Jack McDevitt - POLARIS

In a crowd, on the ground, I should be reasonably safe. If it was a setup, I thought I’d taken the initiative away from him.

It was starting to snow as I lifted away from the country house. But traffic was light going downtown, and I made good time, dropping onto one of the capitol landing pads with ten minutes yet to get to the Tower.

I patted my jacket, reassured by the bulge. I wished I had something lethal, but you can’t really get your hands on a serious weapon without going through a lot of red tape. If it came to it, though, the scrambler would put his lights out, and that would be sufficient.

In case you’re wondering, I was qualified to use the weapon. I wasn’t exactly an expert, but in my full-time piloting days there’d been places I’d gone that you didn’t want to visit unarmed.

The snow had all but stopped. There hadn’t been enough to get any accumulation, but it felt as if more was coming.

The landing pads are on the roof of the Archives. You ride down in an elevator and come out one of the ramps into Confederate Square, close to the statue of Tarien Sim. The usual sight-seers were thinning out, most headed for dinner, some just getting out of the weather. I hurried along the perimeter of the White Pool toward the Tower.

It was closed for the evening when I got there, but there were still people gathered around its entrance, looking up toward the illuminated balcony. It was an obelisk, not really all that high. Only a few stories, actually. But it was a brilliant piece of craftsmanship-reflective, seamless, polished. It had been erected more than two centuries ago as a tribute to the men and women who had come to the aid of the Dellacondans and their allies in the long war against the Mutes. That was the action that had led directly to the formation of the Confederacy, which marked the first time in its long history that the human family had stood united. Well, almost united. There were always places like Korrim Mas.

It occurred to me belatedly that I should have worn a wig, or done something else to change my appearance.

I scanned the crowd, looking for Kiernan. There was no sign of him, but I was still a few minutes early. I stayed close to a group of tourists who were gathered at the edge of the pool. They were mostly standing with their heads back, looking up. I did much the same, while trying to keep an eye on my ground-level surroundings.

I’d assumed coming out that I was reasonably safe. But I began thinking how easy it would be to pick somebody off at that location. There were lots of bushes and trees lining the pool, and still more scattered across the Square. Any of them could hide a sniper. For that matter there was nothing to stop a killer from walking up alongside me and using a knife. It would be over before I knew there was a problem.

So I kept my back to the pool, tried to watch the shrubbery, tried to watch everything.

A family of three paused in front of me and took pictures of the Tower. On the far side of the pool, someone squealed in delight, and I saw running kids.

It was past the designated hour.

If he’d been unable to get here, he would have called. Right? Tried to get a delay.

A security bot wheeled past.

An older man with three or four people in tow explained how young he had been when he’d first gone there, and how the city had changed since then.

A couple of lovers strode by, holding hands, absorbed in each other.

A skimmer drifted down, hovered over the pool, then hurried away. A couple of people tossed coins into the water and smiled at each other.

The crowd opened up a bit, but I still saw no sign of Kiernan.

A group of young boys, all about twelve or thirteen, invaded the area. A kuwallah team, judging by their jackets. Two men were with them. The kids charged to the front of the Tower, and one of the men tried to slow them down.

I imagined Kiernan speeding through the night, trying to get there before I left to tell me-what? That it had all been some sort of terrible mistake? Nothing personal, you understand.

Off to my right, in the direction of the Archives, someone screamed. I heard the sound of running, then spotlights began to come on. It was a frosty sort of illumination.

People were moving toward the Archives.

Whatever was happening, I decided it was prudent to stay clear, to remain where I was. Lights appeared in the sky and began to descend. Security bots hurried past and cleared a perimeter. Within minutes, emergency and police units had arrived.

Word got passed around that someone had fallen from the roof of the Archives.

“A man,” they said.

The emergency vehicles touched down. I threw caution aside and tried to get close. I arrived just in time to see somebody carried into a med unit. Moments later it lifted away.

Police officers fanned out through the crowd looking for witnesses.

Kiernan never showed up.

I wasn’t entirely surprised when Fenn called in the morning to tell us about the man who’d been killed at the Archives. “Identified him from Ida’s pictures,” he said. “It’s Kiernan. The same guy. No question.”

Alex told him I’d been there. Fenn’s expression hardened. “You’re not going to be satisfied until you get yourself killed, are you, Chase?”

“I tried to call.”

“Next time try harder.”

“It won’t happen again,” said Alex.

“You keep telling me that. I can’t protect you if I don’t know what’s going on.”

I told him about Kiernan’s call. He listened. Nodded. Scribbled something down.

“All right,” he said. “Thanks. We’ve got his DNA, and we are working now on establishing who he is.”

“Good. Let us know, okay?”

“If you hear anything more from these people, anything, would you be good enough to contact me? Right away?”

The AI at the Epstein Retreat, Dunninger’s longtime lab, had been named Flash, after a pet retriever. Three days after the departure of the Polaris, campers had gotten careless. The timber was dry, a fire wasn’t properly put out, and the woods caught.

The lab was completely destroyed.

When we’d gotten tired trying to figure out what Kiernan had wanted to tell us, we went back to trying to decipher the nonverbal communication between Dunninger and Mendoza. Eventually we got around to looking at the news coverage of the fire.

The blaze was already out of control when the media arrived. The fire brigade was only a few minutes behind, but by then the area was an inferno.

Epstein was located on a bank of the Big River. The facility consisted of two white one-story mod buildings, the living quarters, and the laboratory. At one time they’d been a boating facility and restaurant. There’d been rumors that Dunninger had been close to a solution to the Crabtree problem, but I had trouble believing he’d have gone off to a distant star system if he’d been on the verge of making the greatest discovery in history.

The fire had completely engulfed the lab. The buildings themselves, of course, resisted the flames, but the forest came all the way out to the water, so everything around them had burned. Lab materials burst into flame, or melted. In the end, the Epstein structures still stood, charred and smoking, but nothing else survived.