Firebird

by Jack McDevitt

  “But look, we lose maybe one ship every thirty or forty years. It’s not an unreasonable price to pay.”

  “As long as you and I aren’t paying it.”

  “Alex, there’s a risk factor anytime you travel. A skimmer might malfunction and crash. That happened last week out on the peninsula. I could have been hit by a falling branch on the way to your front door. It’s rare, but it happens. It always will.”

  “That makes it acceptable.”

  “Yes, it does. Because we’ve no choice in the matter. It’s a risk we have to assume. The only alternative is to stay home.” His mournful expression reflected the kind of dismal world we lived in. “We’ve done everything we possibly can to correct the problem. We’re still doing research. Trying to figure it out. We take every precaution.” He took a long, deep breath. “In the meantime, let me remind you that if you travel with us every day, your chances of being injured are less than your being hit by a meteor while sitting on your front porch.”

  Alex laughed. “I don’t think I understand the purpose of your visit, Mr. Calvekio. If you’re already doing everything humanly possible—”

  “Riko, please. Alex, people accept the idea that accidents can happen. That they do happen. One of our transports sideswiped a freighter at Point Edward two years ago. Six passengers were injured. One seriously. Seven years ago this month, a freighter was destroyed by a solar flare.”

  “The Europa,” I said.

  “Correct. Three people died. The star had been declared safe. We knew there were some problems with it, but the astrophysicists told us, assured us, ‘Don’t worry about it. It’ll be fine. Good for another million years.’ My boss has that line framed and hanging on his wall. Good for another million years. What we’re looking at here is the limits of science. People accept the fact that there’s a slight risk to interstellar travel. Very slight; nevertheless, it’s there. We can live with that.”

  “So again,” said Alex, “I’d like to know why you’ve come to us?”

  “Because there’s a spookiness factor involved.”

  “Explain.”

  Calvekio rubbed his forehead. He was a man on a mission. “Alex, how sure are you about your conclusion?”

  “Which conclusion is that?”

  “That these are in fact lost ships? I mean, you’re basing everything on the claim that Robin found his evidence on Villanueva. But the record shows that he and Winter didn’t even go to Villanueva. They went to Indikar. That’s where Winter died.”

  “That’s the claim,” Alex said. “It appears that they may have lied.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t really looked at the motivation.”

  “Maybe you should.” He finally got around to trying the coffee. He looked up, commented that it was good, and continued: “People can deal with the possibility that something bad might happen. That an engine might explode, or that their ship might collide with a space station. That’s extremely rare, of course. But it has happened. Okay. People can live with that.

  “What they can’t live with is the notion that they might get sucked into some weird dimension, and that their ship would show up from time to time—if that’s really what’s going on—that the ship would keep coming back like a ghost. Okay? When you talk about stuff like that, the odds don’t matter. Nobody cares that maybe it only happens once every thirty or forty years. Any chance is too much. You hear what I’m saying?”

  “You’d prefer we don’t push the issue.”

  “That’s right. You can’t do any good, and you might do a lot of harm. We just don’t need that kind of talk.” He cleared his throat, looking for a fresh start. “It would be different if there were anything to it. But there isn’t. And I’m sure you can see that.”

  Alex smiled politely. “Actually, I’m not sure I can.”

  “Let it go, Alex. You’ve got a solid reputation. But if you keep on the way you’re going with this, you’re going to pay a price.”

  Alex’s tone hardened. “Is that a threat?”

  “No. By no means. It’s just reality. Although we’d have no choice but to defend ourselves as best we can.”

  “And if we backed off, what would we get out of it?”

  “You’d keep your reputation intact.”

  “That’s it?”

  “All right. Look, you’re concerned about Villanueva. We have some political influence. We might be able to help you there.”

  “Let me think about it,” Alex said. “I’ll get back to you.”

  “You aren’t really going to make a deal with them, are you, Alex? For one thing—”

  “You wouldn’t trust them.”

  “That’s right.”

  He smiled. “I agree. So don’t worry about it. I just wanted to see him go home.”

  “Alex—?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why do you think Robin lied about where they’d been? About going to Indikar?”

  “I’ve been reading about the family. It’s impossible to be sure, but I think I can guess.”

  “And that is—?”

  “Let’s try to pin it down. Jacob, see if you can get Billy Winter for us.”

  A few minutes later, Billy blinked on, smiling, glad to see us again. He was seated at a table with a large jigsaw puzzle spread in front of him. “I was going to call you,” he said. “I’ve been reading about you. I was wondering whether you’d learned any more about what happened to my father?”

  “Billy, we’re pretty sure he died on Villanueva.”

  “That can’t be right. What the hell would he have been doing there?”

  “You really have no idea?”

  “None. Are you saying that they never went to Indikar at all? Or—”

  “We think Indikar was made up. From the beginning.”

  His eyes seemed to focus on something far away. “It’s possible,” he said. “My mother didn’t like the idea of his going to Indikar. She would never have allowed him to go to Villanueva—”

  The puzzle was a forest scene. A large downed tree lay in the foreground, forming a bridge across a stream. No sky was visible anywhere. Just water and vegetation. Billy stared at it, tried a piece, shrugged. “My God.”

  “Your mother didn’t like the idea of his traveling off-world at all, did she?”

  “No,” he said. “She didn’t even like Skydeck.”

  “Why not?”

  “She just thought it was too dangerous.” He looked away from us. “I remember one time there was somebody coming in to the university, and some of the staff were going up to be there when she arrived. Dad wanted to go, too, but my mom wouldn’t hear of it. She was half out of her mind about his going to Indikar, and there was a big fight the night before he left. It’s the only time I can remember that there was anything like that in the house. But he insisted he had to go. And he left, and we never saw him again.”

  “Thanks, Billy.”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  “We told you we’d let you know if we ever found out what that mission was about.”

  “Yes. So why did they do it?”

  “We don’t have all the details yet. But you’d be proud of your dad.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “He and Robin were trying to get more information on ships that get lost. Like the Capella. That’s what he risked his life for.”

  “Can you explain that?”

  “We don’t have all the details yet, Billy. But that’s why they were there. On Villanueva.”

  I came to work a couple of mornings later and saw Alex outside on the deck, leaning against one of the support posts. “We might as well bring her back,” he said. “This thing’s not going to happen.”

  “Belle?”

  “Yes. If we were going to find the Firebird, we’d have seen it early.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll take care of it.”

  I told her to come home. A few hours later she replied: 0744. We’re giving
up?

  That was the entire message. I replied: “Yes. Come home.”

  0752. I’m sorry to hear it. Are you sure?

  “I’d think that sitting out there is pretty boring.”

  0801. It beats just sitting.

  “Belle, just come home. Okay?”

  0811. I would really like to have found it.

  “Tell Charlie we said hello.”

  0820. Maybe it fell into a black hole.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Mathematics is the only valid portrait of reality. Everything else is delusional.

  —Grumman Nesbitt, graduation address at MIT, 2214 C.E.

  Maybe it fell into a black hole.

  “The problem,” I said, “is that there’s just too much space to cover. Too much guesswork involved.”

  Alex was ready to throw up his hands. “Maybe she was right about the black hole.”

  “Anything’s possible, boss.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “I, um, don’t think I understand.”

  “I’m going to wander down to Survey this afternoon. You want to come along?”

  “No, thank you. If you don’t mind, Alex, I’ve had enough astrophysics for a while.”

  He hadn’t gotten back when I closed the office and headed home. I needed a break, though, so I went partying that night. When I got back, there was a message from Alex. “Got news. Call me.”

  It was well into the morning, so I wasn’t going to bother him. But it took me a while to get to sleep. The result was that I showed up at the country house next day bleary-eyed and probably not in a good mood. Jacob probably let him know I was there, and I was still getting out of my jacket when I heard Alex’s voice: “When you’ve a moment, Chase, come up.”

  Alex maintains a secondary office upstairs. That’s where he retires when he wants to do research or simply get his mind away from the day’s business. I don’t bother him when he’s there unless we’ve caught fire.

  When I walked in, he was sipping orange juice and munching on a chocolate donut. He tapped a finger on the display, which was filled with arcing lines and numbers. “Chase,” he said, “I think we have it.” His eyes glowed. “Jacob, show her.”

  The room darkened, and I found myself looking across a starscape. A terrestrial planet and its sun floated in the foreground. “Good morning to you, too, Alex,” I said.

  “Oh, yes, sorry. Good morning.” He took a deep breath. “I’ve been locked up with this stuff all night.”

  “So what have we got?”

  “Did you get some breakfast?”

  “Not yet.” The normal routine was to check in and then hit the dining room. But I wanted to know what he had to tell me.

  “Do you want to eat first?”

  He was being a tease. “Come on, Alex,” I said. “What do you have?”

  He waited for me to sit. “Why were Robin and Winter both interested in black holes?” he said.

  “We’ve been over that, Alex.”

  “I don’t mean the standard fascination by every physicist in the Confederacy. You remember telling me that Winter was tracking the trajectories of some black holes?”

  “Yes, of course. You’re not going to tell me one of them’s coming this way, are you?”

  “No, Chase.”

  “Kidding.”

  “Actually, that was my first thought. That a black hole was headed somewhere. But I checked them as soon as I was able. As far as Jacob can tell, no black hole anywhere is threatening anybody.”

  “Well, that’s good.”

  “Jacob,” he said, “show Chase what we have.”

  A planet appeared on the display, with a sun in the background. “The sun is Setara. Do you recognize the world?”

  It was mostly ocean, but living worlds all tend to resemble one another. “No,” I said.

  “It’s Point Edward.” Named for Edward Trimble, and his extrapolation of the quantum point theory regarding why the universe existed. Nobody understood it sufficiently to challenge it until recently. “This is where it was six years ago.”

  “Okay.”

  A blue line moved out a few inches toward a corner of the room. “This is where it is today.” I heard his chair creak. “Point Edward maintains a Fleet base in orbit. Six years ago, the Abonai left there, made its jump, and, as you know, never arrived at its destination. Oh, by the way—” He offered me a donut. “Chocolate,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m a bit distracted this morning. Try one. They’re good.” He finished off the one he had in his hand.

  I took one.

  “The Abonai was 1.4 million klicks out from the base when it made the jump. Here.” A silver marker blinked into existence. A white line connected it with the Fleet base.

  “Okay.”

  “Are you familiar with XK-12?”

  “No, I’m not.” I knew the XK designator was used for black holes, but I couldn’t differentiate among them.

  “This is XK-12 out here.” A red marker lit up. “It’s about five light-years from Point Edward.”

  “That’s fairly close,” I said.

  “Fortunately, they’re headed in different directions.” A yellow line came out of the black hole and made for one of the windows.

  “Now,” he continued, “let me show you where the hole has been.” A second yellow line came back in the opposite direction and passed close to Setara and Point Edward. It intersected with the silver line that marked the course taken by the Abonai.

  “All right,” I said. “So the Abonai made its jump from a place where a black hole had been. But you said it’s how far away now?”

  “Five light-years.”

  “So that thing passed through the launch area, what, thousands of years ago?”

  “Jacob?”

  “Seven thousand, three hundred twelve years, to be precise.”

  “And, of course,” said Alex, “Point Edward was nowhere near it at the time.”

  “Okay. So where is this headed, Alex? That’s not exactly a near miss. What are you suggesting?”

  Alex never enjoyed himself more than when he was solving puzzles. “Let’s talk about the Fishbowl sighting.”

  “The what?”

  “There was a sighting at Fishbowl a thousand years ago. Complete with radio reception. But nobody could understand what they were saying. They got a good reading on the vehicle, and if you traced the trajectory back, it leads directly to Cormoral. Maybe it’s a coincidence, but a few thousand years earlier, a black hole had passed through the launch area. At Cormoral.”

  “Alex, this is crazy. You’re saying two ships get lost because a black hole once passed through their launch areas. And there’s a connection?”

  “You think it’s a coincidence.”

  “How long had it been since the black hole had passed through the Cormoral area?”

  “Half a million years.”

  “Okay. Half a million years. So, what are you saying?”

  “Chase, you haven’t heard everything.”

  “There’s more?” I tried not to roll my eyes.

  “Jacob, show us the XK-12 track.” Another yellow line reached out, crossed the table, and touched the door. “Okay, put Rimway in the position it would have occupied forty-one years ago.”

  A yellow marker appeared on the track.

  “Alex—”

  “Think about it a minute. We have an easy way to determine whether there’s anything to this.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Cermak’s brother said they were going out two hundred billion kilometers. Right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And we assumed they meant two hundred billion klicks in the direction of the target star, Uriel.”

  “Yes. What else would we assume?”

  “The distance between where Rimway was forty-one years ago, and the nearest approach of the black-hole track, the one made by XK-12, was approximately a hundred eighty billion kilometers. Not two hundred, but close enough. Chase, I think we
didn’t find the Firebird because we started from the wrong launch point.”

  “Alex—”

  “All right, look: The track was in front of Rimway. It was closing on it. We’d literally cross it approximately twenty years later.” He stared at me.

  My God. That coincided with the loss of the Capella.

  “Chase, I’ve checked out five other sites where interstellars have gone missing. Three of them have black-hole connections. The other two—” He shrugged. “There are probably holes out there that we don’t know about. But the evidence looks fairly conclusive. I think what happens is that when a superdense object goes through a region, it damages both space and time. Don’t ask me how that happens. I have no idea. But it looks as if these areas constitute dangerous places to initiate a jump.”

  “But, Alex, ships would be leaving the area in the middle of the track all the time. How come only one is affected?”

  “I can’t answer that. Maybe it has to do with the drive, maybe the configuration of the hull, maybe it depends on how much mass you’re dealing with. Probably a combination of factors. But I think that’s precisely what’s happening.”

  Charlie was home by then. He told me how much he’d enjoyed the mission with Belle, and said he hoped it wouldn’t be their last.

  “Actually,” I said, “I don’t think it will be. It was, by the way, the first time we sent the Belle-Marie on her own.”

  “I know,” he said. “Belle enjoyed the experience. And—”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, I don’t want to make an issue of it, but the ship was in perfectly good hands. You talk as if there might have been a risk involved.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to give offense.”

  “None taken. I suppose I’m accustomed to having been in a place where the Betas were in charge.”

  And we can all see how that turned out. But I resisted the urge. “I know,” I said. “I’m sure it’s difficult making the adjustment.”