I sat with my finger on the presspad.
“They’ll know you could have killed them, and didn’t. They’ll always know that.”
“Yeah,” I said. “For all the good it’ll do anybody.”
We watched them limp off into the dark.
XXV.
Boundaries have no existence save on charts or in small minds. Nature does not draw lines.
—Tulisofala, Extracts, CCLXII, vi
(Translated by Leisha Tanner)
I THINK SOMETIMES about Christopher Sim’s observation that Thermopylae need not have been fought.
My war with the Ashiyyur seems to fall into the same category. It would not have happened had I not spent an afternoon revealing everything I knew to S’Kalian at the Maracaibo Caucus. That visit may not have been the dumbest act of all time, but it’s certainly up there among the top ten. We came desperately close to losing the Corsarius and all she contained.
Chase was right about the Armstrongs: there weren’t any. But a far more sophisticated propulstion system stood in their place. And, about ten hours after the incident with the mute warship, the computers gave us a few minutes warning, and the Corsarius took us home.
It was not the sickening dive into multi-dimensional space, and the dreary two-month ride down the gray tunnel that we’d endured on the way out.
It was more like a blink.
Stars blurred, and reappeared. (If we’d been watching closely, we’d have seen the constellations change, the Great Wheel vanish, the familiar configurations of Rimway’s nighttime sky emerge from the moment of confusion.) Belmincour’s sun was gone, and we were approaching lovely, blue-white crescented Rimway. The comm system crackled with traffic, and a quarter moon floated off to starboard.
There was only the briefest physical sensation: a moment during which there had been no deck underfoot, no air to breathe. It passed so quickly that I was unsure it had happened at all.
Under the pressure of that desperate war, someone, certainly Rashim Machesney and his team, had solved a series of theoretical problems related to gravity waves and derived a practical application. Recognizing that gravity, like light, is dualistic in nature, that it is both wave and particle, they had drawn the obvious conclusion: gravity can be quantized.
A wide range of implications rises from this simple fact. The one most significant for Chase and me, sitting in our ancient frigate, feeling not confident of ever getting home, was this: large physical objects are capable of the quantum jump of the electron. That is, it is possible to move them from point to point without crossing the intervening space.
The Corsarius was equipped with a tunable gravity wave collector, enhanced by hyperconductive magnets designed to reduce electrical resistance to a negative factor. The result: the ship was able to achieve displacement in the time/space fabric with a zero time interval.
Well, you already know all that. But that’s how it happens that Chase and I are not still out on the far side of the Veiled Lady.
The quantum drive.
Range isn’t unlimited, of course. It’s a factor of the nature of the drive, and of available power. Energy is stored in a hyperconducting ring, and must be applied within excruciatingly exact limits at the moment of transition. And a ship can’t move freely even within that range. The minimum distance it will cross is slightly longer than a light-day. After that, intervals are reduced by infinitesimal, but steadily increasing, variables. It’s somewhat like stations. All this is apparently tied in with statistics and quantum logic and the Hays Certainty Principle. But the result is that the method isn’t practical for voyages that are either very short, or very long.
We have a better understanding now of what relations among the various human worlds really were during the War against the Ashiyyur. (Or at least Chase and I do.) Though we had always known they hadn’t trusted one another, it came as a shock that the Dellacondans withheld their discovery from their allies. And that it was consequently lost for two centuries after Rigel.
A lot has changed since we brought the Corsarius back from Belmincour.
Political unity on a grand scale has become practical, and the Confederacy appears to be stabilizing. We may make it after all.
I’ve also been happy that the drive has not been used in any particularly offensive way against the Ashiyyur. I owe them no love, and yet, if there is a lesson in all this, I think it points in that direction. We own an immense technological advantage now. Tensions have eased, and some experts claim you can’t have a serious rivalry without a military balance. Maybe we’re looking toward a new era. I hope so.
The Maracaibo Caucus is still open down at Kostyev House. I’ve never gone back, but I wish them well.
You can still see Matt Olander’s grave outside Point Edward. The Ilyandans dismissed Kindrel Lee’s story out of hand.
There’s talk now of an intergalactic mission. Power remains a problem; the voyage would have to be made in a series of (relatively) short jumps. Recharging is slow; and the experts estimate that a trip to Andromeda would consume the better part of a century and a half. But we’re coming. There’ve already been some improvements on Machesney’s basic design; and I hope to live long enough to crack a bottle across the prow of the first intergalactic survey ship. (Promises have been made.)
The reputations of the Sims have suffered no lasting damage. In fact, most people dismiss the Belmincour story and believe firmly that the hero died off Rigel.
There’s a theory that has gained some status among scholars that I’ve found interesting: the notion that there was a final confrontation on the shelf, and that the brothers ultimately embraced, and parted in tears.
Which brings us to the inscription on the rock:
The first section is a cry of anguish, used often by the hero in classical Greek tragedy. Then: O Demosthenes. Most historians read that cry as a tribute by Christopher Sim to his brother’s oratorical abilities and hence as a demonstration of forgiveness: I am in agony, O Demosthenes, it seems to say. This also supports the view of the final parting on the shelf, attended by all the comcomitant bitterness and affection that such an event would have generated.
But I have my doubts. After all, Demosthenes persuaded his countrymen to fight a pointless and suicidal war against Alexander the Great!
If we have not understood the remark, I think Tarien would have.
We’ve always wondered about Tanner and Sim, why she searched so relentlessly for so many years. Somehow, there seems to have been more than simple compassion or loyalty in that quest. Chase would inject a romantic note: She loved him, she has told me on occasion, when the wind blows hard outside, and the fire leaps high. And she found him. I am sure of that. She would not have given up—
Maybe.
I’ve always suspected that Tanner was part of the original plot. That it was she, and not a nameless staff officer or crewman, who saw the Wheel. And that it was guilt, rather than love, that drove her.
And anyhow, we know he didn’t come back. Christopher Sim was never heard of again, after Rigel. Sometimes I think about him on that rock, and I want more than anything else in my life to believe that she came down out of the clear blue sky. And that she took him away.
I like to think it. But I don’t believe it.
And finally, Gabe.
Today, the logs of the Corsarius, and a personal notebook in the hand of Christopher Sim, are on display at the Center for Accadian Studies. In the Gabriel Benedict Wing.
EPILOGUE
THE SKIMMER ARCED in over the rim of St. Anthony’s Valley, circled the abbey, and set down on the visitors’ pad near the statue of the Virgin in front of the administration building. A tall, dark-skinned man climbed out of the cockpit, blinked in the sunlight, and glanced round at the cluster of dormitories, the library, and the chapel, which seemed to have been scattered over the landscape in no very orderly fashion.
A young man in red robes had been standing off to one side, near the Virgin, watching. Now he w
alked swiftly toward the visitor. “Mr. Scott?” he inquired.
“Yes. ”
“Welcome to St. Anthony’s. I’m Mikel Dubay, the Abbot’s representative.” Usually, Mikel broke the formality of the announcement with the additional observation that he was a novice. But Scott’s manner did not encourage spontaneity.
“Ah.” He was looking past Mikel’s shoulder.
“We’ve prepared a room for you.”
“Thank you. But I won’t be staying overnight.”
“Oh.” That was puzzling. “I understood you had intended a retreat here.”
“That’s true,” Scott said, suddenly aware of the novice. “In a way. But it will take only a half hour or so.”
Mikel’s jaw tightened, but he did not reply until he was sure he could keep the ice out of his voice. “The Abbot wished me to see that you receive whatever assistance you require.”
With his heart hammering, Hugh Scott followed his guide behind the residence halls and past the recreation area. Shouts from a group of young ballplayers drifted on the late afternoon air. A couple of white-clad priests came from the other direction, greeted Mikel and his charge cheerfully, and continued on. The portion of their conversation that Scott had caught seemed to have something to do with high energy physics.
The chapel bell tolled. A large avian flapped wildly in one of the trees, and fell out. It hit the ground with a shriek, got up, and galloped away on enormous wedge-shaped feet. “It followed one of the fathers home from a mountain novena a few weeks ago,” the novice explained. “We’ve been trying to catch it so that we can take it back.”
“I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” Scott said reflexively, looking uphill, perhaps not thinking of the creature at all. Indeed, he might not even have been aware of its existence.
“It’s a mowry bird,” continued Mikel, falling into silence thereafter.
The walkway curved past groves of flowering bushes and dwarf trees. They turned uphill. On the ridge, behind an iron fence, Scott could see rows of white markers.
He slowed his pace. It was a lovely day, an afternoon to enjoy, a moment to savor! And the blood rushed in his veins!
Marble benches were set near the entrance, intended obviously as places where one might with profit contemplate the brevity of a lifetime. His glance swept past them to the arch, beneath which the fathers pass on their final journey. A cross stood at its apex, and it was inscribed: He that would teach others how to die, must know how to live. Yes, Scott thought. Sim had known!
“Back there.” Mikel pointed toward a section shaded by ancient trees. Scott walked down the rows of plain white markers, and it struck him that this was probably the first time in his adult life that he’d visited a graveyard and not succumbed to gloomy imaginings about his own mortality. Something more important today.
“Here, sir.” The novice stopped by a marker utterly undistinguishable from the others. Scott approached it, and read the inscription:Jerome Courtney
Died 11,108 A.D.
Scott checked his commlink. The date equated to 1249 on the Rimway calendar. Forty years after the war! Tears filled his eyes, and he went down on one knee.
The grass rippled in the warm afternoon breeze. Water was moving somewhere, and voices floated in the sunlight. He was overwhelmed by the timelessness of the place.
When he recovered himself, and got back to his feet, Mikel was gone. A man stood in his place, bearded, stocky, wearing the flowing white cassock of the Disciples. “I am Father Thasangales,” he said, offering his hand. It was large and bony, roughened by labor.
“Do you know who he was?” Scott asked.
“Yes. The abbots have always known. I’m afraid the bishop knows too. But that was necessary.”
“He was here forty years,” Scott said, astonished.
“He was here periodically for forty years,” said Thasangales. “He wasn’t a member of the Order. Nor even of the Faith, for that matter; although there is evidence that he sympathized strongly with the Church. ” The Abbot gazed wistfully at the far hills. “According to the accounts we have, he came and went quite frequently. But we are pleased to know that St. Anthony’s was his home. ”
“Do you have any documents? Did he make any statements? Did he explain what happened?”
“Yes.” The Abbot drew his arms together, and looked pleasantly up at the taller man. “Yes, we have several documents of his, manuscripts really. One in particular appears to be an attempt to systematize the rise and fall of civilizations. He has, I believe, gone considerably further in the matter than anyone else. There are also several histories, a series of philosophical essays, and a memoir.”
Scott’s breath caught in his throat. “You have all this? And you never let the world know?”
“It was his request. ‘Do not give any of it to them,’ he said, ‘until they come and ask.’ ” He peered intently into Scott’s eyes. “I presume that hour has arrived.”
Scott drew his fingers across the gravestone. Despite the coolness of the afternoon, it felt warm. “I believe I’ll take that room you offered. And, yes, I’d be interested in seeing what he has to say.”
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Novels by Jack McDevitt
THE HERCULES TEXT
ANCIENT SHORES
ETERNITY ROAD
MOONFALL
INFINITY BEACH
TIME TRAVELERS NEVER DIE
The Academy (Priscilla Hutchins) Novels
THE ENGINES OF GOD
DEEPSIX
CHINDI
OMEGA
ODYSSEY
CAULDRON
The Alex Benedict Novels
A TALENT FOR WAR
POLARIS
SEEKER
THE DEVIL’S EYE
ECHO
Collections
STANDARD CANDLES
SHIPS IN THE NIGHT
OUTBOUND
CRYPTIC: THE BEST SHORT FICTION OF JACK McDEVITT
A Talent for War Page 36
