Polaris

THERTEEN

In the data banks we found pictures of Agnes’s home. It had looked pretty good at the turn of the century. It was smaller then. A wing had been added since, and that sagging front porch. One of the pictures, taken during a snowstorm, showed a glowing post light-the same one that now leaned sharply toward the walkway-and two people gazing out through the front window. Agnes and Ed? We couldn’t tell.

The illumination behind them didn’t reach their faces.

The media stories described Agnes as a superluminal pilot and indicated she was often gone on long cruises. (In those days, of course, flights could take months. Or even years, if you could pile enough food on board.) They also mentioned that she’d captained the Echo flight. “Incredible,” Alex said.

“Why?” I asked. “What’s an Echo flight?”

He took his time answering. “You know the notion that the loss of the people on the Polaris was a supernatural event?”

“Yes.”

“In 1400, on the thirty-fifth anniversary of the mission, a few people belonging to the Arrowhead Club decided to reproduce the voyage, as nearly as possible.”

“What’s the Arrowhead Club?”

“You know it as the Polaris Society today. It was a group of enthusiasts. They chartered the Clermo from Evergreen. The Polaris. What they wanted to do was to try to re-create the original circumstances to see whether the occult event would manifest itself a second time.”

Sometimes it’s hard to believe the extent of human gullibility. I saw a report recently that more than half the population of Rimway believes astrology works. “I remember hearing about it. The loony flight.”

“Then you know the rest.”

“Refresh my memory.”

“They rechristened the ship Polaris, held a launch ceremony, put six passengers on board, five men and a woman, and went shopping for a female pilot. I guess they wanted a Madeleine English look-alike. So they settled on Agnes.”

“Did they make her dye her hair?”

“Don’t know. I guess their big problem was that they thought the occult event they were looking for was connected with the collision between the star and the dwarf. They thought it had released, as I recall, something called ‘psychokinetic energy.’ But they couldn’t very well stage a second smash-up, so they had to settle for hoping that whatever had arrived in 1365 was still hanging around out near the collision site.”

“But this is what, thirty-five years later? The dwarf star was a long way off by then, and so was whatever was left of Delta Kay. Which, if I recall, was zip.”

“That’s correct. But I guess they were nothing if not optimistic. They figured out where the debris from the destroyed sun would have gone, and, I suppose, where they could expect to find the spiritual forces. And that’s where they went.”

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about, Alex.”

“Who does?”

“They must have had some money.”

“I assume.”

“So what were they hoping? That they’d all disappear, too?”

“They took six passengers, like the original flight. One of them was a spiritualist, who thought that if they burned the right sort of candles and set lasers at the right frequency, they would be able to control whatever appeared.”

“No drums?”

“Not as far as I know.”

“How come you know so much about this?”

Alex smiled. Man in charge. “This kind of stuff fascinates me. And, from a professional perspective, it’s significant. I always knew there’d be a pile of money to be made if Survey ever turned the artifacts loose. Even artifacts from the Echo flight command a decent sum.”

That brought up another issue. “Why did Survey sell the Polaris? They must have realized it was going to be worth serious money one day.”

Alex closed his eyes and shook his head. “It’s hard to understand the bureaucratic mind, Chase. My best guess is that they knew it would take time for the ship to appreciate. And that means the sale gets made on somebody else’s watch.

Meanwhile the Polaris hangs around reminding everybody of the organization’s most spectacular failure. Did you know people were actually afraid of it?”

“Of the ship?”

“Read the accounts. They were seriously spooked. If an otherworld force could make the passengers disappear, what couldn’t it do? Some people even thought that something might have come back with it.”

“So what happened on the Echo flight?”

“They supplemented the AI with black boxes, to record everything. In case it did happen again.”

“Because the AI had been no help on the original flight.”

“Right. The black boxes were supposed to have been specially designed to withstand supernatural forces. And continue recording. They were going to trigger and start transmitting as soon as anything out of the ordinary happened.”

“How’d they define that? ‘Anything out of the ordinary’?”

“I told you. The presence of psychokinetic forces. The Arrowhead got a lot of publicity, gave all kinds of interviews and whatnot, and took off.”

“And they didn’t see anything,” I said.

“They claimed later there were apparitions. That several of the passengers from the original flight made appearances. I forget which ones. A couple of the Arrowhead people came back claiming they understood what had happened, but that humanity wasn’t ready for the truth.”

“Sounds as if they were reading too much Stepanik Regal.”

“Yeah. There were stories that the apparitions begged for help. Floated through the ship. Nothing more than spectres. They also said that the candles and lasers kept infernal presences at a distance. There were even some pictures, I believe.”

“Pictures of what?”

“Haze, it looked like to me. Wisps of fog in the engine room. I remember one of them really looked as if it had eyes.”

We got names and addresses for neighbors who’d been around when Agnes was in town. We commandeered a booth on the first floor of the city hall and started making calls. I explained that my name was Chase Shanley, that I was a niece of Agnes Crisp, and that the family was still trying to find her. “We haven’t given up,” I told them.

“She had a nice life here,” one elderly woman said. “She seemed to have enough money, she had a lovely house, and a good husband.”

“She must have been very unhappy, though,” I said, “when Ed was lost.”

Some said she hardly went into mourning at all. Others claimed she was distraught. A former casino employee who’d worked with Crisp told us she’d been hit hard by the experience. “She loved Ed,” he said. “It was hard enough on her when she lost him. Then the town turned on her and decided she’d killed him. The truth is that the town was jealous of her. She was a beautiful woman; she goddam flew starships. So, of course, they didn’t like her. That’s why she left. It didn’t have anything to do with feeling guilty, which was what they were all saying. She just got fed up.”

In fact, everyone spoke well of her. That’s what happens, I guess, when you claim to be a relative. We located a couple of former boyfriends, but both seemed reluctant to give details. “I’m a happily married man,” one said. “She was a nice lady, but that’s all I know.”

Nobody remembered a daughter. “She liked gardening,” a neighbor said. And she was a skilled chess player. Played down at the club. “Beat everybody, I hear.”

“Was she capable of pushing someone off a cliff?” Those who knew her personally thought not. She was friendly, they reported. Kind to kids and dogs. She’d never hurt anybody. Although she might have been a bit standoffish. “In what way?”

“Well,” one woman said, “I always got the impression she thought she was kind of elite. But I never saw a serious flash of temper. Or got mistreated by her.”

No one had any idea where she’d gone.

Several believed she might have thrown herself off the same summit that had claimed her husband. The forest was thick at the base of the precipice. Police had looked, but some said not very thoroughly because they never subscribed to the theory.

“I don’t believe it either,” said Alex.

Ed Crisp had fallen from a place called Wallaba Point. It was three kilometers northwest of Walpurgis, where the land rose sharply into the foothills of the Golden Horn, a range that comes in from offshore, arcs around the town, and runs southwest almost to the Gulf. There was a fence at the site when Alex and I visited it.

We got there in the early evening. It was cold and overcast, with a few flakes in the air.

I don’t mind heights when I’m in an aircraft, but I always get a bit queasy on a stationary perch. It was all I could do to lean out over the fence and look down. The sun had just set. The foot of the precipice was buried in thick forest. There were a river, a few boulders, and, in the distance, a ramshackle shed. It wasn’t really a long way down, but it was sheer and you were going to bounce pretty high when you hit bottom.

We paced back and forth, measuring possibilities, wondering precisely from which point Edgar had fallen. Even without the fence, which hadn’t existed when the accident occurred, I couldn’t see how a grown man in possession of his faculties could wander off the edge. The news accounts said no alcohol or drugs had been found. There were no trees near the summit, no bushes, nothing to disguise its existence. The woods ended about fifteen meters away.

“Couldn’t happen,” I concluded.

Alex wasn’t so sure. “No moon. Acrimony in the air. She wants to keep her job.

He wants kids. But he doesn’t make much, and probably doesn’t have much of a future. So it goes back and forth and he’s not watching what he’s doing.”

I didn’t believe it. “It’s not possible.”

“Happens all the time, sweetheart.”

“It does not happen all the time.”

“Seriously, Chase, people get excited, and they can lose sight of everything.

He’s backing away from her, throws up his hands, trips on a loose rock, and over he goes.”

“I just can’t see it. Nobody’s that dumb.”

The hiking trail we were following ran right along the edge. If you decided to play tag up there, you’d back off a good bit, move back by the trees. Your instincts wouldn’t let you do anything else. “I think she killed him,” I said.

He nodded. “You too? Why?”

“I think it’s the only way it could happen. They come up here, maybe she’d discovered he’d been cheating, maybe she’d gotten tired of him. They’re in, what, the third or fourth year of their marriage. That’s about the time you find out whether you’ve got a real marriage or not.”

“When did you become an expert?”

“It doesn’t take a specialist, Alex. We’re talking about stuff every woman knows but apparently not many guys. If she did it, I doubt it had anything to do with whether they were going to have kids. Anyhow, she probably decided she had an easy way out, she was probably angry, or frustrated, so you get a quick push, and it’s over.

Who’d ever know the difference?”

We walked back through the woods to the skimmer. It felt good to get into the cabin, where it was warm. We were in a glade, about a half kilometer from the summit. Alex sat listlessly, not saying anything, just staring out at the trees. I felt it, too. There was something depressing about that windblown hilltop. “It’s the weather,” I said.

Alex made a rumbling sound in his throat. “Louise,” he said, speaking to the AI, “see what you can get on Edgar Crisp.” He’d left me to pick the name for the system, and I picked one at random that seemed warm, friendly, and nonthreatening. Alex wasn’t overwhelmed, but he didn’t say anything.

There wasn’t much on Crisp. Birth. Death. Parents came to Rimway in 1391.

Graduated from the Indira Khan Academy in Lakat, which was halfway across the ocean. Licensed to operate a skimmer 1397. Gained title to a skimmer 1398. Lived three years on Seaview Avenue in leased quarters before marrying Agnes. Employee of Allnight Recreation Services, the owner of the Easy Aces Casino. Died at twentyeight.

That was it. Edgar’s passage through the world had been unremarkable. He’d disturbed nothing, changed nothing, had only called attention to himself by the manner of his death. It was almost as if he’d never existed. I wondered who had attended his funeral.

“That’s the way for most of us,” Alex said. “Birth, death, and good riddance.

The world takes no note. Unless you’re lucky enough to overturn somebody’s favorite mythology.”

I laughed. Alex was persuaded he’d achieved immortality by the Christopher Sim discoveries, and he was very likely right.

“Louise,” he said, “check the graduation lists for the Khan Academy. Make it 1395 and 1396. See if an Edgar Crisp shows up.”

“You don’t think the media had it right?” I said.

“Just following my instincts.”

Louise needed only a few seconds. “Lakat does not subscribe to the registry.”

“Is there any way to verify his background? Short of going there?”

“There is no off-line arrangement.”

A couple of kids wandered past with backpacks. Headed toward the Point. If they were planning on staying outside, it was going to be cold.

“Another one with no history,” I said. “How’d you know?”

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence we keep running into people who come from places that don’t maintain a register.”

I started the engine. “You think any of these people are going to turn out to be who they say they are?”

“Don’t know,” he said. “What I’m wondering is where they’re coming from.”

The Walpurgis Cemetery was less than a half hour’s walk from the home once occupied by Agnes and Ed Crisp. It occupied roughly a square kilometer, mostly on gently rolling hillside. The markers, like the town, were old and worn. It wasn’t used much anymore, because the local population had declined significantly and also because having one’s ashes given to the winds or the sea is now generally favored over other forms of disposal.

We had heard that some of the graves went back eight hundred years, although we saw nothing that old. They were crowded together, three and four people in each plot, and I saw no part of the cemetery that wasn’t lacking space. It was crowded, and the town was empty.

Markers were designed in a wide range of styles, depending mostly, I guess, on the wealth of the occupant and also, to some extent, on the era. Fashions come and go.

Some were simple slates, set in the ground, with a name and dates. Others were larger, more elaborately carved headstones, expressing the sentiments of those left behind. Beloved father. Left us too soon. On some, the characters had become too smooth to read.

Statuary ranged from modest to elegant to overblown. Angels stood guard, a young boy cradled a lamb, biblical figures bowed their heads, doves flew.

It had gotten dark by the time we arrived. The snow had stopped, and the night was very still. I thought briefly of Tom Dunninger, who’d devoted his genius to life extension, who’d said he hated cemeteries, who was reported to have been on the track of a major breakthrough before he joined his colleagues on the Polaris. Well, Tom, nothing has changed. At best, people still live for maybe 120 or 130 years, tops, which is the way it’s been for a long time. Dunninger himself was pushing it when he headed out to Delta Kay. A hundred twenty-something, as I recall. I could understand his interest. All of us would like to think there’s a way of shutting down the ageing process, but if it hasn’t been done by now, I suspected that meant it couldn’t be done.

We walked among the headstones, exchanging irrelevancies, contemplating mortality, trying to keep warm.

Crisp’s grave was in the fold of a hillock, his marker one of four clustered together. It was unpretentious, a white stone, engraved with his name and dates, and the legend In loving memory. Someone had planted a sabula bush beside the headstone. It wasn’t much to look at in the face of approaching winter, but in the spring it would become a golden glory.

The ground was a bit worn. When the weather got warm, the grass would grow.

“I wonder who he is,” Alex said.

Back in the skimmer, Alex called Fenn, told him where we were and what we’d been doing, and asked whether he could get an exhumation order for Crisp.

I suppose I could say Fenn was reluctant. Irritated might be closer. “You’re not supposed to be involved in this,” he said.

“I’m not breaking any laws, Fenn.”

“Whoever this is you’re looking for, they’re dangerous, Alex. Can’t you just leave things alone?”

Alex was good. He was skilled at dealing with people, and his professional persona surfaced. “Fenn,” he said, “I don’t think we’ve got the identity right on this guy. Find out who he is, and you might find out why somebody tried to kill us.”

“Oh, c’mon, Alex. A guy who died twenty years ago?”

“I think there’s a very good possibility that all this is connected. Fenn, I don’t ask for much-”

They went back and forth for a couple of minutes, Fenn growing less adamant.

Finally, he began to cave. “I would if I could, Alex. But you’re talking about something that’s really old news. What’s your evidence?”

“There are too many people involved in this who seem to come and go without leaving tracks. Barber. Agnes, who may or may not be her mother. Crisp. Maybe even Taliaferro.”

“Taliaferro has a long history, Alex. He did not walk in out of nowhere.”

“No. But he walked off. And seven more people disappeared out of the Polaris. I think it would be helpful if we could find out who’s in Crisp’s grave.”

Fenn held up both hands, the way people do when they want you to calm down.

Or when they’re pretending you’re hysterical. “Look,” he said, “Crisp died when?

Fourteen oh-five? Oh-four? And nobody has seen Agnes Shanley since.” He pushed back in his chair. “I’ll pass along what you’ve told me to the jurisdiction up there.

With a recommendation they take a second look at the case. Okay? Will that satisfy you?”

“Are they likely to take a look at the body?”

I could see him debating whether to tell us what he really thought. “No,” he said at last. “From their point of view, no matter who’s in the grave, there’s nobody to prosecute anyhow. So why bother?”