Octavia Gone

by Jack McDevitt

  “He’s good,” I said.

  The glow was gone and discomfort was settling in. “It was my fault. I should be used to it by now.” He pushed the tab on his commlink. “Alex, you busy?”

  A pause. Then: “Hang on. I’ll be right down, Gabe.”

  Gabriel started for the door. “Why don’t you wait here?” I said, making it a point to look up at the clock. “I’ve gotta go. Past my quitting time.”

  • • •

  When I ran into them the following morning, they were eating an amicable breakfast, and it was obvious whatever ill will had surfaced was gone. I was happy they weren’t discussing the Grantner documents. The conversation was mostly about local politics where they were generally in agreement.

  Eventually, somebody brought up Octavia. “I was interested,” Gabe said, “that so many people thought the station had been grabbed by aliens. There was still a lot of excitement about it when I got on the Capella. I was surprised, when I got back here, that nobody had figured out what happened. You think there could possibly be anything to the alien theory?”

  “Well,” said Alex, “I’d guess that anything that doesn’t violate physical law is possible. But I’d be more inclined to accept the idea that they all fell asleep, the system broke down, and they got sucked into the black hole.”

  “Well,” said Gabe, “if that was really what happened, I would understand why DPSAR would want to keep it quiet. Incidentally, I heard that you’re a member of the Maracaibo Caucus. Is that true?” The Maracaibo Caucus is, as anyone living close to Andiquar knows, a group of Ashiyyureans and locals who joined together in an effort to maintain a shaky peace back in the days when we were not comfortable with each other. Those times have changed, although the presence of an Ashiyyurean, or a Mute as they’re more commonly referred to, still makes people nervous.

  They resemble oversized mantises, extremely tall, with leathery flesh. Their faces are vaguely humanoid, with arched diamond eyes. When they smile, even with the best of intentions, people tend to leave the room. In a hurry.

  They unnerve everyone. But their appearance, despite the fangs, the eyes, and the tall pointed ears, is not the main cause. The real problem is that human minds are open to them. No secret is safe when a Mute’s at the table.

  They communicate telepathically with each other, and while they can read us, they require translator boxes to talk to us.

  “Yes,” said Alex. “I joined the Caucus three years ago.”

  “How long have they been around?”

  “Only a few hundred years.”

  “I didn’t mean how long we’d known about them. I seem to recall reading somewhere that they had offworld technology forty thousand years ago.”

  “Yes,” said Alex. “That’s about right.”

  “Have they encountered aliens anywhere?”

  “Just us. They’ve come across a few dead civilizations. As we have. But nothing that’s still functioning.”

  Gabe’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve some questions I’d like to ask. Do you think you could get me in to see them?”

  IX.

  We all treasure the golden meeting, the first encounter with a friend, with a brilliant mentor, with the lover of a lifetime. And, incredibly, we usually recognize the experience from the first moment.

  —REV. AGATHE LAWLESS, SUNSET MUSINGS, 1402

  Alex made the call to the Maracaibo Caucus. They said sure, come on down. The language was considerably less formal than had been the case in my previous encounter at the Caucus. Even though I’ve spent considerable time with Mutes, and established friendships with some, they’re still disconcerting. Especially the part where they automatically read my mind.

  When that happens, you spend most of your time trying not to think of aspects of your life that are less than elegant. Which means, of course, that your worst moments are all you can think of. It’s why you seldom run into Mutes at parties.

  Alex and I went with him. We arrived in the late afternoon at Kostyev House, which was once a Dellacondan embassy. A flat, gray structure that resembles an abandoned school building, it’s located near the capitol. We descended into a landing area two blocks away, walked across a broad green park, and entered through the front door between a pair of white pillars. A tube took us up to the third floor, where a wall panel admitted us into a carpeted corridor. We passed carved doors, and murals portraying Mutes in sedate postures contemplating approaching storms, strolling past fruit-laden tables, or simply standing in contemplative poses. Particularly noticeable was a portrait in which one of them gazed down at a chessboard.

  “You think,” I asked, “that Mutes play chess?”

  “I doubt it,” said Gabe. “How do you play any kind of game, except maybe bingo, if the players can read each other’s minds?”

  “That was going to be my question.”

  “Let’s try to stay on target here,” said Alex.

  We passed several offices. One was Trotter and Smythe, a prominent legal firm; another was a transit corporation that arranged vacations. The others showed names, but nothing I recognized. And then, near the end of the corridor, we reached a set of double doors marked MARACAIBO CAUCUS.

  Alex activated his commlink and one of the doors opened. We walked into an office. It was nothing out of the ordinary. An empty desk, circled by a large sofa and a couple of fabric armchairs. A wooden table stood before two square windows that looked out over the city. Somehow the sky seemed grayer than it had when we were on the street.

  We heard voices from an adjoining room. Moments later it opened and a young man, probably not more than twenty years old, entered and closed the door behind him. His eyes settled on me but he spoke to Alex. “It’s good to see you again, Mr. Benedict. Why don’t you and your guests be seated? Roka Kailan will be with you in a moment.”

  He waited while Gabe and I took chairs and Alex relaxed on the sofa, which almost engulfed him. “My name’s Jerry, by the way. If you need anything while you’re here just tell the AI.” He smiled and then reacted as if he’d heard something. The door behind us opened and a Mute came in.

  He had a huge prothorax and large bulbous dark eyes that inevitably put humans into a kind of spotlight. “Welcome, Alex,” he said, speaking through a gold-colored locket that hung on a chain around his throat. “I’m happy to meet your uncle Gabriel and to see Chase again.”

  “Hello, Roka,” said Alex with a smile. Introductions were always a bit awkward with someone who can read your mind.

  Roka wore a long rust-colored robe with a red sash over his left shoulder. He was tall and moved with easy grace. But Mutes find it difficult to smile, and he was no exception. I’d almost learned to relax in the presence of the Ashiyyur, but I couldn’t recall having met Roka before and I could feel my mind opening and every private thought drifting out into the daylight. Including my failure to recognize him. “It’s okay, Chase,” he said with a smile that was almost innocent. “I’ve blocked myself off. Nothing’s coming through.”

  Our understanding of Mutes is that, because of their communication method, the basic context created by a culture in which telepathy rules, nobody lies. They can’t. There’s no point in it. As much connection as I’ve had with them over the years, I still have a hard time understanding how their interactions work with each other.

  “I wish we could manage more time together, Roka,” said Alex as the Mute sat down beside him.

  “My feeling exactly, Alex. What can I do for you?”

  “You know of Octavia?”

  “The lost station? Yes, of course. Is there news? Has anything changed?”

  “No. Unfortunately not. They’ve made no progress.”

  Roka’s eyes darkened. They generated a chilling look. “We did not have anything to do with it.”

  “We have to consider every possibility. But that’s not one we’ve given much credence. I can see no advantage, no reason, for your people to make off with a space station.”

  “Had it happened,
” said Roka, “it would probably have been influenced by a desire to discover how we might travel through wormholes.”

  “Except that I’m pretty sure your people know that if we’d gained that kind of technology it would have been yours for the asking.”

  “Alex, I don’t know whether that’s true or not.”

  “We would not have kept it from you. But you know nothing about it?”

  “We do not.”

  From a society that, as far as we knew, couldn’t keep secrets, that seemed to settle the issue. Unless Roka was willing to lie to humans. That thought crept into my head despite every effort to push it away. I looked across the room at him, and believe it or not, he was smiling at me. He wasn’t reading my mind, but he knew exactly what I was thinking.

  “The real reason we came was to get a sense of whether DPSAR had run a complete investigation.”

  “If you’re asking, Alex, whether they came here to question us, the answer is yes. They did. I wasn’t here at the time, nor was anyone else who’s currently here. But I know one of the coordinators who was present when the investigation was conducted. So you’ll understand I was, in effect, also present. And yes, they wanted to know whether we had any vehicles in the area at the time, whether it was possible we could have had someone out there and not known about it? Did we understand that we should not take their questions in an offensive manner, but did we have any pirates? I think that was the term they used. It would of course be impossible for us to have pirates running around and not know of it.”

  Gabe got into it at that point: “Roka, please understand that our ability to communicate is fairly clumsy compared to yours. DPSAR didn’t have many options on the table. Either some nonhuman power had taken the station, or there’d been an equipment breakdown of some kind. The station was supposed to be impermeable. There could be no equipment failure without adequate warning.”

  “That’s what they claimed,” said Roka. “But even the highest-tech equipment is not perfect. And why couldn’t there have been human pirates?”

  “We haven’t completely eliminated that possibility. Let’s get that off the table, though. I have a question for you.”

  “I am at your service.”

  “If an attack had been committed by an Ashiyyurean, would it have been possible for him, or her, to hide it from everyone else?”

  Those large dark eyes fastened on Gabe. “Yes,” he said. “Provided the individual never returned to live with the rest of us.”

  “How about if he was unstable? Would it be possible then?”

  “For him to hide what he’d done? No. For one thing, we have very few persons who become deranged. One of the reasons for that is that everyone around them learns very early what is happening, and we are consequently able to intervene.”

  “I suspect that’s one of the things the investigators wanted to know.”

  “I’m sure that’s correct. More significantly we cannot hide who we are. We literally live inside each other’s minds.”

  “Roka,” said Alex, “the most likely possibility seems to be aliens. We’ve both had interstellar flight for thousands of years. The only high-tech aliens we’ve encountered have been each other. Am I correct?”

  “That is correct, Alex.”

  “Nevertheless, there are millions of worlds out there that neither of us has visited.”

  Roka nodded. “That’s certainly true.”

  “You have any theories,” asked Gabe, “why intelligent life is so rare?”

  He took a moment to consider the issue. “It seems obvious enough. Give a creature intelligence and it begins to acquire knowledge. The knowledge leads to advanced technology and probably a tendency to use their developments in a way that exhausts their planetary home. It almost happened with us, and we know you also came close. We’ve seen a substantial number of dead civilizations over the years. As a rule, they have little staying power. The basic key to their eventual collapse has been the development of the printing press. Knowledge spreads too quickly among a species not yet equipped to handle it. Once that happens, we have seen no one who survived more than a few centuries. Other than yourselves.”

  “That doesn’t seem to have happened with you either,” said Gabe. “The Ashiyyur had aircraft and electricity before we were even thinking about building pyramids. You were slow getting to the stars, but there’s no record of your people threatening their own world.”

  “I think we were fortunate.”

  “How do you mean?” I asked.

  “We communicate through direct mental contact. It probably results in a higher level of empathy than most other intelligent life-forms. Lust for power, for example, is rare. Possibly nonexistent. Because one cannot hide it. And we all recognize that it is linked to stupidity. It would serve only to draw the contempt of our associates. Consequently, we are not going to attack each other.

  “For the same reason, negligence that leads to planetary destruction through runaway population growth or corrosion of natural resources cannot hide itself. We were much slower to develop advanced technology than other species because we weren’t fighting wars and consequently had less use for it. By the time we learned to manipulate atomic power, we were well beyond the point where anyone would have thought of converting it into a weapon. And please don’t be offended.”

  “It makes me wonder,” said Gabe, “how we managed to survive.”

  “It was close,” Alex said. “Vasili Arkhipov saved us from a nuclear war.”

  “Oh yes.” Gabe smiled. “The Arkhipov was one of the first interstellars.”

  “What did it do?” asked Roka.

  “Not the starship,” said Gabe. “The man.”

  Roka nodded, inviting him to explain.

  “Several years after we’d invented atomic weapons, there was a standoff between two major powers. They were quarreling over an island. One was shipping weapons to the island while the other sent a fleet of warships to establish an embargo. The incoming freighters were accompanied by three submarines with nuclear missiles. If I remember this correctly, the three submarines each had a captain and there was a senior officer in overall command. In order to use the nukes, all four had to agree. Arkhipov was the guy who said no.”

  “It’s fortunate,” said Roka, “one of them was intelligent. I hadn’t heard that story before. You were lucky.”

  “It makes me wonder,” I said, “how we managed to get into a shooting war with your people?”

  The Mute paused. “I think the problem was that both sides were sitting in interstellars with no knowledge of each other. Probably, had we been close enough for the telepathy to work, we would have realized you were only acting out of fear, that neither side constituted a willful threat to the other. It won’t happen again.”

  “There’s not much question you’re right,” said Alex. “The whole thing was probably just a massive communication breakdown.”

  • • •

  We’d learned a few weeks earlier that Kormin Broder, who’d been one of our clients for almost ten years, had passed away. Kormin was a collector of antiques that had a connection with famous writers. He also owned three hardcover classics that had been signed by the writers: Gasper Mendez’s history of the Ashiyyurean War, Conflict Resurrected; Timothy Zhin-Po’s Night Thoughts; and Wally Candles’s poetry collection Rising Water.

  Kormin’s family had asked us to convert the antiques into cash. Alex put everything up for auction. The best offers for the books all came from the same source, the Collectors’ Library, which was located in Salazar, forty minutes away on the Melony River. I was present but out of sight when Alex closed the deal with the library’s owner, Chad Barker. After they disconnected he asked me to take care of the shipment. “Best,” he said, “is to take them out to him personally. We don’t want to risk any of those books getting lost.” It had happened once before.

  That was good by me. I’d never met Barker but I’d seen him twice during negotiations. It was odd; somehow he
’d become one of my favorite guys. He seemed intelligent, friendly, blond, good-looking. If there are any other qualities that matter, he possessed them too.

  A half hour later I was on my way. I picked up the Melony and followed it directly to Salazar, where I descended into a parking area that served the library and several other small businesses on the north side of the city.

  A force-field screen floated above the rooftop, identifying the building and providing pictures of books currently available, including novels by Ellen Tier and Beaumont Savage and a collection of Hikari Hanyu’s plays. The Great Expansion had been given the center position. Rees Cleever’s classic novel Road to Nowhere was prominently displayed. As was Return to Paradise, described as a discussion of the evolution of human morality. I wasn’t familiar with the author, though the book had originally appeared two thousand years ago. Another title dated all the way back to the third millennium, Tad Daley’s celebrated Apocalypse Never, which has been credited as one of the major players in the denuclearization of Earth. Gabe maintains that, had we not managed eventually to get rid of nuclear weapons, none of us would be here today.

  I got the shipment out of the skimmer and took it inside. The store’s entire stock was available for inspection. A visitor could put whatever she wanted on-screen, effectively turn pages, and look at covers. But the books themselves were in a separate storage place. They could be brought out and shown physically to a customer, but they couldn’t be handled or even touched until ownership was transferred.

  Barker was behind a counter, talking with a middle-aged man. Another customer, a woman, was waiting, apparently having a discussion with an AI. I wandered through the store, looking at what they had available. Barker glanced my way. When our eyes touched, he smiled and indicated he’d be with me in a minute. The middle-aged man was short and heavyset. He was clearly an academic type, a professor of literature or history, probably, at Salazar University, on the southern edge of the city. They were agreeing about something, the professor nodding and Barker providing information. Then Barker exited through a door and came back a minute later with a book. The professor studied it and obviously approved. He handed over payment and the deal was done. The two shook hands, the professor continued examining his prize, and finally he left, still turning pages.