Infinity Beach (15 page)

The machine adjusted to her dimensions. Coils settled around her wrists and ankles. Pads pressed against thighs and buttocks.

“Do you do this regularly?” he called over to her. It was difficult to carry a conversation while the machine was in operation, but he wasn’t going to be discouraged.

The duroflex began to move, gently at first, tugging at arms and legs, rolling her shoulders, squeezing her knees, massaging her buttocks.

“Yes,” she said. “I like to work out.”

Kim listened to occasional remarks about theaters and museums, how he’d come to Salonika at the end of the war, had found a home, and wouldn’t live anywhere else, and how good the weather was. Eventually he got around to inviting her out to dinner. “There’s a great place on the lakefront—”

He was likable enough for her to overcome her prejudice against bureaucrats, notwithstanding the fact that she was one herself. And he did have a modicum of charm.

“Sure,” she said. “I’d like that.” Yes. Dinner would not be a major sacrifice. That satisfied him and he quieted, surrendering himself to the machine.

So did Kim.

The duroflex gradually picked up the tempo. It stretched whole groups of muscles and ran a series of sit-ups at a reasonably fast pace. It chimed to warn her of a change in routine and then she was touching her toes.

She just rode with it for the most part, eyes closed, relaxed, feeling the glow that comes with moderate exercise. Kim was not an enthusiast of the machines; she preferred to get her exercise the old-fashioned way, but this system did indeed have its advantages. It was almost possible to sleep while you did push-ups.

It went on until she began to ache. Sensing her discomfort, it slowed somewhat, but not enough. Then she was aware that Plymouth’s machine had stopped. He was climbing down, covered with sweat, wiping his head and neck with his towel. “Meet you in the lobby?” he asked.

The device was putting her through a series of knee-bends. It wasn’t conducive to maintaining her dignity, or even at this point to getting out an intelligible answer. So they both laughed, and he glanced at her timer, which still showed six minutes. She nodded. She’d be there as soon as the system shut down and she’d changed.

“That’s good.” He tossed the towel in a bin, offered her a
broad smile, and strode out of the room. As soon as he was gone, she hit the
STOP
button. The duroflex coasted to a halt and released her.

She would have preferred to lie quietly in the mechanism and wait for her back and shoulders to stop hurting. But there was no time for that. She climbed down and limped over to the bin, trying to look casual. The room had emptied somewhat and none of the three or four people rocking back and forth in the devices seemed to be paying any attention to her. She held her towel over the bin, retrieved Plymouth’s, and dropped hers.

Ten minutes later, she handed a container to Solly in the lobby and then turned back to wait for her date.

By evening’s end she felt uncomfortable about taking advantage of Mike Plymouth.

The restaurant he selected was a quaint little bistro called The Wicket. It had a lovely view of a lake and hills. It was all candlelight and soft music and logs on the fire. The food was good, the wine flowed freely, and Mike exhibited a wistfulness that first surprised her and then captured her imagination.

Born on Pacifica, he’d been in the war.

“
Their
side—” she said.

“Of course.” There was an intersection here: He’d been on board the
Hammurabi
when Kane’s small squadron blitzed it. He was cast adrift in an escape capsule, and had been rescued after eleven days by a “Greenie” patrol boat. “I never went home,” he explained.

“Why?”

“I’m not sure. I made friends. Liked where I was. Everyone accepted me.” The experience in the capsule, he added, had changed him.

“In what way?” asked Kim.

“I think I got a better idea of what I wanted out of my life. What counts.”

“What
does
count?”

“Friends.” With a grin: “Beautiful women. And good
wine.” His eyes drifted to the candles burning overhead in a wall rack. “The smell of hot wax.”

This was a guy she could really learn to like.

My God, she told herself, he’s a
bureaucrat
. Worse, he works for the government. He’s an exercise nut. Probably has this basic routine he uses on everybody.

He reached across the table and shyly touched her hand. She caught her breath, felt her pulse begin to pick up, imagined herself swept away by him, carried off to an island somewhere. She pictured them walking on a moonlit beach.

Right. He’d really be interested in a woman who’s playing him for a fool.

She briefly considered abandoning the project. But she couldn’t. No way she could do that. It was too late anyhow. She’d already lied about her name.

Nevertheless she wondered what Solly would say if she didn’t show up tonight at their hotel.

They left The Wicket and strolled for an hour along the lake’s edge. The conversation became intimate in the sense that she saw longing in his eyes, and heard the subtext to his comments about his job at the Archives or the three mixed-breed dogs he owned. “I enjoy sailing,” he said. “I’ve a boat on Lake Winslett.”

“Ever dive?” she asked.

“No. But I’d like to try it. You?”

She nodded. “You seem out of place in a government job.” She realized immediately it was the wrong thing to say and wished she could call it back.

But he shrugged and smiled as if he was used to it. He explained he wasn’t in it just to supplement his income. He had a taste for statistics and for order. He liked being responsible for dividing history—of which, he said, there was nothing more chaotic—into journals and diaries, into investigative reports and records of transaction, and then storing the documents in coherent form. “Cataloging events gives me a sense of control. And I know how that sounds.”

Under other circumstances it would have struck her as a hopelessly mind-numbing career. But there was a lilt in his
voice when he talked about it. And he seemed to understand exactly what she was thinking, that it was the work of a dull intellect. So he shrugged and laughed in a self-deprecating way that left her almost helpless. “Born to be a librarian,” he said.

Holding up her end of the conversation was no mean feat. Having manufactured a false name, she was forced to construct a series of lies. She was a teacher, she explained. Of mathematics. She’d secured a position at Danforth University and would start in about two weeks. At first she had a hard time recalling that her name was Kay. A general sense of confusion seemed to have set in.

Toward the end of the evening she was having trouble remembering what she’d said, what branch of math she specialized in, the name of the school in which she’d worked in Terminal City, the exact date she’d arrived in Salonika. Had that question even come up? She was sure it had.

Where was she from originally?

“Eagle Point.”

“My brother lives there, Kay. What part of Eagle Point?”

What part did she know? She had to make up a name. “The Calumet,” she told him, hoping he wasn’t familiar with the town either.

“Oh yes.” His reaction implied he knew the place well. Was he playing with her? Or was he being less than honest?

She began to realize that this was an evening she would always remember. And she visualized herself years from now recalling Mike Plymouth and wondering with a pang what had become of him.

“I should be getting home,” she said finally.

“It
is
getting late,” he agreed.

He insisted on escorting her, so she named a hotel, not the one she and Solly were actually using, and the cab took them there. As it drifted down through the cloudswept sky toward a landing pad, they fell silent.

“Will I see you again?” he asked, as though he’d detected something, knew there would not be a second evening.

“You can reach me here at the hotel, Mike.” There was
another quiet stretch after that. The lights rose up around them, and she understood that they were both embarrassed, but only she knew why. The cab touched down, and she climbed out into a brisk wind. He joined her, and they stood holding hands, gazing at each other. “Mike,” she said, “I had a lovely evening.”

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

“No. I’m just worn out, I think. Been a long day.”

He kissed her lightly. Her body stiffened and he smiled sadly at her, sensing the distance. “I’m glad I met you, Kay,” he said.

He squeezed her hand, looked in the direction of the elevator and back toward his cab. “I’d like very much to do something like this tomorrow.”

“Yes,” she said. “That would be nice.” But she didn’t want him calling during the day. Maybe find out she didn’t live here after all. “Pick me up at nine?” she said.

“Count on it.”

“Good. And maybe you should let me have your number. Just in case.”

“You’re a lovely woman, Kay,” he said. Then he was standing by the cab while she followed the ramp to the elevator bank. She got in and punched the button for the lobby. He waved, she waved back, and the doors closed.

You’re an idiot, Kay.

“How’d it go?” asked Solly.

She shrugged. “Okay.”

“He didn’t show any sign of catching on, did he?”

“No. He has no idea.”

“Good. I got the package off to Alan. He’s not happy.”

Alan was Solly’s buddy at the Institute lab. “Well, he knows we’re doing something illegal and if we get caught he’s going to be in the soup too.”

“He knows we wouldn’t blow the whistle on him.”

“Wouldn’t matter,” she said. “It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out who was helping us.” She really didn’t like the way this was turning out.

“I’m done for the day,” said Solly. “We should get everything back tomorrow, and we can go in tomorrow night.”

“Solly,” she said, “I’m beginning to wonder if it’s worth it.”

He let her see that he wasn’t surprised. “You know how
I
feel. Say the word and it’s over. I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by all this. I don’t believe you’re going to learn anything you didn’t know before. I’ll concede that Yoshi might have been at Tripley’s place, but there’s a relatively innocent explanation for that too. I mean it should be no surprise that he might take her home for a few days if she’s willing.”

“She was supposed to be going to the hotel with Emily.”

He shrugged. “There’s never been any proof they
both
got into the taxi. They used Emily’s ID. So Yoshi went with Tripley to his place for a couple of days. And got caught in the explosion. And she’s still up there somewhere. Since they didn’t know she was there, they didn’t look that hard for her.”

But they’d have found her body in the general search.

“If you want to quit,” he said, “this would be a good time.”

And an odd thing happened: She realized that Solly wanted her to give it up. But he’d be disappointed if she did.

She realized something else too: She couldn’t back away. That would mean spending the rest of her life wondering about the truth.

The package arrived at midafternoon. They checked the contents, a single filmy glove which was carefully packed in a translucent case. Kim put the case, with the glove still in it, in the pocket of her jacket.

They spent the day sightseeing, although Kim was too nervous to enjoy it. She picked at her meals and, as the sun began to fade, they took one of the moving skyways into Kaydon Center. The temperature was dropping and the wind had risen.

The Archives looked bleak in the hard dusk. The last visitors were filing out, their coats pulled tight around them. The pebbled walkways and the landing ramps had been swept clear of snow. A cab was lifting off as they approached from the direction of the reflecting pool. A thin layer of ice had formed on the surface. Solly was uncharacteristically subdued as they walked.

“You’re sure there’s no visual surveillance?” she asked, for the third or fourth time.

“I’m sure,” he said. “Only in Freedom Hall, or if the system doesn’t like your DNA.”

She considered what getting caught would do to her career. Indeed, she’d thought of little else for the past day.
And she’d have felt better if they had a flyer available, in case they needed to leave in a hurry. But parking a flyer on the pad might draw attention. If things went wrong, Solly had insisted, it wouldn’t matter anyhow. The authorities would know who they were before they could get out of the building.

“You still sure you want to do this?” he asked yet again.

“What do you think they’ll do to us if we get caught?”

“Work farm for several months. Probably a couple of days in the cube.” The cube was a transparent cell located in a public place, so that everyone who knew a convicted criminal could observe the sad state to which he or she had fallen. Relatives, family members, and friends were all notified, and they could come in person or watch the humiliation from their living rooms. It was, she thought, a particularly cruel mode of punishment for a supposedly enlightened society.

She could see the headlines:
INSTITUTE SPOKESWOMAN ARRESTED IN BURGLARY. EXPERTS PROBE: WHY DID BRANDYWINE TURN TO LIFE OF CRIME?

They approached the front entrance and turned right onto a pathway that circled the building. “There’s no point in both of us going in,” said Kim. “I know what I’m looking for. Why don’t you wait outside? I mean, we’re—”

“—I’ve come this far,” said Solly. “You may need me.”

They turned off at a secondary entrance, climbed a ramp, and stood before a glass door. Inside, a corridor was lined with offices.

The reader clicked open and a line of instructions appeared:
PLEASE PLACE YOUR FINGERTIPS ON THE LENS. DO NOT MOVE UNTIL PROCESS IS COMPLETE.

Kim glanced around to be sure no one was watching. She took the container from her pocket, lifted out the glove, slipped it on, pulled it tight, and showed it to Solly.

“Perfect,” he said.

She placed her fingertips on the designated spot. The lock clicked and the door opened. She and Solly stepped inside, and the door slid shut behind them.

The corridor was long and shadowy, lined with doors, its
high ceiling gray and in need of repairs. The doors were translucent. Digital numbers and designators blinked on as they approached to identify what lay behind each. They passed Standards, Personnel, General Maintenance, Scheduling, Security, Special Operations.

No one else seemed to be in the building. “There are only nine or ten employees in the whole place,” said Solly. “During regular work hours.”

“The assistant commissioners.”

“Right. And a few directors. And systems analysts. Everybody has a title. All the routine work is automated. As far as I could determine, nobody hangs around after closing time.”

It was of course the cue for contradiction. They’d gone only a few meters farther when a lock clicked behind them, in the direction of Freedom Hall. They watched an office door open. A man in a green worksuit stepped into view and looked curiously at them.

Kim felt her heart stop. Her natural impulse was to bolt.

“Walk naturally,” whispered Solly, taking her firmly by the arm, inspecting one of the designators, nodding as if he’d found what he wanted, and turning directly toward the worker.

The man frowned. He was olive-skinned, with wide shoulders, and an expression that suggested he’d been having a difficult afternoon.

“Hello,” he said. “Can I help you?”

Solly waved an ID in his general direction. “Security check,” he said. “Everything quiet here?”

“Far as I know.”

“Good.” Solly glanced meaningfully at one of the office doors. “Thanks.” He pushed gently against it and nodded his satisfaction that it didn’t open. Kim took the hint and tried one on the other side of the corridor. They proceeded past the man in the worksuit, and strolled down the passageway, continuing the process of periodically testing offices.

He watched them until they reached a cross corridor and turned out of his field of view. “What do you think, Solly?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t think we were very smooth.” They listened for footsteps. When they heard none, she peeked around the corner and saw that he was letting himself out of the building. “I think we’re clear,” she said.

Solly consulted his notes and led her down to the next cross passage and turned left. They came to a section marked
RECORDS,
and found a door whose designator read
INTERSTELLAR NONCOMMERCIAL.

Solly produced a batch of universal keys in a wallet. They were plastic chips, each coded to fit numerous interior locks then in service. He had to try four or five in the dex before the lock moved and the door opened.

“You’d have made a good burglar,” she told him.

He looked pleased. “They just don’t worry about break-ins. Not back here. Out front, where the Instrument is, yes. If a mosquito gets in, alarms go off, guards come running, the doors come down. But back here, it’s a whole different game. Nobody cares about old files.”

They went in and closed the door behind them.

It was a cubbyhole. A small window looked out into a tiny courtyard. Kim sat down at the lone terminal and brought up the menu. She needed less than two minutes to locate EIV 4471886
Hunter
, Arrival Date 30 March 573, Command Log.

“Got it,” she said. She inserted a disk and instructed the computer to download.

Solly held a finger to his lips. Footsteps outside. He moved behind the door so he’d be out of sight if anyone looked in. Kim scrunched down behind the desk.

Voices.

Two people, talking, and then laughing. They moved on.

Kim was surprised to discover a sense of elation. She squeezed Solly’s shoulder. “What?” he asked.

“We should do more of this,” she said.

Sheyel adjusted the cushions in his dragon chair. “Kim, it’s good to hear from you. Do you have news?”

“Probably not. I wanted to thank you for tracking down Yoshi’s shoe size.”

“It was nothing. Now will you tell me why you asked?”

“We found a grip shoe at Kile’s villa. Fits the size.”

“Oh?”

“That’s all we have for the moment. And it probably doesn’t mean anything.”

He was silent.

“I need more information.”

“Of course. If I have it.”

“Was there anything artificial about Yoshi’s body? Anything that a sensor might detect?”

His eyes slid shut. “I don’t think so.”

“Any kind of artificial enhancement, maybe? Or something that had been repaired?”

“No,” he said. “Nothing that I know about. She had an accident once playing wraparound. Had to get a couple of her teeth capped.”

“I don’t think there’s anything there we can use. Okay, Sheyel. I’ll see if I can find another way. In the meantime, if you think of anything, give me a call.”

He nodded. “Thanks, Kim. I appreciate what you’re trying to do.”

She switched off, poured herself a drink, glanced at a code she’d written on a piece of paper, and punched it in.

“Hello?” Mike Plymouth’s voice. She left the visual off.

“Hi, Mike.” She made her voice as soft as she could.

“Hello, Kay. I
thought
I’d hear from you.”

“Yes. I’m sorry. I can’t make it tonight.”

“Oh. Well—You
are
all right?”

“Yes. I’m fine.”

“Another night, maybe?”

She’d pushed Solly out of the room. Now she wished he were there. “I don’t think so. There’s really no point.”

“Oh.” He was fumbling for something to say. Something to retrieve the situation. Or save his pride.

“I’m sorry.” She thought about making up a story. Some
thing to spare his feelings.
I’m already committed. I was cheating yesterday.
But she let it pass. “I’m just really tied up right now.”

“I understand.” The room grew still. “Goodbye, Kay.”

Then he was off the line and she was staring at the link. “Goodbye, Mike,” she said.

They arranged to have the hotel deliver some cheese and wine and settled back to watch the
Hunter
logs. Kim put the disk into the reader, set it for the screen, sampled the cheese, and turned to Solly. “Ready?” she asked.

He nodded and she started the program.

Titles appeared, identifying the ship, setting the time and place, listing commercial cargo (“None”), and describing the general nature of the flight. The date, translated to Seabright time, was February 12. Date of departure from St. Johns.

The early visuals were from the out-station, depicting technicians and maintenance staff working on the
Hunter
. Solly described what they were doing, these checking life support maintenance, those topping off water supplies.

“We’ll get two sets of records,” he explained. “One will be the data flow from the various shipboard systems, life support, navigation, power plant, and so on. The other will be a visual record of what’s happening in the pilot’s room. The imagers will only record movement. If the room is empty, or if the pilot’s asleep—” he held out his hands, palms up, “—nada.”

“How much work is there for a pilot to do, Solly?”

“It’s a tough profession, Kim. It takes a high level of intelligence, extensive knowledge, great reflexes—”

Her eyes closed. “Solly—”

“Trade secret?”

“Go ahead. You can trust me.”

“You could jettison the pilot at any time and be perfectly safe.”

“Really?”

“Sure. The pilot does three things: he talks to the ground,
tells the AI where to go, and takes over if the AI blows up. Which never happens.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. And the AI can talk to the ground.” He fast-forwarded past the technicians. They whirled through their tasks, and then disappeared and the screen went blank. The clock leaped forward two hours. The next sequence gave them Markis Kane coming into the pilot’s room.

This was Kane more than forty years after the war, but there was of course no physical difference between the man who sat in the cabin of the
Hunter
, and the man whose image was prominently displayed at the Mighty Third Memorial Museum. This later version might have been a little less lean, and his features might have been a trifle harder. Otherwise, he was the same person.

He wore a blue jumpsuit with a shoulder patch depicting the
Hunter
orbiting a ringed planet, with the motto
PERSISTENCE
. His black hair was cut short and he was clean-shaven. He had a natural youth and vitality that rendered him quite attractive, Kim thought. He was a war hero, and he had the soul of an artist. Quite a résumé.

The pilot’s room was not radically different from the one she’d seen during her inspection of the
Hunter
. The two chairs were different, the carpeting was lighter, the walls darker. But the instrument layout did not seem to have changed.

Kane sat down in the left-hand chair and picked up a notepad. Kim watched him go methodically through a checklist. The procedure lasted about ten minutes. When he’d finished, he got out of his chair and left the room. She recalled the layout of the
Hunter
, and knew that the pilot’s room opened onto the upper level of the rotunda. The imager stopped recording. The clock jumped ahead sixteen minutes and Kane reentered, eased into his seat, and began touching blinkers.

“
Hunter
ready to depart.”

“
Hunter
, you are clear to go.”

He touched a stud on the chair arm.
“We are thirty sec
onds from departure, folks. Buckle in.”
His own harness came down over his shoulder and locked in place. The chair moved to face forward.

At the time of the
Hunter
flight, St. Johns was on the edge of known territory. That was still true. No deeper outpost existed. Several hundred missions had gone beyond, but that was a trivial number spread against so vast a region. There was an ongoing argument among the Nine Worlds about who should bear the financial burden of maintaining the outstation. Traffic had fallen precipitously, and the station no longer supported itself. There was talk of closing it down.

The
Hunter
edged forward. Kim watched the umbilicals detach. The dock began moving past on the overhead screen and in the windows, moving quicker, and then it dropped away. The acceleration pressed Kane back into his chair. He spoke briefly with the operations people, and noted for the record that the ship was clear, on course, and all conditions were nominal.

Solly moved the record forward. Kane remained alone in the room, watching his instruments, occasionally talking to the AI. Then, about a quarter-hour into the flight he spoke into his intercom again:
“We are going to initiate acceleration to jump status in five minutes. Emily and Kile know about that. Yoshi, once it begins you won’t be able to move. It’ll last roughly twenty-five minutes. Anything you need to do, this is a good time to take care of it.”

“The jump engines feed off the mains,” Solly explained. “Most systems require almost a half hour of steady one-gee acceleration before they can lock in enough power to make the jump to hyperspace.”