Echo

by Jack McDevitt

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Telling the truth requires no skill whatever. But getting away with a lie—Ah, that takes talent.

  —Eskaiya Black, Lost in Aruba

  I’m not sure when I made the decision. But a few hours after talking with Suze, I found myself on the shuttle, riding down to the terminal. I was barely in the door of my condo when Mr. Coppel, the complex owner, informed me that he had people coming over that afternoon to look at the place. “I don’t expect there’ll be any problem with a quick sale,” he said. “How soon can you be out?”

  I needed to talk to Cavallero again. But I didn’t have time to take the train to Carnaiva, and I didn’t want to do this over the circuit. So I rented a skimmer and flew out. On the way, I called Robin and left a message that I wasn’t going to make our date that evening. I apologized and promised I’d make it up to him.

  I turned the thing over to the AI and slept much of the way, waking as we passed Indira. Cremation Station. The last segment of the ride is probably the dullest two hundred kilometers on the planet. It’s pure prairie, unbroken by anything. The most exciting feature of the landscape is that there are occasional slight rises. And a few wild grazing herds of bofins.

  In the late afternoon, local time, I settled to the ground just outside the Space Base.

  Cavallero was not in his office when I arrived. But the AI let him know I was there and asked me to wait. A few minutes later, he walked in, obviously on guard, not happy to see me again. But he gave me a forced smile and said he hadn’t expected to have the pleasure of my presence again so soon.

  “Hal,” I said as jauntily as I could manage, “how are you doing?” I’m not a very good actor, and I did not succeed in putting him at ease.

  “I’m good. What brings you back to Carnaiva? Still working on that book?” His voice carried an implied sneer. He hadn’t liked being lied to.

  He didn’t offer a chair. “Do you have a minute to talk with me?”

  “I’m kind of busy.” He showed me a pair of shears. Then realized how silly it looked. “What do you need, Chase?”

  “I won’t take much of your time.”

  “Okay.”

  Outside, kids were playing, yelling, throwing a ball around. “You and Rachel Bannister worked together for several years. Do I have that right?”

  “Umm. Yes, more or less. I told you before, Chase, it’s been an awfully long time.”

  “I understand there was some tension between you.”

  “Well, that’s not true. Where’d you hear that?”

  “There are a lot of people who know about it. Apparently there was an incident at the Skydeck Club.”

  He went pale. “I’m sorry. Chase, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Some of the people who were there still remember it. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

  He looked at me a long time. Then he lowered himself into a chair. “Please.” His voice shook. “Chase, you look like a decent woman. I’m begging you: Walk away from this. Drop it. You can’t do any good for anyone. Let it go.” He wiped the back of his hand against his mouth. “Please. Leave it alone.”

  “Hal—” He shook his head. Clamped his lips together. Tears rolled down his cheeks. “You can trust me,” I said. “If it’s as you say, it’ll go no further.”

  He shook his head violently and turned away from me.

  I went back to the skimmer and called Alex. “Is my job still open?”

  Eliot Statkins was less happy when I told him I would make the final scheduled flight for Rigel, but that it would be my last.

  “Why, Chase?” He tried to speak like a father, but he couldn’t bring it off. “We can always find another pilot, but you’re throwing away a golden opportunity. Why don’t you take some time and think about it? There’s no big hurry. When you get to Arkon, on the outbound leg, send me a message. To me, personally. Let me know what you want to do. Meanwhile, I’ll take no action.”

  “Eliot, I’m just not comfortable on these flights.”

  “Why not?” He looked shocked by the proposition. Surely I recognized how unreasonable it was.

  “It has nothing to do with the flights themselves. It’s just that—”

  “Yes?”

  “My future’s with Alex.”

  “With the antique dealer?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t believe you really think that. An antique dealer? Well, it’s your call. But think about it. That’s all I’m asking. I know we don’t pay as much as he does, but we’ll still be here in thirty years. Hell, he could shut down tomorrow. With us, you get a lot of benefits, not to mention housing. A fat retirement. Security. And where else would you find a career this interesting? Most pilots would kill for your job.”

  I thanked him, and told him I’d send a message from Arkon. An hour later, I boarded the Gonzalez and started getting ready for departure.

  I called Robin from the bridge.

  “Marvelous,” he said. “When you get back, we’ll do a celebration.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Chase?”

  “Yes?”

  “I think I’m in love with you.”

  I won’t say it was an uneventful flight. Before we got to Arkon, I had to deal with an orgy that spilled out into the main cabin, a passenger who was unhappy with the food and insisted on holding me personally responsible, and a gambling dispute that ended in a broken jaw. Oh, and I also got to deliver a baby.

  At Arkon, a veteran pilot said it all sounded pretty routine. “Don’t worry,” he told me, “after a while you’ll be able to deal with this stuff standing on your head.”

  I sent Eliot a message confirming my resignation.

  During my last night on the ship, I didn’t sleep much. I was on the bridge after midnight, dozing, but not anxious to go back to my quarters. We were three hours from making our jump, and the ship was silent, save for the barely audible sound of the engines and the air vents. Jack had congratulated me when I told him. But he’d shown no other reaction, and my conversations with him had been routine. But as the clock ticked down, he delivered a brief piece of static, his equivalent of clearing his throat. “Chase?”

  “Yes, Jack?”

  “I’m glad that you are so happy. But I will miss you.”

  “Thanks, Jack. “I’ll miss you, too.”

  “Are you sure you’re doing the right thing?”

  “Yes. I am sure.”

  “Good. I think you are, too. Good luck.”

  “Thank you.”

  “May I say something else?”

  “Of course.”

  “Knowing you these few weeks—”

  “Yes—?”

  “Makes me, for the first time, wonder whether I would not be better off being human.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  Every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.

  —William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

  When I showed up at the country house, flowers were waiting on my desk. Alex gave me time to settle in; then he came downstairs and hugged me. “Nice to have you back, Chase,” he said. “The place was never the same without you.”

  “Well,” I said, “thanks. I think I discovered I wasn’t meant to pilot transports.”

  We enjoyed the moment and emptied a bottle of Varicotta wine. It was still morning, and I’m not used to drinking before lunch, so he had to feed me to get me back to normal.

  “I don’t think,” he said, “there’s any question that Cavallero overlooked or neglected something, that it led to a serious consequence of some kind for Rachel, and that that was the reason for the quarrel, if that’s the right word.”

  “So,” I said, “we need something that happened on a tour, that was serious enough to drive the captain to suicide twenty-eight years later, but was apparently only picked up by the scopes or scanners, since nobody else, none of the passengers, seemed to notice.”

  “Whatever
it was, she came back, argued with Cavallero, and told Tuttle what she’d seen. And probably took him back to show him.”

  “But if we’re talking about aliens, why did Tuttle not say anything?”

  “That’s really the question, isn’t it, Chase? Rachel keeps it quiet, and so does he. I don’t know. Other than the story Rachel has: that these creatures are so deadly that they felt it was necessary to keep their existence and location secret. But if that part of the account is true, then she didn’t come across them on a tour. She was out riding with Tuttle. Because there’s no way she could have picked that up without the passengers knowing.

  “We have to figure out where she went on the last tour. What was the name of her ship?”

  “The Silver Comet.”

  “But they didn’t keep the records.”

  Audree called to tell me she was glad I’d changed my mind. “He hasn’t been the same since you left,” she said. “I think I’m jealous.”

  “I think it’s time,” Alex said, “that Rainbow ran a competition. A contest. We need to give away some prizes.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “To generate some publicity.”

  “I’m serious. Why?”

  “That last tour. The passengers would have taken pictures, right?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Tourists always take pictures. A lot of them will be out the windows. Somewhere, somebody has a visual record of that last flight. We have to find it.”

  “You think aliens will show up on it?”

  He laughed. “We’ll need Shara. Whatever happened, we can probably assume they never took a tour back to that destination. So we look for the latest tour to each destination and hope it’s the last one. There’ll be pictures of the sky. There have to be. Turn them over to Shara and let her figure out where they are.”

  “Okay,” I said. “It might work.”

  Two days later, Rainbow launched its Cosmic Tour Contest. We were putting together, the announcement said, a record of “the most striking images” captured by nonprofessionals aboard tour ships. The images could be of planetary rings, comets, solar eruptions, flares, luminous clouds, planetary landscapes, or whatever else could be expected to appeal to our sense of off-world beauty.

  Since World’s End had built its reputation primarily by tours into the Veiled Lady, we excluded systems within the Confederate domain, explaining that we were looking for images not seen before. There was also a human-interest category: pictures of people reacting to the wonders around them, or simply dining together by the light of alien stars. Participants were invited to be creative, and nothing was off the table. Cash prizes were offered, and the winners would be included in Cosmic Wonders, to be published by Hawksworth & Steele later in the year.

  “I’ll want you to put that together in your spare time,” Alex said.

  “Cosmic Wonders?”

  “I’m open to a better title if you can think of one. The assignment should be easy. Use lots of pictures.”

  Entrants were required to complete a form, indicating when the pictures had been taken, the name of the touring company, and the ship. If known, they were also to indicate where the pictures had been taken.

  That part of the exercise turned out to be, as we expected it would be, a fool’s game. Everybody knew where their tours had gone, but the names were pure fiction, invented by the companies. Place names like Bootstrap and Carmody and Rhinestone and Weinberg’s Star. They didn’t even try to maintain consistency. What was Werewolf to Blue Diamond Tours might be Harmony over at World’s End. And when we checked with World’s End, we discovered none of the names had survived into current usage. They still made up names, but the new owners had installed their own set.

  That afternoon, in a mood for premature celebration (we did that all the time, in case things went wrong), we went to Tardy’s for lunch.

  Unlike me, when Alex ate lunch at Tardy’s, he liked to go early and park on the island. But we were late getting out, and when we arrived there, the island spaces were full. No surprise.

  “You want to go somewhere else?” I asked. It was raining, and I thought he might prefer something with indoor parking.

  “Up to you,” he said.

  “I’m hungry.”

  “Then let’s go here. It’s only water.”

  We set down in the big onshore lot, as close as I could get to the viaduct. As if we’d thrown a switch, the rain became more intense. Alex laughed, said something about timing, and climbed out. We hurried to the crossover, which got no protection from the canopy because of a stiff wind. We half walked half rode across, ran the last ten meters, and were glad to get inside, where it was warm and dry.

  We took our time eating and let the storm play out. I don’t remember much of what we talked about, other than Alex predicting that we would know within two weeks’ time where the Silver Comet had gone. We finished lunch and refilled the wineglasses. Somebody was playing a piano in the next room, performing one stormy-weather number after another.

  Eventually, we finished, and the sun emerged from the clouds. We paid and strolled outside. A few people were on the viaduct, moving in both directions. Each of the glideways is equipped with a guardrail that moves with it.

  We got on and didn’t feel much like walking, so we just rode across, leaning over the rail, looking at the river, paying no attention to anything else. There were only a few other people there. Lunch hour was over, so most were going in the same direction we were. My mind was all over the place. I was thinking how glad I was to be back in my old routine, and about Robin and Jack the AI and the Cosmic Tour Contest and suddenly there was a lot of noise around me. People began yelling look out, and the glideway jerked to a stop and somebody screamed. Then the viaduct collapsed.

  No. Not so much collapsed as melted.

  The glideway turned to water. Someone jerked me back, onto solid ground. Several of us spilled onto the deck. Two or three people were scrambling to get clear. The walkway, the piece where we’d been, had literally vanished. Alex was in the river. Along with a young woman.

  The guy who’d pulled me back asked if I was okay but didn’t wait for an answer. Two more people were hanging on, calling for help. A teenage girl was yelling into her link. Alex and the woman were being carried downstream.

  The teen was saying, “Yes, yes, we’re at Tardy’s. Please hurry—”

  Alex could swim reasonably well, and my first reaction was that unless he was hurt, he’d be okay. But that thought was immediately overwhelmed by the roar of Chambourg Falls.

  I needed the skimmer.

  The glideways weren’t moving, of course, but the way to the riverbank was intact. I took off. Meanwhile, people on shore saw what had happened and began running onto the viaduct to help. The result was that I had to plow through heavy traffic. As I finally got clear, I spotted a familiar woman in a light jacket climbing into one of the skimmers. I needed a moment before I placed her: It was the woman I’d seen on the train to Carnaiva. The Mortician.

  Alex and the woman in the river were moving steadily downstream. There was just time enough to get to them. But I suddenly realized I didn’t remember where I’d left the skimmer. It was close to the viaduct. But where? Most of the parking places were taken, and I couldn’t see it.

  I ran frantically from one vehicle to another. Where was the damned thing?

  I wasted three or four minutes looking. And I hate to admit this, but I was in tears when a guy who’d just parked in the automobile section asked if he could help so I said yeah, I’ve got an emergency, and I’ve lost my skimmer; it’s a green Vamoso, brand-new. He went one way, and I went another. Moments later, I heard his voice. “Over here. It’s over here.” And, “Can I help? Are you okay?” He was short and stocky. Not much more than a kid.

  “Do you have a rope in your car? A cable of some kind?”

  “No. Sorry.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and scrambled into the Vamoso. I started the engine before
I was even in the seat and pulled the door shut as I lifted off. We’d had the thing less than a month, and I knew it hadn’t acquired the junk that people always keep in the storage compartment. Like a line.

  How the hell was I going to get him out of the water? All I had was the treads.

  I swung downstream, calling for help, looking for another skimmer. The police responded by asking me what was my problem? Then, “We’re sending someone now.” But they weren’t there yet, and there was no time left.

  The Melony at that point was about a half-kilometer wide, narrowing down as it neared the falls.

  I stayed just above the river and spotted the woman. But not Alex. Where the hell was Alex?

  Then we were into the rapids. Ahead I could see the observation platforms on both sides from which people came and gawked at the falls. And then I saw Alex. The two were almost abreast, but not close to each other. As I watched, the current drove the woman hard into a rock. Still, she managed to stay afloat.

  She saw me coming and tried to wave. She used her left arm, and every time she did it she sank out of sight, only to fight her way back to the surface. Her right arm appeared to be useless.

  Finally, an emergency vehicle appeared. But it was too far away to help.

  Alex was trying to get to shore, but he was making no progress.

  I raced in their direction. The AI warned me I was getting too close to the river. My heart pounded.