Coming Home

Thirty-one

Alex was at the terminal when we got off the shuttle. He looked worried. “You guys okay?” he asked.

“We’re all right,” I said. But I walked into his outstretched arms and hung on to him. He didn’t have the details, but enough had already gotten out to alert the media and the rest of the world that something had gone terribly wrong and that JoAnn and Nick were assumed lost. Shara joined us in the embrace and we stood in the concourse for a long moment while the crowd passed. “I’m sorry, guys,” he said. “What happened?”

Shara just shook her head. “Let’s get away from here.”

We walked out to the skimmer. The sky was gray and overcast. We took our seats while he put the luggage in back. “I assume,” he said, “they don’t want you to talk about it.”

I looked up at him and nodded.

“It won’t go any farther,” he said.

Shara and I looked at each other. “No way,” she said, “we can keep this to ourselves.”

“Yeah,” I said.

We told him everything. We just sat in the parking lot and talked, tried to describe what it had felt like passing through that empty cruise ship. He listened quietly. Closed his eyes. Finally, when we were finished, he asked if we were okay.

We both said yes. We’d lived to come back. But I, for one, knew I would never be the same.

Nobody wanted to go home, so we headed over to Bernie’s Far and Away. “Some of the people on HV,” Alex said, “were criticizing JoAnn for rushing things.”

“Who was doing that?” asked Shara.

“A couple of physicists. They were on several shows this morning. Saying she should have taken her time.”

Shara made an angry noise in her throat. “We didn’t have any time, damn it. That was just a preliminary run. If it had worked, there would have been a lot more research to do before we could have tried using it on the Capella.”

“Hey,” said Alex, “it wasn’t me talking.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry. I just wish these idiots, when they don’t know what they’re talking about, would keep their mouths shut. Do you know who they were?”

“I wasn’t paying that much attention.”

She was still growling. “Ding-dong,” she said.

Alex wanted me to go home, but I had no interest in spending the rest of the day in my cottage. We invited Shara over to the country house. But she said she had calls to make, so we dropped her off and went back to the office. After we got inside, he waved me into a seat. “Can I do anything?”

“No. Other than maybe change the subject. I need something else to think about.”

He smiled. “I love you, Chase.”

“Thanks. Me too.”

“All right. Let’s try to do something else.”

“Good.”

“I’ve been putting together a list of available artifacts we saw on Earth. If we get enough interest, we can go back and get some of them.” He showed me his notebook, where sixty-seven items were recorded. “Why don’t you take a look when you get a chance? No hurry. See if there’s anything you saw that we should add? Then we can talk about putting out some feelers.”

But the truth was I couldn’t get my mind out of those empty corridors. I sat down at my desk and pretended to start. When he walked away, I don’t think I did much other than sit there and stare at the wall. Then, without warning, he was back, standing in the doorway. “Is there anything at all I can do?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “It’s all right. I’ll be okay.”

He offered to stay with me, but I told him to let it go. “Okay,” he said. “I’m exhausted. Going upstairs to crash.”

After he left, I put the notebook down and turned on the HV, hoping for word about the Grainger. The networks were constantly announcing breaking news, but it always consisted of informing us that it was still being searched by the SRF team, and that JoAnn and Nick had not yet been found.

I hadn’t had time to get to know either of them well. Just the two missions. But on that day, I’d have given anything to have them back. What would it have been like to party with JoAnn? And, of course, the dinner with Nick was not going to happen.

Finally, I settled down to work. I added a couple of items to Alex’s list and had started putting together a sales pitch for them when Lawrence Southwick called. He was seated beside a virtual fireplace. Which contained a virtual fire. That probably meant he was calling from an asteroid. “Alex is asleep,” I said. “Can I help you, Lawrence?”

He smiled. “Hi, Chase. Just tell him that the person he should talk to about Zorbas is Marjorie Benjamin. She’s a researcher at the National Institute. She’s spent half her life doing Golden Age research. I’ve let her know you’re interested. Her code’s attached.”

A few minutes later, Jacob informed me we had a transmission from Khaled. “Hi, Chase,” it said. “I’ve got a vacation coming up, and I’m going to head for Andiquar. I hope that’s okay. I don’t want to rush things, but there doesn’t seem to be any casual way to approach this. I’ll be there in about a month. Will give you more specific information when I have my reservation. I’d love to take you to dinner again.”

He was obviously giving me time to think about it. As much as I liked him, and felt indebted to him, it was too much too soon. I wasn’t comfortable with the arrangement. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to back away.

When somebody is crossing worlds to take you to dinner, and the guy has saved your life, it has already gotten serious. I needed the better part of an hour to put together a response that I hoped was appropriate: “Khaled, I enjoyed our time together. But I don’t think allowing ourselves to become emotionally involved right now is a smart idea.”

I went back to thinking about that empty ship while trying to explain why collectors on Rimway would love to acquire a seven-hundred-year-old bracelet worn by a woman who’d set out on a round-the-world trip in a cabin cruiser which was later found abandoned and adrift in the middle of the Pacific, with the bracelet lying on the deck. Or an ID chain that belonged to Chad Tappett, a European champion for animal rights whose career had been cut short when a lion got loose in an incident that many suspected had not been an accident.

Eventually, I called Shara. She blinked on, wearing a robe and sitting on the edge of a bed. “You hear anything more about the Grainger?” I asked.

“No. They’ve got six or seven people on board, but last I heard, they still haven’t found them.”

“You’re crashing early.”

“I’m wiped out, Chase. I can’t believe I spent so much time just sitting in the Casavant, but I’m exhausted.”

“You have any theories about what happened?”

“Yeah.”

“What?”

“I think they were caught in the warp longer than anybody expected. I think, instead of shrinking, the time element stretched out.”

I thought we’d gone pretty much as far as we could with Garnett Baylee. But Alex looked interested when I passed the Marjorie Benjamin message to him next morning, and an hour later, he was off to talk with her. He came back looking exasperated. “Well,” he said, “she was able to provide some new information about Dmitri Zorbas.”

“Anything useful?” I asked.

“He attended Larissa University.”

“You’re kidding. That was all she had?”

“That’s it. That’s, of course, where it’s located. He went back to Greece to get his master’s, and met his future wife, Eva Rodia, there. Apparently he planned to stay in Europe, but they headed back to America because Zorbas missed his family. She also told me that Zorbas wrote an autobiography, Lost Dreams. It’s the perfect title because the book is also lost.” He collapsed into a chair. “I wish we could get our hands on that.”

“Is there any evidence the book might have explained what happened to the artifacts?”

“Marjorie didn’t know, but she doubted he’d have included that kind of information. He lived and died during the early years of the Dark Age, so he would probably have had no security to rely on. She tells me that people generally believed that the economic downturn and the outbreaks of violence and all the rest of it were the end of the world. That it was Armageddon. But Zorbas never bought into that idea. He expected the problems to go on for a long time though probably not for six or seven centuries. But in any case, he was an optimist. Which is why she says he made a major effort to salvage the artifacts. She can’t believe, though, that he’d have been likely to reveal their location to anyone other than his family or a few people he thought he could trust. Unfortunately, he died in the general holocaust. And maybe so did whoever he took into his confidence.”

“Including his wife?”

“Nobody really knows what happened to her. The whole story lacks specifics.”

“How’d he die? Do we know that?”

“Oh, yes. That’s no secret. He was still living in Union City, and taking care of the Prairie House when a nearby town, Seymour, was overrun by thugs. They shot their way in, began burning everything, raping the women, you name it, I guess. The townspeople fought back as best they could and called for help. According to the legend, Zorbas rounded up a militia group they’d put together, and they went to Seymour. They drove out the thugs, but he died in the battle. Marjorie Benjamin said there were a number of stories about his helping defend the area. He was apparently almost a mythic figure at the time.”

“It’s a pity someone didn’t record where he’d put the artifacts.”

“If somebody had, Chase, I doubt we’d have anything to look for now.”

“What did Marjorie think? She give any credence to his having stashed everything somewhere?”

“She’s like us. She wants to believe it.”

Next day, a second transmission came in from Khaled. “I got your message, but giving up is a losing proposition. I’ll let you know what my schedule looks like as soon as it takes shape. You can tell me you don’t have time if you want. Or even that you don’t want me to come. I’ll understand. And I’ll abide by your wishes. But I’m just not going to walk away from you unless you push a little bit. I hope you don’t mind my taking this into my own hands. I’m looking forward to spending some time with you again, Chase. If you’re willing. Incidentally, I’ll only be in the area for a week. But don’t worry. You won’t have to entertain me or anything like that. I have sightseeing plans, so I won’t be getting in your way. See you soon. I hope.”

“Jacob,” I said, “message going back.”

“Very good.” I detected a note of approval. But coming up with the right response wasn’t easy. And after a couple of minutes Jacob asked if I’d changed my mind.

“No,” I said. “I was just thinking. But okay, let’s go.”

“When you’re ready.”

“‘Khaled, I’ll confess I’d enjoy seeing you again. But I just don’t think it’s a good idea. Not right now. Eventually, we’ll probably get back to Earth. I’ll let you know if it’s going to happen.’ Make sure it goes priority, Jacob, okay?”

Shara called in the middle of the night. “They found them.” She paused, and I held my breath. “They’re saying they’ve been dead for thirty years.”

“What?”

“Thirty years, Chase. Probably died of starvation.”

“You were right.”

“Yeah. I guess. Time was moving differently for them than it was for us. But not the way we’d expected. They think that they survived for about four years, until they ran out of food.”