Jack McDevitt - Infinity Beach

Emily looked both beautiful and melancholy.

“He’s pretty good,” Solly commented, “for a pilot.”

“He’s one of the best we’ve had,” said Gould. “The world is just beginning to recognize it.”

Glory was named for the largest of Greenway’s satellites. Emily was posed dreamily against a track of moonlit water. Shoulders bare, one hand laid along her cheek, eyes luminous and thoughtful. It was dated three years before the flight.

Tora was a portrait of Kane’s daughter at about ten. In River Voyage , a handful of rafters try to hang on in rock-strewn white water. Night Passage depicted an interstellar liner passing a cobalt-blue gas giant.

Kim asked for the dates. All four preceded the Hunter incident. “Is it my imagination,” she asked Gould, “or is there a change in tone between his earlier and later work?”

“Oh,” he said, “there very certainly is.” He touched a keyboard. A screen lit up and they were looking at Bringing the Mail , a painting of a freighter crossing a nebula. The freighter was squat and gray, bleak, its running lights casting eerie shadows across the superstructure. The nebula silhouetted the starship, emitting a twilight glow. “This is his last known work.”

“Everything after Mount Hope seems kind of downbeat,” said Solly.

“Oh yes. Beginning with this one.” He brought up a landscape. “His work entered a dark period from which it never really emerged. This is Storm Warning , from 574.” They were looking at distorted trees, ruins in the distance silhouetted against summer lightning, churning clouds. “When he becomes recognized as a major figure, people will recognize this as the first major work of his gothic phase.”

“Did you know him?” asked Kim. “Personally?”

“I knew him quite well. When he lived in the area.”

“Do you have a print of this one? Of Storm Warning !”

Gould consulted a catalog. “Yes,” he said. “I have two left. But they’re not signed.”

“It’s okay,” said Kim, grateful that the price would be diminished by that much. “How much is it?”

“Two hundred.”

“Not cheap,” said Solly.

“I’ll take it,” said Kim.

“It’s a limited edition,” Gould purred soothingly. “You can be sure it’ll hold its value.” He excused himself and disappeared up a narrow staircase.

“That costs an arm and a leg,” Solly complained.

“I know. But we want to keep him talking to us. We should buy something.”

He indicated a dancing nude.

“Right,” she said.

Gould returned with her print and held it up for her to see. “This is quite lovely,” he said. “You’ll find it’s an excellent investment. Would you like me to have it framed for you?”

“No, thank you,” she said. “I’ll take it as is.” She was wondering where she’d put it and began to wish she’d gone for something out of Kane’s early years. They made appreciative sounds over the print for a minute, and then Gould rolled it up and put it into a tube.

“Did he become depressed after the Mount Hope event?” asked Solly casually.

Gould pressed his fingertips against his temples as if the memory were painful. “Oh yes. He was never the same after that.”

“In what way?”

“It’s hard to explain. He’d always been friendly, outgoing, easy to talk to. Well, maybe that’s an exaggeration. But he wasn’t a difficult man, in the way that talents frequently are. But all that went away. He became exceedingly withdrawn. About that time, I was going to Severin Village most nights. My wife lived there then. We weren’t married yet, you understand. And I used to make it a point to go by his place, Kane’s place, to see how he was doing. He wasn’t known then the way he is now. But I knew, I always knew, he was going to be great one day.

“He sold his work through me. He wasn’t getting much for it in those days, nothing like what it would command now. But he didn’t need the money. The paintings were just something he did. You know what I mean?”

She nodded.

“Did I tell you I was there when it happened? When the mountain blew up?

“It was terrible. The town was kind of down low and sheltered so it didn’t get hit directly or we’d’ve all been dead. But pieces of rock and whole trees fell out of the sky. We didn’t know what hit us. Then there was the dust. People choking and dying—” His eyes had gone distant. “Sasha and I did what we could, but—” He held out his hands. “But you don’t want to hear this.”

Kim and Solly stood quietly, waiting.

“By then I was trying to hold onto his work. Buying his paintings myself because I knew they were undervalued. I brought them back here and just waited for the price to go up. Now they’re worth thirty, forty times what they were. And it’s still a seller’s market.” He turned back toward the Autumn . “Look at that; you ever see anyone with that kind of range? Maybe Crabbe. Maybe Hoskin. No, not Hoskin.” He shook his head vehemently, dismissing Hoskin.

“Did you by any chance know Kile Tripley?” asked Kim.

“Tripley? No. Tripley lived in a villa well away from everybody else. He was above spending time with the common people.”

“Would you say he and Kane were friends?”

“Not particularly. No.”

“He was Kane’s employer,” said Kim.

“That’s not the same thing as being a friend.”

Kim was having a hard time keeping her eyes off the Autumn . “One more thing, Mr. Gould,” she said. “I’m interested in what caused his dark period. Did you sense there was anything other than the explosion that might have influenced his later work? A lost woman, perhaps?”

“I know he was affected by what happened to her .” He looked meaningfully at Emily’s image.

“Did he say that?”

“You can see it in his work. But he never outright said it, no.”

“Anything else?”

“Not other than what I’ve told you. He just more or less went into a shell. Rattled around inside that big house. Sealed off the den, even.”

“Sealed off the den? How do you mean?”

“It had been, I’d stop by, we’d go into the den, have a few drinks. He’d tell me about his latest project. The living room was a formal, stiff place where he didn’t like to go. Then suddenly we were always in the living room and I never saw the den again. I don’t suppose it meant anything, but it was strange. As if he were hiding a woman in there.”

They had dinner at a place called The Rucksack. Snow was beginning to fall and a crisp wind had blown up. Solly plowed steadily through the meat and greens. “As soon as we’re finished here,” he said, “I think we ought to get going.”

“Yeah. Before the weather gets any worse .” The predictions called for the snow to stop around midnight, and for colder temperatures to set in.

“I’m surprised at your choice of artwork,” said Solly.

“Why? It’s quite attractive.”

“I’d have thought you’d have wanted one with Emily. The Autumn . You seemed taken by that.”

She lifted a wine glass and watched it sparkle in the light from the fireplace. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I wanted something I could hang on the wall.”

Solly looked at her. “Is it still that painful?”

She shrugged. “That. And the nudity.”

“I didn’t think you were a prude.”

“I am,” she said, “when the model looks too much like me.”

Solly had been a friend for a long time. Kim felt especially drawn to him that night, perhaps because he’d come with her even though, despite what he said, he thought she was pursuing an illusion. Well, they both thought that.