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

“Dummy looks out the window to check the alien.”

I packed the New Hampshire bridge and left the cartoon. If someone comes by, in 20 million years or so, he might need a laugh. I went up to the cockpit with my bag.

McGuire checked with me to see how we were progressing. “Fine,” I told him. I was still sitting there four hours later when Cathie appeared behind me.

“Rob,” she said, “we’re ready to move him.” She smiled wearily. “Marj says he should be okay if we can get him over there without doing any more damage.”

We cut the spinner on the inner module to about point-oh-five. Then we lifted Herman onto a stretcher and carried him carefully down to the airlock.

Cathie stared straight ahead, saying nothing. Her fine-boned cheeks were pale, and her eyes seemed focused far away. These, I thought, were her first moments to herself, unhampered by other duties. The impact of events was taking hold.

Marj called McGuire and told him we were starting over, and that she would need a sizable pair of shears when we got there to cut Herman’s suit open. “Please have them ready,” she said. “We may be in a hurry.”

I’d laid out his suit earlier: we pulled it up over his legs. That was easy, but the rest of it was slow, frustrating work. “We need a special kind of unit for this,” Marj said. “Probably a large bag, without arms or legs. If we’re ever dumb enough to do anything like this again, I’ll recommend it.”

McGuire urged us to hurry.

Once or twice, Cathie’s eyes met mine. Something passed between us, but I was too distracted to define it. Then we were securing his helmet, and adjusting the oxygen mixture.

“I think we’re okay,” Marj observed, her hand pressed against Selma’s chest. “Let’s get him over there—”

I opened the airlock and pulled my own helmet into place. We guided Herman inside and secured him to Greenswallow’s maintenance sled. (The sled was little more than a toolshed with jet nozzles.) I recovered my bag and stowed it on board.

“I’d better get my stuff,” Cathie said. “You can get Herman over all right?”

“Of course,” said Marj. “ Amity’s sled is secured outside the lock. Use that.”

Cathie hesitated in the open hatchway, raised her left hand, and spread the fingers wide. Her eyes grew very round, and she formed two syllables that I was desperately slow to understand: in fact, I don’t think I translated the gesture, the word, until we were halfway across to Amity , and the lock was irrevocably closed behind us.

“Good-bye.”

Cathie’s green eyes sparkled with barely controlled emotion across a dozen or so monitors. Her black hair, which had been tied back earlier, now framed her angular features and fell to her shoulders. It was precisely in that partial state of disarray that tends to be most appealing. She looked as if she’d been crying, but her jaw was set, and she stood erect. Beneath the gray tunic, her breast rose and fell.

“What the hell are you doing, Perth?” demanded McGuire. He looked tired, almost ill. He’d gained weight since we’d left the Cape, his hair had whitened and retreated, his flesh had grown blotchy, and he’d developed jowls. The contrast with his dapper image in the mission photo was sobering. “Get moving!” he said, striving to keep his voice steady. “We’re not going to make our burn!”

“I’m staying where I am,” she said. “I couldn’t make it over there now anyway. I wouldn’t even have time to put on the suit.”

McGuire’s puffy eyes slid painfully shut. “Why?” he asked.

She looked out of the cluster of screens, a segmented Cathie. A group Cathie. “ Amity won’t support six people, Mac.”

“Damnit!” His voice was a sharp rasp. “It would have just meant we’d have cut down activity. Slept a lot.” He waved a hand in front of his eyes, as though his vision were blurred. “Cathie, we’ve lost you. There’s no way we can get you back!”

“I know.”

No one said anything. Bender stared at her.

“How is Herman?” she asked.

“Marj is still working on him,” I said. “She thinks we got him across okay.”

“Good.”

A series of yellow lamps blinked on across the pilot’s console. We had two minutes. “Damn,” I said, suddenly aware of a new danger: Amity was rotating, turning toward its new course. Would Greenswallow even survive the ignition? I looked at McGuire, who understood. His fingers flicked over press pads, and rows of numbers flashed across the navigation monitor. I could see muscles working in Cathie’s jaws; she looked down at Mac’s station as though she could read the result.

“It’s all right,” he said. “She’ll be clear.”

“Cathie—.” Bender’s voice was almost strangled. “If I’d known you intended anything like this—.”

“I know, Ed.” Her tone was gentle, a lover’s voice, perhaps. Her eyes were wet. She smiled anyway, full face, up close.

Deep in the systems, pumps began to whine. “I wish,” said Bender, his face twisted, “that we could do something.”

She turned her back, strode with unbearable grace across the command center, away from us into the shadowy interior of the cockpit. Another camera picked her up there, and we got a profile: she was achingly lovely in the soft glow of the navigation lamps.

“There is something you can do,” she said. “Build Landolfi’s engine. Come back for me.”

For a moment, I thought Mac was going to abort the burn. But he sat frozen, fists clenched. And he did the right thing, which is to say, nothing. It struck me that McGuire was incapable of intervening.

And I knew also that the woman in the cockpit was terrified of what she had done. It had been a good performance, but she’d failed to conceal the fear that looked out of her eyes. I watched her face as Amity’s engines ignited, and we began to draw away. Like McGuire, she seemed paralyzed, as though the nature of the calamity which she’d embraced was just becoming clear to her. Then she was gone.

“What happened to the picture?” snapped Bender.

“She turned it off,” I said. “I don’t think she wants us to see her just now.”

He glared at me, and spoke to Mac. “Why the hell,” he demanded, “couldn’t he have brought her back with him?” His fists were knotted.

“I didn’t know,” I said. “How could I know?” And I wondered, how could I not?

When the burn ended, the distance between the two ships had opened to only a few kilometers. But it was a gulf beyond crossing.

Bender called her name relentlessly. (We knew she could hear us.) But we got only the carrier wave.

Then her voice crackled across the command center. “Good,” she said. “Excellent. Check the recorders: make sure you got everything on tape.” Her image was back. She was in full light again, tying up her hair. Her eyes were hooded, and her lips pursed thoughtfully. “Rob,” shecontinued, “fade it out during Ed’s response, when he’s calling my name. Probably, you’ll want to reduce the background noise at that point. Cut all the business about who’s responsible. We want a sacrifice, not an oversight.”

And I realized, at that moment, that she’d acted, not to prolong her life, but to save the Program . “My God, Cathie.” I stared at her, trying to understand. “What have you done?”

She took a deep breath. “I meant what I said. I have enough food to get by here for eight years or so. More if I stretch it. And plenty of fresh air. Well, relatively fresh. I’m better off than any of us would be if six people were trying to survive on Amity .”

“Cathie!” howled McGuire. He sounded in physical agony. “We didn’t know for sure about life support. The converters might have kept up. There might have been enough air! It was just an estimate!”