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

His mood grew darker as the long retreat continued. And when two more ships from his diminished squadron were lost at Como Des, his anger exploded. “ There will be a Confederacy one day, Tarien, ” he wearily told his brother, “but they will not construct it on the bodies of my people! ”

It was the same voice that had indicted the Spartans.

The Tenandrome was rife with rumor. Some suggested that Sim and his crew had been spirited away by the Mutes and that the Corsarius had been left as a manifestation of an inhuman sense of humor. Others wondered whether the vessel had not been two ships right from the beginning, a clever ploy to confuse the invaders and enhance the image of a supernatural defender.

If McIras had any theories, she was keeping them to herself.

As for me, I could not get out of my mind the image of Christopher Sim in despair. It had never occurred to me that he, of all people, could have doubted the eventual outcome. It was a foolish notion, and yet there it was. Sim was as human as the rest of us. And in that despair, in his concern for the lives of his comrades and the people whom he had tried to defend, I sensed an answer to the deserted vessel. But it was an answer I could not accept.

I began reading everything I could find about the Mutes, the war, the Corsarius , and, in particular, the Rigellian Action. In that final engagement, Sim was operating in close conjunction with the Kudasai , a battle cruiser which carried his brother. The Corsarius had gone in to finish off a mortally wounded carrier, had gotten too close, and been caught when it blew up. It was odd, the way it ended. Sim had always led the Dellacondans personally. At Rigel, however, he’d escorted Kudasai during the main assault, while his frigates drove a knife into the enemy flank.

Ironically, Kudasai carried the surviving brother to his death only a few weeks later, at Nimrod. But Tarien lived long enough to know that his diplomatic efforts had succeeded. Earth and Rimway had finally joined hands, had promised help, and Toxicon was expected momentarily to announce that she would support her old enemies.

I wondered what had happened to the seven crew members who had deserted the Cosarius on the eve of the Rigellian Action. But, with the exception of the navigator, Ludik Talino, none appeared again in the histories. No one knew whether they’d been punished, or even charged with their crime. They became almost immediately a popular target for vilification. Talino, the navigator, surfaced briefly on Rimway almost half a century after the war, just long enough to die, and to earn mention in the news reports. Curiously, he claimed to have fought at Rigel, though on a cruiser, rather than the Corsarius . No details were given, and the comment was attributed to delusions brought on by his sense of guilt.

I was especially interested in the tale of the Seven, the anonymous heroes recruited in the belly of Abonai on the fateful night before the Mute attack. How did it happen that no one knew who they were? Was it coincidence that what should have been the single best source of their names, the log of the Corsarius , was silent on the subject, and in fact, silent on the battle itself? I could not get Saje McIras’ remark out of my mind: It could not have happened!

No, it could not.

In the morning, I asked McIras what she intended to do.

“I’ve classified the report. We’ll leave the Corsarius where she is, and if higher authority wants to come out and have a look at her, they can. That’s it .” She rubbed her temples. “This is bad news for everybody.”

“It’s ancient history,” I said.

“However he died, Christopher Sim is the Confederacy. This place, this world, is a graveyard. It’s a graveyard with a secret of some sort, and I don’t want to get any closer to it.” Her eyes narrowed. “The sooner we’re out of here the better I’ll like it.”

I looked at her a long time. “A graveyard for what?” I asked.

We returned to carrying out our basic mission, but the shadow of the Corsarius continued to hang over us. During the days that followed, the conversation with McIras played itself over and over again in my head. Hell of a graveyard. The bodies were all missing, the names were missing, the log entries were missing. And the Corsarius , which should be missing, was orbiting this world like clockwork, every six hours and eleven minutes.

“They intended to come back,” I told McIras.

“But they didn’t,” she said. “Why not?”

During the entire course of Hellenic civilization, I know of no darker, nor more wanton crime, than the needless sacrifice of Leonidas and his band of heroes at Thermopylae. Better that Sparta should fall, than that such men be squandered.

“Yes,” I said, “where are the bodies?”

Through a shaft in the clouds, far below, the sea glittered.

I went down with Holtmeyer’s group, ostensibly to assist making some deductions about fossils; but as soon as we were on the ground I commandeered a flyer and loaded it with food and water. Probably, I should have taken McIras’ advice and concentrated on my own assignments. They were all a long time dead, and there was no point anymore. But the truth should have some value.

And there was Talino, the navigator, whose name was now synonymous with cowardice, who for a time had served his captain and his world well, but had died bitter and apparently delusional on Rimway. Surely I owed him, and the others, something.

Holtmeyer’s people were still setting up their shelters when I rose slowly over the trees and turned west into the sun-washed sky. There were thousands of islands scattered across the oceans. It would not of course be possible to search them all. But someone had abandoned the Corsarius . Whether that someone wanted to torture Christopher Sim with its presence, or to leave it as a sign they would not forget him, they’d left it all the same, and I wondered whether they would not have placed him along its track, close beneath its orbit.

I fed the course data into the flyer’s computer banks, set speed just below sound, and leveled off at 3,000 meters. Then I informed the Tenandrome where I was, and sat back to listen to the wind. Below, the sea was smooth and transparent and very blue. White clouds drifted through the morning haze. It could easily have been a seascape on Rimway or Earth or Fishbowl.

It was, on balance, a lovely world.

I passed, with barely a second look, a group of sandy, treeless islands. Their shores, like all the shores on this planet, were devoid of the gulls that are inevitably found near water oceans on living worlds. (Birds had not evolved there and in Jesperson’s opinion never would.)

I slowed to inspect a silver archipelago in the north temperate zone, rocky clutches of forest protruding from the glassy surface, progressively smaller islands dribbling away to the northwest. But there were only granite and trees, and after awhile I flew on.

I crossed into the southern hemisphere in late afternoon and approached a Y-shaped volcanic island shortly before sunset. It was a lush, tropical place of purple-green ferns and enormous white flowering plants. Placid pools mirrored the sky, and springs tumbled down off the lone mountain. I settled onto the beach, climbed out, had my dinner, and watched Corsarius pass overhead, a dull white star in a darkening sky.

I checked in with Saje, told her I was looking for Christopher Sim, listened to her opinion that I’d lost my mind, and told her she’d enjoy the beachfront view at my present location. She doubted it, and added that Jesperson had made a discovery having to do with amphibians, and his people were excited. “ Considering we have the Corsarius floating around up here, ” she commented, “ they excite pretty easily. ”