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

The place was beginning to empty out. People and their drinks were headed into the street.

I wasn’t interested in talking about business cycles. Not tonight. Not with Max Hopkin. “Mr. Hopkin,” I said.

“Call me Max.”

“Max. You know, Max, what you say isn’t entirely true. A good reporter can always get the facts. You managed to do that with the Sikhs. Parker and her people did the same thing here over the last twenty-four hours.” I shook my head. “How did you manage it, by the way? What did you do, hire a fishing boat?”

“No,” he said. “We did a lot better.” His eyes lost their glitter, as if he were retreating into a dark place. “We made it up.”

I smiled at him. I know a joke when I hear it.

Listen,” he said, “the Sikhs wouldn’t let anybody near. They were putting out self-serving statements. Hal Richard was with the Chinese. They were doing the same thing. Nobody liked the media much. The warlords can’t do their little bloodlettings in peace with the rest of the world looking in. So they issue their bulletins and conduct their briefings and in the end nobody has a clue what’s happening.

“We decided hell with it. We did our own war. We made it up as we went along.” A line of sharp white teeth glinted in a shark smile. “We sent in the destroyers and counterattacked with the torpedo boats. We took out the big Chinese cruisers and used the subs where they’d do some damage. We had a damned good time. We even issued communiqués. BREAK OFF IF YOU MUST. WITHDRAW IF YOU WILL. RANJAY WILL STAND WITH THE VISHA .”

I took a deep breath. He was using a tone that suggested he’d told this story many times before. “That was a lie?” I asked incredulously. Ranjay’s challenge had rallied the fleet at the critical moment on the third day. The decisive day.

“Let’s call it imaginative fiction.” He swirled his drink, listened to the ice cubes. “Of the highest order.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“It’s true.”

I watched him for a long minute. “How could you possibly have hoped to get away with it?”

“How could we not get away with it? You think Ranjay was going to deny his great moment? Don’t look at me like that. Listen, I was assigned to get a story. I got one. The only thing I really had to worry about was making sure we had the finish right.” He gazed out at the street scene. “The details get lost. If anybody notices, they say, hell, fog of war, communications breakdowns. Whatever.”

I was beginning to feel cold. It was the sound of icons breaking apart. “Most people thought the Chinese would win,” I said.

“I’d met Ranjay. And I’d met Chang-li. Chang-li was an idiot. Political appointment. Ranjay, well, Ranjay was something else. I knew he wouldn’t engage unless he was sure of the result. And the Chinese couldn’t force him to fight. Not in the Strait.” He smiled, enjoying himself now. “We knew enough to make it believable. We had the order of battle. We knew the capabilities of the two fleets. We got that from Jane’s .” He got up, looking for more Scotch, but the bartender was gone. His apron had been rolled up and left on a stool. “Maybe he quit,” he said. “What the hell are you drinking, Jerry?”

“Same as you.”

I followed him over to the bar. A long mirror lined the wall behind the counter. He studied his reflection momentarily, shook his head, pulled down a bottle and produced glasses. “On the rocks,” I added.

He nodded and poured.

It didn’t seem possible. I was thinking: Murrow in London. Cronkite in Vietnam. Hopkin at Malacca Strait. And now he was telling me it was all a lie?

He said, “I never left Calcutta. I spent the war at the Hilton. I wrote my dispatches in the bar.” He was turned away from me again, but our eyes had locked in the mirror.

“I’ve told people at luncheons,” he continued. “Nobody cares. Nobody believes it. It’s a joke. An exaggeration. The Grand Old Cynic playing everybody along. But it’s true.” He swung round to face me. “Nobody cares about truth. Not really. It’s theater that counts. Drama. You want to be a good reporter, Jerry, you keep that in mind.” He refilled his glass and indicated the rum. “How about another round?”

“No,” I said. “I’ve had enough.” That, at least, was true. I don’t usually tolerate more than two drinks.

“Whatever you say.” His eyes lingered on the lines of bottles behind the bar. “I wonder what they really know,” he said.

“Who?”

“Parker. Mark Everett. The rest of those people out there.” He waved in the general direction of the ceiling. In the street, someone had produced a beamer and was firing it off. A stream of cascading light threw shadows across the floor.

“What do you mean?”

“Jerry, I had to get the result right because if I didn’t I’d be found out.”

“And?”

“Parker and Everett and the rest. Things go wrong, who’s going to be around to fire them?” He raised the glass. “To the WBC news team. Whatever else might happen, they gave us a hell of a show.”

Maybe it’s just my imagination, but I’m worried.

The roast beef has no taste, and I’m guzzling my coffee. I’m sitting here watching Turner and Pappas working on the little brick house across the avenue with their handpicks. Jenson and McCarthy are standing over near the lander, arguing about something. And Julie Bremmer is about a block away drawing sketches of the blue towers. Everything is exactly as it was yesterday.

Except me.

In about two hours, I will talk to the Captain. I will try to warn him. Odd, but this is the only place in the city where people seem able to speak in normal tones. Elsewhere, voices are hushed. Subdued. It’s like being in a church at midnight. I guess it’s the fountain, with its silvery spray drifting back through the late afternoon sun, windblown, cool. The park glades are a refuge against the wide, still avenues and the empty windows. Leaves and grass are bright gold, but otherwise the vegetation is of a generally familiar cast. Through long, graceful branches, the blue towers glitter in the sunlight.

There is perhaps no sound quite so soothing as the slap of water on stone. (Coulter got the fountain working yesterday, using a generator from the lander.) Listening, seated on one of the benches at the fountain’s edge, I can feel how close we are, the builders of this colossal city and I. And that thought is no comfort.

It’s been a long, dusty, rockbound road from Earth to this park. The old hunt for extraterrestrial intelligence has taken us across a thousand sandy worlds in a quest that became, in time, a search for a blade of grass.

I will remember all my life standing on a beach under red Capella, watching the waves come in. Sky and sea were crystal blue; no gull wheeled through the still air; no strand of green boiled in the surf. It was a beach without a shell.

But here, west of Centauri, after almost two centuries, we have a living world! We looked down, unbelieving, at forests and jungles, and dipped our scoops into a crowded sea. The perpetual bridge game broke up.

On the second day, we saw the City.

A glittering sundisk, it lay in the southern temperate zone, between a mountain chain and the sea. With it came our first mystery: the City was alone. No other habitation existed anywhere on the planet. On the fourth day, Olzsewski gave his opinion that the City was deserted.

We went down and looked.

It appeared remarkably human, and might almost have been a modern terrestrial metropolis. But its inhabitants had put their cars in their garages, locked their homes, and gone for a walk.

Mark Conover, riding overhead in the Chicago , speculated that the builders were not native to this world.