Jack McDevitt - SEEKER

“Emma,” Teesha said, “have we ever had a ship called the Falcon?”

Emma’s eyeslids half shut. She was too busy for trivia. “No,” she said. “Not as long as I’ve been here.” She sailed out through the door and was gone.

“How long has she been around?” I asked.

“About fifteen years. A long time. She’s our director of interspecies relations.”

“She manages the diplomacy?”

“You could put it that way.”

I strolled down onto the maintenance deck and said hello to the duty boss. He was a short, olive-skinned guy in his sixties with too much weight and a distinct wheeze.

His name was Mark Woolley. Mark needed medical help, and I hoped he was getting it.

“Falcon?” he said, screwing up his face and shaking his head. “Not here. Not ever, that I know of.”

“This would have been a long time ago, Mark.”

He was wearing coveralls with STARTECH INDUSTRIES stenciled over one pocket and MARK over the other. He looked tired. “I been here all my life,” he said. “We never had a ship with that name.”

“Okay. Hennessy acquired it in 1392 from Survey. They might have changed the name.”

He led me back to his office, which was crowded with parts, disks, tools, and instruments. It overlooked one of the docks. Two ships with Foundation markings were out there at the moment, tied to umbilicals. The engine room of one, a Monitor class, had been opened, and a team of robots were working on it.

He sat down, wheeled over to his right, brought up a data screen, and asked for any maintenance record or fleet information they had regarding a ship either currently or formerly named Falcon. “Take it back fifty years,” he added.

The AI replied in the same voice: “No record of a Falcon during the indicated period.

Or of a ship previously carrying that name.”

“Okay,” I said. “Something’s wrong somewhere.”

Mark shrugged. “Don’t know.”

I could have started back that evening and told Alex it was a dead end. But I’d just spent several days in the Belle-Marie, and I needed a break.

I changed clothes again, opting for something a bit more intriguing than the business suit I’d been wearing. Something black and clingy. Then I headed for the Outrider Club, which, judging from the information I had available, was the most posh eating place on the station.

Time doesn’t change on space stations. At a restaurant like the Outrider, it’s always evening, because flights are always arriving and departing, and everybody’s in a different time zone. The fact that people operate on varying clocks-some on an eighteen-hour day, others on thirty hours, and with all sorts of variations between and beyond-adds to the confusion. So restaurants specialize. Some always serve breakfast. At others, it’s always 8:00 P.M. Or whatever passes for 8:00 P.M. in your part of the Confederacy.

I picked a table near a flowering tree of a type I’d never seen before, ordered a drink, and tried to look accessible. I was hoping not to spend the evening alone.

The Outrider had everything, soft music, dim lights, candles, musky scents, a spectacular view of the Veiled Lady. It was a glowing cloud, consisting of millions of stars. You needed an imagination to make a female form out of it. But it didn’t matter.

Below, on the planetary surface, it was just getting dark and the cities were beginning to light up.

I switched my attention to the guys coming in, looking for someone interesting, when I spotted the pained-looking man with the white beard from the Foundation office. He was in a dinner jacket, accompanied by an older woman, standing at the host’s station.

I tried to remember if his name had been on the door, or if Teesha had mentioned it.

But I couldn’t come up with anything. He and his companion were shown to a table across the room. My waiter returned, and I ordered a light meal.

I tried calling Teesha’s office number, but she was gone for the day, and the AI would give me nothing. Let me say up front I had no real hope that this guy could provide any information on the Falcon, but you just never knew.

So I collected my drink and wandered over to their table. They looked up, and he frowned as if trying to recall where he might have seen me before. “Pardon me,” I said. “My name’s Chase Kolpath. I couldn’t help noticing you in the Foundation office today.”

A smile appeared. “Oh, yes,” he said, rising. He introduced himself and his companion. He was Jacques Corvier. “I hope you got whatever you needed.”

So I told him. I explained how far I’d come, that I was involved in a research project, that the Falcon had been sold to the Foundation, and that I wanted very much to talk to its AI.

He pretended to be interested. I got the impression that was for the benefit of his companion. “I think I know what might have happened,” he said, when I’d finished.

I had the distinct feeling that, had the other woman not been present, he’d have invited me back to the office to take a look at the files. As it was, he spoke into his link and offered me a chair. He listened for a moment to the response. Said yes. Then he looked at me. “Chase,” he said, “the Falcon was never part of the Foundation fleet.

We got it from Survey for the express purpose of turning it over to the Ashiyyur.”

“To the Ashiyyur?”

“It was before my time, understand. But yes. They wanted a ship for an exhibition they were putting together, or a museum. I don’t know which. But the ship was turned over to them immediately. We took possession only long enough to make the transfer.”

“Turned over to whom, exactly? Do you know?”

He repeated the question into the link, listened, and shook his head. “We don’t know.”

There was a Mute passage office in the main concourse for those traveling on to Ashiyyurean worlds. The station information packet indicated that flights left every four days for Xiala, which was the entry world to that other domain. I should mention here that Xiala is a made-up human word. We know what the term looks like in its written form, but because the Mutes do not speak, there is no such thing as a correct pronunciation, or indeed any pronunciation. However all that may be, I thought we could have done better than Xiala.

I went to the passage office, where I was greeted by a human avatar. She was reticent, polite, conservatively dressed in a silver-trimmed red uniform. She smiled and said hello as I walked in. Could she help me?

The office was plain. A counter, a couple of chairs, an inner door. Two posters saying ASHIYYUREAN TRAVEL and PASSAGE DOCUMENTATION HERE. An electronic board provided the schedule for incoming and outgoing flights over the next two weeks.

I was tempted to ask to speak to the Mute-in-charge. But I restrained myself. “I have a question. Is there someone here I might talk to? Someone who’s been around a while?”

“Are you sure I can’t answer your question?”

I tried her. Starship contribution by the Foundation decades ago, possibly to an Ashiyyurean museum. The Falcon. Did she know where it might be? She had no idea.

Had never heard anything about it. “Just a moment, please,” she said. “I’ll check with my supervisor.”

She blinked off. Moments later I heard sounds behind the door. And a chair scraping the floor.

Footsteps.

I braced myself for first contact. Noted how many people were strolling past just outside. Reminded myself it couldn’t possibly be as bad as I’d heard.

The door opened. And I was looking at a young woman. The model, I thought, for the avatar. Except that the original looked a trifle more agreeable. “Good afternoon,” she said crisply. (Despite everything, it was still middle of the day in the station business world.) “My name’s Indeila Caldwell. You wanted to know about a starship?”