Firebird

by Jack McDevitt

  Cal looked unhappy. “You might not be able to get there in time. There’s less risk to everybody if whoever finds it first boards it and starts the extraction. The others can help as they arrive.”

  Alex looked around the room. The others were nodding in agreement. “He’s right, Alex,” said Allie.

  “Absolutely,” said Dot.

  And so it went, until Alex raised both hands. “Hold it a second. Look, we don’t want to lose any of you—”

  “Too late now,” said Paul Kaczmarek. “First one there starts the extraction, right?”

  Every hand in the place went up.

  Dot was standing beside Cal. “Do we know when this thing will surface again? If we miss it this time?”

  Alex let Shara answer. “Sixty-seven years,” she said.

  “What kind of ship is this?” asked Michael. “Have we been able to identify it?”

  “Negative.”

  “It’s too old?”

  “That’s what we think, yes.”

  And it’s still under power?”

  “Yes.”

  “My God,” said Cal, “you mean this thing might be seven thousand years old?”

  “Yes.”

  Dot smiled. Beatific. Beautiful. What a marvelous universe we live in.

  “Any more questions?”

  One more. From Linda: “Alex, you’ve described these black-hole tracks. If I understand what you’re saying, you get in trouble if you try to initiate a jump while you’re sitting in one.”

  “That’s correct,” said Alex.

  “When we start back from the target area, we’ll be right in the middle of it. Isn’t there a possibility that one of us will get caught?”

  Alex passed it to Shara. “Let me start,” she said, “by admitting we don’t have everything down yet. But we’re pretty sure we know what kind of vehicles are vulnerable. And under what circumstances. We’ll have a couple of technicians look at every ship before we proceed. You should be safe.”

  “Anything else?”

  Apparently not. Shara passed out formation assignments, another two or three questions, and that was it.

  “Okay,” said Michael. “I guess we have something to tell the grand-kids about.”

  Dot lifted a glass to Alex, Shara, and me. “This,” she said, “is a proud moment. I’m delighted you guys decided to trust us. And we will give you our full support.” She laughed. “Let’s hope we come home with some company.”

  Afterward, as things quieted back down, she took me aside. “I’ve changed my mind,” she said.

  “About what?”

  “Charging you for one of the ships. I can’t do that. Just cover our expenses. That’s all I ask.”

  Taiulus Zeta was, in fact, well past Antares. It was another long ride. Almost six days each way, several more days getting organized, plus however long we had to wait for our apparition.

  We packed up and left the country house at midmorning on a beautiful day, birds singing, tree branches swinging gently in a soft breeze. As we lifted off, Shara called my attention to an elderly couple visiting the old graveyard just across the property line. “I hope,” she said, “that’s not an omen.”

  Four hours later, we launched from Skydeck, sixteen vehicles counting the Belle-Marie. (We’d picked up one more at the last minute.) The squadron reassembled out past the Moon, put identical settings into the drive units, turned in the general direction of Antares, and slipped into hyperspace in as coordinated a manner as we could manage.

  Despite all efforts to stay close to one another, we knew we would emerge a substantial distance apart, and we’d need an additional day or two to regroup.

  It was maybe the longest six days I’ve spent in hyperspace. I don’t know why. A foreboding of some sort crept over me. I don’t usually have a problem simply because there are no stars. Or because I can’t communicate with other ships. Maybe it was that Alpha was still hanging over my head, with its terrified radio voice that wouldn’t go away. I knew now there were people out there, from a time before anyone had ever come near Rimway, when most of the worlds of the Confederacy were unknown. From an age before Elmer Campbell and his religious engineers had erected the obelisks.

  Shara didn’t help matters by explaining how the darkness was probably only a kind of wrap, that it extended no more than a few meters beyond us. I told her that was crazy, and she tried to explain to me why MacKenzie’s Theory required it. And, of course, MacKenzie was always right, except for one famous blunder. Which I’ve never understood, either.

  I pretty much stayed off the bridge. I didn’t want to be looking out the ports at Shara’s black wrap. For whatever reason, it didn’t bother me when I was sitting in the cabin, where I could push it out of my mind while we argued politics.

  And up front somewhere, waiting for us, would be the Antares.

  We were talking about languages. Shara stretched out her legs and crossed them. She was wearing a pullover shirt that read PHYSICS MAKES MY HEART BEAT. “Hard to imagine what that must have been like,” she said. “People saying stuff that other people couldn’t understand. No wonder they were shooting one another all the time.”

  I found myself thinking about Cal, alone in his ship. I’d done it often enough, but I’m not that much of a social type anyhow. But Cal, despite the grumpiness, struck me as a guy who wouldn’t be comfortable without company.

  Alex periodically left us and wandered onto the bridge for long stretches of time. I’d never known him to do that before. I could hear him talking with Belle, though I couldn’t make out what they were saying. When I asked, he said they were “just talking.”

  “About the ship?”

  “That, too.”

  “What else?”

  “I don’t know. Books. Religion. Whatever.”

  “You were talking with Belle about religion?”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. It just seems—”

  “She has a pretty wide knowledge of the subject. She knows how most of the major faiths got started. She knows the dogma. The requirements—”

  “But—” Shara broke in. “That’s not what people usually mean when they talk about religion. Does Belle believe in God?”

  “Maybe you should ask her.”

  So we did. Belle took a few moments to answer. “The evidence,” she said, “is inconclusive.”

  “Then you don’t believe,” said Shara.

  “You’re talking about faith now, Shara,” said Belle. “I prefer not to draw conclusions based on guesswork.”

  “Which way,” I said, “does the evidence point?”

  “Let me say, first, that it is difficult for a mere Beta, as limited as I am, to conceive of a Being without limits.”

  “Then you do not believe?” Shara said again.

  “I reserve judgment.”

  I thought it would be a good idea to change the subject. “What books were you talking about?” I asked.

  “Oh. Chan’s Write On, for one.”

  “Which is what?” I asked.

  “It’s a book about why you cannot learn to be a professional writer by reading books on the subject.”

  “Good,” I said. “What else?”

  “The Life and Times of Malakai Petrona.”

  “He’s a famous archeologist,” Alex said, for Shara’s benefit. “Last century.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Culture Wars and Points South.”

  “Really? You’re interested in battles over social issues?”

  “Of course. I enjoy watching people argue over whether it’s destructive to society to provide food and shelter to those who choose not to work.”

  “What’s your position, Belle?”

  “I’m not sure. I’m not good at these soft areas of knowledge. I can’t imagine, for example, why anyone would choose to be inactive. But there are fascinating issues involved. It is the difficulty of grasping some of these issues that makes them intriguing.”

 
“Tell her about the novel,” said Alex.

  “Yes. We also talked about The Last Man.”

  “Bancroft’s book.”

  “Yes.”

  Alex had been reading it. It was extremely popular in its time. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s one of these multigenerational things in which the vices of the parents come back to haunt the kids, whose reactions then serve to create problems for their own children. It’s complicated, and everyone thought it was destined to be a classic, but nobody reads it anymore. “Why,” I said, “would you read a novel?”

  “I enjoy novels,” said Belle. “I’m a big fan of Vicki Greene.” The writer of supernatural thrillers. I think, if there’d been any doubt in my mind whether AIs were self-aware, it went away at that moment.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  We are never more human than when we become acutely conscious of the natural world. Give us a moonlit beach, or put us in a canoe on a wide river, or let us simply stand under the stars. It is then that we know who we truly are.

  —Elizabeth Stiles, Singing in the Void, 1221

  The truth was that even sixteen ships were inadequate to the task. We knew that from the start. We would probably have no difficulty picking up the Antares, but the odds against our being able to get to it in time to rescue passengers were, unfortunately, less than encouraging. Unless, of course, the first to see it took action. Which was precisely what I expected to happen.

  We started well, arriving in the target area and getting into our search formation more easily than we’d anticipated. Then we settled in to wait. Shara had estimated that we’d probably be there a week or so before anything happened. But we were only hours into the hunt when Michael called from the Caribou. “Tracking something,” he said.

  “What do you have, Michael?” I asked.

  “Looks like a ship.”

  Alex, who’d been quietly reading, raised both hands. Hallelujah!

  “Any details?” I asked.

  “Too far out. But the AI tells me she can’t detect any power.”

  “That’s not good,” said Alex. He was in the right-hand seat. “We get a position?”

  “It’s coming in now.”

  “Belle-Marie,” said Michael, “we are in pursuit.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Everybody lock down. We’ll be changing course in a minute.”

  There was no response from the cabin. “I think Shara’s asleep in back,” said Alex.

  “Okay.” I hit the buzzer for her compartment. “Up and at ’em, kid. Ship on the horizon.”

  Moments later, pulling a thick woolen shirt over her head, she appeared on the bridge and gave us a thumbs-up. “Beautiful, guys,” she said.

  Alex got up. “Take a seat, Shara.”

  She hesitated, then sat. “Thanks.”

  “You’ve earned it.” He disappeared back into the cabin.

  “Can we get to it, Chase?” she asked.

  “We’ll try,” I said.

  The sighting had taken place behind us. We were going to have to go through contortions to manage this. Alex muttered something under his breath as we began a long, slow turn.

  “First images are coming in,” said Belle. She put them on-screen.

  It was hard to make anything out, other than that the object was a dark, spade-shaped vehicle. “I don’t think this is what we’re looking for,” said Alex.

  Shara leaned forward, as if it might give her a better perspective on the screen. “Why?”

  I pointed to the spade, whose aspect was changing as we watched. “It’s tumbling,” I said. “And Michael says it has no power.”

  “We’re getting more from the Caribou.” Belle paused. “Whatever that is, it’s on the wrong course.”

  “How far off is it?” asked Alex.

  “Not a lot. But considering how far it’s come, if it were the Antares, even a slight variation would have taken it out of range.”

  The image grew clearer. I could make out pulse cannons. “Warship,” I said. A tangle of equipment and wiring protruded through a hole in the underside and had wrapped around the hull.

  “It’s a Mute Wasp,” said Michael. “A light cruiser. Looks as if somebody got a direct hit on it.”

  “Belle,” said Alex, “what era is it from?”

  “Wasps haven’t been used for two hundred years,” she said. “Since the Resistance.”

  “Mark the location,” said Alex. “We’ll let them know.”

  Shara was shaking her head.

  “What?” I said.

  “I was just wondering what the odds were of our stumbling across another ship out here.”

  We regrouped and resumed the search. The discovery whetted everybody’s appetite. Conversation among the ships intensified. There seemed to be more of a sense that the target vehicle would show up, and when it did, one of us would run it down. Cal Bickley arranged a pool. Everybody kicked in, and the ship that first located the Antares would get the payoff.

  Alex played chess with Dot, while Jon and Linda talked about how it would feel to set foot inside a seven-thousand-year-old ship. Shara discovered she and Melissa Garber had both grown up in the Crystopolis area, and both had memories of the city’s celebrated Science Museum. It had inspired Shara’s career, while Melissa recalled visiting the place when she was a girl to watch the exhibits and especially to ride the virtual starship.

  The first day passed without further incident. The Mute vehicle dropped off the scopes. And one by one, we retired for the night. Alex stayed with me awhile, but eventually he went back to his cabin, and I was alone on the bridge.

  There was no need for anybody to stay awake. If anything happened, Belle would sound the alarm. I’m not sure why, but at night I tend to sleep better up front than I do in my cabin. I don’t usually give in to the urge because it leaves me a bit stiff in the morning, but on that first night in the target area, I simply never got around to leaving the bridge. It wasn’t exactly a decision. I just didn’t feel like moving after Alex had gone, so I lowered the back of the chair a few degrees, turned on some soft music, and closed my eyes.

  I like symphonies. Beethoven, Kurtzweil, Brachter, Yao Kee. It doesn’t matter. Give me the soothing rhythm of the music and put some stars in the wraparound, and I’m ready to go.

  I drifted off. I’d been out about three hours when Belle’s voice woke me. “Chase, the McCandless has something.” Dot’s ship.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  The strongest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.

  —Attributed to Michel de Montaigne, sixteenth century

  “Chase, we just picked it up. Everything checks out. It’s the Antares.”

  “Okay, Dot. Belle, you have the coordinates?”

  “They’re coming in now.”

  “Are we sure this time? Dot, could it be another Wasp?”

  There was a delay of about four minutes while the signal crossed to the McCandless, and the response came back. “Whatever else this might be, it is definitely not another Wasp.”

  “Okay. Good.” I got on the intercom. “Shara, Alex, we have a hit.

  We’ll be on the move as soon as you get buckled down.” Then back to

  Dot: “Did you by any chance see it surface?”

  “Negative.”

  “Could it have been there for hours?”

  “Affirmative.”

  Alex came out of his cabin, pulling his robe around his shoulders.

  The display activated. I got a sky full of stars and a marker.

  Shara opened her door. “Give me a minute,” she said.

  “Where is it?” asked Alex, sweeping onto the bridge.

  “Dot has it.”

  He lowered himself into the right-hand chair. “What’s the status?”

  “We’ve no idea when it showed up. It could submerge at any time.”

  “We don’t get a break, do we? Okay, how close is she?”

  Usually, the delay in signal transiting is simply accepted as p
art of the operation. But in an emergency, it can be maddening. Finally, her reply came in: “We can be there in about two hours. I think it’s outside the target area. Or maybe just on the edge. Relaying pictures to you.”

  “Alex is here,” I told her.

  “Have you tried to contact them?” he asked.

  “Yes. Been transmitting. No response.”

  Shara showed up in a nightgown. She was breathless. “We got it?”

  “Right there.” I pointed at the marker.

  “Beautiful,” she said. “How long—?”

  “Two hours.”

  “We can be there in two hours?”

  “Dot can,” said Alex. “Chase, how far away are we?”

  I hated to tell him. The Antares was on the far side of the formation. “Five hours.”

  His jaw tightened. Other than that, there was no reaction. “Okay,” he said. “I don’t guess we could do a jump?”

  “We can try it.”

  “Shara,” he said, “is there any hope of getting more precision in the future?” He sounded as if he thought the current state of the art was her fault.

  “We’re working on it.” She sounded—and looked—frustrated. “I have a team of people going through the notebook, doing research, doing everything they can. And yes, I think we’ll get better—”

  “Shara,” I said, “tell me again how long it’s been since the last appearance of the Antares.”

  “If it’s the same one, it’s been sixty-seven years.” Her eyes closed, and she stood there, one hand gripping my seat until I suggested she go back into the cabin so we could get moving.

  I needed a few minutes just to get turned around. Then I kicked up the velocity. “TDI in fourteen minutes,” I said.

  “Is anybody else close?” asked Alex. “Other than Dot?”

  “Cal is. He has an outside chance of getting over there, but I wouldn’t be too hopeful.”

  “Nobody else?”

  “Nobody within three hours.”