“I didn’t realize. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. Do you need something?”
“I just wanted to hear your voice again.”
Alex hadn’t released me from his directive that I not say anything to him. But it was hard to see that it would matter any longer. “Why?”
“Why would I want to hear your voice again? Chase, you sound annoyed.”
“No, I’m not annoyed. I was just wondering whether you were looking for somebody to drop into the Atlantic.”
“Oh.” His shoulders tightened. “What do you mean?”
“You can stop the lies, Khaled.”
He paused. Scrunched his shoulders and straightened. “I’m sorry about that, Chase. I’ll regret that the rest of my life. But so you know, I didn’t mean to cause a problem for you. You were never at risk.”
“Yeah, you said something like that before.”
“I was hoping it wouldn’t—You wouldn’t find out.”
“I’m not surprised. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to get back to sleep.”
“Chase, I’m sorry. I wish I had it to do over.”
“You don’t get do-overs, Khaled.” I broke the connection, and his image blinked off.
I settled back down under the sheet and started rehearsing the things I should have said. Hero of the hour: What a fake. You sold us out. Could have gotten us killed. And then you think you can make everything okay? I’m just going to forget it?
The link sounded again. The few familiar notes, drifting through the dark.
I let it go for a while. I thought about shutting it off, but finally I opened the channel. “Chase,” he said, “please listen to me. Look, I’m sorry. I’ll do anything to make it up to you. When it happened, it just seemed harmless enough. And to be honest, I thought it was a chance to impress you. I had that wrong, and I know that. But all I’m asking is a second chance. Do that for me, and I promise you’ll never regret it.”
“Khaled,” I said, “there’s nothing you can do. No way you could ever fix things so I could trust you. Just go away and leave me alone.”
“Chase, I—”
“Good-bye, Khaled.” I disconnected again. He didn’t call back.
And I tossed and turned the rest of the night.
* * *
On the eleventh, I checked with operations. The Vistula had arrived in the solar system, but it was out near the orbit of Mars. “Figure two days,” they said. We took advantage of the time we had to travel to Egypt. Alex could never get enough of the pyramids. We landed at Balakat, a few kilometers from the Great Pyramid of Giza, climbed into a bus with forty other tourists, and headed out.
As customary, Alex had done his homework. “I cannot imagine how a primitive society could have put this thing together,” he said, as we stood gaping at it. “Some of the individual blocks weigh up to eighty tons and were brought in from Aswan, which was more than eight hundred kilometers away.
“The thing consists of five and a half million tons of limestone, as well as some granite. The slaves were working in a desert. How could they possibly, with no technology, have hauled even one eighty-ton block of limestone across eight hundred kilometers under a blazing sun?”
“What are you suggesting?”
“I don’t know. One fairly common theory is that it was done by aliens.”
“The Mutes?”
“Who else is there?” He laughed. “But I can’t imagine Selotta or Kassel hauling those things around. Can you?”
They’d ridden with us a few years earlier on a tour of Atlantis. “They have antigravity,” I said.
“Let me put it a different way: Can you imagine either of them showing any interest in arranging blocks of limestone on a desert floor?”
* * *
We also visited the Palawi Temple, on the edge of the Libyan Desert. It’s six thousand years old, and the civilization that built it is long gone. But its most fascinating aspect is that tourists who went there three thousand years ago inscribed their names and dates on its walls. The practice was stopped in the last millennium, but the names are still there, now carefully preserved and part of the history of the place.
We had just come out and were climbing back into the tour bus, grateful to be in the cool air again, when we got word that the Vistula had docked. “Do you want to call him?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “Let’s let him take the initiative.”
Fifteen minutes later, the bus lifted off and started back toward Almahdi. The call came in midway during the flight. “Alex? This is Lawrence.”
“Hello, Lawrence. How was your ride in?”
“Long. You haven’t talked to any more reporters, I hope?”
“No. You asked me to hold off, so I did.”
“Good. We need to get together.”
“Okay. We’re in Almahdi.”
“Where?”
“Egypt.”
“You have Chase with you?”
“Yes, she’s right here.”
“Okay. I was going to suggest you come up here. And please bring her with you.”
“Are you on Galileo?”
“Yes. That way we can go directly to Larissa.”
“You know where it is, Lawrence?”
“Not exactly. But I have its number.”
“From Tokata?”
“Yes.”
“KL-4561?”
“No. I got the real one. And I want to apologize for that. Heli was just trying to protect Garnett.”
“Protect him from what?”
“I’d rather not discuss this over the link. Why don’t you come up here, so we can talk it over and get everything settled?”
“Lawrence, so we’re clear: We’ve been running around working on this matter for the better part of three months. We got dumped into the Atlantic and were led to believe our lives were in danger. Your associate sent us on a bogus run to the asteroid belt. And now you want us to go up to the space station and you’ll explain everything. Is that right?”
“I understand you’re not happy, Alex. And believe me, I’m sorry about how this has played out. I’ll make it up to you if you’ll allow me.”
“Why don’t you start by giving me the Larissa designator? Then we’ll pick you up, and we can talk on the way.”
Southwick hesitated. “No,” he said. “I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“I’ll explain to you when you get here. But first I have to have your word that you’ll never say a word about this. Nor will Chase.”
Alex looked at me. Glanced down at the desert moving slowly past. “I can’t do that,” he said. “I’m not good at conspiracies.”
“This is not a conspiracy, Alex.”
“I wouldn’t know what else to call it.”
“Nevertheless, I must have your word.”
“You want me to promise to say nothing before you reveal what you’re hiding?”
“That’s correct. I’m sorry, but I have to insist.”
“Then you might as well get on the next flight, Lawrence, and ride back to Rimway.”
“Alex, I have no choice.”
“Neither do I.”
We could hear him breathing on the other end. “I’ll tell you this much,” he said. “Your plan to make public what you know, and unleash a bunch of treasure hunters will gain absolutely nothing. The odds of their finding anything are virtually nonexistent—”
“I wouldn’t agree with that.”
“No. You probably wouldn’t. But there are a lot of asteroids out there.”
“Not that many big ones.”
“Okay. Let me take it a step further. If you do succeed in getting a swarm of people to go out and do the search for you, and if one of them is able to find Larissa, I can assure you it will do nobody any good.”
He hesitated. “Look. Don’t do this. If, when you find out what has happened, you can conclude that no crime has been committed, and no one has been injured, all I’m asking is that you will agree to say nothing.”
“Why don’t you just tell me what you have, and we can go from there?”
“I can’t do that, Alex. Not like this.”
“Then I’m sorry. I guess we’re just going to have to stay at odds. Lawrence, I think you made the flight for nothing.” Alex clicked off, and he sat staring out the window.
* * *
It took maybe twenty minutes before the link sounded again. “All right,” he said. “I’ve checked into the Galileo Hotel. When you get here, we’ll talk it out.”
FORTY-SEVEN
Truth lacks the privilege of being employed at all times and under every circumstance. As noble as it is, it has its limits.
—Michel de Montaigne, Essays, 1588 C.E.
Southwick came down and met us in the bar. The relaxed, no-problem manner was gone. There was tension in his eyes, and his face was pale. “Glad to see you, Alex,” he said, barely able to get the words out. He eased himself into a chair and sent a weak smile across the table. “Hello, Chase. I guess this has been a long haul for you guys.”
“You could say that,” said Alex.
Piano music drifted through the room. A lazy, quiet rhythm from another era. “I’m sorry. I wish there’d been another way.”
Alex lifted his glass, tasted the drink, and put it back down. “Why don’t you tell us what’s going on?”
Southwick’s eyes closed briefly. A waiter arrived, and he ordered something. I don’t recall what it was, except that he asked for it straight. Then he glanced around to see if anyone was close enough to overhear us. “I’m sorry about the problems. I’d have avoided it all if I could have.”
“I’m sure you would,” said Alex, with a level tone.
“I met Garnett a long time ago. More than half a century. He was one of the finest people I’ve ever known. Totally honest. You could always count on him if you needed anything. I loved the guy. He saved my life once, and it killed me when we lost him.”
Alex’s eyes caught mine. We both wanted Southwick to get to the point, but the message for me was to be patient. Southwick continued for several minutes about Baylee’s virtues. The ultimate stand-up guy. Eventually, his drink arrived. He literally snatched it from the waiter, but he set it down on the table without trying it. “Nothing in his life mattered as much as the Golden Age. And the Apollo artifacts. They represented who we were. Not only the beginning of the space age, but he saw them as symbolic of the beginning of the human family. It was ultimately, he used to say, those early years, when science was on the march, and a world culture was developing as a result of the rise of global communications, that imposed a sense of empathy on us. That drew us together. Showed us who we were. During the early years of the scientific renaissance, people did not believe that the human race would ever come together. Science just provided bigger bombs. But Baylee always said it was the development of new forms of communication that gave everyone a voice and that, after a rocky start, provided us with the kind of world we have now.
“It wasn’t a straight line, of course. Sometimes things went badly. Dictators continued to show up. Civilization came close to collapse on several occasions and finally went under. They got through the Dark Age, only to have some of the colony worlds get into wars with each other. But Baylee maintained that once we were seriously able to talk to each other, a reasonable existence for everyone was inevitable. Which is why he so desperately wanted to find the Apollo artifacts. They marked, in his view, the launch point.” Finally, he picked up his drink, tossed it down his throat, and smiled. “I know you’re wondering why I’m going on like this. But you need to understand the man to understand what happened.”
Alex sat unmoving.
“He was hunting for them when I first met him. But people had been looking for them for thousands of years. The assumption was that they were simply gone. I don’t know how many times I told him it was all a waste. But then he came across the Marco Collins histories at Bantwell University. I don’t know whether you saw them. But there it was: He’d given the artifacts to Larissa.
“I guess there was a problem in translation there, but he recognized the name. He knew that Zorbas was originally from that area in Greece, of course. But he couldn’t believe there’d be any point in hiding the artifacts there. As far as we knew, it was just as unstable as the Dakotas. But a lot of people in that era, those who could, were establishing themselves on asteroids. Getting away from the civil conflicts. And he knew about the Larissa asteroid. Knew that one of Zorbas’s friends, Quincy Abbott, was supposed to have had a retreat there. It would have been the perfect place.”
“How did he find that out?”
“In Russell Brenkov’s It Never Happened. Brenkov was, I think, a late-Fourth-Millennium historian, somewhere in there, who specialized in discounting historical myths. Abbott led the fight in the Dakotas against the thieves and rebels during the Dark Age. He was believed to have returned from an asteroid home on Larissa when everything started to break down. Brenkov argued that the story was untrue, that Abbott had never lived on an asteroid. But it didn’t matter to Garnett, of course. What mattered was that the story established the existence of Larissa.”
I remembered the book from the Albertson Museum. In fact, I’d held it in my hands.
Southwick took a deep breath. “I’ll never forget the night he showed up at the dig site.”
“What dig site is that?” Alex asked.
“We were working in the London area. And suddenly he was there, out of nowhere, telling me he was pretty sure he knew where the Apollo cache was.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, “assuming he suspected everything was hidden on Larissa, how did he know which asteroid that was?”
“He spent almost twenty years tracking that down. He eventually came across a two-thousand-year-old fragment of Les Carmichael’s Last of the Giants, which was a substantive scientific history of the first two centuries of the Third Millennium. Unfortunately, most of it was illegible. But it included a list of the asteroids as they were originally known, matching them with their modern designators. Larissa was among them.” He finished his drink. Our glasses were all empty by then. Alex ordered another round, but I passed for the obvious reason that I would probably be on the bridge of the Belle-Marie before the night ended.
“Last of the Giants,” said Alex. “I never saw anything like that among his papers. Or in his library.”
“I’m not sure where he found it. Or what happened to it. But once he knew where it was, he came to me at the London site. I’ll never forget the way he looked that day. I’ve never seen anyone so happy and so excited. I suggested we get Heli to take us there.”
“Why Heli?”
“We could trust her to keep her mouth shut. We didn’t want to invite any scavengers.”
The music stopped. And started again.
Alex examined his glass. “Whose idea was it to sink the boat?”
Southwick made a noise deep in his throat. “Heli suggested it. But I was responsible for the decision.”
“We could have been killed.”
“Heli assured me they could work everything out. That they wouldn’t do it if there was any danger.”
That got a growl from me. “I wish you’d been there,” I said.
“I know. It was stupid. At the time, it seemed like a good idea. We hoped it would scare you off. I guess we should have known better. I think about it now, and I don’t know where my head was. Anyway, I apologize.”
“Did you have to buy them a new boat?”
“No.” He smiled. “Insurance covered it. They never really asked any questions.”
“Okay.” Alex glanced at me. Keep cool. “So the three of you we
nt to Larissa.”
“Yes.”
“And did you find the artifacts?”
Southwick swallowed. Tried his drink again. “Yes.”
“And what happened?”
“The Zorbas family, or somebody, had built a house out there. A nice place, three stories, a mansion, really. They moved the smaller artifacts to the asteroid. They made no effort to take the shuttles or anything like that. Probably didn’t have that capability. But the small stuff tends to be what’s really valuable. Personal items, plaques, cups with mission names emblazoned on them, uniforms, helmets, journals. It was an ideal place because the vacuum inhibited decay. The objects would damned near last forever. It was a brilliant idea.
“We needed almost four days to get there. I think it was the longest four days of my life, Alex. But we did get there, and when we did—” He stopped, looking past me at whatever it was he’d seen that night. “Garnie was so excited he could barely contain himself.
“Then Heli told us there was a building. It was a dome, with a house inside. Somebody had lived on the asteroid. Maybe Abbott, maybe not. I don’t know whether I’ve ever seen anyone as ecstatic as Garnie was. He pounded his chair and shook my hand and tried to kiss the top of Heli’s head, but she told him to stay clear as long as the engines were running.
“I’d never seen him so ecstatic. And when I told him that it might be a good idea not to get too excited until we saw what we actually had, he laughed and said he knew it was still a long shot but how he was by God going to enjoy the moment anyhow. And if it really turned out just to be an old house in a strange place, then so be it.
“Heli brought us down onto the asteroid, about fifty meters from the dome, off to one side of the house. Garnett and I were both in our pressure suits by then. Heli wished us luck and said how she hoped we’d find what we were looking for. And then we went outside.
“I’d never been on an asteroid before. It was all crags and craters and broken rock. Garnett led the way. We went over to the dome, found a hatch, and pushed the entry pad. The pad glowed a little bit, but nothing else happened. He produced a cutter and told me to stand back.
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