Jack McDevitt - Infinity Beach

“You want me to come up?”

“No. I’ve had enough. I’ll be on my way back in a couple of hours.”

Solly looked relieved. “You don’t have any plans about going back into the lake.”

“No.” She managed a laugh. “No way that’s going to happen.”

“What about the boat?”

“I told the rental shop where it is. They’re charging me for the pickup, but that’s fine. I don’t mind.”

“All right.” He was visibly relieved. It was a reaction that pleased her. “Think about it a minute. How could a thing have got past customs? How would it get down in the lift?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it was inside somebody. Maybe it took over Emily. Maybe that’s why they couldn’t show her on the logs.”

“Kim—” His eyes went briefly out of focus. “What’ve you been reading? Do you have any idea how that sounds?”

“Solly, I don’t have any answers. I just know what I saw.”

“All right.” He was appraising her. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine.” Sure she was.

“I don’t suppose,” said Solly, “you found the Hunter logs? The real ones?”

She looked out the window. Sunlight glittered on the peaks. It was a normal world out there. “No,” she said. “But there is something.” She held up one of the pictures of the sketch on the wall.

He leaned forward. Squinted. “My God,” he said. “It’s Emily again.”

“She seems to be his favorite model.”

“I’d say. What’s she holding in her hands?”

Kim produced close-ups, watched him study the planet, and the ship. He frowned at the Valiant . “What is that thing?” he asked. “A turtle?”

“It’s a ship of some kind. What’s weird is that Ben Tripley has a model of it in his office.”

“The same design?”

“Yes.”

“What the hell is it doing in the sketch?”

“Solly, it might be a celestial. Maybe it’s what they saw out there.” She took a minute to rearrange her cushions. “I think they came out of hyper near one of the seven stars, and they saw this thing.” She shook the photo. “We’ve got to do a search, see if any ship that looked like this has ever existed. Tripley didn’t know about it, so I’d bet not. Anyhow it has no propulsion tubes, at least the model doesn’t—it’s hard to tell with this—” she meant the sketch. “As far as I know everything we make has propulsion tubes. If I’m correct, the ship is either fictitious or a celestial. If it’s fictitious, why would it appear simultaneously in Kane’s mural and as Tripley’s model?”

Solly tapped his fingers on his armchair. “Why would Tripley—Kile Tripley— want a model?”

“I don’t know. Answer that and maybe everything else becomes clear.”

“Okay,” he said. “Another subject—”

“Yes.”

“You were right. The log’s a complete fabrication. Or at least, it is from about the point where they have the engine breakdown.”

“Maybe that becomes the first question. Did they really experience a breakdown?”

“Probably. If not, and if there was a contact, it would imply a rendezvous. That seems like stretching it. No, I think we can assume the engine problem was legitimate.”

“Okay. If what we saw on the log was accurate, would it have been enough to bring them out of hyperspace?”

“Oh yes. Any kind of problem with the jump engines, you get out before you start monkeying with it. That’s SOP. Because if you don’t and something goes wrong, nobody ever hears from you again.”

“So we’re making some progress. The logs look good until the problem develops. And the virtual Emily shows up at about the same time.”

“So what’s our next step?” Solly’s voice got a little deeper, signaling that his testosterone was pushing him in a direction he really didn’t want to follow. “How about if I go up to Severin and see if I can get some pictures of the thingee?”

“No. It scares me, Solly. I don’t want to have anything to do with it.”

“That’s not a very scientific attitude.”

“I don’t care.”

“Okay.”

She could see he was uncomfortable, that he thought he should argue a little, maybe even insist on going. So she changed tack: “Have you decided to take the Taratuba assignment?”

“Not yet. Why? Did you want to come along?”

“I’m going to try to talk to Matt and see if I can borrow the Mac . If I can get it, I’ll need a pilot.” The Mac was the Karen McCollum , one of two Institute interstellars currently at Greenway.

“Why do you need a starship? Where do you want to go?”

“I think it’s time to bite the bullet.”

“You’re getting dramatic. What does that mean?”

“Find out whether a meeting between the Hunter and a celestial really happened.”

“How do you propose to do that?”

“Go out and look at the neighborhood.”

“Kim—” He was studying her, trying to make sense of the proposal. “We’re talking about something that happened almost three decades ago—”

“If they found a civilization, it won’t have gone anywhere.”

“But we seem to be talking about a ship . We don’t think they’d still be hanging around after all these years, do we?”

“Maybe not. But it doesn’t matter.”

“Why’s that?”

“Their traces would still be out there.”

She got off the train at Blanchet Preserve and took a cab to Tempest, home of Orlin University. It was the first time she’d been back since graduation, and she was struck by the degree to which the town had changed. The MacFarlane Recreational Complex looked abandoned, much of East Campus had become a public park, and all of the buildings, with one or two exceptions, appeared weather-beaten.

It was nevertheless good to see it all again, maybe because the old scenes were mundane, laid out against the midafternoon sun, part of a solid, predictable world. No specters need apply. She took comfort from it, from the Thompson Astronomical Center, which received a steady stream of images from observational facilities throughout the Orion Arm; from the Picacci Building, which housed the student center and cafeteria; from Palfrey Park, where she’d often done her reading assignments when the weather was good. Off to the north in a cluster of trees she could almost see her old apartment.

And there , at the end of a quiet lane, stood the house in which Sheyel Tolliver had occasionally gathered groups of graduate students and other faculty members for lunches and wide-ranging discussions. Never look for complexity in diplomatic decisions. With very few exceptions, actions always devolve—and that’s the exact term—from someone’s self-interest. Not the national self-interest, by the way. We are talking here about individual careers.

She hadn’t believed that at the time, had assigned it to the natural growth of cynicism in an aging instructor. Kim had been an idealist then. Now, although she retained a strong belief in the essential decency of the average person, she was convinced that those whose tastes run to personal power could never be trusted to act save in the pursuit of their own ambition.

The last meeting of Sheyel’s informal discussion group had occurred two days before graduation. It had been a farewell, and the students had brought the goodies for a change, and had given Sheyel a plaque, which had read FOR UNRELENTING ADEQUACY. The reference was to his assertion that the standards in their group were so high that adequacy constituted a singular achievement.

The house was stone and glass, in the Sylvan style, with a rooftop garden and a large bay window overlooking a country lane. A portico dominated the eastern side, and a pool occupied the rear. A postlight had been turned on to welcome her.