Firebird

by Jack McDevitt

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  PART I - Virginia Island

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  PART II - Villanueva

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  PART III - Uriel

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  PART IV - Antares

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  EPILOGUE

  Novels by Jack McDevitt

  Novels by Jack McDevitt

  THE HERCULES TEXT

  ANCIENT SHORES

  ETERNITY ROAD

  MOONFALL

  INFINITY BEACH

  TIME TRAVELERS NEVER DIE

  The Academy (Priscilla Hutchins) Novels

  THE ENGINES OF GOD

  DEEPSIX

  CHINDI

  OMEGA

  ODYSSEY

  CAULDRON

  The Alex Benedict Novels

  A TALENT FOR WAR

  POLARIS

  SEEKER

  THE DEVIL’S EYE

  ECHO

  FIREBIRD

  Collections

  STANDARD CANDLES

  SHIPS IN THE NIGHT

  OUTBOUND

  CRYPTIC: THE BEST SHORT FICTION OF JACK McDEVITT

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2011 by Cryptic, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. ACE and the “A” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  McDevitt, Jack.

  p. cm.

  ISBN : 978-1-101-54541-6

  1. Physicists—Fiction. 2. Space and time—Fiction. 3. Missing persons—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3563.C3556F57 2011

  813’.54—dc23

  2011032535

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For Jack McNichol and Joe Chapman.

  Thanks for a lifetime.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to Walter Cuirle, for advice and technical assistance. I’m also indebted to Ginjer Buchanan, my long-suffering editor. To Sara and Bob Schwager, for their contributions. To my agent and good friend for two decades, Ralph Vicinanza, whom we lost this year. And, as always, to my wife, Maureen, for persevering with the second, third, and fourth drafts.

  Dates not classified as Common Era (C.E.)

  are based on the Rimway calendar.

  PROLOGUE

  Lt. Jeremy Dalton frowned at the screen. “Nothing yet, Steve?”

  Steve Yaniwicz activated the expanded scan, pressed the earpods to signal that the AI was telling him something, checked the auxiliary display, and shook his head. “No, sir. No sign of her yet.”

  Dalton was wearing his formal whites, in preparation for the upcoming change-of-command ceremony. “Okay,” he said. “They have to be close. Let me know.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He called the Command Duty Officer. “Still negative, Mr. Brolley,” he said.

  “Check with the rest of the squadron, Jerry?”

  “Yes, sir. They are not in the area.” It had been almost two hours since the Abonai’s scheduled arrival time. The Dellacondan star drive, like the Armstrong system that had preceded it, wasn’t too accurate. You might come out of it thirty or forty million kilometers from your intended destination. But they were providing extensive coverage. Somebody should have picked up the cruiser by now.

  “All right,” Brolley said. He made no effort to hide his concern. “Let Fleet know.”

  Admiral Thadeus O’Conner was aboard the incoming ship, scheduled to take command of the 314th Attack Squadron. Dalton had never seen O’Conner, didn’t know anything about him, but he had to be an improvement over their current commander, Mary D’Angelo. The woman who never smiled. Who was impossible to work with. She thought nothing of chewing out subordinate commanders in front of anyone who happened to be present when she got annoyed. She insisted on telling everyone, in microscopic detail, how to do their jobs. And she had no respect for the chain of command. If she disapproved of the way a junior officer was handling an assignment, she didn’t arrange to work through his boss; she went after the offender herself. It was clear she enjoyed raising hell, and there was no one in the squadron, and especially on the Celestine, who would regret her departure. As inevitably happened in such cases, she had been promoted.

  He turned back to the comm operator. “Steve—”

  “Yes, Mr. Dalton.”

  “Get a message to Comm Ops at Point Edward. Tell them we’re still waiting. Ask them to provide an updated ETA.” Point Edward was, effectively, just down the street. A forty-minute flight. In and out of hyperspace. It was hard to imagine what could be holding things up.

  He watched Yaniwicz send the message. That, he suspected, would be the signal for the cruiser to arrive. But it didn’t happen.

  The transmission would require about twenty minutes to reach the Point. He looked out through the port at the Veiled Lady, which, to him, bore no resemblance whatever to a woman but appeared simply as what it was: a nebula filled with a million stars drifting through the night. Janet McReady, who did indeed look very female,
thought he lacked imagination and pretended to feel sorry for him.

  Janet would be assuming the watch in three hours. She was an intellectual type, beautiful but pretentious. Read philosophy and pretended to be able to see the child peering out of Barnable’s impenetrable art. How, she’d say, could you miss it? Well, she looked good, and for a woman, that was enough.

  He was still thinking about Janet when Yaniwicz raised a hand to signal he had something. It was too soon for Point Edward to have answered. Too soon for them even to have received his message. He started toward the comm desk, but Yaniwicz pointed at an auxiliary screen:From: CDR, Third Fleet

  To: Celestine

  Subject: Abonai

  Movement Report Abonai not received as of 1720Z. Confirm Abonai your area.

  Movement reports were routinely sent at departure and arrival. Dalton squinted at the message, then forwarded it to the CDO. Moments later, Mr. Brolley appeared in the comm center. He did not look happy.

  “Still nothing?” he asked. The CDO was easygoing, a guy who never got excited. Dalton had been impressed with his behavior under fire. He was exactly the man you wanted to be with if you were having a serious problem.

  “No, sir. No sign of her.”

  “Very well. Tell everybody in the squadron to take another look. We want a report, positive or negative, from every ship.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “While we’re at it, let’s inform Point Edward that we haven’t seen them yet. Confirm whether they left on schedule.”

  “We’ve already done that, sir. A few minutes ago.”

  Brolley sighed and walked out. He’d be keeping Admiral D’Angelo informed, of course, which meant dealing with another of her annoying habits. When something went wrong, she had a tendency to sound as if it was the fault of the reporting officer. He had no doubt that Brolley was already feeling the heat.

  Well, at least she hadn’t come down to the comm center yet. Instead, she’d be descending on Operations, taking control of the scanners and sensors and giving obvious instructions. Dalton had seen her described in the Fleet newsletter as a can-do hands-on officer.

  The request went out, and, within minutes, the destroyers began to check back in. McMurtrie first: Negative on the Abonai. Then Karasani. Then Hopewell.

  It was, of course, an exercise in futility. The three cruisers and six destroyers that comprised the Flag Squadron were already doing what they could, watching their screens and standing ready to report at first sighting. Had they seen anything, they’d have said something.

  Wilson reported negative.

  Cajun.

  Eventually, Yaniwicz got a reply from Point Edward: The Abonai ETA has not changed. They left on schedule.

  More than two hours ago for a flight that should have taken twenty minutes.

  Chiyoko negative.

  Sattari negative.

  “The drive’s erratic, Mr. Dalton,” said Yaniwicz. “It could be on the other side of the sun.”

  “I know, Steve. It wouldn’t be the first time. But it’s going to screw up the ceremony.”

  “I hope nothing’s happened.”

  “So do I. They’ve probably just missed their target. I hope.”

  Yaniwicz grinned uneasily. “Safer going to Rigel,” he said, “than going to the grocery.” It was the standard platitude of the interstellar transport lines.

  But then there’d been the Capella. Nine years earlier, on a flight from Rimway to Saraglia Station, it had made its TDI jump and never been seen again. Twenty-six hundred people had gone with it.

  And there’d been the Warburton, lost eighteen months ago. Wreckage had been found, leading investigators to believe that its mass detectors had failed, and the ship had tried to materialize inside an asteroid. Of course, had that happened with the Abonai, there’d have been an explosion of considerable magnitude. No way they could have missed it.

  They waited. Messages from Point Edward became increasingly frantic. Patrol craft and destroyers began to arrive to assist in the search.

  Janet relieved the watch. Dalton returned to his quarters, showered and changed, went to the officers’ mess for dinner, where, of course, the conversation focused exclusively on the lost ship. Tag MacAllen had a sister aboard the Abonai, and Boros Razkuli, a son. Everybody knew someone in the crew.

  At midnight, when Dalton returned to his watch station, there was still no word.

  Six days later, the Abonai was formally declared lost. An extensive search by a sizable portion of the fleet had revealed nothing.

  A memorial service was held at Point Edward, and another at Toxicon, the Abonai’s home port. To the dismay of the Celestine’s crew, Admiral D’Angelo was extended. Investigations continued for a year and a half. All reached the same nonresult: The Abonai, its crew, and Admiral O’Conner were missing due to cause or causes unknown.

  PART I

  Virginia Island

  ONE

  However useless your product, package it properly, and people will buy it. People will buy anything if the approach is correct. It is this happy truth that keeps the wheels of commerce rolling.

  —Eskaiya Black, Lost in Aruba, 7811 C.E.

  1434, RIMWAY CALENDAR. SIX YEARS LATER.

  I was sitting in my office at the country house, watching the snow come down, when Karen Howard arrived. The storm had reached epic proportions, at least by local standards, and I’d expected her to postpone. But she appeared at the front door exactly on time.

  The only things I remember about her were that she wore a big hat, and that she talked in a loud voice. And, yes, that she was short. When she’d called for an appointment, she’d dodged explaining why she wanted to see us. “I have something to sell,” she had said. “I know you’ll be able to get a good price for me. It’s all quite valuable.”

  But no details. That kind of approach is usually a guarantee that the prospective client is trying to get away with something. The antiquities business attracts a lot of con artists. Particularly our specialty, which is handling objects that have specific historical significance. The original notebook, say, that Despar Kolladner had used when he was writing Talking with God, or a set of drums that had belonged to Pepper Aspin. People are usually quite good at creating and producing supporting documents, but Alex is hard to fool. It’s only happened once, and it cost us. But that’s a tale for another time.

  Karen came into my office, shook off the snow, and removed the hat but held it close to her blouse as if it would one day be a collector’s item. “I’m Elizabeth Robin’s sister,” she said, in a tone suggesting that explained everything.

  I invited her to sit, but she remained standing. So I got up and came around in front of the desk. “I’m Chase Kolpath, Ms. Howard. How may I help you?”

  “You’re the person I talked to?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Is Mr. Benedict available?”

  “I’m his associate.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “At the moment, Ms. Howard, he’s busy. I’m his associate. What can I do for you?”

  She frowned. Took a long look at me. Apparently decided she could make do. “You may know that Elizabeth died last year.” I had no idea who Elizabeth Robin was, but I nodded and managed to look sympathetic. “I’ve inherited the estate,” she continued. “And I have some items connected to Christopher that I’m going to make available. I’d like your help getting a good price.”

  An old Ray Cammon song, “Love Is All There Is,” was playing quietly in the background. “Who,” I asked, “is Christopher?”

  She just barely avoided rolling her eyes. “Chris Robin,” she said. “Of course.” Then, seeing that I needed further explanation: “Elizabeth was his wife.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Chris Robin the physicist?”

  “Yes. Who did you think?” Now she sat down.

  “He’s been dead a long time,” I said.

  She smiled sadly. “Forty-one years.”
<
br />   “I see.”

  “Maybe I should be speaking with Mr. Benedict?”

  “You should understand, Ms. Howard,” I said, “that artifacts connected with physicists—Well, there’s just not much of a market for them.”

  “Christopher wasn’t just any physicist.”

  “Did he accomplish something special?”

  She sighed, reached into a handbag, and pulled out a book, an old-fashioned collector’s edition, with his name on it. Multiverse. “Here’s part of what he did,” she said.

  “Well—” I wasn’t sure where to go from there. “It looks interesting.”

  “He accomplished quite a lot, Ms. Kolpath. I’m surprised you don’t know more about him. I suggest you read this.” She laid the book on my desk. Then she reached back into the bag and brought out a small box. She opened it and handed it to me. It contained a wedding ring with engravings of Liz and Chris, with the inscription “together forever.” There was also a diamond-studded comm link. “This is the one he always wore,” she said, “on special occasions. Whenever he received an award. Or spoke at an event.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  She produced a chip. “I wanted you to see some of the other items. Do you mind?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  The chip activated our projector, and a pair of lamps appeared. “They were custom-made to his order.” The lamps were ordinary flexible reading lamps, one black, one silver. Documentation consisted of two photos of Robin, one at his desk writing by the light of the black lamp, and one in which he was relaxing on a sofa, reading, with the silver lamp behind him.