Firebird (45 page)

I listened to the sound of the air vents.

“I understand you're upset,”
she said.
“But you need to be aware I don't wield the kind of power you think. I made some calls, Alex. I tried to get help for you.”

“Of course.” He showed no emotion. “I appreciate that.”

A pearl white sweater was draped around her shoulders. She pulled it tight as if she'd been struck by a sudden draft of cold air.
“My understanding is that the next one of these ships from the past won't be here for a long time. For years. Is that correct?”

“Shara tells me they found one that will probably show up in 1361. Twenty-seven years.”

She didn't try to hide her disappointment.
“Okay. I was hoping we could do better. But we'll put together a program.” She got up and came forward.
“Look, Alex, I know you don't believe this at the moment, but I don't like having those people stranded out there any more than you do. I
will
pursue this. I'm putting in a motion to do whatever's necessary to get this affair under control. Our first order of business will be to introduce the Deep-Time Rescue Provision. And we'll pass it by a near-unanimous vote. I can guarantee that. It'll be aimed at establishing a permanent commission to oversee operations as they become necessary. And also to try to determine who else might be out there that we don't currently know about. That
is
possible, right?”

“That's correct, Senator. A good example would be the
Capella.”

“The
Capella. Yes.”

“I wish you luck.”

“You sound doubtful, Alex. And I guess you're justified feeling that way. Sometime between now and maybe the next election cycle or the one after that, somebody will introduce a cost-cutting measure and I'm concerned that the Deep-Time Rescue Provision will be among the first casualties.”

Alex shrugged. No surprise there. “Would they take any heat for that?”

“To be honest, I think we need something that isn't three decades away. If we don't do something now, the commission will get put on the back burner. It might not happen right away. In fact, it almost certainly won't. But, eventually, there'll be a serious need somewhere else, and it'll coincide with some economic problems, and that'll be the end of it.”

“So what do we do? Do you have a suggestion?”

“Would
you
be willing to make an initial grant? A nominal amount. Just something to get it started. Say, ten thousand?”

“To what purpose?”

“To establish the Alex Benedict Foundation, which would be dedicated to coordinating future rescue operations of vehicles lost on interstellar flights. You get it up and running, and I'll see that it's funded. That way it gets put on the calendar, it becomes a functioning entity, and it's considerably harder to shut down.”

A week later, we officially launched the effort. Melissa took over as volunteer chair, I signed on to do public relations, and contributions began rolling in. We named it the Dot Garber Foundation.

At about the same time, we attended a memorial service for Dot. I don't think the family was happy to see us there, but Melissa came over and embraced us, and returned a few minutes later with Dot's parents. “Alex tried to discourage her from making the attempt,” she told them. “But she rescued Sabol and Cori. And she was going back for more. Would you have been proud of her if she'd thought of herself first?”

The father's name was Stan, and he stared at the sky while Melissa talked. When she was done, he glared at Alex. Then he shrugged. “I don't guess there's much to be done about it at this point.”

“She's a hero,” I said.

The mother, whose name was also Dot, managed a smile. “I'm sorry, Mr. Benedict,” she said. “I know it wasn't your fault. I guess it wasn't anybody's fault.”

I think everybody who'd been on the rescue flight was also there, Allie, Jon, Cal, Michael, the other pilots, and their passengers. And Shara. “Dot was something else,” Shara told me at one point. “She was the woman I'd want to have at my back if things went wrong.” Then she grinned at me. “Not that you wouldn't do in an emergency.”

It was a cool, crisp morning. The sun floated through a cloudless sky, and a strong wind was coming out of the north. The service was conducted in a small chapel on the outskirts of Andiquar. They couldn't get everybody inside, but those who couldn't make it simply stood around on the chapel grounds. When the service ended, the mourners filed out and milled about, talking in low voices, shaking their heads— she was so young, let us know if there's anything we can do, stay in touch.

I don't much like memorial services and good-byes. I get annoyed when someone goes on about how, well, they're in a better place now. Frolicking in the green pastures. It reminds me how good we are at pretending. My bedroom, when I was growing up, had a picture of two kids, a boy and a girl, crossing a rickety bridge over a swollen river. The bridge looks about to give way, but it's okay, because there's an angel hovering immediately behind the kids, arms outstretched, ready to step in if necessary. As I grew up, I came to realize there were no angels, and kids
did
fall from bridges.

Then I thought of Cori and Sabol, and of Dot risking her life to carry them back to the
McCandless.
Maybe, sometimes, there
were
angels.

Alex was quiet on the way back to the country house. We'd been together a good many years by then, and I'd come to take my life with him for granted. And I guess I took
him
for granted. He was easygoing most of the time, an ideal boss, sometimes moody, always ready to head off for lunch. And I loved him. As we settled onto the pad that morning, I realized that the day would come when I'd do anything to be back in that moment, to have him at my side again. Everything's temporary, he liked to say. It was why Rainbow Enterprises prospered, people trying to recapture a piece of the past. To hang on as best they can.

FORTY-ONE

Truth is overrated. Sometimes it's better to believe the fable.

—Armand Ti,
Illusions
, 1400

At about the same time the doctors told Melissa it was now safe for Cori and Sabol to mingle with the rest of the world, we got a call from Charlie.
“We're coming home,”
he said. He had made himself into a duplicate of Rod Baker, the vid action-adventure star. He was dressed like Rod, for the trail, with a blaster in his belt and a forest green canyon hat pulled low over his eyes. He looked great.
“We're a few hours out from Skydeck. I was wondering if you guys would be up for a party tomorrow night? “

“Absolutely, Charlie,” I said. “I'll check with Alex. But I'll be there for sure. I take it the flight was successful.”

“We did pretty well. We recovered eight Betas. Including one that Alex will be especially interested in.”

“How do you mean?”

“Jorge can provide a play-by-play account of the last days at Parnassus House, when they were trying to get everybody off-world.”

“What's Parnassus House?”

“Alex will know. It was the world's nerve center when they were having their collapse. Anyhow, we're going to have a celebration tomorrow at Doc's place. You know where it is?”

“Yes.”

“We aren't going to make a formal announcement yet of what we have. The plan is to wait awhile.”

“Why's that?”

“At the moment, you and Alex and Dot are all the news. We don't want to crowd you. By the way, I was sorry to hear about her. About Dot. She must have been a remarkable woman.”

Parnassus House, Alex said, was the place where, during the final days on Villanueva, executive decisions got made. “We don't have a clear picture of events at the end. It's so long ago. There are all kinds of conflicting stories. Margus Virandi was a heroic leader who seized control from Philip Klaus, an indecisive idiot who operated inside a bubble and never seemed to know what was going on. Virandi lost an arm during the coup, but he made the right calls and saved a lot of lives, ultimately sacrificing himself by staying too long. Or, he was a power-crazy nut who thought the predictions about the encroaching cloud were a conspiracy designed to make Klaus look heroic. And in the end he got a lot of people killed unnecessarily.”

“I can't believe,” I said, “nobody ever went in there before this to pick up the AI.”

“In fact, there were at least two attempts. Both failed, and in one of them the entire mission got wiped out. Nobody really knew where the AI was. I suspect Doc succeeded because he had Charlie along.”

“Maybe,” I said, “they'll give Charlie an award.” Nothing like that had ever happened before. And, of course, it didn't happen that time. In fact, nobody got an award.

If Doc Drummond had any serious intention of keeping his find quiet, he was dreaming. Whenever someone goes out of Skydeck on an operation in which the media are interested, there's no way it can return without someone's blowing the whistle. Usually, it's the operations people. Or one of the bosses. In return, they get to meet and sometimes even hang out with people like Brockton Moore, the host of
Round Table.

The result was that Drummond was confronted by reporters when they were still two hours out from Skydeck. He'd been subjected to some media attention when he'd left several weeks earlier, but that had been nothing compared with the reception on their return. The media were not, however, all that interested in the historical aspects of the mission.

Had anyone been killed? “That was our first question,” one of the reporters told me that evening. “It wasn't exactly a proud moment for us. We must actually have seemed disappointed when we found out there'd been no casualties. Although we pretended to be relieved.

“We asked whether they'd been attacked.

“And, what had they brought back? Most of my colleagues had no idea who Margus Virandi was.” He shook his head. “How can our guys know so little and pursue this kind of career?”

“I don't know,” I told him, trying not to grin. “Sometimes reporters can be pretty dumb.”

As can we all.

The commotion produced, for us, a fresh avalanche of calls. Jacob responded with stock answers, that Alex had no direct connection with the mission, that he was glad to hear they were safely back, but that since he was
not
involved, he had no further comment, thank you very much.

Doc's near-palatial house was lit up when we got there, and the place was jumping with music and laughter and applause. We drifted in through a murky sky and set down on the pad, where AIs took over and moved the skimmer into a parking area. Inside, a couple of hundred people wandered among lush curtains and sculpted furniture, lavish bookcases and electronic artwork. Doc and his wife, Sara—she'd gone along on the trip, too—welcomed us and introduced us to medical colleagues, members of the mission, neighbors, a task force from nearby Conseca University, and a couple of big names in the entertainment world. The people who'd accompanied him were there with their families, of course. They were mostly big, competent-looking types, the sort that nobody would want to mess with. I realized, despite my first impression, he'd known precisely what he was doing.

And, of course, Charlie was present, still in his Rod Baker persona, standing with a small group in a corner of the library, describing how they'd descended into Buchanan Harbor and come away with an

AI—”a Beta”—that had once belonged to Cassandra Talley, the classical humorist who is still read today, thousands of years after her death. Nobody doing comedy has lasted so long.

Seven of the other Betas were also active. They joined Charlie in strolling about, projecting themselves as bon vivant males, beautiful women, and, in one case, as a former Villanuevan president. An eighth, who'd been found on a ship that had run aground in coastal waters and, miraculously, never been submerged by the tides, was perhaps a bit more shy. He provided no hologram, but he spoke with anyone who wished to converse, explaining how happy he was to have been rescued. He described to me how he'd spent time wishing the waters would rise, or the ship would come apart, so that his power would be cut off.
“Now,”
he said,
“I'm grateful it never happened.”

Doc gave us a lot of the credit for his success, and said contributions were coming in for more missions.

I've been back to the Caton Ferry Museum a couple of times. Eliot Cermak still looks proudly out of the heroes' gallery. Handsome, courageous, a guy who appears utterly selfless. I couldn't help thinking that, if Elizabeth had said yes that evening, and he'd spent the night with her on Virginia Island, he would have survived the quake and gone back to pick up Chris Robin. And had he done that, the loss a few years later of the
Capella,
with its twenty-six hundred victims, might have been avoided. Alex never again talked about what he believed had happened that fatal night. He couldn't see that any good would come of it.

The day after the celebration, Shara asked us to meet her at Tardy's for dinner.
“My treat,”
she said.
“I have news.”

We got there early, and had already put away some celebratory wine— it had to be good news, something out of the notebook—when she came in. A dark cargo, her favorite drink, was waiting. She was all smiles. “We've had a breakthrough,” she told us. She took a swallow. “We've known for a while that the level of hazard to a ship making a jump in a black-hole track is a combination of factors, the type of drive and whatnot. You know all that.”

“Yes.”

“It's been complicated. But we've come up with a formula.”

The waiter arrived. “Hello. My name's Kaleff. Are you ready to order?” he asked.

“We'll need a minute,” said Alex.

Kaleff smiled, bowed, and left.

Alex never took his eyes from Shara. I refilled the glasses and passed them around. Shara, drawing out the moment, had more of hers. “Not bad,” she said.

“Come on, Shara,” said Alex.

“All right. Look, if we have the initial departure reports on a ship that's gone lost, we will be able to work out, within a reasonable estimate, where and when the ship is likely to reappear. We don't have it down cold yet, but we're making progress.”