A Talent for War

by Jack McDevitt

  He made no effort to look pleased at the tactics I’d used to get him to the table. He was already seated in a corner staring gloomily out at the city when I walked in. “No point delaying it,” he said, when I commented on his promptness. He ignored my offered hand. “You’ll forgive me if I pass on the food.” A drink stood before him. “What exactly do you want of me?”

  “Hugh,” I said, as casually as I could manage, “what happened on the Tenandrome? What was out there?”

  He did not react: he had known the question was coming, but I still caught a tremble of uncertainty in his throat, as though he’d decided to test the chemistry of the evening before deciding how to reply. “You’ve made up your mind there’s a secret, I take it?”

  “Yes.”

  He shrugged as one might when a conversation has taken a tiresome, and inconsequential, turn. “You got this idea from your uncle?”

  “And from other sources.”

  “All right. You’ve come all this way, I assume, to speak to me. And you will not believe me when I tell you that there was nothing unusual about that mission, except the breakdown of the propulsion system?”

  “No.”

  “Of course. Very well, then: will you believe me when I tell you that we had good reason to keep the secret of what we found? That your persistence in asking difficult questions can do no good, and may do a great deal of harm? That the decision to say nothing was unanimously supported by the men and women on the mission?”

  “Yes,” I said carefully, “I can believe that.”

  “Then I hope you will have the good sense to break off your present course and go home and stay there. If I know anything at all about Gabriel Benedict, I suspect he left you a considerable sum of money. Yes? Go back to Rimway and enjoy it. Leave the Tenandrome alone.” He’d stiffened while he was speaking, and the air had grown tense.

  “Is this what you told my uncle?”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t tell him you’d found a Dellacondan warship?”

  That hit home. He caught his breath and looked round to see if anyone might have been close enough to overhear. “Alex,” he protested, “you’re talking nonsense. Let it drop. Please.”

  “Let me try it another way, Hugh. Why are you here? What are you looking for?”

  He stared into his drink, his irises round and hard and very black. “I’m not sure anymore,” he said. “A ghost, maybe.”

  I thought of my long-ago conversation on Fishbowl with Ivana. He’s a strange one. “Her name wouldn’t be Tanner, would it?”

  His eyes rose slowly and caught mine. There was pain in them, and something else. His big hands twisted into fists, and he pushed himself out of the seat. “For God’s sake, Alex,” he hissed. “Stay out of it!”

  XX.

  Poetry is vocal painting.

  —Attributed to Simonides of Ceos

  ALWAYS IT CAME back to Leisha Tanner.

  “She’s the key,” Chase observed. “Where was she during the missing years? Why is she at the center of whatever it is that’s driving Scott? And she was significant enough that Gabe named the file for her.” She was stretched out on the sofa with an electronic brace strapped to her leg. It hummed softly, stimulating the healing process. “The missing years,” she said. “Why did she keep dropping out of sight for years at a crack? What was she doing?”

  “She was,” I said slowly, “looking for whatever it was the Tenandrome found.”

  Yes, that might fit: if the sun weapon had been hidden, lost, it might have been a nervous prospect. Both Sims dead, and no one knew where it was. So Tanner had led the hunt. “It’s possible,” she said. “Where do we go from there?”

  “We have Tanner looking for a frigate, and two hundred years later, Gabe is looking for the same frigate. And he is extremely interested in Tanner. What does that suggest?”

  “That she found it, and recorded its location somewhere?”

  “But she couldn’t have found it. Or it wouldn’t still be out there for the Tenandrome to run across. I mean, what was the point of the hunt if she was just going to go away again and leave it?”

  “Truth is,” said Chase irritably, “after all we’ve been through, things still don’t make sense.”

  I was up out of my seat and prowling the room. “Let’s try it from a different angle. There must have been a piece of information of some kind to guide her. Otherwise, she’s got an impossible job. Right?”

  “Okay.”

  “What form would that piece of information have taken? Maybe she went along when they went out to the Veiled Lady. In that case, she would have known the length of the voyage. Or maybe she didn’t go, but had a half-remembered heading from a crewman.”

  “Good,” she said. “But where would Gabe have got hold of that kind of information? We’ve read through all the stuff we could find on her, and there’s nothing. And anyhow, if we’re right in assuming she was out there for years and never found whatever it was, then what good could her information be? I mean, if she couldn’t find it, what could she tell us?”

  What could she tell us? There was an echo in that remark, and I played it through again. Who had she told?

  “Candles,” I said.

  “Pardon?”

  “Candles. She’d have told Candles!” And, son of a bitch, I knew right where it was. I took down the copy of Rumors of Earth, with which I’d replaced the stolen volume, and opened it to “Leisha.” “It’s even named for her,” I said. “Listen:Lost pilot,

  She rides her solitary orbit

  Far from Rigel,

  Seeking by night

  The starry wheel.

  Adrift in ancient seas,

  It marks the long year round,

  Nine on the rim,

  Two at the hub.

  And she,

  Wandering,

  Knows neither port,

  Nor rest,

  Nor me!

  “I’ve never been strong on poetry,” Chase said, “but that sounds pretty bad.”

  I had Jacob display the critical work that had been done on the poem: discussions of the ancient mystical significance of the number nine (nine months in the birth process, nine knots in the Arab love whip, and so on) with the yin/yang implications of the dual stars at the axis. Leisha emerges as a symbolic representation of the all-mother, making (apparently) some sort of cosmic adjustment after the death of her equally symbolic son at Rigel. The hero becomes Man, enmeshed in the wheel of mortality.

  Or something.

  “Hell,” said Chase, “it’s a constellation. It’s obvious.”

  “Yes. And I think we’ve got the answer to something else. Rashim Machesney had come through. Gabe meant the databanks at the Machesney Institute! They must have run a search for him!”

  A half-smile touched the corners of Chase’s mouth.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Quinda. ”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When she stole your copy of Rumors of War: she had the answer in her hands.”

  Jacob set up an appointment with one of the administrators and we linked in within the hour.

  He was a thin freckled youth with a long nose and a quiver in his voice. His shoulders were hunched in a defensive fashion, and he seemed unable to respond to any question without first consulting his monitor. He made no effort to rise from behind his desk to greet us; and he kept it between us like a fortification. “No,” he said, after I explained the purpose of our visit. “I’m not aware that we’ve done any special projects for someone named, uh, Benedict. Which of our channels would it have come through?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Research requests are received from a variety of government, university, corporate, and foundation sources. Which would your uncle have used?”

  “I don’t know. Possibly none.”

  “We don’t accept requests from individuals.” He seemed to read that directly off his monitor.

  “Listen,�
�� I said. “I’ve no way of knowing how he might have arranged it. But it’s important, and I have no doubt he’d have been seen around here himself at one point or another. Somebody was working with him.”

  The administrator tapped his fingertips against the polished desktop. “That would be entirely against the rules, Mr. Benedict,” he said. “I wish I could help.” That was intended as a signal that the interview was ended.

  “My uncle died recently,” I said. “The reason I’m here is that he was quite pleased with the job that your people did for him, and he wished to express his appreciation in some substantive way.” I flashed a congratulatory smile.

  The administrator’s expression softened. “I see,” he said. There was much about the man that was birdlike: his slightness; the quick, perfunctory moves; the sense that his attention flitted about the office, never resting more than a few seconds in one place.

  “Unfortunately, my uncle neglected to identify the person who helped him, and I have no direct way of doing so. I need your help.” I produced a photo. “This is my uncle.”

  The administrator squinted at it, and shook his head. “I don’t know him.”

  “How many professionals do you have on your staff?”

  “That depends on how you define the word.”

  “Define it any way you please. At least one of them will recognize the photo. Of course, I’d need to be sure I had the right person, so I’ll expect him, or her, to be able to describe the project.”

  “Very well,” he said, tossing the photo into a stack of paper. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “I couldn’t ask for more.” I lifted my left wrist ostentatiously, and spoke into the commlink. “Jacob, we’ll be making the transfer now.” And to the administrator: “I’ll need an account number.”

  He was only too happy to comply. I named the sum for Jacob, who acknowledged, and announced he was prepared to execute. About a week’s pay for the administrator, I guessed. “It’s yours. There’s as much more if you find the person I’m looking for.”

  “Yes,” he said, gaining interest. “I’m sure I can find him.”

  “By tonight.”

  He nodded. “Of course,” he said. “Where can I reach you?”

  Eric Hammersmith was sandy-haired, bearded, overweight, and he drank too much. I liked him immediately.

  “I never really got to know your uncle,” he said. We were in a pub downtown, huddled over a bottle of tomcat rum, and eying the gravity dancers while we talked. “He was kind of secretive. He kept pretending the search he wanted me to do was part of a statistical study of some sort.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “You’ll forgive my saying so,” he pinched my sleeve between thumb and forefinger. “But he was a lousy actor.”

  There was a loud dinner party in an adjoining room, and a fair amount of noise in the bar, so we had to lean close together to be heard.

  Hammersmith was propped up on an elbow. He’d walked in sufficiently flushed that I suspected he’d done some early celebrating. “What,” he asked, with an engaging smile, “was he up to?”

  “He was trying to locate an archeological site, Eric,” I said. “It’s a long story.” And I hoped he wouldn’t insist I tell it.

  “With a constellation?” His eyebrows arched.

  I drank my rum, and adapted an ignorant bystander attitude. “I guess it is strange. Fact is, I really didn’t pay much attention to the details.” The dancers were distracting him. “Anyway, he wanted to be sure you understood he was grateful for your help.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” he said. “It wasn’t exactly by the book, you know.”

  “What wasn’t?”

  “What I’m trying to say is that I had to bend a few regulations. We’re not supposed to use the equipment for private purposes.”

  “I understand.” I repeated the process of setting up a transfer, this time for about six months’ salary—as best I could guess.

  “Thanks,” said Hammersmith, his smile broadening. “Let me buy the next round.”

  I shrugged. “Okay.”

  He was waiting for me to transfer the money. When I didn’t, he signaled the waiter, and we refilled our glasses. “I assume,” he said, “you don’t know any more than I do.”

  I was startled. Was I really that transparent? “You mean about the wheel?”

  “Then you do know!”

  Bingo. Results at last. “Of course.” Somewhere in the Veiled Lady, there was a world in whose skies that circular constellation appeared. Nine on the rim, two at the hub. “By the way,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant, “he used to talk about this quite a lot. Where is it, exactly, the world he was looking for?”

  “Oh, yes.” The dancers pursued each other erotically through a halo of soft blue light. “It took several weeks to find,” he said, “because we’re just not programmed to perform that kind of search. And the computers often weren’t available. Actually,”—he lowered his voice—“it’s the first time I’ve taken a chance and broken the regulations. It’s worth my job if anyone finds out.”

  Sure, I thought. That explains how the administrator was able to locate you so easily.

  “It was a big job, Alex. There are 2.6 million stars in the Veiled Lady, and, without a very specific configuration, drawn by a computer, with precise angles between the stars, and exact magnitudes, he would be very likely to get a substantial number of possibilities. I mean, what’s a wheel look like? Is it perfectly formed? If not, how much variance is there from the base line of arc? Are there really only nine stars? Or are there nine bright stars? We had to set some parameters, and the result was, to a large extent, guesswork.”

  “How many possibilities did you get?”

  “Over two hundred. Or twelve thousand if you become a little liberal with the parameters.” He watched me sympathetically, enjoying the frustration he imagined I was feeling. But I was thinking how Jacob and I had looked at the starship patterns weeks ago, and cut the search area down to ten thousand stars or so. Given those numbers, it should be easy to eliminate most of Hammersmith’s targets. I was briefly tempted to buy a round for the house.

  “Can you give me a printout?”

  He reached into his jacket. “I brought it along in case you wanted proof.” He delivered a broad grin.

  “Thanks,” I said. I completed the transfer, and got up. “You’ve been helpful, Eric.”

  We were both tossing cash onto the table. “Thank you,” he said. “And Alex—?”

  “Yes?”

  “Gabe asked me not to say anything about this. To anyone. I wouldn’t have, if he were still alive.”

  “I understand.”

  “I’d like a favor. If you ever find out what this is all about, would you come back and tell me what it is?”

  Our eyes met. “If I can,” I said, and walked out into a pleasant, late winter evening.

  The primary target was located about thirteen hundred light years from Saraglia, in a region of the Veiled Lady that carried only coordinates and no name. “Two months, at least,” Chase said. “One way. It’s a long way out.”

  XXI.

  A starship is no place for a man in a hurry.

  —Nolan Creel,

  The Arnheim Review, LXXIII, 31

  WE RODE THE Grainger out to Saraglia. Grainger was the Capella’s sister ship, and I thought a lot about Gabe while we drifted down the long gray tunnel.

  The observation ports were, of course, shuttered. The view outside is a bit hard on the comfort level for most people; but there are a few places on the ship where a curious passenger who wants to see the nether world can indulge himself. One of them was a lounge called the Captain’s Bar at the forward section of the topmost deck.

  Chase and I retreated there after I recovered from the plunge into hyper. My reaction, by the way, seemed to be getting worse with each successive trip. And I sat there that first evening, refusing to say very much to anyone, morosely recalling my pledge to myself�
��it seemed a long time ago now—that I was returning to Rimway to travel no more.

  We drank too much. Starship bars always do very well. And, with too much time to think, I got to wondering why the research team on the Tenandrome had agreed that they would say nothing of their find. And I worried about that.

  I didn’t eat well, and after a while even Chase seemed to grow moody. So we worried our way through the formless flux of a dimension whose existence, according to some, was purely mathematical in nature.

  Eight days later, ship time, we made the jump back into linear. The passengers, as they recovered from the effects of the transit, crowded around the ship’s viewports, which were now open, to gape at the spectacle of the Veiled Lady.

  At this close range, it bore no resemblance to anything on a human scale. Even the nebular structure was no longer recognizable. Rather, we were staring at a vast congregation of individual stars, a blazing multitude of dazzling points of color spearing the soul, a river of light passing ultimately into infinity. How poor had Jacob’s representation been in the study at home.

  After a while, when I could stand it no more, I went into the bar. It was crowded.

  The longest part of the flight now lay before us: the journey from the re-entry point to Saraglia itself, which, in the event, required two and a half weeks. I read a lot, and took to playing cards in the Captain’s Lounge with a group of regulars. Chase frolicked in the gym and the pool with a young male whose name I’ve forgotten.

  A pair of shuttles rendezvoused with us at the beginning of the third week. They carried passengers and cargo for the next phase of the Grainger’s flight, and removed everyone bound for Saraglia. Chase said good-bye to her friend, and I was surprised to discover a sense of well-being at our departure.

  Saraglia is a construct approximately the size of a small moon, orbiting the collapsed remnant of a supernova. Its mission was to serve as an observation station. But its proximity to the super dense star led to its development as a commercial center, specializing in a wide range of processing services for manufacturers whose products required the application of ultra-high pressures for extensive periods of time.