“Eddie.” I felt helpless. “Getting yourself killed won’t help anything.”
“Listen to him,” said Valensky. Then he looked my way. Time to go.
I waited a few seconds, watched Valensky disappear. “Ed,” I said, “for God’s sake—.”
“He won’t do it,” said Trexler. “Too much paperwork if he kills somebody.”
When the rebellion started, two months later, with the coordinated robberies of two banks and the looting of a parish arms warehouse, the authorities were slow to recognize it for what it was. And that cost them everything.
The two historians of the revolution, the two I know of, both believe Edward Trexler’s death was the spark that started it all. There’s some truth to that. But of course a lot of other people had died before he did, charged with heresy, or blasphemy, or various other attitudinal felonies.
God knows, though, Trexler’s death motivated me. Who would ever have believed that conservative old Blinky Baylor would pick up a gun and go to war? But there was something else that stuck in my mind. That, for a lot of us, eventually became the engine that drove the revolution.
“(I?)…Have sworn…altar…hostility (against?)…tyranny…mind of man.”
It wasn’t hard to fill in the blanks. And sometimes, during the dark times, it kept me going. I think it kept a lot of us going. You want to make a revolution work, you need more than a taste for vengeance.
INDOMITABLE
And this is an anti-grav generator. Do you know what that is, Harry?” Did Harry know? Sometimes his father was such a nit. “Sure, Dad,” he said.
“Good.”
“We have one at school.”
“Do you want to try it?”
A bot was standing by, waiting for him to answer, or to get out of the way for the next kid who, Harry thought, also knew what an anti-gravity generator was. Was there anybody on the planet who didn’t know?
Behind the next kid was a little girl, maybe six or seven, watching with her eyes wide while she waited for a chance to levitate her hat.
They moved on to the bridge mockup. Displays indicated it was an exact replica from the XAA-466, the Tokyo, which had visited the black hole at Momsen. (Visuals of the black hole were available in the gift shop.)
There was a model of the Lexa Habitat from CX26, which had done interdimensional research near Antares a long time ago. Harry had read about it in the fifth grade, and it had ignited his interest in the interstellars. It was where Adcock had died and Parrish had vanished out of a sealed chamber. Where Corelle had done the research that had led eventually to the star drive that now carried his name. “Dad,” he said, “do you know how long we were there?”
His father studied the interlocking tubes and spheres as if the answer lay within the geometry. “Not sure,” he said. “It was before I was born.”
By about two centuries. “Sixty-six years,” Harry said.
His father nodded. Okay. Sometimes Harry got into his know-it-all mode and Dad got irritated.
And over there, nestled in a cradle, was Captain Songmeister’s lander. It had lost power entering the atmosphere of Antares III when Songmeister and his team thought they’d seen a city. Songmeister had used a sputtering auxiliary unit to guide the vessel to a safe landing in mountainous terrain. That had been the good news. The city had turned out to be nothing more than a reflection on an odd rock formation.
“They never found anybody,” said Harry, “Not there. And not anywhere else.”
His father was already moving on to the next exhibit. “Nobody to find, Son. There’s nobody out there.”
They were looking at a space shuttle. The Rosie McGreer. It had run between the Overby station and the spaceports at Rome and Barcelona.
“Here’s something you’ll like.” They slipped into the Cosmicon, which lit up with images from the colonies, gleaming cities and soaring towers and vast parklands. Here was Mirax on Deneb II, serene and cloud-wrapped on a mountaintop; and New Paris on Altair III, awash in music and soft light; and Shay Pong, straddling the mouth of the Karraso, the longest river on any known world. But of course it wasn’t the length of the Karraso that made Harry’s heart pump. It was the magnificent lighthouse.
“I’d like to go there someday,” Harry said.
His father nodded. “It is nice. Your mother and I went there on our honeymoon. We had a nice hotel. And the beach was outstanding. There’s something about the sun. You can stay out in it a long time and you don’t have to worry about getting burned.”
One area was designated as the memorial room. Virtual ships floated along the walls and guarded a long table, Harry knew them. The Wallsley, which had made the first flight to Alpha Centauri. And the London, which had carried the first colonists offworld. And the McCondrey, lost while testing the ill-fated Qubic Drive. The Dallas had visited Polaris, setting what, at the time, was a new distance record. And the Exeter, a few months later, had almost doubled that, going all the way out to Zeta Aurigae.
Harry knew them all. The Sabre, the Valiant, the Reliable. He had a picture of the Reliable on his bedroom wall. They were magic names. Harry knew who their captains had been, knew their stories. They were from the era when the survey ships were still going out, still looking.
It had been a long time ago.
“Dad,” he said, “let’s go look at the Indomitable.”
It was the reason Harry had wanted to come. Everything else here in the Calgary Museum was more or less duplicated in Toronto. But not the Indomitable.
They picked up an escort bot. He was designed to look like Captain Parmentier, who was the hero of the HV Interstellar series. All pure fiction, of course.
“We’re still working on the Indomitable,” Captain Parmentier said. “It’s in a temporary shelter next door. You’ll have to walk through clay to get to it. And the ground is still a little wet from the rain last night. Inside the shelter, parts are scattered everywhere. You’ll have to be careful where you walk.” He smiled. It was the familiar everything’s-fine smile from the series. “Before we proceed, you’ll have to stipulate that you understand the risks, and you agree to relinquish your right to sue. If you agree to the conditions, please move a little closer to the imager and hold up your hand.”
They complied. “Very good,” said the captain. “This way, please.”
The Indomitable did not look as big as some of the other ships he’d seen. In fact, it looked about half the size of the Seattle, which was based in that city. But it pursued a different mission from the cargo ship. And it possessed an aura none of the others had. Not even the Valiant.
Working lights illuminated the area. The Captain stood in the ship’s shadow. “It was a survey vessel” He looked up at it, and for a moment Harry thought he sensed sadness, “It’s a Pyrrus model. The only one left.” Harry heard a door close somewhere. “We were very proud to be able to bring it here.”
Its insides lay in piles on the bare ground. Engines here, fuel tanks there. Corelle unit in the corner. Instruments, ducts, stabilizers, black boxes. A chair. One of the hatches leaned against a bulkhead.
“Eventually,” the captain said, “we’ll put it back together.”
“How long will it take?” asked Harry.
Parmentier smiled. Made a face. “Unfortunately, a while. Most of our workers are volunteers. They know about this ship, and they know how to take care of it. But they aren’t young, so it will take a while.”
“It’s beautiful,” said Harry.
The captain agreed. “It’s been as far as 15,000 light-years out. Halfway to the core.”
Harry’s dad shook his head. “You say it’s the only one left? What happened to the others?”
Parmentier stared at the hull. He seemed to be looking at the inscription beside the airlock. Deep Space Survey. “They were broken up and used for scrap.”
Harry’s dad nodded. Of course. What else would you do with old ships?
“When you’re finished working on it,” said H
arry “would you be able to use it again? To go out in it?”
“We hope so. It depends on what we find. We don’t have a lot of money, so if there’s expensive damage—.” His voice trailed off before he switched subjects. “It wasn’t the last of the operational survey ships. The Ranger was the last one taken out of service. A lot of the Ranger was used to provide the framework for the Benson Building in Tucson.”
Harry placed his fingertips against the hull. The metal was cold and unyielding. “Why?” he asked.
“Why what, son?” asked his father.
“Why did they stop the missions?”
“You know why, Harry.”
“No. I don’t. Tell me.”
He sighed. “Because we’d found enough worlds to last us a long time. Plenty of room for us to spread out. Enough for a thousand years.”
Harry’s hand was still pressed against the hull. Holding onto it. “But is that really the reason we went out there? To get more places to live?”
“Sure it is.”
“I thought we were looking for somebody to talk to. I thought we wanted to find out whether we were alone.”
“Harry, we found out. We are alone. There isn’t anybody else.”
“How do we know?”
“Because we’ve looked on thousands of worlds and there’s nothing. We’ve been listening to the galaxy for centuries and there’s not a sound. Not a peep anywhere. No life, except for a few cells here and there. Otherwise, zip.”
“Dad, maybe we gave up too easily”
His father smiled. Benign. Proud, even. “It’s over, kid. Maybe you’re right. Maybe we could have gone farther. Maybe there’s something in another galaxy somewhere. But it costs money. And nobody really cares anymore.” He waited for Harry to say something. When the boy remained silent, he gently put his hand on his shoulder and pulled him away from the Indomitable. “Let’s go, champ,” he said. “It’s getting up to dinner time.”
Parmentier led the way past the ship’s prow. He opened the door for them and sunlight spilled in. Harry looked back as the work lights went out. “Beautiful day,” the captain said.
They went out into the bright afternoon. The ground was rough and full of holes.
“Careful where you walk.”
Harry wasn’t sure who made the comment. “It’s not over,” he said.
His father smiled. “Your mother said she’d have spaghetti and meatballs for us tonight.”
LAST CONTACT
They looked down through towering banks of cumulus at an ocean bright with sunlight. A mountainous archipelago broke the smooth curve of the horizon. “There were thousands like this in the crystals,” said Wincavan. “Other worlds.”
In the darkness behind him, Rotifer shifted his weight and sighed audibly.
“This is what they saw from the Quandis during their first day over Omyra. Later, after it had been settled, this world would become famous because its philosophers came to an understanding of man and his place in the universe.”
Rotifer could not entirely conceal his contempt. “And what might that be?”
It was Wincavan’s turn to sigh. “I think they concluded that it was man who gave purpose to existence.”
Rotifer laughed. It was an ugly sound, loaded with derision.
“They never found anyone else,” Wincavan explained. “Among all those worlds, they never saw a reflection that was not their own.” He fell silent. The islands passed beneath them, lovely and sunlit in the endless sea. “No, maybe you’re right to sneer. But I’d like to believe there was a purpose to it all, that we served some humble cause: herald, perhaps, or torchbearer. A pathfinder for something greater than ourselves, who will find our bones among the stars and know that we were there.”
Rotifer swung round in his chair, away from the images. “Emory, I love your stories. But the truth is there’s only one world, and you’re standing in it.”
“No.” Wincavan’s eyes closed. “We are not even native to this world.”
The younger man shrugged. “Foolishness. But it hardly matters.”
A blue line of peaks appeared in the distance. Wrapped in winter, they marked a continental coastline. But it was a narrow range, and gave way quickly to rain forests and lake country. The image drew closer, and they saw broad rivers. At the confluence of two of the largest, Camwyck would be built two centuries later. Her sons and daughters, for years after, would continue the great expansion through the stars. Oliver Candliss, whose bloody shirt lay in the museum upstairs, was born there.
Wincavan debated taking them lower, but he wanted to maintain the planetary perspective, which was the most enthralling part of the demonstration, save for the fight with the rikatak at the climax.
They moved well above the clouds. The texture of light changed, and the sky darkened as they glided again over open sea. “Nice effects,” said Rotifer.
Wincavan nodded patiently. Too much was at stake to offend the Councilman now.
A canopy of stars appeared, unfamiliar constellations. Far below, silent lightning flickered. “Eventually,” said Wincavan, “the night will be ablaze with lights.”
Rotifer’s patience was running short. “How do you know?” he asked wearily. He himself was no longer young. His eyes had grown cold and hard in the harsh winters. His hair and beard were gray, and the limp was becoming ever more pronounced. (The leg injury had been sustained in his first cavalry action against the goliats, when he had been clawed and bitten.) He tended to be querulous, especially when the nights were damp, and he judged his worth exclusively by a long series of victories achieved against the savages many years before. Rotifer was, to Wincavan’s mind, a prime example of the result when a hero outlives his campaigns.
“I know because I have seen the record. It was in one of the crystals,” he said, with rising heat. “One of the crystals that were auctioned off during my grandfather’s time!”
“Ah, yes.” The Councilman spoke slowly, as though he had caught Wincavan in a deception. “Of course it would have been in one of the jewels.”
There were more mountains in the west. They were silver under the stars, and silent. Beyond them, a pale ruddy glow stained the horizon. Rotifer, who had never seen a moonrise, watched the surge of crimson light fill the spaces between the peaks, watched a long blue-gray arc begin to rise above the mountains. “What’s that?” he demanded. His voice was pitched higher than usual.
“A second world,” breathed Wincavan. “Omyra’s twin.”
“A world in the air?” The Councilman laughed, though Wincavan thought he detected a hollowness in the sound, “It’s nonsense, Emory. What would sustain it? How can you continue to take any of this seriously?”
Wincavan’s world had no moon, and consequently its inhabitants had no experience with solid objects in the sky.
His countrymen thought him a deranged old man. It was just as well he stayed shut up in one of the ancient theaters, unable to grasp the difference between light shows and reality. But the Hall was no theater. The Community had known that once. His grandfather had remembered when there’d been a small coterie of supporters, of men and women who actively pursued research into the Great Days. But that was long ago. Now the Hall was empty, save for himself, and the savage goliats, who occasionally climbed the outside walls to peer timidly at the images. “Why,” he asked, “do you deny the evidence of your eyes?”
“Because it is only a show. Like all the others. Because there is only one world; because an ocean can’t cling to a globe. Why doesn’t it run off the bottom of the world, Wincavan?”
Wincavan hesitated. “I don’t know,” he admitted.
“I thought not.”
“We had that knowledge once.”
“Contained in one of the jewels, no doubt?”
He shrugged. “The sun sets each evening in the west. Can you explain how it gets back during the night into the eastern sky?”
“There’s a tunnel,” Rotifer said hesitantly. “Beneath the
world.”
“You don’t believe that?”
“It makes as much sense as living upside down.” He stared at Wincavan, trying to read his expression in the gloom. “Do you have pictures of oceans and forests on the other world as well? The one in the sky?”
“We used to.” The crystal was set in a gold clasp, but the last time Wincavan had seen it, it was dangling between the ample breasts of Banda Pier, wife of the Stablemaster.
The upper clouds of Omyra floated below them. Wincavan could feel the weight of the turning planet. He knew that the major land mass lay immediately west, an enormous continent of sulphurous mountains, broad rock-strewn plains, and advancing icecaps. “The Quandis circled the world ninety-three times before the landing team went down.” He paused and looked toward the approaching dawn. Rotifer was silent, crossing his arms across his thick chest. “On the fourth day, Memori Collin and Lex Esteban and Creel MacAido boarded one of the ship’s launches. They were right about here—.” He pushed a stud forward. The stars lurched, and Omyra’s cloudscape rotated. “It looked more or less like this.” The black hull of the Quandis appeared above as the landing craft they seemed to be in dropped away. He smiled as the Councilman gripped the arms of his chair and pushed back into his seat.
Clouds rippled past, then surrounded them. Rotifer was trying to look away, but they dropped down the sky with terrifying speed. Even after all these years, after a thousand flights, Wincavan thrilled to the maneuver. They fell and fell and Rotifer made strange sounds; then they were out over water again, their descent slowing, the ocean far below disturbed by a squall. The vessel shook.
Was it his imagination that, during the final moments of the maneuver, his seat pushed against him? Turning toward his guest, Wincavan glimpsed a flurry of movement through a window. Two, or possibly three, goliats had climbed the courtyard wall, from where it was possible to watch the images. It was a perch which they frequently assumed. But he had long since given up trying to lure them inside. “In a moment, you’ll see a large island shaped somewhat like a running man.” He used the electronic pointer. “There. You can make out one arm. The head’s over here, bent forward because he’s moving very quickly. Well be landing near the right knee. Collin chose it because the area has a level plain, without too many trees or other obstructions, and she knew from experience how important it was to be able to see clearly in all directions.”
Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt Page 19