Chindi

by Jack McDevitt

  It was an agonizing five-day wait for the reply. “Hutchings.”

  George didn’t quite have the name right, but he knew he had hit the jackpot.

  HE CAUGHT TRANSPORTATION to Outpost, got there early, and decided to work while he waited. Decided, in fact, that his best bet with Hutch was to let her find him at work. Let her see what he was doing.

  The gas giant at Outpost was big, maybe six times Jupiter’s mass. It was called Salivar’s Hatch, after a pilot who had disappeared into its clouds twenty years before. There were more than thirty moons, not counting the shepherds located in its elegant ring system. Some had atmospheres, several had geologic activity, two had oceans frozen beneath their icy surfaces, none had life. Twenty-one was a small chunk of ice and rock, not quite half the size of Luna.

  Most of its surface was covered with needle peaks, craters, and broken ridges. But an enormous plain dominated almost a quarter of the landscape, where lava had erupted eons ago, spilled out across the area, and frozen.

  AS HUTCH MADE her approach, Bill broke in. “You have a transmission from the Wendy Jay, Hutch.”

  That would be Kurt Eichner, the Academy’s senior captain, a model of Teutonic efficiency. A place for everything and everything in its place. Kurt was the only Academy skipper she knew who could have torn down his ship and put it back together.

  He had a softer side, which passengers were not allowed to see. Even when he was in the act of performing a signal service for them, he did it with polite yet brusque dispatch. The baby’s been delivered. Ma’am, you may sit up now.

  He liked Hutch, but then he liked all the women pilots, although, as far as she knew, he scrupulously kept hands off. She wasn’t sure why that was. In his younger years, he’d had a reputation as something of a rake. But she had never seen any indication of it, even though she’d occasionally encouraged him.

  Her favorite recollection of Kurt Eichner was from Quraqua, where he’d once cooked for her, in a portable shelter, an unforgettable dinner of sauerbraten, red cabbage, and potato dumpling. Perhaps because of the desolate location, perhaps simply because of Kurt’s culinary abilities, it was the most memorable meal of her life. With the possible exception of some fruit and toast she’d once had after three days with no food.

  “Pipe it through, Bill,” she said.

  Hutch switched it to her main screen and settled back. Kurt blinked on. He was in his seventies. With most people it was possible to tell when they started putting on serious mileage, because even though their bodies didn’t age, their eyes tended to harden, and the animation went out of their personalities. Some argued this was because humans were intended to live the biblical threescore and ten, and nothing could really change that. Others thought the condition could be avoided by refusing to allow the iron grip of habit to take hold. However that might be, Kurt had managed to stay youthful. His smile made her feel girlish, and she delighted in his approval.

  “Hello, Hutch,” he said. “I just heard you were at Outpost. How long are you planning to be there?”

  “I’m already gone,” she said. “Leaving as soon as I make my pickup.”

  There was a delay of several minutes, indicating he was at a substantial range. “Sorry to hear it. I’d have liked to get together.”

  “When will you be in, Kurt?”

  “Tomorrow morning. I understand you’re on a private flight this time.”

  “More or less. It’s an Academy assignment, but the ship’s not one of ours.”

  “The Contact Society?” He couldn’t entirely smother a smile.

  “You know about it?”

  “Sure. It’s not exactly a secret.”

  They prattled on until Bill interrupted. “On close approach,” he said.

  THE MEMPHIS WENT into orbit, and Hutch took the lander down. A small gray pocket dome stood on the edge of the plain, its lights brave and cheerful in the vast emptiness. They were on the inner side of the moon, with a spectacular view of rings and satellites. The giant world itself was marked with green and golden bands. It was one of the lovelier places the starships went.

  “Message,” said Bill.

  She nodded, and he put it through. Audio only. “I’m almost ready,” a male voice said. It was, she thought, familiar.

  “Am I speaking to Tor Kirby?” she asked.

  “Yes, you are.”

  She was sure she knew him. “Bill,” she said, “open the passenger packet. Let’s see if we can find a picture of this guy.”

  “Coming up.”

  An image blinked on. It was Vinderwahl!

  She stared at it, puzzled. Why the name change? “Tor, this is Hutch.”

  “Who?”

  “Hutch.”

  Pause. “Priscilla Hutchins? Is that really you?”

  Still no visual. “Who’s Tor Kirby?”

  “I am.”

  “What happened to your last name? What are you doing out here?” The last time she’d seen him, he’d been working part-time as a greeter in an electronics depot. And trying to paint.

  “I changed it.”

  “Your name? Why?”

  “Let’s talk about it when I get into the ship, okay? I’m a little busy at the moment.”

  “You need help?”

  “I can manage.” She heard him moving around, heard the click of a notebook snapping shut, heard the creak of fabric, presumably his pack. And finally she heard the gentle hiss of a Flickinger field forming as he activated his e-suit. The lights went off in the dome, the door opened, and he came out onto the surface. He looked up at her and waved.

  Well, who would’ve thought? She’d said good-bye to him several years before and he’d shocked her by nodding, saying he was sorry she felt that way. And he’d simply withdrawn from her life. Gives up too easily, that one.

  It had hurt her pride at the time, but it was just as well. Now, of course, here he was again.

  She waved back. He was wearing a gray shirt with a dragon on the front, khaki shorts, and tennis shoes. He hadn’t changed.

  Tor had been cautious around her to the degree she hadn’t been sure about his feelings. When, one snowy night at the Carlyle Restaurant on the Potomac (odd how she remembered the detail), she’d concluded he was in love with her, realized it was so in spite of all his efforts to hide it, it had frightened her away. Gotta go. Starhopping. Catching the next freight off the Wheel.

  Now here he was. Tor Vinderwahl. Her Tor.

  “Take us closer, Bill,” she said. “Put the cargo airlock on the ground.”

  He was moving his equipment and his air and water tanks out of the pocket dome when the lander touched down. She activated her own suit and went outside with mixed feelings.

  He looked good. He smiled at her uncertainly, and it was like the years collapsed and the giant rings overhead were swept away and they were back along the Potomac again. “It’s good to see you, Hutch,” he said. “Been a long time.” His eyes were blue, and his black hair tumbled down over his forehead. He wore it longer than she remembered.

  “It’s nice to see you, too, Tor,” she said. “It’s a pleasant surprise.” Actually, something had changed, in his demeanor, in his eyes, something. She saw it in the way he approached her, hauling gear in both hands, his gaze moving between her and the lander.

  She expected to be embraced. Instead he gave her a quick squeeze and kissed her cheek. The Flickinger field flashed when his lips touched it. “I didn’t expect to see you out here,” he said.

  “Why the name change, Tor?”

  “Who’d buy artwork from somebody named Vinderwahl?”

  “I would,” she said.

  He grinned. “That makes one.” She saw an easel among the equipment.

  He followed her eyes to it. “It’s why I’m here,” he said. He pulled out a long tube, opened it, and extracted a canvas. Then he unrolled it and held it up for her to see. He had caught the gas giant in its glory, suspended above the moonscape. The sky was filled with rings, and a couple of
satellites, both at third quarter, floated in the night sky. Silhouetted against the banded planet, she saw a superluminal.

  “Lovely,” she said. He’d come a long way from the sterile landscapes he’d shown her back in Arlington.

  “You like it?”

  “Oh, yes, Tor. But how’d you make it work?” She looked around at the airless rock. “Did you do this from inside?”

  “Oh, no,” he said. “I set up right over there.” He showed her. Near a boulder that might have served as an armrest, or even a place to sit.

  “Doesn’t everything freeze up?”

  “The canvas is high-rag content. The pastels are reformulated. They use less volatile binders.” He smiled at his work, obviously pleased with himself, and put it away. “It works quite well, really.”

  “But why?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Sure. It must cost a fortune to come all the way out here. And to paint a picture?”

  “Money’s no object, Hutch. Not anymore. Do you have any idea how much this will be worth when we get back?”

  “None.”

  He nodded as if the amount were beyond calculation. “Hard to believe that we’d meet in a place like this.” He sat down, wrapped his arms around his knees, and looked up at her. “You’re lovely as ever, Hutch.”

  “Thanks. And congratulations, Tor. I’m happy for you.”

  Tor looked quite dashing in the glow of the rings. He pulled a remote from a vest pocket, aimed it at the dome, and keyed it. The dome sagged, collapsed, and dwindled to a pack. They picked it up, along with the air and water tanks, and carried everything to the lander.

  George and the others were waiting. They all shook hands, poured drinks, laughed, exclaimed how surprised they were that he and Hutch knew each other, said how glad they were to see him again, and talked about how they were going after the biggest prize of all.

  They asked to see what he’d been doing and he showed them and they ooohed and ahhhed. What was he going to call it, Alyx asked with excitement.

  It was a question Hutch should have put to him.

  “Night Passage,” he said.

  chapter 7

  —Something of an extraordinary nature will turn up.

  MR. MICAWBER IN DAVID COPPERFIELD

  —CHARLES DICKENS, 1850

  DURING THE FINAL week of their voyage, Tor made no attempt to reestablish their relationship on its old footing. There were no covert smiles, no oblique references, no solitary visits to areas of the ship where she happened to be.

  Nevertheless, having what amounted to an old boyfriend on board changed the chemistry and created a decidedly uncomfortable situation.

  For the first couple of days after Tor boarded, Hutch spent less time with her passengers and all but confined herself to the bridge. But as Tor seemed to be making every effort to avoid creating a problem, she gradually returned to her normal routines.

  During the final days of their approach to 1107, she spent a fair amount of time talking with Preach. Well, maybe talking wasn’t quite the right descriptive. They were a couple of hours apart, using hypercomm, so the conversations consisted of long monologues and a lot of waiting. It wasn’t at all like sitting in the same room with someone, and even with years of practice on both sides, the experience could be frustrating.

  The process had taught Hutch a long time back about the vagaries of human conversation, the things that really mattered, which were not at all the words, or even the tones, but rather the moment-to-moment reactions people had to one another, the sudden glitter of understanding in the eyes, the raised hand that accompanied a request for additional explanation, the signal of approval or dismay or affection that a given phrase might induce. What good was it to say, for example, I would like to spend more time with you to a still image and wait more than an hour for a response that came as part of a long reply.

  So she said nothing of that sort, nothing personal. Nothing that she couldn’t put out there gradually, using his reactions to guide her. She liked Preach, liked him more than anyone she’d met in a long time. She enjoyed spending hours trading small talk back and forth with him, telling him what she was reading, how excited everyone was now that they were drawing close to 1107.

  The exchanges had been infrequent at first, maybe twice a day, centering primarily on details of the mission, how Preach’s contact team was every bit as excited as hers. The Condor group consisted of ten people, six men, four women. Five were corporate executives, one was the chairman of the World Food Store; two were university presidents. Another was a prominent Catholic bishop who’d become famous after he got into an argument with the Vatican. And he also had on board the celebrated comedian Harry Brubaker. “Harry,” Preach said, “claims he’s just along gathering material.”

  The emphasis of his team was different. As opposed to looking for a piece of hardware, they harbored an outside hope that the planetary system at Point B was home to an advanced civilization. “Nobody’ll really admit they think it’s likely, but they all light up when the subject surfaces.”

  The presence of the bishop had surprised Hutch. “His interest in the possibility of contact has only recently developed,” Preach said. “But he thinks that eventually we’re going to have an encounter that’ll call everything humans believe about God into question. That we’re going to have to opt for a wider vision. He wants to be part of it when it happens.”

  She could see that his own eyes brightened as he described the state of mind of his passengers. “I know what you’re thinking, Hutch,” he continued. “And it’s true. I don’t care much about the scientific side of this thing, but there’ll be a lot of publicity if we really do find something, and that can’t hurt an independent contractor. I’d love to see it happen.

  “By the way, something I meant to tell you…” And he lurched into an account of two of his passengers caught en flagrante in one of the storerooms. “They were trying to avoid the possibility of being seen sneaking in and out of their quarters, so…” One or the other had tripped the surveillance imagers and the coupling had been relayed to every monitor on the ship.

  “But it turned out okay,” he added. “This is a fairly laid-back group.”

  Their conversations became less impersonal with the passage of time. There was a quality to the vastness outside, the sense of their joint isolation in a hostile place, that tempted her to say more sometimes than might be prudent. But she held back.

  At night, when she was occasionally awakened by footsteps in the corridor, somebody headed for a midnight snack, or maybe a furtive rendezvous, she allowed herself to imagine that it was Preach coming for her.

  GEORGE’S PEOPLE TOOK full advantage of the Memphis’s sim capabilities. They attended a Broadway production of South Pacific, circa 1947, in which George showed up as Emile, Alyx jumped in happily to play Nellie, and Herman became Luther Billis. Hutch played Liat, the island beauty. They watched hot-air balloons soar out of Albuquerque in the celebrated “checkerboard” race of 2019. They heard a concert by Marovitch, and another by the Trapdoors. (Pete played sax, and Alyx did the vocals.) They were present, with Gable and Leigh, at the Hollywood opening of Gone With the Wind in 1939.

  They watched a nineteenth-century soccer match between Spain and Britain, and a Phillies-Cardinals game from the 1920s. The latter was Herman’s suggestion, and he had to explain the rules to everybody. The leadoff hitter for the Phillies was Hutch, who thought she looked pretty good in the uniform. She started the game with a line drive single to center.

  Later she asked Herman why everybody swung three or four bats before coming to the plate, and then discarded all but one.

  “When you get up there,” he explained, “the single bat feels lighter. You can get it around quicker.”

  Tor amused himself by making charcoal sketches of the various participants, Pete with his sax, Alyx wrapped around her microphone, Herman as a World War II sailor.

  He might have heard about Hutch’s question
, because he presented her with a sketch depicting her in her Phillies uniform crouched inside the on deck circle, cradling four bats.

  She was delighted with it, and mounted it on the bridge.

  THEY WERE THREE days out from 1107 when Preacher reported that the Condor had arrived at Point B, and was preparing to jump back into sublight space.

  “Excitement’s pretty thick,” he said. “These guys are really ready to go. Hutch, I hope we find something.”

  “I hope you do, too, Preach.”

  In the morning he was back with the first report. “We’ve arrived, but we’re in the middle of nowhere. Still trying to find the worlds in this system. I doubt my passengers understand how there could be something as big as a planet out there and we can’t find it. I try to explain that the neighborhood’s pretty big, too, but they don’t see it.”

  Her own passengers watched with mixed emotions. They wouldn’t admit it, but they didn’t really want their compatriots to succeed at Point B. If there was to be a discovery, they wanted that it would happen at 1107. Point A.

  “How long will it be before they know what the system looks like?” asked George.

  “They won’t get data on the entire system,” she said. “The Condor isn’t designed for large-scale mapping and charting. They’ll concentrate on looking for worlds in the biozone, and on trying to locate the incoming signal. That may take a couple of days. More, if they’re unlucky.”

  But George’s concern suggested the degree to which life changed on the Memphis once the other ship had actively begun its survey. The social cruise was over, and everyone now took to waiting on news from Point B.

  Preach’s messages reflected a similar mood on the Condor. Not that he said anything directly, but a solemn tone crept into his voice. “No sign of planets yet,” he said. “Class-G sun. They should be here somewhere.”

  Some news came during the evening of the second day of the search: “We found a gas giant. Too cold out there, though. It’s not what we’re looking for.”