Jack McDevitt - Infinity Beach

She opened the hatch and eased down onto the sand. It crackled underfoot. The wind was cold. She turned up the heat in her suit and tugged a woolen hat down over her ears. The sky was heavy and overcast.

She pulled the boat out of the back seat, hit the inflater, mounted the motor, and dragged it into the water. It had a transparent bottom. She tossed in a paddle, her flippers, and the converter. And her packet of pictures of Severin Village circa 573. She added forty meters of line, marked at two-meter intervals, and used a rock to make an anchor.

She strapped a lamp and an imager to her wrist, and looped a belt around her waist. She attached a utility pouch to it, and put in a compass and a laser cutter. Satisfied that she had everything, she launched the boat and started its waterjet engine.

The surface was choppy. Although she had a remote, she sat in the rear, steering by hand, headed out into the lake.

She moved onto the bearing with the dam and followed it until the city hall and the flyer repair facility lined up. Then she killed the engine and looked down through the bottom of the boat. The water was clear and she could see a bench. Nearby lay an abandoned flyer. Beyond the flyer she could make out a group of poles. A children’s swing set. The swings swayed gently as she passed overhead.

The boat rose and fell.

She saw a house, but it was not Kane’s, not the right shape. Her pictures indicated it was probably his neighbor on the south, a physician who’d performed well during the disaster.

She continued straight on until she saw what she was looking for: an arched pavilion, a stone wall, a Thunderbird house.

That was it. It had angled wings and courtyards and a long central spine. The roof, with its crests and ridgelines, was unmistakable.

Kim dropped her makeshift anchor over the side and watched the line play out to fourteen meters. Deep. She secured it to the gunwale, pulled on her gear, and slipped into the water. She immediately felt safer, as though she were no longer exposed.

She turned toward the bottom and rode down on her jets.

Gray light filtered through the surface. The water grew cool and then warm again as she passed through alternating currents. An eel glided past. She switched on her lamp and a few fish quickly retreated. The boat was a dark shape above.

She leveled off in front of the second floor, eye-to-eye with an oculus window. The interior was thick with silt. But she could see a bed, a dresser, a couple of chairs. A fish glided out of a venting pipe, turned toward the lamp, and then disappeared out of the room.

She descended to the front door. It had no power, no knob, no easy way to open it. She passed by, moved along the front of the building, found a gaping window, and swam in.

Her lamp picked out a couch, a fireplace, and a flatscreen in the down position on one wall. This, she thought, had been the formal living room Gould had described.

Amazing. Kane had apparently not bothered to move his furniture when he left, had simply given in to the rising water.

She passed into the central hallway. A staircase rose on one side, assorted chairs and tables were tumbled about, and a couple of beams lay in the debris.

Kim pushed across to the opposite wing. She had to struggle to get the door open. Inside, she looked into what seemed to be Kane’s work area. A wooden table was turned over, its legs sticking up like those of a dead animal. Several rolls of what might once have been canvasses were scattered in the silt. Artists’ brushes lay everywhere, and pieces of an easel.

She could make out sketches, or parts of sketches, on the walls. Women’s faces, mostly. Framed by trees, lanterns, a vestibule. But always the woman was prominent.

They were incomplete, as though he were trying out ideas. The expressions were inevitably wistful, melancholy, mournful. No life of the party here. The hairstyles were different, the hair itself sometimes cut short, sometimes shoulder length, inevitably in the fashions of the 570s. But it struck her, as she passed along the wall, examining the figures in the glow of the lamp, that each was an aspect of Emily .

Or herself.

Kim’s scalp prickled.

She drew the imager out of her utility pouch and began taking pictures. She tried to record everything.

She had come hoping to find the original Hunter logs. The possibility suddenly seemed remote, but the table had a drawer, so she opened it. It contained only a couple of rags.

There was a door at the far end of the room, leading to an enclosed porch, beyond which lay a washroom. She went through the door, and saw plastic containers and flowerpots on the porch floor. She found a medicine cabinet in the washroom and opened it. One of the containers still had air trapped inside. The container floated out and rose to the ceiling.

She went back the way she’d come, through the formal living room and on into the far wing.

She opened drawers, broke into cabinets when hinges wouldn’t work. She searched everywhere, and then went upstairs and prowled through bedrooms and washrooms. A broken pot or two remained in the kitchen cabinets. She was shocked to find several of Kane’s trophies in the mud, including the Conciliar Medal of Valor, the highest award the Republic had to give. It seemed odd that no one had been here before her and claimed the treasure.

Tora should have it. She wiped it off and put it in her pouch.

She felt movement in the water.

And sensed that she was not alone.

She listened, heard nothing, and surveyed the room for another way out. She’d have no choice but to go through the window if she had to, risking the glass shards still jutting out from the frame. She turned abruptly, as if to catch someone watching her. But the room was empty save for shadows drifting around the walls.

Dumb.

It was not at all hard to imagine that the spirit of Markis Kane lingered about the place. Had she been in sunlight, she’d have smiled at the notion and dismissed it with contempt. But down here— There must be a part of us , she thought, that’s wired to accept the paranormal. Science and the experience of a lifetime don’t count for much when the lights go out .

She returned to the hallway, swept it with her lamp, and started toward the rear of the house, stopping to examine a cabinet and a small desk. She’d acquired an escort of fish, long, rainbow-colored creatures that moved with her but darted back whenever she turned toward them. She was pleased to have their company.

Another bedroom opened off left. Here the furniture was still more or less in place. Clothing, or possibly bedding—it was impossible to know—lay in gray piles on the floor.

She continued down the corridor to the last doorway, which was on the right hand side of the corridor.

The sanctum sanctorum.

Its door was closed.

She pushed on it, gently at first, and then with as much force as she could muster. It did not budge. She took out the laser and cut a hole big enough to pass through.

Within, she saw a desk, a credenza, some cabinets and tables. And a chair.

She passed inside.

There was a closet across the room. Drapes covered the wall on her right. Two of the other walls had large windows. This window, she thought, looked north toward Eagle Point. The one on her left opened onto Mount Hope. She visualized Kane seated in here, watching the sun drop behind that scarred peak. What had he been thinking?

She rifled everything, breaking into cabinets, opening drawers, trying not to spill their contents, as if that mattered, searching the closet, which contained more clothes and several unopened packages of sketch paper. When she’d finished she drifted back into the center of the room, allowing her lamp to point where it would.