Firebird

TEN

I wish all the best for my brother. I ask only that I am able to stay a step ahead of him.

— Josh Levins, Darkness Rules, 1398

Aside from a few preserved sites, the only indication that Caton Ferry had been devastated by an earthquake and a tsunami forty-one years before is Memorial Park, which now occupies a substantial tract of land on the west side of the city, between the town center and the ocean. Everything else has been rebuilt, restored, replaced.

At the time of the disaster, Caton Ferry had a population of about ten thousand. It's considerably more than that now, and like many of the coastal towns, it's become a tourist trap. It's anchored by Big Apple Construction and Kryzinski University, it has the most famous auto racetrack on the continent, and it's also the headquarters of three major churches. So much, the noted atheist Wendel Kavich commented a few days after the quake, for any claims on their influence with God.

I checked into the Seaview Hotel, which borders Memorial Park, and changed into some casuals.

The park consists mostly of closely manicured lawns, with clipped rows of hedges and clutches of shade trees. Two sites enclose wrecked buildings, protected by globes. Data boards at each site show pictures of the structures as they'd looked before the disaster.

They have a theater that, twice daily, runs a documentary on the event, titled Day of the Hero. An L-shaped building houses a souvenir shop, administrative offices, and a museum.

I wandered into the museum. It was filled with pieces of equipment used by firefighters and rescue teams during the quake. The AI that had coordinated the overall effort was on display and would talk with anyone who had a question or comment. I listened for a few minutes.

“How did you feel,” a teenage boy asked, “to be in the middle of all that? Were you scared? Do AIs get scared?”

“I was inspired,” said the AI, speaking with the voice of an older male, “by the heroic efforts of those who came to the rescue. And I am referring not only to the professionals but to the ordinary people who put their lives on the line to save their friends and neighbors. Was I scared? Yes. I knew we were in trouble.”

“Were you scared for yourself?”

“Yes. I was scared for all of us.”

An older man described himself as having barely survived the experience. “I was in a staircase,” he said. “It collapsed, and I broke both legs. The place was on fire, and a young woman showed up and dragged me out.” He grinned and indicated a female companion. “I married her.”

“Excellent choice,” said the AI.

A guy in a Fleet uniform asked about preparedness. “How did it happen,” he said, “that everyone was taken so completely by surprise? Could the politicians have done more?”

“We have the advantage of hindsight,” said the AI. “When you have that, you can always think of more things that might have been done. The real problem was that we thought there could not be an event of that magnitude that would not reveal itself in advance. The science failed.”

Eighteen persons were recognized in the heroes' gallery. All had lost their lives during the earthquake. Their pictures dominated two walls. They were young and old, both sexes, some in uniform and some not. Among them was Eliot Cermak, handsome, gallant, and fearless in his pilot's silver and blue. His name was emblazoned below the photo, and his dates: 1326–1393.

A booklet had been put together for the eighteen, photos and names on the cover, and emblazoned with the motto NO GREATER COURAGE.

I picked one up and paged through it. It contained a brief biography of each person, and dozens of pictures, most of moments from their personal lives before the event. One of the Cermak photos showed him standing next to Robin.

I bought a copy and took it back to the hotel.

Cermak's parents had looked like serious people, the father not entirely comfortable smiling for the photographer, his mother lighting up the page. It was easy enough to see where he got his good looks.

Here he was lined up in front of the Cardwell Elementary School with the other first graders. And at about age twelve in a beach picture with his father. And playing palmball with his older brother, Gregory. They had him at his high-school prom, embracing a gorgeous brunette who was smiling complacently at the picture taker.

Then Cermak at Kryzinski University. And on vacation. Posing with the family at a wedding. There were two pictures from flight school. Another returning from his first solo. He was beaming, and I remembered how that had felt. It is still, so many years later, one of the proudest moments of my life.

And two more pictures of Cermak with the Fleet, where he rose to the rank of lieutenant commander.

And, finally, Cermak standing beside the Breakwater, on one of the docks at Skydeck. And the one with Robin, who was identified as a “world-famous physicist.” Robin looked a trifle pretentious, self-important, while Cermak was simply a guy on top of the world.

The older brother, Gregory, still lived in the area. There was no indication of a profession, so I assumed, correctly as it turned out, that he had settled for the basic security allotment. When I called and told him I was doing research on Eliot, he couldn't keep the annoyance out of his voice. “It's a long time ago,” he said.

I wondered whether he was jealous of the attention that Eliot had received. Still jealous, after forty years? “That's why we need to do the research,” I said. “I was wondering if there was more material available about your brother that I could look at? We'd like to get a sense of who he really was. And of the family that could produce somebody like him.”

“What do you mean?”

“The world knows he's a hero, but they've never really gotten a good image of the man.”

“I don't think I have anything that would be of use to you. Nice to talk to you-”

“No, wait. Don't break off. This is important, Mr. Cermak. And I'd be willing to pay for access.”

“Really? How much?”

I gave him a number. It was a minimum amount, but it's always easy enough to increase the offer if necessary.

“Okay,” he said. “I'll do what I can. But payment up front, please.”

“Let's see what you have to offer first.”

“What exactly are you looking for?” His tone softened a bit. Not much, but enough.

“Do you have anything that belonged to him? Correspondence? Diary? Anything like that?”

He had to think about it. “There's a diary. I have a lot of stuff, actually. My wife never throws anything out.”

“What else?”

“Pictures. A lot of pictures. And an award he received. In high school, I think it was. I don't have any correspondence.” He couldn't think of anything else. “Mostly pictures,” he said. “And a notebook.”

“When can we talk?”

I doubted that Gregory Cermak had ever looked much like his brother. Where Eliot could have been a leading man, Gregory might have been a guy who'd spent most of his time hanging out in the woods. He had hard, almost immobile, features, and he was irritable and impatient. He introduced me to his wife, Vella, who seemed beaten down, then made it clear that she must have other things to do.

He didn't have much to tell me, mostly stories about him and Eliot growing up together. His resentment of his brother came through loud and clear. Eliot had been selfish. “Though maybe I shouldn't say that.” The other kids in school hadn't liked him as they had Gregory. “He was always whining about something, but please don't print that. The only reason I'm saying it is so you can understand he wasn't really what everybody thinks now.”

“Greg,” I said, “how do you account for his actions during the earthquake?”

“Look, Chase,” he said, “I'm not saying he was a bad person. If I said that, I'm sorry. It's not what I meant. I just wanted you to understand he was as human as everybody else. He ran into buildings and pulled kids out while everybody else ran in circles and screamed that he'd get himself killed. Which is ultimately what happened.” He said it as if it demonstrated his brother's bad judgment. Then his tone changed: “I like to think that if I'd been there, I'd have done the same thing.”

“You weren't there?”

“No,” he said, in a tone that suggested I wouldn't believe him. “I was on a job.”

“Did you ever meet Robin?”

“Chris Robin? Not really. I saw him at a distance once or twice. I don't think I ever actually talked to him, though.”

“Did they come down from the Skydeck on the shuttle?”

“Yes. Eliot's skimmer was at the terminal. He took Robin home and then rode back to Caton Ferry.”

“He wasn't very lucky, was he?”

“No.” I saw a hint of regret.

“What about the yachts? You know he and Robin lost some yachts?”

“I heard about that, yes.”

“Do you know anything about them?”

“Not really. I joked with Eliot about them. What were there? Three?”

“Four.”

“Okay. Yeah. They'd just take them out somewhere and dump them.”

“And you've no idea why?”

“Eliot said they were junk. They were just using them for experiments.”

“Did he say what kind?” He shook his head. “How about where they went? Did he ever-?”

“No. When I asked Eliot about it, he laughed it off. They bought them, or rather Robin did, and I think they deliberately took them out and got rid of them. But I don't know. Eliot was never inclined to tell me stuff.”

“And you've no idea where?”

“No.” He bit his lower lip. “I remember he said something about one of the yachts, the Firebird, I think it was. The last one.”

“Yes?”

“I remember asking Eliot, just before he left, where he was going. And he said, 'Just for a spin.' I asked him what he meant, and he said two hundred billion klicks. He shrugged, like it was just around the corner.”

“Two hundred billion. You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“It wasn't million?”

“No. It was billion. It stuck in my mind because usually he'd say he was headed for Toxicon, or the Moon, or wherever. But that time, no. It was just two hundred billion klicks. I remember telling him it sounded like a long walk.”

That couldn't be right. Two hundred billion kilometers would take you absolutely nowhere. Well outside the planetary system, but it would deposit you in the pit. In interstellar space.

“What about the Breakwater?” I asked.

“It got junked.”

There were pictures, holograms, even a bust of Eliot sculpted, according to Gregory, by a girlfriend. In school, Eliot had been at the top of his class a few times, and he had framed certificates to testify to it.

I picked up the diary. This was where I expected, hoped, to find everything laid out, explanations of what he and Robin were trying to do. Maybe I'd even get a sense of what had happened on that final fatal night. So I opened it, in Gregory's presence, and made no effort to disguise my disappointment. It covered only his junior and senior years in high school. Mostly it was a record of love affairs and occasional conquests.

“We did it,” he reported at the beginning of one entry. “I never thought Molly would go along. She always went just so far and backed off. But we did it. O happy day-!”

Damn.

O happy day.

So we went through the pictures. I didn't know any of the people in them, except of course Cermak and Robin. And Gregory. Gregory agreed to identify everybody, provided I increased the remuneration. Remuneration might not have been in his vocabulary, actually. “This is taking up my time,” he said by way of explanation. “And I should warn you up front that some of these people, a lot of them, actually, I don't know.”

Whatever Eliot had been, Gregory was not. He grumbled that I wasn't moving fast enough. He ignored Vella when she arrived with some muffins and fruit juice. She'd probably been attractive when she took her place with him at the altar. He rolled his eyes a lot and didn't seem able to get comfortable in his chair.

Nevertheless, he helped and I made notes. “This was Dr. Farley, the family physician. That was one of Eliot's girlfriends. Yolinda Something-or-other. Don't know who this one is. Oh, yes, that's Talia, his first wife.”

“He was married?”

“Twice. The other one was, um-” He pushed back in his chair, opened the door to the living room, and called to his wife. “Vella, what was the name of Eliot's second wife?”

“Akri,” she said.

“They divorced him?” I asked. “Both wives?”

“Talia did. Akri, I think, just let the marriage lapse.”

“Sorry to hear it.”

“It hardly matters now.”

And here was the picture of Cermak and Robin that had been in the book. And a few more. A couple with Cermak and Akri. One showing Robin sitting in the right-hand seat in a cockpit. “The Breakwater?” I asked.

Gregory shrugged. “Who the hell knows?”

“You were never in it?”

“No. Not me. I like to keep both feet on the ground.”

More pictures from the cockpit. In one, Eliot was looking out at an enormous set of rings. Robin, in another, was just sitting, trying to smile, and not doing a very good job of it, while the same rings cut across the wraparound. I wondered where they were. The instrument panel was visible, but I couldn't make out any details. Blowing it up wasn't likely to help. Still, there was always a possibility. “Can you make a copy of this one, Greg?” I asked.

He looked at it as if he might be giving away something I should be paying for. But he shrugged and directed the AI to make a print.

Then a surprise: a picture of Robin's house on Virginia Island. In fading sunlight. And a shot of the ocean, taken from the bluff. And one of Elizabeth, looking out to sea. All three pictures were moody, placid, somehow wistful. Taken at the same time of day.

Then we had Eliot lifting off in a skimmer. “That was the last time I saw him,” said Gregory. “It was my father's funeral. We had a memorial service, and afterward he left, went out to wherever it was with Chris Robin. He came back just in time to get killed by the quake.”

“Who took the picture?”

“My son Creviss. Creviss always wanted to be a pilot. Be just like his uncle.”

“Did he do it, Gregory?”

“No. He became a lawyer. Don't know which is worse.”

Jack McDevitt

Firebird