Jack McDevitt - SEEKER

Alex had been on these kinds of shows before and always got attacked. “They don’t let you talk,” he’d complained to me afterward. “The hosts load the questions, control the flow of conversation, and never let you finish an answer if they don’t like the way you’re going.” The fact that they consistently went after him as someone more interested in making money than in revealing the truth didn’t help. They’d made it sound as if there was something wicked in turning a profit.

But Alex thought the empty chair wouldn’t look good. So he agreed.

I went with him to the station the following evening. They could have done the show by remote, of course. But they prefer that you come physically so they can arrange your makeup and do what they like to call the personal touch, which always seemed to involve laying on a lot of charm and trying to put him off guard before they go to broadcast. This was the same guy who, when the Christopher Sim information came out, had openly accused him of being unpatriotic.

Peter McCovey is short and stocky with a black beard and a smile that never goes away and never changes. He wore his trademark blue jacket with a white neckerchief and a white sash. A little pretentious, he admitted to me, but his audience expected it.

There were two other panelists, Dr. Emily Clark, who doubted that the Margolian colonists had ever managed to get a foothold on the world of their choice, wherever it might have been. And one Jerry Rhino, who insisted that Margolia had not only survived its early years but had affected our daily lives through subliminal influences and magnetic manipulation. “It’s the source of our spiritual strength,” he said. Rhino had written several books on the subject and was wildly popular with the occult crowd.

The show took place on a set designed to resemble a book-lined den. McCovey introduced his guests and opened things up by asking Alex what had really happened to the Margolians.

Alex, of course, didn’t know. “Nobody knows,” he added.

Rhino claimed he knew, and the show developed rapidly into an argument. McCovey liked having guests quarrel with one another. He was, and remains, among the highest-rated media hosts.

Clark smiled relentlessly throughout the performance, successfully implying that anyone who took any of this seriously was an idiot. When Alex tried to argue that for all we knew they could still be alive and prospering out there somewhere, she rolled her eyes and wondered aloud where common sense had gone. She could not tolerate Rhino at all and simply dismissed him with icy sarcasm.

But Jerry plunged on, unaffected. The Margolians had gotten caught up in the spiritual flow of the cosmos. Cut off from the more mundane activities of the home world, they had reached a kind of nirvana. And so on. Occasionally he glanced at Alex for confirmation. I got the impression Alex was trying to hide.

McCovey’s standing claim was that he took no sides. He was not reluctant to call people names. At one point he asked Alex to explain how he wasn’t a vandal, and he told Rhino he was deranged. I’ve noticed since that he makes it a point to invite people on who are easy to assault because they’re reluctant to yell back. I’ve never mentioned that to Alex.

In any case, Alex left the studio in a bleak mood. He swore he’d never again allow himself to be caught like that. We stopped at the Silver Cane, and he tossed down three or four drinks, which was well past his usual limit.

The real attack came the following day, when Casmir Kolchevsky showed up on Jennifer in the Morning. “There should be legislation to put people like Benedict out of business,” he insisted. “They’re thieves. They take treasures that belong to all of us and sell them to the highest bidder. It’s contemptible.”

He went on like that for the better part of fifteen minutes. At the segment’s conclusion, Jennifer invited Alex to appear and defend himself. Alex admitted he’d already received a call. “They told me I’d want to watch.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m not sure going on doesn’t just make things worse.” He sighed. “I’m tired of it. These guys are never satisfied. People like Kolchevsky, who could never find anything on his own, get on and claim we’re stealing things that belong to the audience. But none of it belongs to anybody. It belongs to whoever is willing to show some ambition and do the legwork. If it weren’t for us, a lot of this stuff would still be lying around out there.”

“Okay,” I said, “but you have to go on and say that, Alex. You can’t just let him make those charges and not respond. It looks like a concession.”

He nodded. “Book me. And by the way, your pal Shara is due back tomorrow. I’ve already made an appointment for you.”

“Okay.”

“Show her the AI log. I’ll be surprised if she can’t tell us where the Seeker is.”

I got a call that evening from Windy. “I didn’t want to talk to you from the office, because I was concerned about being overheard,” she said.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I think I know who was putting out information. One of my people saw a member of the director’s staff downtown last night. She was in a bar with one of Ollie Bolton’s specialists.”

“Bolton?”

“There’s no proof anywhere. But-” She shrugged.

“Do you have confidential information that Bolton would be interested in?” I asked.

“Sure,” she said. “We always have stuff on projects and speculations that I’m sure, for that matter, you and Alex would like to see.”

“It doesn’t prove anything,” I said.

Her voice hardened. “No, it doesn’t. But we’re going to call her in tomorrow morning and talk to her.”

I hesitated. “No. Why not leave her in place? Just be careful what she sees.”

Windy didn’t take well to disloyalty. “I hate to do that, Chase. If this woman is collaborating with him, giving information away, she should be terminated.”

I decided I wouldn’t want to get on her wrong side. “You don’t know for sure. So you can’t really act anyhow. Let it go for now.”

Time is a river of events, and its current is strong. No sooner does a thing appear in its flow than it is swept away, and another takes its place, until that too is carried from sight.

- Marcus Aurelius,

Meditations I was at Shara’s office next morning to explain what we wanted. The mission reports showed the stars visited by the Wescotts on their various flights. Thanks to the Falcon AI record, we now knew, for each mission, the order in which those visits had occurred. “Alex thinks you might be able to determine whether that sequence coincides with the original proposal.”

“But the proposals have been discarded,” said Shara. “We already went over this.”

“I know,” I said. “But hang on. Before the quantum drive was developed, a Survey ship always computed the shortest total route for a given mission.”

I saw the perplexed look give way to a smile. “Oh,” she said.

“And we know that Wescott was interested in G-type stars near the end of their hydrogen-burning cycle.”

“Okay.”

“We’re pretty sure they found something in one of the systems and deleted that star from the report. They went somewhere else and substituted that for the one that had been in the original proposal. If we can establish which star was deleted-”

“-You’ll know where the Seeker is.”

“Can we do it?”

“Without having the proposal in our hands-”

“Yes.”

“Sure.” Her eyes focused elsewhere. A flock of colbees floated past, riding the wind.

Her AI broke in to inform her of an incoming call.