"Canon, this is a chance to get a whole new perspective from an intelligent species. The potential for new knowledge is unlimited. But even that's not the point. They're like us in some very significant ways. We know that now-"
"We don't really know anything, Kim. Look, I'm not saying you're not right. I'm saying, we don't know.
Why take the risk?"
"We've an obligation," she said, "at the very least, to say hello. We're the part of the universe that thinks.
How can we fail to act simply because we want to eliminate risk? You're talking about the status quo. Is that really what we're about?"
"That's all a trifle abstract for me." Woodbridge sighed. "This would be so much easier if you were a bit more practical, Kim. Nevertheless, maybe history, in its very long view, will demonstrate that you're right and I'm wrong. Or maybe not. For the moment at least, life is quite pleasant in the Nine Worlds, and this thing in Orion is a very large unknown. We are therefore going to try to keep it at a safe distance."
"You understand," she said, "this breaks our agreement. I no longer feel bound to remain silent."
He shrugged. "This," the microship, "changes the equation. I'm sure the government will be making an announcement within the next few days."
The train slowed to navigate a long curving defile.
"You're going to make it public?" she asked. "Why?"
"Oh, there's no way to keep this sort of thing quiet. Once we begin bringing people in to look at it, the story will get out quickly. We're not nearly as good at keeping secrets as people like to think."
"So missions will be going out to Alnitak after all-"
"They'll be going to Zeta Tauri. That's where the celestial incident will have occurred. It'll be leaked, and we'll deny it, of course. So everyone will believe it. And the missions should be quite safe there."
"Unless I tell them differently."
"This is what I referred to when I suggested we would want your cooperation. If you persist in going your own way, Kim, we'll simply write you out of the scenario altogether. We have an alternate narrative set up. It does not include you, so there is no reason anyone would believe you." He pressed his palms together. "I don't want you to think I'm threatening you. I'm simply trying to spell out the realities. Please understand that I take no pleasure in any of this, but it's essential that we avoid future contact with these things. You, of all people, should be able to see the wisdom of that position."
He rapped on the door. Two women came in, carrying a container. They bundled the Valiant into it and asked Woodbridge whether he needed anything. He did not, and they left, taking the microship with them.
"If you can see your way to cooperate, Kim, I'll try to arrange to have you present when we dissect it."
Her time was up. He rose and opened the door for her. "You're a talented woman," he said. "If you're interested, I think the conciliar staff would have a place for you."
Kim went back to her seat, collapsed into it, and stared desultorily out at the passing countryside.
Gradually the forest changed to marsh. They slowed to negotiate a curve back toward the west and Kim saw the skyhook.
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 mountain. 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.
32
I love to sail forbidden seas- -HERMAN MELVILLE,.
Moby Dick, 1851 C.E.
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."