Jack McDevitt - Coming Home

It was time to change the subject: “You really think Baylee might have said anything to Khaled Eisa that would be of any help?”

“Probably not, Chase. But the two of them would have spent considerable time alone on a boat. They dived to the museum together. What do you think they were talking about?”

“Probably the artifacts.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

We ate breakfast at the hotel. “I need a bathing suit,” said Alex. “There’s a beach place back down the road where I should be able to pick one up.”

“We’re going down to look at the museum?”

“Yes. I am.”

“I’ll go, too.”

“You have any diving experience, Chase?”

“Not exactly.”

“Any at all?”

“No.”

“I’ll have the imager along, so you can watch. This is no big deal, and you’ll be safer in the boat.”

“Have you ever done any diving?”

His eyes took on a sheepish appearance. “Khaled will have enough trouble just having one of us to look out for.”

We were back in the Eisa Friendly Charters Office Friday morning when Khaled came in. He was tall, gorgeous, a guy who caught my attention immediately. He had the same brown hair and hazel eyes as his sister. He might have been a twin. “Polly told me you were looking for me,” he said, ushering us into the office and offering some fresh fruit juice. “You want to go out to the Space Museum, is that correct?”

“Yes,” said Alex.

“And there’s something about Garnett Baylee?”

“Yes, Mr. Eisa. Do you remember him?”

“Oh, sure.” Khaled was more casual, more amiable than Polly. But both exuded authority. “We saw a lot of him. He’d take his people out for an evening of good times. They loved partying at sea.” His eyes touched mine, and he delivered an inviting smile.

I returned the gesture.

Alex saw the exchange and couldn’t entirely hide his amusement. But he plunged ahead: “When was it that he went to the museum? Can you give us a date?”

“Sure,” he said. “Give me a second.” He checked the record. “June 16, 11,257.” Nineteen years ago.

Alex glanced my way. That made it a year or so before Baylee returned to Rimway.

We boarded a cabin cruiser, the Patriot , and headed out to sea under bright, sunny skies. Behind us, the shoreline was mostly beach. A few kids stood in the surf and waved as we pulled away from the pier. Alex and I made ourselves comfortable in the passenger cabin. Minutes later, Khaled turned the boat over to the AI and joined us.

“You guys know Garnett very well?” he asked.

“No,” said Alex. “I never really met him.”

“But you’re going to be his biographer?”

“Something like that.”

The conversation subsided into Alex’s standard methodology. We talked about Khaled’s background, how he’d grown up on the coast, had gone to Aquatica University, where he’d majored in literature. But he’d always loved the ocean, and eventually he’d joined with his sister—who was , it turned out, a twin—to form Eisa Friendly Charters, which had four cabin cruisers and a sub.

We’d been out about an hour when Khaled pointed to a passing boat. “There’s Silvia ,” he said. “It’s one of ours.”

Eventually, Alex got back to Baylee. “So you took him out once to see the Space Museum?”

“Yeah.”

“You say that as if it’s unusual.”

“Well, look, guys, there isn’t a museum. I mean, it’s been sitting down there for thousands of years. The tides took it apart long ago. There’s nothing there now. Probably hasn’t been for centuries. Just a few lumps in the ocean bottom. You can see where it was . But that’s the most you can hope for. If you want to go sightseeing, there are whole cities down there. Jacksonville, Orlando, St. Petersburg. They’re a mess, too, but at least they’re big enough that you can actually see them.”

“Did you suggest looking at one of those instead?”

“Yeah.” He grinned. “He laughed at me. That was before I knew him very well.”

“He was only interested in the museum.”

“You got that right. Look, Alex, I’ve seen guys get emotional about that place before. I understand what it means. But I’ve never seen anybody react the way he did. We went down, and after we came back up, he was almost in tears.”

“He had a fixation about the place,” Alex said.

“He was mad that they’d lost the stuff that had been in the museum. We stayed out here three or four days. He went down with a sensor and went all through the area, hoping to find something. But there wasn’t anything. I mean, they took everything out to—what was it?—Huntsville. And all right, I knew they wouldn’t have gotten everything , but it’s been nine thousand damn years. The guy just wasn’t making sense.” He shook his head. “It’s the only time I ever saw him like that.

“On the way back, he talked about trying to find the stuff that had been in the museum. That he’d looked everywhere. He started drinking, and I got worried. He’s a big guy, and once he almost fell overboard.”

“Khaled, did he ever give any indication that he’d found any of those artifacts? Anything at all?”

“No. I saw him a couple of times after that. Just going out to have a few drinks. Alone both times. I asked him if he was still looking for the Apollo stuff. He just got a kind of sad grin on his face and shrugged it off.”

Alex nodded. “You guys have a sub, right?”

“Yes, we do. Her name’s Lola .”

“Did you offer to take him down in Lola ?”

“We had a different sub then. But sure. I remember we’d been having problems with sharks in the area. I wanted to avoid taking any chances, so we stopped taking people down for a while. If people wanted to see the museum, we only took them in the sub. I offered him a substantial discount. But he said no.”

“What’s a shark?” I asked.

Khaled’s eyes glowed. “You really do come from another place, don’t you? You have an accent.”

“We’re from Rimway,” I said. “What’s a shark?”

Alex responded: “It’s a big fish that would enjoy having a Kolpath sandwich for lunch.”

“That’s sort of what I thought.”

“Alex,” said Khaled, “why did you pass on the sub?”

“No special reason. I just want to do this the same way Baylee did.”

“All right. Whatever you like.” He looked my way. “Will you both be going down?”

“No,” I said. “I think I’ll sit this one out.”

The sea was quiet, and the sun was sinking toward the horizon when we arrived at the museum. There was no wind to speak of. Khaled lowered an anchor into the water while Alex asked how he could be sure where we were. “There’s just ocean in every direction.”

“We planted a homing device here years ago, Alex. We knew there’d be a fair amount of interest. There are a few other pieces of tracking equipment here although I think ours is the only one that’s still working.”

He suggested that Alex not try making a dive until morning. “We’ll want as much light as we can get,” he said.

Another boat passed close to us, filled with college kids singing and having a good time. “It’s spring break, I guess,” I said.

Khaled nodded. “In this part of the world, it’s always spring.” He was obviously enjoying himself. “Usually, our customers just want to cruise along the shoreline and go sightseeing. In fact, Polly’s out now with a bunch of them. She’d have preferred to bring you guys out here instead, but I was the one who’d taken Baylee, so I got the assignment.”