good-bye and was gone. Alex turned laser eyes in my direction. “You didn’t actually think I might go along with that, did you?”

“I just wanted to be sure,” I said.

“I appreciate your confidence.”

With the Capella rendezvous approaching, excitement in the media and the general public was ramping up. And interest in the other lost ships was reviving as well. Sabol and Cori Chaveau, the two girls who had been rescued from the Intrépide , were in the news again. The Intrépide had left the French outpost at Brandizi eight thousand years ago. The passengers were not only still alive, but for them only a few weeks had passed.

Unfortunately, it had taken too much time to catch up with the ship, and the two girls were the only passengers we’d been able to rescue before the ship was dragged away again. Sabol was thirteen and Cori three years younger. Probably they were the youngest guests ever to turn up on The Charles Koeffler Show .

“How did it feel,” Koeffler asked them, “when you found yourself in a place that must have seemed so strange to you?”

“It was scary,” said Sabol. “We’d grown up in Brandizi, which had only a few thousand people. It’s so crowded here. And everyone we knew back there is gone.”

“The worst part of it,” added Cori, “is that Dad is still on the Intrépide . And it’s not like the Capella , which will show up every five and a half years.” She wiped a tear from her cheek. “The Intrépide won’t be back again for sixty-five years.” Both girls had mastered Standard, but the ancient accent held fast. Neither would ever be mistaken for a native.

“I’m sorry,” said Koeffler. “I’m sure your rescuers did everything they could.”

“Oh, yes,” said Sabol. “Dot Garber brought us across. But she went back for others and got caught.”

“You live with Dot’s daughter, don’t you?”

“Yes. She’s been very nice. Out of this world.”

“I suspect, Sabol, that a lot of people would say you and Cori have been out of this world.” Both girls smiled and blushed.

Cori’s eyes closed momentarily. “You know, this whole thing is hard to believe. I mean, it was only a little more than a year ago when we left Brandizi. And we get here , to a place that didn’t even exist when we left home. And people tell us that Brandizi is gone. That nobody lives there anymore. What’s really hard to accept is that everything we knew as kids, all those people, the house where we lived, our friends, that they’re just not there anymore. Haven’t been there for thousands of years. I can’t believe that. And what’s even sadder, nobody except us” —she glanced at her sister, who nodded— “nobody except us even knows they existed.” More tears were coming.

“Well,” said Koeffler, “ you remember them. You and Sabol. As long as you are here, they won’t be forgotten.”

Baylee might not have left an avatar, but he had a serious presence on the net. Check out almost any archeological occasion, a convention, a luncheon, a conference, a strategy meeting at a university, anything at all of that nature that had happened before about 1416, and you could find him. He received awards, appeared as a speaker, performed as host, presented the prizes. The events had usually occurred on Earth, but there were occasional entries from Rimway as well. The records from Earth had been imported since, of course, no direct connection between the webs of the two worlds existed.

There was no denying that everybody loved him. He was greeted with enthusiastic applause on every occasion. People crowded up to the head table to shake his hand, to whisper words of encouragement, to get their picture taken with him. Incredibly, at an awards dinner at Polgar University on the Alpine Islands, I caught a glimpse of Gabe talking with him.

Baylee, in his younger years, looked good. He was short, but he had a full head of hair, blue eyes, and a smile that inevitably lit up the room. He told jokes on himself, describing how he blundered about the various dig sites but consistently “found good stuff” because he always traveled with smart people. “I’ve been fortunate,” he said at the dedication of the Cambro Museum in St. Louis. “I’ve had a good run. We’ve tried to do what archeologists are supposed to do, which is to rescue the past, to keep history alive, and if I’ve been able to do that to a reasonable degree, it’s been because of people like Lawrence Southwick and Anne Winter, both of whom are here today. Anne, Lawrence, would you guys please stand?” They did, and the place rocked with applause.