Jack McDevitt - SEEKER

It was a decorative piece, the sort of thing you might buy in a souvenir shop. It was gray. A green-and-white eagle was etched into its side. There was something antiquated about the style in which the eagle was drawn. It was in flight, wings spread, beak open in an attack posture. A bit overdramatic. It might have been popular in the last century. A small banner was unfurled beneath the eagle, and something was written on it. It was too small to make out clearly, but I could see it wasn’t the Standard alphabet.

She turned the cup so I could see the back side. It featured a ringed globe, with inscriptions above and below. Same type of symbols.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“What’s the language, Amy? Do you know?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“Do you know what it is?”

She looked puzzled. “It’s a cup.”

“I mean, what kind of cup? Where did it come from?”

“My boyfriend gave it to me.”

“Your boyfriend.”

“My ex -boyfriend.” Her eyes narrowed, and I could see things had come to a bad end.

She was trying to turn whatever remained of the relationship into cash. “He saw me admiring it one time so he told me I could have it.”

“Good of him,” I said.

“I liked the eagle.” She stared at it for a long moment. “He gave it to me the night before we broke up. I guess it was supposed to be a consolation prize.”

“Maybe.”

“The cup’s worth more than he is.” She smiled. One of those smiles that tell you she wouldn’t feel especially upset if the boyfriend fell off a bridge.

“Where did he get it?”

“He always had it.”

I could see I wasn’t going to get far with her. I was tempted to tell her what I believed, that the cup was worthless. But Rainbow has a code of ethics that requires me to know what I’m talking about. I fell back on our AI. “Jacob,” I said. “What’s the language?”

“Searching,” he said.

There was really nothing outre about the cup, nothing to set it apart, aside from the strange symbols. But I’d seen a lot of odd lettering during my years with Rainbow, and, believe me, it didn’t necessarily mean anything.

Jacob made a sound as if clearing his throat. It signaled he was surprised. Had Amy Kolmer not been on the circuit, I knew he would have made an appearance of his own.

“It’s English,” he said. “Mid-American.”

“Really?”

“Of course.”

“Fourth Millennium,” I guessed.

“Third. Nobody spoke English in the Fourth.”

Amy came to life. She’d not expected any good news from me. But she’d overheard enough to raise her hopes. She looked at the cup, looked at me, looked back at the cup.

“This thing is nine thousand years old?”

“Probably not. The inscription uses an old language. That doesn’t mean-”

“Hard to believe,” she said. “It’s in good shape for all those years.”

“Amy,” I said, “why don’t you bring the cup over here? Let us take a close look at it?”

The truth is that Jacob can give us all the physical details remotely. But Alex insists that a computer-generated repro is not the same as holding the actual object in his hands. He likes to imply there’s a spiritual dimension to what he does, although if you ask him point-blank he’d say it was all nonsense, but that there are qualities in a physical object that computers cannot measure. Don’t ask him to specify.

So I made the appointment with Amy Kolmer for that afternoon. She showed up early.

Alex came down and ushered her into the office personally. His curiosity had been piqued.

I didn’t particularly care for the woman. On the circuit, I’d sensed that she expected me to try to cheat her. In person, she went a different direction, playing the helpless but very sexual female. I suppose it was Alex’s presence that set her off. She fluttered and primped and cast her eyes to the floor. Poor me, life is hard but maybe I’ve gotten lucky and I surely would be grateful for whatever assistance you can lend. If she thought Rainbow’s asking price to broker a transaction would go down as a result of her efforts, she didn’t know Alex.

She’d wrapped the cup in a piece of soft linen and carried it in a plastic bag. When we were all seated inside the office, she opened the bag, unwrapped the cup, and set it before him.

He studied it closely, bit his lip, made faces, and placed it on Jacob’s bulk reader.

“What can you tell us, Jacob?” he asked.

The lamp in the top of the reader blinked on. Turned amber. Turned red. Dimmed and intensified. Went pretty much through the spectrum. The process took about two minutes.

“The object is made of acryolonitrile-butadiene-styrene resins. Coloring is principally-”

“-Jacob,” said Alex, “how old is it?”

“I would say the object was constructed during the Third Millennium. Best estimate is approximately 2600 C.E. Error range two hundred years either way.”

“What does the inscription say?”

“The banner says New World Coming. And the lines on the back of the cup seem to be a designator. IFR171. And another term I’m not sure about.”

“So the cup is, what, from an office somewhere?”

“The letters probably stand for Interstellar Fleet Registry.”

“It’s from a ship?” I asked.

“Oh, yes. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that.”

Amy tugged at my arm. “What’s it worth?”

Alex counseled patience. “Jacob, the other term is probably the ship’s name.”

“I think that is correct, sir. It translates as Searcher. Or Explorer. Something along those lines.”

The lamps went off. Alex lifted the object gently and placed it on the desk. He looked at it through a magnifier. “It’s in reasonably good condition,” he said.

Amy could hardly be restrained. “Thank God. I needed something to go right.” Alex smiled. She was already thinking what she would be able to buy. “How can it be that old?” she asked. “My drapes are new, and they’re already falling apart.”

“It’s a ceramic,” he told her. “Ceramics can last a long time.” He produced a soft cloth and began gently to wipe the thing.

She asked again how much we would pay.

Alex made the face he always used when he didn’t want to answer a question directly.

“We’re not normally buyers,” he said. “We’ll do some research, Amy. Then test the market. But I’d guess, if you’re patient, it will bring a decent price.”

“A couple hundred?”

Alex smiled paternally. “I wouldn’t be surprised,” he said.

She clapped her hands. “Wonderful.” She looked at me, and turned back toward Alex.

“What do I do next?”

“You needn’t do anything. Let’s take this one step at a time. First we want to find out precisely what we have.”

“All right.”

“Have you proof of ownership?”

Uh-oh. Her face changed. Her lips parted and the smile vanished. “It was given to me.”

“By your former boyfriend.”

“Yes. But I own it. It’s mine.”

Alex nodded. “Okay. We’ll have to provide a document to go with it. To certify that you have the right to make the sale.”

“That’s okay.” She looked uncertain.

“Very good. Why don’t you leave it with us, and we’ll see what more we can find out, and get back to you.”

“What do you think?” I asked when she was gone.

He looked pleased. “Nine thousand years? Somebody will be delighted to pay substantially for the privilege of putting this on the mantel.”

“You think it’s really from a ship?”

He was looking at the cup through the magnifier again. “Probably not. It comes out of the era when they were just getting interstellars up and running. It’s more likely to have been part of a giveaway program or to have been sold in a souvenir shop. Not that it matters: I doubt it would be possible to establish whether it was actually on shipboard or not.”