Jack McDevitt - SEEKER

“I take it you want me to go talk to her,” I said.

“Yes. Woman to woman is best.”

“We promised Amy we wouldn’t let the family know we’re interested in the cup.”

“We promised her that Hap wouldn’t find out. Chase, the woman is on Morinda.

Moreover, she and her brother haven’t spoken for years.”

“Where’s the mother?”

“Dead.”

“And the father?”

“Dropped out of sight early. I can’t find anything on him.”

There’s something about having a black hole in the neighborhood that leads to sleepless nights.

- Karl Svenson,

Strumpets Have All the Fun, 1417 Morinda is one of three black holes known to exist inside Confederacy space. The name also serves the large armored orbiting space station that was home to a thousand researchers and their support staffs, who were measuring, poking, taking the temperature of, and throwing assorted objects into, the beast. Most of them, according to the info tabs, were trying to learn how to bend space. There were even a few psychologists conducting experiments related to the way people perceive time.

I had never been there, nor had I ever seen a black hole before. If that’s the correct terminology, since you don’t really see a black hole. This one wasn’t particularly big, as these things go. It was maybe a couple hundred times the mass of Rimway’s sun. A ring of illuminated debris, the accretion disk, enclosed it, firing off X-ray jets and God-knows-what other kinds of radiation, and sometimes even rocks.

That’s why the station is armored and equipped with Y-beam projectors. Most of the action is predictable, but the experts claim you never really know. They don’t worry much about the rocks, which they can dissolve. But radiation is a different kind of problem.

I jumped into the system at a range of about 70 million kilometers from the hole. That was closer than I should have been, but still a safe distance. Quantum travel is convenient because it’s instantaneous. But the downside is that there’s a larger degree of uncertainty to it than there was with the old Armstrong engines. It’s a modest difference, but it’s there, and it’s enough to get you killed if you don’t give yourself plenty of room so you don’t materialize inside a planet, or for that matter in the same space as anything too big for the prods to push out of the way.

I needed three days to coast into the station. While en route I arranged billeting, called my old friend Jack Harmon who was there on assignment and let him know I was coming and he could expect to buy me a drink, and checked out what I could find on Hap’s sister.

Her name was Kayla Bentner. She was a nutritech, whose chief responsibility was to see that food supplies at the station were healthful. Her husband Rem was a lawyer. I know you’re wondering why a space station needs a lawyer, but this is a big operation.

People are always renegotiating contracts and quarreling over assigned time on the instruments. They also get married, make out wills, file for separation. And occasionally they sue one another.

At a place like that, the lawyer is the neutral party, the guy everybody trusts. Not like back home.

I thought about letting Kayla know I was coming, but then decided it would be best not to make a big deal of it. So I cruised into my assigned berth on the evening of the third day, checked into my hotel room, met Harmon in a small bistro, and spent the evening recalling old times and generally enjoying myself. I’d hoped he might know either Kayla or her husband. That would have made the job easier, but no such luck.

In the late morning I planted myself outside the offices of the Support Services, where Kayla worked, and when she came out to go to lunch, I fell in behind.

She was with two other women. I followed them into a restaurant called Joystra’s, which was a no-frills place. The tables were too close together and management expected you to eat up and move on. Furniture, curtains, and tableware all looked as if they had been made on the run. But it was located on the station’s outer perimeter, and there was a wall-length window with a view of the accretion disk. It wasn’t much to look at, a large shining ring that under other circumstances would have been just another shining ring, of which the Orion Arm has plenty, but it was ominous because you couldn’t get out of your mind what was at the center of the thing.

Kayla didn’t look much like her brother. She was tall, trim, serious. Civilized. You looked into her light blue eyes, and you could see somebody was home. Half the people in the restaurant seemed to know her, and exchanged greetings with her as she passed.

She and her friends were shown to a table, and I was next in line, wondering how to manage getting an introduction when I caught a break. Sharing tables during peak hours was a common practice at the station. “Would madam mind?”

“Not at all,” I said. “Perhaps the three ladies who just came in-”

“I’ll attend to it.” The autohost was tall, lean, black mustache, constantly smiling, but it was the kind of smile that looked glued on. I’ve never understood why the people who arrange these things can’t get the details right. He strode over to the table where Kayla and the others were seated and made his request. The women looked my way, one of them nodded, and Kayla raised a hand in my direction.

I went over. Introductions all around. I gave my name as Chase Dellmar. “I know you from somewhere,” I told Kayla, putting on my best puzzled frown.

She studied me. Shook her head. “I don’t think we’ve ever met.”

I pressed an index finger against my lips and creased my brow, thinking deeply about where we might have connected. There was some back and forth about places we’d both worked. No link there. Different schools. Must be my imagination. We ordered, lunch came, we talked aimlessly. The women were all assigned to the same facility.

There was a problem of some sort with the boss, who was forever taking credit for other people’s ideas, who wouldn’t listen to anyone, and who didn’t spend enough time with the software. That was station-speak for someone who didn’t socialize, a capital crime in a small society. The usual cautions about supervisors fraternizing with the help didn’t apply to the same degree in places like Morinda.

I waited until we were finished and dividing the check. Then it struck me. I brightened, looked directly at Kayla, and said, “You’re Hap’s sister.”

She went white. “You know Hap?”

“I was Chase Bonner when you knew me. I used to come by the apartment.”

She frowned.

“Years ago, of course. I can understand you might have forgotten.”

“Oh, no,” she said. “I remember you. Of course. It’s just that it’s been so long.”

“I can’t believe I’d run into you here.”

“Yes. That’s a wild coincidence, isn’t it?”

“How’s Hap? I haven’t seen him in a lot of years.”

“Oh. He’s okay. I guess. Actually, I haven’t seen him myself in a long time.” We were out of the restaurant by then, trailing behind her companions. “Listen,” she said, “it’s been a pleasure to see you again, uh…” She had to struggle for the name. “Shelley.”

“Chase.” I smiled gently. “It’s okay. We didn’t spend that much time together. I wouldn’t expect you to remember me.”

“No. I remember you. It’s just that I have to get back to work, and I guess my mind is on other things.”

“Sure,” I said. “I understand. How about letting me buy you a drink while I’m here?

Maybe this evening?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Chase. My husband-”

“Bring him along-”