Seeker

by Jack McDevitt

  Alex was getting to his feet, trying to end the conversation. “Thank you, but no. Really.”

  “All right. Should you change your mind, Alex, don’t hesitate to get in touch. The offer’s open.”

  At Alex’s direction, I checked to see which corporate entities were leasing superluminals during the 1390s. The only company then in the business on Rimway was StarDrive. But it had since crashed. I tracked down a former executive of StarDrive, Shao Mae Tonkin, currently with a food distribution firm.

  It took the better part of a day to get through to him. He was reluctant to talk to me, too busy, until I told him I was working on a biography of Baker Stills, who had been StarDrive’s CEO. Tonkin was a massive individual. He may have been the biggest human being I’ve ever seen. He was maybe three times normal size. But it didn’t look like fat so much as concrete. He had solemn features and small eyes that peered out from under thick lids. His forebears had inhabited a low-gravity world, or maybe an orbital. Or maybe he just ate too much. In any case, he’d probably live longer if he retreated off-world.

  It wasn’t just physical size and weight that impressed me. There was a heaviness of spirit, a kind of concrete demeanor. I asked him about StarDrive.

  “Went down twenty years ago,” he said. His tone was so serious an eavesdropper would have thought the fate of the world hinged on the conversation. “I’m sorry, Ms. Kolpath, but everything other than the financial records were destroyed. Long ago. I can tell you all you need to know about Baker.” He’d been competent, creative, a hard driver. Et cetera. “But I can’t provide much in the way of details on the day-to-day operations. It’s been too long.”

  “So there’s no record of any kind where your customers took the ships?”

  He seemed to be running about five seconds behind the conversation. He thought my question over while he massaged his neck with his fingertips. “No. None whatever.”

  “How many ships were in the company fleet?”

  “When we closed operations, in ’08,” he said, “we had nine.”

  “Do you know where they are now?”

  “You’re thinking that AIs might have made a permanent record of everything.”

  “Yes.”

  “Of course. Unfortunately, our fleet was old at the end. That’s one of the reasons we shut down. We would have had to upgrade or buy new vehicles. Either way—” He moved his head from side to side, as if to loosen joints in his neck. “So we terminated. Most of the ships were recycled.”

  Broken down and recast. “What about the AIs?”

  “They’d have been downloaded and filed. I believe the requirement is nine years from the destruction of the ship.” He pondered it for a long moment. “Yes. That’s correct. Nine years.”

  “And then?”

  He shrugged. “Expunged.” A frown formed slowly, like a gathering cold front. “May I ask why you’re interested? None of this seems germaine to the biography.”

  I mumbled something about statistical research, thanked him, and disconnected.

  “I think the trail’s gone cold,” I told Alex.

  He refused to be discouraged. Despite the negative results, he was in an ebullient mood. Later I discovered he’d been contacted by a prospective client who’d come into possession of the Riordan Diamond, which, in case you’re one of the few people in the Confederacy who doesn’t know, was once worn by Annabel Keyshawn and supposedly was cursed. It eventually became one of only three items we’ve ever carried in our inventory officially designated in that category. It served to drive up the value. “We haven’t exhausted the possibilities yet,” he said.

  I could see it coming. “What do we do next?” The we, of course, at Rainbow Enterprises was strictly a pejorative term.

  “Survey doesn’t destroy its records,” he said. “It might be interesting to see whether the Wescotts reported any unusual findings, especially during their later missions.”

  I was getting tired of the runaround. “Alex, if they found anything connected to the cup, like maybe Margolia, don’t you think Survey would have acted on it by now?”

  He gave me that you-have-a-lot-to-learn look. “You’re assuming they read the reports.”

  “You don’t think they do?”

  “Chase, we’ve been assuming that if the Wescotts found something, they omitted putting it into their report.”

  “I think that’s a safe assumption. Don’t you?”

  “Yes. In fact, I do. But still we can’t be certain. And there’s always a possibility there’ll be something on one of the reports that gives the show away. In any case, we lose nothing by looking.”

  EIGHT

  Might the Harry Williams group have succeeded in building a society that had actually banished the various imbecilities that have always plagued us? The reflex is to say no, that it could not be done so long as human nature itself remained unchanged. But this view denies that we can learn from history, that we can sidestep the inquisitions, dictatorships, and bloodletting of past ages. That the programing of false values into our young can be stopped. That people can learn to live reasonably. If they were able to establish themselves on their chosen world, and to pass on their ideals to succeeding generations, if they could avoid forgetting who they were, then success might have been achieved. Maybe we have not heard from them since their departure six centuries ago because they did not want to be contaminated. I’d like to believe it’s so.

  —Kosha Malkeva,

  The Road to Babylon, 3376 C.E.

  The administrative offices of the Department of Planetary Survey and Astronomical Research were located in a complex of glass-and-plasteel buildings on the north side of Andiquar, along the banks of the Narakobi. Its operational center was halfway across the continent, but it was here that policy was set, politicians were entertained, missions approved, and resources allocated. This was where personnel decisions were made and where researchers came to present and ultimately defend their projects. The public information branch was located here, and this was where the records were kept.

  The grounds were mostly parkland, although in midwinter the place looked a bit desolate. There was a move on to put a dome over the entire complex, but the proposal, as of this writing, is still stalled in committee somewhere.

  The visitors’ space was filled, so I dropped down onto a parking area half a kilometer away and walked in. We’d had a break in the weather, and it was almost warm, with a hazy sun and a few clouds spread across a yellow sky. There were a few people out with their kids, and I passed a chess game being played by two shivering middle-aged guys on one of the benches. Ahead, I could see the three-story parabolically shaped Trainor Building that housed the personnel offices. To my left, in a cluster of trees, was the Central Annex, which looked more like a temple than a structure intended for scientific research. The Annex housed Survey’s museum and exhibits.

  I veered right, strolling past stone memorials to old glories, circled the Eternal Fountain (which is supposed to symbolize the notion that exploration will never cease, or that the universe goes on forever, or something like that), passed a couple of bureaucratic types arguing and looking annoyed, and approached the Kolman building, which housed Survey’s director and his immediate staff.

  I climbed the eleven steps at the front entrance. Alex tells me they signify the eleven interstellars that formed the original Survey fleet. Eight Doric columns supported the roof. At the far end of the portico, a child was charging down the steps with a red kite in tow while his mother watched.

  The front doors opened onto a stiff, uncomfortable lobby, filled with plants and armchairs and tables. It had a vaulted ceiling and a long array of windows, both real and virtual. They were framed by lush silver curtains. The walls were lined with paintings of Survey vessels cruising past exploding suns or serene ring systems, and of people getting out of landers and standing heroically gazing across alien landscapes. PUTNAM ARRIVES ON HELIOTROP IV, an attached plate said. Or, THE JAMES P. HOSKINS DOCKS A
T STARDANCE. It was the kind of place specifically designed to make the occasional visitor feel insignificant.

  And there stood Windy, in conversation with someone I didn’t know. She saw me, waved, and signaled me to wait. A moment later she came over. “Social call?” she asked.

  “Not this time. I just wanted to get authorization to look at some records.”

  “Can I help?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Good.” She smiled. “By the way, did you ever figure out who the thief was?”

  “At Gideon V? No. We have no idea.”

  “I checked on this end. There were several people who had access to my report.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m sorry. There’s a good chance that’s where things went wrong.”

  “Well, we’ll know better next time.”

  “It infuriates me,” she said.

  “Let it go.”

  “Well, I can’t quite do that. Not if we have someone giving out information that allows people to descend on archeological sites.” Her mouth was a thin line. God help whoever it was if she caught him. “What did you want to see?”

  Adam Wescott had completed a total of fourteen missions for Survey over a fifteen-year period, beginning in 1377 and ending in 1392.

  I started with the most recent and worked backward through each of the missions he’d shared with Margaret. That might have been overkill, but I didn’t want to miss anything.

  Most of the Survey flights are general purpose. You pick a group of stars, go in, take pictures, get sensor readings, measure everything in sight, and move on. Adam had a special interest in the mechanics of G-class stars as they approach their helium-burning phase. Three of his missions, including the last one, had been focused on that subject. That wasn’t to say they didn’t also look at other aspects of the central luminary and also survey the planetary system. But helium was the watchword. Consequently, all the stars on the itinerary were old.

  I visited every system with them. I looked at the images, paged through the details of each sun, its gravity constant, mass, temperature ranges, whatever. And of course I got to see the planetary families. During their joint career, they’d found four living worlds, one their first time out together, one on the third mission, and two on their seventh. I heard their voices, his low in the register, the voice of a professional researcher, always calm and methodical, hers soft and subdued, much in contrast, I thought, to her take-command appearance.

  I heard them on the one occasion when they thought they’d discovered evidence of intelligence, in a forest that looked remarkably like a city. They’d retained the professional tone, but I could feel the electricity. Until, a few minutes later, they realized they were looking at something quite natural. Then the disappointment was evident.

  There probably is somebody else out there. Other than the Mutes. But there are just so many places to look. Some experts think that, by the time we find a third player, we’ll have evolved away from being human.

  Nowhere was there any mention of a derelict, or of Margolia.

  I made a copy of the record. Next I needed somebody with some insight into Survey procedures.

  Shara Michaels was an astrophysicist, employed on Survey’s analytical staff. Her responsibility was to advise upper management about submitted projects: which were worth pursuing, which could be put on the waiting list, and which could be safely dismissed.

  I’d gone to school with her, partied with her, and even introduced her to a future husband. A future ex, as things turned out, but we’d remained friends through it all although in recent years we hadn’t seen much of each other.

  She’d been the queen of the walk in those early days, the woman you didn’t want your date to see. Blond hair cut in an elfin style, sea-blue eyes, and a talent for mischief. Everybody loved her.

  She still looked good when she came to the door of her office. But the old cavalier attitude had disappeared. She was all business. Polite, glad to see me, commented how we needed to get together once in a while. But there was a level of reserve her younger self had never known.

  “You should have called,” she said, showing me to a chair and taking one herself. “You almost missed me. I was on my way out the door.”

  “I hadn’t expected to come by today, Shara,” I said. “Do you have a few minutes?”

  “For you? Sure. What’s going on?”

  “Alex has had me on the run. I was over at the archives.”

  “Still doing slave labor?”

  “Pretty much.” We did several minutes’ worth of small talk. Then I got down to cases. “I need your help.”

  She got drinks for us. Wine from the islands. “Name it.”

  “I’ve been looking at some old mission reports. From forty years ago.”

  “Why?” she asked. “What are you looking for?”

  “Survey used to have a husband-and-wife team, Adam and Margaret Wescott. There’s a possibility they found something unusual on one of the missions.”

  “People often find unusual things on the missions.” She meant planets with odd orbits or gas giants with unusual mixes of, say, carbon and methane.

  I looked at her over the rim of my glass. “No,” I said. “Not like that.”

  “Like what, then?”

  “Like an artifact. A derelict ship. Connected with Margolia.”

  “With what?”

  “Margolia.”

  She still had a great smile. “You’re kidding.”

  “Shara, a woman showed up at our place a week or so ago with a drinking cup that might be from the Seeker.” When the frown reappeared, I explained.

  When I’d finished, she looked amused. Maybe disappointed that I could jump to an obviously silly conclusion. “Chase,” she said, “anybody can manufacture a cup.”

  “It’s nine thousand years old, love.” Her eyes widened. “We’ve been able to trace it back to Wescott. It was taken from his home in the 1390s. By a burglar.”

  “But you don’t know where Wescott got it?”

  “No.”

  “He probably bought it somewhere. Do you have reason to suspect it actually came off the ship? Or from”—she couldn’t suppress a smile—“Margolia.”

  “It’s a possibility.”

  “A remote one.”

  Her office was on the third level. The walls were decorated with pictures of stars in collision. That was her specialty. She’d done her thesis on interstellar traffic accidents and remained disappointed that she’d come along too late to see the crash between Delta Karpis and a dwarf star sixty years earlier.

  One image was particularly striking. It was a computer graphic done from behind and above a yellow star that was about to do a head-on with a white mass of some sort. A dwarf, probably. “How often do these things happen?” I asked.

  “Collisions? There’s always one going on somewhere. There’s one happening at this moment. Somewhere in the observable universe.”

  “Well, the observable universe is pretty big.”

  “I was just trying to answer your question.”

  “It’s still a lot of wreckage,” I admitted. “I’ve only heard of one in my life.”

  “The Polaris incident.”

  “Yes.”

  She smiled again, letting me know how uninformed I was. “They happen all the time, Chase. We don’t see much of it around here because we’re pretty spread out. Thank God. Stars never get close to one another. But go out into some of the clusters—” She stopped and thought about it. “If you draw a sphere around the sun, with a radius of one parsec, you know how many other stars will fall within that space?”

  “Zero,” I said. “Nothing’s close.” In fact the nearest star was Formega Ti, six light-years out.

  “Right. But you go out to one of the clusters, like maybe the Colizoid, and you’d find a half million stars crowded into that same sphere.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I never kid, Chase. They bump into one ano
ther all the time.” I tried to imagine it. Wondered what the night sky would look like in such a place. Probably never got dark.

  “I have a question for you,” I said.

  She tucked a wisp of hair back in place. “I thought you might.”

  “If I want to do a mission, I come to you with a plan. You look at it, and if it’s okay, you approve it, assign me a ship and pilot, and I’m on my way. That’s the way it works, right?”

  “It’s a little more complicated than that, but that’s the essence of it, yes.”

  “Okay. The plan I submit tells you which star systems I want to look at. It includes a flight plan, and, if there are special reasons for the mission, it mentions those also. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “I used to do the preliminary missions. And I know there were follow-up flights, with specialists.”

  She nodded.

  “How often? If I came back from a mission on which I’d visited, say, a dozen systems, what are the chances somebody would actually go back and look at one them?”

  “Usually, you could expect maybe half of them would get follow-ups.”

  “Really? That many?”

  “Oh, yes. Sure.”

  “So if I found something and wanted to keep it quiet—”

  “You’d want to leave that system off the mission report. Substitute something else.”

  “But if I did that, you guys would notice, right?”

  Shara looked uncomfortable. “I doubt it. I don’t know how we were doing things thirty, forty years ago. But there’s no reason to backcheck the report against the proposal. Nobody has a reason to lie about any of that, and to my knowledge there’s never been a problem.”

  “Do the proposals still exist?”

  “From 1390? I doubt it.”

  “Would you check for me?”

  “Hold on.”

  She put the question to the AI. And we both heard the response:

  “Proposals are retained three years before being discarded.”

  “That’s longer than I would have thought we keep them,” she said. “You think the Wescotts found the Seeker and falsified the report?”