Firebird (36 page)

There were also, without explanation, between sixty and seventy pages listing galactic positions, like these:

a: 22:14:38 dec: +22.31 S 0611/4322

a: 21:10:41 dec: -17.33 N 1222/6319

a: 19:21:35 dec: -19.27 N 0303/9312

a: 23:32:17 dec: +14.12 N 0914/8711

The eight-digit number seemed to be a date, given in the terrestrial calendar. If that was correct, some of them went back thousands of years.

“So what do you make of it?” Alex asked Shara.

“Give me a chance to look at it,” she said. “But I'd say it's just what we were hoping for.”

They were huddled in the dining room when I came in next morning. Shara was so excited, she could have been walking on the ceiling. “The basic problem,” she told me, “is that we've never known where the black holes really are, except for a few. So nobody ever put all this together. What Robin's done is to mark the launch sites of vehicles that went missing. Then he went looking for later sightings, something that would, if not confirm, at least suggest, that these were Sanusar events. In some cases, he was able to show that no other reasonable explanation existed. Some of these events date all the way back to the third millennium. He's also been able to give us the tracks for black holes that we didn't know existed. Still don't, officially. The only evidence for their existence derives from lining up Sanusar events. But now we have a sense of where the danger areas are. Places where you don't want to be if you're aboard a given type of ship and you're about to make a jump.”

She took a long swallow of her coffee. “All of this will need confirmation. But, unless he was making up the numbers, and even some of the events—we haven't been able to find them all yet because he didn't list his sources—I don't think there's much question that we have a major breakthrough here.”

I glanced over at Alex. He was just finishing a plate of scrambled eggs, but his eyes were on me. “Why,” I said, “didn't he mention this to somebody? Why—?”

“Don't be too hard on him,” said Alex.

Shara nodded. “I'd guess he was gathering data and getting ready to publish. It's the way the game is played. You don't go out there with this kind of thing until you can show reasonable evidence.”

“So where are we now?” I asked. “I assume we're going to try to find the Alpha Object.”

“We only have one ship,” said Alex. “Remember the butterfly.”

“What's the butterfly?” asked Shara.

“Chase thinks the measurements aren't sufficiently exact to enable us to find these things.”

“They aren't,” I said. “And the playing field is getting bigger. Some of these ships only show up every couple of centuries.”

“Well, that's not quite a valid statement,” said Shara. “They are only
observed
every couple of centuries. Actually, though, we have exact times on the last two appearances. So we should be in good shape with the Alpha and Antares Objects.”

“I'm glad to hear it,” I said. Shara continued talking about the value of Robin's notebook while I collected some toast and coffee. I went back to the table and pretended to listen while she went into some detail about what happens when time and space are subjected to the presence of a black hole. I waited for the appropriate moment and asked the question that had been on my mind from the beginning: “Do we have anything on the
Capellat
Do we know when it'll be back?”

Alex looked at Shara.

“We have to wait,” she said, “until somebody sees it. Once we have a sighting, we can match it to the launch, and that will tell us where and when we can find it.”

The problem was that it might never happen. Probably wouldn't, as a matter of fact. It could show up every few days, but if it was out in the pit, nobody was going to notice.

The Alpha Object would be up first. It had last been seen 178 years before by a deep-space monitor.

“Its previous known appearance before
that,”
said Shara, “was again 178 years. And we're pretty sure this thing left Cormoral 2,331 years ago. That's divisible by 178, or nearly so.”

“But the jump,” I said, “could also be eighty-nine. Or 44.5. Or anything at all that's divisible into 2,331.”

Shara nodded. “That's correct. But it doesn't matter.”

“What do we do,” I asked, “if we find survivors?”

“We'll take them off,” said Alex. “If we can.”

“The
Belle-Marie
doesn't have much carrying capacity, Alex. Suppose there are fifty of them? Or a couple of hundred?”

“We're hoping that won't be the case,” he said.

“Hoping?”

Alex's eyes clouded. “Chase, what do you think would happen if we went to Star Corps with this? And asked for a fleet of ships to accompany us?”

“They'd ask for some specifics.”

“And—?”

“Some proof you know what you're talking about,” said Shara.

“We have pictures of the
Firebird.”

“I don't like it, Alex.”

“Neither do I, babe. Right now, our best bet is to get some hard evidence, and next time it appears, a serious rescue force will be on hand.”

“Alex, you're talking almost two hundred years.”

“No. I'm talking how much time will pass inside the ship.” He seemed frustrated. “If there are a couple of hundred people on board, we wouldn't have time to get them off no matter how many ships we take. Let it go. If we can prove we know what we're doing with this one, next time we ought to be able to get some help.”

I looked at Shara. “He's right,” she said.

“I've ordered a few extra pressure suits,” Alex said. “One for Shara, if she wants to use it. And seven for survivors, if we find any. Beyond that, we'll have to make it up as we go.”

As we got ready to leave on the Alpha mission, a storm rolled in. The Coyote had been delivered the night before. I remember standing with Shara out on the front deck, waiting for Alex, watching the rain wash over the new lander. We were excited at the prospect of taking it up to the station. Finally, he came out just as a bolt of lightning crackled across the sky. He looked up for a moment. “Anybody here believe in omens?”

Our luggage had been loaded earlier, when the weather was clear. We hurried down onto the covered walkway. The rain was still blowing in on us. Not that it mattered. We'd have to run through the rain anyhow. The lander was too big for the shelter, so it had been left in the middle of the lawn.

We got drenched. I didn't care. I love getting behind the controls of a new vehicle for the first time. (The test run didn't count, of course.) We sat down and said hello to Gabe, who'd been installed by the manufacturer. I checked in with the tower, got clearance, and within a few minutes we were on our way to Skydeck.

Alex sat in back with Shara. They were talking about the chances of success and how many ships might be out there, lost in transdimensional tunnels.

We rose through the clouds. Alex leaned forward and asked about my reaction to the Coyote, how did it handle, would I have any problem getting used to it, but I could tell he was just making conversation, that his mind was elsewhere.

I asked Gabe what
he
thought of the Coyote.
“It is,”
he said,
“a substantial upgrade over that junker we used to ride around in.”

On approach, I reported in to the station. And a familiar voice replied.
“Hi, Chase. This is Skydeck.”
Brad Hopkins. He was a heavyset guy who drank too much. Life-of-the-party type. He'd been in the Pilots' Club the night I was there.
“You just can't stay away, can you?”

“Never could, Brad.”

“Lucky for us. Okay, Chase. Release the Coyote.”

I turned control over. “You have it, Brad.”

“Indeed I do, beautiful.”
Hopkins was never much for standard operating procedure.
“You headed for the
Belle-Marie?”

“Yes, we are.”

He slowed our forward motion while a maintenance vessel emerged, then guided us into the docking area. When we were alongside the
Belle-Marie,
he told me the Coyote looked pretty nice. Then he said something about seeing me at the Club. And, finally,
“All yours, Chase.”

I ran a preflight check, reported to Ops that we were ready to go, and sat back to await clearance. Alex and Shara were back in the cabin. I wasn't paying much attention to what was going on back there until I became suddenly aware that they'd gone quiet.

Then Alex came in behind me and pointed at the auxiliary screen. “Put on WWN,” he said.

The Worldwide News Feed.

I switched it on and read the headline:

S
EVEN
W
OULD
-B
E
R
ESCUERS
K
ILLED
ON
V
ILLANUEVA

(Andiquar, 11 Mor.) Seven persons died this week during an abortive “rescue” attempt on Villanueva. Early reports indicate that the victims had entered a public building in an effort to retrieve ancient AIs. They were trapped inside the building by an onslaught of bots, construction devices, and vehicles, and ultimately died in a missile attack.

I caught my breath as I skimmed down for the names of the casualties. I didn't know any of them. I half expected to see Doc Drummond among them. But he wasn't. According to the report, they'd been led by one Matthew Po. Po and two others had survived.

The story recapped the running debate about AIs and sentience, and they cited Alex as the “instigator” for the movement, which was described as “controversial.”

I felt relieved at not seeing Drummond's name. But you know what runs through your mind when you feel happy to replace one victim with another.

They put up pictures of the victims, five men and two women. World News Live was also on the story.
“We have reports,”
said the anchor,
“that six other expeditions are known to be en route in the effort to save the hardware.”
He looked saddened by the tragedy. I turned it off, but Alex had switched over to it in the cabin.
“It's possible there may be as many as a hundred vehicles en route as we speak. Marcia, what do you think's going on here?”

Marcia started to talk about mass hysteria. Then
that
one got shut off.

A few minutes later, we were cleared to go. Ordinarily, I'd have let Belle manage the departure, but I needed something to take my mind off Villanueva. We undocked and moved slowly out of the station. I remember looking down and thinking how much Rimway resembled that pitiful world. The same gauzy clouds, the wide green continents, the ice caps, the scattered storms. There'd been a large blizzard in the south when we'd first arrived there, and there was a large storm now on Rimway, though over the
northern
ice cap. Terrestrial worlds always induce, at least for me, a wistfulness, a sense of returning to a place I know well. Even a place like Salud Afar, expelled from the Milky Way millions of years ago, with almost no stars in its sky, nevertheless retained that domestic quality. You show up at one of these places, and it always feels like coming home. I mentioned it to Shara as we cruised past the Moon.

“I haven't traveled the way you have, Chase,” she said, “but I'd be surprised if it weren't true for everybody. It strikes me, though, that it could be a dangerous affinity. Some of these places are definitely not friendly.”

We were looking at four days to get out to our target site. Belle complained that we didn't have a more specific location.
“I'll get you into the neighborhood,”
she said.
“But we'll need some luck.”

Alex tried to keep busy, something to do with twelve-hundred-year-old abstract portraits, one of which was thought to be the work of Thiebold Marcetti. Unfortunately, he'd explained earlier, nobody could prove anything one way or the other. He thought he'd pinpointed a factor that indicated the portrait was genuine, and he was comparing brushstrokes. But he was still unusually subdued.

When we made our jump, I couldn't help thinking about the lost ships. There was no indication of a black-hole track in the neighborhood. But I knew that doing the transit into hyperspace would never again feel quite the same.

On that first day, Shara moved up front with me, and we exchanged glances and eye contact and other nonverbals, relating our mutual concern for Alex, who was obviously stressed. “I'll tell you,” she said, “I wish you guys had never gone near that place.”

“Me, too.” I kept my voice low. “These are not the best conditions for a long ride.”

She gazed down at the control panel. “Wish I could do something.”

“So do I. But he'll be fine.” That was easy to say. People were dying as a result of something he'd started. It had to be painful.

Despite the uncomfortable beginning, the flight passed more easily than I'd expected. Once away from Rimway, Alex again became his affable self. Mostly, we just talked. The conversations ranged over a wide variety of topics, but mostly they concentrated on why creatures as smart as humans did so many dumb things. Alex thought that we're wired to hold on to our opinions despite what the facts might show. “It's more critical to survival than just being smart,” he said. “It always helps to be able to persuade other people to follow you, and to do that, you have to be consistent. And you have to be part of the tribe. It's why beliefs are more important than facts.”

I wondered whether we'd ever develop a capability to cross to another galaxy. Shara said that we might be able to improve star-drive technology, but to get to Andromeda we'd need something completely new. “I'm reluctant to say we've exhausted the possibilities,” she said. “That always turns out to look like a foolish position a few years later. But it's hard to see where we can go from here.”

“I'd be interested,” said Alex, “in coming back in, say, ten thousand years to see what the human race is like.”

“We'll all be different by then,” I said. “We'll probably have gotten rid of old age. We'll have a complete map of the Milky Way. Everybody will have a 200 IQ. And we'll all be impossibly good-looking.”