Octavia Gone

by Jack McDevitt

  “Thank you, Rick,” I said.

  “Glad to help, Chase.” He actually managed to look as if he was interested in our getting together for an evening. “Hope to see you guys again sometime.”

  When he was gone, Gabe looked pleased.

  “What?” I asked.

  He sat back in his chair and gazed at me with that smug look I was once so familiar with. “I don’t believe a word of it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Hotels want to be noticed.”

  “You’re saying—?”

  “The Oceanside wasn’t going to go to all that trouble with an artificial language that accomplished nothing except preventing potential customers from reading it.”

  “Maybe they thought the winners would show their prizes around a lot.”

  “That’s what they would like. Except you would want to find a way to get the hotel’s name out front. Putting everything in an artificial language is more likely to scare potential visitors off.”

  “Makes sense,” I said. “I have a suggestion. When we get a chance, let’s call Skydeck and find out if the Venture is in dock, and check to see who owns it.”

  “And then,” said Gabe, “we ride up and talk to the ship’s AI.”

  We’d have an advantage that we didn’t have with the avatar: AIs can’t be rigged to lie.

  • • •

  The speaker released its musical alert as we descended toward the country house. It wasn’t Angela Montgomery, though. “Good morning,” I said. “Rainbow Enterprises.”

  The caller was Clem Wayfield, one of our clients. “The antique lamp I left with you last month,” he said, “has it sold yet?”

  “Clem,” I said, “I’m not in the building. But I’ll be there shortly. Give me a few minutes and I’ll get back to you.”

  “The lamp belonged to Johan Bester. You really don’t know whether it’s been sold or not?” Bester was a minor politician who’d run for a governorship in the last century.

  “I don’t, Clem. I’ll check and get right back to you. That kind of information is not accessible when we’re out of the building.”

  We touched down as Wayfield gave me an exasperated okay. Jacob opened the front door and said he was glad to see us. “Were you able to locate the silver trophy?”

  “No,” said Gabe. The place was empty. Alex had gone off to his antiquities conference on the other side of the world.

  I checked on Bester’s lamp. It had not moved yet. I called Wayfield and he expressed his dismay at what he perceived as our lack of interest. “Maybe,” he said, “it could use some publicity.”

  “I’ll take a look, Clem. I’ll get back to you later.”

  I called Skydeck Ops. “Is there a Venture currently in operation?”

  “Negative,” they said. “I don’t see anything like that anywhere in the system. Not currently.”

  “But you did have one?”

  “Years ago.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “It was sold. It’s now the Mary Kaye.”

  “Can you give me the name of the current owner?”

  “I’m sorry. That’s a privacy issue.”

  “Can you tell me if it’s docked now?”

  “It’s not.”

  “When do you expect it back?”

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Kolpath. That information isn’t available.”

  “Can you let me know when it returns?”

  “It’s a private vehicle, ma’am. I can inform the owner of your interest and ask him to get in touch, if he wishes.”

  • • •

  Gabe came into my office a few minutes later. “How’d we make out?” he asked.

  “They weren’t much help.”

  “Did you ask them to let us know when the thing’s in port?”

  “Privacy concern.”

  “Where’ve I heard that before?”

  “Gabe, why do we care about this so much? About the trophy?”

  “Are you serious?” He sat down in one of the armchairs. “If that thing is real, it means that Harding, or somebody, may have discovered a civilization that we don’t know about. Maybe it’s gone, maybe it’s still out there, but we just don’t know. If it exists, if they’re still alive, it would be the biggest news of the millennium. A third interstellar society.” He leaned forward. “And I don’t want to go crazy on this, but there could be a connection with Octavia.”

  “Blame it on the aliens,” I said.

  “I’m serious. We just don’t know.”

  • • •

  Gabe took me to dinner that evening at Molly’s Top of the World, located on the peak of Mount Oskar. I asked him about his upcoming mission.

  “We’re going to Bowman’s World.” It was one of the planets orbiting Solanik, Rimway’s closest neighbor. “Earth is supposed to have dispatched a few ships during the fifth millennium to go out and set up a colony. There’s no record that it actually happened, but there are references to the effort in some of the literature from the period.”

  “Has anybody gone out to look?”

  “Of course. There’ve been several missions.”

  “And—?”

  “They haven’t found anything. At the time the colonials left Earth, if they really did, it was in the middle of the millennium. A turbulent period. The whole story may just be a myth, or they might have lied about their destination and gone somewhere else. Or maybe the people doing the missions weren’t thorough enough.”

  “So you and your colleagues are going to try again?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many of you are going?”

  “Just two of us. Ed Baxter will be with me.”

  “That seems small for that kind of mission. How much digging can two guys do?”

  He laughed. “Not much. We won’t be doing any digging. We’re just going to do a quick survey and try to decide the most likely place they’d have tried to settle. Then, if we turn anything up, we’ll send in a team.”

  “Who’s providing the transportation?” I was wondering whether he hadn’t asked me to go because he didn’t want to offend Alex. Or put me on the spot.

  “The WWAA,” he said. That was the Wide World Archeological Association. “They’d like to settle the matter.”

  “Sounds as if it could be an interesting trip.”

  “I hope so.” Our dinners arrived. Fried chicken for him, meat loaf for me. “I should be back in a week or two.”

  • • •

  When we’d finished and returned to the country house, he asked me to let him know if Angela called. “I’ll be leaving tomorrow, but you have my code.”

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  “I hope we get something on the trophy.” He went to his quarters, supposedly to retire, but he was gone only a few minutes when I heard the piano. I checked on Wayfield’s lamp. It still hadn’t moved. I informed him and suggested we might want to lower the asking price. He wasn’t happy.

  I called it a night and returned to the cottage. In the morning, when I arrived at the country house, Gabe was gone.

  V.

  The saddest of words spoken by men,

  Most feared, most painful,

  Haunting all our years,

  Is not fail, or die, or lose,

  But good-bye.

  —WALFORD CANDLES, “THE LONG TWILIGHT,” 1215

  I’d been working in the country house almost thirteen years, most of it under Alex’s direction. He spent a lot of time on the road, and I suspect I was alone in the building as often as not. Nobody lives close to us. No other human habitation is visible through any of the windows. Nevertheless, I never felt a sense of solitude. Maybe that was because of Jacob; maybe it was because Alex was forever calling in with assignments, asking me to run over to the Bannerman Artifact Center to get an estimate on the value of a ninth-century car, or to visit someone who was interested in details about a three-thousand-year-old tablet that had once belonged to a dictator on Toxicon. But that mornin
g, with Gabe and Alex both away on their projects, I could feel the emptiness of the place.

  We’d been having disruptive weather off and on for several days. It was growing increasingly turbulent, so much so that I’d decided if it didn’t ease off, I’d pass on going home that night. Thunder and lightning were so severe I was almost ready to hide under a table. Rain pounded the building. There wasn’t much work to be done. I finished it before noon and was playing chess with Jacob when he told me we had a call. “It’s for Gabe,” he said. “From an April Dutton.”

  From April? Uh-oh. “Put her through, Jacob.”

  He made the connection. “Hello, April? This is Chase. I’m sorry, but Gabe isn’t here.”

  She appeared in the center of the room, wearing a light blue jacket and gray slacks. She was standing on a lawn under threatening skies. “Chase,” she said. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.” Thunder shook the building and the image faded for a few moments. Then she was back.

  “No, not at all. What can I do for you?”

  “Is Gabe okay?”

  “Yes, he’s fine. Why do you ask?”

  “There was something he said that’s had me worried.” She hesitated. “Will he be back today?”

  “No, April. He’s off on an interstellar mission. We don’t expect to see him for a week or two.”

  “Okay.” She sounded simultaneously disappointed and relieved. “Maybe it’s just as well. He said how, because of that space-time thing, it had only been about three weeks for him since we’d been together. Chase, I can’t imagine what he must have gone through.”

  I got out of my chair, came around in front of the desk so we were within arm’s reach of each other. “He’s good,” I said. “I can transfer you to him if you want. He’s probably at the terminal waiting for a flight to the space station.” She looked uncomfortable. “Are you okay, April?”

  “Yes. I’m all right. But don’t connect me. Just tell him I called. That I was worried about him.”

  “I’ll tell him.”

  “Thank you.” And she was gone.

  I looked out at the storm. Thunder rumbled overhead.

  April hadn’t gotten over him either.

  • • •

  I’ve never really loved anyone. Romantic love, that is. I’ve gone through occasional flings, but I’ve never been in a relationship that would have been capable, had things gone wrong, of tearing me apart.

  To be honest, I’ve never been convinced serious love affairs actually happen. The ones I’ve observed from a distance inevitably seem to wear out over time. They suggest a kind of quantum entanglement in which the participants talk themselves into a condition that exists only on a temporary basis. Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know.

  Maybe I’ve just never met the right guy. There’ve been a couple in my life that got my chemistry going. Alex was one of them. But I just haven’t seen anyone yet who could have the kind of effect that shows up in romantic movies. I was surprised back in the old days when Gabe told me about his engagement with April. Odd. I’d always thought he was too smart to fall in love.

  The storm eased off that afternoon. Alex called shortly before dinnertime to make sure everything was okay. The media were describing it as one of the severest storms the area had seen in living memory.

  The skies cleared in the early evening and gave us a bright full moon. I was in the conference room watching The Julie Edwards Show and getting ready to go home when Angela called.

  She stepped out of a glimmering light, smiled, and said, “Hi, Chase.”

  Nice effect. “Hello, Angela.” It had been about five years and I’d forgotten what she looked like.

  “It’s good to see you again,” she said. “I was surprised to hear you were looking for me. What’s going on?” Lush red hair enveloped her shoulders, and she had a body that might have belonged to an athlete. It made me wonder if, like her brother, she’d been, or still was, a mountain-climbing enthusiast.

  “I guess, first, I should tell you that Dr. Benedict isn’t here just now. He’s off on an expedition of some sort. He’d want me to assure you he’ll get back to you, but it’ll be a while.”

  “Well, I guess that can’t be helped.”

  “When he got home, your trophy was one of the first things he asked about.”

  “That’s nice to hear. I hope you’re not going to tell me it really was a relic of some sort.”

  That past tense did not sound good. “I hope nothing happened to it.”

  “I tossed it. I think I invited you to keep it if you wanted it. But you didn’t look interested. Nobody was.”

  “Angela, it wouldn’t have been ethical for me to keep it.”

  An embarrassed look swept across her features. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to blame anyone.”

  “I know.” I took a deep breath. “Dr. Benedict will be interested in what you have to say about it. Do you mind if I record the conversation?”

  “Not at all.” She reached out, brought a chair into the picture, and sat down. “Are you telling me it actually was an alien artifact?”

  “We don’t know. It might have been. That’s the reason Dr. Benedict wanted to get another look at it. What did you do with it?”

  “People I’d shown it to laughed at the idea it might be alien. And once I found out it wasn’t really silver and seemed to have no value of its own, I just put it in the trash.”

  I closed my eyes for a moment. “When was that?”

  “Three or four years ago.”

  “Were you sure it wasn’t silver?”

  “I showed it to a metallurgist. That’s what she told me. It wasn’t silver, but she didn’t know exactly what it was. There just didn’t seem to be any point keeping it. The only thing it did was remind me of Rick.”

  “She didn’t know what it was?”

  “No.”

  That sounded like a good reason to have hung on to it. But I let it go. “We were in Newbury the other day, hoping to find you, and we discovered the memorial they’ve erected for your brother.”

  “Oh yes. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? I thought somebody would put up a memorial for all four of the people who were on Octavia, but I guess that’s not going to happen.”

  “Well, it’s early yet, Angela. Things like that take time.”

  “Tell me again why you were looking for me? You think the trophy might actually have been an alien artifact?”

  “It’s possible.” I glanced out at the moon. “If Rick had found another civilization somewhere, did he seem to you like a person who’d have kept that quiet?”

  “Not at all. It’s been a while since I’ve thought about it. But no, he’d have loved to come up with that kind of discovery.”

  “What can you tell me about him? What kind of guy was he?”

  “He was serious. Didn’t talk much, except when he was running tours for Galactic. I was on board one of them once, and I almost didn’t know him. He talked and laughed with the passengers. He was the perfect pilot to have for a long-term flight. After he retired from doing all the tours, he went back to being kind of somber. Even more than he’d been. He became even more intense after he started working for the Quantum Research Group. But that was who he was.”

  “How did he get assigned to Octavia?”

  “I don’t know. I never understood it. He liked being around people. Women, especially. When he told me about getting assigned to the space station, I was shocked. But he said it was just what he wanted.”

  “Angela, why did you leave Newbury?”

  “My husband. I got married.”

  “What does he do for a living?”

  “He’s an endocrinologist.”

  “May I ask where you live now?”

  “Castleton. It’s on the west coast.”

  “It must have been hard, leaving Newbury.”

  “Actually I wanted to get away from what had happened. Get to a place where they didn’t have a statue of my dead brother in the center of town.
I don’t know. Maybe that’s not it at all. Maybe I just needed a change. Harkin was willing, so we took off.”

  “Harkin’s your husband?”

  “Yes.”

  “You met him in Newbury?”

  “No. He was from Andiquar. We were dating while he was going through medical school. When he graduated he got an invitation to help set up a practice in Castleton. I was all for it.” She closed her eyes. “One person at the University Museum told me it was probably a joke of some sort.” She was talking about the silver trophy again. “She said there was no record of any such language. I just got tired keeping it around the house. Was that a mistake? Do you think it might actually have been worth something?”

  “No,” I said. “Probably not.”

  “Well, whatever. It’s gone.”

  “One more question, Angela. Rick owned an interstellar yacht.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “He eventually sold it, right?”

  “Yes. When he came back from the Orion Express job.”

  “Do you know who the buyer was?”

  “I have no idea, Chase.”

  “Okay. Something else: Rick’s avatar said he had a certificate from the Oceanside Hotel on Elysium. It explained what the trophy was about. That the hotel had issued it. Did you ever see it?”

  She needed a minute. “No,” she said finally. “I don’t recall anything like that. If I had, I wouldn’t have started running around thinking I had something from aliens. There was a lot of junk in Rick’s place. I just pretty much tossed everything.”

  VI.

  There is no adequate definition for love,

  No description that warns of its effect,

  No analysis that encompasses the look in a woman’s eyes,

  Or the passion that overwhelms a man’s senses.

  Love is all that matters,

  All else is decoration.

  —WALFORD CANDLES, “EMILY,” 1193

  I went back to the cottage, where I lay most of the night staring at the ceiling. Eventually I gave up trying to sleep, got up, and watched the sun rise through my kitchen windows while I ate a breakfast of grapes and raisin bread. Then I put on the news and collapsed into a recliner. The president was unhappy about charges of corruption he was receiving. That was apparently the only thing that was happening, but it was enough finally to put me under.