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

“That may also be true. And certainly going on to your goal entails a great risk. But you must decide whether the prize is not worth the risk.”

“ We will decide. I have a partner in the enterprise.”

“He will abide by your decision. It is up to you.”

She tried to hold angry tears back. “We’ve done enough. It would be unreasonable to go on.”

“The value of reason is often exaggerated, Chaka. It would have been reasonable to accept Hitler’s offer of terms in 1940.”

“What?”

He waved the question away. “It’s of no consequence. But reason, under pressure, usually produces prudence when boldness is called for.”

“I am not a coward, Winston.”

“I did not imply you are.” He bit down hard on his weed. A blue cloud drifted toward her. It hurt her eyes and she backed away.

“Are you a ghost?” she asked. The question did not seem at all foolish.

“I suspect I am. I’m something left behind by the retreating tide.” The fire glowed in his eyes. “I wonder whether, when an event is no longer remembered by any living person, it loses all significance? Whether it is as if it never happened?”

Quait stirred in his sleep, but did not wake.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Chaka.

For a long time, neither of them spoke.

Winston got to his feet. “I’m not comfortable here,” he said.

She thought he was expressing displeasure with her.

“The floor is hard on an old man. And of course you are right: you must decide whether you will go on. Camelot was a never-never land. Its chief value lay in the fact that it existed only as an idea . Perhaps the same thing is true of Haven.”

“No,” she said. “It exists .”

“And is anyone else looking for this place?”

“No one. We will be the second mission to fail. I think there will be no more.”

“Then for God’s sake, Chaka of Illyria, you must ask yourself why you came all this way. Why your companions died. What you seek.”

“Money. Pure and simple. Ancient manuscripts are priceless. We’d have been famous throughout the League. That’s why we came.”

His eyes grew thoughtful. “Then go back,” he said. “If this is a purely commercial venture, write it off and put your money in real estate.”

“Beg pardon?”

“But I would put it to you that those are not the reasons you dared so much. And that you wish to turn back because you have forgot why you came.”

“That’s not so,” she said.

“Of course it’s so. Shall I tell you why you undertook to travel through an unknown world, on the hope that you might, might , find a place that’s half-mythical?” Momentarily he seemed to fade, to lose definition. “Haven has nothing to do with fame or wealth. If you got there, if you were able to read its secrets, you would have all that, provided you could get home with it. But you would have acquired something infinitely more valuable, and I believe you know that: you would have discovered who you really are. You would have learned that you are a daughter of the people who designed the Acropolis, who wrote Hamlet , who visited the moons of Neptune. Do you know about Neptune?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t think so.”

“Then we’ve lost everything, Chaka. But you can get it back. If you are willing to take it. And if not you, then someone else. But it is worth the taking, at whatever cost.”

Momentarily, he became one with the dark.

“Winston,” she said, “I can’t see you. Are you still there?”

“I am here. The system is old, and will not keep a charge.”

She was looking through him. “You really are a ghost,” she said.

“It is possible you will not succeed. Nothing is certain, save difficulty and trial. But have courage. Never surrender.”

She stared at him.

“Never despair,” he said.

A sudden chill whispered through her, a sense that she had been here before, had known this man in another life. “You seem vaguely familiar. Have I seen your picture somewhere?”

“I’m sure I do not know.”

“Perhaps it is the words. They have an echo.”

He looked directly at her. “Possibly.” She could see the cave entrance and a few stars through his silhouette. “Keep in mind, whatever happens, you are one of a select company. A proud band of brothers. And sisters. You will never be alone.”

As she watched, he faded until only the glow of the cigar remained. “It is your own true self you seek.”

“You presume a great deal.”

“I know you, Chaka.” Everything was gone now. Except the voice. “I know who you are. And you are about to learn.”

“Was it his first or last name?” asked Quait, as they saddled the horses.

“Now that you mention it, I really don’t know.” She frowned. “I’m not sure whether he was real or not. He left no prints. No marks.”

Quait looked toward the rising sun. The sky was clear. “That’s the way of it in these places. Some of it’s illusion; some of it’s something else. But I wish you’d woke me.”

“So do I.” She climbed up and patted Brak’s shoulder. “He said the sea is only forty miles.”

Warm spring air flowed over them. “You want to go on?”

“Quait, you ever hear of Neptune?”

He shook his head.

“Maybe,” she said, “we can try that next.”

The moon was big . It was an enormous gasbag of a moon, like the one Uncle Eddie used to ride down at the fairgrounds, when she’d stand only a few feet away, watching it strain against the lines and then cut loose and start up. She used to wish for the day Uncle Eddie would take her soaring above the treetops, but he said he couldn’t because of insurance problems and eventually the gasbag went down and Uncle Eddie went with it. Janie thought of that last flight as she gazed at the foreboding presence dominating the night sky. The moon looked as if it was coming down. It was dim, dim as in dark, not at all like the bright yellow globe that rides the skies of Earth. It was a ghost moon, a presence, a thing lit only by stars.

“ If there were more light, ” said the voice in her earphones, the voice that sounded a bit too cheerful, “ it would look silver and blue. Its name is Charon, and it’s less than a third the diameter of our moon. ”

“Why does it look so big?” asked Daddy.

“ Do you know how far the Moon is from the Earth? ”

Daddy wasn’t sure. “About a million miles,” he said.

“ That’s close, Mr. Brockman. ” The AI was very polite.

“I think,” said Janie, trying not to sound like a know-it-all, “it’s 238,000 miles.”

“ That’s very good, Janie. Right on the button. But Charon is only twelve thousand miles away. ”

Janie did the arithmetic in her head. Multiply by ten and Charon was still only half, one-twentieth of the distance of her moon. “It’s close,” she said. She’d known that, but hadn’t understood the implications. “It’s right on top of us.”

“ Very good, Janie, ” said the voice. It belonged to a software system that was identical to the AI that had made the later flights, the Iris voyages, the Challenger run, the Long Mission, and the circumsolar flight on the Eagle . All the data from those missions had been fed into it, so in a sense, it had been there.

Its name was Jerry. Same as the originals. The onboard AI was always Jerry , named for Jerry Dilworth, a popular late-night comic of an earlier era. Daddy had commented how much the voice sounded like Jerry Dilworth, for whom Daddy had a lot of affection.