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

“This is a hell of a time to tell me,” she said. “Well, it doesn’t matter now. Listen, I’ll be fine. I’ve got books to read, and maybe one to write. My long-range communications are kaput , Rob knows that, so you’ll have to come back for the book, too.” She smiled. “You’ll like it, Mac.” The command center got very still. “And on nights when things really get boring, I can play bridge with the computer.”

McGuire shook his head. “You’re sure you’ll be all right? You seemed pretty upset a few minutes ago.”

She looked at me and winked. “The first Cathie was staged, Mac,” I said.

“I give up,” McGuire sighed. “Why?” He swiveled round to face the image on his screen. “Why would you do that?”

“That young woman,” she replied, “was committing an act of uncommon valor, as they say in the Marines. “And she had to be vulnerable.” And compellingly lovely, I thought. In those last moments, I was realizing what it might mean to love Cathie Perth. “ This Cathie,” she grinned, “is doing the only sensible thing. And taking a sabbatical as well. Do what you can to get the ship built. I’ll be waiting. Come if you can.” She paused. “Somebody should suggest they name it after Victor.”

This is the fifth Christmas since that one on Callisto. It’s a long time by any human measure. We drifted out of radio contact during the first week. There was some talk of broadcasting instructions to her for repairing her long-range transmission equipment. But she’d have to go outside to do it, so the idea was prudently shelved.

She was right about that tape. In my lifetime, I’ve never seen people so singlemindedly aroused. It created a global surge of sympathy and demands for action that seem to grow in intensity with each passing year. Funded partially by contributions and technical assistance from abroad, NASA has been pushing the construction of the fusion vessel of which Victor Landolfi dreamed.

Bender was assigned to help with the computer systems, and he’s kept me informed of progress. The most recent public estimates had anticipated a spring launch. But that single word September in Bender’s card suggests that one more obstacle has been encountered; and it means still another year before we can hope to reach her.

We broadcast to her on a regular basis. I volunteered to help, and I sit sometimes and talk to her for hours. She gets a regular schedule of news, entertainment, sports, whatever. And, if she’s listening, she knows we’re coming.

She also knows that her wish that the fusion ship be named for Victor Landolfi has been disregarded. The rescue vehicle will be the Catherine Perth .

If she’s listening. We have no way of knowing. And I worry a lot. Can a human being survive six years of absolute solitude? Bender was here for a few days last summer, and he tells me he is confident. “She’s a tough lady,” he has said, any number of times. “Nothing bothers her. She even gave us a little theater at the end.”

And that’s what scares me: Cathie’s theatrical technique. I’ve thought about it, on the long ride home, and here. I kept a copy of the complete tape of that final conversation, despite McGuire’s instructions to the contrary, and I’ve watched it a few times. It’s locked downstairs in a file cabinet now, and I don’t look at it anymore. I’m afraid to. There are two Cathie Perths on the recording: the frightened, courageous one who galvanized a global public; and our Cathie, preoccupied with her job, flexible, almost indifferent to her situation. A survivor.

And, God help me, I can’t tell which one was staged.

Christmas night.

Will Cutler couldn’t get the sentient ocean out of his mind. Or the creature who wanted only to serve man. Or the curious chess game in the portrait that hung in a deserted city on a world halfway across the galaxy. He drew up his knees, propped the book against them, and let his head sink back into the pillows. The sky was dark through the plexidome. It had been snowing most of the evening, but the clouds were beginning to scatter. Orion’s belt had appeared, and the lovely double star of Earth and Moon floated among the luminous branches of Granpop’s elms. Soft laughter and conversation drifted up the stairs.

The sounds of the party seemed far away, and the Space Beagle rode a column of flame down into a silent desert. The glow from the reading lamp was bright on the inside of his eyelids. He broke the beam with his hand, and it dimmed and went out.

The book lay open at his fingertips.

It was hard to believe they were a thousand years old, these stories that were so full of energy and so unlike anything he’d come across before: tales of dark, alien places and gleaming temples under other stars and expeditions to black holes. They don’t write like that anymore. Never had, during his lifetime. He’d read some other books from the classical Western period, some Dickens, some Updike, people like that. But these: what was there in the last thousand years to compare with this guy Bradbury?

The night air felt good. It smelled of pine needles and scorched wood and bayberry. And maybe of dinosaurs and rocket fuel.

His father might have been standing at the door for several minutes. “Goodnight, Champ,” he whispered, lingering.

“I’m awake, Dad.”

He approached the bed. “Lights out already? It’s still early.” His weight pressed down the mattress.

Will was slow to answer. “I know.”

His father adjusted the sheet, pulling it up over the boy’s shoulders. “It’s supposed to get cold tonight,” he said. “Heavy snow by morning.” He picked up the book and, without looking at it, placed it atop the night table.

“Dad.” The word stopped the subtle shift of weight that would precede the press of his father’s hand on his shoulder, the final act before withdrawal. “Why didn’t we ever go to the stars?”

He was older than most of the other kids’ dads. There had been a time when Will was ashamed of that. He couldn’t play ball and he was a lousy hiker. The only time he’d tried to walk out over the Rise, they’d had to get help to bring him home. But he laughed a lot, and he always listened. Will was reaching an age at which he understood how much that counted for. “It costs a lot of money, Will. It’s just more than we can manage. You’ll be going to Earth in two years to finish school.”

The boy stiffened. “Dad, I mean the stars . Alpha Centauri, Vega, the Phoenix Nebula—.”

“The Phoenix Nebula? I don’t think I know that one.”

“It’s in a story by a man named Clarke. A Jesuit goes there and discovers something terrible—.”

The father listened while Will outlined the tale in a few brief sentences. “I don’t think,” he said, “your mother would approve of your reading such things.”

“She gave me the book,” he said, smiling softly.

“This one?” It was bound in cassilate, a leather substitute, and its title was written in silver script: Great Tales of the Space Age . He picked it up and looked at it with amusement. The names of the editors appeared on the spine: Asimov and Greenberg. “I don’t think we realized, uh, that it was like that. It was one of the things they found in the time vault on the Moon a couple of years ago. Your mother thought it would be educational.”

“You’d enjoy it, Dad.”

His father nodded and glanced at the volume. “What’s the Space Age?”

“It’s the name that people of the classical period used to refer to their own time. It has to do with the early exploration of the solar system, and the first manned flights. And, I think, the idea that we were going to the stars.”