Jack McDevitt - SEEKER

“He took her for granted?”

Smile. “Oh, yes. Adam was too busy looking at the stars, worrying about things that were far away, to see what was under his nose.”

“But he didn’t mistreat her?”

“Oh, no. Adam wouldn’t have harmed a fly. And he loved her. It was just that it was a kind of limited love. He loved her because she was physically attractive, and she enjoyed the same kinds of things of things he did, and because she shared his passion for the outer boundaries. And because she was the mother of his daughter.” She looked around the room again. “It’s depressing in here. Why don’t we open the curtains, dear?”

I helped, and sunlight streamed in.

“Much better,” she said. “Thank you. Have you met their daughter? Delia?”

“Yes.”

“Sweet young thing. She has a lot of her mother in her.”

She paused, obviously lost in the past. I took advantage of the opening: “Did Margaret ever suggest to you that she and Adam might have discovered something unusual during one of their flights?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Of course. Did you know about that?”

“I know they found something.”

“She always told me to keep it quiet.”

“What did they find?” I asked.

She drew back into the present and looked at me closely, trying to decide whether she could trust me. “Don’t you know?”

“No. I know there was a discovery. I’m not sure what it was. Did they find Margolia?”

Her eyes locked on me. “They found the Seeker,” she said.

“The Seeker.”

“Yes.” She nodded. “Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“Yes.”

“They went back several times, trying to extract information from it. But everything was too old.”

“I’d think so.”

“They hoped it would tell them where Margolia was.”

“And it didn’t.”

“No. But they didn’t have enough time. They were still working on the problem when they went out on that damned skiing vacation.”

“Where is the Seeker?”

“I don’t know. She told me once, but I really have no recollection. Just coordinates.

Numbers, and who remembers them?”

“Are you sure?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Did she write it down?”

“If she did, it’s a long time gone.” She managed another smile. “I’m sorry. I know this isn’t what you hoped to hear.”

“No, it’s okay. But they actually found the Seeker.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell somebody?”

“I didn’t think they’d want me to. I wouldn’t have told you if you hadn’t mentioned Margolia. You already had part of the story. So I figured no harm done.” She looked cautiously at me. “I hope I’m right.”

“I’ve no interest,” I said, “in damaging anyone’s reputation. I understand they boarded it.”

“That’s correct.”

“Can you tell me what they saw?”

“A dead ship.” She lowered her voice, as if we were in a sacred place. “It was carrying a full complement.”

“Of crew?”

“Of passengers. I’ll never forget the look on Margaret’s face when she told me.”

My God, I thought, the ship’s capacity was, what, nine hundred people? “Lost together,” she said. “Whatever happened, they were lost together.”

When I got back to the office, a call from Delia Wescott was waiting for me. “I have something you might want to see. Can you come to the island?”

Delia lived on Sirika, which was several hundred kilometers southeast of Andiquar. I got directions from her and grabbed a southbound train for Wakkaida, which is a seacoast community. From there I took a cab, settled into the backseat and relaxed while it rose above the shoreline and headed out to sea.

It was early evening by then. The skies were clear, and the first stars had shown up in the east. The cab passed over a pair of large islands and joined some local traffic.

Sirika appeared on the horizon. It was an unremarkable place, mostly just a refuge for people with a lot of money and an inclination to get away. Its population was only a few thousand.

Its houses were all outrageously big, and they came with columns and colonnades and pools. They all had boathouses, which looked better than most people’s homes.

We angled down toward a villa situated on a hilltop. It was modest, as things went in that neighborhood, located amid a vast expanse of lawns. There was a decent guesthouse off to one side. We drifted toward the landing pad, and Delia got on the circuit. “Welcome to Sirika, Chase.” A door opened below, and two kids, a boy and a girl, charged out onto the walkway. Delia followed behind.

The cab touched down, the kids cheered, and I disembarked. She introduced the children. They wanted to look inside the cab, so I held it a minute before paying up.

Then they ran off, accompanied by a peremptory warning from their mother not to go far, dinner’s about ready. Delia looked proudly after them until they disappeared into a cluster of trees. “It’s a long way from Andiquar,” she said, “but I’m glad you could make it.”

“I had a good book,” I said.

We went inside. It was a showy home, with high ceilings, lots of original art, marble floors. “My husband’s away on business,” she said. “He asked me to tell you he was sorry not to be here.”

She directed me into a sitting room. It was small, cozy, obviously the place where the family hung out. Two armchairs, a sofa, and a dark-stained coffee table, on which stood a metal box. Music was being piped in. I recognized Bullet Bob and the Ricochets.

“I know you’re anxious to hear why I asked you to come,” she said. “After you asked me about the Seeker, I called my aunt Melisa. She took care of me after my folks died.

She didn’t know anything about a discovery, but she and my father weren’t all that close anyhow. Aunt Melisa wasn’t interested much in outer space.

“I’d talked to her as I told you I would, and she said at first there wasn’t anything we’d care about. From my parents. But she went looking and she called me the other day to tell me about something she’d found.” Delia indicated the box.

I followed her gaze and she nodded. Open it.

Folded inside was a white shirt wrapped in plastic. It was marked with the same eagle emblem I’d seen on the cup. “Beautiful,” I said.

“Melisa tells me she remembers now that there was other stuff. Clothes, boots, electronic gear. Data disks.”

“My God. What happened to it?”

“It got tossed. She said she kept it a few years, but it looked old, and the electronics didn’t seem to do anything, weren’t compatible with anything, and she couldn’t see any reason to store it. She kept the shirt as a memento.”

“Did she get rid of the disks, too?”

“She says everything went.” She sighed. Me, too. “Which brings us to the other reason I wanted to talk to you.” She looked worried.

“Okay.”

“If you’re right, if they really did discover the Seeker, they must not have reported it.

It’s going to turn out my parents hid information from Survey.”

“Yes,” I said. “Actually, that’s the way it looks.”

“How serious is that?”

“I don’t know.” I told her why we thought they’d have kept it quiet. That they might have felt it was necessary to protect the artifact. I put the best light on it I could. But Delia was no dummy.

“No matter,” she said. “If that’s what happened, it won’t look good.”

“Probably not.”

“Chase, I don’t want to be part of anything that’s going to harm their reputations.”

She paused. Looked around the room. “You understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes.”

“So I’m not sure where I go from here.”