Seeker

SEVEN

Where did they go? Into the glade, or along the river? Back to the sea, or beyond the moon?

- Australian children’s fable, twenty-third century C.E.

We debated taking Amy back to the Hillside, but we were both concerned she might make a scene. It was better to talk things out at the office, then see whether she’d be receptive to a meal.

I’ll say one thing for the woman: She was no dummy. She knew as soon as she walked in the door it was bad news. “What?” she demanded of Alex, bypassing the customary greetings, and ignoring me altogether.

Alex directed her to the sofa and sat down behind the desk. Would she like something to drink? Thanks, no.

“It’s beginning to appear,” he said, “the cup was stolen.”

Her nostrils quivered. “That’s crazy. Hap gave it to me. It was a peace offering after I caught him screwing around. A goddam cup.”

That wasn’t quite the same story she’d told us initially.

“It seems odd,” said Alex. “Ordinarily you’d expect flowers or candy.”

“Yeah. Well, Hap wasn’t your ordinary kind of guy. It was the cup I usually drank out of when I was over there, and he wasn’t going to go out of his way.”

“You drank out of it?” Alex was horrified.

“Yeah. Is that a problem?”

“No.” Alex cast a quick glance my way. “No, not at all.” We lapsed into an uncomfortable silence.

“I didn’t steal it,” she said. “I asked you not to contact him. Is that what he’s saying?

It’s a lie.” She finally looked over at me. “It’s just like him. Now that he knows it’s worth something, he wants it back.”

“Hap doesn’t know anything,” Alex said smoothly. “Hap isn’t the problem.”

“Who is?” she demanded.

“There’s a fair chance that Hap didn’t have legitimate ownership.”

“You mean Hap stole it from someone? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Not Hap. Probably his father.”

Color flowed into her cheeks. “Maybe you should just give it back to me and we’ll forget the whole thing.”

“We can do that, if you like. But the person we think was the original owner knows that we know where it is. I expect she’ll be taking action.”

“Thanks. You’ve been a big help, Mr. Benedict. Now please give me my cup.”

Alex’s tone never changed: “In order to be able to get it back, though, the other party will have to be able to establish ownership. I don’t know whether she can do that.”

Amy stared at Alex. “Please get me the cup.”

He sighed. “Have it your way, if you must. But it’s a mistake.” He excused himself and left the office. Amy sat stiff as a board.

“We can probably arrange a finder’s fee,” I said.

She nodded violently.

“We really had no choice,” I continued. That was hedging a bit, but there was some truth to it.

She was on the verge of tears. “Just leave me alone.”

Alex came back with the cup, showed it to her and packed it in a container. “You won’t want to let anything happen to it, Amy.”

“I’ll take care of it. Have no fear.”

“Good.” She got up, and he opened the door for her. “I suspect you’ll be hearing from the police.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Why am I not surprised?”

“I don’t feel very good about that,” I told him, when she’d gone.

“The law is what it is, Chase. These things happen.”

“It wouldn’t have happened if we’d not poked our noses into it.”

He took a deep breath. “Our code of ethics requires us to look into the source of anything that seems doubtful. If we start moving stolen merchandise around, we become liable. Suppose we’d sold it to somebody, then Ms. Cable showed up.”

“She’d never have known.”

“It would have been on the open market, Chase. She might have found out.” He poured two cups of coffee and handed me one. “No. We do things by the book.” He used a tone indicating that part of the conversation was over. “I was looking at your interview with Delia Cable.”

“-And?”

“I’ve done some research on them. The parents. You know what they were doing for income after they left Survey?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“Nothing. Margaret had an inheritance that left her independent.”

“Must have been considerable if they could afford skiing vacations and flights to God-knows-where.”

“Apparently, it was. She came into it early in the marriage. They were able to do whatever they wanted. And in the end they left Delia pretty well provided for.”

“Okay. Is this leading somewhere?”

“Maybe. How much does it cost to lease an interstellar?”

“A lot.”

“They did it on a regular basis. But there’s no record they ever stopped anywhere with it. They made a number of flights, according to Delia, but she can’t remember getting off the ship. All she has is the recollection of a station. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”

“People working for Survey don’t usually disembark.”

“But they weren’t working for Survey. This was after they’d left the organization. Did you know that at the time they quit they only had six years remaining before Wescott would have been eligible for retirement from the program? Why do you think he left early?”

“Well, for one thing, they had a baby daughter. Maybe the Survey lifestyle wasn’t working.”

He thought about it. “You might be right,” he conceded. “But then they start making flights on their own.”

“I know.”

“So where were they going?”

“I have no clue.”

“Might have been a good idea to press Delia a bit more.”

“She was a kid at the time, Alex. I assumed she wasn’t remembering things very well.

That they were sight-seeing tours.”

“Chase, this is more than thirty years ago. It predates the quantum drive. It’s back in the days when it took weeks to go anywhere. Would you travel a couple of weeks in a closed cabin with a six-year-old if you didn’t have to?”

“Actually, having a six-year-old aboard might be fun.”

He plunged ahead as if I hadn’t spoken. “They weren’t away from Survey six months before they were out making more flights. On their own money.”

“Okay. I’ll admit it makes no sense to me. So where does that leave us?”

He looked at a point somewhere back of my left shoulder. “They were doing something other than sight-seeing. I think they found something. On one of the Survey missions. Whatever it was, they wanted to be able to claim it for themselves.

So they kept quiet about it. Left early. And then went back.”

“You’re not suggesting they discovered Margolia?”

“No. But I think they were looking for it. That’s why they made several flights.”

“My God, Alex. That would be the find of the century.”

“Of all time, love. Answer a question for me.”

“If I can.”

“When you’re out with Survey researchers, who determines where the mission goes?”

“As I understood it, the researcher was responsible. If there was more than one, their head guy did it. In either case, they submitted a plan to the operational people. It targeted a given area, laid out objectives, and stipulated any special reasons for the flight, other than general survey. If Ops approved, the mission went forward.”

“Could they change their minds en route? Change the plan?”

“Sure. Sometimes they did. If they saw a more interesting star, they thought nothing of making a side trip.”

“They kept a log, of course.”

“Of course. The researcher turned a copy over to Ops at the end of the mission.”

“Was the log validated in any way?”

“How do you mean?”

“How would Survey know the researcher had actually gone where he said he had?”

Strange question, that. “Well,” I said, “the ship comes back with data from the systems that were visited.”

“But the AI also maintained a record, right?”

“Sure.”

“Did they check the log against the AI?”

“Not that I know of. What reason would they have to do that? I mean, why would they be concerned that someone would lie?”

“I’m just saying if. If somebody found something they didn’t want to make public, didn’t want to report to Survey, Survey would never know. Right?”

“Probably not.”

“Chase, I think they found the Seeker.”

“The space station? But she said it had lights.”

“A child’s memory.”

“I think she’d remember if it had no lights. I think that would be a striking feature.”

“She might have been looking at reflections from their navigation lights.”

“All right. But if they did-and I don’t for a minute believe it-they would also have found Margolia.”

“Not necessarily.”

I was on the sofa, and I felt the air go out of it as I leaned back. “It’s only a cup,” I said. “They could have got it anywhere. It might have been lying around for thousands of years.”

“In somebody’s attic?”

“More or less.”

He tried to smother a laugh, then gave up.

“If they found the Seeker, why didn’t they find Margolia?”

“I don’t know. That’s a question we’d want to answer.”

“Why didn’t they report finding the ship?”

“If they had, Survey would have owned it. And everybody in the Confederacy would have been out there poking around. I’m guessing the Wescotts didn’t want that. And if they discovered it later, on their own, they could claim it for themselves.” He looked excited. “So we proceed on that assumption. First thing is to find the Seeker. Which is going to be in one of the systems they visited.”

“Their last Survey mission,” I said. “How many planetary systems were involved in that last flight? Do we know?”

“Nine.”

“Well, that should make it simple enough. Margolia will be a terrestrial world located in the biozone. Nine systems will take a while to look at, but it can be done.”

“I don’t think it would be that easy.”

“Why not?”

“Because if we’re right, the Wescotts knew where the Seeker was. Yet they apparently had to make a number of flights. No landfall, though, according to Delia.

So they didn’t find the lost colony. Why not?”

“Beats me.”

“It suggests the colony isn’t in the same system as the Seeker.”

“Maybe they found the place and just didn’t let Delia out of the ship.”

“Don’t you think they’d have said something if they’d come across Margolia?

Discovery of the age? There’d be no reason to sit on that. No, I think, for whatever reason, the Seeker and Margolia aren’t located in the same place.”

“That means we’d be hunting through nine planetary systems for a ship?”

“Yes.”

“Well, we can do that, too. But it would take some time.”

“Chase, we can’t even be sure they made the discovery on the last mission. They might have found it earlier and thought it a good idea to do nothing for a while. After all, how would it look if they left Survey prematurely, then a couple years later, or whatever, they make a major discovery in one of the systems they’d recently visited officially?”

That would pile up the numbers. “How many systems did the previous mission visit?”

“Eleven.” He went over to the window. It was a cold, gloomy day. And a storm was approaching. “We have to pin things down a bit. I think what we need to do is talk with the Wescotts.” He folded his hands together and braced his chin on them.

“Jacob?”

“Yes, Alex?”

“Be good enough to get us Adam and Margaret Wescott.” Since they were long dead, he was of course referring to their avatars, which might or might not exist.

Even if no avatar were available, it was possible for a reasonably competent AI to cobble together what the records implied about a given individual and create a personality, within a given margin of error.

For almost three thousand years, people have been constructing their own avatars as “gifts” to posterity. The net is full of them, mostly creations of men and women who’d lived their lives and moved on to the hereafter leaving no other trace of their existence than their natural offspring and whatever they’d installed in cyberspace.

This latter type of avatar was of course notoriously unreliable, because it tended to be a wish-fulfillment ideal. It was usually the embodiment of wit, or virtue, or courage, constructed of qualities its original never approached. I doubt anybody has ever put an avatar into the system without improving it substantially over the original model.

They even look better.

Neither Margaret nor Adam had submitted an avatar, but Jacob told us he had enough information on both to provide credible mock-ups.

Margaret blinked on first, near the door. Her black hair was cut short in a style long since abandoned. Clearly a woman of the nineties. She stood looking around like the person in charge, which was a good thing when you were a pilot and might run into problems a thousand light-years from home. She wore a dark blue jumpsuit with a shoulder patch marked Falcon.

Adam appeared moments later in the center of the room. He was formally dressed, red jacket, gray shirt, black slacks. He was in his midforties, with a long face and a set of features that looked as if they didn’t smile much.

Alex did the introductions. Chairs appeared for both avatars, and they sat down. There were some comments about the weather, and how nice the office and the house looked. That sort of thing happens all the time. Obviously it’s of no significance to the avatars, but Alex seems to need the process to get into the right frame of mind. He’s used avatars on several occasions to confirm or negate data regarding the existence and/ or location of various antiquities. But there’s a method to it, and if you ask him, he’ll tell you that you have to go the whole route, accept the illusion you’re talking to real people and not just to mock-ups.

The country house was positioned atop a low hill, where it got a lot of wind. We were getting strong cold gusts out of the northeast, rattling windows and shaking trees.

There was a taste of more snow in the air. “Storm coming,” said Margaret.

The trees were close to the house, and on some days the wind was so bad that Alex worried that one of them would come down on the roof. He said something to that effect to Margaret and moved on to the missions. How long had Adam been employed by Survey? “Fifteen years,” Adam said. “I was part of those projects for fifteen years. I held the record for most years in the field.”

“How much of that time,” Alex asked, “did you actually spend in the ship?”

He looked at his wife. “Almost all of it. We did a mission a year, on average. A mission generally lasted eight to ten months. Sometimes more, sometimes less.

Between flights, I usually accepted academic and lab assignments. Sometimes I just took the time off.”

“Obviously, Margaret, you weren’t always his pilot. You’re too young.”

She smiled, pleased with the compliment. “Adam had been making the flights for four years before he showed up on the Falcon.”

“That was your ship all along?”

“Yes. I had the Falcon from day one with Survey. I was in my second year with them when I met Adam.”

“On our first mission together,” Adam said, “we decided to get married.” He exchanged glances with her.

“Love at first sight,” Alex said.

Adam nodded. “Love always happens at first sight.”

“I was fortunate,” said Margaret. “He’s a good man.”

Alex looked my way. “Chase, when you were with Survey, did you ever think about marrying any of your passengers?”

“Not a chance,” I said.

He grinned and turned back to Adam. “You say nobody has spent more time than you in Survey’s ships. Fifteen years out there, usually with only one other person on board.

Nobody else is even close. The runner-up is at eight.”

“Baffle.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Emory Baffle. He was the runner-up.”

“Did you know him?”

“I met him.” Adam smiled. “He was a hard worker. And I know what you’re thinking.

You and Chase over there.”

“What are we thinking?”

“That we’re antisocial. But it’s not so.”

“Never thought it was,” I put in.

“Look. The truth is, I liked company. We both did. Especially Margaret. But I had a passion for the work.”

Margaret nodded. “He was the best they had.”

Most pilots don’t stay long with Survey. You go in, get some experience, and go elsewhere. Money’s better in other places, and you get more company. Long flights with, at best, a handful of people on board can be wearing. When I was working for them, I couldn’t wait to transfer out.

“Were you both skiing enthusiasts?” Alex asked.

“I was,” said Margaret. “God help me, I talked him into going to Orinoco-”

“The ski resort?”

“Yes. We’d been there before. A few times. For how little skiing he did, he was quite good at it.”

“What actually happened at Orinoco?”

“It was an earthquake. It was ironic. They were putting out avalanche advisories, telling us to stay off the slopes. Conditions were bad. But the quake hit instead.”

“No advance warning?”

“No. They’d never had a problem there, and nobody was paying attention, I guess.”

“How long had you been retired from Survey at that time? When the accident happened?”

“Six years.”

“Why did you leave?”

They looked at each other. And here was the crunch. If the Wescotts had been hiding something, they’d not have made it available on the net, and the avatars wouldn’t know.

“We just decided we’d had enough. We were ready to stop. To go home.”

“So you pulled the plug.”

“Yes. We settled down in Sternbergen. It’s outside Andiquar.”

Alex sat quietly for a moment, drumming his fingertips on the arm of the sofa. “But within a short time after leaving Survey, you were making more flights.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Adam, who’d been quietly watching Margaret field the answers, took that one: “We missed the old days. We both loved going out alone like that. You know, until you’ve cruised past some of those worlds, you don’t really know what it means. We started feeling earthbound.”

“It looks,” said Alex, “as if you started feeling earthbound right after you moved into Sternbergen.”

Margaret grinned. “Yes. It didn’t take long.”

“We discovered,” said Adam, “we couldn’t just go out and sit on the porch. We both loved what we’d been doing for a living. We missed it.”

“Then why not come out of retirement? Let Survey pay the bills?”

“Yeah,” said Adam, “we could have done that. But I think we liked just being able to do things at our own pace, without clearing projects with anyone. Without needing permission. We had the resources to do what we wanted, so that’s what we did.”

“I think, too,” said Margaret, “we wanted Delia to see what was out there.”

“She was very young.”

“That’s right.”

“Too young to understand.”

“No,” said Adam. “She was old enough to see how beautiful it is. How tranquil.”

“She could have gone along on the Survey missions.”

“Actually, she did,” said Margaret. “She made two with us. But we felt it was important to be able to manage our own schedule.”

Alex looked from one to the other. “Is it possible you were searching for something?”

“Like what?” asked Margaret.

“Like Margolia.”

They both laughed. “Margolia’s a myth,” she said. “There’s no such place.”

“No,” said Alex. “It’s not a myth. It happened.”

Both of them protested that we couldn’t be serious.

“When you were running the Survey missions,” Alex continued, “did you ever discover anything unusual?”

“Sure.” Adam lit up. “We found two suns closing on each other in the Galician Cloud. They’ll impact in less than a thousand years. Something else, too, during, I think, the next mission-”

“Hold it,” Alex said. “I’m talking about artifacts.”

“Artifacts?”

“Yes. Did you ever come across any artifacts? Anything from another age?”

“Once.” Adam’s features clouded. “We found an abandoned lander one time. At Arkensfeldt. It was from a Dellacondan ship. Couple centuries old.”

“I don’t think that’s what we’re looking for.”

Adam shrugged. “With a pilot and a passenger on board.”

“You had, in your home, a drinking cup that we were able to date from about the twenty-eighth century, terrestrial calendar.”

They replied simultaneously, Adam saying he knew nothing about an antique cup and Margaret saying it wasn’t so.

“We think it was in the bedroom. At your home in Sternbergen.”

“Not that I can recall,” said Adam.

Margaret shook her head vehemently. “I’m sure I’d know if we’d had anything like that.”

“Let it go,” said Alex. “It apparently wasn’t included in your programing.”

Which to my mind proved that the Wescotts knew they had something to hide. They’d put it up there in tribute to themselves, but apparently no mention of it was made outside the house.

Shortly before closing time, Jacob informed me a visitor was approaching.

“Descending now,” he said.

There was no one on the appointments calendar.

“Who is it, Jacob?” I asked.

“It’s Mr. Bolton. Calling for Alex.”

I went to the window and looked out. The storm that had been threatening all day had finally arrived. Light snow had begun falling, but I knew it was going to get worse.

“Patch it here, Jacob,” I said. “He’s busy at the moment.”

A black-and-yellow corporate vehicle drifted down out of the gray sky. The BBA logo was displayed in heavy yellow letters on its hull. I hit the intercom. “Boss,” I said.

“Ollie Bolton’s here. Making for the pad.”

He acknowledged. “I see him. Be right down.”

An image formed in the office. Bolton, seated in the back of the aircraft. “Hello, Chase,” he said, cheerily. “It’s a pleasure to see you again.”

“Hello, Ollie.”

“I apologize for dropping by without warning. I happened to be in the neighborhood.”

I mentioned earlier that Bolton possessed the kind of gravitas that you associate with the occasional serious political leader. He never forgot a name, and he had a reputation for being both methodical and persistent. He was, an associate once told me, the kind of guy you wanted to have on your side when things weren’t going well.

Still, there was something about him that put me off. Maybe it was a sense that he thought he could see things that people around him were missing.

“What can we do for you, Ollie?” I said.

“I was hoping to have a few moments with Alex.”

“I’m right here.” Alex strode into the room. “What are you up to, Ollie?”

“Not much. I was sorry I didn’t get a chance to talk with you at the Caucus.”

I was still standing by the window. The skimmer touched down and a door opened.

“To be honest,” said Alex, “I thought you had your hands full fending off the true believer.”

“Kolchevsky? Yes, and unfortunately we shouldn’t take him lightly. He’s been in touch with me since.”

“Really? About what?”

“He’s pushing legislation to put us out of business.”

“I’ve heard that before.”

“I think he’s serious this time.”

“He won’t get anywhere,” said Alex. “We both satisfy the public’s taste to own a piece of history.”

“I hope you’re right.” The Bolton image blinked off, Bolton himself climbed out of the aircraft, pulled on a white-brimmed cap, and started leisurely up the walkway, pausing to frown at the threatening skies. He tugged his collar up, glanced in my direction, waved, and proceeded to the front door, which opened for him.

Alex met him, brought him back to the office, and poured him a drink. “Social call?” he asked.

“More or less. I wanted you to know about Kolchevsky. We need to present a united front.”

“I don’t think there’s too much to worry about. But sure, I’m with you.”

“To be honest, Alex, there’s something else. I was on my way back to my place when an idea hit me.”

“Okay.”

“It involves you.”

They sat down on opposite sides of the coffee table. “In what way?”

Bolton glanced in my direction. “It might be best if we talked privately.”

Alex waved the idea out of the room. “Ms. Kolpath is privy to all aspects of the operation.”

“Very good.” Bolton brightened. “Yes, I should have realized.” He complimented the wine and made a comment about the weather. Then: “We’ve been in competition for a long time, Alex. And I can’t see how either of us benefits from that situation. I propose an alliance.”

Alex frowned. “I don’t think-”

“Hear me out. Please.” He turned his attention to me. “Mr. Benedict has a flair for locating original sites.” He took a deep breath and cleared his throat. “But Bolton Brothers has the resources to exploit that capability to the fullest. If we were to combine Rainbow Enterprises with BBA, we’d have far more financial muscle to work with. And you’d have a Confederacy-wide network of researchers behind you.

None of them is in your league, of course, but they could do the grunt work. It would be to everyone’s advantage.”

Alex sat quietly a moment. Then: “Ollie, I appreciate the offer. But the truth is, I prefer to work on my own.”

Bolton nodded. “I’m not surprised you feel that way. But why don’t you take some time? Think it over? I mean-”

“No. Thanks, Ollie. I like having my own organization. And anyhow, you don’t need me. You seem to be prospering nicely.”

“It’s not so much what I need,” he said. “It’s just that I’d enjoy working with you.

Side by side with the best in the business.” He sat back. “I need not mention there’d be an appropriate position for Chase.”

Alex was getting to his feet, trying to end the conversation. “Thank you, but no.

Really.”

“All right. Should you change your mind, Alex, don’t hesitate to get in touch. The offer’s open.”

At Alex’s direction, I checked to see which corporate entities were leasing superluminals during the 1390s. The only company then in the business on Rimway was StarDrive. But it had since crashed. I tracked down a former executive of StarDrive, Shao Mae Tonkin, currently with a food distribution firm.

It took the better part of a day to get through to him. He was reluctant to talk to me, too busy, until I told him I was working on a biography of Baker Stills, who had been StarDrive’s CEO. Tonkin was a massive individual. He may have been the biggest human being I’ve ever seen. He was maybe three times normal size. But it didn’t look like fat so much as concrete. He had solemn features and small eyes that peered out from under thick lids. His forebears had inhabited a low-gravity world, or maybe an orbital. Or maybe he just ate too much. In any case, he’d probably live longer if he retreated off-world.

It wasn’t just physical size and weight that impressed me. There was a heaviness of spirit, a kind of concrete demeanor. I asked him about StarDrive.

“Went down twenty years ago,” he said. His tone was so serious an eavesdropper would have thought the fate of the world hinged on the conversation. “I’m sorry, Ms.

Kolpath, but everything other than the financial records were destroyed. Long ago. I can tell you all you need to know about Baker.” He’d been competent, creative, a hard driver. Et cetera. “But I can’t provide much in the way of details on the day-to-day operations. It’s been too long.”

“So there’s no record of any kind where your customers took the ships?”

He seemed to be running about five seconds behind the conversation. He thought my question over while he massaged his neck with his fingertips. “No. None whatever.”

“How many ships were in the company fleet?”

“When we closed operations, in ’08,” he said, “we had nine.”

“Do you know where they are now?”

“You’re thinking that AIs might have made a permanent record of everything.”

“Yes.”

“Of course. Unfortunately, our fleet was old at the end. That’s one of the reasons we shut down. We would have had to upgrade or buy new vehicles. Either way-” He moved his head from side to side, as if to loosen joints in his neck. “So we terminated.

Most of the ships were recycled.”

Broken down and recast. “What about the AIs?”

“They’d have been downloaded and filed. I believe the requirement is nine years from the destruction of the ship.” He pondered it for a long moment. “Yes. That’s correct.

Nine years.”

“And then?”

He shrugged. “Expunged.” A frown formed slowly, like a gathering cold front. “May I ask why you’re interested? None of this seems germaine to the biography.”

I mumbled something about statistical research, thanked him, and disconnected.

“I think the trail’s gone cold,” I told Alex.

He refused to be discouraged. Despite the negative results, he was in an ebullient mood. Later I discovered he’d been contacted by a prospective client who’d come into possession of the Riordan Diamond, which, in case you’re one of the few people in the Confederacy who doesn’t know, was once worn by Annabel Keyshawn and supposedly was cursed. It eventually became one of only three items we’ve ever carried in our inventory officially designated in that category. It served to drive up the value. “We haven’t exhausted the possibilities yet,” he said.

I could see it coming. “What do we do next?” The we, of course, at Rainbow Enterprises was strictly a pejorative term.

“Survey doesn’t destroy its records,” he said. “It might be interesting to see whether the Wescotts reported any unusual findings, especially during their later missions.”

I was getting tired of the runaround. “Alex, if they found anything connected to the cup, like maybe Margolia, don’t you think Survey would have acted on it by now?”

He gave me that you-have-a-lot-to-learn look. “You’re assuming they read the reports.”

“You don’t think they do?”

“Chase, we’ve been assuming that if the Wescotts found something, they omitted putting it into their report.”

“I think that’s a safe assumption. Don’t you?”

“Yes. In fact, I do. But still we can’t be certain. And there’s always a possibility there’ll be something on one of the reports that gives the show away. In any case, we lose nothing by looking.”