Seeker

by Jack McDevitt

“Oh, yes. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that.”

  Amy tugged at my arm. “What’s it worth?”

  Alex counseled patience. “Jacob, the other term is probably the ship’s name.”

  “I think that is correct, sir. It translates as Searcher. Or Explorer. Something along those lines.”

  The lamps went off. Alex lifted the object gently and placed it on the desk. He looked at it through a magnifier. “It’s in reasonably good condition,” he said.

  Amy could hardly be restrained. “Thank God. I needed something to go right.” Alex smiled. She was already thinking what she would be able to buy. “How can it be that old?” she asked. “My drapes are new, and they’re already falling apart.”

  “It’s a ceramic,” he told her. “Ceramics can last a long time.” He produced a soft cloth and began gently to wipe the thing.

  She asked again how much we would pay.

  Alex made the face he always used when he didn’t want to answer a question directly. “We’re not normally buyers,” he said. “We’ll do some research, Amy. Then test the market. But I’d guess, if you’re patient, it will bring a decent price.”

  “A couple hundred?”

  Alex smiled paternally. “I wouldn’t be surprised,” he said.

  She clapped her hands. “Wonderful.” She looked at me, and turned back toward Alex. “What do I do next?”

  “You needn’t do anything. Let’s take this one step at a time. First we want to find out precisely what we have.”

  “All right.”

  “Have you proof of ownership?”

  Uh-oh. Her face changed. Her lips parted and the smile vanished. “It was given to me.”

  “By your former boyfriend.”

  “Yes. But I own it. It’s mine.”

  Alex nodded. “Okay. We’ll have to provide a document to go with it. To certify that you have the right to make the sale.”

  “That’s okay.” She looked uncertain.

  “Very good. Why don’t you leave it with us, and we’ll see what more we can find out, and get back to you.”

  “What do you think?” I asked when she was gone.

  He looked pleased. “Nine thousand years? Somebody will be delighted to pay substantially for the privilege of putting this on the mantel.”

  “You think it’s really from a ship?”

  He was looking at the cup through the magnifier again. “Probably not. It comes out of the era when they were just getting interstellars up and running. It’s more likely to have been part of a giveaway program or to have been sold in a souvenir shop. Not that it matters: I doubt it would be possible to establish whether it was actually on shipboard or not.”

  What we really wanted, of course, was that yes, it had traveled with the Searcher, and that preferably it had belonged to the captain. Ideally, we would also find out that the Searcher was in the record somewhere, that it had accomplished something spectacular, or better yet, gotten wrecked, and, to top everything, its captain would be known to history.

  “See to it, Chase. Put Jacob on the job, and find out whatever you can.”

  THREE

  There is an almost mystical attraction for us in the notion of the lost world, of an Atlantis out there somewhere, a place where the routine problems of ordinary life have been banished, where everyone lives in a castle, where there’s a party every night, where every woman is stunning and every man noble and brave.

  —Lescue Harkin,

  Memory, Myth, and Mind, 1376

  The Third Millennium was a long time ago, and the record is notoriously incomplete. We know who the political leaders were, we know when and how the wars started (if not always why), we know the principal artists, literary movements, religious conflicts. We know which nation threatened to do what to whom. But we’ve little idea what people’s lives were like, how they spent their time, what they really thought about the world in which they lived. We know of assassinations, but we don’t always know the rationale. Or even whether, when they happened, ordinary citizens mourned or breathed a sigh of relief.

  Nine thousand years is a long time. And nobody except a few historians really thinks much about it.

  So Jacob went looking for the Searcher. When he found nothing, he started recovering detailed accounts of the more famous interstellars, on the possibility we’d find mention of a similar name. “Maybe we don’t quite have the translation right,” he said. “English was a slippery language.”

  So we went through accounts of the Avenger, which had played a prominent role in the first interstellar war between Earth and three of its colonies in the early thirty-third century. And the Lassiter, the first deep-space corsair. And the thirtieth century Karaki, the largest ship of its time, which had hauled a record load of capital goods out to Regulus IV to get that colony started. And the Chao Huang, which had taken a team of doctors to Maracaibo when, against all expectation, human settlers had been stricken by a native plague. (This was at a time when the experts still believed disease germs could only attack creatures evolved in the same biosystem.)

  There was endless information about the Tokyo, the first interstellar to vanish into the transdimensions. Never heard from again. There were pictures of its captain and first mate, and of various passengers, of the dining area and the engine room. Everything you wanted to know. Except where it went.

  And the most famous of all the starships, the Centaurus, which made the first transdimensional flight to Earth’s neighboring star, requiring seven weeks to complete the journey one way. You have to smile at that: Seven weeks to go four light-years.

  But there was no mention of a Searcher. Or an Explorer. There was a Voyager. Three of them, in fact. A popular name, obviously. And even a Hunter.

  Few physical objects have survived from the Third Millennium. Most of them tend to be either ceramic, like Amy Kolmer’s cup, or plastic. There’s an axiom in our business that the cheapest stuff lasts longest.

  I didn’t know anybody who was an expert on the era, so I checked the Registry and picked one at random, an assistant professor at Barcross University. His name was Shepard Marquard. He looked young, but he’d written extensively on the period and been recognized by his peers.

  I called and had no problem getting through. Marquard was a good-looking guy, tall and redheaded, more personable than his pictures had led me to expect. “Most of the naval and shipping records from that era are lost,” he told me. “But I’ll see what I can do. I’ll look through what I have and get back to you.”

  The following day, I took virtual tours of half a dozen museums and spent a lot of time wandering through third-millennium artifacts. I saw a plastic case that might once have been a container for makeup, an electronic device whose use could only be guessed at, a woman’s pair of high-heeled shoes, a couple of pens, a lamp, a sofa, a sheet of paper in laminated plastic described as a “classified section from a newspaper.” I didn’t know what a newspaper was, and neither did anybody else I was able to talk to. (Marquard told me later that it was information printed on paper and distributed physically across a wide area.) There was a man’s hat with a visor to keep the sun off. And a coin with an eagle on one side. Metal money. United States of America.

  In God We Trust. It was dated 2006, and the data display said it was the second-oldest coin in existence.

  I wandered through the exhibits, and when I’d seen everything I cared about, I settled into a reading room and opened one of the data files.

  The Third Millennium was a turbulent era. Earth was crowded well beyond capacity. Its inhabitants seemed to be constantly at war with each other, over politics, real estate, or religion. Political systems were generally corrupt and prone to collapse.

  There were serious environmental problems left over from the Industrial Age, and the deterioration of the global climate seemed to coincide with political leaders who grew increasingly ruthless. The worst of these was Marko III, known to his American subjects as The Magnificent.

 
Midway through the twenty-fifth century, while Marko was jailing and killing as his mood dictated, Diane Harriman did her groundbreaking work in the dimensional structure of the space-time continuum, and twenty years later Shi-Ko Han and Edward Cleaver gave us the interstellar drive.

  Another four years, and we’d discovered the first habitable world. It’s not surprising to read that a lot of volunteers signed up to head for the frontier.

  I was getting ready to go home for the day when Jacob passed a call to me. “Chase,” said a familiar voice. “I think I have what you want.”

  It was Marquard. “You’ve identified the Searcher,” I said.

  “Yeah.” There was an odd intonation. “May I ask why you wanted to know?”

  I told him about the cup. He listened without comment, and when I’d finished, the silence stretched out. “Your turn,” I said finally. “What have you got?”

  “A surprise. Could you arrange to come by the school?”

  “Can’t you just tell me what you have?”

  “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you join me for dinner?”

  Subtle as an avalanche. “Dr. Marquard, I really haven’t time to go all the way out to Barcross.” Not that I wouldn’t have enjoyed it, but it’s a long run.

  “Call me Shep. And I guarantee you’ll find it worth your while.”

  Barcross is a large diamond-shaped island, probably best known as a summer resort for singles. Years ago I went through a phase during which it was an occasional part of my social calendar. It was part surf, part moonlight, part dream. The kind of place that felt as if the love of your life was in the wings somewhere. I’m a bit more realistic now, but I still felt a touch of regret as I came in low over the ocean and looked down at the empty beaches and the villas beyond. The sun had just dipped below the horizon, and lights were beginning to come on.

  The island is engineered. It’s arranged with consecutively rising terraces as you move inshore, so that everyone, theoretically, has a view of the sea. It was off-season. A few hardy souls moved along ramps and walkways. Most of the shops and restaurants were closed.

  Base population was forty thousand, with an additional forty distributed among surrounding islands. The university served seven thousand students, who came from all over the archipelago and from the mainland. It had a good reputation, especially for the sciences. If you planned to be a physician, it was exactly the right place to start.

  The campus spread across two broad terraces, immediately below the municipal buildings, which occupied the highest point on the island. I turned the skimmer over to the guide, which brought me down onto a landing pad adjoining a dome. The dome housed a student center, several shops, and a restaurant. The restuarant was Benjamin’s. I remembered it from a long time ago, when it had been down near the beach.

  Marquard surprised me by appearing from a side door. He strode quickly out onto the pad, opened the hatch, and provided a hand to help me down. In an age when chivalry ranks up there as just one more antiquity, it was a good way to start things off.

  Barcross has probably the loveliest campus on the planet. It’s all obelisks and tortoiseshell buildings and pyramids, with a spectacular command of the sea. But it was cold that day, and a sharp blast of wind stayed at our backs and all but blew us into the student center.

  “It’s good to meet you, Chase,” he said, steering us into Benjamin’s. “I appreciate your coming.” He was wearing gray slacks and a blue seashell shirt beneath a white jacket. He looked good, a tall, dashing type with a sense of humor and maybe a little bit shy, out for a night on the town.

  We sat down and picked up our menus. Benjamin’s hadn’t changed much over the years. The dining area was bigger than in the old days, when the restaurant was located on a pier. And the selections had changed, of course. But it was still cozy, still subdued, and it still featured a seafaring ambience. There were sails and wheels and compasses scattered about, and one wall opened onto a virtual lighthouse and storm. In addition, they still had images of celebrity entertainers, including the classic one of Cary Webber standing outside the restaurant on the pier, with the ocean at her back. She looked lost. Cary had been a romantic favorite, but she died young, of course, and thereby became immortal.

  We ordered wine and some breadsticks. When the server had gone, Marquard leaned across the table and whispered that I was striking. “But of course,” he said, “you already know that.”

  I wondered if I was in for a long evening. I said thanks, propped my elbows on the table, folded my hands, and rested my chin on them. “Shep,” I said, “what do you have on the Searcher?”

  “Wrong translation, Chase.” He looked around as if to ensure that we were alone—we were, save for a group of three or four students seated over by the window—and lowered his voice. “It’s Seeker.” He said it as if it had special significance.

  “Seeker,” I said.

  “That’s correct.”

  “Okay.”

  “Chase, I don’t think you understand. This might be the Seeker.”

  “I’m sorry, Shep. I have no idea what we’re talking about. What’s the Seeker?”

  “It’s one of the ships that carried the Margolians off to their colony.”

  “The Margolians.”

  He smiled at my ignorance. “They left Earth during the Third Millennium. Fled, I guess, is a better term. They told nobody where they were going. Went out on their own with five thousand people. And we never heard from them again. They’re the lost colony.”

  Atlantis. Intava. Margolia. Light dawned. “They’re a myth, aren’t they?”

  “Not really. It happened.”

  “They didn’t care much for the home world.”

  “Chase, they lived in a society that was nominally a republic—”

  “—But—?”

  “—It controlled the churches, and used the schools to indoctrinate rather than teach. Patriotism was defined as unwavering support for the leader and the flag. Anything short of that was disloyal. The decisions of those in authority were not to be questioned.”

  “What happened if you did? You got jailed?”

  “Hellfire.”

  “What?”

  “You had a divinely imposed responsibility to submit to the will of the president. Render to Caesar.”

  “That’s not what ‘Render to Caesar’ means.”

  “It got twisted a bit. Failure to support the political establishment, and for that matter the social establishment, in thought as well as in act, constituted a serious offense against the Almighty.”

  “Weren’t there any skeptics out there?”

  “Sure. But you don’t hear much about them.”

  It was hard to believe people could ever have lived like that. “So it’s a famous ship?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Are you telling me the Seeker never came back, either?”

  “That’s correct.” He leaned toward me, and the candlelight flashed off a row of white teeth. “Chase. If this cup you told me about is really from the Seeker, you couldn’t have done better.” The wine and breadsticks arrived. “You say a woman walked in off the street and just presented you with it? Without any explanation?”

  “Yes. That’s pretty much what happened.” I was thinking how pleased Alex would be.

  “I don’t suppose you have it with you?”

  I smiled. “If I’d tried to take it off the premises, Alex would have had cardiac arrest.”

  “And you’re sure it’s nine thousand years old?”

  “That’s the reading we got.”

  “Incredible.” He handed me my glass and lifted his own. “To the Margolians,” he said.

  Indeed. “So what really happened to them?”

  He shrugged. “Nobody knows.”

  The wine was good. Candles. Firelight. And good wine. And good news. It was a hard combination to beat. “They vanished completely?”

  “Yes.” The waiter was back. I tend to eat light meals, even when some
one else is buying. I settled for a fruit salad.

  The waiter asked whether I was certain, and assured me that the Cordelia breakers were excellent.

  “The Seeker,” Marquard continued, “left Earth December 27, 2688, carrying approximately nine hundred people. Two years later they were back, and took off another nine hundred.”

  “There was a third trip as well, wasn’t there?” I was beginning to remember the story.

  “Yes. The other ship was the Bremerhaven. They made three flights each. Carried more than five thousand people out to the colony world.”

  “And nobody knew where it was? How’s it even possible? You can’t leave the station without filing a movement report.”

  “Chase, we’re talking about the beginning of the interstellar age. They didn’t have many rules then.”

  “Who owned the ship?”

  “The Margolians. According to the record, it was refitted after each flight.”

  “That doesn’t sound as if it was in the best of shape.”

  “I don’t know what it took to maintain an interstellar in that era.”

  “Was a search conducted for them?”

  “Hard to say. The records aren’t clear.” He finished off his wine and gazed at the rim of the glass, which sparkled in the candlelight. “Chase, the authorities probably didn’t try very hard. These were people who didn’t want to be found.”

  “Why not?”

  An easy smile spread over his features. He did look good. He sat a few moments, admiring my charms, or my physical attributes, or the breadsticks. He signaled his approval as the waiter showed up with a dish full of nuts and grapes. “They were perceived as troublemakers. They wanted to stay out of sight, and the government was happy to oblige them.”

  “How were they troublemakers?” I asked.

  “You ever been to Earth, Chase?”

  “No, as a matter of fact. I’ve been wanting to make the trip for years. Just never got around to it.”

  “You should do it. That’s where it all began. For an historian, the trip to Earth is de rigueur.

  “You go there, and you see the great monuments. Pyramids, statues, dams. The Kinoi Tower. The Mirabulis. Stop by Athens, where Plato and his colleagues launched the civilized world. Visit London, Paris, Berlin. Washington, and Tokyo. St. Petersburg. Famous places, once. Centers of power in their day. You know what they’re like now?”