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

“How do we know?”

“Because we’ve looked on thousands of worlds and there’s nothing . We’ve been listening to the galaxy for centuries and there’s not a sound. Not a peep anywhere. No life, except for a few cells here and there. Otherwise, zip.”

“Dad, maybe we gave up too easily.”

His father smiled. Benign. Proud, even. “It’s over, kid. Maybe you’re right. Maybe we could have gone farther. Maybe there’s something in another galaxy somewhere. But it costs money. And nobody really cares anymore.” He waited for Harry to say something. When the boy remained silent, he gently put his hand on his shoulder and pulled him away from the Indomitable . “Let’s go, champ,” he said. “It’s getting up to dinner time.”

Parmentier led the way past the ship’s prow. He opened the door for them and sunlight spilled in. Harry looked back as the work lights went out. “Beautiful day,” the captain said.

They went out into the bright afternoon. The ground was rough and full of holes.

“Careful where you walk.”

Harry wasn’t sure who made the comment. “It’s not over,” he said.

His father smiled. “Your mother said she’d have spaghetti and meatballs for us tonight.”

They looked down through towering banks of cumulus at an ocean bright with sunlight. A mountainous archipelago broke the smooth curve of the horizon. “There were thousands like this in the crystals,” said Wincavan. “Other worlds .”

In the darkness behind him, Rotifer shifted his weight and sighed audibly.

“This is what they saw from the Quandis during their first day over Omyra. Later, after it had been settled, this world would become famous because its philosophers came to an understanding of man and his place in the universe.”

Rotifer could not entirely conceal his contempt. “And what might that be?”

It was Wincavan’s turn to sigh. “I think they concluded that it was man who gave purpose to existence.”

Rotifer laughed. It was an ugly sound, loaded with derision.

“They never found anyone else,” Wincavan explained. “Among all those worlds, they never saw a reflection that was not their own.” He fell silent. The islands passed beneath them, lovely and sunlit in the endless sea. “No, maybe you’re right to sneer. But I’d like to believe there was a purpose to it all, that we served some humble cause: herald, perhaps, or torchbearer. A pathfinder for something greater than ourselves, who will find our bones among the stars and know that we were there.”

Rotifer swung round in his chair, away from the images. “Emory, I love your stories. But the truth is there’s only one world, and you’re standing in it.”

“No.” Wincavan’s eyes closed. “We are not even native to this world.”

The younger man shrugged. “Foolishness. But it hardly matters.”

A blue line of peaks appeared in the distance. Wrapped in winter, they marked a continental coastline. But it was a narrow range, and gave way quickly to rain forests and lake country. The image drew closer, and they saw broad rivers. At the confluence of two of the largest, Camwyck would be built two centuries later. Her sons and daughters, for years after, would continue the great expansion through the stars. Oliver Candliss, whose bloody shirt lay in the museum upstairs, was born there.

Wincavan debated taking them lower, but he wanted to maintain the planetary perspective, which was the most enthralling part of the demonstration, save for the fight with the rikatak at the climax.

They moved well above the clouds. The texture of light changed, and the sky darkened as they glided again over open sea. “Nice effects,” said Rotifer.

Wincavan nodded patiently. Too much was at stake to offend the Councilman now.

A canopy of stars appeared, unfamiliar constellations. Far below, silent lightning flickered. “Eventually,” said Wincavan, “the night will be ablaze with lights.”

Rotifer’s patience was running short. “How do you know?” he asked wearily. He himself was no longer young. His eyes had grown cold and hard in the harsh winters. His hair and beard were gray, and the limp was becoming ever more pronounced. (The leg injury had been sustained in his first cavalry action against the goliats, when he had been clawed and bitten.) He tended to be querulous, especially when the nights were damp, and he judged his worth exclusively by a long series of victories achieved against the savages many years before. Rotifer was, to Wincavan’s mind, a prime example of the result when a hero outlives his campaigns.

“I know because I have seen the record. It was in one of the crystals,” he said, with rising heat. “One of the crystals that were auctioned off during my grandfather’s time!”

“Ah, yes.” The Councilman spoke slowly, as though he had caught Wincavan in a deception. “Of course it would have been in one of the jewels.”

There were more mountains in the west. They were silver under the stars, and silent. Beyond them, a pale ruddy glow stained the horizon. Rotifer, who had never seen a moonrise, watched the surge of crimson light fill the spaces between the peaks, watched a long blue-gray arc begin to rise above the mountains. “What’s that?” he demanded. His voice was pitched higher than usual.

“A second world,” breathed Wincavan. “Omyra’s twin.”

“A world in the air?” The Councilman laughed, though Wincavan thought he detected a hollowness in the sound. “It’s nonsense, Emory. What would sustain it? How can you continue to take any of this seriously?”

Wincavan’s world had no moon, and consequently its inhabitants had no experience with solid objects in the sky.

His countrymen thought him a deranged old man. It was just as well he stayed shut up in one of the ancient theaters, unable to grasp the difference between light shows and reality. But the Hall was no theater. The Community had known that once. His grandfather had remembered when there’d been a small coterie of supporters, of men and women who actively pursued research into the Great Days. But that was long ago. Now the Hall was empty, save for himself, and the savage goliats, who occasionally climbed the outside walls to peer timidly at the images. “Why,” he asked, “do you deny the evidence of your eyes?”

“Because it is only a show. Like all the others. Because there is only one world; because an ocean can’t cling to a globe. Why doesn’t it run off the bottom of the world, Wincavan?”

Wincavan hesitated. “I don’t know,” he admitted.

“I thought not.”

“We had that knowledge once.”

“Contained in one of the jewels, no doubt?”

He shrugged. “The sun sets each evening in the west. Can you explain how it gets back during the night into the eastern sky?”

“There’s a tunnel,” Rotifer said hesitantly. “Beneath the world.”

“You don’t believe that?”

“It makes as much sense as living upside down.” He stared at Wincavan, trying to read his expression in the gloom. “Do you have pictures of oceans and forests on the other world as well? The one in the sky?”

“We used to.” The crystal was set in a gold clasp, but the last time Wincavan had seen it, it was dangling between the ample breasts of Banda Pier, wife of the Stablemaster.

The upper clouds of Omyra floated below them. Wincavan could feel the weight of the turning planet. He knew that the major land mass lay immediately west, an enormous continent of sulphurous mountains, broad rock-strewn plains, and advancing icecaps. “The Quandis circled the world ninety-three times before the landing team went down.” He paused and looked toward the approaching dawn. Rotifer was silent, crossing his arms across his thick chest. “On the fourth day, Memori Collin and Lex Esteban and Creel MacAido boarded one of the ship’s launches. They were right about here —.” He pushed a stud forward. The stars lurched, and Omyra’s cloudscape rotated. “It looked more or less like this.” The black hull of the Quandis appeared above as the landing craft they seemed to be in dropped away. He smiled as the Councilman gripped the arms of his chair and pushed back into his seat.