Infinity Beach (43 page)

The train leaped ahead again, passed beneath a series of ridges, and raced out across a lake. The shock wave struck the water like a ship’s prow. At the water’s edge, a crocodile watched them pass.

They slowed again, settled to earth, and emerged through a patch of cypress into a wide stretch of parkland. A few kids turned away from a ball game to wave. People on benches looked up and then went back to reading or talking.

The train joined the main east–west line at Morgantown Bay and ran the short gauntlet of cliffs, sea, and islands into Terminal City. It passed slowly through the downtown area, glided into the terminal building, and settled to a stop. The doors opened.

Kim walked dejectedly out onto the platform. There was no sign of Woodbridge or his people. She picked up her bags, held out the one with the wet suit and the metal sensor, and tagged the rest for Sky Harbor.
To be held till called for.

No one seemed to be watching her. She checked the timetables, noted that she had fifty-five minutes before the next departure for Eagle Point.

The train she’d just left was filling up. A bell sounded, doors closed, and it rose on its magnetics and pulled slowly out of the station. It would be heading back east.

She went to the terminal roof, hailed a cab, and told it to take her to the Beachfront Hotel. It rose into clear air, swung onto a southeastern tangent, and moved swiftly across the city.

At the Beachfront, she took an elevator down to the lobby. A cluster of shops ringed the area. She wandered into one, bought a comb, went out to the registration desk and reserved a room. Then she got back on the elevator, rode up past her floor, and went instead to the roof. Two cabs were just landing. She took one and instructed it to proceed to the train terminal.

There was still no indication of surveillance. Good. They had what they wanted, she hoped, and would not further concern themselves with her. She arrived at her destination, strolled over to an ADP, inserted her ID, and got a ticket to Eagle Point. Then she found a bench and watched a holocast talk show.

Ten minutes later her train arrived. She boarded, sat down, and lazily started browsing through the library. The doors closed and they left the station on schedule. The train cruised above the parks and residences on Terminal City’s north side. It crossed the VanderMeer Bridge to the mainland, and began to accelerate. The trees thinned out and they moved over rolling fields.

The quiet motion rocked her to sleep. She dreamed of the shroud but somehow knew it was a dream and forced herself awake. The car was full of sunlight and skis and the laughter of children. Everybody seemed to be on vacation.

A drink table approached, and Kim helped herself to a frozen pineapple.

It was late afternoon when they glided into Eagle Point. She got off, walked over to the tourist information booth, and consulted the commercial registry. Finding what she wanted, she went up onto the skywalk and minutes later entered The Home Shop. She bought some white ribbon, and had it cut into six strips, each about twenty centimeters long.

Next she proceeded to the Rent-All Emporium sporting goods outlet, down at the next arch. There she picked out a collapsible boat, a converter and a jetpack, and several tethers designed for mountain climbing. They delivered everything to Wing Transport, where she rented a flyer. An hour and a quarter after she’d arrived, she was flying south over countryside that had grown painfully familiar. She picked up the Severin River, and followed it through the canyons and over the dam to Lake Remorse.

The lake was bright and still in the afternoon sun. No boat moved across its surface. It was almost, she thought, as if this area were disconnected from Greenway, and had become part of whatever strange world from which the shroud had come.

She took the metal sensor out of her carrying case and tied it into the flyer’s search system. That done, she skimmed the shoreline once, perhaps to ensure that she was alone, perhaps to be in a position to flee if anything rose out of the trees to come after her. She shuddered at the memory and made an effort to put it out of her mind.

At Cabry’s Beach, someone had put up a memorial for Sheyel, Ben Tripley, and the three guards.

She hovered over the place, tempted to go down and pay her respects. But time was short. She promised herself she would come back.

Kim turned north onto the same course she’d followed when fleeing the shroud, and retraced her flight across the lake. She homed in on the clutch of dead trees, measured angles between them and the town and the face of the moun
tain. She had been about sixty meters offshore when she pitched the
Valiant
into the lake.

Right there!

She descended to within a few meters of the surface and moved slowly across the face of the water, watching the sensor. It lit up a couple of times, but the position wasn’t quite right. Too far east. Too far out.

Eventually she got the hit she was looking for. She marked the spot with a float, found a landing place, and took the flyer down. When she’d come back to Remorse with Matt, she’d not felt much, just a kind of numbness. But today she was alone again, and the area oppressed her, weighed on her spirits.

She tried to concentrate on Solly, to imagine him alongside her, telling her not to worry. Nothing here to be afraid of.

She hauled the boat out of the aircraft, pulled the tag, and watched it inflate. A hawk appeared high overhead and began circling. She was glad for its company.

She tied her tethers together, making two lines, one approximately twenty and the other forty meters long, and laid them in the boat. She added her strips of ribbon, and picked up two rocks, one white and one gray. These she also put in the boat.

When everything seemed ready she got back into the flyer and changed into her wet suit. She strapped on the jets and the converter, then disconnected the sensor and put it in her utility bag.

She launched the boat with a sense of bravura and rode out to the marker. Depth registered at twelve meters. Deeper than she’d hoped. But by no means out of reach. She initiated the sensor search.
That
way, closer to shore.

Kim moved to the indicated spot, tied the shorter line around the gray rock and dropped it over the side to serve as her anchor.

It would have been easier to work with a partner in the boat, as she had with Solly above the dam. Now she had to forego the advantage of an observer with a tracking screen.
She attached the sensor to her lamp, strapped the lamp to her wrist, and slipped over the side.

The lake was cool and clear, but dark in its depths. She arrowed down until she touched bottom. Then she turned slowly 360 degrees, watching the sensor, waiting for the blinker to brighten. When it didn’t, she tried moving out, swimming in a circle, and immediately got her directions confused. The easy way was not going to work.

She went back up to the boat and thought about it. A flyer passed, moving south. She watched it until it was gone.

It was getting late. The afternoon was beginning to change color.

She paid out her second line and tied the ribbon to it in five-meter increments. When she was finished she looped it over one shoulder, put the white rock in her utility bag, went back over the side, and descended to the anchor.

She connected the line with the ribbons to the anchor line, measured out five meters and marked the outermost limit with the white rock.

Something hard-shelled, a turtle probably, bumped into her and scurried away. A good sign.

Holding on to the first ribbon to prevent moving beyond the perimeter, she searched the area immediately around the anchor, out to five meters. When she got back to the white rock, she switched her attention to the area
outside
the perimeter, and completed a second circle. Then she moved the rock to ten meters and repeated the process.

She found the
Valiant
on the next circuit, lying upside down in a tangle of vegetation. She removed it gently, clasped it to her breast, congratulated herself, and rose slowly to the surface.

Matt met her at the boarding tube. She was carrying the
Valiant
in a Gene Teddy box, which was adorned with a picture of the popular children’s character. “Is that it?” he asked.

“That’s it.” She was surprised to see him there. But he looked like a man being led to execution. “Something wrong?”

“No. Why do you ask?”

“No reason. It was good of you to come see us off.”

“‘See you off’? I’m going.”

It had never occurred to her that Matt would put himself at risk. “Good,” she said. “We can use all the help we can get. When are we leaving?”

“Two more people are on the way up. As soon as they get here, in about an hour—”

“Sooner the better,” she said. “I suggest we plan on leaving as soon as they’re in the door.”

He took the box and they started up the tube. “Something happen?”

She told him about Woodbridge. He listened with a deepening frown. “Do we have cover for this mission?” she asked.

“It’s listed as a return to Taratuba. Nothing unusual. But he knew you were coming to Terminal City.”

“I make a lot of trips out here. Nothing unusual about that. And I’ve booked a room at the Beachfront Hotel. We should have a few hours.” It was essential to be away before Woodbridge found out he had nothing more than an ornament and began looking for her. If there was a problem with the Patrol this time, she wouldn’t have Solly in the pilot’s room.

“All right,” he said. “We’ll try to get going as quickly as we can. But I don’t want to leave anybody behind. These people dropped everything for this—”

“They don’t know why, do they?”

“They’ve only been told they won’t be sorry.”

“I hope that’s true.”

If the
Hammersmith
had resembled a cheap hotel, the
McCollum
suggested a run-down office building with temporary quarters for people who’d got stranded during a blizzard. It was gray, dark, and oppressive. Usually, when Kim wanted to suggest how desperately the Institute needed contributions, she showed pictures of the
Mac
.

The ship itself was a box with rounded edges. The rooms were spartan, intended for dual occupancy, with sufficient space to house twenty-four passengers. Its facilities weren’t all that bad: the rec area was decent, it had an updated mission center, a good briefing room, and the pilots thought it was the most dependable vehicle in the Institute’s modest fleet. That probably wasn’t saying a great deal.

The utility deck was located on the top floor. And an 8.6-meter telescope was mounted on the roof.

“We picked up a robot bouncer,” Matt said.

“A
what
?”

“An automated system we can send outside to get rid of anything that attaches itself to the hull.”

Several of the team members were gathered in the passenger cabin. There was a mathematician, a biologist, a linguist, and several others. Matt introduced everyone. Kim knew a few. They shook hands and everybody started asking questions. What’s it about? Where are we going?

They’d come on faith. Trusted Agostino, God help them.

She explained that she needed some time in her quarters. There were two more coming, and they should be along any moment. When they got here, she’d come back and tell them what all the mystery was about.

Then she excused herself and retreated to her room, asking Matt to let her know as soon as everyone was on board. Ten minutes later there was a knock at her door. She opened it and found herself looking into the smiling features of Ali Kassem, the ship’s captain.

“Kim,” he said. “What’s going on?”

“Hello, Ali.” She made way, and closed the door behind him. “Nice to see you again.”

“You too. What’s all the secrecy?”

“How much do you know?”

“Only that we’re not going to Taratuba.”

“Sit down, Ali,” she said. “Are they giving you hazardous duty pay?”

“Should they?”

“Yes.”

“You’re serious.”

“Very.”

“All right. So fill me in.”

She encapsulated everything into a three-minute narrative, omitting Woodbridge’s effort to seize the
Valiant
. When she finished he looked shaken. “Are you still willing to go?” she asked.

“What do you do if I decide it is not for me?”

“I’ll be in some difficulty.”

The rest of the team arrived in good order. Other than Kim, Matt, and Ali, there were eight persons on board. They gathered in the briefing room, where Matt explained he had wanted to invite others, and in fact
had
invited others. Some had wanted specifics, others said they couldn’t come on such short notice. Eight, he said, was inadequate to the task, but it would have to do. Then he turned the meeting over to Kim.

“We have only a few minutes before departure,” she said.
“So I’ll try not to waste anyone’s time.” She stepped up onto a raised section of floor. “We’ve made contact,” she said.

The room went dead silent. Nobody moved.

“With celestials. It’s true. It happened. In fact, there’ve been
two
events.”

Now she had them. They blurted out questions but Kim waved them aside. She described the
Hunter
and
Hammersmith
discoveries, and told them what had really occurred at the Culbertson Tunnel. She told them that the Council was determined to maintain secrecy for the time being, and that was why no one had been able to explain anything in advance. She showed them the
Valiant
but would not allow them to inspect it. “You can do all that later,” she said. “What you need to know now is that we hope to reestablish communication, that we hope to compensate for the mistakes made twenty-seven years ago, and that we know almost nothing about what we face. We’re pretty sure they are now hostile, and we can assume they will not hesitate to destroy the
McCollum
. We’ll be out there alone. Consequently you might want to reconsider whether you want to come.” She turned to Ali. “Anyone who wishes to leave has an opportunity now to do so. Once we get underway, you’re committed.”

“
How
dangerous?” asked their anthropologist, Maurie Penn.

“You know as much as I do now. I’d say
substantially
.”

“Count me in,” said the mathematician. “A chance to
talk
to another species? Hell, yes.”

There was no real debate. For one thing, they were out of time. For another, the prize was simply too bright. Those who might ordinarily have been reluctant to put their lives in jeopardy for any reason, like the AI specialist Gil Chase, were overwhelmed by the possibilities of the situation. They would all stay. Certainly, they were saying, what else would you expect?

The formal meeting broke up. The seats swung back to acceleration positions, and Ali made for the pilot’s room.

Maurie Penn sat down beside her. “This is not the way I’d
have wanted to do this,” he said. “A mission like this. There should have been some preparation.”

“Conditions don’t permit it,” she said.

Ali’s voice alerted them that departure was imminent. The cabin lights dimmed.

The seats in the briefing room had individual monitors that could be keyed into any of the visual inputs from the external imagers. She switched over to a view of Greenway and looked down at Equatoria. The northern snows had given way and the entire continent was now green. The Mandan archipelago trailed off to the west, over the rim of the world.

The skyhook, long and arcing as if a heavy wind were blowing against it, dropped down and down into the cloud banks where it faded from sight.

Kim felt a slight push.

“Underway,” said Ali.

Forty-some minutes later, without a word from the Patrol, they slipped into hyperspace and Kim breathed more easily.

The
Valiant
came under immediate scrutiny. After the initial wave of euphoria, some members concluded that Kim had dragged them along on a frivolous—and deranged—mission. But Flexner’s reputation held the day. Matt was solid, down-to-earth, not one to be swept off his feet. There might therefore be something to the story.

Eventually, after everyone had had a chance to look at the microship, she cautioned them against attempting to take it apart, and secured it inside a glass case in one of the unused rooms on the top floor. Reluctantly, she activated an alarm system.

“Not a good idea,” Matt told her, “to signal that you don’t trust your people.”

She knew that. She apologized to them but explained that she knew they were scientists and that the temptation might be overwhelming. “We need it intact,” she said. And then she explained the real purpose of the mission. “We’re going to give it back to them.”

Eyes widened and people started to argue. Tesla Duchard, the biologist, looked as if she were going into shock.

But Kim defended her view, and to his credit, Matt supported her. “The
Hunter
mission did a lot of damage,” he said. “If we can rectify that, and establish a constructive relationship, we’ll come away with far more than a busted ship.”

There was some grumbling, but in the end they bought it.

Sandra Leasing, who designed and built star drives, concluded that the
Valiant
used a transdimensional entry system that was in no way different from their own. “Probably,” she said, “there
is
no other way to manage things.”

“The real question for me,” said Mona Vasquez, a psychologist, “is the missing propulsion tubes. How does it travel in normal space?”

“Only one way
I
can think of,” said Terri Taranaka, a physicist, “if you’re not throwing something out the rear, you have to throw something out the
front
, something to
pull
you along.”

“And what would that be?” asked Maurie.

“A gravity field. You create a gravity field along the intended course, just as we create one in here. And you
fall
forward into it.”

“Do
we
have that kind of capability?” asked Tesla.

“We do,” said Matt. “But we couldn’t generate a strong enough field to make it practical. In time, though, it’d be a good way to go. If only because you wouldn’t have to take along a load of reaction mass.”

Kim ran the
Hunter
logs for the team and enjoyed hearing them gasp when the celestial pilot appeared.
“Cho-cho-san,”
said Terri. “Butterfly.”

They discussed the
Hunter
’s reaction to its unexpected find and began considering what might await them, and how best to respond.

She decided also that it would be necessary to tell them about Woodbridge’s effort to seize the
Valiant
. When they reemerged into realspace in the vicinity of Alnitak, they’d
undoubtedly receive an official message demanding return of the artifact. And she had to inoculate them against that. Especially, she had to win Ali over.

But she waited for the right time. They passed the midway point of the journey on a Thursday, and marked the event by throwing a party. This group turned out to be big on parties, and Kim liked that. The atmosphere in the ship remained festive and there was a lot of talk about being at the intersection of epochs. That was Gil’s terminology. Gil was aloof and formal, and quickly earned a reputation for being cooler than the AIs he created and serviced. Kim had known him for years, and he seemed to her to be a particularly selfish man, dedicated exclusively to advancing his own priorities. But it happened, on this occasion, that his priorities were in sync with hers.

Toward the end of the party, Paul McKeep commented that it was a good thing the Institute had kept the existence of the ship quiet. “The government’s too conservative,” he said. “They’d never have allowed us away from the dock.” Paul was their mathematician.

Kim threw a sidelong glance at Ali to make sure he was listening. Then she raised her voice slightly: “There’s something you folks ought to know.”

“Something
else
?” laughed Mona.

“Yes,” she said. “We didn’t quite succeed in keeping a lid on the
Valiant
. Woodbridge found out about it and tried to take it from me.”

“How’d you manage to keep it out of his hands?” asked Ali.

“I gave him a duplicate.”

That brought a round of laughter.

But Ali never cracked a smile. “You know what that means,” he said.

“Yes.” Kim looked directly into his dark eyes. “When we make the jump, we’ll find a recall waiting for us.”

He frowned, turned, and left the room. The others fell silent. Kim looked at Matt, intending to follow him, and make sure he would resist pressure from home.

But Matt shook his head.
No,
he was saying.
This is not the time.

There was an echo to the voyage. Kim could not repress memories of the flight with Solly. The distances tended to collapse, as if she were on a train running through dark but familiar countryside, and the landmarks were all abstract, temporal, racing by. Places she’d been before. Here we were playing chess and Solly kept winning so I got annoyed. And
there
was where we finally beat Veronica King to the solution, in the case of “The Haunted Balcony.”

She knew when they arrived at the place where Kim’s image, as Clea, had performed the torchlight dance.

Stupid. Somewhere she had been incredibly stupid and had let it all slip through her fingers.

They spent most of their time devising their contact strategy. They intended to begin broadcasting as soon as they arrived, to ensure they couldn’t be missed. A new kind of Beacon Project, Kim thought.

They debated endlessly how best to establish a syntax and vocabulary. “We don’t want to play more number games,” Gil Chase reminded them.

They knew the two technologies had a common system for exchanging audio and visual signals. “We can use pictures in the beginning,” Eric Climer said. He was a linguist. “But it would have been helpful,” he complained to Kim, “if I had known in advance what this was about. I could have brought the proper software.”