Firebird

by Jack McDevitt

He smiled. “No. I’d have liked it if he had been.”

  A hologram appeared in the center of the room. Reporters at one of the terminals. Hurling questions at a woman in a StarCorps uniform. “They’re saying that it wasn’t a standard drive, Commander. Is it possible it was an alien?”

  “Did you actually see the thing, Commander?”

  “What did it look like to you?”

  She held out her hands. “One at a time, please.” They quieted. “I can’t believe you guys are asking me seriously about aliens.” She smiled. Foolish notion. “Give us a little time, and I’m sure we’ll figure out what happened out there this morning. To start with, I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be a Mute.”

  “Well,” I said, “Mutes are aliens.”

  “Not anymore.” Alex looked amused. He poured two glasses of orange juice and passed one over. “This one never amounted to much. Tippimaru’s a small out-of-the-way place, and nobody pays much attention to what goes on there. But they never did come up with an explanation.”

  “Did they check with the Mutes?”

  “Yes. They said it wasn’t one of theirs.” He sat back, looked out at the morning sun. “I think we should do a little traveling, Chase.”

  “Tippimaru?”

  “No. Remember Tereza Urbanova?”

  “Umm. Not exactly.”

  “She was the Ops officer at Sanusar.”

  “Okay. Yes, of course.”

  “Jacob found an interesting posting about her online.”

  “Really?”

  “Her husband is quoted by a friend as saying she never got over the sighting.”

  “Why not?” I asked. It wasn’t as if the incident had threatened the station.

  “I don’t know. But she’s still at Sanusar. Retired now.”

  We watched every available visual involving Robin that we could find. He gave out awards, addressed community gatherings, presided over graduations. He was an accomplished speaker and invariably won over his audience right from the start because he consistently made them, rather than himself, the center of his remarks. If the audience was composed primarily of teachers and librarians, he inevitably pointed out that it was teachers and librarians who had given us civilization. On one occasion we watched him talk to a crowd of law-enforcement officials, and he observed that it was the police who held civilization together. With engineers and architects, he doted on the sheer joy of living in a modern city, with its combination of convenience and majesty.

  He was good.

  The Carmichael Club was a group of mathematicians who’d loved him, and apparently had invited him in at every opportunity. They took particular pleasure in jousting with him. They tended to talk about a hidden universe rather than an alternate one. And during the Q&A sessions, he was invariably asked the off-the-wall questions that everyone enjoyed. Was entanglement evidence of another level of cosmic law? Had he yet found a bridge for crossing over to another reality? If there was an alternate Chris Robin out there somewhere, was there any chance he was a lawyer?

  “But here’s something I wanted you to see,” said Alex.

  At one of the Carmichael events, a young woman with auburn hair got the floor for a moment. “In all seriousness, Professor Robin,” she said, “you often speak of blue sky science. You’re enthusiastic about concepts that may always be beyond our reach. How much effort are you willing to expend, how far are you willing to go, on, say, the shadow universe, before you concede that no proof is possible?”

  Robin nodded. “How far am I willing to go? What’s my transportation look like?”

  Laughter rippled through the audience. “Whatever you like.”

  “Okay. Whatever it takes. Put me in the Constellation, and I’ll ride to the other side of the Milky Way. If I’m on foot, I’ll walk a thousand kilometers, if I have to, to get the result I need.”

  Someone in front jumped in: “Why a thousand kilometers?”

  “Because I’ll be headed south, into better weather, and a thousand kilometers will bring me more or less to the shoreline.” That got more laughter. Then he continued: “I guess what I’m trying to say, Catherine, in my mangled way, is that the chase is never over.”

  “So, Alex,” I said, “what did we learn from that?”

  “Hold on. Here’s something from an address to undergraduates at Que Pakka University. Robin had been telling them how shy he’d been as a graduate student, and how important it was that he’d learned to trust himself, how it was something they all needed to do. “Until you believe in yourself,” he said, “no one else will believe in you. Except maybe your mother. No one else will ever take you seriously.”

  A male student, moments later, commented that it was hard to believe that Robin had ever been shy. “You’ve come a long way, Professor,” he said.

  Robin nodded. “A thousand kilometers. And I had to. Or I would never have had the opportunity to speak with you.”

  “He likes the reference,” I said. “A thousand kilometers.”

  “I found six other times that he used it.”

  “Okay. So what do we take from that?”

  “All eight occasions occur between 1389 and 1393. I couldn’t find any prior to that period.”

  “I still don’t see—”

  “I know. It probably means nothing. But it’s worth keeping in mind. It certainly seems to have been in his.”

  Alex went on the Kile Ritter Show that evening, where he was his usual charming self while describing his interest in the missing physicist and how he certainly didn’t want to suggest that Robin had walked across a bridge into an alternate reality, but of course that was what some people thought. “The problem with a lot of our critics,” he said, “is that their minds are closed. Shut down. Anything that doesn’t fit easily into their worldview, they won’t even consider as a possibility. Kile, as you know, that’s not the way science works.”

  Three days later, we held the auction. The books, especially the ones with the more outrageous handwritten comments by Robin, brought in most of the money. That was no surprise. They had the personal touch that most of the other items lacked. It was why a functioning AI, that could have re-created conversations with Robin, would have been worth a small fortune. The Carpathian hat also did well. (Robin had actually owned two. He had apparently been wearing the other one when he went missing. It was just as well, Alex said. A lone Carpathian hat would be more valuable than the total for two of them.)

  The auction was held in a center-city hotel. Alex had several of the pictures enhanced, and they were projected onto the walls. One that particularly caught my interest was an idyllic image of Robin and his wife standing arm in arm under a tree. It was early evening, and they were looking out to sea. A sailboat was tacking away toward the setting sun, and it seemed somehow suggestive of what would later happen.

  We framed a number of the pictures, and they went, too. Along with certificates guaranteeing exclusive possession.

  You can measure success by the level of disappointment among those who don’t get what they want. Please notify me, they were saying, if anything else shows up.

  When it was over, Alex called me aside. “Audree and I are going to see The Last Rebel over the weekend. I’ve two extra tickets if you’d like to come.”

  “It’s an opera, isn’t it?”

  “It’s a ballet.”

  “Well, thanks,” I said. “But I don’t think so. I’m not much for ballet. Especially the prehistoric stuff.”

  “Consider it part of the work, Chase. We may come across one of these productions someday. Most of them are lost.”

  “I wonder why.”

  “You’re sure, now? The offer includes dinner.”

  TWELVE

  Despite what people say, Sanusar is not a world lacking in pleasant weather. Just don’t be away on the wrong weekend or you might miss it.

  —Racine Vales, Memoirs, 10,762 C.E.

  We made Sanusar in a day. It’s one of only four worlds in th
e Aurigae system. One of the others is an enormous gas giant, on the verge of igniting. One of the local comedians famously said that if somebody crashed on it, the thing would gain enough mass to start a nuclear reaction, and they’d have a second star.

  All four worlds are in wildly irregular orbits, and in fact they cross one another’s paths occasionally. There is, however, no concern that any of them will collide with Sanusar. If nothing changes, the big one will swallow it eventually, but the date has been projected so far ahead that the universe itself will be in severe decline when it does. There was apparently a close encounter with a passing star or something a billion years ago, which is believed to have created the present situation.

  The result, of course, is that temperatures on Sanusar vary extensively, and there is no permanent settlement in the standard sense. A few ground facilities provide shelter for visitors, who are predominantly people who like an unstable climate, or who just want to get their picture taken here, or be able to say they’ve been to Sanusar. There are some who come because they feel it provides a religious setting. For others it is a place where they can experience the arbitrariness of a nature that, at home, seems so solid and dependable. You don’t get that in the confines of a space habitat, they’ll tell you. Even one circling a black hole. You need hills and open water and something alive to provide a sense of the value of your home world. By something alive, they’re talking about misshapen arboreal growths. It’s the only known world with fully developed vegetation that does not have animal life beyond that of a microscopic variety. It existed at one time, but vanished long ago when the environment was effectively reshaped. Until Sanusar, biologists had held that plants could not exist without an animal population.

  The space station is among the smallest in the Confederacy, with an operational staff of six. It would probably have been shut down centuries ago except that it’s close to Mute territory and has been of use to the Fleet when relations have deteriorated.

  “They had five people then,” Miriam Varona told us, referring to the time of the sighting. Miriam was the sole operational officer. Her husband, Barry, oversaw station maintenance, and her other husband, Condrey, was their Patrol officer. (I don’t know the relationship for a fact, but that seemed to be the arrangement.) A fourth person, whom she enjoyed referring to as her personnel guy, was on vacation for two months and had been relieved by Miriam’s son Boris. Boris was training to be a physician. Two others performed as technicians, and were also available to handle the rescue vehicle in case of an emergency.

  “It’s not like the big stations,” she explained, “but we do get some traffic. Someone’s in or out at least once a week. In fact, you are the third arrival in the last five days.” Miriam was tall, and maybe a trifle bent, and I got a sense of someone who spent too much time alone. Later, I heard that she’d grown up on the station, where there was a 0.3 gravity setting. Her muscles never became accustomed to standard gravity and when in later years she did have to deal with it, it caused problems. Her family, which had obviously not been too bright, or maybe just didn’t care, owned the orbiter.

  “We’re looking for Tereza Urbanova,” said Alex. “Can you tell us where she is?”

  “Oh, yes. It’s been a while since I’ve seen her. But she’s living at Oceanside.” She produced a map for us. “We can shuttle you down, but I have to tell you, it’s not cheap. If you have a lander, I’d suggest you use it.”

  “We will,” he said. “What kind of place is Oceanside?”

  “It’s on a mountain. Beautiful view, though, despite the name, you won’t see much water.”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s a small complex. Tourist spot, of course. Tereza works there. Does presentations and serves as the host for most of the parties and whatnot.”

  “Sounds like a busy place.”

  “Well, I’m not sure I’d go that far. They do have some people there now, though. A group of literature enthusiasts. They’re there to visit the Filandia.”

  “What’s the Filandia?” I asked.

  Alex usually knows the answers to such abstruse questions, but he waited for Miriam to explain. She seemed mildly amused that we didn’t know. “It’s the hotel. Where Racine Vales wrote Over the Side.”

  I’d heard the title but had no idea what it was about.

  “It’s the big revolutionary novel of the Bacchanal movement,” Alex said.

  I still didn’t know—

  “It’s a long time ago, dear,” said Miriam. “Six hundred years. But it did change the way an entire civilization behaved. It brought about a new moral code and a complete freedom of the spirit.”

  “Do as you like,” said Alex, “as long as no one gets hurt.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “People always talked about freedom, but then they set a lot of rules. Think how much better everyone’s life would be if we just exercised some common sense instead of living by tribal taboos.” She laughed. “Well, enough of that. Does Tereza know you’re coming?”

  In fact she did. We landed on the edge of the complex, which consisted of the Filandia, an entertainment complex, and a half dozen cabins, arranged in a large circle. They all had a kind of rough-hewn look, which added to the sense of being well away from civilization. (As if you needed anything to underscore the reality.) They weren’t really on top of a mountain. It was more like an oversized hill with a flattened summit. If you fell off the summit, you weren’t likely to get hurt, but you’d do a lot of rolling. We saw a few kids playing tag, and a young woman was coming out of one of the cabins.

  An ocean was visible, but it was far enough away that it might have been nothing more than a distant lake. We set down on a pad, climbed out, and went into the hotel.

  Tereza was in the lobby, seated near a window with three men and a woman. She stood and smiled as we came in. “Chase?” she said. “And Alex. How nice to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you.”

  She hadn’t aged much in a half century. She had black hair, smooth skin, lemon-colored eyes, and a quiet dignity that imposed itself on her surroundings. She introduced us around the table. They were members of the literary group, and they’d apparently been talking about the weather. And before you leap to judgment, keep in mind that the weather on Sanusar wasn’t anything like whatever world the visitors had come from. But that day, with sunlight and relatively warm temperatures, it was all anyone could have asked.

  “Yesterday,” said one of the tourists, “it was forty below.”

  We joined the conversation, were asked what we did for a living and whether we’d like some drinks. After a few minutes, Tereza excused herself from her guests and took us to a side room, where we sat down around a table. “You’re, of course, welcome to stay if you like,” she said. “I hope you will, but I don’t want to waste your time. How can I help you?”

  Alex leaned forward. “Tereza,” he said, “we’re trying to get a handle on the sighting fifty years ago. The ship that—”

  “I know,” she said.

  “You were on duty when it happened.”

  “Yes. That’s correct.”

  “We’ve seen the record of the incident. And we were hoping you might be able to add something.”

  “I don’t know what else—?”

  “Your husband once described you as having never been the same after the incident.”

  She blinked and smiled. “There’s some truth to that, I guess.” Outside, in the lobby, somebody put on some music. It was slow and moody.

  Alex waited quietly.

  Her eyes focused somewhere behind us. “The record that you saw was edited.”

  “Why?”

  “We had some decent images of the ports.”

  Alex leaned forward. “It’s okay,” he said. “What did you see?”

  “There was a woman at one of them. She appeared to be banging on it. She looked hysterical.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.” Those lemon eyes grew sad. “The investiga
tors confiscated everything. When, later, the record was released, that part of it was missing.”

  “Did you talk to them? The investigators?”

  “My boss did. He said they told him it was our imagination. That she was never there.” She shook her head. “We all saw it, Alex. God help me, we all saw it.”

  PART II

  Villanueva

  THIRTEEN

  The future of our species lies hidden in its past.

  —Wolfgang Corbin, Let’s Hear It for the Infidels, 6615 C.E.

  “Why would they edit it out?” I asked, as we lifted away from Oceanside.

  “Public relations again,” said Alex. “We don’t know who conducted the investigation, whether it was StarCorps or local. But they had a woman in distress. Worse, pictures of a woman in distress. They don’t have a clue who she is, or what the ship is, or where it went. There were no reports of anyone in trouble. All vehicles were accounted for.” He looked down at the landscape. “How would they explain it to an aroused public?”

  The ride home was somber. Alex buried himself in a book and barely spoke until we’d made the jump back into our home system. When I asked him whether we were ready to back away from the entire business, he said that he was disappointed in me. “You give up too easily, Chase.”

  “So where do we go from here?”

  “Winter.”

  “What?”

  “William Winter. Robin’s friend. The one who died on Indikar. I think it’s time we tried to find out what actually happened.”

  Two days later, we were on a glide train crossing the continent. At Port Leo we got off, and spent the night at the Amerada Hotel. I’m embarrassed to admit that I had a little too much to drink and became part of the floor show. I don’t usually do stuff like that, and I probably wouldn’t have if Alex had been down in the club with me, but he wasn’t, and I began thinking how maybe those people who were saying you should enjoy yourself while you can, have a big time as long as nobody gets hurt because you don’t have forever, maybe they’re right. So I joined two or three other women at the center of the party.