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

“UFO stories,” I said. “They used to be common.”

She shrugged. “It might be that the thing the Berlin saw frightened these people off. Or worse.”

The museum is wheel-shaped. Heavy, curving panels of tinted glass are ribbed by polished black stone that is probably marble. The grounds are a wild tangle of weed and shrub anchored by overgrown hedge. A few flowering bushes survive out near the perimeter.

I laughed. “You don’t suppose the sun is about to nova, do you?”

She smiled and brushed my cheek with a kiss. Jenny is 23 and a graduate of MIT. “It’s going to rain,” she said.

We walked past a turret. The air was cool.

“They seem to have taken their time about leaving,” I said. “There’s no evidence of panic or violence. And most of their personal belongings apparently went with them. Whatever happened, they had time to go home and pack.”

She looked uneasily at the sky. Gray clouds were gathering in the west. “Why did they destroy the computers? And the power plant? Doesn’t that sound like a retreat before an advancing enemy?”

We stood on the rounded stone steps at the entrance, watching the coming storm. Near the horizon, lightning touched the ground. It was delicate, like the trees.

And I knew what had disturbed me about the painting.

Jenny doesn’t play chess. So when we stood again before the portrait and I explained, she listened dutifully and then tried to reassure me. I couldn’t blame her.

I have an appointment to meet the Captain in the gallery after dinner. He doesn’t play chess either. Like all good captains down through the ages, he is a man of courage and hardheaded common sense, so he will also try to reassure me.

Maybe I’m wrong. I hope so.

But the position in that game: Black is playing the Benko Gambit. It’s different in detail, of course; the game is different. But Black is about to clear a lane for the queenside rook. One bishop, at the opposite end of the board, is astride the long diagonal, where its terrible power will combine with that of the rook. And White, after the next move or two, when that advanced pawn comes off, will be desperately exposed.

It’s the most advanced of the gambits for Black, still feared after three hundred years.

And I keep thinking: the inhabitants of the City were surely aware of this world’s value. More, they are competitors. They would assume that we would want to take it from them.

“But we wouldn’t,” Jenny had argued.

“Are you sure? Anyhow, it doesn’t matter. The only thing that does matter is what they believe. And they would expect us to act as they would.

“Now, if they knew in advance that we were coming—.”

“The Berlin sighting—.”

“—Might have done it. Warned them we were in the neighborhood. So they withdraw, and give us the world. And, with it, an enigma.” Rain had begun sliding down the tinted glass. “They’re playing the Benko.”

“You mean they might come back here in force and attack?” She was aghast, not at the possibility, which she dismissed; but at the direction my mind had taken.

“No,” I said. “Not us. The Benko isn’t designed to recover a lost pawn.” I could not look away from the painting. Did I detect a gleam of arrogance in Black’s eyes? “No. It doesn’t fool around with pawns. The idea is to launch a strike into the heart of the enemy position.”

“Earth?” She smiled weakly. “They wouldn’t even know where Earth is.”

I didn’t ask whether she thought we might not go home alone.

One more thing about that painting: there’s a shading of light, a chiaroscuro, in the eyes of the onlookers. It’s the joy of battle.

I’m scared.

The moonlight was bright on Patty’s grave. Rodney Martin felt the moisture in his eyes, threw a final spadeful of earth, and groped for a prayer to a God whose jurisdiction surely ended somewhere south of here. Behind him, in the dark, the surf was a muffled boom.

The wind moved in the trees.

It seemed now he had never known her free of pain. He had worked with her aboard Alexia for almost three years; yet her lifetime, for him, was bracketed between this night and that terrible moment on the dark ruined bridge of the stricken starship when he had come upon her, mouth bloody, face pale behind the plexiglass of her helmet.

Grief twisted his features.

He was reluctant to leave, and stood a long time listening to the forest sounds and the ocean. The moon drifted through the night, not the barren pebble of Earth’s skies, but a large blue-green globe of continents and water, its arc softened in the shimmering white clouds.

There was a chill in the air.

After awhile, Martin shouldered the spade and walked slowly back toward the beach. The trees gave way to tough, fibrous plants rooted in stony soil. He looked out at the ocean, on which no ship had ever sailed.

Long waves broke and slid up the beach. Ahead, atop a low slope, the lights from the Monson dome glittered on the water. He’d been careful to turn the lamps on before leaving, but now it seemed distant and cold.

He passed a massive boulder, its lower sides smoothed by the tides. Beyond lay the escape capsule, cool and round and black, an enormous bowling ball in the sand, forming a kind of matched pair with the rock.

He climbed the ridge behind the capsule and was home. The Monson was actually four domes, three smaller ones connected by twelve-foot-long tubes to a primary central bubble. Not exactly a townhouse, but comfortable, designed to withstand extreme temperatures, assaults by giant lizards, corrosive atmosphere, whatever. The ideal survival structure, sufficient to house the entire eight-person crew of Alexia . As things had turned out, he had a lot of room.

And a lot of time. He wondered what had happened on the ship. Screen failure, probably. God knew the shields had blinked out often enough before. So yes, they’d probably gotten corked by a good-sized rock.

Whatever it was, the hull had come apart, and apparently dumped everyone but the two sleepers into the void. During those last frantic minutes, with power and gravity gone, and the star well swirling beneath his feet, he’d searched Alexia’s spaces and found only Patty, whose first fortunate response had been to launch the datapak.

Sleep did not come easily. He tried to read but could not concentrate. Finally he turned out the lights and stared at the ceiling. The bedroom windows were open. The surf thundered and boomed.

It had been two weeks since they’d arrived here in the escape capsule. Patty had been thrown hard into a bulkhead during the event and had never really rallied. She’d grown weaker day by day while he watched helplessly.

In the morning, he was up early. Tired, angry, he scrambled an egg for which he had no appetite, added toast and coffee, and went for a swim. The ocean was cool. After a while he came in close to shore and stood knee-deep in the surf, enjoying its inconstant tug, feeling it pull the sand from around his toes. The sea was blue and salty, indistinguishable from the Atlantic. Strands of weed wrapped around his ankles. Things very much like sandcrabs washed in and buried themselves amid tiny fountains of water. The white beach, punctuated with heaps of gray rock, swung in a wide curve for miles, vanishing at last around the edge of a promontory. Inland, wooded hills mounted in successive ridges westward to the foot of a distant mountain chain. A lost floater drifted over the breakers, until it was picked up by the wind and blown back toward the forest. The floaters were green airbags, apparently airborne plants, resembling nothing so much as lopsided leathery balloons, complete with an anchoring tail. He watched until it disappeared inland.