Jack McDevitt - POLARIS

We paced back and forth, measuring possibilities, wondering precisely from which point Edgar had fallen. Even without the fence, which hadn’t existed when the accident occurred, I couldn’t see how a grown man in possession of his faculties could wander off the edge. The news accounts said no alcohol or drugs had been found. There were no trees near the summit, no bushes, nothing to disguise its existence. The woods ended about fifteen meters away.

“Couldn’t happen,” I concluded.

Alex wasn’t so sure. “No moon. Acrimony in the air. She wants to keep her job.

He wants kids. But he doesn’t make much, and probably doesn’t have much of a future. So it goes back and forth and he’s not watching what he’s doing.”

I didn’t believe it. “It’s not possible.”

“Happens all the time, sweetheart.”

“It does not happen all the time.”

“Seriously, Chase, people get excited, and they can lose sight of everything.

He’s backing away from her, throws up his hands, trips on a loose rock, and over he goes.”

“I just can’t see it. Nobody’s that dumb.”

The hiking trail we were following ran right along the edge. If you decided to play tag up there, you’d back off a good bit, move back by the trees. Your instincts wouldn’t let you do anything else. “I think she killed him,” I said.

He nodded. “You too? Why?”

“I think it’s the only way it could happen. They come up here, maybe she’d discovered he’d been cheating, maybe she’d gotten tired of him. They’re in, what, the third or fourth year of their marriage. That’s about the time you find out whether you’ve got a real marriage or not.”

“When did you become an expert?”

“It doesn’t take a specialist, Alex. We’re talking about stuff every woman knows but apparently not many guys. If she did it, I doubt it had anything to do with whether they were going to have kids. Anyhow, she probably decided she had an easy way out, she was probably angry, or frustrated, so you get a quick push, and it’s over.

Who’d ever know the difference?”

We walked back through the woods to the skimmer. It felt good to get into the cabin, where it was warm. We were in a glade, about a half kilometer from the summit. Alex sat listlessly, not saying anything, just staring out at the trees. I felt it, too. There was something depressing about that windblown hilltop. “It’s the weather,” I said.

Alex made a rumbling sound in his throat. “Louise,” he said, speaking to the AI, “see what you can get on Edgar Crisp.” He’d left me to pick the name for the system, and I picked one at random that seemed warm, friendly, and nonthreatening. Alex wasn’t overwhelmed, but he didn’t say anything.

There wasn’t much on Crisp. Birth. Death. Parents came to Rimway in 1391.

Graduated from the Indira Khan Academy in Lakat, which was halfway across the ocean. Licensed to operate a skimmer 1397. Gained title to a skimmer 1398. Lived three years on Seaview Avenue in leased quarters before marrying Agnes. Employee of Allnight Recreation Services, the owner of the Easy Aces Casino. Died at twentyeight.

That was it. Edgar’s passage through the world had been unremarkable. He’d disturbed nothing, changed nothing, had only called attention to himself by the manner of his death. It was almost as if he’d never existed. I wondered who had attended his funeral.

“That’s the way for most of us,” Alex said. “Birth, death, and good riddance.

The world takes no note. Unless you’re lucky enough to overturn somebody’s favorite mythology.”

I laughed. Alex was persuaded he’d achieved immortality by the Christopher Sim discoveries, and he was very likely right.

“Louise,” he said, “check the graduation lists for the Khan Academy. Make it 1395 and 1396. See if an Edgar Crisp shows up.”

“You don’t think the media had it right?” I said.

“Just following my instincts.”

Louise needed only a few seconds. “Lakat does not subscribe to the registry.”

“Is there any way to verify his background? Short of going there?”

“There is no off-line arrangement.”

A couple of kids wandered past with backpacks. Headed toward the Point. If they were planning on staying outside, it was going to be cold.

“Another one with no history,” I said. “How’d you know?”

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence we keep running into people who come from places that don’t maintain a register.”

I started the engine. “You think any of these people are going to turn out to be who they say they are?”

“Don’t know,” he said. “What I’m wondering is where they’re coming from.”

The Walpurgis Cemetery was less than a half hour’s walk from the home once occupied by Agnes and Ed Crisp. It occupied roughly a square kilometer, mostly on gently rolling hillside. The markers, like the town, were old and worn. It wasn’t used much anymore, because the local population had declined significantly and also because having one’s ashes given to the winds or the sea is now generally favored over other forms of disposal.

We had heard that some of the graves went back eight hundred years, although we saw nothing that old. They were crowded together, three and four people in each plot, and I saw no part of the cemetery that wasn’t lacking space. It was crowded, and the town was empty.

Markers were designed in a wide range of styles, depending mostly, I guess, on the wealth of the occupant and also, to some extent, on the era. Fashions come and go.

Some were simple slates, set in the ground, with a name and dates. Others were larger, more elaborately carved headstones, expressing the sentiments of those left behind. Beloved father. Left us too soon. On some, the characters had become too smooth to read.

Statuary ranged from modest to elegant to overblown. Angels stood guard, a young boy cradled a lamb, biblical figures bowed their heads, doves flew.

It had gotten dark by the time we arrived. The snow had stopped, and the night was very still. I thought briefly of Tom Dunninger, who’d devoted his genius to life extension, who’d said he hated cemeteries, who was reported to have been on the track of a major breakthrough before he joined his colleagues on the Polaris. Well, Tom, nothing has changed. At best, people still live for maybe 120 or 130 years, tops, which is the way it’s been for a long time. Dunninger himself was pushing it when he headed out to Delta Kay. A hundred twenty-something, as I recall. I could understand his interest. All of us would like to think there’s a way of shutting down the ageing process, but if it hasn’t been done by now, I suspected that meant it couldn’t be done.

We walked among the headstones, exchanging irrelevancies, contemplating mortality, trying to keep warm.

Crisp’s grave was in the fold of a hillock, his marker one of four clustered together. It was unpretentious, a white stone, engraved with his name and dates, and the legend In loving memory. Someone had planted a sabula bush beside the headstone. It wasn’t much to look at in the face of approaching winter, but in the spring it would become a golden glory.

The ground was a bit worn. When the weather got warm, the grass would grow.

“I wonder who he is,” Alex said.

Back in the skimmer, Alex called Fenn, told him where we were and what we’d been doing, and asked whether he could get an exhumation order for Crisp.

I suppose I could say Fenn was reluctant. Irritated might be closer. “You’re not supposed to be involved in this,” he said.

“I’m not breaking any laws, Fenn.”

“Whoever this is you’re looking for, they’re dangerous, Alex. Can’t you just leave things alone?”