Chindi

Chapter 20

IN THE MORNING, which was of course lit in the same ethereal way as the previous night, they ate in the dome. It was a trifle crowded for five people, but they made do.

Afterward, Hutch prowled through the retreat. George took her aside for pictures. He was taking pictures of everyone, he explained, mementos of the occasion. So he walked her around and she posed in the main room, in the cupola, and in the dining area, standing beside a table that rose past her shoulders. And on the upper deck, looking pensively down at the courtyard. She posed with Tor and Nick, with Alyx, and of course they took several group pictures. And eventually she stood beside George himself.

She returned to the alien lander in the afternoon for a closer look at the power plant, which clearly had a dual capacity. It encompassed a device that appeared to be a fusion reactor, but there was an additional unit that she didn’t recognize, except that it provided a housing for the Gymsum coils that signaled Hazeltine technology. That implied this wasn’t a lander at all, but was instead a self-contained superluminal. The common wisdom was that a Hazeltine engine, necessary for the space-twisting capabilities of interstellar propulsion systems, had certain minimum size constraints, and that no such system could possibly be installed inside a vehicle the size of a lander. Still, one never knew.

Somebody had posted signs on the clothes closets saying PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH. It looked like George’s printing, and she was glad to see he was taking preservation seriously.

She stood looking at the clothing, thinking, there had only been two of them. Did the magnificence of the spectacle create an illusion, suggesting that this had been a retreat, a vacation home? A week at the shore? It was possible, after all, that the occupants had been exiled, marooned out here because they were someone’s political enemies. Or undesirables of another sort. Maybe the ship parked on their front lawn was disabled. Something to remind them of what they’d lost.

Tor came into the room and motioned to the window. “Something you’ll want to see,” he said.

The two planets were rising in the east.

“It happens every night. I was talking to Bill. He says, seen from here, they’ll come up, circle each other, and set at around sunrise.”

THE WONDER OF it all wore off quickly. They couldn’t read the books, couldn’t see the paintings, couldn’t even sit on the furniture. They were beginning to talk about what they should do next when Bill announced a message from Outpost. “Dr. Mogambo,” he said.

She knew what that would be about. Move over, George. “Okay, Bill. Let’s see what he has to say for himself.”

The Academy seal with the Outpost designator blinked on, followed by Mogambo’s serene features. “Hutch.” He flashed a smile, a smile that told her he was pleased with what they’d been doing, that he was in fact delighted, and that he knew an opportunity when he saw one. “You and Gerald have been doing excellent work.”

Gerald? He meant George, knew that George was in charge. But he was sending a message that they were in fact small potatoes, little people of minor consequence. “I’ve forwarded the latest news to the director, and recommended that your efforts on the mission be suitably acknowledged.” He was wearing a light brown jacket, with a mission patch on his left shoulder. She couldn’t quite make it out. “You’ll be happy to know that you won’t be on your own any longer.” Here-arranged himself, slid a hand into the jacket pocket. “Help is on the way.”

“Good,” she said to no one in particular, wishing someone else were coming. Anyone else.

“We’ve commandeered the Longworth, and expect to be there in about seventeen days. Until then, I know you’ll make sure nothing gets manhandled.” Not mishandled. Not dropped. Manhandled. “Hutch, I’m sure you realize that the less amateurs have to do with a find of this nature, the better off we all are.”

He was about to sign off when he remembered something. “By the way, be advised the media are on their way, too. There’s been a UNN ship at Outpost doing a series of some sort. I don’t know what it was about. But when word about the retreat started to spread, they left immediately. Broke a leg getting out of here.” He tried to look annoyed but didn’t quite succeed. “I guess we’ll just have to tolerate them. Anyhow, well done, Hutch.”

And he was gone.

Mogambo was the last guy they needed. Where were the archeologists?

But there was a comic aspect to it. The Longworth was an enormous cargo vessel, used principally to haul supplies and capital equipment for the ongoing construction efforts on Quraqua. It was old, cramped, solid, without the relative opulence that Mogambo would prefer.

“It must have been all they had available,” said Tor, reading her mind.

“WHAT I’D LIKE to do,” George said, on their third day at the retreat, “is to get the energy shield up again. And restore life support. That should be our first priority, to put everything back the way it was.”

“How do you plan to do that?” she asked.

His eyebrows rose. “I assumed you could do it. You can, can’t you?”

She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. I’m just a little old country girl. “It’s not possible,” she said. “Even if we could figure out how the equipment works, expecting stuff that’s three thousand years old to function is not reasonable.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. Where he came from, nothing was impossible. It was a matter of will and ingenuity. There was no such thing as being unable to accomplish a specific task. George liked Hutch, but she gave up too easily. She’d never have made it, he knew, in the business world.

He went outside, turned his back to the precipice and the sky, and studied the long oval building, its oculus window, its decks, the dish antennas, and he thought nothing in the world would give him more pleasure than seeing the lights come on. He wanted to be able to strip off the e-suit, to wander through the courtyard, to make dinner in the kitchen, to sleep unencumbered in the cupola, to live a few days in the house as it had been. When he expressed those sentiments to Alyx, she was sympathetic, but she, too, thought it could not be done. At least not until a lot of help arrived.

But then it would be too late. There’d be technicians running all over the place, and this Mogambo would be taking charge, and it wouldn’t be at all the way it had been in the old days. “We owe it to the Beings that lived here.”

They had wandered outside, because it was only from out there, where the retreat tended to withdraw into the shadows, that he could make his point. Overhead, the big ring and the Twins were bright and hard. “The Beings are asleep in the courtyard,” she said, capitalizing the noun as he had. “You’re talking about a major project. We don’t have the people here to do it.”

He knew. He’d probably known before he’d asked Hutch. But he’d been hoping because he wanted so desperately to be able to make it happen.

He was in the position he’d dreamed about all his life, camped out in a living room that had served an alien intelligence. But it wasn’t turning out the way it was supposed to. The shelves were filled with books no one could read, or even take down. The walls were hung with pictures no one could make out. Down the back staircase, there was a power plant no one could understand. Outside, on the shelf, stood a lander that might be a great deal more than a lander, but no one could make anything out of that either.

When Mogambo got here, everything would change.

But Mogambo was the enemy.

“Isn’t there a law,” he asked Hutch, “that says the discovery belongs to us? To the first people on the spot?”

“Unfortunately,” she replied, “there were a series of bad experiences on Nok, Quraqua, and Pinnacle. In each case, the first people on the spot looted pretty much at will. When the researchers arrived, the original discoverers continued to make off with priceless artifacts, and in several cases did some serious vandalism. The result was the Exoarcheological Protection Act, which governs in these cases now. When the Academy shows up, they have jurisdiction.”

“So he can just walk right in—.”

“—And make himself at home. Yes, that’s exactly what he can do.”

It wasn’t that George was demanding credit for the discovery, although that would be nice, and probably would be his, in any case. And it wasn’t that he would have denied the discovery to the Academy. But he wanted to do the investigation himself. He wanted to bring out experts, his own people, translate the books, solve the riddle of who had buried whom, figure out what kind of technology had run the place. It was the dream of his life, come true in a way he could never have hoped. And they were going to take it from him.

“I’m sorry we let them know what we’d found,” he said. He turned a baleful eye on Hutch. “This isn’t your fault. But we’d have been better off with Preacher Brawley as our captain. Somebody not wedded to Academy regulations.”

“It’s not Academy regulations, George,” she said. Her eyes sparkled angrily. “It’s the law.”

“Oh, Hutch, for God’s sake, take a look around you. Do you see where you are? What makes you think any kind of human law applies out here?”

“If it doesn’t,” she said, “then why not just vandalize the place? Take everything. Who’s to stop you?”

“That’s enough, Hutch.”

“Just be aware that I’m tired of taking the blame every time you can’t get what you want. You hired me, you might want to consider taking my advice.” She was going to say more, to bring up Pete and Herman, but she caught herself. “I was required to make the report,” she added. They were up in the cupola, watching the Twins set. They were still living on a twenty-four-hour clock, paying no attention to day and night, such as they were, on Vertical. “All evidence of alien contact has to be reported. When it happens.”

He must have scowled at her because he was thinking how easy it would have been just to forget what they’d found, report nothing until they’d had a chance at it. And if she lost her license, so what? He’d have more than made it worth her while. But he didn’t say anything, and she just stood gazing back at him, not giving anything away, and finally she said, “It’s not an administrative issue, George. It’s a criminal matter. Criminal. Which means by the way, if it happens again, I’ll have to do it again.”

He decided to ask Sylvia Virgil to intervene. After all, it wasn’t as if he lacked influence himself. Hutch said fine, it was okay with her. When he was ready, she set him up in the cupola, where he could stand beside a giant chair, with a row of books on the wall behind him, and make his appeal. He explained what the problem was. They had been careful in their inspection of the retreat, he told her, and they had begun the process of understanding its nature. They had found the place when no one else had wanted to bother, and they had bled for it. Now the Academy proposed to take it from him.

He was getting worked up as he proceeded, and he told himself to keep cool. Let her see that he was resentful. That the Academy might pay a price down the road somewhere. But don’t let her think he’d become a crank.

He asked that Mogambo be placed under his authority. And he felt he did it in diplomatic fashion. Hutch warned him that it would be several days before they could hope for an answer, but that would be adequate because they would have it before the Longworth arrived. George could see that she didn’t expect his request to be granted, but she didn’t comment other than to tell him she hoped he had won her over. George got the impression she, Hutch, didn’t think highly of Mogambo.

HUTCH SPENT ONE night in the dome with Nick, Alyx, and George. (Tor, either seeking inspiration, or demonstrating his independence, stayed in the lander.) It was enough. Group sleepovers had never appealed much to her, and this was a restless bunch. It was all very historical, George maintained, entering all the details in his notebook, as if someone a thousand years from now would care that Nick hadn’t slept well or that Alyx was the first one up.

They never really got used to being in the Retreat. (It had by then acquired a capital letter.) They lowered their voices and talked about how much time they were going to spend with the books when they got translated. Hutch thought that would be an unlikely result. If they turned out to be treatises on celestial mechanics or on the philosophical aspects of the soul, they’d bail out pretty quickly. Nick admitted as much to her, while they stood in the half-light of the living room. “At the moment,” he said, “they’re like women.” He was talking about the books. “They’re mysterious and they look good and we can’t really touch them. But once it’s all laid out, where everybody can see….” He shrugged. Stopped. Realized he was in a mine field.

Hutch nodded but kept a straight face. “Men aren’t that way at all.”

“No, we’re not. We don’t rely on mystery.”

“Just as well,” she said.

OUTPOST FORWARDED A series of news reports on the discoveries at Safe Harbor, Paradise, and the Retreat. There was a covering comment by Virgil, informing them that the world was watching.

Maybe, but for all the wrong reasons. The world was fascinated by the nuclear devastation at Safe Harbor, and by the loss of Pete and Herman, which had become known as the Angel Murders. And she suspected that, for most of UNN’s audience, the most intriguing aspect of the Retreat would become the presence of bodies in the courtyard grave.

At the time of transmission, the media knew almost nothing about the Retreat other than the fact it was there. But they were stressing the hazards involved, the possibility of more murderous aliens running loose, stay tuned. After which they switched back to the usual, shoot-outs in the Middle East, a government sex scandal in London, a serial killer in Derbyshire, a revolt in Indonesia, and a corporate argument about who really controlled the newest longevity procedures.

In one of the broadcasts, Virgil was interviewed by Brace Kampanik of Worldwide. She expressed her concern for the losses endured by the mission, but argued that forays into the unknown are always done at hazard. But the discoveries would be “far-reaching,” she said, stipulating that “we are finally beginning to get a sense of what our neighborhood looks like.”

On the whole, she was quite good. She inevitably tended toward pomposity and usually said too much, but this time she hit the right tone, grabbed the credit for the Academy (which it clearly didn’t deserve), and expressed her hope that Mr. Hockelmann and his gallant team would get back safely.

THEY MADE A virtual record of the Retreat, and Hutch was able to re-create it on the Memphis so that it became possible to discard the e-suits and use the holotank to spend time there. Bill even reconstructed the place as it might have looked when it was new, and he shrank the dimensions so they could see it as its occupants must have seen it.

But it didn’t really matter. George and his people preferred the real thing, the pocket dome, the proximity to the graves, and the books. Always the books. Expectations for their contents, the wisdom of an advanced race, their history, their ethics, their conclusions about God and creation, ran so high that she thought they could not fail to disappoint when translation eventually came. It occurred to Hutch that it might be a blessing were the library and all its work to vanish. Go up maybe in a volcanic eruption. It would provide debate and romance for centuries, while scholars and poets speculated about what had been lost. Nick had commented once that people never look good at their funerals, not because they’re dead, but because there’s too much light on them. “We need some shadowing,” he said. “Some concealment.”

Virgil’s reply to George arrived during the early afternoon of New Year’s Eve. Hutch was on the ship when Bill asked whether she wanted to look at it before it was relayed down to the Retreat.

“Other people’s mail,” she said.

“You might want to look anyhow.”

“Let it go.”

Five minutes later George was on the circuit, outraged. “Did you see it?” he demanded.

“No. But I assume she denied the request.”

“Worse than that, Hutch.” He looked ready to commit murder. “She says she’s directed Mogambo to move the Retreat back to Virginia.”

“The furnishings?” she asked. “The books? What?”

“Everything. Lock, stock, and barrel. The woman’s lost her mind.”

Hutch could think of nothing to say. But she understood the rationale. Out here, a zillion light-years from Arlington, the site was inconvenient. Worse, if they left it where it was, they would need to find a way to keep poachers and vandals off the premises. Furthermore, at home, it would become a pretty decent tourist draw.

Now that she thought of it, she wondered whether the director wasn’t doing the right thing. Why not make it available to the public? The Academy drew 51 percent of its support from federal taxes. It struck her that the taxpayers had every right to see what their money was buying. But she could see that George was in no mood to discuss the matter.

“I won’t allow it.” They were empty words, and they both knew it. “Hutch.” He looked at her as if she could somehow intervene. Make Sylvia Virgil see reason. Beat off Mogambo. “It’s indecent.”

“Archeologists have always been grave robbers,” she said softly. “It’s what they do.” She almost said, what we do. Because she’d been involved, had helped make off with countless artifacts. But she was only an amateur grave robber.

She pictured the Retreat, with its unremarkable decks and its myopic windows looking out across the Potomac. With hordes of schoolkids tracking through it, and vendors outside hustling sandwiches and kites. And a souvenir shop. And visitors would say to one another, Built by real aliens. They’d enjoy their soft drinks and their popcorn, imagining they knew how it had really felt when George and his team landed.

George was right. And all those people making off with jars and knives and cups and medallions from Sumer and Egypt and Mexico, and later from Quraqua and Pinnacle and Beta Pac, had been right, too. She couldn’t bring herself to deny the work she’d assisted all these years. But still…

Without the needle peaks and the Twins and the big ring (they couldn’t take any of that back to Arlington) what would the Retreat be?

THEY WENT BACK to the Memphis for New Year’s Eve. They’d run out of constructive things to do on the ground. By then everyone wanted to get out of the pocket dome, or stop sleeping in the lander. So they came back up and had another party.

There’d been some reservation about the propriety of all these celebrations so soon after Kurt’s death. But Hutch assured them that Kurt would have preferred they go ahead and enjoy themselves, which was true. Moreover, it was a bonding process, a way to shut out the strangeness of their surroundings. So they raised the first glass to the lost captain, drank to their other lost comrades, and drowned themselves in each other’s company.

“This is the way archeology is supposed to be done,” Hutch told Nick, late in the evening. She was wearing a party hat and had probably drunk a bit too much by then. There were no rules about captains drinking, other than the general admonition that they be able to function in an emergency. Consequently, Hutch stayed within range of what some coffee and a couple of pills could do to bring her around. Bill helped her keep watch on her limitations, and was not above informing her publicly if he thought she was indulging beyond the limits.

At midnight, of course, everybody kisses everybody else. George had been a bit reluctant when Hutch offered herself to him, but he managed a smile and delivered a chaste peck just to one side of her lips. Poor George. He was the most driven man she’d ever known. Even there, in the midst of a success that would make him immortal, he couldn’t enjoy himself. When he started to pull away, Hutch tossed her own inhibitions to the wind, seized him, looked directly into his startled eyes, and delivered a long wet smooch after which she grinned happily at him. He tried to break free, but she hung on. “Happy New Year, George,” she said, while applause rose around her. It went a long way to breaking down the wall that had been rising between them.

And even Tor, who routinely kept his distance, approached her toward the end of the evening and took her aside. “Next year, Hutch,” he said, “however we do it, whatever it takes, I want to celebrate with you.”

Why not? “It’s a date,” she said.

“HAPPY NEW YEAR, Hutch.”

Bill startled her. Usually, when she was alone in her quarters and he wanted to speak with her, there was a preliminary cough or a telltale squeal from the screen. But this time the voice was right in the room with her, hello ma’am, how are you doing, no monkeying around.

“Happy New Year yourself, Bill.”

“Nice party.”

“Yes.” She had just finished toweling off after coming out of the shower and was pulling her shift over her head. “Is everything okay?”

“We have another anomaly. I think.”

That got her attention. “What?”

“I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“It’s okay. What’s the anomaly?”

“The white spot.”

“The white spot?” She’d forgotten about it. The cyclonic storm on Cobalt?

“On Autumn. At the equator. I’ve been watching it for several days.”

“Why is it anomalous?”

“For one thing, it’s not in the atmosphere.”

“It isn’t? Where is it?”

“It’s in orbit.”

“I thought you said it was a snowstorm.”

“It is.”

“Can’t happen.”

“That would have been my view.”

She was tired. Ready to call the mission a success and go home. “What else?”

“Autumn is directly on the line of transmission.”

“The signal from Icepack?”

“That is correct.”

Hutch had been punching up her pillows. She abandoned them, turned, and waited for the wallscreen to light up. It did, and Bill looked out at her. He was wearing a black dressing gown with the ship’s insignia over the breast pocket. “Has the signal been tracking Autumn?”

“Yes.”

“And you think there’s another set of stealths around Autumn?”

“No. It would be too hard to find a stable orbit. If you were going to put satellites in this system, it would be best to put them outside the big ring.”

“What then? What’s it aimed at?”

Bill smiled at her. “I have no idea.”

IN THE MORNING they agreed unanimously to go look at the white spot. They returned to the Retreat and effectively broke camp, retrieving the pocket dome, and trying to leave the structure as they’d found it.