Coming Home

Forty-six

A second message arrived in the morning. “Alex, I’ll be on the Vistula. In port on the eleventh your time. Will contact you then.”

That was five days away. “I’m going to charge him,” Alex said. “If he’d been up front with us from the beginning, we could have avoided all this.”

“You want to tell me what it’s all about?”

“I don’t know yet, Chase. To be honest, I haven’t even been able to come up with a decent theory.”

“I think he’d like you to meet him at the space station.”

“I don’t think there’s any question about that. But we’ll let him come to us. How about heading for Barkova? We could do some sightseeing.”

I don’t know why Alex decided out of nowhere that he wanted to go halfway around the planet. If he’d left the call to me, we’d have stayed on the beaches. But I said sure, and did a search on the place.

Barkova had been, for two thousand years, one of the major cultural centers of northern Europe. Alex, it turned out, was interested in it, though, because it’s located less than a hundred miles south of the group of islands that are all that remains of Moscow. That ancient city, shaken for centuries by earthquakes, had been all but swallowed by its overflowing rivers. Consequently, we spent most of our time there in a rented skimmer surveying the ruins. The only visual evidence of the former capital consists of a few wrecked buildings jutting out of the water. The onion domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral are still visible, glittering in the sunlight. As is the magnificent turret of the Valkan, which was the seat of government for almost three thousand years.

Today, the islands are home to an army of tourists. We wandered along an elevated walkway, rode a roller coaster, played some games in a casino, and ate dinner at Sergev’s, a pricey restaurant overlooking Lake Kaczinski. Sergev’s had pictures of the old days on the walls, of giant snowstorms and people wandering city streets wrapped in heavy overcoats and wearing fur hats. Hard to believe it was the same place.

We took one of the sub tours. I’d hoped to get a good look at the ancient buildings and streets, but most of what had been Moscow was buried in mud. We did get to see the Bolshoi Theater and the Kremlin Armory, more or less.

On the third afternoon, our hotel was hosting a wedding in its ballroom. I’m no longer clear on how it happened, but we became involved in the celebration. I always enjoy celebrating and will take any excuse to jump in. Alex, on the other hand, is not normally drawn to social events. He’s an effective speaker, but take his audience away, and he seems to become almost shy. On that afternoon, though, he wandered away for a few minutes and returned with a woman who would become a lifelong friend, Galina Mozheika. She had bright amber eyes and long dark hair that fell below her shoulders. A cousin of the bride, she worked as one of the tour conductors. “It doesn’t pay much,” she told me, “but I love what I do.”

I needed about three minutes to grasp what Alex saw in her: She had a taste for history. Her prime interest seemed to be ancient Russian literature. She knew all the stories, and on that night was talking with him about the accidental discovery of Dostoevsky’s long-lost Brothers Karamazov during the Seventh Millennium. A three-hundred-year-old hardcover edition had been found in the library of a deceased book collector who apparently never realized what he had. And she knew about the trunkful of Third Millennium Russian novels found in a Greek attic and placed on board an interstellar that subsequently vanished. It sounded like another of the Sanusar vehicles.

He spent the rest of the evening with her. In years to come, they communicated back and forth. She made it to Rimway on a few occasions, and I never knew him to go back to Earth without visiting the Moscow Islands. But as far as I could tell, nothing romantic ever came of it. They were friends.

Maybe it was enough.

On one occasion, when we were alone together, Galina told me that Earth and Rimway were too far from each other. “And I’m not just talking about kilometers.” By which I concluded that she wasn’t ready to leave family and friends, and she assumed the same to be true of Alex.

It was an enjoyable party. People asked about my accent. Where was I from? Off-world? Really?

That night, somewhere around 3:00 A.M., my link sounded. It was Khaled. I reached over and took it from the bedside table. “Hello,” I said.

His image appeared over by one of the windows. “Chase. Ah, so you are still here.”

“More or less, Khaled.”

“I can’t see you.”

“I’m in bed.”

“Oh. At this hour?”

“It’s the middle of the night here.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m in Barkova.”

“I didn’t realize. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. Do you need something?”

“I just wanted to hear your voice again.”

Alex hadn’t released me from his directive that I not say anything to him. But it was hard to see that it would matter any longer. “Why?”

“Why would I want to hear your voice again? Chase, you sound annoyed.”

“No, I’m not annoyed. I was just wondering whether you were looking for somebody to drop into the Atlantic.”

“Oh.” His shoulders tightened. “What do you mean?”

“You can stop the lies, Khaled.”

He paused. Scrunched his shoulders and straightened. “I’m sorry about that, Chase. I’ll regret that the rest of my life. But so you know, I didn’t mean to cause a problem for you. You were never at risk.”

“Yeah, you said something like that before.”

“I was hoping it wouldn’t—You wouldn’t find out.”

“I’m not surprised. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to get back to sleep.”

“Chase, I’m sorry. I wish I had it to do over.”

“You don’t get do-overs, Khaled.” I broke the connection, and his image blinked off.

I settled back down under the sheet and started rehearsing the things I should have said. Hero of the hour: What a fake. You sold us out. Could have gotten us killed. And then you think you can make everything okay? I’m just going to forget it?

The link sounded again. The few familiar notes, drifting through the dark.

I let it go for a while. I thought about shutting it off, but finally I opened the channel. “Chase,” he said, “please listen to me. Look, I’m sorry. I’ll do anything to make it up to you. When it happened, it just seemed harmless enough. And to be honest, I thought it was a chance to impress you. I had that wrong, and I know that. But all I’m asking is a second chance. Do that for me, and I promise you’ll never regret it.”

“Khaled,” I said, “there’s nothing you can do. No way you could ever fix things so I could trust you. Just go away and leave me alone.”

“Chase, I—”

“Good-bye, Khaled.” I disconnected again. He didn’t call back.

And I tossed and turned the rest of the night.

On the eleventh, I checked with operations. The Vistula had arrived in the solar system, but it was out near the orbit of Mars. “Figure two days,” they said. We took advantage of the time we had to travel to Egypt. Alex could never get enough of the pyramids. We landed at Balakat, a few kilometers from the Great Pyramid of Giza, climbed into a bus with forty other tourists, and headed out.

As customary, Alex had done his homework. “I cannot imagine how a primitive society could have put this thing together,” he said, as we stood gaping at it. “Some of the individual blocks weigh up to eighty tons and were brought in from Aswan, which was more than eight hundred kilometers away.

“The thing consists of five and a half million tons of limestone, as well as some granite. The slaves were working in a desert. How could they possibly, with no technology, have hauled even one eighty-ton block of limestone across eight hundred kilometers under a blazing sun?”

“What are you suggesting?”

“I don’t know. One fairly common theory is that it was done by aliens.”

“The Mutes?”

“Who else is there?” He laughed. “But I can’t imagine Selotta or Kassel hauling those things around. Can you?”

They’d ridden with us a few years earlier on a tour of Atlantis. “They have antigravity,” I said.

“Let me put it a different way: Can you imagine either of them showing any interest in arranging blocks of limestone on a desert floor?”

We also visited the Palawi Temple, on the edge of the Libyan Desert. It’s six thousand years old, and the civilization that built it is long gone. But its most fascinating aspect is that tourists who went there three thousand years ago inscribed their names and dates on its walls. The practice was stopped in the last millennium, but the names are still there, now carefully preserved and part of the history of the place.

We had just come out and were climbing back into the tour bus, grateful to be in the cool air again, when we got word that the Vistula had docked. “Do you want to call him?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “Let’s let him take the initiative.”

Fifteen minutes later, the bus lifted off and started back toward Almahdi. The call came in midway during the flight. “Alex? This is Lawrence.”

“Hello, Lawrence. How was your ride in?”

“Long. You haven’t talked to any more reporters, I hope?”

“No. You asked me to hold off, so I did.”

“Good. We need to get together.”

“Okay. We’re in Almahdi.”

“Where?”

“Egypt.”

“You have Chase with you?”

“Yes, she’s right here.”

“Okay. I was going to suggest you come up here. And please bring her with you.”

“Are you on Galileo?”

“Yes. That way we can go directly to Larissa.”

“You know where it is, Lawrence?”

“Not exactly. But I have its number.”

“From Tokata?”

“Yes.”

“KL-4561?”

“No. I got the real one. And I want to apologize for that. Heli was just trying to protect Garnett.”

“Protect him from what?”

“I’d rather not discuss this over the link. Why don’t you come up here, so we can talk it over and get everything settled?”

“Lawrence, so we’re clear: We’ve been running around working on this matter for the better part of three months. We got dumped into the Atlantic and were led to believe our lives were in danger. Your associate sent us on a bogus run to the asteroid belt. And now you want us to go up to the space station and you’ll explain everything. Is that right?”

“I understand you’re not happy, Alex. And believe me, I’m sorry about how this has played out. I’ll make it up to you if you’ll allow me.”

“Why don’t you start by giving me the Larissa designator? Then we’ll pick you up, and we can talk on the way.”

Southwick hesitated. “No,” he said. “I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“I’ll explain to you when you get here. But first I have to have your word that you’ll never say a word about this. Nor will Chase.”

Alex looked at me. Glanced down at the desert moving slowly past. “I can’t do that,” he said. “I’m not good at conspiracies.”

“This is not a conspiracy, Alex.”

“I wouldn’t know what else to call it.”

“Nevertheless, I must have your word.”

“You want me to promise to say nothing before you reveal what you’re hiding?”

“That’s correct. I’m sorry, but I have to insist.”

“Then you might as well get on the next flight, Lawrence, and ride back to Rimway.”

“Alex, I have no choice.”

“Neither do I.”

We could hear him breathing on the other end. “I’ll tell you this much,” he said. “Your plan to make public what you know, and unleash a bunch of treasure hunters will gain absolutely nothing. The odds of their finding anything are virtually nonexistent—”

“I wouldn’t agree with that.”

“No. You probably wouldn’t. But there are a lot of asteroids out there.”

“Not that many big ones.”

“Okay. Let me take it a step further. If you do succeed in getting a swarm of people to go out and do the search for you, and if one of them is able to find Larissa, I can assure you it will do nobody any good.” He hesitated. “Look. Don’t do this. If, when you find out what has happened, you can conclude that no crime has been committed, and no one has been injured, all I’m asking is that you will agree to say nothing.”

“Why don’t you just tell me what you have, and we can go from there?”

“I can’t do that, Alex. Not like this.”

“Then I’m sorry. I guess we’re just going to have to stay at odds. Lawrence, I think you made the flight for nothing.” Alex clicked off, and he sat staring out the window.

It took maybe twenty minutes before the link sounded again. “All right,” he said. “I’ve checked into the Galileo Hotel. When you get here, we’ll talk it out.”