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

The transmitter had been left on.

Something was going out. I put it on the speaker. It was simply the quiet murmur of electronics. Telemetry, I decided. The spaceport was transmitting telemetry.

It made no sense. I went to a window and looked out. Looked for moving lights somewhere, something going up or coming down. But the night sky was quiet. At ground level, a light mist had begun to creep across the parked vehicles.

I sat down at the radio. “Hello,” I said. “This is Richardon. Where the hell is everybody?”

I’m not sure precisely when I realized I wasn’t alone. A footstep somewhere, maybe. An echo. Whatever it was, I became conscious of movement, and of my own breathing.

My first impulse was to get out of the terminal. To get back to the car, and maybe back to the boat. Sweat rolled down my ribs.

I moved through the offices one by one, clinging to the pistol.

I stopped in a conference room dominated by a sculpted freediver. A holograph unit which someone had neglected to turn off blinked sporadically atop a carved table. A half-dozen chairs were arranged around the table, in disorder. There were empty coffee cups, and a couple of light pads.

I activated the holo and one of the light pads. They’d been discussing motivational techniques.

And somewhere, far off, glass shattered.

Above, in the Tower Room, the rooftop restaurant.

I rode the elevator up two floors, came out into a dark corridor, and stood before a pair of open doors.

There were lights on, computerized candles flickering in smoked jars. Music was playing. Soft, moody, romantic. The Tower Room in those days looked, and felt, like a sunken grotto. It was a hive of (apparently) rocky vaults and dens, divided by watercourses, salad dispensers, mock boulders and shafts, and a winding bar. Blue and white light sparkled against fake sandstone and silverware. Crystal streams poured from the mouths of dancing nymphs and raced through narrow channels between rough-hewn bridges.

It felt as if the heating system had given out.

I crossed a bridge and followed the bar. Everything was neatly arranged, chairs in place, silver laid out on red cloth napkins, condiments and sauce bottles stacked side by side.

I could feel tears coming, and sank into a chair.

There was an answering clatter. And a voice: “Who’s there?”

I froze.

Footsteps. In back somewhere. Then a man emerged from the shadows. In uniform. “Hello,” he called cheerfully. “Are you all right?”

I shook my head uncertainly. “Of course,” I said. “What’s going on? Where is everybody?”

“I’m back near the window.” He turned away from me. “Have to stay there.” He looked back to make sure I was following, and then retreated the way he’d come.

I’d seen the uniform before. Somewhere. By the time I joined him, I’d placed it: It was the light and dark blue uniform of the Confederacy, the small group of frontier allies waging war against the Mutes.

He’d piled a table high with electronic equipment, a computer, agenerator, a couple of displays, and God knew what else. He stood over it, a headphone clasped to one ear, apparently absorbed in the displays. They showed schematics, trace scans, columns of digits and symbols.

He glanced in my direction without quite seeing me, pointed to a bottle of dark wine, produced a glass, and gestured for me to help myself. Then he smiled at something on one of the screens. He pulled the headset off one ear and dropped into a chair. “I’m Matt Olander,” he said. “What the hell are you doing here?”

He was middle-aged, a thin blade of a man whose gray skin almost matched the color of the walls. “I don’t think I understand the question,” I said.

“Why didn’t you leave with everybody else?” He watched me intently, and I guess he saw that I was puzzled. Then he started to look puzzled. “They took everybody out. You know that, right?”

“ Who? ” I demanded. My voice must have gone off the edge of the register. “ Who took everybody where ?”

He reacted as if it was a dumb question, and reached for the bottle. “I guess we couldn’t expect to get one hundred percent. Where were you? In a mine somewhere? Out in the hills with no commlink?”

I told him and he sighed in a way that suggested I had committed an indiscretion. His hair was thin, and his features suggested more of the tradesman than the warrior. His voice turned soft. “What’s your name?”

“Lee,” I said. “Kindrel Lee.”

“Well, Kindrel, we spent most of these two weeks evacuating Ilyanda. The last of them were sent up to the ships yesterday morning. Far as I know, you and I are all that’s left.” His eyes switched back to the monitors.

“Why?” I asked. I was feeling a mixture of relief and fear.

His expression wished me away. After a moment, he sat down at the computer. “I’ll show you,” he said.

One of the screens dissolved to a ring display. The figure eight infinity symbol, which was prominent on the flag, was at the center. An array of more than forty trace lights blinked along the outer circumference. “Ilyanda is at the center,” he said. “The range runs out to a half billion kilometers. You’re looking at a Mute fleet. Capital ships and battle cruisers.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “What’s happening, Ms. Lee,” he continued, “is that the Navy is about to blow hell out of the sons of bitches.” His jaw tightened, and a splinter of light appeared in his eyes.“At last.”

“It’s been a long time coming,” he said. “They’ve been beating hell out of us for three years. But today belongs to us.” He raised his glass and finished the wine.

“I’m glad you were able to get people away,” I said into the sudden stillness.

He smiled. “Sim wouldn’t have had it any other way.”

“I never thought the war would come here.” Another blip appeared on the screen. “I don’t understand it. Ilyanda’s neutral. And I didn’t think we were near the fighting.”

“Kindrel, there are no neutrals in this war. You’ve just been letting others do your fighting for you.” His voice contained an edge of contempt.

“Ilyanda’s at peace!” I stared at him, into his eyes, expecting him to flinch. But I saw only annoyance. “Or at least it was. Anyhow, thanks for coming.”

He looked away from me. “It’s all right.”

“They’re only here,” I said, “because you are, aren’t they?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve brought your war to us!”

He propped his chin on his fist and laughed at me. “ You’re judging us ! You know, you people are really impossible. The only reason you’re not dead or in chains is because we’ve been dying to give you a chance to ride around in your goddamn boat!”

“My God,” I gasped, remembering the missing shuttle. “Is that why they never got here?”

“Who?”

“The shuttle that was supposed to be coming in.”

“Oh.” That infuriating grim reappeared. “Don’t worry about it. It was never coming.”

“You’re wrong. I overheard some radio traffic shortly after midnight—”

“They were never coming. We’ve done everything we could to make this place, this entire world, appear normal.”

“Why?” I asked.

“You have the consolation, Kindrel, of knowing we are about to turn the war around. The Mutes are finally going to get hurt.” His eyes glowed.

“You led them here,” I said.

“It wasn’t hard.” He got to his feet and looked through the window. “We led them here. We’ve led them into hell. They think Christopher Sim is on the space station. Or on the ground. And they want him very badly.” His face was in shadow. “Sim has never had the fire power to fight this war. He’s been trying to hold off an armada with a few dozen light frigates and one battle cruiser.” Olander’s face brightened. “But he’s done a job on the bastards. Anyone else would have been overwhelmed right at the start. But Sim: Sometimes I wonder whether he’s human.” He turned back to me. “Maybe it would be best if you left,” he saidtonelessly.