Jack McDevitt - Coming Home

“Okay,” I said. “But I can’t believe this will work.”

Alex managed a smile. “It depends on what they’re hiding.”

It took two and a half days, approximately as long as it required a hypercomm message to reach Rimway and draw a response. “Alex,” it said, “please don’t do anything rash until we’ve had a chance to talk. I’m on my way.” It was from Southwick.

“I guess you were right,” I said.

A second message arrived in the morning. “Alex, I’ll be on the Vistula . In port on the eleventh your time. Will contact you then.”

That was five days away. “I’m going to charge him,” Alex said. “If he’d been up front with us from the beginning, we could have avoided all this.”

“You want to tell me what it’s all about?”

“I don’t know yet, Chase. To be honest, I haven’t even been able to come up with a decent theory.”

“I think he’d like you to meet him at the space station.”

“I don’t think there’s any question about that. But we’ll let him come to us. How about heading for Barkova? We could do some sightseeing.”

I don’t know why Alex decided out of nowhere that he wanted to go halfway around the planet. If he’d left the call to me, we’d have stayed on the beaches. But I said sure, and did a search on the place.

Barkova had been, for two thousand years, one of the major cultural centers of northern Europe. Alex, it turned out, was interested in it, though, because it’s located less than a hundred miles south of the group of islands that are all that remains of Moscow. That ancient city, shaken for centuries by earthquakes, had been all but swallowed by its overflowing rivers. Consequently, we spent most of our time there in a rented skimmer surveying the ruins. The only visual evidence of the former capital consists of a few wrecked buildings jutting out of the water. The onion domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral are still visible, glittering in the sunlight. As is the magnificent turret of the Valkan, which was the seat of government for almost three thousand years.

Today, the islands are home to an army of tourists. We wandered along an elevated walkway, rode a roller coaster, played some games in a casino, and ate dinner at Sergev’s, a pricey restaurant overlooking Lake Kaczinski. Sergev’s had pictures of the old days on the walls, of giant snowstorms and people wandering city streets wrapped in heavy overcoats and wearing fur hats. Hard to believe it was the same place.

We took one of the sub tours. I’d hoped to get a good look at the ancient buildings and streets, but most of what had been Moscow was buried in mud. We did get to see the Bolshoi Theater and the Kremlin Armory, more or less.

On the third afternoon, our hotel was hosting a wedding in its ballroom. I’m no longer clear on how it happened, but we became involved in the celebration. I always enjoy celebrating and will take any excuse to jump in. Alex, on the other hand, is not normally drawn to social events. He’s an effective speaker, but take his audience away, and he seems to become almost shy. On that afternoon, though, he wandered away for a few minutes and returned with a woman who would become a lifelong friend, Galina Mozheika. She had bright amber eyes and long dark hair that fell below her shoulders. A cousin of the bride, she worked as one of the tour conductors. “It doesn’t pay much,” she told me, “but I love what I do.”

I needed about three minutes to grasp what Alex saw in her: She had a taste for history. Her prime interest seemed to be ancient Russian literature. She knew all the stories, and on that night was talking with him about the accidental discovery of Dostoevsky’s long-lost Brothers Karamazov during the Seventh Millennium. A three-hundred-year-old hardcover edition had been found in the library of a deceased book collector who apparently never realized what he had. And she knew about the trunkful of Third Millennium Russian novels found in a Greek attic and placed on board an interstellar that subsequently vanished. It sounded like another of the Sanusar vehicles.

He spent the rest of the evening with her. In years to come, they communicated back and forth. She made it to Rimway on a few occasions, and I never knew him to go back to Earth without visiting the Moscow Islands. But as far as I could tell, nothing romantic ever came of it. They were friends.

Maybe it was enough.

On one occasion, when we were alone together, Galina told me that Earth and Rimway were too far from each other. “And I’m not just talking about kilometers.” By which I concluded that she wasn’t ready to leave family and friends, and she assumed the same to be true of Alex.

It was an enjoyable party. People asked about my accent. Where was I from? Off-world? Really?

That night, somewhere around 3:00 A.M., my link sounded. It was Khaled. I reached over and took it from the bedside table. “Hello,” I said.

His image appeared over by one of the windows. “Chase. Ah, so you are still here.”

“More or less, Khaled.”

“I can’t see you.”

“I’m in bed.”

“Oh. At this hour?”

“It’s the middle of the night here.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m in Barkova.”

“I didn’t realize. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. Do you need something?”

“I just wanted to hear your voice again.”

Alex hadn’t released me from his directive that I not say anything to him. But it was hard to see that it would matter any longer. “Why?”

“Why would I want to hear your voice again? Chase, you sound annoyed.”

“No, I’m not annoyed. I was just wondering whether you were looking for somebody to drop into the Atlantic.”

“Oh.” His shoulders tightened. “What do you mean?”

“You can stop the lies, Khaled.”

He paused. Scrunched his shoulders and straightened. “I’m sorry about that, Chase. I’ll regret that the rest of my life. But so you know, I didn’t mean to cause a problem for you. You were never at risk.”

“Yeah, you said something like that before.”

“I was hoping it wouldn’t—You wouldn’t find out.”

“I’m not surprised. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to get back to sleep.”

“Chase, I’m sorry. I wish I had it to do over.”

“You don’t get do-overs, Khaled.” I broke the connection, and his image blinked off.

I settled back down under the sheet and started rehearsing the things I should have said. Hero of the hour: What a fake. You sold us out. Could have gotten us killed. And then you think you can make everything okay? I’m just going to forget it?

The link sounded again. The few familiar notes, drifting through the dark.

I let it go for a while. I thought about shutting it off, but finally I opened the channel. “Chase,” he said, “please listen to me. Look, I’m sorry. I’ll do anything to make it up to you. When it happened, it just seemed harmless enough. And to be honest, I thought it was a chance to impress you. I had that wrong, and I know that. But all I’m asking is a second chance. Do that for me, and I promise you’ll never regret it.”

“Khaled,” I said, “there’s nothing you can do. No way you could ever fix things so I could trust you. Just go away and leave me alone.”