Jack McDevitt - SEEKER

“Was there a problem?”

“No. It had forty years’ service. That was as long as they kept them then.”

“They keep them longer now?”

“Fifty-five. We buy better stuff now.”

“What happens to a ship when its time is up?”

“We sell it if we can. Junk it if we have to.”

“Do they clear off the AI when that happens?”

He looked puzzled. “You know, I really have no idea. It’s not something I ever thought to ask.” He made a face and drummed his fingertips on a flat surface. A desktop, probably. “Hold on a second, Chase.”

The scenic images came back. Sand dunes this time. And music designed to make you feel affectionate toward Survey. Then he reappeared. “They tell me we do now. But at the turn of the century, we don’t know whether they bothered. There was a court case eighteen years ago. That’s what got us serious about it, so now everything gets cleared.”

“Can you tell me specifically what happened to the Falcon?”

“Let me check,” he said. “I’ll get back to you.”

You should understand I had no hope whatever that anything would come of the inquiry. But Alex expected me to be thorough.

When Aaron called back, he had a piece of paper in front of him. “Chase,” he said, “it was purchased in 1392 by the Hennessy Foundation.”

“Hennessy,” I said.

“Dedicated to peace with the Mutes.”

Takmandu is the loveliest of human worlds. Its forests are deep, its seas veiled in mist, its triple moons breathtaking. It is remote from the mundane skywalks and crowded parks of the Inner Confederacy, and its proximity to the demon-haunted Ashiyyur suggests it will remain that way.

- Hyman Kossel,

Travels, 1402

The ski slopes are great, too.

- Leslie Park, quoted in The Ultimate Tourist, 1403 The Hennessy Foundation was headquartered on Takmandu, in the Coroli Cluster.

Takmandu had been, for centuries, the political center of the outlying worlds. I’d been there once, with my class, when I was a teenager. It was the first time I’d been off Rimway, and it was one of those life-changing events. I wasn’t all that caught up visiting the historical sites, which was the purpose of the field trip, but I loved the ship.

The Starduster. And the flight itself. I came back with the determination to be a pilot.

In an era during which you could communicate more quickly over interstellar distances by traveling physically than by any other means, I knew I’d be hitting the road again. Alex pleaded the pressure of business. Appointments with clients. Have to keep them happy. You know how it is, Chase. “Anyhow,” he said, “I don’t know anything about shipboard AIs. Find the Falcon. And let’s see what the AI has to say for itself.”

“If anything,” I said.

He gave me his most optimistic gaze. “Nothing ventured,” he said.

So I packed a couple of good novels, picked up a blank chip that would be compatible with the Falcon AI data dump, and boarded the Belle-Marie. On the first day of the new year I set out for Takmandu and the Josef Hennessy Foundation, which was dedicated to creating a better understanding between us and the Ashiyyur.

I’d never seen a Mute in the flesh. Alex had talked with one once. If that’s the right word. They’re telepaths, and there’s something about their physiognomy that creeps people out. Not to mention the fact that they can see into your mind. Alex describes the experience in his memoirs. His comment to me was that what humans and Mutes need isn’t understanding, but distance. We’re just not designed to get along. “The Foundation’s been at it for half a century,” he’d said. “They should understand the realities by now.”

“I guess they keep trying,” I told him.

“Yep. Makes me wonder if they’re not really con men collecting money from idiots.”

I read what I could about the Hennessy Foundation on the way out. They supervised some exchange programs, and conducted seminars in how to communicate, the nature of Mute psychology, and how to control your own natural revulsion in their presence.

Mutes didn’t really look that bad. They were humanoid, but there was something insectile about them. Their pictures didn’t look all that unsettling; but Alex warned me that the common wisdom was correct. Get close to them and your hair stands on end.

The AI produced a Mute avatar for me to talk with. It did look pretty revolting, like one of those things that show up in horror sims. Red eyes, fangs, claws, and a smile that suggests you’re next on the menu. Still, I didn’t feel the kind of revulsion that I’d been warned about.

“That’s because,” Alex said, “it wasn’t really there, and you knew that.”

Whatever Alex might think, the Foundation seemed to be having a degree of success.

The sporadic sniping and occasional warfare between Mute and human had stopped.

Visitors from each side were spending time with receptive groups, and there was even an Ashiyyur-human friendship society. The Foundation’s stated goal: Two intelligent species with a single objective.

The objective, Alex commented, was to keep well away from each other.

The historian Wilford Brockman has argued that we were fortunate to find the Mutes, because they had the effect of uniting the human race. Since they arrived on the scene centuries ago, there had been only one major war between human powers. The last few centuries have been the most sustained period of internal peace in millennia.

Interestingly, the same effect had been noted on the Mute side. They, too, had a long history of internecine struggle, which had slowed perceptibly. Nothing like a common enemy to bring people, or Mutes, together.

I came out of jump status three days away from Takmandu. I let their ops people know I was in the neighborhood and started one of the mysteries I’d brought along.

But I’ve never been able to read six or seven hours at a crack, so I found myself watching more sims inspired by the Margolian legend. In Tiger-Men of the Lost World, a mission finds the lost colony, but it is covered with trackless forests and the colonists have devolved into ravenous beasts. (How that could happen in a few thousand years isn’t explained.) Vampire Below posits a freighter that encounters a Margolian ship with a lone pilot, who turns out to be-Well, you guessed it.

The majority of books written on the subject weren’t serious. Most of the authors were true believers of one kind or another, generally pushing occult visions of what had happened and sometimes claiming that the lost colony exercises a mystic influence over certain individuals. (Send money and learn how to apply Margolian power in your own life.) The most popular theory by far was the demon star notion that had arisen shortly after the colonists had departed. Harry Williams’s celebrated comment that they would travel so far that even God couldn’t find them gained notoriety as depicting an antireligious spirit. The notion took hold that the Margolian mission was therefore doomed from the start. Someone launched the idea that a red star would arrive over their chosen world, the eye of God, and that it would herald the destruction of the colony.

Stories began to circulate that many of the people who had donated money and time to the Margolians had died prematurely. As the years passed, and no message ever came back, talk of a curse became widespread. The eye of God no longer sounded so far-fetched.

I thought about what a truly free society might accomplish in nine thousand years.

Harry Williams’s refugees had started with the intention of avoiding the old mistakes and applying the lessons of history. Their society would throw off all strictures except those imposed by compassion and common sense. Education would emphasize the sciences and philosophy and stress the value of independent thought. Everything would be open to question. Professional politicians would not be allowed.