Jack McDevitt - Infinity Beach

“You understand,” she said, “this breaks our agreement. I no longer feel bound to remain silent.”

He shrugged. “ This, ” the microship, “changes the equation. I’m sure the government will be making an announcement within the next few days.”

The train slowed to navigate a long curving defile.

“You’re going to make it public?” she asked. “Why?”

“Oh, there’s no way to keep this sort of thing quiet. Once we begin bringing people in to look at it, the story will get out quickly. We’re not nearly as good at keeping secrets as people like to think.”

“So missions will be going out to Alnitak after all—”

“They’ll be going to Zeta Tauri. That’s where the celestial incident will have occurred. It’ll be leaked, and we’ll deny it, of course. So everyone will believe it. And the missions should be quite safe there.”

“Unless I tell them differently.”

“This is what I referred to when I suggested we would want your cooperation. If you persist in going your own way, Kim, we’ll simply write you out of the scenario altogether. We have an alternate narrative set up. It does not include you , so there is no reason anyone would believe you.” He pressed his palms together. “I don’t want you to think I’m threatening you. I’m simply trying to spell out the realities. Please understand that I take no pleasure in any of this, but it’s essential that we avoid future contact with these things. You, of all people, should be able to see the wisdom of that position.”

He rapped on the door. Two women came in, carrying a container. They bundled the Valiant into it and asked Woodbridge whether he needed anything. He did not, and they left, taking the microship with them.

“If you can see your way to cooperate, Kim, I’ll try to arrange to have you present when we dissect it.”

Her time was up. He rose and opened the door for her. “You’re a talented woman,” he said. “If you’re interested, I think the conciliar staff would have a place for you.”

Kim went back to her seat, collapsed into it, and stared desultorily out at the passing countryside. Gradually the forest changed to marsh. They slowed to negotiate a curve back toward the west and Kim saw the skyhook.

The train leaped ahead again, passed beneath a series of ridges, and raced out across a lake. The shock wave struck the water like a ship’s prow. At the water’s edge, a crocodile watched them pass.

They slowed again, settled to earth, and emerged through a patch of cypress into a wide stretch of parkland. A few kids turned away from a ball game to wave. People on benches looked up and then went back to reading or talking.

The train joined the main east-west line at Morgantown Bay and ran the short gauntlet of cliffs, sea, and islands into Terminal City. It passed slowly through the downtown area, glided into the terminal building, and settled to a stop. The doors opened.

Kim walked dejectedly out onto the platform. There was no sign of Woodbridge or his people. She picked up her bags, held out the one with the wet suit and the metal sensor, and tagged the rest for Sky Harbor. To be held till called for.

No one seemed to be watching her. She checked the timetables, noted that she had fifty-five minutes before the next departure for Eagle Point.

The train she’d just left was filling up. A bell sounded, doors closed, and it rose on its magnetics and pulled slowly out of the station. It would be heading back east.

She went to the terminal roof, hailed a cab, and told it to take her to the Beachfront Hotel. It rose into clear air, swung onto a southeastern tangent, and moved swiftly across the city.

At the Beachfront, she took an elevator down to the lobby. A cluster of shops ringed the area. She wandered into one, bought a comb, went out to the registration desk and reserved a room. Then she got back on the elevator, rode up past her floor, and went instead to the roof. Two cabs were just landing. She took one and instructed it to proceed to the train terminal.

There was still no indication of surveillance. Good. They had what they wanted, she hoped, and would not further concern themselves with her. She arrived at her destination, strolled over to an ADP, inserted her ID, and got a ticket to Eagle Point. Then she found a bench and watched a holocast talk show.

Ten minutes later her train arrived. She boarded, sat down, and lazily started browsing through the library. The doors closed and they left the station on schedule. The train cruised above the parks and residences on Terminal City’s north side. It crossed the VanderMeer Bridge to the mainland, and began to accelerate. The trees thinned out and they moved over rolling fields.

The quiet motion rocked her to sleep. She dreamed of the shroud but somehow knew it was a dream and forced herself awake. The car was full of sunlight and skis and the laughter of children. Everybody seemed to be on vacation.

A drink table approached, and Kim helped herself to a frozen pineapple.

It was late afternoon when they glided into Eagle Point. She got off, walked over to the tourist information booth, and consulted the commercial registry. Finding what she wanted, she went up onto the skywalk and minutes later entered The Home Shop. She bought some white ribbon, and had it cut into six strips, each about twenty centimeters long.

Next she proceeded to the Rent-All Emporium sporting goods outlet, down at the next arch. There she picked out a collapsible boat, a converter and a jetpack, and several tethers designed for mountain climbing. They delivered everything to Wing Transport, where she rented a flyer. An hour and a quarter after she’d arrived, she was flying south over countryside that had grown painfully familiar. She picked up the Severin River, and followed it through the canyons and over the dam to Lake Remorse.

The lake was bright and still in the afternoon sun. No boat moved across its surface. It was almost, she thought, as if this area were disconnected from Greenway, and had become part of whatever strange world from which the shroud had come.

She took the metal sensor out of her carrying case and tied it into the flyer’s search system. That done, she skimmed the shoreline once, perhaps to ensure that she was alone, perhaps to be in a position to flee if anything rose out of the trees to come after her. She shuddered at the memory and made an effort to put it out of her mind.

At Cabry’s Beach, someone had put up a memorial for Sheyel, Ben Tripley, and the three guards.

She hovered over the place, tempted to go down and pay her respects. But time was short. She promised herself she would come back.

Kim turned north onto the same course she’d followed when fleeing the shroud, and retraced her flight across the lake. She homed in on the clutch of dead trees, measured angles between them and the town and the face of the mountain. She had been about sixty meters offshore when she pitched the Valiant into the lake.

Right there!

She descended to within a few meters of the surface and moved slowly across the face of the water, watching the sensor. It lit up a couple of times, but the position wasn’t quite right. Too far east. Too far out.

Eventually she got the hit she was looking for. She marked the spot with a float, found a landing place, and took the flyer down. When she’d come back to Remorse with Matt, she’d not felt much, just a kind of numbness. But today she was alone again, and the area oppressed her, weighed on her spirits.

She tried to concentrate on Solly, to imagine him alongside her, telling her not to worry. Nothing here to be afraid of.

She hauled the boat out of the aircraft, pulled the tag, and watched it inflate. A hawk appeared high overhead and began circling. She was glad for its company.