Seeker

TWENTY-SEVEN

The home world exercises its siren call over us all. No matter how far we wander, or how long we are gone, it waits patiently. And when we return to it, as we must, it sings to us. We came out of its forests, waded ashore from its seas. It is in our blood, for good or ill.

- Ali Barana,

Go Left at Arcturus, 1411

Earth.

It was an odd feeling, seeing Sol up close. The planet floated in the void, with its big scarred moon, and the continents, their outlines familiar, as though I’d been there before. As if I were coming home.

Harmony, the giant orbiting station, glittered in the night. Harmony was the most recent in a long series of orbiters. It began as a simple terminal and maintenance station a few centuries ago, but they kept adding to it, hotels here and rec areas there and a research facility out back. The original structure was hardly visible anymore, concealed within an array of pods and domes and spheres. There was a long argument raging at the time over whether to upgrade or replace it altogether.

A liner was leaving as I approached. It passed me, outward bound, light radiating off the bridge and through rows of viewports. It was a big ship, though not in the same league with the Seeker, and certainly not as romantic. As it passed me, it fired its main engines and accelerated away until all I could see was a fading star.

I turned the Belle-Marie over to the controllers, and they brought us into a docking area crowded with small vessels. Mostly corporate vehicles. A boarding tube attached itself to the hatch, and I climbed out.

Three hours later I was on the ground, on the original terra firma, asleep in a compartment on a glide train headed west across the North American continent. In the morning I got my first look up close at the Pacific, and caught a commuter flight for the Destiny Islands, the Queen Charlottes in ancient times, about eighty klicks up the coast. I could see traffic moving below, and people on beaches. Flotillas of sailboats dotted the ocean.

The Destinies consist of more than 150 islands in an area still preserved in a predominantly natural state. There were tall trees, morning mists, and eagles on the wing. I’d never seen an eagle, and I understood immediately why it was an appropriate symbol for an interstellar. I looked down on snowcapped mountains, blue lakes, winding streams. Two days later, on the flight out, I’d see a dozen or so gray whales gliding through the quiet waters.

I’d made reservations at the White Dove Hotel, at Rennell Sound, overlooking the ocean. They provided a pleasant room, with wide windows and billowing curtains.

The Pacific, at least at those latitudes, was more serene than the Eastern Sea at home.

Looking west from the hotel, I could see nothing but water.

It was late morning when I finally got moving. I looked up the name Alex had given me, Jules Lochlear, and asked the AI to connect me with the University of the Americas. Lochlear, I was informed, would be happy to see me in the early afternoon.

“At one o’clock sharp.”

He was located in the upper reaches of the campus library. It was one of those oldstyle buildings, designed by someone with a penchant for geometry run amok. There were multiple roofs and doors in unusual places. The corners of the various structures were rarely parallel with each other, and even the walkways through the upper tiers rose and fell seemingly at random, and at angles that suggested only an athlete might navigate them safely. It’s a style that somebody once described as an explosion rather than a design.

I had some trouble finding Lochlear’s office, but I suppose that’s part of the game. He was alone when I got there, working at a table piled high with books and pads. It was spacious, its walls decorated with assorted academic accolades and awards. A large sliding door opened onto a veranda, providing a view of the campus. When I appeared, he didn’t look up, but kept writing in a green folder while using his other hand to wave me toward a divan.

He was well past his prime years. In fact, I suspected I’d arrived none too soon. He was thin, and his shoulders were bent. A few strands of white hair complemented bushy eyebrows. His eyes were watery, and he seemed frail beyond endurance. “You must be Ms. Kolpath,” he said, in a surprisingly steady voice, still without taking his eyes off the paperwork.

“That’s correct, Professor.”

“Very good, young lady. I’ll be with you in just a moment.”

It took a bit longer than that, but finally he expressed his satisfaction with the task at hand, put the pen down, and favored me with a glance. “Forgive me,” he said. “Stop in the middle of one of these things, and sometimes it takes an hour to get back to where I was.”

“It’s okay. It’s good to meet you.” Alex had described him as a historian and an archivist. “What is it you’re working on, Professor?” I asked, by way of launching the conversation.

“Oh, nothing, really.” He pushed back from the table. “It’s just something I’ve been toying with.” He tried a dismissive smile, but he didn’t mean it.

“What is it?” I persisted.

“It’s The Investigators.”

“The Investigators?” I asked.

“It’s a play. I expect they’ll be performing it at the Theater by the Sea next season.”

“I didn’t know you were a playwright,” I said.

“Oh, I’m not. Not really. I’ve done a few. But they never get beyond the local group.

You know how it is.”

I had no idea. But I said yes, of course.

“I do murder-mystery comedies,” he said. “Eventually, I’d like to see one of them go all the way to Brentham.”

I pretended I understood the significance. “That would be nice,” I said. “Good luck, Professor.”

“Thank you. I’m not optimistic.”

“What do you teach?” I asked.

“Not a thing,” he said. “I taught history at one time, but that’s long ago. I got tired trying to persuade reluctant students, so I gave it up.”

“And now you-?”

“I’m seated firmly in the Capani Chair. Which means I work with occasional doctoral candidates. God help them.” He laughed and got up, tottered momentarily, but hung on and laughed. “The floor’s not as steady as it used to be. Now, I believe you’re here to-” His voice trailed off, and he rummaged through another pile of papers, gave up, and opened a cabinet. More searching, then his features brightened. “Yes,” he said, “here it is. Ms. Kolpath, why don’t you come with me?” He headed for the veranda.

The door slid open, and he led the way outside. “Be careful,” he said.

He immediately gained strength. His frailty slipped away, and he moved almost with the ease of a young man. When I stepped out behind him, and my weight melted off, I understood why. “Antigrav units,” I said.

“Of course. You’re about thirty percent normal weight at the moment, Chase. May I call you Chase? Good. Please watch your step. Sometimes the effect induces a sense of too much well-being. We’ve had people fall off.”

We were on one of the ramps I’d seen from the ground. Its handrails consisted of ornately carved metal, and it angled sharply up to one of the rooftops. Lochlear started to climb, moving with practiced ease.

We went to the top and strode out onto the roof. He walked with a casual inattention that, combined with his frailty and reduced weight, left me worried that the windwhich was steady and coming in off the ocean-might blow him off. He saw my concern and laughed. “Have no fear,” he said, “I come this way all the time.”

I gazed across the rooftop at the sea. “It’s lovely,” I said.

“This is where I get to be young again. For a few minutes.” We hurried past chairs and tables, and reentered the building through a double door. I couldn’t figure out what all the rush was about, until I realized that Lochlear did everything on the run.

We pushed through a set of curtains and entered a long, narrow room, crowded with shelves and files and chips and books and display cases. The cases held individual volumes. “They’re here somewhere,” he said. “I thought I’d set them aside after the messages from your Mr. Benedict.” The books on display were old, the covers discolored and worn, and in some cases missing. He opened a cabinet door, peered inside, and brightened. “Here it is,” he said. He removed a box, set it down on a table, and began to go through it. “Yes.” He pulled out several labeled containers. “Good.”

He dusted them off, sorted them, put a couple back, and placed the rest in front of me.

There were four of them. Each held eight disks. The labels read COLLIER ARRAY, UNCOLLATED, and were marked with catalog numbers.

“Tarim?” he said.

An AI’s voice replied, gently, “Good afternoon, Dr. Lochlear.”

He turned to me. “Chase, Tarim will be happy to assist you.”

“Thank you.”

“One more thing: These are quite valuable. Please be careful. The scanner is over here by the wall if you wish to make copies. You won’t be able to take the originals out of the room, of course. If you need to speak with me, just tell Tarim, and he’ll put you through. When you’re finished, please leave everything on the table. It’s been a pleasure to meet you, Chase.” Then he was gone. The door closed behind him with an audible click.

At the time it became operational, the Collier Array had been the largest telescope of all time. It was based off Castleman’s World, which supported and maintained it for the better part of seven centuries. With units scattered across the planetary system, it had possessed a virtual diameter of 400 million kilometers. It was a product of the Fifth Millennium, and it remained in operation until it fell victim to one of the incessant wars of the period. Its destruction had been a deliberate act of malice. By then, however, it had become obsolete.

The Array had drawn Alex’s interest because Castleman’s was four thousand lightyears from Tinicum 2116. Four thousand years for light to arrive at the system’s multiple lenses. So he realized that, if it had any record at all of that star, it would be of a time preceding the event that had disrupted life for the Margolians.

Much of the data gathered by the Collier was lost with the general collapse on Castleman’s at the end of the Fifth Millennium. But in the early decades of the last century, investigators uncovered a trove of stored raw data in hard copy from the Array. No one had sorted it out, because much of it had since become available elsewhere.

The disks were marked with the dates they were thought to cover, but even about that there was uncertainty. Not that it mattered.

I sat down in front of a reader, took Belle’s record of our flight to Tinicum, and inserted it. Then I removed the first disk from box #1 and put it in also. “Tarim,” I said, “please activate.”

Status lamps came on.

“Tarim, I’m trying to find Tinicum 2116 in the Collier raw data. I’ve provided you with a spectrographic analysis and images of surrounding star patterns. Please commence search.”

“Working,” he said.

I opened a novel and sat back to wait.

Sometimes you get lucky. Tinicum 2116 had been inspected, and the entry turned up thirty minutes later, on the second disk.

Tarim posted a picture of the star, as seen through the Collier. Beneath were the results of the analysis, spelling out quantities of hydrogen, helium, iron, lithium, and whatnot. And a final line: Planets: 4.

Four.

We knew of three.

The fourth was another terrestrial.

No wonder the orbits hadn’t matched.

Two gas giants. And two terrestrials.

Bingo.

Lochlear called to ask whether I’d like to have dinner with him. Some of the faculty members got together most evenings. I’d stayed in the archives, going over the other disks to see whether there was more on Tinicum. There wasn’t. But I was bored and stiff when the invitation came, so I was more than willing to find something else to do.

He picked me up and escorted me to the faculty dining room, which was in an adjoining building. There were five or six others gathered when we walked in.

Lochlear did the introductions, everybody made room, and I was surprised to discover they’d heard of me. Kolpath? Furrowed brows all around. You were with Benedict when he found Margolia, weren’t you?

I allowed as how that was so.

They wanted to shake my hand. All of them. “Superb piece of work, Chase,” said an energetic young guy who looked as if he lifted barbells when he wasn’t in the classroom. They asked me to pass my congratulations to Alex, and to tell him they were all in his debt. It was a nice moment. A couple of them asked lightheartedly whether Rainbow was taking on help. And they wondered what I was doing at the university.

When I told them it was just basic research, they laughed, and a middle-aged woman with honey-colored hair said she’d keep it quiet, too, if she were out to bag the kind of game I usually went after. They all laughed again. And I sat there feeling like the queen of the walk.

The guy with the muscles wondered if we were positive about what we’d found. Was it really Margolia? “Yes,” I said. “There’s no question.”

They raised their coffee cups in a toast to Rainbow. “The University of the Americas appreciates you, Chase,” said a heavyset man in a red sweater. Galan Something-orother. His specialty was modern theater. I wondered what he thought of Lochlear’s plays.

They didn’t seem to feel any of the disappointment Alex and I had experienced.

Exhilaration was the order of the day. The middle-aged woman excused herself and left, returning a few minutes later with a copy of Christopher Sim’s Man and Olympian. “I was wondering if you’d sign it,” she said.

My connection with the Sim business was a long time ago, and I hesitated. It was a leather-bound edition, gilt edge, black ribbons. Not the sort of book you want casually to mark up. “Please,” she said.

I complied, feeling a bit foolish.

“What’s next?” asked Lochlear.

“Home,” I said.

“I mean, what’s the next project? McCarthy?”

Golis McCarthy was an archeologist who’d returned from a frontier world a century earlier, claiming to have brought back alien artifacts. Not Mute. Something else. He wouldn’t go into details, but during the next three months the artifacts went missing, supposedly weighted and dropped in the ocean by McCarthy. McCarthy and his people-seven of them altogether-refused to comment and, within seven months, all were dead, the victims of assorted accidents. It was a conspiracy theorist’s dream.

“No,” I said, “I think we’re just going to take it easy for a while.”

Lochlear leaned close. “Did you find what you came for?”

“Oh, yes,” I said.

He beamed. “I’m glad we were able to help.”

The guy with the muscles, whose name was Albert, told me if we had anything more like Margolia up our sleeves, he’d appreciate an invitation to go along. I told him next time I’d be in touch.

When it was over, and we were on our way back to the library, Lochlear commented that I’d been a big hit. I was sorry Alex hadn’t been there.

I couldn’t resist taking a day to go sight-seeing. I went rafting, tried my hand at a canoe, rode a tour ship through the islands, and allowed Albert to take me to dinner.

There was a glorious late-summer sunset, and I decided that, if I ever found reason to relocate, the Destinies would be high on my list.