Infinity Beach

34

By morning nothing had changed. “To tell you the truth,” Ali said, “being watched by something I can’t see is uncomfortable. I’m glad the banshee’s here. Makes me feel a lot safer.”

Kim drank her coffee without replying. By now everyone on board knew that the fleet had arrived. Some admitted feeling the way Ali did. But they all knew it spelled the end of the mission.

The scan warning blinked on, burned steadily for three seconds, and went off. They were always three-second flashes now, still coming on their precise schedule. “You think the banshee’s getting the same treatment?” she asked.

“Probably.”

“I wonder what they make of it.”

“For sure they’re not happy. They’re probably keeping everybody close to battle stations.”

“Incoming from the fleet,” said the AI.

Ali glanced at Kim. “Maybe they’ll tell us. Okay, Mac, let’s hear it.”

“Audio only. Relaying.”

Kim sank back in her cushions.

“McCollum, this is the commanding officer of the RE Dauntless.” The voice rumbled with authority. “You’re directed to leave this area immediately.”

She looked at Ali. “They don’t have any authority out here, do they?”

Ali made a face. “Technically, no,” he said.

“So tell him to go harass somebody else. He’s interfering with a civilian enterprise. Here, I’ll tell him—”

She reached for a headset but All held up a hand. “I’m sorry, Kim. I have to cooperate. It would be my license.”

“But you said—”

“I said technically they have no authority. But we’re Greenway registry. They have lawyers.”

“Everybody’s worried about his job,” she grumbled.

“Well, what do you expect?” he demanded, frustrated. “We’ve had almost a week out here. What’s happening that’s worth making major sacrifices for?” He switched on the speaker. “Captain, we’ll start preparations for departure immediately.”

“Not just yet, Captain Kassem,” said the Dauntless. “Do you have a Dr. Kimberly Brandywine on board?”

Ali looked sidewise at her.

“Go to visual,” said Kim.

The warship’s commander was tall, blond, with wide-set blue eyes and a neatly trimmed mustache. There was no evidence of flexibility in his rock-hard features. This was not a man with whom she would want to negotiate. “Go ahead, Captain. This is Dr. Brandywine.”

“Doctor, I’m informed you’re in possession of a piece of government property. Is it with you now?”

She looked toward Ali.

He shook his head. No use lying. They’d only board and search. “It is,” she said.

“Very good. Please use care with it. We’ll be drawing alongside shortly. I’ll expect you to have it ready for me.”

He signed off.

“It probably doesn’t matter anyhow,” Ali said. “You can’t give the Valiant back to the owners if they don’t even want to say hello.” He looked subdued.

“Are we still sending out the vocabulary package?”

“Every sixty minutes.”

Everything was coming apart. The Valiant would go into a government laboratory somewhere, search efforts for the civilization which produced it would be misdirected, and Kim would not hear about butterflies and shrouds again during the course of her lifetime. The world would never learn of the sacrifice made by the celestials at Mount Hope. And when we do finally meet, at whatever remote date that might be, it will be as potential antagonists. “Every hour,” she said. “That seems stupid, doesn’t it? Under the circumstances? I mean, we’re not getting any results.”

“We don’t seem to be.”

“Shut it down, Ali. We’ve still got some time. Let’s try something else.” She brought up the Valiant package, the Valiant running beneath crescent moons, the Valiant hovering in the sky over the nightside of a world illuminated by vast pools of light, the Valiant fleeing before an exploding nova. Kim had done her work well, and the ship looked by turns regal and exotic and elegant. The only thing it lacked was a clean red-orange flame from a pair of thrusters. “Send these,” she said. “Send them all.”

Ali passed the instructions to the AI. “Canceling second-phase package,” it said. “Proceeding with Valiant transmission.”

They watched the console. Lights blinked, and the visuals went out.

There was a terrace on the second level with an aft view. Nobody was using it, and Kim strolled onto it and stood in the starlight looking at the sky. The banshee and its escorts were back there somewhere, less than two hours away.

“It was a good try, Kim.” The voice startled her. It was Matt’s, and she read concern in his face. “You can’t blame yourself.”

“I don’t,” she said.

His tone changed. Grew optimistic. “You’ve confirmed a major discovery. We know they’re here. And we have an artifact. That’s not a bad piece of work.”

“We also know,” she said, “that if we ever are able to talk to celestials, what their first question’s going to be.”

“Well, we’ll just have to explain as best we can.”

“Killed the crew and took the ship. Good luck to us, Matt.”

“Kim—”

“Let it go.”

He settled into a chair. “They’re scared, Kim. You really can’t blame Woodbridge. He’s just taking your advice.”

The great star-clouds glowed in the night.

“Don’t put this on me,” she said. “I’m tired of that game. He has as much information as I do. He knows what happened at Mount Hope. He knows what the Valiant crew did.”

“But he has more responsibility than you do. If you’re wrong, well, maybe we lose a ship. A few lives. If he gets it wrong, there could be a catastrophe. God knows what it could bring down on our heads. We haven’t really done a study to determine what contact would mean. Despite Beacon, despite all the missions, we never really thought through the potential consequences.” The chair creaked as he shifted his weight. “Let it go. In the long run, we’ll be better off.”

“You really believe that, Matt?”

From the adjoining corridor she heard the bleep that accompanied the scan marker. The whatever was looking at them again. Making sure they hadn’t changed course. She wondered what they made of the warships. The presence of the fleet, if it provided comfort to Ali and some of her colleagues, was as likely as not to scare off anything in the neighborhood.

“You know,” she said, “if we don’t get it right this time, we may not get another chance.”

“We do what we can.”

Kim looked out at the stars, at Matt, sitting now with his eyes closed, absorbing pain, doing what he’d always done, trying to make the best of things. In the long run, we’ll be better off. He’d left the door open, and she could see down the passageway, which ultimately led back to the Institute. “I don’t understand,” she said, “why they haven’t responded. I’d think they’d want to talk about the Valiant, if nothing else.”

He shrugged. “Who’s to say? Maybe they think we’re looking to grab another one if it shows itself. Or maybe just transmitting pictures doesn’t convey the message.”

“What would?”

“I don’t know. What’s the message?”

“Hello,” she said. “We’re sorry.”

“Then maybe they need to be informed we have the Valiant with us. They don’t really know that—”

“Yeah.” She thought about it. “You might be right, Matt. All we’ve done so far is send—”

“—A lot of images. Maybe we need to show them the ship.”

She opened a channel to the captain. “Ali, when’s the next scan due?”

“We just had one.”

“It’s still running at sixty-three minute intervals?”

“That is correct.”

“How much time have we left before the good captain arrives?”

“Hour and a half, give or take.”

“There’s still time,” she said.

“Time for what?” asked Matt and Ali simultaneously.

“To go outside. Ali, can you arrange things so that when the next probe comes, we’re in the shadow of the planet? We’ll need whatever shelter we can get from the sun.”

Matt didn’t like it, but he could not withstand her determination. “I go with you, though,” he said.

“You ever been outside one of these things?”

“Have you?”

At the other end of the corridor, a staircase ascended to an air lock. Kim and Matt took the Valiant from its display case. They set it on the floor and Kim wrapped it carefully in plastic.

Ali, speaking from the pilot’s room, tried to dissuade her.

Neither of you has any EVA experience, he argued. It’s dangerous. It’s pointless. I’d prefer you not do it.

Kim thanked him for his concern. “Have to try,” she said. “It’s all we have.” They carried the microship up the stairs into the air lock, selected a pair of p-suits and dressed.

Ali came to make sure they had everything right. He lectured her some more, but ended by telling her he’d do the same thing if he were in her place. “Might as well,” he said. “We aren’t going to get to come out here again.”

Then he retreated onto the landing and Kim began depressurizing the lock.

“It’s good timing, if nothing else,” he told her, speaking now through the suit radio. “Next scan is due in eight minutes. What do you expect to happen out there anyhow?”

“We hope,” she said, “to shake hands with a celestial.”

The air lock’s outer door opened. Kim and Matt stepped through. It was like going onto a rooftop at night.

This upper section of hull was flat and rectangular, bordered by a waist-high handrail. They were still within the ship’s artificial gravity field.

Kim put the Valiant down, walked to the edge of the roof and looked over the side. It was dizzying. She felt as if she stood atop an infinitely high building whose foundation was lost in the void. The gas giant, with its system of rings and moons, lay off to her left, shielding her from the sun. “What happens if I fall off?” she asked Ali.

“Nothing,” he said. “You won’t fall. But you would float away. So it’s probably a good idea not to go too close to the edge.”

Matt stayed in the center of the roof with the Valiant.

“One minute to the next scan,” said Ali.

Kim walked over and put a hand on Matt’s shoulder. He looked lost. “You want to help?”

“Sure.”

“Okay.” She removed the plastic from the microship. Following her lead, he took hold of one side of the vessel, she the other, and they lifted. “All the way,” she said. They raised it shoulder high and then got it over their heads.

All counted down the seconds. “Okay, folks. We have a light. We are being scanned.”

She imagined she could feel the tingle of the probe passing through the three floors of the Mac, passing through her, locking on the Valiant.

“This is not going to be productive,” said Matt. “It feels like a religious ceremony.”

“It is a religious ceremony.” She juggled it, tried to lift it higher, and almost lost it.

“Careful,” said Matt.

“Still scanning,” said Ali. “It’s going long this time.”

Kim, remembering the scan had been running at three seconds’ duration, began counting. “I think we got their attention,” she said.

“I hope so.”

She got to nineteen.

“Marker’s out,” said Ali. “That’s it.”

They lowered the Valiant and laid it back on the roof.

“Kim.” Ali’s voice again.

“Yes?”

“It went twenty-six seconds.”

Matt looked around, maybe to see whether lights had materialized among the stars. But the skies showed no change. “Might as well go back inside,” he said. “Nothing more we can do out here.”

Kim struggled to sit down beside the Valiant. The suit was exceedingly awkward. “I’m going to stay out for a while,” she said.

“Kim—”

“I’m okay. I’m just not ready to quit yet.” The air-lock door stood open. Light spilled out onto the roof. “Once we go back in, it’s over.”

He came and stood close to her.

She looked out into eternity, past the great ringed globe, past the scattered diamonds of individual stars, past the rivers of light. And she thought of Emily, dead at the moment of triumph.

Ali’s voice: “We have movement.”

Terri Taranaka was watching the screens in the mission center. “Kim,” she said, “we’re getting something!”

Kim struggled to her feet. “Not the Dauntless?”

“Negative,” said Ali, sounding excited. “The Dauntless is still in our rear.”

“Which way? Where?”

“Bearing zero six zero,” said Ali. “Up about thirty degrees.”

She had to look back to the air lock to reorient herself to the front of the ship. Up here it was hard to tell.

“It just appeared? he continued. “I don’t know where it came from.”

Even though it lay behind the planet, Alnitak’s glare was still harsh. Matt held a gloved hand over his visor and peered in the indicated direction. “Don’t see anything, Kim,” he said.

Neither did she.

“We’re getting an anomalous reading,” said Ali. “Configuration keeps shifting. I don’t think it’s a ship.”

“What else could it be?” Sandra’s voice.

Kim’s pulse began to pick up. “Not shape-changing?” she asked.

“Dauntless is on the circuit, Kim. I think they’re getting a little excited over there.”

“How far is it? The thing with the shifting configuration?”

“About eight kilometers. And closing. I can’t understand how it could have gotten so close without our picking it up earlier.”

“Kim.” Eric’s voice. “We’re getting a visual.”

“Text message,” said Paul. And then he let out a shriek. “It’s from them.”

And Maurie: “You sure? That’s English.”

Kim heard applause, but it quickly died away.

Eric again: “I don’t know what they’re talking about.”

“Uh-oh,” said Mona.

“What does it say?” demanded Kim.

“It says, Where are they?”

“Where are who!” asked Matt.

A chill felt its way up Kim’s spine. “I think,” she said, “they want to know what happened to the crew of the Valiant.”

“Kim.” Ali’s voice. “That thing out there does look like a cloud. It’s coherent. Moving with purpose.”

“I hear you.”

“I think it’s another shroud. You better get inside.”

“Matt,” she said. “You go. Close the air lock and do not open it unless I tell you to.”

“Not a good idea,” said Terri.

“Kim, I want you both inside. And hurry it up. It’s only a couple of minutes away.”

Matt went quickly to the air lock and stood in the patch of light, waiting for her. She looked down at the Valiant and out off the starboard side, about a third of the way up the sky. And saw nothing.

“Come on, Kim,” Matt said. “We can’t do anything out here except get ourselves killed.”

“Kim.” It was Maurie. “I think you’re right. They want to know about the crew. What do we tell them?”

Crunch time. “Tell them they’re dead. We’re sorry, but they were killed. Accidentally.”

“We do not have ‘dead’ or ‘killed’ in the vocabulary. Or ‘accident.’”

Ali again, his voice a command: “Kim, get inside. We’re out of time.”

“Matt—”

Matt shook his head no and pushed the door shut. Then he turned and came back across the roof.

“That was dumb,” she said.

“I won’t leave you out here alone.”

She was trying to recall the vocabulary. They had lots of words like stone and grass, tree and leaf, water and earth, light and dark. They had cloud and sun, starship and engine. They even had colors. How to convey death?

“Tell them ‘Their engines are stopped. They have gone dark.’”

“You sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure, Maurie.”

“Okay. Doing it now.”

“We need a way to express regret. Anybody have any ideas?”

Mona said: “‘We wish it had not been.’”

“We have,” said Gil, “no word for ‘wish.’ Or for syntactical complexities.”

Kim had not taken her eyes off the patch of sky from which the shroud was approaching.

The debate over how to address the celestials descended into a frustrated silence. “Defective vocabulary,” said Terri.

“We did what we could,” replied Eric. “You have to get the fundamentals down before you can do philosophy.”

The sky rippled. Several stars disappeared.

“It’s here,” Kim said.

“Kim.” Ali sounded angry. “Why are you still out there?”

“Eric.” Sandra was speaking. “Try ‘The leaves on our trees fall to the ground.’”

“Yes,” said Kim. “That’s good.”

“We should have brought a writer,” said Paul.

She could see the cloud approaching, could see stars through its veils.

“How about, ‘Our plants become dry’?”

“Yes. Good. Send it too. Can’t have too much regret at a time like this.”

Kim and Matt stood side by side, not moving. The shroud looked very much like the creature from Severin, except that this one seemed to be smaller. “Same basic model,” she told Matt.

But no eyes this time.

Nevertheless she knew it could see her. Or was aware of her in some manner that did not involve visuals.

“‘Our life is now dark,’” she told Maurie while she resisted an urge to back away. Matt, to her surprise and his credit, stayed with her.

“We don’t have any way of expressing time, Kim. No word for ‘now.’”

“Send it without the ‘now,’ Maurie.” Heart pounding, she picked up the Valiant.

The shroud opened, blossomed, as had the one at the lakefront before engulfing its victims.

She held out the microship.

“Don’t make any sudden moves,” said Ali.

Kim could barely move at all. Her suit felt claustrophobic.

“We’re getting a reply,” said Tesla.

And Eric: “It says: ‘We are you.’”

“Makes no sense.”

“What are they trying to say?”

“‘We’re of one mind,’” suggested Matt, his voice shaking. “Maybe they understand what we’re trying to do.”

“You really think so?” asked Tesla.

Kim sincerely hoped so.

Ali’s voice: “You guys okay out there?”

She felt a tug at the Valiant. She let go, watched it begin to fall, but slowly, still in gravity’s grip. The mist swirled across its polished hull, embraced it, and the shroud gathered it in.

Kim, heart pounding, heard applause.

And then she and Matt were alone on the roof.