Jack McDevitt: Infinity Beach

“Uh-oh,” said Mona.

“What does it say?” demanded Kim.

“It says, Where are they? ”

“Where are who !” asked Matt.

A chill felt its way up Kim’s spine. “I think,” she said, “they want to know what happened to the crew of the Valiant .”

“Kim.” Ali’s voice. “That thing out there does look like a cloud. It’s coherent. Moving with purpose.”

“I hear you.”

“I think it’s another shroud. You better get inside.”

“Matt,” she said. “You go. Close the air lock and do not open it unless I tell you to.”

“Not a good idea,” said Terri.

“Kim, I want you both inside. And hurry it up. It’s only a couple of minutes away.”

Matt went quickly to the air lock and stood in the patch of light, waiting for her. She looked down at the Valiant and out off the starboard side, about a third of the way up the sky. And saw nothing .

“Come on, Kim,” Matt said. “We can’t do anything out here except get ourselves killed.”

“Kim.” It was Maurie. “I think you’re right. They want to know about the crew. What do we tell them?”

Crunch time. “Tell them they’re dead. We’re sorry, but they were killed. Accidentally.”

“We do not have ‘dead’ or ‘killed’ in the vocabulary. Or ‘accident.’”

Ali again, his voice a command: “Kim, get inside. We’re out of time.”

“Matt—”

Matt shook his head no and pushed the door shut. Then he turned and came back across the roof.

“That was dumb,” she said.

“I won’t leave you out here alone.”

She was trying to recall the vocabulary. They had lots of words like stone and grass, tree and leaf, water and earth, light and dark. They had cloud and sun, starship and engine. They even had colors. How to convey death?

“Tell them ‘Their engines are stopped. They have gone dark.’”

“You sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure, Maurie.”

“Okay. Doing it now.”

“We need a way to express regret. Anybody have any ideas?”

Mona said: “‘We wish it had not been.’”

“We have,” said Gil, “no word for ‘wish.’ Or for syntactical complexities.”

Kim had not taken her eyes off the patch of sky from which the shroud was approaching.

The debate over how to address the celestials descended into a frustrated silence. “Defective vocabulary,” said Terri.

“We did what we could,” replied Eric. “You have to get the fundamentals down before you can do philosophy.”

The sky rippled. Several stars disappeared.

“It’s here,” Kim said.

“Kim.” Ali sounded angry. “Why are you still out there?”

“Eric.” Sandra was speaking. “Try ‘The leaves on our trees fall to the ground.’”

“Yes,” said Kim. “That’s good.”

“We should have brought a writer,” said Paul.

She could see the cloud approaching, could see stars through its veils.

“How about, ‘Our plants become dry’?”

“Yes. Good. Send it too. Can’t have too much regret at a time like this.”

Kim and Matt stood side by side, not moving. The shroud looked very much like the creature from Severin, except that this one seemed to be smaller. “Same basic model,” she told Matt.

But no eyes this time.

Nevertheless she knew it could see her. Or was aware of her in some manner that did not involve visuals.

“‘Our life is now dark,’” she told Maurie while she resisted an urge to back away. Matt, to her surprise and his credit, stayed with her.

“We don’t have any way of expressing time, Kim. No word for ‘now.’”

“Send it without the ‘now,’ Maurie.” Heart pounding, she picked up the Valiant .

The shroud opened, blossomed, as had the one at the lakefront before engulfing its victims.

She held out the microship.

“Don’t make any sudden moves,” said Ali.

Kim could barely move at all. Her suit felt claustrophobic.

“We’re getting a reply,” said Tesla.

And Eric: “It says: ‘We are you.’”

“Makes no sense.”

“What are they trying to say?”

“‘We’re of one mind,’” suggested Matt, his voice shaking. “Maybe they understand what we’re trying to do.”

“You really think so?” asked Tesla.

Kim sincerely hoped so.

Ali’s voice: “You guys okay out there?”

She felt a tug at the Valiant . She let go, watched it begin to fall, but slowly, still in gravity’s grip. The mist swirled across its polished hull, embraced it, and the shroud gathered it in.

Kim, heart pounding, heard applause.

And then she and Matt were alone on the roof.

Kim had little opportunity to celebrate her victory. Within an hour of watching the Valiant float off into the darkness, off the scanners and scopes of the Mac and the fleet vessels, she was arrested by the captain of the Dauntless , charged with willful misuse of government property and, against the indignant protests of everyone involved, taken on board the banshee to be returned to Greenway.

That wasn’t the problem. At least not the major one. Matt used every argument he could think of to persuade the force commander to rescind his order that the McCollum depart immediately. Ali contrived to scramble a key navigational system, and thereby gained twelve hours during which the contact team worked frantically to establish a constructive relationship with the celestials.

Kim was treated well enough. Her movements were restricted, but her quarters were a step up from Mac’s accommodations. The crew were polite, if not especially convivial. They had been told, she suspected, that she was a major violator, so they maintained a respectful distance. The captain declined to interview her or to see her, explaining through an intermediary that he had no wish to be called into court to testify as to what she had said or not said about her activities.

The small task force of which the Dauntless was part did not leave until the Mac was safely on its way home. Then it too slipped into hyperspace and started the long flight back to Greenway.

Kim did little other than read, work out, and sleep. She twice forwarded requests to the captain, explaining that the scientific project of the age, perhaps of all time, was now going forward, and asking whether the Dauntless could perhaps pop out of hyperspace for an hour to allow her to file a report to her superiors.

“Quite redundant,” the captain replied politely through his representative. He’d be pleased to comply with her request, but he had already forwarded a report. As had the McCollum . He had a copy of the latter presented to her. It contained the electrifying news that the celestials had agreed to a future meeting, to be conducted during the five-hundredth revolution of the gas giant. Several months away.

So it happened that during the second week of August, the Dauntless jumped back into realspace and Kim arrived at Sky Harbor once again expecting to be arrested. And again she was surprised: She was greeted by the Premier himself while a band played, an audience cheered, and the media recorded everything for posterity.

I’ve told you, and I’ve told you , Matt had said, smiling at dockside, never underestimate the power of public relations . It was too big a story, the news too good. There was no way a politician could ignore it. If the celestials turned out later to be dangerous, well, with luck that would happen during somebody else’s watch.