Infinity Beach (40 page)

Carrying their helmets, they went into the air lock and sat
down on the bench. The screen embedded in the outer door performed all the functions of a window. Kim’s angle however did not reveal what they were able to see.
“So far there’s no response,”
said Kane.

He took almost an hour to negotiate the distance. When he was satisfied, he signaled and Tripley opened the inner air-lock door. And then the outer.

“Still nothing,”
said Kane.
“It’s about two minutes away.”

They moved out of the lock, giving Kane room to operate.

“We’re about to cut gravity. Stay clear of the object. If it does anything unexpected, let it go. Somebody dies, it’s a lot of paperwork, and in this situation it wouldn’t take much.”

“You all right?”
Emily asked her partner.

“I’m fine,”
said Tripley.

“Okay.”
Kane’s voice was a monotone.
“We’re about to shut gravity down. Don’t make any sudden moves.”

The celestial appeared outside the open air lock.

“Stay clear,”
warned Kane.
“The turtle-shell will come through the door without help. When it’s safely inside, close up. And then give it lots of room.”

The
Hunter
’s outside lights swept across the turtle-shell. Kim noticed what she had not observed before: The geometry suggested the hyperbolic vehicle that had attached itself to the
Hammersmith
.

“Don’t worry,”
said Emily.
“We’ll be fine.”

“I’m sure you will. But keep your distance until we’re sure it’s safe. When we’ve done that, we’ll have to figure out how to secure for the trip home.”

“Maybe,”
said Yoshi, who was watching from the corridor,
“we should have talked this out a bit more.”

The turtle-shell was just outside the air lock. Kane was apparently moving the
Hunter
gradually toward it. Tripley stood watching. He was too close. Maybe mesmerized, but his face was obscured by the helmet. Emily took him by the arm and pulled him gently out of the way.

It entered the lock. Passed through and drifted into the hold. Into the lights.

“Hey,”
said Kane,
“we’re getting a visual.”

Tripley threw a startled glance at one of the monitors. The picture of the spacecraft blinked off and was replaced by the butterfly. Its antennae were weaving and the singsong cadence had gone up an octave.

“I think it’s frightened,”
said Emily.

“Maybe.”
Tripley looked from the screen to the microship.
“They’ll be grateful soon enough.”

Tripley started toward the air lock, intending to close it. But the ship
moved
. It rotated a few degrees around its own axis, pointed its prow at the open sky beyond the air-lock door, and started forward. It was a kind of lurch, as though the directing force had less than total control.

“Stay clear,”
warned Kane.
“It wants out.”

Emily tried to pull Tripley back.
“They’re terrified,”
she said.
“They’ve just discovered how big we are. Don’t make any threatening moves.”
And then, incredibly, she walked in front of the ship and held up her hands.
“It’s all right,”
she told them.
“We only want to help.”

Several things happened at once. Tripley punched a button and the air lock started to close. Kane shouted a warning to Emily that they couldn’t hear her and to get out of the way. The butterfly image vanished from the screen.

Foolishly, Emily held her ground, blocking the vessel’s route back through the door, which was closing fast.
“Please,”
she said.
“Give us a chance.”

Twin beams of red light lanced from the fork on the ship’s prow. They struck her squarely in the abdomen and propelled her into the air lock and sent her tumbling out the door. Tripley screamed and made a grab for her but he succeeded only in changing her course and very nearly going out himself. He stared after her retreating form, turned, and charged the turtle-shell. Kane ordered Tripley to stop. But it was too late. The mission director seized the microship and his momentum carried both of them across the chamber. They crashed into a wall and Tripley bounced away in the zero gravity, still holding tight to the celestial.

The outer door closed.

“Going to one gee,”
Kane said.

Tripley and the microship fell to the floor.

Emily, picked up by one of the screens, continued drifting away, trailing red bubbles.

“Monitoring zero—”
Kane’s voice broke. He needed a moment to regain control and finish:
“—Zero pulse.”

Yoshi was adamant.
“I say we turn them loose. Turn them loose, get away from here, and forget it ever happened.”

“They killed Emily,”
said Tripley.
“How can we just let them go?”

“They were scared. They wanted out.”

“There was no need.”

Kane broke in:
“Nobody has more reason than I do to want the little bastards dead.”
He stopped and his jaw worked.
“But this is a special case. Yoshi’s right. Point them toward the hydrogen—”
he meant the gas giant,
“—and let them go.”

Tripley shook his head.
“That means she’d have died for nothing. What do we tell people when we get home? We found some celestials, but they didn’t want to talk a whole lot. Don’t know how the ship works, we didn’t get a chance to ask. Don’t know where they’re from. Otherwise ask us anything. By the way, we lost Emily.”

“What do
you
want to do?”
asked Kane.

“I say we take them with us. We’re committed. For God’s sake, Markis, we’ve paid the price. We owe it to
her
.”

“If we’d used our heads—”

“It’s late for recriminations. You want me to take the blame? Okay, it’s my fault.”

“That doesn’t bring her back, Kile.”

“I know. It was stupid. We took a chance. But we’ve got to make it count for something. How could we possibly walk away from this now?”

“Kile?”
Yoshi’s voice, strained.
“I don’t think anybody’ll thank us for this.”

“What do you mean? How can you
say
that? This is
it
. It’s the Holy Grail.”

“People will be happy to have the discovery, but
we’ll
be a laughingstock.”

Tripley shook his head desperately.
“
You
wanted to bring them on board as much as I did.”

“Think about it,”
said Yoshi.
“We don’t know what kind of hypercomm messages they’ve been sending out. Look out for the giants with their open doors. Shoot on sight. What do you think people are going to say to the pictures of you charging the ship and banging it against a wall?”

“Markis, is that really on the log?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so, Kile.”

“My God. But the bastards are killers.”

“Only because they were being hijacked,”
insisted Yoshi.
“That’s the way they saw it. And the way the media will play it. Look, I’m not trying to blame anybody. But we need to think about this. Reputations, careers, everything’s going to go. We’ll even show up in the history books as dummies of the first order. They’ll be laughing at us for centuries.”

They were in mission control. Emily’s body had been retrieved and placed in her bunk. The celestial was centered on their screens, lying pinned by gravity to the cargo deck.
“We can’t just throw this away,”
Tripley pleaded.

No one answered.

Kim reran the sequence in the cargo hold. She froze the picture at the moment of impact, when the bolt struck Emily, and she magnified it and focused on her sister’s face plate. She could make out her expression, which betrayed more surprise than agony.

She died quickly, and that was some consolation. But there had been a few seconds after the attack, when the lights were going out, when Kim could almost read her thoughts:
I have it in my hands, a ship built by another civilization, and I’ll never know who they are—

The design of her colleagues now took on a kind of Greek inevitability. They would take the turtle-shell back to Greenway and find out what they could about it and its occupants. But first they had to negate the vehicle’s capacity to do damage.

They accomplished the latter by determining that the weapon used against Emily was the “fork” mounted on the prow. They used a bar to break it off and then secured the vehicle in a stowage locker.

They next engaged in a heated debate before taking the eventually unanimous, if reluctant, decision to conceal the outcome of the mission.
“Until,”
in Tripley’s words,
“the
time is right to reveal what we’ve found. If that ever happens.”
Kane was most opposed to the plan, perhaps because he did not like deceit, but also and most certainly because it required him to falsify the ship’s records. But he eventually succumbed to the argument that if they reported events as they had occurred, their careers would be ruined and their reputations destroyed. They would be remembered for their folly as long as the species endured.

So they would take the microship back to Greenway and examine it themselves. And in the meantime they hoped that maybe one of them would think of a way out of the frightful dilemma into which they had sunk.

The strategy required that Emily be left behind, since there was no way to explain her death. It was Tripley who devised the plan that they would “return” her to Terminal City, book a hotel reservation for her, use her ID to create the illusion that she’d gotten into a cab, and let the authorities figure out why she never arrived.

Having laid out their course, their last action before leaving orbit was to consign Emily to the void.

All this was on the record, as if Kane wanted to make it available to some future—What? Historian? Judge?

The logs ended immediately after the burial service. The screen went blank and the power blinked off.

Kim sat in the lengthening shadows listening to the ocean.

“Kim, you have a call from Canon Woodbridge.”

“Put him on, Shep.”

Actually, she got an assistant, a young male with a somber, self-important manner. “Dr. Brandywine?”

“Yes? This is she.” If he gave his name she missed it.

“Dr. Woodbridge wishes you to come to Salonika tomorrow. He asked me to express his regrets that he couldn’t call you himself, but he’s extremely busy.”

“Why?” she asked.

“He’s always quite busy, Doctor.”

“I mean, why does he want me in the capital?”

“I believe it’s an award ceremony of some sort. He’s quite anxious that you be here.”

“You can’t tell me what it’s about?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t have details. But transportation’s been arranged. You’ll be picked up at nine tomorrow morning. I hope that’s not inconvenient.”

Ten minutes later, Shep reported another call.
“Tora Kane.”

Kim sighed. She was on the sofa, trying unsuccessfully to read the latest issue of
Cosmic
, and she was not in the mood for more hostility. Nevertheless she straightened herself and told Shepard to make the connection.

“Brandywine,” said Tora. The woman
was
difficult.

“Hello,” said Kim.

The archeologist was standing beside an antique vase. “Would I be correct in concluding,” she said, “that it was you I saw at the Mighty Third yesterday?”

“I don’t think so,” Kim said.

“Please don’t waste my time. I’m not stupid.”

Kim shrugged.

“I warned him it was a bad place to leave them,” she said.

Was she talking about her father? Or Mikel? “What exactly,” asked Kim, “do you want?”

“I have an instruction to carry out.” She looked at Kim the way one might look at a beetle.

“An instruction? From whom?”

“From Markis.”

“Oh?”

“First I need to be sure I have the right person. Did you, or did you not, steal something from the museum yesterday?”

“Just a moment.” Kim cut the sound. “Shep,” she said, “are we being recorded at the other end?”

He needed a moment to run a sweep.
“No,”
he said.

“If she starts to record,” Kim said, “cut us off immediately.”

“I’ll do that, Kim.”

“Give me the sound again.”

Tora gazed at her from under half-lowered lids. “I hope you feel safe enough now to tell me the truth.”

“I have the logs,” said Kim.

“There’s something else you should see.”

“What?”

“Come tomorrow evening. At seven.”

“You can’t tell me what it is?”

She blinked off.

A government flyer touched down on Kim’s pad at precisely nine
A.M.
She got in, showed her ID to the dex, and the vehicle lifted off and headed northwest through a sky heavy with rainstorms.

She was exhausted. The images from the
Hunter
’s cargo bay had given her no rest. She kept seeing Emily’s eyes, and Tripley’s mad dash to seize the
Valiant
.

What should she do now?

It seemed simple enough: release the news. It would be a huge story, and while the
Hunter
crew wouldn’t emerge covered with glory, at least some of the suspicions of foul play would dissipate. But she couldn’t do that without also divulging that a contact had been made. And that would violate the understanding she had with Woodbridge.

If people found out, there’d be no holding them back.
Everybody with access to a ship would be headed for Alnitak. Where they’d encounter what? A species made hostile by the apparent hijacking of one of their ships?

The flyer dropped onto a rooftop pad at the National Security Center. By then rain was falling heavily. The vehicle taxied into one of the shelters and Kim found a young female escort waiting for her.

She was taken down several floors and shown into a small office. Moments later a door opened and Woodbridge appeared. He shook her hand, asked whether everything was going well at the Institute. Before she had a chance to answer, an assistant looked in and told him they were ready.
“Good,” Woodbridge said. Showing no interest whatsoever in conditions at the Institute, he led the way across a corridor into a conference room where roughly twenty people were milling about. It was a festive occasion. Cheeses, pastry, and wine had been laid out. Woodbridge began introducing her to the room’s occupants—all seemed to have titles, Director This and Commissioner That—when a side door opened and everyone fell silent. The few who were not already on their feet rose.

Kim couldn’t see who was coming in, but she heard voices just outside in the corridor and then the commotion was in the room and she saw that it was Talbott Edward, one of the members of the Council. He strode to the front, while people made way on both sides, and took his position behind a lectern. He waited for everyone to find a seat.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “It’s good to see you all again. I don’t get up here often enough.” Edward was tall, extraordinarily thin, immaculately groomed. He wore bracelets on both wrists, and his gaze had the quality of reflecting from his aides and guests, as if he didn’t quite see anyone around him.

“Today I have an especially gratifying task to perform.” He looked out over his audience, picked out Kim, and seemed to recognize her.
Did
recognize her, probably, she decided, because he was searching out the young woman seated beside Woodbridge. “Dr. Brandywine, would you come up here, please? And Canon, you too.”

He welcomed her with a hearty handshake, his glance meanwhile returned upward. He smiled at Woodbridge, and proceeded to go on for several minutes about the advances of science and technology and how important it was that the Republic remain at the forefront of scientific research.

“Periodically, we at the Progress Directorate like to take time to honor the people who lead the charge.” He seemed to think that was an especially telling phrase, because he delivered it again. “—Who lead the charge into the future. Today we want to express our appreciation to Dr. Kimberly
Brandywine, for special contributions in the field of cosmology.” Woodbridge produced a small white box and held it out to him.

Edward took the box, opened it, and extracted a silver medal with a red ribbon, which he held so the audience could see. “The Brays Stilwell Award for Special Achievement,” he said. His hand moved in a graceful arc ending at her lapel, to which he affixed the medal. “Congratulations.” He shook her hand, and shook Woodbridge’s hand.

Kim had never heard of the Brays Stilwell. She said thanks, felt a rush of gratitude, and smiled at Woodbridge and at the Councilor.

Edward told her he knew she would continue her fine work. Then he shook a few more hands, glanced at the time, and disappeared.

The people in the audience approached her to look at the award and wish her well. “It’s nice,” she told Woodbridge. “Thank you.”

“It’s really quite a high honor,” he said. “The highest we can give. But nobody’ll ever really know why you got it. Except you, me, the councilman, and a few staff people.”

She wasn’t sure herself why she’d gotten it.

He put his hands on her shoulders, as if he were sending her off to battle. “Now, can I talk you into having lunch with me?”

It had just begun to get dark when Kim arrived at Tora Kane’s home. Tora was standing at the pad, sipping a drink, when the taxi touched down and Kim stepped out. “Good evening, Brandywine,” she said.

Kim nodded and looked at the cab. “Should I have it wait?”

“It wouldn’t hurt.”

It was a pleasant evening toward the end of April, just after sunset. The air was filled with the scent of the woods. A pair of squirrels stopped chasing each other around the bole of an ancient oak to watch the two women.

They climbed onto the porch and Tora invited Kim to sit
down. She picked out a rickety wooden chair; Tora took the swing. There was a pitcher and an extra glass on a side table. “Blue riggers,” said her hostess. “Would you like one?”

“Thank you,” Kim said, determined to avoid returning the woman’s surliness.

Tora filled a glass and held it out for her. “How did you find out where they were?”

“The logs?” Kim shrugged. “It seemed like a place that would have appealed to him.”

“Hidden in a museum? On public display? Oh yes, he liked that.”

The blue rigger was quite good.

Kim met her eyes. “You knew all along, didn’t you? You knew what happened on the
Hunter
.”

“Yes,” she said. “I knew.”

“You’ve seen the logs?”

“No.” She put her drink down. Rocked back and forth. Stared into the growing dusk. “No. I had no wish to see the gory details. But I knew what happened. He was tortured by it.”

“What about Mount Hope? What’s the rest of the story?”

She opened a drawer on the side table and took out a disk. “He knew that somebody would eventually do what you have done, somebody would get at least part of the truth. If it hadn’t been you, it would have been somebody else.” A lamp burned inside the window. “My instructions were that, if the logs were found, this statement should be made available to the authorities. That’s not you, but it seems that you’re the logical person to receive it nonetheless.”

Kim took it. “Do you want to watch it?”

“I’ve seen it.”

Kim slipped it into a jacket pocket. “You should be aware that I haven’t decided yet whether I’ll make any of this public.”

She shrugged. “Make it public and be damned.”

Kim got up and turned to go.

Tora stayed on the swing. “
You
should be aware,” she said, “that what you have is a copy. No part of the
Hunter
story is to be made public unless all of it is. If you don’t see to it,
I
will.”

When she got home, Kim put it on the flat screen.

The first image was the
Valiant
. A timer in the lower right hand corner gave the date April 3, 573, 6:48
P.M.
The Mount Hope explosion, she recalled, had occurred on that same date at a little after seven o’clock in the evening.

The
Valiant
was on a table. It was bathed in light, and she could see part of a device that looked like a sensor suspended overhead. She couldn’t make out anything else, but the table looked like the one she’d seen in Tripley’s basement lab.

An arm came into the picture, adjusted the sensor. And she heard Kile’s voice:
“How’s that, Yosh?”
The arm was in a white sleeve. It withdrew, and Kim could see nothing except the microship and the tabletop.

“That’s good. That’ll do it.”

And Kile again:
“Markis, we’re ready to start.”

“Be right down.”

The timer continued to run.

“Ready?”
asked Tripley.

Yoshi again:
“All set.”
Then her voice going higher:
“Hey, Kile, what’s that?”

Kim saw nothing.

“Not sure.”
The arm came back, went behind the ship on the port side, and blocked the imager’s view.
“Hey, we’ve got an open hatch!”

The table and the ship
rippled
.

Mist rose from a dozen places on the
Valiant
, as if the spacecraft were venting.

The arm jerked away.

And now the voices became confused.

“What is that?”

“They’re not dead.”

“My God, Kile, stay away from it.”