Enigma

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

  “There’s nothing for me to be afraid of,” Koi said, stiffening.

  “Sure there is. What if you get the evidence and he still won’t listen? Or maybe worse, what if you have to force him to realize he was wrong and you were right? How’s he going to react to that?”

  / don’t know, she thought unhappily. But she said nothing.

  “You’ve got to push him,” Guerrieri said, his tone changed from demanding to coaxing as if he sensed her ambivalence. “You’re the only one who has any real influence with him.”

  “I won’t use our relationship that way.”

  He scowled. “You mean you won’t risk your relationship.”

  “That’s not why.”

  “Then tell me what the reason is.”

  Oh, there’s a reason, she thought, a good one. But all she said was a curt, “None of your damn business.”

  “Fine,” Guerrieri said, turning his back on her and setting up the dulcimer on the desk. He lowered the working surface to a comfortable playing level and reached into the case for his mallets. “Just as long as you realize that I’m not going to tiptoe around him any more.”

  There was no point in her staying: Each had said what they had to say, yet left the other unconvinced. She walked out with the sound of steel strings in her ears, conscious that Guerrieri’s usually precise mallet strokes were marred by the ragged edge of his frustration.

  The wardroom was empty when Koi returned there, so she continued upship to the cabin she and Thackery shared. There she found him stretched out on the bunk, hands folded behind his head and one leg hooked over the other.

  “Did you folks finish?” she asked.

  “I postponed the briefing to tomorrow morning. With half the strategy team missing, there didn’t seem to be much point in continuing. What’s the story with Derrel?”

  “Mostly impatience, I think.”

  “He has doubts about what we’re doing.”

  She admitted, “If he were calling the shots, we wouldn’t be going to Talitha.”

  “If he wanted to call the shots, he should have signed on a different ship,” Thackery said harshly, and closed his eyes. “You two go back a long way together,” Koi said, surprised by his tone.

  “True but not relevant,” Thackery said, opening his eyes and propping himself up on his elbows. “So what do you think I should do about him?”

  “Does something need to be done?”

  “If he keeps challenging me in front of the crew, it will.”

  Cautiously, Koi asked, “What are the options you’re considering?”

  “Going to A-Lynx and releasing him from his contract. I wish I’d left him in Wenlock,” he said bitterly. Koi stared at Thackery curiously. “Did you come downship after us?” she asked with sudden insight.

  He nodded wordlessly.

  “Ah,” she said, understanding. “How much did you hear?”

  “I was a few minutes behind you.” Thackery sighed. “I heard enough to be grateful to you for supporting me. And enough to know that I can’t count on him anymore.”

  “Because he thinks for himself? Come on, Thack. Isn’t that why he’s here, to provide another viewpoint? If not, then what do you need the rest of us for?”

  “Are you siding with him?”

  “Do I have to choose sides? Look, I’ve got a better option than leaving him at A-Lynx. Why don’t you talk with him?”

  Thackery lay back and looked away. “No.”

  “You’re making more of this than it is.”

  “Am I?” Thackery said, sitting bolt upright. “He doesn’t believe, Amy. He wants us to turn back. He tried to turn you against me. Isn’t that enough? It’s almost as if he wants us to fail.”

  “I think he wants very much for us to succeed,” Koi said, as soothingly as she could. “Talk with him, Thack. This isn’t personal. It’s professional. You should still be able to talk about it.”

  Thackery shook his head emphatically. “No. I see no reason to give him a free shot at me. If he continues to be a problem, then I’ll have to do something. But until then, he can talk to the freezin’ walls.”

  “Barbrice?”

  The technoanalyst looked up from her lunch to see Guerrieri at her shoulder. “Yes?”

  “Come by my cabin when you’re done there.”

  “Sir?”

  “We need to talk,” Guerrieri said soberly. “As soon as you’re finished, all right?” Far from certain that it was, she echoed, “All right.” A few minutes later, she followed him downship.

  “I feel very uncomfortable doing this,” Mueller said nervously. “But I thought you should know.”

  “Go on,” Thackery said, resting his folded hands on his knee.

  “At first I thought he was going to try to lean on me for favors. Not that he has a reputation for that, but he seemed so—imperious, like he knew he was senior to me and he wanted me to remember it, too.”

  “So did he ask you for—favors?”

  “No. He asked me how I felt about the mission.”

  “And you said?”

  “I told him the truth—that I’m very happy to have been picked and have a chance to be part of this special project. Then he asked me what I thought about Talitha, about our chances of finding anything there.”

  “And?”

  “I told him I was very hopeful, that the way you had figured out what happened at 7 Herculis had given me even more confidence in you. Then he said, ‘There are some things I think you should know about Commander Thackery.’ ”

  Thackery listened impassively as the young surveyor recounted the rest of her conversation with Guerrieri. Twice, when she became embarrassed at repeating Guerrieri’s catalog of unflattering anecdotes, he calmly encouraged her to continue. Otherwise he was silent.

  “,.. that you couldn’t work with either of your commanders, and that the main reason you were given Munin was that it was a convenient way to be rid of you, that the Analysis Office didn’t take you seriously and that I shouldn’t either,” she concluded. “That’s when I walked out.”

  Eyes downcast, Thackery rolled a touchscreen stylus between his fingertips. “You’re right—I should know. And I thank you.”

  Her worried eyes flitted from one focus to another. “Will he know I told you?”

  “I’m afraid he probably will. But I can protect you from any repercussions. And I want you to know that I appreciate your loyalty, and I’ll remember it.”

  She smiled a nervous smile. “That’s not necessary, Commander.”

  “But it is appropriate,” he said. “You can go now, Barbrice. I have some things to think about.”

  For the showdown, Thackery chose the more formal surroundings of the ship’s library over the informality of his cabin. Guerrieri entered with his face cast into an emotionless mask, but his eyes were wary and alert. “You wanted to see me?”

  “Close the door,” Thackery said with a nod.

  “Oh—this is going to be one of those,” Guerrieri said as he complied. “Should I stand against the wall, or would you prefer a moving target?”

  “Just sit down.” Thackery waited until Guerrieri was settled, then continued. “I understand you’re having some trouble with what we learned at 7 Herculis.”

  “I’m having trouble with what you think you learned there.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Gladly. Amy did a beautiful little piece of work pulling together the threads of what happened at Wenlock. She may have done enough to start a revolution in FC theory. But you’ve twisted around her findings so they support your notions instead, brainwashed Barbrice into believing you, and intimidated Amy into backing off on her own discovery. On top of which, you’ve committed Munin to the least profitable search possible—nothing more or less than the kind of plodding, random survey we did on Descartes. We should be looking for Amy’s iceships, not your D’shanna.”

  “I thought you were with me on this. I thought that’s why you were along.”

&
nbsp; “Then I left you with a misimpression,” Guerrieri said, regarding Thackery with a level gaze. “I came not so much because I thought you were right, but because it seemed right to be going where you were going.”

  “So you never believed in the D’shanna?”

  “As an influence on the Sennifi, yes. As a galaxy-roaming superspecies trying to impose quarantine on human settlements, no. If the D’shanna are so afraid of letting us have spacecraft, explain why they let the Journans build Jiadur. Explain why they let us build Pride of Earth and the Pathfinders and all the ships that came after.”

  “Jiadur was a fluke. There was no evidence they were going to do such a thing until it was done—it happened in a span of forty years. As for us, they did stop us—the first time. They just didn’t do a thorough enough job to keep us from having a revival.”

  “It doesn’t wash, Thack. We’ve been all over the map now for four hundred years. If they were sharp enough to get to Sennifi and Wenlock at the right time to castrate them, they have to have taken notice of our ‘revival’ by now. Why are they leaving us alone?”

  “We have attracted their attention again—that’s why this is so urgent. Look at what happened to Dove.”

  “Dove had a freezin’ drive accident, for life’s sake. We have her own captain’s word for that. There’s no ambiguity in her last dispatch, nothing about any external causes. Why do you have to keep bending and stretching the truth?”

  “Why is it so important to you that I be wrong?”

  Guerrieri sighed. “It’s not important to me that you’re wrong, but you are wrong. The 7 Herculis and Sennifi civilizations died of natural causes, and so did the FC. I know it’s not as dramatic, but goddamnit, that’s the way it is.”

  “If I’d known you weren’t committed to the mission, I don’t know if I’d have picked you—”

  “If I’d known that was the only reason you picked me, I don’t think I’d have volunteered. Have you looked around yourself lately? You and I are the only ones of our generation on board. We’re the vets now, Thack. You never quite let me close enough to be your friend, but we still share something that no one else on board understands, not even Amy.”

  Seeing Thackery’s blank and uncomprehending expression, Guerrieri continued in a softer, sadder voice. “Or am I the only one who feels it? Am I the only one who remembers Rajesh and Queen Maud Land, or crowding into Tycho’s library to get our black ellipse? Am I the only one who remembers Mike and Jael? Damn it, I’m the last person you know from home.”

  “That has nothing to do with Wenlock, or Talitha—”

  “It has to do with how you’ve stopped listening to us since the Analysis Office put you over us.”

  “I haven’t stopped listening to you,” Thackery said defensively. “Damn it all, I was counting on you—you, and Amy, and Barbrice. That’s why this hurts so much.”

  “Then why bring us to Ursa Major? Why not follow up what Amy found? Why not look for the iceships oh other colonies?”

  “We are looking for the iceships. That’s why we’re on our way to Talitha.”

  “Not the D’shanna, damnit—the FC. We know they existed.”

  “I’m not interested in beginnings,” Thackery said stiffly. “I only care about the endings.”

  Guerrieri stared. “Since when?”

  “Since Sennifi.”

  “So you’ll look for the D’shanna to the exclusion of all else, no matter what else we might find or where else the markers might point.”

  “When we find the D’shanna, we’ll get the answers we need, and more.”

  “More? Like revenge? What would you do if you should find them? How would you settle your list of grievances?”

  “I’m not afraid of them. They didn’t make war on the colonies. They manipulated them. All we have to do is find them and expose them, and we’ll eliminate their power.”

  Guerrieri shook his head. “No. No matter what you had in mind, Munin was sent out to try to pave the way for Phase III. When you get back to that responsibility, I’ll work harder for you than anyone. But I have no intention of contributing to this exercise.”

  “Are you on strike, then?”

  “Call it what you like.”

  Thackery studied his hands as he considered. “I think you’ve come up with a workable solution,” he said at last. “You’re restricted from the bridge and the survey lab. You’ll be locked out of sensitive files in the library. And I’ll instruct the rest of the crew to treat you as though your clearance has been dropped from Active to Non-Service.”

  “You haven’t the authority to do that.”

  “If you’d prefer, I think we could manage to lock you into Level II isolation in F-5 for the duration. As far as you’re concerned, that should be authority enough.”

  “You’d go that far to insulate yourself from criticism?”

  “I’d go that far to protect myself from an unpredictable threat to my command and this ship.”

  “Locking me away won’t be enough.”

  “You’re the only one who seems to find what we’re engaged in intolerable.”

  Guerrieri shook his head. “I’m the only one who’s spoken up.”

  “Who, then? Who else?”

  Guerrieri only smiled. “You’ll hear from them, eventually.”

  As near as Thackery could tell, the pronouncement about Guerrieri sent a ripple of surprise through the ship, but created no real disruption. It could have been worse, except that Derrel himself respected the lines Thackery had drawn, apparently unwilling to sacrifice all his freedom to principle. As for the rest of the strategy team, Barbrice seemed more than willing to shun the new pariah. Even Amy had little to say, save regret that the split had become necessary. Though caution was still in order, it seemed the crisis had been averted, the disrupting influence banished.

  From Guerrieri’s perspective, the situation was very different. Being an outcast from the strategy team actually raised his status with the regular crew, with whom he began spending his time. Taken into their confidence, he learned the true depth of their misgivings. Thackery still had his defenders, but even they yearned for clearer explanations and more concrete goals Among the others there were one or two vocal detractors, and the rest were nervous, full of disquiet. As though placed on probation, Thackery was being watched closely, his every order analyzed and dissected, almost as though the commander’s paranoia were feeding back on itself in self-fulfilling prophecy.

  Guerrieri did what he could to put minds at ease, even to expressing more confidence in Thackery than he was sure he felt at the moment. But even as he did. he knew that he would not be able to keep the lid on. Unless Thackery regained their confidence, truth, half-truth, and rumor would simmer and bubble until they boiled over into fear.

  And what a frightened crew might do, Guerrieri did not want to consider.

  One week after Guerrieri’s demotion, Thackery and Koi were cuddling together, using each other as excuses not to rise and begin the day.

  “Can we talk about what happens after Talitha?” Koi asked, her head resting in the crook of his arm.

  “That depends on what we find there.”

  “What if we find nothing?”

  “As I said the other day, there are some excellent candidates for colonies in the Ursa Major Cluster.””

  “All of them well beyond the Phase II boundary. I don’t remember anything in the expedition Protocols that would allow us to take Munin out there.”

  “There isn’t that much of the Phase II zone left unexplored to test our ideas in. I’m sure the A.O. expected us to go beyond fifty lights.”

  “If so, wouldn’t they also have expected us to do it in the Cygnus octant?”

  She felt, rather than saw, Thackery’s slight shrug. “If we bring them back what they wanted, they won’t care where we’ve been.”

  “Even so, I think we should use the Kleine to get explicit authorization before we leave Talitha.”

  “Uh-
uh. I won’t give them the chance to say no,” Thackery said, gathering her in closer to him. “I won’t let the Committee or some A-Cyg bureaucrat stop me when I’m this close.”

  “Is that why you sent the dispatch you did from 7 Herculis? You hardly told them anything—”

  “Because I want to get there first. If we’d told them everything, they could have diverted Newton or Hubble from their A-Lynx missions. It isn’t enough to be in the right place. It has to be the right person, with the right understanding—or all we’ll have is another fiasco like Tycho at Sennifi.”

  Koi said nothing, and rolled on her side to turn her back to him. Thackery took it as an invitation to cuddle spoon-fashion, and reached around her to cup one of her breasts in his hand. He expected her to wriggle her buttocks against him, the next step in one of their patterns of foreplay. When she did not, he slid his hand down her belly toward the apex of her thighs. Just as his fingertips reached fine, downy hair, she turned again, this time onto her stomach, arms wrapped around the pillow on which her chin was bolstered. Puzzled, he drew back and propped his head on one elbow.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “That you once made me an offer I wish you’d make again,” she said. “I probably should have taken it the first time.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “About going back to Earth with you.” Even before he responded, she could sense his withdrawal. “That’s not possible now,” he said. “Isn’t it? When we’re finished at Talitha, we could go back to A-Cyg. Derrel could be released from his contract, and you and I could take some time for ourselves. I’d like you to show me Earth. What Jankowski said about heritage struck home with me.”

  “This is too important to go waiting.”

  “To me, you’re more important. We’re more important.” She hoped against hope that he would respond in kind. Thackery said nothing for a time. “You sound like you don’t think we’ll find anything at Talitha.”

  “I don’t think we will.”

  “And you want us to turn around and leave empty-handed?”

  “I want to get you out of the Service while you’re still a whole person, while I can still see the person I saw at Sennifi,” she said, sitting up and facing him. “Don’t you see what you’re doing? Keeping secrets from the Planning Office—exceeding your authority—taking every disagreement as a betrayal—what’s happening to you?”