Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt

by Jack McDevitt

  Beside her, Quait’s chest gently rose and fell.

  She was using her saddle bag for a pillow. Without any visible movement, she eased her gun out of it.

  The figure appeared to be a man, somewhat thick at the waist, dressed in peculiar clothes. He wore a dark jacket and dark trousers of matching style, a hat with a rounded top, and he carried a walking stick. There was a red glow near his mouth that alternately dimmed and brightened. She detected an odor that might have been burning weed.

  “Don’t move,” she said softly, rising to confront the apparition, “I have a gun.”

  He turned, looked curiously at her, and a cloud of smoke rose over his head. He was indeed puffing on something. And the smell was vile. “So you do,” he said. “I hope you won’t use it.”

  He didn’t seem sufficiently impressed. “I mean it,” she said.

  “I’m sorry.” He smiled. “I didn’t mean to wake you.” He wore a white shirt and a dark blue ribbon tied in a bow at his throat. The ribbon was sprinkled with white polka dots. His hair was white, and he had gruff, almost fierce, features. There was something of the bulldog about him. He advanced a couple of paces and removed his hat.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked. “Who are you?”

  “I live here, young lady.”

  “Where?” She glanced around at the bare walls, which seemed to move in the flickering light.

  “Here.” He lifted his arms to indicate the grotto and took another step forward.

  She glanced at the gun and back at him. “That’s far enough,” she said. “Don’t think I would hesitate.”

  “I’m sure you wouldn’t, young lady.” The stem cast of his features dissolved into an amiable smile. “I’m really not dangerous,”

  “Are you alone?” she asked, taking a quick look behind her. Nothing stirred in the depths of the cave.

  “I am now. Franklin used to be here. And Abraham Lincoln. And an American singer. A guitar player, as I recall. Actually there used to be a considerable crowd of us.”

  Chaka didn’t like the way the conversation was going. It sounded as if he were trying to distract her. “If I get any surprises,” she said, “the first bullet’s for you.”

  “It is good to have visitors again. The last few times I’ve been up and about, the building’s been empty.”

  “Really?” What building?

  “Oh, yes. We used to draw substantial crowds. But the benches and the gallery have gone missing.” He looked slowly around. “I wonder what happened.”

  “What is your name?” she said.

  He looked puzzled. Almost taken aback. “You don’t know?” He leaned on his cane and studied her closely. “Then I think there is not much point to this conversation.”

  “How would I know you? We’ve never met.” She waited for a response. When none came, she continued: “I am Chaka of Illyria.”

  The man bowed slightly. “I suppose, under the circumstances, you must call me Winston.” He drew his jacket about him. “It is drafty. Why don’t we retire to the fireside, Chaka of Illyria?”

  If he were hostile, she and Quait would already be dead. Or worse. She lowered the weapon and put it in her belt. “I’m surprised to find anyone here. No offense, but this place looks as if it has been deserted a long time.”

  “Yes. It does, doesn’t it?”

  She glanced at Quait, dead to the world. Lot of good he’d have been if Tuks came sneaking up in the night. “Where have you been?” she asked.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “We’ve been here several days. Where have you been?”

  He looked uncertain. “I’m not sure,” he said. “I was certainly here. I’m always here.” He lowered himself unsteadily to the ground and held his hands up to the fire. “Feels good.”

  “It is cold.”

  “You haven’t any brandy, by chance, I don’t suppose?”

  What was brandy? “No,” she said. “We don’t.”

  “Pity. It’s good for old bones.” He shrugged and looked around. “Strange,” he said. “Do you know what’s happened?”

  “No.” She didn’t even understand the question. “I have no idea.”

  Winston placed his hat in his lap. “The place looks quite abandoned,” he said. Somehow, the fact of desolation acquired significance from his having noted it. “I regret to say I have never heard of Illyria. Where is it, may I ask?”

  “Several weeks to the southwest. In the valley of the Mawagondi.”

  “I see.” His tone suggested very clearly that he did not see. “And who are the Mawagondi?”

  “It is a river. Do you really not know of it?”

  He peered into her eyes. “I fear there is a great deal I do not know.” His mood seemed to have darkened. “Are you and your friend going home?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “We seek Haven.”

  “You are welcome to stay here,” said Winston. “But I do not think you will find it very comfortable.”

  “Thank you, no. I was referring to the Haven. And I know how that sounds.”

  Winston nodded, and his forehead crinkled. There was a brooding fire in his eyes. “Is it near Boston?”

  Chaka looked over at Quait and wondered whether she should wake him. “I don’t know,” she said. “Where is Boston?”

  That brought a wide smile. “Well,” he said, “it certainly appears one of us is terribly lost. I wonder which of us it is.”

  She saw the glint in his eye and returned the smile. She understood what he was saying in his oddly-accented diction: they were both lost.

  “Where’s Boston?” she asked again.

  “Forty miles east. Straight down the highway.”

  “What highway? There’s no highway out there anywhere. At least none that I’ve seen.”

  The cigar tip brightened and dimmed. “Oh, my. It must be a long time.”

  She pulled up her knees and wrapped her arms around them. “Winston, I really don’t understand much of this conversation.”

  “Nor do I.” His eyes looked deep into hers. “What is this Haven?”

  She was shocked at his ignorance. “You are not serious.”

  “I am quite serious. Please enlighten me.”

  Well, after all, he was living out here in the wilderness. How could she expect him to know such things? “Haven was the home of Abraham Polk,” she said hopefully.

  Winston shook his head sheepishly. “Try again,” he said.

  “Polk lived at the end of the age of the Roadmakers. He knew the world was collapsing, that the cities were dying. He saved what he could. The treasures. The knowledge. The history. Everything. And he stored it in a fortress with an undersea entrance.”

  “An undersea entrance,” said Winston. “How do you propose to get in?”

  “I don’t think we shall,” said Chaka. “I believe we will give it up at this point and go home.”

  Winston nodded. “The fire’s getting low,” he said.

  She poked at it, and added a log. “No one even knows whether Polk really lived. He may only be a legend.”

  Light filled the grotto entrance. Seconds later, thunder rumbled. “Haven sounds quite a lot like Camelot,” he said.

  What the devil was Camelot?

  “You’ve implied,” he continued after taking a moment to enjoy his weed, “that the world outside is in ruins.”

  “Oh, no. The world outside is lovely.”

  “But there are ruins?”

  “Yes.”

  “Extensive?”

  “They fill the forests, clog the rivers, lie in the shallow waters of the harbors. They are everywhere. Some are even active, in strange ways. There is, for example, a train that still runs, on which no one rides.”

  “And what do you know of their builders?”

  She shrugged. “Very little. Almost nothing.”

  “Their secrets are locked in this Haven?”

  “Yes.”

  “Which you are about to turn your b
ack on.”

  “We’re exhausted, Winston.”

  “Your driving curiosity, Chaka, leaves me breathless.”

  Damn. “Look, it’s easy enough for you to point a finger. You have no idea what we’ve been through. None.”

  Winston stared steadily at her. “I’m sure I don’t. But the prize is very great. And the sea is close.”

  “There are only two of us left,” she said.

  “The turnings of history are never directed by crowds,” he said. “Nor by the cautious. Always, it is the lone captain who sets the course.”

  “It’s over. We’ll be lucky to get home alive.”

  “That may also be true. And certainly going on to your goal entails a great risk. But you must decide whether the prize is not worth the risk.”

  “We will decide. I have a partner in the enterprise.”

  “He will abide by your decision. It is up to you.”

  She tried to hold angry tears back. “We’ve done enough. It would be unreasonable to go on.”

  “The value of reason is often exaggerated, Chaka. It would have been reasonable to accept Hitler’s offer of terms in 1940.”

  “What?”

  He waved the question away. “It’s of no consequence. But reason, under pressure, usually produces prudence when boldness is called for.”

  “I am not a coward, Winston.”

  “I did not imply you are.” He bit down hard on his weed. A blue cloud drifted toward her. It hurt her eyes and she backed away.

  “Are you a ghost?” she asked. The question did not seem at all foolish.

  “I suspect I am. I’m something left behind by the retreating tide.” The fire glowed in his eyes. “I wonder whether, when an event is no longer remembered by any living person, it loses all significance? Whether it is as if it never happened?”

  Quait stirred in his sleep, but did not wake.

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” said Chaka.

  For a long time, neither of them spoke.

  Winston got to his feet. “I’m not comfortable here,” he said.

  She thought he was expressing displeasure with her.

  “The floor is hard on an old man. And of course you are right: you must decide whether you will go on. Camelot was a never-never land. Its chief value lay in the fact that it existed only as an idea. Perhaps the same thing is true of Haven.”

  “No,” she said. “It exists.”

  “And is anyone else looking for this place?”

  “No one. We will be the second mission to fail. I think there will be no more.”

  “Then for God’s sake, Chaka of Illyria, you must ask yourself why you came all this way. Why your companions died. What you seek.”

  “Money. Pure and simple. Ancient manuscripts are priceless. We’d have been famous throughout the League. That’s why we came.”

  His eyes grew thoughtful. “Then go back,” he said. “If this is a purely commercial venture, write it off and put your money in real estate.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “But I would put it to you that those are not the reasons you dared so much. And that you wish to turn back because you have forgot why you came.”

  “That’s not so,” she said.

  “Of course it’s so. Shall I tell you why you undertook to travel through an unknown world, on the hope that you might, might, find a place that’s half-mythical?” Momentarily he seemed to fade, to lose definition. “Haven has nothing to do with fame or wealth. If you got there, if you were able to read its secrets, you would have all that, provided you could get home with it. But you would have acquired something infinitely more valuable, and I believe you know that: you would have discovered who you really are. You would have learned that you are a daughter of the people who designed the Acropolis, who wrote Hamlet, who visited the moons of Neptune. Do you know about Neptune?”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t think so.”

  “Then we’ve lost everything, Chaka. But you can get it back. If you are willing to take it. And if not you, then someone else. But it is worth the taking, at whatever cost.”

  Momentarily, he became one with the dark.

  “Winston,” she said, “I can’t see you. Are you still there?”

  “I am here. The system is old, and will not keep a charge.”

  She was looking through him. “You really are a ghost,” she said.

  “It is possible you will not succeed. Nothing is certain, save difficulty and trial. But have courage. Never surrender.”

  She stared at him.

  “Never despair,” he said.

  A sudden chill whispered through her, a sense that she had been here before, had known this man in another life. “You seem vaguely familiar. Have I seen your picture somewhere?”

  “I’m sure I do not know.”

  “Perhaps it is the words. They have an echo.”

  He looked directly at her. “Possibly.” She could see the cave entrance and a few stars through his silhouette. “Keep in mind, whatever happens, you are one of a select company. A proud band of brothers. And sisters. You will never be alone.”

  As she watched, he faded until only the glow of the cigar remained. “It is your own true self you seek.”

  “You presume a great deal.”

  “I know you, Chaka.” Everything was gone now. Except the voice. “I know who you are. And you are about to learn.”

  “Was it his first or last name?” asked Quait, as they saddled the horses.

  “Now that you mention it, I really don’t know.” She frowned. “I’m not sure whether he was real or not. He left no prints. No marks.”

  Quait looked toward the rising sun. The sky was clear. “That’s the way of it in these places. Some of it’s illusion; some of it’s something else. But I wish you’d woke me.”

  “So do I.” She climbed up and patted Brak’s shoulder. “He said the sea is only forty miles.”

  Warm spring air flowed over them. “You want to go on?”

  “Quait, you ever hear of Neptune?”

  He shook his head.

  “Maybe,” she said, “we can try that next.”

  WINDOWS

  The moon was big. It was an enormous gasbag of a moon, like the one Uncle Eddie used to ride down at the fairgrounds, when she’d stand only a few feet away, watching it strain against the lines and then cut loose and start up. She used to wish for the day Uncle Eddie would take her soaring above the treetops, but he said he couldn’t because of insurance problems and eventually the gasbag went down and Uncle Eddie went with it. Janie thought of that last flight as she gazed at the foreboding presence dominating the night sky. The moon looked as if it was coming down. It was dim, dim as in dark, not at all like the bright yellow globe that rides the skies of Earth. It was a ghost moon, a presence, a thing lit only by stars.

  “If there were more light,” said the voice in her earphones, the voice that sounded a bit too cheerful, “it would look silver and blue. Its name is Charon, and it’s less than a third the diameter of our moon.”

  “Why does it look so big?” asked Daddy.

  “Do you know how far the Moon is from the Earth?”

  Daddy wasn’t sure. “About a million miles,” he said.

  “That’s close, Mr. Brockman.” The AI was very polite.

  “I think,” said Janie, trying not to sound like a know-it-all, “it’s 238,000 miles.”

  “That’s very good, Janie. Right on the button. But Charon is only twelve thousand miles away.”

  Janie did the arithmetic in her head. Multiply by ten and Charon was still only half, one-twentieth of the distance of her moon. “It’s close,” she said. She’d known that, but hadn’t understood the implications. “It’s right on top of us.”

  “Very good, Janie,” said the voice. It belonged to a software system that was identical to the AI that had made the later flights, the Iris voyages, the Challenger run, the Long Mission, and the circumsolar flight on the Eagle. All the data from th
ose missions had been fed into it, so in a sense, it had been there.

  Its name was Jerry. Same as the originals. The onboard AI was always Jerry, named for Jerry Dilworth, a popular late-night comic of an earlier era. Daddy had commented how much the voice sounded like Jerry Dilworth, for whom Daddy had a lot of affection.

  The sky was dark. This place never really experienced daylight. She wondered what it would be like to live where the sun never rose.

  “But it does rise,” Daddy explained.

  “I know,” she said. He meant well, but sometimes he just seemed to go out of his way to misunderstand her. Of course it rose, and for all she knew it might be up there now among all those stars, but who could tell? It was no more than a light beam.

  She lowered her gaze and looked out across the frozen surface, past the Rover. A few low hills broke the monotony of a flat snowfield. It was lonely, quiet, scary. Solitudinous. Janie liked making up new words from the vocabulary list.

  The Rover was the sole man-made object on the planet. It looked like a tank, with sensors and antennas aimed in all directions. The International Consortium seal, a blue-white globe, was stenciled on its hull.

  “It’s really much lighter than it looks,” said Jerry. “Especially here, where the gravity is light.”

  “Nobody’s ever been to Pluto, Janie,” said Daddy. “It’s very far.”

  Of course no one had been to Uranus or Neptune either. But never mind.

  A bright star appeared over the hills and began climbing, “Do you know what it is, Janie?” Jerry asked.

  She was puzzled. Another moon? Was there a second moon she didn’t know about?

  Daddy put his hand on her shoulder. “That’s the Ranger,” he said.

  Oh, yes. Of course. Given another moment she’d have thought of it herself. “I know, Daddy,” she said.

  “…Orbits Pluto every forty-three minutes and twelve seconds.”

  The place felt cold. She pulled her jacket around her shoulders. This little stretch of ground, the hills, the plain, the snow, had been like this for millions of years, and nothing had ever happened until the Ranger showed up. No dawn, no rain, nobody passing through.

  “Once in a while,” said Jerry, “the ground shakes a little.”

  “That’s it?” asked Daddy.