Odyssey

by Jack McDevitt

  The book had been put together by a pair of maverick journalists. MacAllister hadn’t gotten a cent out of it. “Thank you, Amy,” he said. He was impressed. The girl obviously had a brain.

  “You’ll be leaving in four hours,” Hutch said. “I’ve arranged to have your bags delivered directly to the Salvator. I hope you don’t mind.”

  Hutch never seemed to change physically. But she’d become more subdued over the past two or three years. The devil-may-care attitude he remembered from the Deepsix rescue was gone. Maybe it was motherhood; more likely it was watching the decline of the Academy. He wished there were something he could do to ease that particular trauma.

  They stopped at a place called All-Night Charlie’s for coffee. “They’ve been servicing the ship,” she said. “But it should be ready for boarding in an hour or so.”

  “Wish you were coming?” he asked.

  “Part of me does.” She glanced at Amy, who was hanging on the answer. “One day, when the kids are on their own, I’d like to take one of the ships out and go deep again.”

  “‘When the kids are on their own.’ You have another one coming?”

  “Yes,” she said. “A boy.”

  “When’s it due?”

  “September.” She looked radiant.

  “Congratulations.”

  Amy squeezed her hand. “When it happens,” she said, “I’d like to be your pilot.” Hutch smiled.

  “You know,” said MacAllister, “you sound as if you don’t really expect it to happen. The flight. The deep one.”

  Hutch considered it. “Tor’s not like you, Mac. He’s not much of an adventurer.” That was her little joke, but she didn’t crack a smile. “He’s been off-world just enough to know he prefers life in Virginia.”

  “You don’t think he’d go?”

  “He might. To keep me happy. But he wouldn’t enjoy himself. And that would pretty much take the pleasure out of it.”

  The coffee came. They had a good view of the moon through one of the ports. MacAllister marveled at the mountains and craters. They were spectacularly bleak.

  VALENTINA WAS WAITING on the ship, seated in the cramped cockpit they call the bridge. She was busy talking to the AI, raised a hand to say hello, but never really broke off the conversation. She’d apparently already met Amy, who had spent the night on the station. MacAllister backed away, mildly irritated, and retreated to a larger room just off the bridge. This was, Amy explained, the common room. “It’s where everybody hangs out,” she said.

  Moments later, Valentina joined them. Her eyes fastened on MacAllister, and she broke into a smile that was almost mischievous. “Sorry,” she said, “I was in the middle of something. Hutch, the monitors are loaded and ready to go.”

  “Okay.” Hutch was visibly amused at the interplay between the pilot and her passenger. “I guess you’re all set then.”

  She nodded. “How’ve you been, Mr. MacAllister?”

  “Good,” he said. “Done any more shows?”

  The smile widened. “No. I’m not much of a debater.”

  “On the contrary, you can be quite argumentative. By the way, since we’re going to be in pretty close quarters for a while, you might want to call me Gregory. Or Mac.”

  “I think I prefer Mac.” She offered her hand. “I’m Valya.”

  He shook it and turned to Hutch. “Is the mission purely hit-or-miss? Are we really just going out there and hoping for the best?”

  “Pretty much,” she said. “All you’re doing is planting monitors. Think of it as time off. Read, relax, and enjoy yourself.”

  “Okay.”

  “For what it’s worth, there’s been another sighting along Orion’s Blue Tour, at 61 Cygni. It’s your first stop, so who knows? You might get lucky and come home with the story of the century.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Valya says,” said Amy, “that even if we see some moonriders, we might not be fast enough to catch them.”

  MacAllister smiled at her enthusiasm. In fact, it hadn’t occurred to him he might become part of a pursuit. “I assume,” he said, “if we were to see something, we’d try to talk to them.”

  “If you can,” said Hutch.

  “Well, we’ll see what happens.”

  Someone else was coming on board.

  “It’s getting close to time,” said Valya.

  Eric Samuels strolled through the airlock. “Hello, all,” he said, with that phony cheerfulness he always exuded in public. “Are we ready to go hunting for moonriders?”

  It was going to be a long trip.

  THE SALVATOR WASN’T exactly the Evening Star. It was cramped, uncomfortable, everything squeezed together. Its carrying capacity was a pilot and seven passengers. The walls were paneled, there was a carpet, and pseudoleather furniture. MacAllister chose a compartment toward the forward part of the vehicle. He’d read somewhere that the farther you were from the power plant, the safer you were. The compartment would be big enough provided he didn’t try to stand up. It contained a basin, but other facilities were located in twin washrooms. Only a contortionist, he saw, would be able to manage the toilet.

  Samuels took a compartment in the middle of the ship, and Amy picked one at the rear. Their luggage arrived. They hauled everything inside and got settled.

  Hutch got up to go. Good luck, everybody. Happy hunting. “We’ll try to bring something back,” Valya said.

  “It would be nice,” said Hutch. “You guys have everything you need?”

  MacAllister knew it would turn out he’d forgotten something. He always did. But he ran a quick mental check of the essentials. Unsure what the ship’s library would hold, he’d brought a generous supply of novels in his notebook. “I’m all set,” he said.

  So were the others. “I’ve talked with Union Ops,” said Valya. “We’ve got launch in twenty.”

  “Then I’m out of here, folks. See you when you get back.” Hutch shook their hands, embraced Amy, pressed her lips to MacAllister’s cheek, and strode out through the main hatch.

  Valya closed it behind her. “We’ll be accelerating during the first thirty minutes or so,” she said, “which means we’ll all be locked down. You guys have anything you need to do, this would be a good time.”

  NEWS DESK

  ROBOT RUNS LOOSE; TERRORIZES TASMANIA

  2 Dead, 7 Injured after Rampage

  IS THERE AN UPPER LIMIT TO INTELLIGENCE?

  Study Suggests Few Meet Their Potential

  Social Conditions Get in Way

  Beliefs Block Mental Processes

  Trick Is to Keep Open Mind, According to Experts

  PATENT GRANTED TO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

  “Bob White” Gets Groundbreaking Authorization

  MIT Project Develops New Sensing System

  Next: Are AIs Sentient? James Watson Parker: “They Have No Souls”

  LONGEVITY BREAKTHROUGH IMMINENT?

  Today’s Infants May Get Indefinite Life Span

  World Council Debates “Talis” Research “Where Will We Put Everybody?”

  MIDDLE EAST TURMOIL UNLIKELY TO END SOON

  DODGERS TRADE FOR BAXTER

  HURRICANE SEASON WILL START

  EARLIER THIS YEAR, LAST LONGER

  Storm Intensity Likely to Continue to Grow

  Atmosphere Seeding Helps, “But Probably Too Little Too Late”

  STOCKS MOVE TO RECORD HIGHS

  LITERACY RATE IN NAU CONTINUES TO DROP

  AI Might Write New War and Peace, But Will Anybody Read It?

  BEEMER CLAIMS HARM FROM RELIGIOUS TEACHING

  Anti-Christ Loose in North Carolina?

  chapter 17

  Intelligence is like pornography. I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.

  —Gregory MacAllister, “Keeper of the Keys”

  One of the things MacAllister disliked about the Salvator was that, unless you were on the bridge, you had no windows. On the Evening Star, the walls of the dining area had bee
n transparent, and even his compartment had provided a view of the stars. The Salvator was oppressive. The outside world was limited to what you could see on a set of display screens. It wasn’t at all the same thing.

  Hutch had explained to him once that windows, viewports in the vernacular, needed special reinforcement because they didn’t withstand air pressure well, and it was simply safer not to have them, to use monitors instead. Nevertheless, he didn’t like it very much. He wondered what the Orion tour ships were like.

  They were seated in the common room. The ship was still accelerating away from Earth, preparing to make its jump into the foggy morass they called hyperspace. Amy couldn’t take her eyes off the displays, and he could hear Valya on the bridge talking to the AI again. MacAllister was trying to manage a conversation with Eric. But the guy’s enthusiasm for the flight was almost beyond bearing. “Something I’ve wanted to do all my life, Mac,” he said. “I can hardly believe I’m here.” And: “Look at that moon. Isn’t that incredible?” And: “A lot of people don’t like to admit it, but in the end this is the way we’ll define ourselves. Make the stars our own, or sit home.” He’d attempted a piercing look, in case MacAllister missed the implied criticism. The guy was as subtle as an avalanche.

  Amy Taylor was also awed by the experience. But she was fifteen, so it was tolerable. She’d opened a book, Norma Rollins’s The Nearby Stars, but she was too absorbed in the receding Earth-moon system to pay much attention to it. She told MacAllister she knew about his exploits on Deepsix and asked him to describe the experience. That was the way she’d put it. Exploits. In fact all he’d done was try to stay alive for a few days while Hutch figured out a way to save all their asses.

  Amy seemed to have done surprisingly well for herself, considering she was growing up under the care of a full-time politician. The mother had run off years before with the senator’s campaign manager, abandoning both her husband and Amy. That must have been hard to take, and he wondered whether her desire to follow in Hutch’s footsteps didn’t really mask a desire to get away from her life at home.

  Eventually the acceleration eased off, and Valya came back to join them. She inquired whether everybody was feeling all right, then told them they’d be jumping in about six hours.

  “We’re headed where first?” asked MacAllister. “Something-or-other Cygnus?”

  “61 Cygni,” she said. “It’s eleven light-years out. Takes about a day to get there.” She was wearing a white jumpsuit. Her red hair, cut shorter than it had been in Tampa, looked more military.

  The furniture wasn’t especially comfortable. MacAllister grumbled at the prospect of having to deal with it for the next few weeks. “How long have you been doing this?” he asked Valya. “Piloting Academy ships?”

  “Almost fifteen years,” she said.

  “You don’t get bored?”

  “Never.”

  He recalled Hutch’s talking about how tiresome it could get, how pilots often made the same flights back and forth. How it could go on for months. Or the long flights. The mission to Lookout had taken the better part of a year one way. He tried to imagine being cooped up inside these bulkheads until next January.

  Amy must have read his expression. “I wouldn’t want that either,” she said. “But you can get pretty cooped up groundside, too.” She’d come aboard prepared to talk like a pilot. Groundside. Bulkheads. I’m going aft for a minute when she was talking about the washroom. The kid was right at home. But talk was cheap. MacAllister was prepared to give her a couple days before the idealism came crashing down. “If my father had his way,” she continued, “I’d be stuck the rest of my life in courtrooms and offices.”

  “And on beaches and at parties,” said MacAllister. “You won’t find many of those out here.” As a rule, he didn’t approve of adolescents. They were rarely smart enough to understand the depths of their inexperience. To be aware they really didn’t know anything. The few he encountered invariably behaved as if their opinions were as valid as his. Amy was no exception. But there was a degree of shyness about the child and an intellectual openness that engaged his sympathy. She thought the world a friendly and well-lighted place, where people really cared about each other, and all the stories had happy endings.

  “Mac,” she said, “I was surprised when I heard you were coming.”

  “Why was that?”

  “You don’t like the Academy.”

  MacAllister tried to explain his position. It was hard to do with Eric sitting there casting disapproving glances his way and Valya rolling her eyes.

  When he’d finished, she looked at him a long time. Finally, she said quietly, “It’s wrong, Mac. We went over the greenhouse thing in school. It’s not just a matter of money. Ms. Harkin says it’s people’s attitudes that have to change.”

  “Ms. Harkin’s your teacher?”

  “In Current Events, yes.”

  “She’s right. But that doesn’t justify wasting money somewhere else.”

  Amy’s eyes got very round. “It’s not a waste, Mac.”

  Valya smiled. “As long as we have people like you, Amy, we’ll be okay.”

  “They’ll never shut it down,” said Eric, his eyes locked on the receding moon. “They could no more do that than the Europeans could have turned their backs on America after Columbus.”

  “Or we could have gone to the moon,” said MacAllister, “then forgotten how to do it.”

  Eric was one of those people who would spend his life reaching for something better than he had because he wasn’t smart enough to realize what really mattered. MacAllister thought how much better the world would be if there were fewer people like Eric and more like himself. Pragmatists. People who kept open minds. Who were content to live their lives, enjoy the sunrise, make the moment count.

  THEY HAD AN uneasy dinner. MacAllister understood he was the cause of that. Eric and Amy both wanted to talk about where they were going, how exciting it all was, but he loomed over the general enthusiasm like a dark cloud. He couldn’t help it. Couldn’t pretend to get excited because they were going somewhere to look at a star up close. You’ve seen one burning gasbag, you’ve seen them all. But he tried. While they dined on roast beef he made occasional comments about how he’d never been to 61 Cygni, or 63 Cygni, or whatever it was, and wasn’t that where the alien monument was? He knew damned well it was, but it sounded self-effacing. Even if he wasn’t a good enough actor to ask the question as if he really cared.

  They finished dinner in a gloomy mood, while the other three united against him. No one said anything, and everybody was unfailingly polite, but there it was. He was odd man out. After years of playing the VIP everywhere he went, it was annoying to be excluded.

  Twenty minutes after they’d cleared the dishes they belted down, the Hazeltines took over, and the Salvator adjusted course for 61 Cygni and slipped between the dimensions. MacAllister was aware of the brief change in lighting when the moment came. When the jump was complete, Amy and Eric congratulated each other.

  Valya returned from the bridge, announced they were on their way, and proposed a toast. Poor Amy, who was underage, got grape juice. “Here’s to us,” Valya said.

  WHEN HE’D BEEN on the Evening Star, the passengers had spent their time at parties scattered throughout six or seven decks. You could stand before the see-through bulkheads and look out at the void, or at the quiescent mists of hyperspace. But despite its proximity, the world outside had seemed far away. Distant. Something seen but not really experienced. You were inside a warm, comfortable cocoon composed of soft bunks, dining areas, game rooms, and dance floors.

  It was different on the Salvator, where the vast outside could only be seen directly from the bridge, where it pressed against the hull. Where his heart beat slightly faster, and he could feel the empty light-years stretching away in all directions. It became even more unsettling after the jump, because hyperspace theoretically had no boundary, and no physical features of any kind except the mist.
/>   It intrigued Amy. “What would we do,” she asked, “if lights appeared out there?”

  Valya looked up at the screen. “If we see lights out there,” she said, “we’d clear out in a hurry.”

  They laughed at the idea. Eric said the notion gave him a chill, and MacAllister, pretending to be buried in a manuscript, was inclined to agree.

  Amy and Valya challenged each other to a role-playing game. Eric watched for a while, but finally declared it had been a long day and drifted off to his compartment. MacAllister tried to look interested. It had something to do with a quest in a medieval land. There were wizards and dragons and elves and magical artifacts that had gotten lost and other such nonsense. Had he been alone, MacAllister might have run the old Bogart vehicle Casablanca with himself as Rick. He’d done it at home any number of times and never grew tired. Play it, Sam.

  Eventually, Valya also retired for the evening. Amy, left to herself, wandered over and asked what he was reading. It was Bleak Angel, by Wendy Moran. A classic from the previous century. Amy looked bored when she heard the title. Like most kids, she automatically ruled out anything older than she was. “It’s about things that get lost,” he said. “Things we care about.”

  She nodded, smiled, excused herself, and headed for the bridge.

  He wondered briefly if she could get into trouble up there, then dismissed the idea. Or tried to. She didn’t come back, and eventually he left Bleak Angel and brought up a proof copy of a first novel. The editor had sent it to him hoping he’d review it, or possibly find something kind to say about it. He paged through and quickly concluded the writer had talent but insufficient discipline. There were too many adjectives and adverbs. Plotting, characterization, conflict, everything worked, but you couldn’t get the guy to write a simple sentence.

  When Amy came back, her eyes were shining. “I love being here,” she said.

  IT FELT GOOD to climb into the bunk, turn out the lights, and slide down into the sheets. There was no sense whatever of movement. In the darkness, MacAllister could hear the murmur of power in the walls and the occasional whisper of a fan. Once, he heard bare feet in the corridor and, probably, the sound of a washroom door. He remembered nothing else before he awoke and looked at the time. It was almost seven o’clock.