Джек Макдевитт - Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt

I threw off my clothes, leaving them in a pile on the floor, and retreated into a tan-tiled bathroom. I showered in glorious hot water, toweled off, and tried the garments my host had provided. They were a size large, but they were clean and smelled faintly of pine. I washed my own clothes and hung them to dry.

The smell of steak and potatoes drifted up from the kitchen. I wandered downstairs, pausing to look through a window at the rooftop lights. They blazed through the rushing snow. What a prodigious waste of power it all was. I wondered how they were able to manage it?

Marsh must have heard me coming: he was waiting when I arrived on the second floor. “I hope you feel better, Quincey,” he said.

I did. Very much so.

We returned to the room in which we had talked earlier. A pot of coffee was waiting. He poured, and we sat down by the fire. We were barely settled when he looked up, past my shoulder. “Eleanor,” he said, “this is Mr. Quincey.”

I rose and turned, and was astonished. So, I might add, was Eleanor.

“ Jeff ,” she said, and I watched dismay, relief, fear, affection, and everything between, ripple across her face.

And I : my God, it was Ellie Randall .

For those few seconds, I could only stare.

Probably, no one ever quite recovers from the first big passion. Ellie had been mine. We’d had three months together when we were both growing up in the Forks. And that was all there was. She lost interest and walked out of my life. I didn’t even have the consolation of losing her to someone else. Shortly after that I left the area, and when I went back ten years later she was gone and nobody knew where.

So I stood gaping back, shackled by the old resentment, breathless again. She was as gorgeous as I remembered. And that too shook me: I think in some dark corner of the mind, I’d hoped eventually to come across her and discover that the near-supernatural creature of my twentieth year had been a figment of youthful daydreaming. That, to a mature adult, she would really be quite ordinary. Perhaps even a trifle dull. That I’d conclude I’d been lucky to have got away.

But in that darkened room she seemed composed of firelight and shifting shadows, more spirit than flesh. (Although the flesh was not to be overlooked.) Her familiar features were classic, dark, and, now that she’d recovered from her initial shock, amused. She shook her head in sheer pleasure and her black hair swirled across her shoulders. Delight filled her eyes, and I felt the entire room, the chairs, the lamps, the fire, and certainly me, come erect.

I knew already I would lie alone on the plains during years to come and replay this meeting. From that moment, I developed a loathing for Edward Marsh that nothing could ever efface.

We embraced, a fleeting, phantasmagoric thing, her lips brushing my cheek, her shoulders vibrant and alive in my hands. Her eyes touched mine. “Jeff, it really is you, isn’t it? What have you been doing all these years?”

Her smile melted me into my socks, and I was twenty years old again. I didn’t trust my voice, so I grinned, foolishly no doubt, retreated to my coffee, and mumbled something about traveling extensively.

Marsh moved into the gap. “Well, that’s interesting,” he said, eyes brightening. “How odd that you two would know each other.”

“We grew up together. Jeff and I were good friends for a long time.” Her eyes settled on me. “It is good to see you again, Jeff.” The smile never faded. “Listen, I have to finish dinner. But we have a lot to talk about.” She swung round and trooped out. And the room sank back into the normal flow of time.

“She hasn’t changed,” I told Marsh. He was watching me with interest, and I knew what he was wondering. The rational tack, of course, was to change the subject. “What kind of installation was this originally?” I asked, heading in the first direction that suggested itself.

He took a long breath and examined his coffee. “A research facility of some sort,” he said. “Ellie can tell you more about it than I can.”

“Oh?”

He shrugged. “Yes, she’s closer to the history of the place than I am.” There was something dismissive in his tone, as if there were more important matters to consider. His eyes glided over me.

“Will there be others at dinner?” I asked.

“No,” he said distractedly. “There is no one else here.”

I looked down at my shirt.

“It belonged to Ellie’s brother-in-law, actually,” he said. “He left a few years ago.”

Ellie’s brother-in-law ? Why not ‘my brother’? “Where is he now?” I asked conversationally.

“We don’t know. Occasionally, someone comes by with a letter from him. Last we heard, he was in Zona.”

I gradually received the impression, one that was reinforced through the evening, that he was measuring me, that he was involved in a calculation and that I was somehow a variable.

Marsh had traveled widely. He explained that he had been born in Canada, in a town not far from Ottawa. “We all grew up in the shadows of that enormous wreck. And I’ve stayed away from the ruins since. Don’t like them.” He shook his head. “No sir. Don’t like them one bit.”

“I know what you mean,” I said, not sure at all that I did.

“We’re headed backward, Quincy. All of us. Still losing ground even while you and I sit here. And I don’t like being reminded of it.” He raised his arms in a sweeping gesture that took in the walls, or maybe the world. “They’re all yellow now,” he said. “Fading. And when they’re gone, I suspect none of us will even remember who we were.”

I realized finally he was referring to his books, marshaled around the room like a military guard. I repressed a shrug. I’ve never read a book, and am barely able to manage trade documents, if the truth be known. “I’m not so sure,” I said. “Life is hard, but it could be worse. I mean, there’s always food and drink, if a man’s willing to work. And women enough, God knows.” I wished Ellie had been there to hear that. I hoped he would repeat it to her, and she would understand that I had been having a very fine time on my own, thank you.

A few minutes later, Ellie announced that dinner was ready. We retired to the dining room, and she flashed me another big smile. I thought I saw in it a glint of regret. I applied the construction most favorable to myself, and attacked dinner with a sense of good cheer.

The table would have supported dinner for ten. We ate by candlelight, warmed by two fireplaces.

The meal consisted of steak and potatoes and green beans and buttered corn and hot rolls. Marsh broke out a decanter and filled the glasses, and we toasted ‘old friends.’ His proposal. I was still wondering about the nature of the facility. “What,” I asked, “is the ring? The ring-shaped ridge?”

Ellie tried her drink, and obviously approved. “They used this place to break into atoms,” she said. “They were trying to discover what matter really is.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I’m not entirely sure.”

“Did they leave records?”

“In a way. They wrote their results into computer banks.”

“Oh.” The computers don’t work anymore.

She sliced off a piece of steak, turned it on her fork, and slid it between her lips. “Not bad,” she said, eyes gleaming. “Given time, maybe we’ll figure out how to fix them.”

We ate quietly for a few minutes. “How do you come to own a place like the Tower?” I asked Marsh.

“I don’t own it,” he said. “It’s Ellie’s, actually.”

She tried her wine and let me see she approved. “I married into it. Two or three years after you left, I married Corey Bolton. His family had been here for generations.” She propped her chin on her fist and looked right through me. “Corey died in a raid several years later. After that his brothers cleared out, and I more or less inherited the place.”