Seeker (26 page)

“Did he ask about the
Seeker
?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.”

That was a jolt. Somebody else knew. “What did you tell him?”

“I didn’t see any point keeping things quiet. I told him pretty much everything I told you.”

While I was having a big time with Delia, Alex received a call from the producer of
The Peter McCovey Show
. They had heard about the search for Margolia and were going to “highlight it” next day. Several guests were being invited. Would he care to appear?

Alex was not happy that word of the effort was getting out, but it seemed impossible under the circumstances to keep a secret. He tried to beg off, but they told him he was the center of interest and would be essential to what they wanted to do. If he persisted in refusing to participate, the producer said, they would have no choice but to inform their audience he had been invited but had declined. And they would be forced to put an empty chair on the set to represent him.

Alex had been on these kinds of shows before and always got attacked. “They don’t let you talk,” he’d complained to me afterward. “The hosts load the questions, control the flow of conversation, and never let you finish an answer if they don’t like the way you’re going.” The fact that they consistently went after him as someone more interested in making money than in revealing the truth didn’t help. They’d made it sound as if there was something wicked in turning a profit.

But Alex thought the empty chair wouldn’t look good. So he agreed.

I went with him to the station the following evening. They could have done the show by remote, of course. But they prefer that you come physically so they can arrange your makeup and do what they like to call the personal touch, which always seemed to involve laying on a lot of charm and trying to put him off guard before they go to broadcast. This was the same guy who, when the Christopher Sim information came out, had openly accused him of being unpatriotic.

Peter McCovey is short and stocky with a black beard and a smile that never goes away and never changes. He wore his trademark blue jacket with a white neckerchief and a white sash. A little pretentious, he admitted to me, but his audience expected it.

There were two other panelists, Dr. Emily Clark, who doubted that the Margolian colonists had ever managed to get a foothold on the world of their choice, wherever it might have been. And one Jerry Rhino, who insisted that Margolia had not only survived its early years but had affected our daily lives through subliminal influences and magnetic manipulation. “It’s the source of our spiritual strength,” he said. Rhino had written several books on the subject and was wildly popular with the occult crowd.

The show took place on a set designed to resemble a book-lined den. McCovey introduced his guests and opened things up by asking Alex what had really happened to the Margolians.

Alex, of course, didn’t know. “Nobody knows,” he added.

Rhino claimed he knew, and the show developed rapidly into an argument. McCovey liked having guests quarrel with one another. He was, and remains, among the highest-rated media hosts.

Clark smiled relentlessly throughout the performance, successfully implying that anyone who took any of this seriously was an idiot. When Alex tried to argue that for all we knew they could still be alive and prospering out there somewhere, she rolled her eyes and wondered aloud where common sense had gone. She could not tolerate Rhino at all and simply dismissed him with icy sarcasm.

But Jerry plunged on, unaffected. The Margolians had gotten caught up in the spiritual flow of the cosmos. Cut off from the more mundane activities of the home world, they had reached a kind of nirvana. And so on. Occasionally he glanced at Alex for confirmation. I got the impression Alex was trying to hide.

McCovey’s standing claim was that he took no sides. He was not reluctant to call people names. At one point he asked Alex to explain how he wasn’t a vandal, and he told Rhino he was deranged. I’ve noticed since that he makes it a point to invite people on who are easy to assault because they’re reluctant to yell back. I’ve never mentioned that to Alex.

In any case, Alex left the studio in a bleak mood. He swore he’d never again allow himself to be caught like that. We stopped at the Silver Cane, and he tossed down three or four drinks, which was well past his usual limit.

The real attack came the following day, when Casmir Kolchevsky showed up on
Jennifer in the Morning. “There should be legislation to put people like Benedict out of business
,” he insisted. “
They’re thieves. They take treasures that belong to all of us and sell them to the highest bidder. It’s contemptible
.”

He went on like that for the better part of fifteen minutes. At the segment’s conclusion, Jennifer invited Alex to appear and defend himself. Alex admitted he’d already received a call. “They told me I’d want to watch.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m not sure going on doesn’t just make things worse.” He sighed. “I’m tired of it. These guys are never satisfied. People like Kolchevsky, who could never find anything on his own, get on and claim we’re stealing things that belong to the audience. But none of it belongs to anybody. It belongs to whoever is willing to show some ambition and do the legwork. If it weren’t for us, a lot of this stuff would still be lying around out there.”

“Okay,” I said, “but you have to go on and
say
that, Alex. You can’t just let him make those charges and not respond. It looks like a concession.”

He nodded. “Book me. And by the way, your pal Shara is due back tomorrow. I’ve already made an appointment for you.”

“Okay.”

“Show her the AI log. I’ll be surprised if she can’t tell us where the
Seeker
is.”

I got a call that evening from Windy. “
I didn’t want to talk to you from the office, because I was concerned about being overheard
,” she said.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I think I know who was putting out information. One of my people saw a member of the director’s staff downtown last night. She was in a bar with one of Ollie Bolton’s specialists.”

“Bolton?”

“There’s no proof anywhere. But—” She shrugged.

“Do you have confidential information that Bolton would be interested in?” I asked.

“Sure,” she said. “We always have stuff on projects and speculations that I’m sure, for that matter, you and Alex would like to see.”

“It doesn’t prove anything,” I said.

Her voice hardened. “No, it doesn’t. But we’re going to call her in tomorrow morning and talk to her.”

I hesitated. “No. Why not leave her in place? Just be careful what she sees.”

Windy didn’t take well to disloyalty. “I hate to do that, Chase. If this woman is collaborating with him, giving information away, she should be
terminated
.”

I decided I wouldn’t want to get on her wrong side. “You don’t know for sure. So you can’t really act anyhow. Let it go for now.”

Time is a river of events, and its current is strong. No sooner does a thing appear in its flow than it is swept away, and another takes its place, until that too is carried from sight.
— Marcus Aurelius,
Meditations

I was at Shara’s office next morning to explain what we wanted. The mission reports showed the stars visited by the Wescotts on their various flights. Thanks to the
Falcon
AI record, we now knew, for each mission, the order in which those visits had occurred. “Alex thinks you might be able to determine whether that sequence coincides with the original proposal.”

“But the proposals have been discarded,” said Shara. “We already went over this.”

“I know,” I said. “But hang on. Before the quantum drive was developed, a Survey ship always computed the shortest total route for a given mission.”

I saw the perplexed look give way to a smile. “Oh,” she said.

“And we know that Wescott was interested in G-type stars near the end of their hydrogen-burning cycle.”

“Okay.”

“We’re pretty sure they found something in one of the systems and deleted that star from the report. They went somewhere else and substituted
that
for the one that had been in the original proposal. If we can establish which star was deleted—”

“—You’ll know where the
Seeker
is.”

“Can we do it?”

“Without having the proposal in our hands—”

“Yes.”

“Sure.” Her eyes focused elsewhere. A flock of colbees floated past, riding the wind. Her AI broke in to inform her of an incoming call.

“Not now,” she said to it. Then: “Chase, let me see what you have.”

I passed the disk over. She put it in the reader and darkened the room. “Can we assume it probably happened during the final mission?”

“That’s a good place to start.”

She directed the AI to bring up a projection of the search area for the 1391–92 flight.

The office vanished, and we were adrift among the stars. “
I’ve blanked everything outside the subject area
,” the AI said. “
There are thirteen hundred eleven stars in the field
.” Most were yellow G-types. One, near the bookcase at the far wall, brightened. “
That’s Taio 4776, where they made their first visit
.” A line grew out of it and connected to a second star, a half meter away. “
Icehouse 27651
.” It angled off to a third, near the desk lamp. “
Koestler 2294
.” And up to a star near the overhead. From there it skimmed along the sofa, touching two more, and turned sharply to cross the room. In the end we were looking at a glowing zigzag. “
Distance across the field is thirty-two point four light-years. Total distance covered by the mission is eighty-nine point seven light-years. Ten stars visited
.”

“Mark.” Shara was addressing the AI. “Keep this same field. I want you to show us which stars are near the end of their hydrogen-burning cycle. Say, stars in which helium burning would begin during the next half million years. Blank everything else.”

“I will require a moment, Shara.”

“Take your time.”

“Shara,” I said, “wouldn’t someone have had to visit these systems earlier for Adam to know which suns were at the end of the cycle?”

“Not at all. Spectrographic analysis would provide everything he’d need to plan the flight.”

“Ready
,
”
said Mark.

“Okay.” The stars were beginning to wink out. “Let’s see what we have.”

We were left with about thirty target stars, including the ten visited by the Wescotts. The track of the
Falcon
was bright and clear.

“Store the pattern,” she said.

It winked off.

“Okay, Mark. Now I want you to plan a flight to the same ten stars, using minimal total travel time. Start from the same star the
Falcon
mission used. Taio Whatever. When you have it, put it up.”

Taio 4776 grew bright, and the line came out of it again, moved to Icehouse, then to the star near the lamp. When it had finished all ten, the zigzag pattern floated in front of us. “Looks like the same one,” I said.

“Let’s find out. Mark, shrink the pattern and let’s see the first one again. Overlay them.”

He moved the patterns until they were side by side. Then he merged them.

Identical.

“Try the previous mission,” I said.

We found it in the 1386–87 flight.

The patterns were
almost
identical. Again, the mission had visited ten planetary systems. But this time, it had not used the most-fuel-efficient route. The deviation came at the sixth star.

Tinicum 2502.

It wasn’t a major change, but it was enough to tell us something was wrong.

We sat looking at it. Had they remained consistent to the pattern, they would not have gone to Tinicum.

“Okay,” I said. “Which star
should
they have visited? Which one fits with the rest of the pattern?”

Shara put the question to the AI. “Assume,” she said, “that after Tinicum 2502 they returned to the original track.”

“Here,”
said Mark, brightening a nearby star.

Tinicum 2116.

“Brilliant, Shara,” I said.

She smiled. “I have my moments.”

I took her to lunch. It seemed the least I could do. We went to the Hillside, got a table by a window, ordered drinks, and sat back to talk about lost interstellars.

“Tinicum’s planetary system will probably have a diameter of about eight billion klicks,” she said. “But the sun’s gravitational influence will reach out several times that far. If the
Seeker
’s orbiting one of the planets, you should have no trouble finding it.”

“But if it’s in solar orbit—”

“—You’re going to want to pack a few meals.”

Yeah. That was the next order of business. It would take the
Belle-Marie
, which had only basic navigation equipment to conduct the search, a long time. Maybe years. “Can Survey help?”

“I can let you have a piece of hardware, a telescope, that should move things along nicely.”

“Shara,” I said, “you’re a warm, wonderful human being.”

“Right. What do I get in return?”

“I’ll pay for lunch.”

“You’re already paying for lunch.”

“Oh.” I thought about it. “You want to come along? Be there when we find it?”

She made a face as if I’d just offered a plate of chopped squid. “I don’t think so. I know it’s historically big stuff, but I’m just not an enthusiast. Not enough to spend that much time on shipboard. You’ll probably be out there a month or two.”

The food came. Sandwiches and drinks. There was a guy at a window table trying to catch Shara’s eye. She seemed not to have noticed. “When you find it,” she said, “you publicly share credit with Survey—”

“Done.”

“—And agree to give us access to the discovery. Which is to say you and your boss don’t strip the ship before we get there.”