Jack McDevitt - Infinity Beach

The ruined buildings cast long shadows in the moonlight. A cool, sharp wind whipped in off the lake. It howled through the abandoned town and shook the flyer. Kim was embarrassed sitting locked in the cabin like a frightened child. Eventually she opened up and climbed down onto the ground. But she stayed alert.

Somewhat before midnight Jerry broke into her thoughts: “ Aircraft approaching. ”

A blip appeared on the screen. Inbound from the southwest. From the general direction of Terminal Island.

She was back in the cabin. “Can we talk to them?”

“ Wait one. ”

Kim felt behind her for the duplicate Valiant , brought it up front and set it on the seat beside her.

“ Channel is open, Dr. Brandywine. ”

“Sheyel,” she said, “is that you?”

“Kim.” He sounded genuinely surprised. And delighted. “Where are you?”

“I’m embarrassed for you,” she said. “You took the man’s starship.”

A long pause. Then: “Yes, I did.”

“And what are you planning to do with it?”

“I am going to talk to its pilot. If possible. I’d be pleased if you joined me. Where are you?”

“On the ground. In town.”

“There’s a strip of open beach to the east. I’m going to set down there.”

She saw his lights approaching. “It’s not possible, Sheyel. What you want to do.”

He sounded surprised. And disappointed. “Why not?”

“Whatever the local goblin is, it’s not someone you can talk to.”

“How do you know?”

“I know. Take my word for it. It’s some sort of disembodied AI. Designed to perform specific functions, as best I can judge. Maybe it’s a kind of automatic pilot. But it won’t do negotiations.”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions, Kim.” The other flyer had begun to descend. “Everything points to the fact that it’s intelligent.”

“The thing’s deranged, Sheyel. And it’s dangerous.”

“It’s lost and alone. It’s been stranded here for almost three decades. You have to start by understanding that.”

“Sheyel—”

“You want to say hello to the unknown, there’s no way it can be anything but dangerous. I accept that possibility. Still, I’ve never heard of a malevolent AI.”

“I have.”

“You’re letting your imagination take over, Kim.”

“No, goddammit. I know what I’m talking about. Let it go, at least until—”

“I think you’re running scared, Kim. I’m disappointed in you. But after what you’ve been through, I can understand—”

“Don’t be stupid, Sheyel. This may be the thing that killed Emily and Yoshi. Look, let’s take the night to talk about it. Go up to Eagle Point. Hear me out. If you still want to do this tomorrow, then okay, I’m with you.”

She watched the lights of his flyer disappear below the trees. “Kim, do you know for sure of anyone it has attacked?”

“No. But—”

“There you are then. We’re going to make history tonight, you and I. Are you with me?”

“Sheyel—”

“Do you know what I have on board?”

“Yes,” she said. “I know.”

“No, I don’t think you do. You think I have a replica of the celestial.”

“No. You have the ship itself.”

“Oh.” She heard the respect in his voice. “Well done, Kimberly. Well done indeed. How long have you known?”

She was tempted to lie, to tell him she’d realized, as he undoubtedly had, from the moment she found out there were identical ships on the mural and in Tripley’s office. “I’ve known for a while,” she said. “You didn’t tell me the whole truth, did you?”

“You mean about my conversation with Yoshi? Yes, that’s so. I did hedge a bit. She told me they’d brought back a ship. But she wouldn’t answer any questions. Told me I’d have all the details soon enough.”

“What did you think? That they’d hidden it in the outer system somewhere?”

“To be honest, Kim, I didn’t know what to think. I suspected maybe they’d brought back something completely different from what we’d expect. And I wasn’t sure they hadn’t hidden it in the lake. It’s why I came here so often.” She heard his engine shut off and his door open. “Now, I have to get set up. Come join me if you want.”

“I wish you wouldn’t do this, Sheyel.” She ordered her flyer to lift off, to find the other vehicle and land beside it. It left the ground and followed the shoreline east.

Sheyel’s aircraft was down on Cabry’s Beach, where she and Solly had landed. “Careful,” Kim pointlessly cautioned her own vehicle. There wasn’t much room left. And then to Sheyel: “We don’t know what this thing might be able to do if it gets access to the microship.”

“It won’t go anywhere with this .” He was out of the flyer, dragging a packing case down from the cargo compartment.

“Why not?” Her aircraft settled into weeds and high grass, and she popped open the door and jumped out.

“Because I’ve scanned it. It has an antimatter power source. But there’s no fuel. No antimatter.”

“Oh.”

“So now we know what blew the face off Mount Hope, right?”

“I guess we do.”

He pulled a collapsible table from the flyer, locked its legs in place, and set it on the sand at the water’s edge. He pushed on it to make sure it was stable.

Now he opened the case, moved the packing out of the way, and lifted out the Valiant . He gazed at it with affection and reverence, and put it on the tabletop.

Kim could have seized it by force. She could have thrown it into the back of her own aircraft and gotten out of there with it. But something stopped her, an inability to defy her old teacher, a need to see what might happen, perhaps simply a reluctance to make the decision.

Whatever the reason, she chose not to act.

He brought out a battery-powered lamp, set it on the table beside the spacecraft, and snapped it on. The Valiant sparkled. Kim walked toward it, trying to grasp what she knew to be true: that it was a vessel built by celestials. That it had traveled among the stars. That it had housed an entity like the one that had stalked the corridors of the Hammersmith .

Sheyel watched her carefully. For the first time she read distrust in his eyes. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he asked.

“You said you’ve scanned it. What’s inside?”

“Other than the dimensions, and the propulsion system, or lack thereof, it could almost be one of ours. Control room, individual quarters, pilot’s room of some sort. No chairs. Nothing to sit on.”

“What about the propulsion system?”

“I can’t find one. But that just means we need some experts to look at it.”

Kim thought about Kane’s offer to assist. “It must have been in trouble when the Hunter found them.”

“Why do you—?” Something out on the lake caught his eye. She followed his gaze and saw a reflection. Possibly distant lightning. She looked off toward Mount Hope and saw flashes around its summit.

“Do you have pictures of the interior?” she asked.

He was slow to look back toward her. “Yes.”

“May I see them?”

“Of course.” But he made no move to get them. His attention had returned to the lake.

She saw again the luminous patch. Far out, but brighter this time.

Uh-oh.

His right arm went slowly up in a gesture of triumph.

It might have been a cloud of fireflies, out on the water, but it moved with unnerving precision, a spiral mounting up as she watched, a cloud, a fog, a mist.

Sheyel raised both hands to welcome it.

“Back off,” said Kim. “Get into the flyer.”