Cauldron

by Jack McDevitt

  REYNA WAS USED to his moods. And she knew what caused them. “Quit,” she advised.

  They’d skipped dinner, gone for a walk along the river, and ended at Cleary’s, a coffeehouse that had prospered during Academy days and was now just hanging on. “Quit and do what?” he asked.

  “You’ll find something.”

  He liked Reyna. She was tall and lean, with blue eyes and dark hair, and he loved the way she laughed. There was no real passion between them, though, and he didn’t understand why. It made him wonder if he’d ever find a woman he could really relate to.

  She was good company. They’d been dating on and off for a year. They’d slept together a couple of times. But he didn’t push that side of the relationship because he wasn’t going to offer to make things permanent. She was the woman he spent time with when no one special was available. She knew that, and he suspected she felt much the same way. “Like what?” he asked.

  “How about a federal job? I understand they’re looking for tour guides in DC.”

  “That would be exciting.”

  She smiled at him. Everything’s going to be all right. You’re putting too much pressure on yourself. “Have you thought about teaching?”

  “Me?”

  “Sure. Why not?” She stirred her coffee, took a sip, rested her cheek on her fist. Her eyes locked on him. She was showing a little perspiration from their walk.

  “What would I teach?”

  “Astronomy.”

  “I was a history major, Reyna.”

  “They won’t care. Star pilot. You’ve been out there. They’d love you.”

  The coffee was good. He had a Brazilian blend, sweetened with tapioca. “I don’t think so. I can’t imagine myself in a classroom.”

  “I could ask around,” she said. “See what’s available.” She looked away, out the window at the river. “There’s another possibility.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ve a friend who works in a law office in Wheaton. They’re looking to hire an analyst. Apparently, you don’t need a legal background. They’ll teach you everything you need. They just want somebody who’s reasonably smart.”

  He couldn’t see himself working with contracts and entitlements. Of course, until these last few years, he couldn’t have imagined himself spending his days in an office of any kind. Maybe what he needed in his life was a good woman. Somebody who could make him feel as if he were moving forward. Going somewhere.

  Maybe two good women.

  “What are you smiling at?” she asked.

  HE’D JUST GOTTEN in the door at home when Basil, his AI, informed him there was a news report of interest. “I didn’t want to disturb you while you were out.”

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “François was in an accident. They’re sending out a rescue mission.”

  “François St. John?” That seemed unlikely. François was a model of caution and good sense. “What are they saying? Is he okay?”

  “Presumably. There are no reports of injuries. But apparently the ship is adrift.”

  “What happened?”

  “An omega. They got in its way.”

  François was the guy who wouldn’t quit. When everything was shutting down, he’d found a way to stay with the interstellars. Most recently he’d been working for the Prometheus Foundation. Probably for expenses and lunch money. “We have details?”

  “They’re running an interview with Dr. Golombeck now.”

  “Put it on. Let’s see what happened.”

  Golombeck’s image appeared. He was seated at a table, looking forlorn, saying something about a derelict ship. He was a thin, gray man. Gray mustache, gray clothes, gray skin. He didn’t look as if he had ever been out in the sun. He was, of course, the director of the Prometheus Foundation.

  François and Matt had never really been friends. They’d not seen enough of each other for that. But they’d met periodically in the Academy ops center and at the outstations. They’d had a few drinks together on occasion, including that last memorable night at Union when the Academy announced it was closing down. There had been four or five of them present when the news came. Matt had returned less than an hour earlier from a flight to Serenity. François and one of the others had been scheduled for outbound missions, which had been delayed two or three days without explanation, and finally canceled. A couple of the others had been going through refresher training.

  The talk, of course, had centered on the conviction that it wasn’t really happening. A shutdown had been rumored for years, but the common wisdom was that the threats were always designed to shake more funding out of Congress. There was some hope at the table that it was true this time, too.

  But if not, what would they do?

  They’d talked about getting piloting jobs with Kosmik and Orion and the other starflight corporations. But the field was drying up, and everybody knew it. One female pilot had talked about going home to Montana. “Maybe work on the ranch,” she’d said. After all this time, he could still remember the way she’d tilted her head, the way her blond hair was cut, the pain in her eyes. Couldn’t remember her name, but he remembered the pain.

  Work on the ranch.

  And François. He’d been solid, quiet, competent. The kind of guy you wanted playing the action hero. He was a born skeptic, thought nothing corrupted people quicker than giving them promotions. What was he going to do now? He’d shaken his head. Stay in the backcountry, he’d said. Ride the ships. Matt seemed to recall that he’d added he would never stoop to selling real estate for a living. But that was a false memory. Had to be.

  “They were trying to salvage what they could out of the derelict,” Golombeck was saying.

  The interviewer was Cathie Coleman, of The London Times. She sat across the table, nodding as he spoke. Her dark skin glistened in lights that did not exist in Matt’s living room. He described how the Langstons had boarded the derelict, had cut their way into it. How they had cut things a bit too close. How the derelict was by far the oldest ever discovered.

  “And you say this object was a billion years old?”

  “That’s what they’re telling us, Cathie.”

  “Who was flying around out there a billion years ago?”

  “That’s a question we might not be able to answer now.”

  “Were they able to salvage anything?” she asked.

  “A few relics, we know that, but we don’t know what specifically. Apparently almost everything was lost.”

  Matt halted the interview. “How far away are they?” he asked the AI.

  “Two hundred sixty-four light-years.”

  Almost a month travel time. Well, they clearly had adequate life support, so there was really nothing to worry about. Other than losing a billion-year-old artifact. What would that have been worth?

  “The rescue ship is leaving from here?”

  “Yes, that’s correct.”

  “Dr. Golombeck.” Cathie took a deep breath. Big question coming. “Are you going to be able to salvage the Jenkins?”

  “We don’t know the extent of the damage yet. They were hit by lightning. We’ll send a team of engineers out as soon as we can assess what’s needed. We’ll do everything we can to bring the Jenkins home.”

  There’d been a time, during the peak of the interstellar period, when someone would have been close by, when help would have arrived within a few days, at most. That was only twenty years ago. Hard to believe. The era was already being described as the Golden Age.

  IN THE MORNING, Golombeck was back. He’d been a bit optimistic, he admitted. The Foundation would have to write the Jenkins off. “Beyond repair,” he said.

  The interviewer, Wilson deChancie of Chronicle News, nodded. “Professor,” he said, “there aren’t many people left doing serious exploration. And Prometheus is now down to one ship.”

  “That’s correct, yes.”

  “Will the Foundation survive?”

  “Yes,” he sa
id. “We’ll survive. There’s no question about that.”

  “I’m sure our viewers will be happy to hear that.”

  “Yes. We do not intend to give up and walk away from the table, Wilson. And by the way, I should mention we’ll be conducting a fund-raiser. That’ll be at the Benjamin Hotel, next Wednesday, at noon.”

  “The proceeds to be used to buy another ship?”

  “That’s our hope, yes. The problem, of course, is that no one manufactures superluminals anymore. The few operational vehicles that remain are extremely expensive.”

  “I’m sure they are.”

  Golombeck turned and looked directly at Matt. “The public’s invited, of course. And again, that’s Wednesday, at twelve. There’ll be a luncheon, and your viewers can secure reservations by calling us directly.”

  The code appeared at his knees.

  DeChancie nodded solemnly. Expressed his hope that the event would be successful.

  Elsewhere, experts argued that the derelict could not possibly have been a billion years old, as reported.

  On another show, one guest asked the others on the panel whether anyone could name anything the Prometheus Foundation had discovered during its five-year lifetime. “Anything anybody really cares about?”

  The panelists looked at one another and smiled.

  IN THE MORNING, Matt sent Prometheus a donation. He wasn’t sure what impelled him to do that. He never had before, had never even considered it. But he felt better when it was done. They responded within the hour with a recorded message, an attractive young woman standing in front of a Foundation banner, blue and white with a ringed star in the center. She thanked him for his generosity, reminded him it was deductible, and invited him to attend the Wednesday luncheon at the Benjamin Hotel in Silver Spring. The guest speaker, she said, would be Priscilla Hutchins, a former star pilot and the author of Mission.

  Her name induced a moment of pride. When, years from now, his grandkids asked him what he’d done for a living, he knew he wasn’t going to bring up real estate.

  He had a leisurely breakfast, bacon and eggs, and headed for work. It was a cool morning, with rain clouds coming in from the west. But he could beat the storm. Or maybe not. The possibility of getting drenched added a bit of spice to the morning. It wouldn’t matter. He had extra clothes at the office.

  He strolled past the Senior Center, ignoring the rising wind. The place was well maintained, with clusters of oaks and maples scattered in strategic places and more benches now than there’d been in earlier times. The morning’s stream of flyers were already passing overhead, most making for DC. Across the Potomac, the Washington Monument seemed poised to free itself from the gravity well.

  On impulse, he detoured into the grounds, following the long, winding walkway that used to be filled with joggers and physical fitness nuts. It was concrete until you got past the main buildings, where it converted to gravel, entered a cluster of trees, and circled the Morning Pool. At the far end of the pool, the trees opened out onto a stone wall. If he’d walked to the end of the wall, he would have been able to see his office.

  Despite the fact it was located along the eastern perimeter of the old Academy grounds, this was the South Wall, on which were engraved the likenesses of the fifty-three persons who had given their lives during the Academy’s near half-century existence. Fourteen pilots and crew (the latter from the days when ships needed more than a pilot), and thirty-nine researchers. There was Tanya Marubi, killed in the Academy’s first year when she tried to rescue a paleontologist who’d blundered into a walking plant of some sort on Kovar III. The plaque stipulated that the paleontologist had escaped almost unharmed, and that Marubi had taken the plant down with her.

  And George Hackett, who’d died during the Beta Pac mission, which had discovered the existence of the omega clouds. And Jane Collins and Terry Drafts, who’d found the first hedgehog and revealed its purpose when they inadvertently triggered it. And Preacher Brawley, who had run into a booby trap in a system that was referred to on his plaque simply as Point B.

  EMMA WAS WAITING for him when he got to the office. She was watching the latest Jenkins reports. “Anything like that ever happen to you, Matt?” she asked. “You ever get stranded somewhere?”

  “No.” He made immediately for the coffee. “My career was pretty routine. Just back and forth.”

  She studied him. “Did you know the pilot?” she asked.

  “I’ve met him.”

  “Well, I’m glad he came out of it okay.”

  “Me, too.”

  They were in his office. The wind was rattling the windows, and rain had begun to fall. “You must be glad to be here,” she said. “Real estate’s not the most glamorous way to make a living, but it’s safe.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you ever know anybody out there who…?” Her voice trailed off.

  “One,” he said. “I trained under Preacher Brawley.”

  “Who?”

  Brawley had been the best there was. But he’d lost his life when he got ambushed by an automated device that there’d been no way to anticipate. Matt had set out to be like his mentor. And gradually came to realize nobody could be like the Preacher.

  She nodded and smiled and after a minute glanced at the clock. Time to get to work. “Do you have anything pressing at the moment, Matt?”

  “No. What did you want me to do?”

  “Take over the Hawkins business. I think it’s a little too complicated for Anjie.”

  Too complicated for Anjie. “Why don’t I just give her a hand?”

  LIBRARY ENTRY

  THE JERRY TYLER SHOW

  Guest: Melinda Alan,

  Astrophysics Director, AMNH

  JERRY: Melinda, we were talking back in the lounge before we came on and you said the omega incident was the worst scientific setback in history. Do I have that right?

  MELINDA: Absolutely, Jerry. I can’t think of anything that remotely compares with it.

  JERRY: Okay. Do you want to explain why?

  MELINDA: Sure. Previous to this, we’ve known that there was intelligence in the galaxy going back over a million years—

  JERRY: Let’s take a moment here to explain to our audience. You’re saying we’ve known all along that, a million years ago, there were intelligent aliens.

  MELINDA: That’s right.

  JERRY: How did we know that?

  MELINDA: The omega clouds. They come from the galactic core. They travel pretty fast, but they still need more than a million years to get here.

  JERRY: What exactly are they? The omegas?

  MELINDA: We have no idea, Jerry.

  JERRY: But there’s no question in your mind they’re mechanical objects? Launched by somebody?

  MELINDA: That seems to be a safe assumption.

  JERRY: So whoever’s out there could be a lot older than a million years.

  MELINDA: That’s so, yes.

  JERRY: Okay. Now talk about the loss of the artifact.

  MELINDA: One point two billion years, Jerry. That ship, station, whatever it was, was so old the mind has trouble grasping it. We’ll probably not see anything like it again. It was older than the dinosaurs. In fact, that vehicle dates from a time before any multicellular life had developed on Earth. Think about it: There was nothing on the planet you would have been able to see. Who knows what the artifact might have revealed had we been able to retrieve it?

  JERRY: It’s okay. Take a second to catch your breath.

  MELINDA: (Wipes her eyes.) I’m sorry. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything like this on camera before.

  chapter 3

  PRISCILLA HUTCHINS LOOKED out across the tables and saw a lot of empty places. Maybe her act had gotten old. But the diminishing crowds had been a long-term trend, and the Foundation’s other speakers were running into the same problem. The loss of the Jenkins wasn’t helping. She saw Rudy Golombeck slip in through the side door, take a quick look around, shake his head, and leave a
s quickly as he’d come. “I’ll take questions now,” she said.

  “Hutch.” Ed Jesperson, up front. A medical researcher. “My understanding is that we know where the omega clouds come from. Is that right?”

  “Ed, actually we’ve known for a long time. More or less. We’ve been able to backtrack them. And yes, the point of origin seems to be in a cluster of dust clouds near the galactic core. We can’t get a good look at the area. So we don’t know precisely what’s happening.”

  Spike Numatsu was next. Spike was the last survivor of a band of physicists from Georgetown who’d organized campaigns on behalf of the Foundation for years. “Is there any possibility of sending a mission there to find out? I know it would take a long time, but it seems as if there should be a way to do it.”

  There was a lot of nodding. “We can’t stretch the technology that far,” she said. “A flight to the galactic core would take seven years. One way.” She paused. “We’ve thought about an automated flight. But we don’t have the funds. And we’re not sure it could be made to work anyhow. Basically, we need a better drive unit.” More hands went up. “Margo.”

  Margo Desperanza, Margo Dee to her friends, hosted parties and galas and a wide range of benefits for Prometheus. It struck Hutch that there were few new faces that day. Mostly, only the true believers were left. Margo Dee didn’t know it yet, but Rudy was going to ask her that afternoon to serve on the board of directors. “Hutch, do you see any possibility of a breakthrough? Whatever happened to the Locarno Drive?”

  What, indeed? “There’s always a possibility, Margo. Unfortunately, the Locarno didn’t test out.” It had been the brain child of Henry Barber, developed in Switzerland, an interstellar propulsion system that was to be a vast improvement over the Hazeltine. But it had gone through a string of failures. Then, last year, Barber had died. “I’m sure, eventually, we’ll get a better system than the one we have.”

  “You hope,” said Jenny Chang in a whisper from her spot immediately to Hutch’s left.

  Eventually, the big question showed up. It came from a young blond man near the back of the dining room: “If we did develop the capability to go there, to find out who was sending the omega clouds, wouldn’t it be dangerous? Wouldn’t we be telling them we’re here? What happens if they follow us home?” It was a question that had been gaining considerable credibility among American voters, and, for that matter, worldwide. Politicians around the globe had seized on the issue to scare the general public and get themselves elected on promises to restrict interstellar travel.