Jack McDevitt: Infinity Beach

She dropped through alternating warm and cold currents. Solly, now trailing behind her, switched on his wristlamp.

The Caledonian had been running among the islands on its way out to the banks with nineteen passengers and a three-person crew when a freak storm blew up. It became a legendary event because there’d been some famous people on board, and because there’d been only two survivors. One had been the unfortunate captain, later held negligent by a board of inquiry, charging failure to train his crew, poor ship handling, failure to develop emergency procedures. His situation was exacerbated by the suspicion that on the night of the accident he’d been frolicking in his quarters with a married passenger.

The ship’s wheel was on display at the Marine Museum in Seabright. Other divers had gone over the wreck and taken whatever they could. Even Kim, who was usually inclined to respect such things, had removed a latch from a cabin door. The latch was now inside a block of crystal, which she kept hidden in her bedroom because visitors had made a point of showing their disapproval. Moves were currently afoot to declare the area a seapark, install monitoring equipment, and thereby protect it from future looters. Kim, with the quiet hypocrisy that seems wired into the human soul, favored the measure. She soothed her conscience by promising herself she’d donate the latch to the museum. When the time came.

She left her own lamp off, savoring the dark and the solitude and the moving water. The bottom came into view. A school of fish, drawn by Solly’s light, hurried past.

Ahead she could make out the wreck. It lay on its starboard side in the mud, half buried. Its rudder was gone, the spars were gone, planking was gone. Anything that could be carried off had been taken. Still it retained a kind of pathetic dignity.

The seabottoms of Greenway, unlike those of Earth, were not littered with the wrecks of thousands of years of seafaring and warmaking. It was in fact possible to count the number of sinkings along the eastern coast, during five centuries, on two hands. Only one, the Caledonian , had been a ship in the true sense of the word. The others had all been skimmers. The loss of a vessel was so rare an event that anything that went down became immediately a subject of folklore.

They were approaching bow-on. Kim switched on her light. “Spooky as ever,” said Solly.

It wasn’t the adjective Kim would have used. Forlorn , perhaps. Abandoned.

Yet maybe he was right.

They drifted down toward the foredeck.

The other survivor had testified that the ship’s captain had done what he could.

The unfortunate skipper’s name was Jon Halvert. He’d used a lantern to signal passengers to the lifeboats, and renderings of the incident invariably showed him holding the lantern high, helping men and women off the stricken ship. But it had all come too late and the Caledonian had turned over within seconds and plunged to the bottom. Historians believed that, the view of the board of inquiry notwithstanding, nothing the captain could have done would have made any significant difference. But there had been, as always, the need to establish responsibility. To lay blame.

Kim felt a special affection for him. Halvert seemed to represent the human condition: struggling under impossible circumstances, answerable for lack of perfection, holding the lantern nonetheless. But in the end it makes no difference.

Within a year of the event he died, and it became a popular legend that his spirit hovered in the vicinity of the wreck.

Divers only visit the Caledonian when the weather is good. But when the wind is stirring and rain is on the horizon, you can sail out to the spot and look down through the water, and you’ll see the glow of the captain’s lantern moving along the decks and ladders while he urges his passengers toward the boats.

Kim had read that in True Equatorian Specters . One version of the story had it that he was damned to continue the search until the last victim had been rescued.

Solly must have known what she was thinking. “There he is,” he said, directing her attention toward a luminous jellyfish over the port quarter.

They swam down to the pilothouse and passed before the empty frames. There was nothing left inside. Even the wheel mount was missing. But it was easy to conjure up the voyagers that night, lounging about the decks, looking forward to a week at sea, suddenly aware of a threatening sky.

They emerged on the starboard side and moved aft. Kim used her wristlamp to illuminate the interior. The cabins were, of course, stark and empty.

Forty minutes later they surfaced, climbed aboard the sloop, and changed. Then they broke out dinner: turkey and salad and cold beer. It was beginning to get dark. The sky was cloudless, the sea a sheet of glass.

“This place is a good example of what stage management does,” said Solly. “ It feels as if the supernatural can happen down there. The stories are pure fantasy, but when I’m near the wreck I’m not so sure. That’s the way the Severin Woods will be.”

“Different sets of rules,” she agreed. “Take away the light, and werewolves are possible.” She touched a presspad and soft music came out of the speakers.

They sat in the cabin, the food spread out on a table. A couple of islands lay on the horizon. In the distance another sailboat was moving across their line of vision. Solly made a sandwich and took a bite. “Kim,” he said when he’d gotten enough down that he could talk again, “do you believe ghosts are possible?”

She studied him, and decided he was quite serious. “Running into a real ghost would change everything we believe about the way the universe works.”

“I’m not so sure about it,” he said.

“Why?”

“I once served aboard the Persepholis . It had a haunted stateroom.”

“Haunted how?”

“Strange noises. Voices no one could account for. Cold spots.”

“You ever see any of this?”

He considered the question. “Yeah. I can remember walking past it on watch, hearing voices inside.”

“Might have been the passengers.”

“This was after they stopped using it for passengers, Kim. It became a storage area.”

“Did you look inside?”

“First couple of times, yes. Didn’t see anything. After that I just let it go.”

“Not that I doubt you,” she said, “but I’d have to see it for myself.”

They ate quietly. Solly looked out toward the mainland, just visible in the east. “Plato believed in ghosts,” he said.

“Plato?” Kim was skeptical.

“He thought ghosts came from drinking too much wine.” He laughed at her reaction. “It’s true. He says somewhere that when people get too attracted to their earthly lives, too many good times, too much sex, that when they die their souls get tangled up with the flesh and can’t get free. He thinks that’s why spirits hang around cemeteries. They’re sort of pinned to their bodies.”

Kim finished the sandwich, scooped up some cranberry sauce, and washed everything down with the beer. “You’re really caught up on this Severin business, aren’t you, Solly?”

He was refilling their glasses. “No. Not really. But when the sun goes down, it becomes a different kind of world.”

“Hell of an attitude for a starship pilot.”

He let her see how much he was enjoying the beer. “Maybe I’ve been out in the dark too many times,” he said.

Alpha Maxim had erupted in an explosion that would be visible for a billion light-years. Of course, if a response had to come from that kind of distance nothing human would be here to receive it. The species would long since have evolved into something else.