Jack McDevitt - Infinity Beach

“ Can I help you? ” asked the house AI.

“Dr. Kane asked me to come by.”

“ I’m sorry. Dr Kane is not at home. ”

“That can’t be right. Are you sure?”

“ She is not here. But I will be happy to relay a message to her, if you wish. ”

Kim stared at the front door. The house stared back.

She used her commlink to find Kane’s number and then put through a call. It chimed twice.

“Kane.”

“Tora, this is Kim Brandywine.”

“Hello, Brandywine. What can I do for you?”

“I’m at your place. You asked me to come over.”

“You’re where?”

“At your place.”

“My place? I don’t know anything about it. Who’d you talk to?”

“Forget it,” she said. She switched to Shep’s circuit, but he didn’t answer.

Not good. She strode quickly to the taxi and ordered it back home.

Two hours later she walked into Matt’s office. He looked up from his desk, surprised to see her, startled at her appearance. “You okay?” he asked.

She closed the door behind her and sat down. “Somebody’s been at Shep.”

“Uh-oh. What did they get?”

“I think we can assume everything.”

“The Kane disk?”

“That too.”

He looked around the office as if suddenly wondering whether it was secure. “Why? Who would do it?”

“I can only think of one person.”

“Woodbridge?”

“Yep.”

“So what’s everything ? Do they know what we talked about this morning?”

“There’s no way to be sure. Shep didn’t have any of it, but it’s possible somebody was listening.”

Matt nodded slowly. “So what did they get that they didn’t already have?”

“The Valiant .”

“They know where it is?”

“They know it exists.”

“That’s not so good.” He inhaled. Exhaled. Looked uncertain. “I was going to call you.”

“About—?”

“I’ve spoken with Dr. Agostino.”

“I thought we agreed we wouldn’t bring him in.”

“Come on, Kim. Be reasonable. He understands the situation and he’s willing to set up a contact team.”

“ He’s probably why I got raided.”

“I don’t believe it. When’d it happen?”

“Around three.”

“I talked to him less than an hour ago.” It was almost five o’clock.

“All right,” she said. “Look, they’ll be coming after the Valiant . We need to get moving.”

“The plan was to leave next week. We thought that was pushing it.”

“Not good enough. We need to be on our way tomorrow.”

“That’s not practical.”

“Forget practical. We’d be better off clearing out tonight. Tell everybody we go tomorrow. Anybody who can’t be there, leave without.”

“You’ll need supplies, Kim. This kind of thing can’t be managed overnight.”

“This one has to be. Do it overnight or forget it.”

“I’ll do what I can,” he said. “We’ll be using the McCollum . It’s in port and ready to go. All we need is the people.”

“Then get them started. Have we got a pilot?”

“Ali Kassem. Do you know him?”

“Met him once or twice.” Solly had spoken well of him. That was good enough.

Matt called her at home late that evening. “We got a late request,” he said. “Can you talk to the Terminal City Business Association tomorrow?”

It was the signal. They would leave tomorrow night.

She complained that it was short notice, and he apologized, said he’d originally planned to handle it himself, but something had come up, and he’d appreciate it.

“Okay,” she said. “But you owe me.”

And she went to bed happy.

Kim slept soundly through the night and was up at six, ate a good breakfast, and finished packing. She put her wet suit and a metal sensor in a carrying case, instructed Shep to inform callers during the balance of the day that she was on assignment in Marathon and after that to say simply that she was on vacation and would be unavailable for the foreseeable future.

Shortly after nine she arrived at the train station and directed the loader to ship her bags through to Terminal City, and signed in. By 9:40 she was on her way to Marathon.

Marathon was a garden town, populated predominantly by people who were satisfied to live off the basic allotment, and to devote their lives to the pursuit of leisure and the arts. It had more theaters per square meter than any other place in the world, more game rooms, more libraries, more swimming pools, and probably more sex.

According to legend, its name commemorated the ultimate one-night stand when Annie Muldoon, a personage at the edge of history, took on the town’s entire adult male population, said to have numbered an even one hundred, and to have exhausted them all in a single night. There was a statue of Annie, with a bunch of bananas thrown over one shoulder, in the city hall courtyard. Kim saw it from the train window as she pulled into town.

She got off, ate lunch, and rented a horse, which she rode through woods still wet from an early morning rain, past waterfalls and wallball courts, to the UDI office. United Distribution was located on the upper floor of a small log building. The lower level featured a communications shop and a liquor store. She went up a flight of stairs, followed the signs into a service area, and presented her ID number to the dex.

The system produced her package, laying it on the counter so she could see the label she’d addressed from Eagle Point. “ Is this correct? ” it asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“ Press here, please. ” It wanted her thumb print on the delivery receipt. She complied, carried the package downstairs, and hefted it onto the horse. A man sleeping on the front deck woke up, looked at her, and said hello. Kim returned the greeting, climbed into the saddle and started back toward the station.

She rode slowly. It was a lovely spring day, but she was preoccupied with her surroundings, prepared to bolt at the first sign of danger. The forest made her vulnerable, and it occurred to her belatedly that selecting a horse over a cab might not have been a good idea.

But no one appeared, and she arrived safely at the stable. She returned the animal and walked across to the station, where she sat down on a bench to await the train to Terminal City.

There were only a few others on the platform: a couple of families with children, several people dressed in ski clothes apparently headed for the mountains, and two persons who appeared to be traveling on business.

The Terminal City train came in from the east along a slow curve riding just above thick woods. It was silent at low speeds, and the view was blocked off by the station roof, so there was no advance warning that it was coming. It simply appeared on the bend, glided in, and settled into its well. A few passengers got off; the people who’d been waiting on the platform boarded. Kim, carrying the UDI parcel, joined them.

The train was more than half empty. She found a compartment where she could be alone, closed the glass door, and settled into a seat. They moved forward out of the station, gathered speed, slowed again to maneuver through a couple of ridges west of Marathon, and then climbed to the treetops and began accelerating.

Rivers and lakes flowed past. There would be no towns before Little Marseille, 150 kilometers away. That was not because there were no towns in the region, but because the velocity of the train required that it be kept away from inhabited areas. One rarely saw a human being from inside a maglev car traveling at full gait. Anyone who appeared tended to be down flat and holding on.