Alex Benedict 07 - Coming Home (22 page)

Whoever loved that loved not at first sight?

—Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman,
Hero and Leander
, 1598
C.E.

Alex was at the terminal when we got off the shuttle. He looked worried. “You guys okay?” he asked.

“We’re all right,” I said. But I walked into his outstretched arms and hung on to him. He didn’t have the details, but enough had already gotten out to alert the media and the rest of the world that something had gone terribly wrong and that JoAnn and Nick were assumed lost. Shara joined us in the embrace and we stood in the concourse for a long moment while the crowd passed. “I’m sorry, guys,” he said. “What happened?”

Shara just shook her head. “Let’s get away from here.”

We walked out to the skimmer. The sky was gray and overcast. We took our seats while he put the luggage in back. “I assume,” he said, “they don’t want you to talk about it.”

I looked up at him and nodded.

“It won’t go any farther,” he said.

Shara and I looked at each other. “No way,” she said, “we can keep this to ourselves.”

“Yeah,” I said.

We told him everything. We just sat in the parking lot and talked, tried to describe what it had felt like passing through that empty cruise ship. He listened quietly. Closed his eyes. Finally, when we were finished, he asked if we were okay.

We both said
yes
. We’d lived to come back. But I, for one, knew I would never be the same.

*   *   *

Nobody wanted to go home, so we headed over to Bernie’s Far and Away. “Some of the people on HV,” Alex said, “were criticizing JoAnn for rushing things.”

“Who was doing that?” asked Shara.

“A couple of physicists. They were on several shows this morning. Saying she should have taken her time.”

Shara made an angry noise in her throat. “We didn’t
have
any time, damn it. That was just a preliminary run. If it had worked, there would have been a lot more research to do before we could have tried using it on the
Capella
.”

“Hey,” said Alex, “it wasn’t
me
talking.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry. I just wish these idiots, when they don’t know what they’re talking about, would keep their mouths shut. Do you know who they were?”

“I wasn’t paying that much attention.”

She was still growling. “Ding-dong,” she said.

*   *   *

Alex wanted me to go home, but I had no interest in spending the rest of the day in my cottage. We invited Shara over to the country house. But she said she had calls to make, so we dropped her off and went back to the office. After we got inside, he waved me into a seat. “Can I do anything?”

“No. Other than maybe change the subject. I need something else to think about.”

He smiled. “I love you, Chase.”

“Thanks. Me too.”

“All right. Let’s try to do something else.”

“Good.”

“I’ve been putting together a list of available artifacts we saw on Earth. If we get enough interest, we can go back and get some of them.” He showed me his notebook, where sixty-seven items were recorded. “Why don’t you take a look when you get a chance? No hurry. See if there’s anything you saw that we should add? Then we can talk about putting out some feelers.”

But the truth was I couldn’t get my mind out of those empty corridors. I sat down at my desk and pretended to start. When he walked away, I don’t think I did much other than sit there and stare at the wall. Then, without warning, he was back, standing in the doorway. “Is there anything at all I can do?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “It’s all right. I’ll be okay.”

He offered to stay with me, but I told him to let it go. “Okay,” he said. “I’m exhausted. Going upstairs to crash.”

After he left, I put the notebook down and turned on the HV, hoping for word about the
Grainger
. The networks were constantly announcing breaking news, but it always consisted of informing us that it was still being searched by the SRF team, and that JoAnn and Nick had not yet been found.

I hadn’t had time to get to know either of them well. Just the two missions. But on that day, I’d have given anything to have them back. What would it have been like to party with JoAnn? And, of course, the dinner with Nick was not going to happen.

Finally, I settled down to work. I added a couple of items to Alex’s list and had started putting together a sales pitch for them when Lawrence Southwick called. He was seated beside a virtual fireplace. Which contained a virtual fire. That probably meant he was calling from an asteroid. “Alex is asleep,” I said. “Can I help you, Lawrence?”

He smiled.
“Hi, Chase. Just tell him that the person he should talk to about Zorbas is Marjorie Benjamin. She’s a researcher at the National Institute. She’s spent half her life doing Golden Age research. I’ve let her know you’re interested. Her code’s attached.”

A few minutes later, Jacob informed me we had a transmission from Khaled.
“Hi, Chase,”
it said.
“I’ve got a vacation coming up, and I’m going to head for Andiquar. I hope that’s okay. I don’t want to rush things, but there doesn’t seem to be any casual way to approach this. I’ll be there in about a month. Will give you more specific information when I have my reservation. I’d love to take you to dinner again.”

He was obviously giving me time to think about it. As much as I liked him, and felt indebted to him, it was too much too soon. I wasn’t comfortable with the arrangement. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to back away.

When somebody is crossing worlds to take you to dinner, and the guy has saved your life, it has already gotten serious. I needed the better part of an hour to put together a response that I hoped was appropriate: “Khaled, I enjoyed our time together. But I don’t think allowing ourselves to become emotionally involved right now is a smart idea.”

*   *   *

I went back to thinking about that empty ship while trying to explain why collectors on Rimway would love to acquire a seven-hundred-year-old bracelet worn by a woman who’d set out on a round-the-world trip in a cabin cruiser which was later found abandoned and adrift in the middle of the Pacific, with the bracelet lying on the deck. Or an ID chain that belonged to Chad Tappett, a European champion for animal rights whose career had been cut short when a lion got loose in an incident that many suspected had not been an accident.

Eventually, I called Shara. She blinked on, wearing a robe and sitting on the edge of a bed. “You hear anything more about the
Grainger
?” I asked.

“No. They’ve got six or seven people on board, but last I heard, they still haven’t found them.”

“You’re crashing early.”

“I’m wiped out, Chase. I can’t believe I spent so much time just sitting in the
Casavant
, but I’m exhausted.”

“You have any theories about what happened?”

“Yeah.”

“What?”

“I think they were caught in the warp longer than anybody expected. I think, instead of shrinking, the time element stretched out.”

*   *   *

I thought we’d gone pretty much as far as we could with Garnett Baylee. But Alex looked interested when I passed the Marjorie Benjamin message to him next morning, and an hour later, he was off to talk with her. He came back looking exasperated. “Well,” he said, “she was able to provide some new information about Dmitri Zorbas.”

“Anything useful?” I asked.

“He attended Larissa University.”

“You’re kidding. That was all she had?”

“That’s it. That’s, of course, where it’s located. He went back to Greece to get his master’s, and met his future wife, Eva Rodia, there. Apparently he planned to stay in Europe, but they headed back to America because Zorbas missed his family. She also told me that Zorbas wrote an autobiography,
Lost Dreams
. It’s the perfect title because the book is also lost.” He collapsed into a chair. “I wish we could get our hands on that.”

“Is there any evidence the book might have explained what happened to the artifacts?”

“Marjorie didn’t know, but she doubted he’d have included that kind of information. He lived and died during the early years of the Dark Age, so he would probably have had no security to rely on. She tells me that people generally believed that the economic downturn and the outbreaks of violence and all the rest of it were the end of the world. That it was Armageddon. But Zorbas never bought into that idea. He expected the problems to go on for a long time though probably not for six or seven centuries. But in any case, he was an optimist. Which is why she says he made a major effort to salvage the artifacts. She can’t believe, though, that he’d have been likely to reveal their location to anyone other than his family or a few people he thought he could trust. Unfortunately, he died in the general holocaust. And maybe so did whoever he took into his confidence.”

“Including his wife?”

“Nobody really knows what happened to her. The whole story lacks specifics.”

“How’d he die? Do we know that?”

“Oh, yes. That’s no secret. He was still living in Union City, and taking care of the Prairie House when a nearby town, Seymour, was overrun by thugs. They shot their way in, began burning everything, raping the women, you name it, I guess. The townspeople fought back as best they could and called for help. According to the legend, Zorbas rounded up a militia group they’d put together, and they went to Seymour. They drove out the thugs, but he died in the battle. Marjorie Benjamin said there were a number of stories about his helping defend the area. He was apparently almost a mythic figure at the time.”

“It’s a pity someone didn’t record where he’d put the artifacts.”

“If somebody had, Chase, I doubt we’d have anything to look for now.”

“What did Marjorie think? She give any credence to his having stashed everything somewhere?”

“She’s like us. She wants to believe it.”

*   *   *

Next day, a second transmission came in from Khaled.
“I got your message, but giving up is a losing proposition. I’ll let you know what my schedule looks like as soon as it takes shape. You can tell me you don’t have time if you want. Or even that you don’t want me to come. I’ll understand. And I’ll abide by your wishes. But I’m just not going to walk away from you unless you push a little bit. I hope you don’t mind my taking this into my own hands. I’m looking forward to spending some time with you again, Chase. If you’re willing. Incidentally, I’ll only be in the area for a week. But don’t worry. You won’t have to entertain me or anything like that. I have sightseeing plans, so I won’t be getting in your way. See you soon. I hope.”

“Jacob,” I said, “message going back.”

“Very good.” I detected a note of approval. But coming up with the right response wasn’t easy. And after a couple of minutes Jacob asked if I’d changed my mind.

“No,” I said. “I was just thinking. But okay, let’s go.”

“When you’re ready.”

“‘Khaled, I’ll confess I’d enjoy seeing you again. But I just don’t think it’s a good idea. Not right now. Eventually, we’ll probably get back to Earth. I’ll let you know if it’s going to happen.’ Make sure it goes priority, Jacob, okay?”

*   *   *

Shara called in the middle of the night.
“They found them.”
She paused, and I held my breath.
“They’re saying they’ve been dead for thirty years.”

“What?”

“
Thirty years
, Chase. Probably died of starvation.”

“You were right.”

“Yeah. I guess. Time was moving differently for them than it was for us. But not the way we’d expected. They think that they survived for about four years, until they ran out of food.”

There is no emotion so painful as a happy memory.

—Aneille Kay,
Christopher Sim at War
, 1288

By midafternoon, the media had the story. The victims, the networks were reporting, had died when their food supply ran out. Shock was deep and widespread. Nothing like this, everyone was saying, had
ever
been reported before.

The HV ran on and on. Physicists tried to explain how something like that was possible while political commentators predicted that there would be no further talk about manipulating star drives. Walter Brim, a guest on
Straight Talk
, asked the viewers to imagine how terrible it would be if something like that happened on the
Capella
.

I got through the afternoon as best I could, needed some medication to get to sleep that night. Alex called in the morning to make sure I was okay, and suggested we meet at the Hillside.

When I arrived, he was already there, seated at a corner table. He raised a hand and smiled. “You still okay?”

“I’ll live.”

“Apparently, Nick arranged things to conserve power. That’s why so much was shut down. But I guess they couldn’t do anything about the food supply. Believe it or not, they had enough food on board to get them through it if they could have prevented it from spoiling.”

“I guess,” I said. “I’m not sure though I would have wanted to live inside that thing for four years.”

We ordered whatever off the menu. I don’t recall what it was, just that I drank a lot of coffee. And we were back to talking about living for the day because you never know about tomorrow. Nick and JoAnn had seemed so
alive
when they were on the
Grainger
bridge.

The Hillside was crowded. “Never noticed before,” I said, “but having almost a full house lends a sense of security to the place.”

He reached across the table and pressed my wrist. “The world has changed, love.” He was about to continue when his link sounded. He activated it, listened, and nodded. “Good, John, let me know when, okay?” And then: “Yes. She’s with me now.”

“What’s happening?” I asked.

“There’s going to be a memorial for JoAnn and Nick at the headquarters building. Middle of the week. They’ll tell us when they lock in the night.”

*   *   *

That evening, President Davis spoke. He stood behind a lectern, the blue and white colors of the Confederacy draped across the wall behind him.
“Friends and citizens,”
he said,
“you already know of the losses we incurred during an effort to find a better way to manage the rescue of those trapped on the
Capella
. JoAnn Suttner and Nicholas Kraus, members of the Sanusar Recovery Force working under the auspices of the Department of Transportation, lost their lives in the attempt. I am sorry to report also that, as a result of the experiment, we know now that the technique under development cannot be relied on. We will not risk the lives of the people on the
Capella
. Therefore, we will be falling back on the lifeboats that we have been preparing for the last few months.

“It is a method we would have preferred not to use because it is more time-consuming than we wish. But it is our safest way to proceed. Consequently, we now face the reality that we cannot take everyone off prior to experiencing another jump. In fact, we will be able to provide an immediate escape for only about two hundred of those on board.

“Having said that, I want to remind everyone that our first consideration remains the safe return of our friends and family members, not on rushing to get them off quickly. Our primary concern is their safety. I regret this reality. But we are confronted with a force of nature. We have no reasonable choice except to wait. It is a price we must be willing to pay to bring this unhappy state of affairs to a successful conclusion.”

*   *   *

Three nights later, we went downtown to the Riverside Hotel for the memorial service, which had been originally scheduled for the Department of Transportation Building. But the planners had been surprised by the public response to the event. “I don’t think we realized,” Senator Caipha Delmar told us, “that people would turn out the way they have.” Obviously, the sacrifice JoAnn and Nick made had an impact.

Several thousand persons jammed into the hotel. About half got into the Starlight Room, where the ceremony was to be held. The rest filled the lobby, the restaurant, the bar, and a second showroom where the event was put on-screen. John came out onto a raised platform precisely on time, thanked the audience for their support, and introduced himself as Nick’s brother and as the director of the operation that had taken the two lives. “At first,” he said, “I’d planned to describe this simply as an effort gone wrong. But it served to show us that the potential downside of trying to stop the process is too high, and in that sense, because of JoAnn and Nick, twenty-six hundred people will not be put at risk. I’m proud to be Nick’s brother and to have been JoAnn’s colleague.”

That drew somber applause. “Whatever it takes,” he continued, “we will not waste the sacrifice these two heroes have made. We
will
get those people off the
Capella
. The lifeboats are ready to go. We’ll take advantage of its return to get the lifeboats to it, to get them on board, and when it comes back in five years we’ll get the passengers and crew off,
all
of them, and we’ll throw the biggest party Rimway has ever seen.”

The place exploded.

He waited until things calmed down and invited Shara onstage to say something.

She took her place behind the lectern. “I’ll never forget JoAnn,” she said. “She was young and brilliant, and had so much to give, and in the end, she gave it all. And Nick. He’d been a peerless friend. And he was a professional interstellar captain whose first concern was his passengers and crew. If he were here tonight, he’d consider that the ultimate compliment.”

Prize-winning physicist Akala Gruder said that she had known JoAnn and could not believe she was gone. “In a sense, she never will be.” She had never met Nick, she said. And added, “My loss.”

A few others expressed similar sentiments. Then we got a surprise. John introduced President Davis. He came in through a side door and, like everyone else that night, he spoke without notes. “We are gathered here this evening,” he said, “to pay tribute to our friends JoAnn Suttner and Nick Kraus. I don’t know that I can add anything that hasn’t already been said. Other than that it gives me great hope for the future to know that these two friends were by no means unique. Where, I wonder, do we get such men and women?

“One more thing. The parents of both are present with us tonight. They were invited to speak this evening, but they declined. We can all understand that. The emotional pressure is high. And I think their natural inclination is to let others do the talking. But that said, I would now like to invite them to come up to receive the Presidential Medal of Honor, which is hereby granted to JoAnn Suttner, and to Nicholas Kraus, for extraordinary heroism in the cause of providing assistance to those in desperate need.”

JoAnn’s husband, Jerry, was halfway across the Confederacy and had not been able to attend. But both sets of parents, Laura and Joseph Dayson, and Sandra and Jack Kraus, made their way onto the platform. The President handed them the awards, they exchanged a few comments, everybody wiped their eyes, and it was over.

*   *   *

In the morning, I was just settling behind my desk when Jacob announced that I had a call from Nick’s mother.
“I saw you at the memorial last night, Chase,”
she said.
“I tried to get to you, but we lost you in the crowd.”
That brought an uneasy moment.

“Hello, Ms. Kraus. It’s nice to hear from you. Please accept my condolences on Nick’s loss.” I paused, not sure where the call was going. “What can I do for you?”

“Call me Sandy, please. I know Shara, and she told me how things went.”
My heart picked up a beat.
“I wanted to say that I’m glad you and she were there. And that I hope you’re not too upset.”

“I’m okay,” I said. Suddenly I was back in the passenger cabin with Nick while he asked whether he could take me to Cranston’s. “I wish I could have helped.”

“You were there. It’s all you could do. Jack and I just wanted to say thanks. And to make sure you’re okay.”
Jack, of course, was Nick’s father.

“Yes. Thank you. I’m all right. How about you?”

“We’ll get through it, Chase.”
Her voice caught. She said good-bye, and she was gone.