Infinity Beach

2

In effect, Kim and her charges, a combination of commentators, contributors, and political heavyweights, were afloat in the void at relatively close range to Alpha Maxim. They were seated in four rows of armchairs, some sipping coffee or fruit juice, one or two pushed back as if it might be possible to fall. The sun’s glare was muted. Its apparent size was about twice that of Helios at noon.

Two clocks, positioned among the stars, counted down to ignition.

Kim, in the rear, was doing a play-by-play. “The LK6 is now two minutes from making its jump into the solar core. When it does, it will try to materialize in an area already densely packed with matter.” Canon Woodbridge, seated up front, was talking on a phone while he watched.

“This alone would be enough to create a massive explosion. But the LK6 is loaded with a cargo of antimatter. The reaction will be enough to destabilize the star.”

Beside her, a technician signaled that the operation was still on schedule.

“We have a report from the McCollum that the last crewmembers have left the Trent, and that they have begun to pull away.”

One of the observers wanted to know about safety margins. How long would it take before the shock wave hit the Trent?

“There’s no danger to any of the personnel. They’ll be gone long before the first effects of the nova reach their former location. Incidentally, the Trent won’t be destroyed by the shock wave. The light will get there first, and that’ll be quite enough.”

Could she explain?

“A nova puts out a lot of photons. Think of a near-solid wall moving at lightspeed.”

The clock produced a string of zeroes.

“Insertion is complete,” she said.

“Kim.” It was the representative of a corporation that almost routinely underwrote Institute activities. “How long will it be before we start to see the first effects?”

“That’s a gray area, Ann. To be honest, we have no idea.”

There were skeptics among the witnesses, some who believed that the Institute had overreached, that blowing up a star was simply beyond human capability. Several, she knew, would have been pleased to see the effort fail. Some did not like the Institute; some did not like its director. Others were simply uncomfortable at the prospect of human beings wielding that kind of power. Woodbridge was among these. Despite his remarks the previous evening, Kim knew that his real misgivings flowed from a basic distrust of human nature.

Minutes passed and nothing happened. She heard something fall and strike the invisible floor. They grew restless. In their experience, explosions were supposed to happen when they were triggered.

The first signs of stress showed up at zero plus eighteen minutes and change. Bright lines appeared around Alpha Maxim’s belt. The chromosphere became visibly turbulent. Fountains of light erupted off the solar surface.

At zero plus twenty-two minutes the sun began to visibly expand. The process was slow: it might have been a balloon filling gradually with water. Enormous tidal forces started to overwhelm the spherical shape, flattening it, disrupting it, inducing monumental quakes.

At twenty-six minutes, eleven seconds, it exploded.

It was often possible to make a reasonable guess at a person’s age from the physical characteristics his or her parents had selected. Different eras favored different skin tones, body types, hair colors. Concepts of beauty changed: women from one age tended to be well developed, their centers of gravity, as Solly Hobbs had once remarked, several centimeters in front of them; another era favored willowy, boyish women. Men’s physiques ranged from heroic to slim. The current fashion was to consider bulk as somehow in poor taste. Males born during the next few years were going to resemble a generation of ballet dancers.

During the eighties, parents of both sexes had opted for classic features, the long jawline, eyes wide apart, straight nose. Teenage girls now looked by and large as if they’d stepped down from pedestals in the Acropolis. Kim had come from an earlier time when the pixie look was in vogue. She tried to compensate by maintaining a straightforward no-nonsense attitude, and by avoiding a programmed tendency to cant her head and smile sweetly. She also adapted her hair style to cover her somewhat elvin ears.

Solomon Hobbs was from an age that had favored biceps and shoulders, although he had allowed things to deteriorate somewhat. Solly was one of the Institute’s four starship pilots. Kim had come to know him, however, not through an official connection, but because of their mutual interest in diving. Solly had been a member of the Sea Knights when Kim joined.

He had clear blue eyes, brown hair that was always in disarray, and a careless joviality that contrasted with a culture that thought of having fun as serious business, something one did to maintain a proper psychological balance.

After the lights came on and her guests had drifted away, Kim caught a cab which deposited her at the foot of Solly’s pier. The dive on the Caledonian was to be their way of welcoming the new year. They’d been looking forward to it for weeks, but as they rounded Capelo Island, riding a cold wind, Kim began to describe her conversation with Sheyel. It wasn’t a story she enjoyed telling, because it cast her former teacher as a crank. Yet she felt driven to talk about it. When she finished, he asked gently how much confidence she had in Tolliver.

“If you’d asked me two days ago—” she said.

“People lose touch as they get older.” Solly squinted at the sun. The sloop rose and fell. “It happens.”

They listened to the sea.

“I almost feel,” said Kim, “as if I owe it to Emily to do something.”

“Emily would tell you to forget it.”

Kim laughed. That was funny. Emily was by no means a mark for every weird idea, but there had been something in her that wanted to get beyond the merely physical universe. Given a choice between daylight and darkness, she’d have opted for the night every time. “No,” she said. “Emily would have wanted me to do something. Not just let it go.”

“Like run up to Severin?”

She made a face. “I know. It’s dumb even to think about it.”

Solly shrugged. “Turn it into a vacation.”

“I’m going to have to get back to him. To Sheyel. I don’t like the way we left things.”

“And you don’t want to call him and tell him—”

“—Right. That I didn’t bother to check out the woods.”

They both laughed. The wind brought some spray inboard.

“Solly, I’ll just say I didn’t have time to go. That I’ll get around to it when I can.”

“Didn’t you tell me this guy was a good teacher?”

“Yeah. He was good.”

“And you’re going to tell him you didn’t have time to check something out for him? That you were too busy? Even though your sister was involved?”

“Solly, I don’t really want to get caught up in this.”

“Then don’t.” His sensors picked up the wreck, and he tacked a few points to port. “Moving up on it,” he said.

“I mean, what happens to my reputation if it gets around I’ve gone ghost hunting?”

“Kim, why don’t you take him at his word? We both know you’re not going to sleep until you do. Look, it’s only a few hours to Severin. Do it. What did he say was out there? A spook?”

“He didn’t exactly say. ‘Something’s loose.’”

“Well, that could be pretty much anything.”

“I think he was suggesting I’d know it when I saw it.”

“Give it a chance. When nothing happens you can tell him you tried.”

He dropped anchor and they changed into their wet suits. Kim folded her clothes carefully on the cabin bunk, then removed her silver earrings and laid them on top of her blouse. They were dolphins, given to her years ago by an otherwise forgettable amour. Then they sat down on the deck and resumed the conversation while they pulled on flippers and adjusted thermostats. Kim knew that the dive could not be made until the Tolliver issue was settled.

“You think I owe him that,” she said.

“I think you owe it to yourself.” He put his mask on, adjusted it, attached the converter, and took a deep breath. “I’ll go with you, if you want.”

“You really would?”

“I’m on an off-rotation for a couple of weeks. Plenty of time available if you’d like to do it.”

Actually, she did. “Okay,” she said. “I’m supposed to talk to the Germane Society the day after tomorrow. Wednesday. And I’ve got a fund-raiser at Sky Harbor next Saturday.”

“What’s next Saturday?”

“The Star Queen christening. Maybe this weekend would be a good time.”

“I don’t think I want to ask you what the Germane Society is.”

“They are relevant.”

Solly grinned. “Is it a luncheon?”

“Yes.”

“Why wait till the weekend? Eagle Point’s a tourist spot. Cheaper to hit it now. Why don’t we leave Wednesday afternoon? After the Relevant Society—?”

“—Germane—”

“Whatever.”

“You sound terribly interested all of a sudden.”

“A night in the Severin Valley with a beautiful woman? Why wouldn’t I be interested?”

Her relationship with Solly was purely platonic. He’d been married when they first met, so they became friends before they could have become lovers. She’d liked him from the first. When Solly became eligible after he and his wife had failed to renew the marriage, she had considered signaling a romantic interest. But he’d seemed reluctant. Best way he knew of, he said, to put a rift between them. She’d wondered whether there was a secret agenda somewhere, perhaps another woman. Or whether he meant what he said. Eventually the arrangement came to seem quite natural.

“I used the VR this morning,” she said, “after I got off the circuit with Sheyel.” She pulled the converter on over her shoulders and connected it. “I spent an hour looking at the Severin woods. They’re just woods.”

“It’s not quite the same as being there,” said Solly.

A wave passed under the boat and set it rocking. He dipped his mask in the water and put it on. “What about Kane? What happened to him?”

“He retired after the Hunter incident. Went into seclusion, I guess. I haven’t done much research on him yet.”

“Aha.”

“What aha! What are you trying to say?”

“Research? So we are interested in this, are we?”

She rolled her eyes. “Just curiosity. He stayed in Severin Village until they evacuated. When they took down the dam. He moved to Terminal City after that, and then he headed out. Eventually landed on Earth. Canada. Lived on his retirement income, I guess.”

“Is he still alive?”

“He died a few years ago trying to rescue some kids. In a forest fire.” .

Solly pulled on his flippers. “And he always told the same story?”

“The conspiracy freaks were constantly after him. That appears to be the reason he left Greenway. But yes: He maintained that nothing unusual happened on the Hunter mission. They went out. They had an engine problem. They came back. Didn’t know what happened to the women. Thought Tripley died in the blast.”

“Mount Hope.”

“Yes.”

He lowered himself into the water, and his voice came in over her ‘phones. “There is someone you might try talking to.”

She watched him start down, and then followed him in. “Who’s that?”

“Benton Tripley. Kile’s son. His office is at Sky Harbor. When you go there next weekend, why don’t you stop by and see him? He might be able to tell you something.”

“I don’t know.” She slipped beneath the surface and filled her lungs several times to assure herself the converter was working properly. The air was sweet and cool. When she was satisfied, she started down. “I think I’ll settle for just looking at the woods and let it go at that.”

Bars of sunlight faded quickly. A long rainbow-colored fish darted past. The oceans of Greenway had filled rapidly with lobsters and tarpon and whales and algae and seaweed.

She dropped through alternating warm and cold currents. Solly, now trailing behind her, switched on his wristlamp.

The Caledonian had been running among the islands on its way out to the banks with nineteen passengers and a three-person crew when a freak storm blew up. It became a legendary event because there’d been some famous people on board, and because there’d been only two survivors. One had been the unfortunate captain, later held negligent by a board of inquiry, charging failure to train his crew, poor ship handling, failure to develop emergency procedures. His situation was exacerbated by the suspicion that on the night of the accident he’d been frolicking in his quarters with a married passenger.

The ship’s wheel was on display at the Marine Museum in Seabright. Other divers had gone over the wreck and taken whatever they could. Even Kim, who was usually inclined to respect such things, had removed a latch from a cabin door. The latch was now inside a block of crystal, which she kept hidden in her bedroom because visitors had made a point of showing their disapproval. Moves were currently afoot to declare the area a seapark, install monitoring equipment, and thereby protect it from future looters. Kim, with the quiet hypocrisy that seems wired into the human soul, favored the measure. She soothed her conscience by promising herself she’d donate the latch to the museum. When the time came.

She left her own lamp off, savoring the dark and the solitude and the moving water. The bottom came into view. A school of fish, drawn by Solly’s light, hurried past.

Ahead she could make out the wreck. It lay on its starboard side in the mud, half buried. Its rudder was gone, the spars were gone, planking was gone. Anything that could be carried off had been taken. Still it retained a kind of pathetic dignity.

The seabottoms of Greenway, unlike those of Earth, were not littered with the wrecks of thousands of years of seafaring and warmaking. It was in fact possible to count the number of sinkings along the eastern coast, during five centuries, on two hands. Only one, the Caledonian, had been a ship in the true sense of the word. The others had all been skimmers. The loss of a vessel was so rare an event that anything that went down became immediately a subject of folklore.

They were approaching bow-on. Kim switched on her light. “Spooky as ever,” said Solly.

It wasn’t the adjective Kim would have used. Forlorn, perhaps. Abandoned.

Yet maybe he was right.

They drifted down toward the foredeck.

The other survivor had testified that the ship’s captain had done what he could.

The unfortunate skipper’s name was Jon Halvert. He’d used a lantern to signal passengers to the lifeboats, and renderings of the incident invariably showed him holding the lantern high, helping men and women off the stricken ship. But it had all come too late and the Caledonian had turned over within seconds and plunged to the bottom. Historians believed that, the view of the board of inquiry notwithstanding, nothing the captain could have done would have made any significant difference. But there had been, as always, the need to establish responsibility. To lay blame.

Kim felt a special affection for him. Halvert seemed to represent the human condition: struggling under impossible circumstances, answerable for lack of perfection, holding the lantern nonetheless. But in the end it makes no difference.

Within a year of the event he died, and it became a popular legend that his spirit hovered in the vicinity of the wreck.

Divers only visit the Caledonian when the weather is good. But when the wind is stirring and rain is on the horizon, you can sail out to the spot and look down through the water, and you’ll see the glow of the captain’s lantern moving along the decks and ladders while he urges his passengers toward the boats.

Kim had read that in True Equatorian Specters. One version of the story had it that he was damned to continue the search until the last victim had been rescued.

Solly must have known what she was thinking. “There he is,” he said, directing her attention toward a luminous jellyfish over the port quarter.

They swam down to the pilothouse and passed before the empty frames. There was nothing left inside. Even the wheel mount was missing. But it was easy to conjure up the voyagers that night, lounging about the decks, looking forward to a week at sea, suddenly aware of a threatening sky.

They emerged on the starboard side and moved aft. Kim used her wristlamp to illuminate the interior. The cabins were, of course, stark and empty.

Forty minutes later they surfaced, climbed aboard the sloop, and changed. Then they broke out dinner: turkey and salad and cold beer. It was beginning to get dark. The sky was cloudless, the sea a sheet of glass.

“This place is a good example of what stage management does,” said Solly. “It feels as if the supernatural can happen down there. The stories are pure fantasy, but when I’m near the wreck I’m not so sure. That’s the way the Severin Woods will be.”

“Different sets of rules,” she agreed. “Take away the light, and werewolves are possible.” She touched a presspad and soft music came out of the speakers.

They sat in the cabin, the food spread out on a table. A couple of islands lay on the horizon. In the distance another sailboat was moving across their line of vision. Solly made a sandwich and took a bite. “Kim,” he said when he’d gotten enough down that he could talk again, “do you believe ghosts are possible?”

She studied him, and decided he was quite serious. “Running into a real ghost would change everything we believe about the way the universe works.”

“I’m not so sure about it,” he said.

“Why?”

“I once served aboard the Persepholis. It had a haunted stateroom.”

“Haunted how?”

“Strange noises. Voices no one could account for. Cold spots.”

“You ever see any of this?”

He considered the question. “Yeah. I can remember walking past it on watch, hearing voices inside.”

“Might have been the passengers.”

“This was after they stopped using it for passengers, Kim. It became a storage area.”

“Did you look inside?”

“First couple of times, yes. Didn’t see anything. After that I just let it go.”

“Not that I doubt you,” she said, “but I’d have to see it for myself.”

They ate quietly. Solly looked out toward the mainland, just visible in the east. “Plato believed in ghosts,” he said.

“Plato?” Kim was skeptical.

“He thought ghosts came from drinking too much wine.” He laughed at her reaction. “It’s true. He says somewhere that when people get too attracted to their earthly lives, too many good times, too much sex, that when they die their souls get tangled up with the flesh and can’t get free. He thinks that’s why spirits hang around cemeteries. They’re sort of pinned to their bodies.”

Kim finished the sandwich, scooped up some cranberry sauce, and washed everything down with the beer. “You’re really caught up on this Severin business, aren’t you, Solly?”

He was refilling their glasses. “No. Not really. But when the sun goes down, it becomes a different kind of world.”

“Hell of an attitude for a starship pilot.”

He let her see how much he was enjoying the beer. “Maybe I’ve been out in the dark too many times,” he said.

Alpha Maxim had erupted in an explosion that would be visible for a billion light-years. Of course, if a response had to come from that kind of distance nothing human would be here to receive it. The species would long since have evolved into something else.

The news accounts were filled with Beacon stories, including excerpts from religious and conservation figures, who’d entered into an unusual alliance, declaring the detonations either acts against God or against the environment.

Kim understood people’s objection to blowing up suns, even suns with planetary systems which would never be home to anything except iron and methane. The worlds that had been engulfed yesterday had been orbiting Maxim for time out of mind, and it seemed indecent to disturb them.

She shook off the misapprehension and her thoughts drifted to Sheyel Tolliver. She’d been tempted to call him after she got back from the Caledonian dive, talk to him casually as though last night’s conversation had not been at all unusual, to assure herself that he was okay, that he had taken no offense. But she decided it was better left alone.

She spent much of the following day in a conference with Matt Flexner, trying to draw up a strategy for squeezing additional funds from the central government. Elections were imminent and the Premier knew that either of his prospective opponents would turn money for the Institute into another example of government waste.

The problem, as Kim saw it, was to demonstrate why the Institute was valuable to the taxpayers, who tended to see it as a way to create jobs for overeducated people with nowhere to go. Kim hated to admit it, but she wasn’t sure the taxpayers were altogether wrong. She did not, of course, share that opinion with Matt. Only Solly knew how she felt.

Matt Flexner had literally been around the Seabright Institute for a century. At thirty, he’d been one of its showpieces, a world-class physicist, doing breakthrough work in transdimensional structure. But the extension of life had underscored quite clearly what scientists had always known: that truly creative work must be done during the early years, or it will not be done at all. Genius fades quickly, like the rose in midsummer. And all the genetic enhancement known to science had not been able to change that melancholy reality.

Matt had adjusted, passed his work unfinished to younger hands, and gone into less demanding fields. Public relations, Kim thought sadly, recognizing that her genius had never got off the train. If Matt had come up short, at least he’d been in the game. People would remember him.

He still looked thirty, of course. He had a broad forehead and a whimsical smile and a long nose. His hair and beard were black, and he was an extraordinarily gifted tennis player.

Kim was his chief lieutenant.

She told him that she’d be gone for a couple of days. Her schedule was her own. Nobody cared how she came and went as long as she got the job done. And the immediate job was to persuade the members of the Germane Society that the Institute was a worthy recipient for donations.

It would, she thought, be rather nice if she could find a supernatural being in the Severin Woods. It would open a whole new field of scientific inquiry.

She went home early, slept for an hour, then made some hot chocolate and carried it into the living room. “Shep,” she said, “see what you can find out about Markis Kane after 573.”

“Searching,” he said.

The sky was gray and cold. A stiff wind beat against the house.

“Not much here. He was an artist of some note.”

“Artist? You sure it’s the same guy?”

“Oh yes. It’s the same person. Apparently his work has a modest reputation.”

“Okay. What else?”

“He left Greenway in June 579, on a flight to Earth. Worked several years there in Canada as a consultant for flight-deck design. Retired from that in 591. Moved to Old Wisconsin. Died in 596.”

“He never served as a ship’s captain again? After the Hunter mission?”

“Not that I can find.”

It was odd. Three people disappear. And the fourth gives up his career.

Nothing remained of Severin Village except a few buildings jutting out of the lake that had formed when they took down the dam. The lake itself, appropriately named Remorse, was quite large, more than twenty kilometers across at its widest point, and lined with forest. In some places there were piles of uprooted trees.

“Shepard,” she said, “take me there.”

The living room dissolved to lakeshore.

“Weather conditions?”

“Springlike. April. Maybe throw in a shower.”

Kim’s chair was at the water’s edge. The wind rose and a small boat with two fishermen was making for land. A sheet of rain was moving across the lake, coming her way. Near shore, brick walls and chimneys broke the surface.

She sat for a long time at the water’s edge. Since she was not dressed for stimulation, the storm would have no effect on her and the illusion would be ruined. So Shepard kept the rain out to the north.

There were no artificial lights anywhere, save for a lantern in the fishing boat. “Nearest town, Shep?” she asked.

“Eagle Point. Population about seventeen thousand. Approximate distance thirty-three kilometers.”

Eagle Point. They had some of Kane’s sketches there, at the Gould Art Gallery.

She hesitated. Then: “Shep, let me talk to Emily.”

The AI’s electronics murmured. “Kim, are you sure?” It had been years.

“Do it, Shep.”

Lights brightened and dimmed again. Kim was still on the beach at Remorse. But she was no longer alone.

“Hello, Kimberly.” Emily wore the same leisure outfit, loose white top and baggy pants, that Kim was wearing. Both were barefoot. It had never been quite like this before when Kim had called up her lost sister. Then she’d been an adolescent talking with a grown woman. Now they were on equal terms.

“Hello, Emily. It’s good to see you again.” The years had not assuaged the grief of loss. Maybe it had to do with the fact that there’d never been a body. Kim had never really given up hope that her sister, her other self, would come back.

“You see me in every mirror. How’ve you been doing?”

“Pretty good. I’m working at the Seabright Institute.”

“Wonderful. What do you do?”

“Public relations. Fund-raising.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“It’s not exactly what I wanted. But I’m good at it. And the pay’s not bad.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” She lowered herself onto a log. “I’m surprised to be here. Has something happened?”

“No. Yes. Do you remember Yoshi Amara?”

“Of course. She was the fourth crewmember on the last flight.”

“An old teacher of mine called me. It turns out he was related to Yoshi.”

“Really? What did he want?”

“He wants me to look into her disappearance.”

“Oh.”

“What happened to you, Emily? Where on earth did you go that night?”

“I wish I knew. I really do.” She used her heel to draw a line through the sand. “What does he think you can do that hasn’t already been done?”

“You know the stories about Mount Hope.”

“I know that Markis would never try to steal a fuel cell. Or at least I know that if he did, he’d succeed and wouldn’t blow everybody up.”

Kim leaned forward in her chair. She would have liked to embrace Emily, to hold onto her, to prevent her inevitable retreat into the shades. “Sheyel says there’s something strange about the valley. He’s implying you brought something back with you. And it got loose.”

She sighed. “What can I say to that? Your former teacher shouldn’t be allowed out by himself.”

Kim looked past her, out onto the lake. “Emily, did you ever have any reason to distrust either of them? Kane or Tripley?”

“No,” she said. “Kile was a little erratic. But I’d have trusted him with my life. In a heartbeat.”

“And Kane?”

“Markis was a man you meet once in a lifetime. I hope one day you’re as fortunate, Kim.”

“How about Yoshi?”

“Yoshi. I can’t really answer that because I barely knew her prior to the last mission. She seemed okay. A little shallow. But she was very young.”

They had talked about the disappearance before, years ago. And it was unlikely that Shep could have fed her fresh information. Yet framing questions for Emily helped her think.

“I’ve agreed to go up to the Severin Valley with Solly.”

“Why?”

“To look for whatever you brought back from wherever you were.”

“Well, I hope Solly’s good company. Because other than that, you’ll be in for a long trip.” She tilted her head. “It’s cool out here.”

Kim felt only the warmth of the living room. “I miss you, Emily. I wish you’d come back.”

“I know—I’m sorry. I wish there were a way to do it all again. And have it come out differently.”