The woman waved for me to go ahead. So I went up to the counter.
“May I help you, ma’am?” Barker asked.
“I’m Chase Kolpath,” I said. “From Rainbow Enterprises.” I handed him the books.
“Oh,” he said as his face lit up. I remember wishing that it was my presence that had generated that effect. He put the package on the counter, opened it, and lifted each volume, nodded, and then placed them all back down. “Thank you.” He produced a receipt and handed it to me. “What was your name again, please?”
“Chase Kolpath.”
The door opened and another customer walked in.
“Thank you, Ms. Kolpath. You know what these are, right?”
“Yes.”
“I appreciate the prompt service.” He hesitated. “If you don’t mind my asking, are you an associate of Mr. Benedict?”
“Yes, I am.”
“And you came all the way out here from Andiquar? Instead of simply shipping them?”
It’s not that far, but I could see what was happening. “We wanted to make sure they got here okay.”
“Ms. Kolpath, I know it’s a bit late for this, but I hate to see you just turn around and go back. May I take you to dinner? If you haven’t eaten already? There’s an excellent café right across the street.”
X.
Let the heavens open, the rains pour down,
Let the oceans roll in and scatter their empty shells,
Let the mountains erupt, and the fire boil forth,
We don’t care.
We know why these things happen
And we fear them no more.
—WALFORD CANDLES, “NIGHT DREAMS,” 1201
The café was the Prime. It was an elegant club with a beautiful view of the Melony. The menu had no prices because its customers weren’t supposed to be concerned with trivia. A young woman served as hostess, which is expected in the better restaurants. There were real waiters, which is also rare. When we walked in, a piano player was in the middle of “An Evening with You.”
Jasmine candles illuminated the interior. The place was crowded; the hostess informed us a seat would be available in a few minutes. “Is it always like this?” I asked.
It was just after six. “I guess we didn’t time this very well.” Chad’s eyes brightened. “They need a VIP section.”
The walls were covered with prints from the previous century. Some were art deco; others were landscapes and portraits of people in formal dress. I wondered if Chad knew any of them, and managed to look surprised when he said he didn’t.
Eventually we found our way to a table, ordered, and sat back. The pianist was doing “Love in the Elms.” A young couple that was just leaving danced the last few steps. Others applauded.
“I noticed,” he said, “that you’re a star pilot.”
“How did you know?”
“I looked you up.” He hooked his hands together and braced his chin on them. His smile lit up the room. “I didn’t want to go out with a strange woman.”
“Especially to a place like this.”
“How’d you get started, Chase? Why’d you become a pilot?”
“My mom was one.”
“Really? Is she still doing this stuff?”
“No,” I said. “When I got my license, she talked her boss into giving her job to me. Then she retired.”
“Her boss was Alex?”
“It was Gabriel Benedict. Alex’s uncle.”
“Oh, okay.”
“Actually, she didn’t retire exactly. She wanted to spend time with my father.”
“And she never went back?”
“No. She tells me that life on the farm is the ideal existence.”
“So your dad’s a farmer?”
“Not exactly. I was overstating things a bit. They just have a place in the country. A few goats and a dog.”
“Goats?”
“My mom’s always had a thing about goats. Don’t ask me why.”
“So what does your father do?”
“Physical workouts, mostly.”
“That’s it?”
“He concentrates on enjoying life. He says how you only get one shot and you shouldn’t waste it working.”
Chad’s grin kept getting larger. He couldn’t decide whether I was serious. “How about you?” he asked. “You thinking about heading into the countryside yourself at some point?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You going to stay with being a pilot?”
“Probably. I’ve never really thought seriously about going in another direction. I enjoy what I do, and I have a good boss.”
Our drinks arrived. Chad raised a glass in my direction. “Here’s to you, Chase, and to Gabriel and Alex. If you didn’t work for them, I’d probably never have met you.”
• • •
A few nights later, Alex took Olivia Hill to dinner. The following morning he told us how much he’d enjoyed it. “She’s a treasure,” he said. “She belongs to the National Historical Society, writes poetry for their magazine, and is one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. She has a picture of Karen Bianchi on a bookshelf in her living room.”
“Who’s Karen Bianchi?” I asked.
“A close friend of Charlotte’s. And another avid chess player. I guess that’s no surprise.” Alex fell silent for a moment. “She blames DPSAR for what happened and suspects they’re hiding something.”
“You think there’s anything to that?”
He sat quietly for a moment, stirring his breakfast. “Probably not. But I wish we could do something.”
“You did the right thing last week,” Gabe said.
“What was that?”
“Not charging her. You not only swallowed your commission; you paid for the chess set.”
“Come on, Gabe. How could I have taken her money? I’m just glad we were able to get it.”
• • •
Gabe had ordered an upgrade for his printer. It arrived, and I took it back to him. He was in his office, looking through reports on current archeological efforts being made across the Confederacy. When you have fourteen worlds politically joined—probably seventy colonies and way stations where efforts to establish permanent outposts have a broad history ranging from dazzling success to crash landings, with all that happening across a sweep of ten thousand years—you’re going to have a lot of archeological sites. “You setting up another mission, Gabe?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about it. Something I can get in before I go back to the university.” Gabe loved teaching. Seminars were his style. His classroom presentations morphed into conversations with students. It was his tactic for igniting enthusiasm.
“Anything particular in mind?”
“To be honest, I don’t feel like doing any more interstellars for a while. I’m tempted to go to Ironda and just do some digging.” Ironda was a small continent on the other side of the world, named after the politically anarchist group that had initially settled there. The problem with an anarchic perspective, of course, is that anything it establishes is likely to have a short life span. The Irondans were at odds with one another for half a century before the movement collapsed. The turmoil, however, increased the value of artifacts. Especially personal items associated with the leaders, all of whom tended to be authoritarian. Gabe had always been fascinated by them.
“You want me to go along?”
“I’m probably not going to bother, Chase. At the moment I’m more interested in the Octavia business. Did you know there’s a science museum in Calvekia that used to have a virtual display of the place? Patrons could sit inside the space station and watch what was going on. They shut it down after Octavia got lost. I asked them if they could set it up for me.”
“Are they going to do it?”
He delivered that in-charge smile. How could they not? It reminded me of a time when my mom was his pilot and I was just going along for the ride, that we’d gone to the museum in
Calvekia to donate artifacts. It’s a long ride, down the coast, fifteen hundred kilometers south of Andiquar. I think there were several artifacts but the only one I can remember clearly was a radio from the twenty-third-century CE that he’d found at the site of the original Mars colony. And there was something connected with Marcellus Rienke. A notebook computer. For those who don’t follow classical theater, Rienke was the fourth-millennium playwright who’s best known for The Night That Victor Arrived.
“Why’d they shut the Octavia display down?” I asked. “I’d think there’d have been a lot more interest in the thing after it disappeared.”
“I’d have thought so too. But I guess the interest just fell off.”
“Is Alex going?”
“Yes.”
“You guys are still hung out about the space station, aren’t you?”
“I think we both feel that the families of the people who were lost deserve an answer. So do a lot of other people with connections to it.”
“I doubt you’ll get one by going down to the museum. What’s its name?”
“The Corvey Institute. And you’re probably right. But it’s worth trying. If we watch them at work, see how they operated, we might come up with an idea. You want to come along? We need a driver.” He smiled. The skimmer doesn’t need much help.
“Sure,” I said. “When are we leaving?”
“Tomorrow.”
• • •
Calvekia was an hour and a half from Andiquar. We left in the late morning, rising into a bright sunlit day, turned south, and headed down the coast. Gabe settled in with something from the skimmer’s library. Alex had brought some reading along on his commlink. “What is it?” I asked.
He grinned. “Wormhole Research for Nitwits.”
“How’s it going?”
“It’s okay. Brackett, the author, says that some black holes have wormholes. Or at least one does.”
“I think we already know that. We’re not planning on going through it at any point, are we?”
That caught Gabe’s attention. Alex laughed and traded glances with him. “No,” Gabe said. “Not really. If I recall, there was a lot of excitement about the research when they first put Octavia in orbit.” He shook his head. “That just seems like a month ago. You weren’t much older than a kid.”
Nobody spoke for several minutes. Then Gabe started breathing loudly, the way he does when he thinks a conversation has gone off the rails. “You know,” he said, “we’ve had interstellars for thousands of years, and most of the galaxy is still unknown country. I’m not sure I understand why there’s so much enthusiasm about finding a way to cross over to Andromeda. Let alone find a new universe.” He looked in my direction. “I’m talking here preferably about one with stars.”
Nobody likes to talk about this, but we live in a dark age for science. And it’s never going to change. We still talk about research, but it’s really, as someone once said, not much more than stamp collecting. Scientists get excited by life-forms nobody’s ever seen before, and add them to the catalog. And we visit new worlds and record the differences among them and whatever else we encounter. Blufield has a wider oxygen-nitrogen split than any other Earth-type planet. Parmentier has the widest ranges of temperatures. Barnicle has the highest mountain. And that’s what constitutes serious science today. The remaining questions that have evaded us for thousands of years are still there, and probably always will be: How big is the universe? Does it have an edge? And if so, what would that look like? And what came before the big bang? I guess the bottom line will always be whether life has meaning.
I don’t think there’s been a serious scientific breakthrough for centuries. And I suspect that was the reason for the enthusiasm about wormholes. Most of the people who used to become scientists are now probably training as architects.
• • •
The Corvey Institute is located in the center of Crystopolis. Cities on Rimway, of course, and for that matter throughout the Confederacy, are generally unlike cities on the home world. They are not crowded, they are not tight clusters of skyscrapers jammed together, and they are not places where kids grow up thinking that concrete is the natural condition of the ground, where trees and bushes are occasional ornaments and fields are connected to sports.
Crystopolis is a typical example of the interstellar city. Groves, meadows, and parks are everywhere. There are only a handful of modest-sized towers, all rising with a kind of simplistic utility, all surrounded by greenery. Columns are rare, in fact almost nonexistent, as are domes, arcades, cornices, and porticos. We do seem to have a taste, though, for spires. Trolleys run almost silently. Some cities use them on bridges to connect rooftops, though Crystopolis is not one of them.
We came down in the institute’s parking area, went inside, and made our way to the director’s office. The secretary’s desk invited us to be seated and informed us the director would be with us shortly.
“You know him, Gabe?” Alex asked.
“More or less. I’ve been over here a couple times as a guest speaker. When I called yesterday, though, I couldn’t get past the AI.”
“How long’s it been shut down?” I asked.
“They tell me we’re the first people who will see it in about two years, other than science or historical groups.”
“Good thing we have you with us,” said Alex.
• • •
The curtains were drawn in Malcolm Denver’s office, which was decorated with framed certificates expressing appreciation for his work in archeological and scientific fields and framed photos depicting him conversing with persons of obvious significance. There was also a family portrait of him standing on a beach with his wife and two kids. And a gilded engraved cup denoting him as the winner of the 1431 Harbor Trophy. We’d been there about ten minutes when he came in, immediately recognized Gabe, and extended his hand. “It’s good to see you again,” he said. He was a thin, placid man, well into his later years but still with a long way to go. His hair was steel gray, his eyes stern, and his manner distant. He was casually dressed, with a blue shirt pulled loose over pale gray pants.
“Good to see you too, Malcolm. It’s been a while. This is my nephew, Alex. And our associate Chase Kolpath.”
He smiled politely in my direction without softening his expression, and adjusted the curtains to let more light into the room. Then he sat down in an armchair opposite Gabe. “I understand you’re interested in the Octavia VR display.”
“That’s correct,” said Gabe. “I hope we’re not creating an inconvenience.”
“No, no. We’re pleased to have the opportunity to help.” He did not look as if that were true. “May I ask the purpose of this?”
“I suspect everyone’s interested in what actually happened, Malcolm. I wonder if you have any theories about it?”
He pushed back into his chair. “We just don’t have anything to base a theory on. Octavia station was a Cherasco model. At last count there were eleven of them in orbit, but none around a black hole.”
“Why not?”
“I guess because wormhole research is expensive. But the key point here is that the Cherasco stations have been in position for a substantial number of years. Octavia is the only one that ever had a problem. So there’s no reason to believe there’s a defect anywhere. I’m not saying it couldn’t be. But there’s no indication of what it might have been.” He took a moment and chewed on his upper lip. “Have you heard of Reggie Greene?”
“Charlotte Hill’s former boyfriend,” said Alex.
“That’s correct.” The appearance of disinterest changed to disapproval. “Please understand, I’m not offering this as anything supported by evidence.” Gabe’s eyebrows rose but Alex leaned forward. “Of the four victims,” Denver continued, “Charlotte Hill drew most of the attention and sympathy. That’s probably because she was the only woman on board. And she was young. I’m sure you’re aware she was apparently pretty talented. Anthony Kingston predicted a brilli
ant future for her.”
“Who’s Anthony Kingston?” asked Gabe.
“A physicist who specialized in quantum research. He was stricken by the loss of Octavia and suffered heart failure at the height of the event. He was also a close friend of Womack’s. And he knew Housman as well. It was a terrible blow for him.”
“What,” asked Alex, “can you tell us about Greene?”
“He was the closest thing to a suspect who emerged from the investigation. He was a onetime boyfriend of Charlotte’s who turned into a stalker. We know that he visited Octavia on at least one occasion.”
“You mean,” said Alex, “he boarded the station?”
“No. He simply turned up in the area. Tried to start a radio conversation with Charlotte. It apparently went nowhere.”
“This was reported by the station?”
“Yes. By Harding, I believe. He said the guy wasn’t actually visiting, just hanging around in the area, trying to get a conversation started with Charlotte. She apparently didn’t respond very well. The thing that raised eyebrows is that he was out in a family-owned yacht at the time of the disappearance. But there’s no record of his having been anywhere close to Octavia then. On the other hand, there’s no record of where he was. He had a girlfriend with him who swore they weren’t involved with or anywhere close to the space station. They were, she said, just out sightseeing. She passed every lie detector test. As did Greene. And the AI supported the same story. So unless they were able to figure a way to rig the AI without its being found out, their story was untouchable.”
“The black hole,” said Gabe, “is forty light-years from here. Do I have that right?”
“From here? Yes, forty-one actually. There was a pretty thorough investigation. A couple of vehicles from other stations could have reached the area at the time of the disappearance, but they were cleared after their AIs were checked. Nevertheless, it does seem likely the station was attacked.”
Octavia Gone Page 10
