Seeker

FIFTEEN

Those decisions that are truly significant are only confronted once.

Whether it’s the choice of a life partner, or of an invasion route, the opportunity never returns. You must get it right the first time.

- Mara Delona,

Travels with the Bishop, 1404 Back in my hotel room, I used my notebook to run the chip. First I scanned for any reference to Margolia, to a derelict, or to any kind of artifact whatever.

“Negative search,” it said.

“Okay. Just print the damned thing out and let’s see what we have.”

“Very good, Chase. The data covers ten missions, beginning in 1381 and ending in 1392.”

The hotel made several versions of assorted nonalcoholic drinks available for its guests. While I waited for the printout, I tried one with a lime taste that was actually quite good.

The Falcon had visited nine suns on its last flight with the Wescotts. None had been binaries. We had the usual details on each-mass, temperature, and age, along with a wealth of associated data. We also had the details of the planetary systems, where they existed. (One of the targets, Branweis 4441, had none.) We had everything that had been on the original report and, as far as I could see, nothing more.

And everything was consistent.

I took it back one mission, conducted in 1390-91. They’d inspected ten systems on that one, and again all the data checked out.

I went over the rest of the flights, all the way back to Adam’s first mission on the Falcon. I saw no anomalies.

A week later I was at Takmandu, where a message was waiting from Alex. Spare no effort, he’d written. Come back with the prize and consider yourself a junior partner.

Sure, Alex. What we have is a copy of what we already had.

I was glad to check out of the hotel and get the shuttle up to the orbiter. And I can’t adequately describe my feelings, ten days later, at seeing the Belle-Marie again.

I got on board, said nice things to the guys in ops to get a quick clearance, told Belle I’d missed her, sat down on the bridge, and started going through my checklist.

Fifteen minutes later I was on my way home.

It was a four-day flight. Mostly, I sat stewing over the amount of time and effort invested to come up with nothing. I read, watched some sims, and when I got within radio range of Rimway I called Alex.

“How’d you make out?” he asked.

“I got the AI download. But there’s nothing new in it.” We were audio only, with a twelve-minute total time delay while the transmission traveled out and back. I made myself comfortable.

“Okay. Hang on to it. Maybe we can find something.”

Did he really think I might toss it overboard? “I’m not optimistic,” I said.

He was waiting at Skydeck when I docked, all smiles and reassurances. Not my fault nothing was there, he said. Not to worry. We’ll take another look. Who knows what we might see? “Don’t know where I’d be without you, Chase,” he added. He thought I felt terrible. What I mostly felt was frustration. Three weeks of mostly inedible food and playing mental dodge ball with Mutes, and we had nothing to show for it.

“Where’s the download?” he asked finally.

It was in one of my bags.

“Okay.” He was trying to sound reassuring. “Why don’t you get it out so we can look at it on the way down?”

“It’s no different from the official record.”

He waited for me to comply. I did, and when he had the printout in his hands, we headed for the shuttle deck. We’d gone maybe five steps when his eyes lit up and he rolled the documents into a cylinder and waved them over his head.

“What?” I said.

“The individual operations are dated. We’ve got the sequence in which they visited each system. Good show, Chase. You’re a genius.”

“Why’s that important?”

“Think about it. You did your Survey time before the quantum drive became available.

When distance really mattered.”

“Okay.”

“You’ve got, say, a dozen stars to visit on a given mission. How did you determine the sequence?”

That was simple enough. “We arranged things so the overall distance to be traveled was kept to a minimum.”

“Yes.” He squeezed my arm. “So now we can find out whether the record reflects where they actually went. If they didn’t take the shortest routes among the target stars, that’ll tell us they changed something. And maybe we’ll be able to figure out where the Seeker is.”

When I pressed him how this would happen, he talked to me about fuel economy.

“Your friend Shara is on vacation. Off on an island somewhere. When she gets back, we’ll present the matter to her and see whether she can pin things down.”

“Okay,” I said.

“By the way, you had a call from Delia. Get back to her when you can, okay?”

The following evening I met her at the Longtree, a downtown bistro located just off Confederate Park. Dark corners, stained paneling, candles, soft music. It was her suggestion, but it was one of my favorite places.

She was already seated when I got there. Dark hair framing attractive features that held a hint of anxiety. She was modestly dressed in a powder blue skirt, white blouse, and sleeveless lace jacket. Only her comm link suggested wealth: It was encased in a gold bracelet on her wrist. “So good to see you, Chase,” she said. “I’m glad you could come.”

We talked about the weather for a few minutes. Then I let her know I was surprised she was in Andiquar.

“I came specifically to see you,” she said.

Our autowaiter showed up, introduced himself, took drink orders, and hurried off.

“I should tell you,” I said, “that we’ve located the AI record for the Falcon. It backs up the official reports.”

“Good.” She smiled defensively. “It’s just a matter of time, though, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know.”

“I hate this.”

“I’m sure.”

Our drinks came. She studied hers, then raised it. “To the Seeker,” she said.

“Wherever it is.”

“To the Seeker,” I agreed.

“They’d want you to find it,” she said. “I know they wouldn’t have wanted it to stay lost.”

“I think you’re right.”

Delia adjusted her jacket collar, tugging it together, pulling it around her as if to fend off something. “Chase, I know my parents have been part of your investigation. Bits and pieces of it are getting back to me.”

“We haven’t really been investigating your folks,” I said. “It’s the missions we’ve been looking at.”

“Phrase it however you like. It’s the same thing. Word’s getting around, and people are calling me to ask what kind of cover-up they were involved in.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “We’ve tried to be circumspect. I know no one’s accused anybody of anything.”

“The investigation is enough. It constitutes an accusation. I’m sorry to say this, but I’d be grateful if you would stop.”

I looked out through the window. People hurried by, bundled against a cold night. “I can’t do that,” I said.

“I’m willing to make it worth your while.”

“You just said your mom and dad would want the Seeker found.”

“That’s what they would want. But I don’t want the family name destroyed.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I really am.”

She no longer looked friendly. “They’re not alive to defend themselves.”

“Delia, there are no charges. Nobody’s claiming they did anything wrong.”

“Doctoring the record, if that’s what happened, would be a criminal offense, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes. I suspect so.”

Tears were rolling down her cheeks. “Please take a minute and think about what you’re doing to us.” The waiter was back to take the dinner orders. The way things were developing, I wasn’t sure we were going to get to dinner. She looked at me, looked at the menu, started to say something, and shook it away. “The special,” she said. “Rare.”

Red meat.

I ordered a boca casserole, which, for my off-world readers, tastes much like tuna. I also asked for a second round of drinks and settled in for the duration.

“Incidentally,” she said, “I had another visitor who was interested in my parents.”

“Oh? Who was that?”

“His name was Corbin. Josh Corbin, I think.” She bit her lip. “Yes, that’s right. Josh.

Young guy. Midtwenties.”

“Why was he interested?”

“He said he was doing a history of Survey operations.”

“Did he ask about the Seeker?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.”

That was a jolt. Somebody else knew. “What did you tell him?”

“I didn’t see any point keeping things quiet. I told him pretty much everything I told you.”

While I was having a big time with Delia, Alex received a call from the producer of The Peter McCovey Show. They had heard about the search for Margolia and were going to “highlight it” next day. Several guests were being invited. Would he care to appear?

Alex was not happy that word of the effort was getting out, but it seemed impossible under the circumstances to keep a secret. He tried to beg off, but they told him he was the center of interest and would be essential to what they wanted to do. If he persisted in refusing to participate, the producer said, they would have no choice but to inform their audience he had been invited but had declined. And they would be forced to put an empty chair on the set to represent him.

Alex had been on these kinds of shows before and always got attacked. “They don’t let you talk,” he’d complained to me afterward. “The hosts load the questions, control the flow of conversation, and never let you finish an answer if they don’t like the way you’re going.” The fact that they consistently went after him as someone more interested in making money than in revealing the truth didn’t help. They’d made it sound as if there was something wicked in turning a profit.

But Alex thought the empty chair wouldn’t look good. So he agreed.

I went with him to the station the following evening. They could have done the show by remote, of course. But they prefer that you come physically so they can arrange your makeup and do what they like to call the personal touch, which always seemed to involve laying on a lot of charm and trying to put him off guard before they go to broadcast. This was the same guy who, when the Christopher Sim information came out, had openly accused him of being unpatriotic.

Peter McCovey is short and stocky with a black beard and a smile that never goes away and never changes. He wore his trademark blue jacket with a white neckerchief and a white sash. A little pretentious, he admitted to me, but his audience expected it.

There were two other panelists, Dr. Emily Clark, who doubted that the Margolian colonists had ever managed to get a foothold on the world of their choice, wherever it might have been. And one Jerry Rhino, who insisted that Margolia had not only survived its early years but had affected our daily lives through subliminal influences and magnetic manipulation. “It’s the source of our spiritual strength,” he said. Rhino had written several books on the subject and was wildly popular with the occult crowd.

The show took place on a set designed to resemble a book-lined den. McCovey introduced his guests and opened things up by asking Alex what had really happened to the Margolians.

Alex, of course, didn’t know. “Nobody knows,” he added.

Rhino claimed he knew, and the show developed rapidly into an argument. McCovey liked having guests quarrel with one another. He was, and remains, among the highest-rated media hosts.

Clark smiled relentlessly throughout the performance, successfully implying that anyone who took any of this seriously was an idiot. When Alex tried to argue that for all we knew they could still be alive and prospering out there somewhere, she rolled her eyes and wondered aloud where common sense had gone. She could not tolerate Rhino at all and simply dismissed him with icy sarcasm.

But Jerry plunged on, unaffected. The Margolians had gotten caught up in the spiritual flow of the cosmos. Cut off from the more mundane activities of the home world, they had reached a kind of nirvana. And so on. Occasionally he glanced at Alex for confirmation. I got the impression Alex was trying to hide.

McCovey’s standing claim was that he took no sides. He was not reluctant to call people names. At one point he asked Alex to explain how he wasn’t a vandal, and he told Rhino he was deranged. I’ve noticed since that he makes it a point to invite people on who are easy to assault because they’re reluctant to yell back. I’ve never mentioned that to Alex.

In any case, Alex left the studio in a bleak mood. He swore he’d never again allow himself to be caught like that. We stopped at the Silver Cane, and he tossed down three or four drinks, which was well past his usual limit.

The real attack came the following day, when Casmir Kolchevsky showed up on Jennifer in the Morning. “There should be legislation to put people like Benedict out of business,” he insisted. “They’re thieves. They take treasures that belong to all of us and sell them to the highest bidder. It’s contemptible.”

He went on like that for the better part of fifteen minutes. At the segment’s conclusion, Jennifer invited Alex to appear and defend himself. Alex admitted he’d already received a call. “They told me I’d want to watch.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m not sure going on doesn’t just make things worse.” He sighed. “I’m tired of it. These guys are never satisfied. People like Kolchevsky, who could never find anything on his own, get on and claim we’re stealing things that belong to the audience. But none of it belongs to anybody. It belongs to whoever is willing to show some ambition and do the legwork. If it weren’t for us, a lot of this stuff would still be lying around out there.”

“Okay,” I said, “but you have to go on and say that, Alex. You can’t just let him make those charges and not respond. It looks like a concession.”

He nodded. “Book me. And by the way, your pal Shara is due back tomorrow. I’ve already made an appointment for you.”

“Okay.”

“Show her the AI log. I’ll be surprised if she can’t tell us where the Seeker is.”

I got a call that evening from Windy. “I didn’t want to talk to you from the office, because I was concerned about being overheard,” she said.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I think I know who was putting out information. One of my people saw a member of the director’s staff downtown last night. She was in a bar with one of Ollie Bolton’s specialists.”

“Bolton?”

“There’s no proof anywhere. But-” She shrugged.

“Do you have confidential information that Bolton would be interested in?” I asked.

“Sure,” she said. “We always have stuff on projects and speculations that I’m sure, for that matter, you and Alex would like to see.”

“It doesn’t prove anything,” I said.

Her voice hardened. “No, it doesn’t. But we’re going to call her in tomorrow morning and talk to her.”

I hesitated. “No. Why not leave her in place? Just be careful what she sees.”

Windy didn’t take well to disloyalty. “I hate to do that, Chase. If this woman is collaborating with him, giving information away, she should be terminated.”

I decided I wouldn’t want to get on her wrong side. “You don’t know for sure. So you can’t really act anyhow. Let it go for now.”