Jack McDevitt - SEEKER

I even got to hear him speak. “Thank you, Harv,” he said, and immediately corrected himself: “Mr. Striker.” Smile for the audience. We all know he’s really good old Harv. He took a piece of paper out of his pocket, unfolded it, and made a face at it.

“The corps wants me to say thanks to all the parents, and to Mr. Striker, and the Society,” he said. “We’re grateful for your help. Without you, we wouldn’t be here.”

The kid was on his way.

And there was a middle-aged Adam as an observer at the table of Jay Bitterman when Bitterman received the Carfax Prize. And Adam again during a birthday celebration for a politician with whom he’d developed a passing relationship.

And Adam’s wedding. He’d shown good taste and married his pilot, Margaret Kolonik. Margaret looked gorgeous the way brides inevitably do because they are happy and emotional and celebrating a premier moment. In fact, though, she’d have looked good in an engine room. She had the same highlighted black hair I’d seen in her daughter, framing perfect features and a smile that lit up the room.

The routine at Survey is to interchange pilots and researchers after each mission. The average mission now lasts about eight or nine months, and I doubt things were much different forty years ago. It was done because the missions usually carried only the pilot and one or two researchers. People locked away like that for extended periods of time tend to get on each other’s nerves.

But the background information indicated the happy couple had been together ten consecutive flights. On the last two, their baby daughter Delia had been along. I assumed there was no problem arranging that if you wanted to do it.

I sat in my office and watched Margaret Kolonik stride purposefully up the aisle to take charge of her guy. No wilting flower, this one. The data prompt informed me that her father was dead, and she was given away by an uncle, an overweight man who kept looking around as if he wanted to escape. Not somebody she’d have been very close to, I thought.

It was a religious ceremony. A priest requested the blessings of the Almighty on the happy couple, and led them in their vows. The best man produced the ring, Adam slipped it on her finger, she waltzed into his arms, and they kissed.

I envied them that moment. I’ve had a good life and can’t complain. But I don’t think I’ve ever approached the sheer joy I saw in Margaret’s eyes as she let go of him, and they started back down the aisle.

The best man was described as a lifelong friend of Adam’s, Tolly Weinborn. I recognized him immediately and switched back to the Explorer ceremony. And there he was, about thirteen, standing at attention with his comrades, with all due intensity and innocence.

I found Tolly after a quick search. He was living in Barkessa, on the northern coast, where he was an administrator at a public service office, the kind of place people go to when they’re in trouble. He was not available at the moment, the AI told me. Could they have him return the call?

I found other tasks to occupy my time while I waited, among them looking for books that dealt with the Margolians and their flight from Earth. I came across The Golden Lamp, by Allie Omar. Omar looks at the causes of humanity’s long history of starting and stopping, taking three steps backward, turning left, going forward, and doing lots of pratfalls. Her basic question: What might have happened if, since the twentyseventh century, the human race had been able to avoid the infighting, the economic dislocations, the collapses? Had we sidestepped the three distinct sets of dark ages that set in during the Fourth, Seventh, and Ninth Millennia? Assume a straightforward dead-ahead unimpeded progress. Where would we be?

She doesn’t answer her own question, but is satisfied with speculating on what the result might have been had the Margolians succeeded. The bottom line: They would be technologically three or four thousand years ahead of us. They’d regard us, not as barbarians, but as distinct inferiors.

In the early years of interstellar travel, people worried about meeting aliens who would prove to be vastly superior. In technology. Perhaps ethically. Possibly both.

And the fear was that, faced by a hypercivilization, however benevolent its intentions might be, humans would simply lose heart. Similar effects had been observed time and again during the early years as man spread around his home world.

But, where the Margolians were concerned, the fears were, of course, unfounded.

After leaving Earth, they were never seen again. And, across thousands of years, the only aliens we’ve encountered are the telepathic Ashiyyur, the Mutes, sometime friends, sometime rivals, occasional enemies. We discovered to our surprise that we were their technological equals. And since they still engaged in war among themselves, and occasionally against us, we were further gratified to conclude they were no better than we were.

There was no one else. Visits to star systems over the millennia produced numerous living worlds, but none with anything you could call recognizable intelligence. Of course there were some species out there with potential. If you were prepared to wait around a few hundred thousand years, you might have someone to talk with. But the galaxy, as Art Bernson famously said, has a lot of empty rooms.

Tolly never called back, so I tried him at home that evening. When I mentioned Wescott’s name to his AI, he immediately agreed to talk to me. He still looked relatively young, despite the accumulation of years. The features, cherubic in the twelve-year-old, congenial in the best man, had assumed a kind of world-weariness.

He’d gained weight, and his face was lined, his once-red-blond hair gone mostly gray.

He wore a beard, and he had something of a haunted look. Too many years of public service, maybe. Too many sad stories.

I identified myself and explained that I was doing some historical research. “Did you keep in touch with Adam after he got married?” I asked.

He couldn’t suppress a grin. “It was impossible to stay in touch with him. He was away too much.”

“Did you see him at all?”

He bit his lip and pushed back in his chair. “A couple of times. During the early years.”

“What about after he left Survey? When his career was over?”

No hesitation this time: “His career never ended,” he said. “He might have left Survey, but he and Margaret kept making flights. Did it on their own.”

“You mean they paid the bills?”

“Yes.”

“Why did they do that?”

Shrug. “Don’t know. I always assumed they’d gotten hooked and just had to keep going. I asked him that question once.”

“What did he say?”

“ ‘The world is too small.’ ”

“But why wouldn’t they have stayed with Survey if that’s what they wanted to do?”

“He said Survey always gave him a prepared itinerary. He liked being able to go wherever he wanted.”

“That make sense to you?”

“Sure. They had plenty of money. They’d saved all those years, and Margaret had access to a trust of some sort.”

“Did you ever think about going along with them?”

“Who? Me?” The grin spread across his face. “I like to keep my feet on the ground.

Good old terra firma. Anyhow, I had a career to take care of. Such as it was.”

“Did they ever invite you?”

He rubbed his jaws. “I just can’t remember, Chase. It’s too long ago. I’m sure they’d have made room for me if I’d asked.”

“Do you know where they were going? On the private flights? Did they go to different places? Or was it the same destination all the time?”

He reached for a glass half-filled with a colorless liquid and ice cubes. He took a sip and put it back down. “I always assumed they went to different places.”