Alex Benedict 07 - Coming Home

by Jack McDevitt

  “Maybe they should bring in one of the warships. They don’t have any use for them anymore.”

  “John tells me even those are too small. They need another Capella.”

  “Well, there are a few cruise ships.”

  “They’re working on it. However that goes, John doesn’t want to take any chances on losing the ship. He’s not going to allow any experimenting with the drive unless they can guarantee the safety of the passengers. It doesn’t sound as if that’s going to happen.”

  “So what’s the option?”

  “The problem is that, because of its mass, the area where it may reappear has gotten a lot bigger. They’ll likely need five or six hours just to get somebody alongside.”

  “That’ll probably be a yacht, and take off about ten people.”

  “That is probably true. Given the time constraints, they won’t be able to get more than a couple of hundred people off, at best, when it reappears.”

  “How long will it be accessible?”

  “John says about ten hours.”

  “It’s a nightmare,” I said.

  “It’s why they’ve been hoping JoAnn could come up with something.”

  “The fleet won’t provide any more?”

  “The fleet maintains they don’t have any more. Some of the media people claim they’re keeping a force available in case the Mutes try to take advantage of the situation.”

  “Alex, the bad times with the Mutes are over. Doesn’t anybody realize that? I mean, the Mutes have announced they’ll be sending ships to help with the search.”

  “I’m not sure everybody in the media recognizes that. President Davis says he’s not worried about the Mutes. But he says they have other responsibilities, like keeping ships on station to respond to emergencies. John is so frustrated, he’s talking about resigning.”

  “You don’t think he’ll do that, do you?”

  “No. There’s too much at stake. But I suspect he’s not very happy that they didn’t get more from the experiment.” He put the cup down, stared into it for a moment, and got up. “Well, I have some work to catch up on. Talk to you later. And by the way—”

  “Yes?”

  “If you hear anything more about JoAnn, let me know.”

  * * *

  That afternoon, I was scrolling through archeological journals for material on sites that might yield what we like to think of as payoff artifacts when Jacob broke in. “Chase, CMN is running a program you might find of interest.”

  “Okay, Jacob,” I said. “Put it on.”

  A middle-aged woman in a green blouse blinked on in the middle of the room, with Walter Brim, who did human-interest cases for the network. “Describe it for us, Tia,” he said.

  Tia looked very much like the sort of woman you’d see in a park with kids. She was healthy, probably worked out regularly, and wore her blond hair cut short. But there was a sadness in her eyes. “It’s hard to talk about, Walter, because I’ve never heard of anyone going through this kind of experience. Eleven years ago, my son Mike took his family, his wife and two sons, on an interstellar trip. They were going to visit Sanusar and Saraglia. They wanted the kids to get a sense of the universe, to see other worlds. I remember being uncomfortable with the idea, but nobody asked me, so I stayed out of it.

  “Next thing I knew, I was hearing reports that the ship, the Capella, was overdue at Sanusar. Then they said it was lost. My family was dead. I’ve had to live with that for a long time. Now they’re saying they’re still alive. Not only alive, but that the kids are still kids. That for them it’s not 1435, it’s still 1424. It’s crazy but I assume they know what they’re talking about.”

  “How have you been reacting to that, Tia?” Walter was tall, with dark hair and features that tended to inspire confidence and a willingness in his guests to express their innermost feelings. He looked sadly at her.

  “I’m still trying to get my head around it. But okay, good, sure, I don’t know how to describe what I felt except that I was so happy I was screaming. The ship was coming back, and a rescue effort was under way. I couldn’t believe it. Then they said that they’d only be able to rescue a hundred or so of the passengers. Until the next time it shows up. Which they say will be in 1440. Walter, the ship has twenty-six hundred people on board. And they can only take off a hundred or so every five years.” Her voice broke, and she stood wiping her eyes. “Every five years, Walter. They’ll be at this for more than a century.”

  “Tia,” said the host, “I’m sorry. I know this is hard on you.”

  “They tell me the kids will still be kids when they get home. That I shouldn’t worry because at least they’re safe. And I’m glad for that. But I’m not sure I’ll live long enough to ever see them again.”

  “I wish I could help,” said Walter.

  Tia stiffened. “Maybe you can. The reason it will take so long is that they don’t have enough ships. They have to be able to get to the Capella as soon as it comes back. They’re saying it’ll take six or eight hours for rescuers to get to them. But after about ten hours, it goes away again. They need more ships. Where’s the rest of the fleet?”

  Next came a young man whose parents had been stranded on the disabled vessel. “I doubt they’ll be able to get off right away. They’re going to be stuck on that damned thing for nobody knows how long. When they do get back, I’m going to be older than they are. If I’m still here to see them.”

  And Admiral Yakata Fox. “The problem we’re having, Walter,” he explained, “is that when the tensions with the Mutes ended several years ago, we put most of the fleet in storage. Despite what’s being reported, we’ve made available nearly every ship we have. We’ve had to keep a few back because we have other responsibilities.

  “The real issue here is not so much a lack of ships as it is the sheer immensity of the target area. We can only estimate within a pretty wide range where the Capella will appear. When we first started talking about this, it wasn’t supposed to be that way. They were telling us we’d be able to pinpoint where it would come back, and we’d just be sitting there waiting. But that turns out to be wrong. They’re saying it’s too big, and for reasons I don’t entirely understand—I’m not a physicist—that widens the area of the search. By a lot.”

  Then Headline News, with Roster McCauley, came on. He was seated at a table opposite a black box. “Earlier this week,” he said, “a test mission by the government could have left an AI stranded on a ship that might have disappeared into the warp. Our guest this afternoon”—he glanced at the black box—“is Charles Hopkins, representing the National Association for Equal Rights for All Sentients. Charles, what’s your reaction?”

  “Roster, I am outraged.” I recognized the voice. Charlie, the AI whom Alex and I had brought home from Villanueva, had acquired a last name. “And I can assure you, we’ll be taking action to prevent anything like this from happening again.”

  * * *

  “Okay, Jacob,” I said, “you can shut it down.”

  “There is one more clip you might want to see.”

  It was Alex. He was also a guest on Brim’s show.

  “Alex,” said Walter, “you were one of the principals who discovered what had happened to the Capella. And you have a relative on board. Did you have a suspicion all along that your uncle was still alive?”

  “No. We’d assumed he was gone. We were looking for a missing physicist. Chris Robin. He was the guy who made the discovery about the lost ships.”

  “Well, Alex, in any case, I know you’re happy at least that your uncle has been accounted for. And that eventually, if not in the immediate future, you’ll get to see him again.”

  An odd thing happened then. Alex seemed to look directly at me. “Yes,” he said. “I can’t believe it’s happening.”

  He was careful to say nothing about the delay that would be involved. That the rescue was probably going to go on piecemeal over the better part of a century.

  * * *

 
; “I was surprised to see the interview,” I told him.

  “Chase, this is the biggest story the press has had in our lifetime. Of course they’re going to give it massive coverage.”

  “Do you buy the admiral’s story? That they’re committing the entire fleet to this?”

  “I don’t think there’s any question. President Davis tried to calm the people who are still scared of the Mutes, but that’s a hard case to make. People don’t forget.” He propped his chin on one hand and sighed. “We need a better solution.”

  “Which is—?”

  “Damned if I know.”

  “Shara said something about a backup plan, but she didn’t explain it.”

  He was frowning. “I hope they have something.” A cold rain was drumming against the window. “You know, the media have been talking about the effect it will have when people we’d written off as dead are suddenly back in our lives.”

  “I know. I’m trying to imagine how it would feel to have Gabe walk in.”

  “Yes. Gabe and the rest of them. Or from their perspective. What will it be like to return to friends and relatives who are at least eleven years older than they were just a few days ago? It won’t be so bad for the ones we can get off this time around. But imagine the people who will be stuck out there for another quarter century or more. They will have lost the world they know.”

  FIVE

  It’s hard to imagine what it will be like opening homes to sons and daughters, to mothers and fathers written off years ago as dead. To seeing again old friends thought lost. There will be a powerful effect from this strange event because we can hardly help being reminded of the impact on our lives of the people around us.

  —Editorial, Andiquar Herald, Janus 3, 1435

  Casmir Kolchevsky showed up the following day on Jennifer in the Morning. Kolchevsky was small and compact, a guy who always looked as if he were about to explode. He had scruffy black hair and eyes like those of a cat watching a squirrel. That was when he was feeling friendly. He liked to preach, to make it clear that very few could meet his high intellectual and ethical standards. Whenever he showed up on one of the talk shows, I got uncomfortable because Alex was one of his favorite targets.

  Kolchevsky was an archeologist. He claimed to have been a friend of Gabe’s though I never saw any evidence of it, and he resented Alex because he made a living trading and selling artifacts that he felt belonged to everyone. He’d said on several occasions that Alex had betrayed the family name. That he was nothing better than a grave robber. But this time, he did not come after us.

  The conversation was about the historical information that had already been gleaned from the passengers who’d been aboard the Intrépide. “We’re now able to talk to people who were actually alive during the Dark Age. Think about that for a minute. We can acquire some historical knowledge, some serious insights, by sitting down with someone who was there. I’ll tell you, Jennifer, we live in a remarkable time.”

  Kolchevsky’s tone made it clear that he knew everything of significance. No one else’s opinion mattered. Which was why listening to him go on about somebody else’s perspective came as something of a jolt. Jennifer agreed that he had a point, and asked what he thought could be learned from people who’d begun life in a different era.

  “So far,” he said, “they’ve shown us they were as indifferent about what was happening in their time as we are in ours. Imagine being alive during the Dark Age, when civilization was crumbling. When it looked as if everything was coming apart. When we had starships but no control over the economic and political systems. All I’ve heard these survivors talk about is what was going on in their personal lives. Were they concerned that things were getting worse and would probably deteriorate completely? That humanity might never recover? I’ve heard almost nothing about that. It was all about whether they had a job.”

  “Come on, Casmir,” said Jennifer, “there’ve only been two people who go back that far. And they’re only kids. You’re going to have to wait awhile to talk to the adults from that period. The Intrépide won’t be back for, what, seventy or eighty years?”

  “That’s true, Jennifer. But do you really think the parents of these kids will be any different? No. We know what these people did. How they just stood around and let the world go to hell. Let the oceans rise. Let whole species go extinct. You think they’re going to care? They probably won’t have even noticed unless their paychecks got cut off.”

  I stayed with the show not because I wanted to hear what he had to say but because I was waiting for him to give Alex some credit. Without him, I wanted to scream at the little idiot, none of this would be happening.

  And finally, near the end, he actually reached out. “I guess we owe all this to Alex Benedict. I’ve been a bit hard on him in the past. Although he certainly deserved it. But to be fair, I should admit that he’s done a serious service for these people. Saved their lives.” He smiled across the room at me, that wooden, forced grin that moved his lips without creating any sense of warmth.

  * * *

  When Alex came downstairs, I asked whether he’d seen the show.

  “No,” he said. “Why?”

  “Your buddy was on.”

  “Which one?”

  “Kolchevsky.”

  Alex immediately looked weary.

  “No,” I said, “he was okay. In fact, he gave you credit for finding the Capella.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Cross my heart.”

  “All right. Good. Remind me to send him a Christmas card this year.”

  * * *

  One of the panel shows, Four Aces, spent time discussing whether they shouldn’t go ahead with manipulating the drive unit to prevent the Capella from disappearing again. They seldom agreed on anything. But on this occasion, they’d obviously heard about JoAnn’s experiment. And they were united in opposing any effort to manipulate the star drive. “They got lucky with the yacht, they admit that, and they’re saying there’s no way to be sure what would happen if they start playing around with the Capella. So if that’s the case, why would anyone want to take chances with the lives of twenty-six hundred people?”

  * * *

  Shortly after that, Casmir Kolchevsky went missing. I saw the first report on the morning news two days later. Jennifer brought in Jeri Paxton, an anthropologist and a friend of Kolchevsky’s to talk about it. Jeri was probably well into her second century, but she retained much of the vigor of youth. “The only thing I know, Jen,” she said, “was that his AI became concerned when he didn’t come home for two consecutive nights. Drill—that’s the AI, and don’t ask about the name—called police. As of now, we just have no idea what happened to him.”

  “Have you ever heard of his doing something like this before?”

  “No, I haven’t. Casmir has always lived by an orderly schedule. I had a chance to talk with Drill last night. He says this is a completely new experience.”

  “So there’s reason to be worried.”

  “I’m afraid so, yes. And I’ll tell you, Casmir seems to some people to have a rough edge, but he’s really one of the kindest, gentlest men I know. He’s one of a kind, Jennifer. I really hope, wherever he is, that he’s okay. If you can hear me out there, Cas, call. Please.”

  * * *

  The rational thing to do would have been to leave it to the police to find him. But Alex has never been willing to stay out of this type of affair. “I’m surprised,” he told me, “that he has no avatar. Guy like that, with that immense ego, you’d expect there’d be one to represent his various contributions to research and tell us about his awards. But there’s nothing.”

  “Why were you looking?”

  “He’s disappeared, Chase. Or didn’t you notice?”

  I ignored the question. “I remember his talking about it one time. The avatar, that is.”

  “Where was that?”

  “Give me a minute.” I did a quick search and came up with a three-year-old
episode of The Charles Koeffler Show. Koeffler notes that Kolchevsky has no avatar, and that it would be easier for hosts to prepare better programing if one were available.

  “Most people,” the host said, “especially those who are well-known, maintain an online presence. I wonder, could you—?”

  “Of course they do, Charles.” Kolchevsky’s smile revealed that he was tolerant of his host’s lack of insight. “Some of us, most of us, I guess, feel a need to establish that we matter. That we leave a mark. But putting a babbling version of yourself out there for every idiot to talk to doesn’t get the job done. In fact, all it does accomplish is to waste time.” Koeffler looked about to jump in, but Kolchevsky waved him off. “I’m not saying everyone who puts a version of himself online is an idiot, Charles. What I am saying is that our time is limited. If we really want to accomplish something, then by God we should do it. And stop the posturing.”

  “Are you saying you’ve never had an avatar?”

  He snorted. “When I was sixteen, I had one. The girls all laughed at it.” He sat back, amused at the recollection as the mood lightened. “There was one girl in particular whom I just loved. In the way that only a sixteen-year-old can. She told me that she could go for the avatar and wished I were more like him.”

  “So you took it down?”

  “Charles, do you have one of those things?”

  Koeffler turned it into a joke without answering, and they went to another subject.

  Alex shook his head. “If you’re in business,” he said, “you have to have one of those things.”

  I couldn’t resist laughing. Alex was also amused. “I wonder,” he said, “what happened to him? To Kolchevsky.”