A Talent for War (2 page)

Certainly there have been far worse disasters. But the twenty-six hundred people riding with the big interstellar had not died in any ordinary sense. They might, in fact, not have died at all. No one knows. And therein lies the fascination of the event.

The client, whose name I no longer recall, shook his head sadly at the hazards of life, and returned quickly to the artifacts at hand. We compromised nearer his end than mine.

The Capella had been the flagship of the newest class of interstellars, equipped with every conceivable sort of safety device, piloted by a captain of documented ingenuity. It was painful to think of it reduced quietly to the stature of a ghost.

It's happened before. But never to anything so big. And with so many people. Almost immediately, we had a hit song. And theories.

The vessel had struck a time node, some said, and would emerge at a future date, with the passengers and crew unaware that anything unusual had happened. Of course, we'd been losing ships for a hell of a long time now, and none has ever reappeared. So if they're going uptime, it must be a considerable distance.

The idea most widely held was that the Armstrongs had simultaneously failed, leaving the ship to wander forever, unseen, unheard. (That, it struck me, was a wonderful thing to tell the families of the travelers.)

There was a host of other ideas. The Capella had emerged in another universe. Or there'd been a glitch that had propelled her to another galaxy (or more likely, into the gulfs between the galaxies). The one that seemed most likely to me was the boulder theory: Armstrong space is not a perfect vacuum, and the Capella had struck something too big for its deflectors.

Of course I have no more idea than anyone else. But it was unnerving all the same. And it was just one more reason why I didn't ride the damned things unless I absolutely had to.

During the days that followed, the net was filled with the usual human interest stories. The man who had overslept, missed the shuttle, and thereby missed the flight, mentioned his appreciation to an Almighty who, apparently, was less indulgent to the twenty-six hundred others. The captain was on her last cruise, and was to have retired when the ship reached Saraglia Station, the final port of call. A woman on Rimway claimed to have dreamt, on the night before the disaster, of the loss of the Capella. (She eventually parlayed that claim into a lucrative career, and became one of the leading seers of the age.)

And so on. We heard that an inquiry would be conducted, but of course that was likely to lead to nothing. There was, after all, little to examine, other than passenger and cargo manifests, shipping schedules, and the like.

The carriers released fresh statistics that demonstrated people were safer traveling between Rigel and Sol than tooling around the average city.

About ten days after the loss, I received a transmission from a cousin on Rimway with whom I'd had no communication in years. In case you haven't heard, he said, Gabe was on the Capella.

I'm sorry. Let me know if there's anything I can do.

That brought it home.

In the morning, an electronic package containing two sponders arrived from the law firm of Brimbury & Conn, which, according to the routing information, was also located on Rimway. I
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fed it into the system, dropped into a chair, and put on the headband. The standing image of a woman formed, about a half-meter off the floor, and angled at maybe thirty degrees. The tone wasn't quite right either. I could have compensated easily enough, but I knew I wasn't going to like this, so I didn't bother. The woman was talking to the floor. A library tried to take shape around her. I screened it out.

The woman was attractive, in a bureaucratic, well-pressed sort of way. "Mr. Benedict, please allow us to extend our condolences on the loss of your uncle." Pause. "He was a valued customer here at Brimbury & Conn, and a friend as well. We'll miss him."

"As will we all," I said.

The image nodded. The woman's lips trembled, and when she spoke again there was enough uncertainty in her voice to persuade me that, despite the canned speech, there had been some genuine feeling. "We wanted to inform you that you have been named sole heir of his estate. You will need to file the necessary documents as outlined in the appendix to this transmission." She seemed to flounder a little. "We have started procedures to have Gabriel declared officially dead.

There will be some delay, of course. The courts are not anxious to move in the case of a missing person, even in this type of situation. However, we will want to be prepared to act on your behalf at the earliest opportunity. Consequently, you should forward the documents to us without delay." She sat down and arranged her skirt. "Your uncle also left in our custody a sealed communication for you, to be delivered in the event of his death. It will be activated at the conclusion of this message by your voice. Say anything. Please do not hesitate to inform us if we can be of further assistance. And, Mr. Benedict—" her voice fell to a whisper, "—I really will miss him."

I stopped it, ran a test, and adjusted the picture. Then I went back to my chair, but I sat a long time before putting the headband back on.

"Gabe."

The lights dimmed, and I was in the old second-floor study back home, seated in a thickly cushioned chair that had once been my favorite. Nothing seemed to have changed: the paneled walls were familiar, and the ancient heavy furniture, and the mahogany-colored drapes. A fire crackled in the grate. And Gabriel stood at my side.

He was barely an arm's length away, tall, thin, grayer than I remembered, his face partially in shadow. Without a word, he touched my shoulder, pressed down on it. "Hello, Alex."

This was all simulation. But I knew in that moment how much I would miss the old bastard. I had mixed emotions about this. And it surprised me: I'd have expected Gabe to accept his misfortune without subjecting anyone to a maudlin farewell. It was unlike him.

I wanted to break the illusion, to just sit and watch, but you have to respond, or the image reacts to your silence by telling you to speak up, or by reassuring you everything's okay. I didn't need that. "Hello, Gabe."

"Since I'm here," he said ruefully, "I guess things must have gone wrong."

"I'm sorry," I said.

He shrugged. "It happens. Timing could hardly have been worse, but you don't always have control of everything. I assume you have the details. Though possibly not, now that I think of it.

Where I'm going, there's a chance we'll just disappear and never be heard from again."

Yes, I thought. But not in the way you expect. "Where are you going?"

"Hunting. Into the Veiled Lady." He shook his head; and I could see he was full of regret. "It is a son of a bitch, Alex, the way things turn out sometimes. I hope that, whatever happened, it happened on the way back. I would not want to die before I find out about this."

The plea—for that is what it was—hung there. "You never made it to Saraglia Station," I said.

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"Oh." His brow furrowed, and his frame seemed to collapse. He turned away from me, circled a coffee table that had been in the house for years, and eased himself stiffly into a chair opposite mine. "Pity."

He'd slowed down: his movements were more deliberate now, and the quixotic face had sobered. It was difficult to judge whether he was showing the effects of age, or simply responding to the news of his death. In any case, there was a grayness about the conversation, a quivery uncertainty, and a sense of things undone.

"You look good," I said, emptily. It was, under the circumstances, an eerie remark. He seemed not to notice.

"I'm sorry we didn't get a chance to talk together at least one more time. This is a poor substitute."

"Yes."

"I wish things had been better between us."

There was no easy way to respond to that. He'd been the only parent I'd known, and we had suffered the usual strains. But there had been more: Gabe was an idealist. "You made it very difficult," he continued. What he meant was that I'd made a comfortable living selling rare artifacts to private collectors. An activity he considered immoral.

"I broke no law," I said. Arguing was pointless: nothing I could say would be carried back to the sender. Gabe was beyond this sort of communication now. The illusion was all that remained.

"You'd have broken a few here. No enlightened society allows the sort of thing you do to go unregulated." He took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly. "Let it go. I paid a higher price for my principles than I would have wished, Alex. It's been a long time."

The figure before me was nothing more than software, knew only what my uncle had known at the moment of storage. It had no grasp of the principles of which it spoke, no real sense of the regret that I felt. But it allowed him to do something that I would have liked very much to have done: "I'm sorry," he said. "If I had it to do over, I would have let it go."

"But you would still have disapproved."

"Of course."

"Good."

He smiled, and repeated my comment with satisfaction. "There's hope for you yet, Alex." He pushed himself to his feet, opened a liquor cabinet, and extracted a bottle and two glasses.

"Mindinmist," he said. "Your favorite."

It was good to be home.

I violated a personal rule with that sponder: I gave in to the images and allowed myself to accept the illusion as real. And I realized how much I'd missed the paneled, book-lined study at the back of the house. It had always been one of my two favorite rooms. (The other was in the attic, a magic place from which I'd watched the forest many times for the approach of dragons or enemy soldiers.) It smelled of pine and fresh cloth drapes and casselate book covers and scorched wood. It was filled with exotic photos: an abandoned vine-strangled temple guarded by an obscene idol that seemed to be mostly belly and teeth, a broken column in an otherwise empty desert, a small group gathered before a step pyramid under a pair of moons. A reproduction of

Marcross's portrait of the immortal warship Corsarius hung on one wall, with plyseal sketches of men and women with whom Gabe had worked. (Plyseal had been one of his hobbies. There was one of me, at about four years old, in my old bedroom.)

And there were always artifacts: toys, computers, lamps, statuary that Gabe had recovered from various field sites. Even now, I could see a cylindrical, studded object in a glass display.

I raised my drink to him. He lifted his own, and our eyes locked briefly. I could almost believe that Gabe and I were making it right, at long last. The liquor was warm, very smooth, and it
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tasted of other days.

"There's something you'll have to do," he said.

He was standing before VanDyne's depiction of the ruins at Point Edward. You know the one: blackened wreckage beneath red-gold rings and a cluster of silver moons. The way they found it after the attack.

The chair was comfortable. Supernaturally so, in fact, just as the Mindinmist was supremely good. You get that kind of effect with objects that don't really exist. Some people say perfection spoils the illusion, and that sponders would work better if the physical sensations were muted, or flawed. Like the real thing.

"What's that?" I asked, thinking he was going to ask me to administer the estate in some meaningful way. See that the money went to a good cause. Not spend it all on skimmers and women.

He poked at the fire. It popped, and a log fell heavily off the grate. A cloud of sparks swirled and died. I could feel the heat on my face. "How did it happen? Heart attack? Problem with the leased ship? Hell, was I run down by a taxi on my way to the spaceport?"

I couldn't suppress a smile at the notion that the simulacrum was curious. "Gabe," I said, "the flight never came out of the jump."

"Isn't that a son of a bitch?" A chuckle forced its way out, and then he dissolved in gales of laughter. "I died on the goddam commercial leg." I started to laugh too. The Mindinmist was warm in my stomach, and I refilled our glasses.

"Ridiculous," he said.

"Safest form of travel per passenger-kilometer," I observed.

"Well, I'm damned if I'll make that mistake again." But the laughter died into a long silence.

"Still, I'd have liked to see it."

I expected him to say more. When he didn't, I prompted him. "See what? What were you looking for?"

He waved the question away. "To be honest with you, I don't feel very comfortable doing this.

I mean, it seems only decent that people shouldn't hang around after they've—" he shook one hand idly, looking for the expression he wanted, "—gone to a happier world." He sounded uncertain. Lost. "But I had to guard against this possibility." His eyes fastened on mine and grew very round. "Do you remember Hugh Scott?"

I considered it. "No," I said at last.

"No reason why you should, I suppose. How about Terra Nuela? Do you remember that?"

Sure. Terra Nuela was the first habitation built outside the solar system. It was constructed on a hot, rocky world circling Beta Centauri, and it was, of course, little more now than a hole in the desert. It was the first excavation Gabe had taken me to. "Yes," I said. "Hottest place I've ever seen."

"Scott was along on that trip. I thought you might have remembered him. He used to take you for walks after sundown."

"Okay," I said, calling up a vague recollection of a big, bearded, dark-skinned man. Of course, I was at an age when everyone was big.

"If you had known Scott a few years ago, known him as I did, you wouldn't recognize him now."

"Health?" I asked. "Marital problems?"

"No. Nothing like that. He came back from a mission with Survey about three years ago. He came back somber, preoccupied, disoriented. Not at all like his old self. In fact, I suspect a psychiatrist would conclude that he's undergone a fundamental personality change. You would not have found him a desirable companion."

"And?"

"He was on board the Tenandrome, one of the big new survey ships. They saw something very
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