Polaris (11 page)

“May I ask whether the fortunate man is Alexander?”

“No,” I said. “My fiancé is a person I've known for a long time.”

“Excellent.”

“He's a good man.” Dumb.

“Well, Chase,”
he said,
“please accept my best wishes for a long and happy future. And congratulate the lucky groom for me.”

“I will. Thank you.”

“I'll arrange to extend the invitation again, perhaps when life settles down a bit.”

Rainbow had some decisions to make. We'd taken orders from nine clients and come away with a total of nine artifacts. If that sounds like good planning, it wasn't. Two, the command jacket and the glass, were reserved for the office. Of the remaining seven, Nancy White's gold bracelet would go to Harold Estavez. Maddy's blouse was headed for Marcia
Cable, a longtime and valued client. And her jumpsuit was earmarked for Ida. Vlad Korinsky, a philosophy professor at Korchnoi University, would get the plaque, with its history of prior missions. Maddy's etui and its assorted contents would go to Diane Gold. That left only Urquhart's Bible and the vest to be divided among the four remaining aspirants.

“We have an obligation to keep our commitments,” I told Alex. “You have enough for everybody. Forget about keeping stuff ourselves.”

“I
like
the idea of having some of it in the office,” he said. “Reminds us what we're about.”

“Of course it does. But that's not the point.”

I could see he was not going to be moved. “There's really no compelling reason to give it up, Chase. Everybody knows what happened. We have forty messages telling us our clients are glad we walked away okay. Nobody even knows, except a couple of people at Survey, that any of the artifacts survived.” He was sitting by the window, drinking something that reflected the sunlight. “So that'll be the reason we have to disappoint a couple of them. They'll get over it. Hell, they'll appreciate the fact that we were almost killed trying to fill the order. We've already taken care of five of them. It seems to me it's easy enough to assign the Bible and the vest, and call the two who are left to pass along our apologies. Couldn't possibly have foreseen anything like this, terrible waste of excellent merchandise, thanks for your interest, sorry we couldn't oblige, maybe next time, et cetera.”

“And what happens the next time they call the office and see Maddy's jacket framed on the wall? Or the glass?”

“That's simple enough. We'll put them both out of visual range.”

“Isn't that defeating the purpose of having them here?”

He cleared his throat. “We're just determined to throw up roadblocks this morning, aren't we?”

After we decided how the artifacts would be distributed, he made the calls himself to the two who weren't getting anything. I'll give him that. I've worked for people who wouldn't have hesitated to saddle the help with delivering the bad news. He called from the living room, seated on his sofa, the view of the Melony behind him. (He traditionally did things
that way. I called from the office; he called from the sofa.) And he was good. He described the carnage, how horrified he'd been, how unfortunate that so much had been lost. He phrased everything carefully and told the truth, more or less. (Because he knew that eventually the truth would come out.) He'd managed to rescue a handful of objects, but unfortunately not the one he'd earmarked for the client, blah, blah, blah. He hoped next time that we'd all be more fortunate. And he would, of course, find a way to make it up.

It's okay, Alex, both clients said. Not to worry. I know how these things can be. Thanks for trying.

When he'd finished he flashed a satisfied smile at me. I told him I was embarrassed for him. That earned another grin, and he turned the pleasant task of notifying the successful aspirants over to me.

I called each, described the event, and showed the prizes to their new owners, the captain's vest to a laughing Paul Calder, the plaque to a stoic but obviously delighted Vlad Korinsky.

The vest was accompanied by a mounted picture of Maddy wearing it. Calder raised a fist in triumph. He'd wanted to pilot interstellars, but he suffered from defective color vision and could never qualify. It's a foolish requirement, actually, because corrective action can be taken, but the rules say your eyes have to meet the standards on their own.

Diane Gold beamed when I showed her the etui. We couldn't have done better, she said. Gold was an architect, an extraordinarily beautiful woman, but one with whom I suspect no man would want to live. She gave a lot of directions, always knew a better way to get things done, and started wearing on you five minutes after she walked in. She was personally angry with the bombers, who might have destroyed her etui and, incidentally, could have killed me. “Death's too good for them,” she said.

The Bible went to Soon Lee, a book collector and a wealthy widow who lived on Diamond Island. Marcia Cable wasn't home when I called, but she got back to me, breathless, within the hour.

“You got a uniform blouse,” I told her. “Maddy's.”

I thought she was going to collapse.

The most melancholy moment came when I showed Ida Patrick the
jumpsuit. She listened and swayed a little and asked what else had been in the exhibition. “Glasses and books,” I said. “Flatware and jackets. There were two other jumpsuits.”

“Whose?”
she asked.

“Urquhart's and Mendoza's.”

I could almost feel her physical presence in the room. The color drained from her face, and I thought for a moment she might be having a heart attack.
“And they were destroyed in the bombing?”

“Yes.”

“Barbarians,”
she hissed.
“Don't have enough common decency to do the assassination responsibly. I don't know what the world's coming to, Chase.”

In its own way, each of the artifacts was intriguing, and I enjoyed having a chance to spend time with them while preparing them for shipment to their new owners. The one that was most fascinating was Garth Urquhart's Bible. It had gold trim, was well-worn, and it pages were filled with notes that were sometimes mournful and invariably incisive. Urquhart, whose public persona had suggested a relentlessly optimistic man, showed some doubts about where we were going. In Genesis, beside the passage, “Be ye fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein,” he commented:
We've done that. Resources soon will start to become scarce. But it's okay. At the moment we have what we need. Our children, however, may be another matter.

That was a fairly bleak appraisal. But there was a degree of truth to it. Toxicon and Earth and a couple of other Confederate worlds were suffering from crowding.

I spent an hour or so with it, and, had I been able to keep one of the objects, that would have been my choice.

Some of his comments were sardonic. “I am going the way of all the earth,” from the Book of Joshua, was accompanied by his scrawled notation,
As are we all.

“His family,” Alex said, “didn't really want him to make the flight because they thought it was dangerous. Deep space, unknown country.”

“He should've listened.”

“Originally there were only to be two ships going to Delta Karpis. Then somebody at Survey, apparently Jess Taliaferro, the operations chief, got the idea of a VIP flight. Send out a few people who had made extraordinary contributions. Recognize their accomplishments by providing the show of a lifetime.”

“It must have seemed like a good move at the time,” I said.

“They had people come in for the launch and make speeches. They even had a band.”

“How old was Urquhart?”

“In his sixties.” Still relatively young. “He had one son.”

In Ecclesiastes, “Be not righteous overmuch,” Urquhart had written,

All things, even virtue, are best in moderation.

“He served two terms on the Council,” said Alex. “One of the best we had, apparently. But he was defeated in 1361. It seems he wanted people to stop having babies.”

I showed him the passage in
Genesis.

Alex nodded. “I'm not surprised. He was concerned about unrestrained population growth. You don't see it here, of course, but there are a lot of places that have serious problems. He grew up destitute in Klymor. His closest boyhood friend developed anemia and never really recovered, his mother died in childbirth when he was four, his father drank himself to death. Read his autobiography when you get a chance.”

And St. Luke: “Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee.”
A caution to authors. And politicians.

In the Book of Ruth, he'd marked her famous promise:
Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge. . . .
Under the circumstances of his disappearance, an eerily appropriate line.

“He made a lot of enemies in his time,” Alex said. “He didn't like special interests. He couldn't be bought. And he apparently couldn't be intimidated.”

“Sounds as if he should have been chief councillor.”

“He was too honest.”

I was still turning pages. “Here's another one from St. Luke: ‘This night thy soul shall be required of thee.' ” He'd underscored the passage but left no comment. I wondered precisely when he'd done that.

“One of his biographers,” said Alex, “quotes him as telling Taliaferro that having the opportunity to watch a sun get destroyed had forced him to think how different the scales were between human and cosmic activity. Given time, he'd said, who knew what Delta Kay might have produced?”

We have a clear obligation to Madeleine English and her six passengers to seek the truth and not to rest until we find it.

—From the founding documents of the
Polaris
Society

Garth Urquhart had piqued my curiosity. I looked through the record and watched him in action during his years as a senator and later on the Council, watched him campaign for himself and for others, watched him accept awards for contributions to various humanitarian efforts, watched him lose an election because he refused to budge on principle.

In 1359, six years before the
Polaris,
he'd been invited to address the World Association of Physical Scientists. He'd taken advantage of the opportunity to sound a warning. “Population continues to expand at a level that we cannot absorb indefinitely,” he said. “Not only here, but throughout the Confederacy. At current rates of growth, Rimway will be putting a serious strain on planetary resources by the end of the century. Prices for food and real estate and most other commodities continue to rise while demand increases. But there's a limit, and beyond that limit lies catastrophe. We do not want to repeat the terrestrial experience.”

It hadn't happened. Technological applications in agriculture and food production had combined with a growing tendency to keep families small. The so-called ‘replacement' family had become the norm not only on Rimway, but through much of the Confederacy. The general population had increased, but by no more than two or three percent.

If he was wrong in his predictions, Urquhart was nevertheless an able speaker. He was persuasive, passionate, self-deprecating. “Too many babies,” he'd said. “We need to slow down a bit. And let nature catch her breath.”

Corporate Rimway had wanted a growing population precisely because it brought rising prices. And they'd gone after him with a vengeance. “Urquhart Doesn't Like Children!” became the battle cry of his opposition in 1360. Organizations like Mothers Opposed to Urquhart arrived on the scene. He refused to back down, and he was beaten.

My kind of guy.

I shipped everything off to the new owners, except the vest and the etui. Calder and Gold lived nearby and preferred to come to the Rainbow office to pick up their prizes.

Under the circumstances, Alex could have renegotiated the prices with his clients. Everything had multiplied several times in value as a result of the attack. But he charged only his cost plus the usual commission. Ida responded with a bonus that didn't begin to cover the new value of the jumpsuit. Alex tried to refuse it, but she insisted. “We did the right thing,” Alex commented afterward. “We held no one up even though the opportunity was there, and nobody would have blamed us.” Of course, Rainbow's demonstrated integrity wouldn't hurt its reputation in the least.

Marcia Cable sent us a recording of herself appearing on a talk show in her area, showing off Maddy's blouse. She was literally glowing.

Meantime Alex found some assignments for me and sent me off around the globe to represent the company in a couple of auctions, to do some negotiating with a few Neeli who had found some curiosities in the Neeli Desert, and to fill in for him at the annual World Antiquities Convention. I was gone ten days.

When I got back, I heard there'd been talk that Survey would make an effort to restore some of the artifacts damaged in the explosion. But there's an odd thing about antiquities and damage. If you have, say, a vase that's been scorched by a laser, and it happened during the useful days of the vase, it might actually enhance the value of the object. Especially if we know whose troops were firing the lasers and who was holding the vase.
There's nothing quite so priceless as a pistol that came apart while its heroic owner, say Randall Belmont, was using it to fend off the Hrin during the Last Stand. (The pistol exists, as you probably know, but I doubt there's enough money on the planet to buy it.)

But inflict the damage
after
the object is recovered from the soil, maybe by a careless archeologist cutting too close to it, and the value does a crash dive.

So the attempt went nowhere. Shortly after the restoration rumor first surfaced, Survey announced that it was abandoning the effort. And a few days later, the entire lot of mangled pieces was sold for a song.

Harold Estavez was delighted with White's bracelet.

He was tall, solemn, a man for whom a smile seemed painful. An initial impression suggested he'd never learned to enjoy himself during a long life. He was overcast and gloomy, always awaiting a storm that never arrived, convinced the worst would happen. Alex told me that Estavez felt he'd lost the one great love of his life. I suspected every other woman in the area would have bolted as well.

“Sorry to hear about it,” I said.

“A half century ago. He never got over it.”

However that might have been, I had the pleasure of watching him light up when he received the bracelet.

He called us as soon as the box arrived, and he unwrapped it in our presence. Until that moment he didn't know precisely what he'd gotten. (He'd shushed me when I tried to tell him what we were sending.) But his eyes went wide when he saw gold. And wider still when he saw the engraved name on the bracelet.

Nancy.

By that time, we were getting calls from all our clients, almost everyone on the list. Everybody was interested in the
Polaris.
They'd all heard we'd salvaged some artifacts. Was there perhaps a piece available?

Terribly sorry, we told them. Wish we could oblige.

I was glad we kept the jacket and the long-stemmed glass. Alex told me he'd intended to get something for me, too, and if I liked the glass, he'd be willing to part with it. But I could read the nonverbals. He wanted
me to decline. I'd have loved to have it at home in my den. But better, I thought, was to have the boss feeling indebted to me. So I told him it was okay, keep it, think nothing of it. I'd see it every day anyhow. He nodded, as if he were doing me a favor by retaining it.

The ship's registry number, CSS 117, had been retired ten years after the incident. No future vessel would ever be so designated. Nor, I suspected, would there be another
Polaris.
The people who name superluminals aren't superstitious. But why tempt fate?

Alex bought a lighted display case for the jacket, which went into a corner of the office, near a cabinet and away from the imager. I folded and refolded it until it looked the way it should, with Maddy's name (which was sewn over the left-hand breast pocket) visible. We closed and locked the case, and stood for a minute or two admiring our new possession.

But where to put the glass? We needed a place where it couldn't be knocked over and wouldn't get dusty. And where there'd be at least a degree of security.

Bookshelves were built into two of the walls. There was also a Stratemeyer antique bookcase, a half century old, that Alex had inherited from his uncle. It had glass doors and could be locked. “Yes,” he said. “It's perfect.”

Not exactly. We had to move it out of range of the imager, so we found ourselves rearranging most of the furniture in the office. But when we were done, it looked good.

Alex stood back to admire the arrangement, opened the bookcase doors, made room on the top shelf, and handed the glass to me to do the honors.

Later that afternoon I got a call from Ida.
“Check the news on sixteen, Chase,”
she said.
“There's a weird piece about the
Polaris.
”

I asked Jacob to take a look, and moments later a man and woman materialized in the office. The woman was Paley McGuire, who was one of CBY's reporters. They were standing beside five packing crates on the dock at Skydeck. A ship's hull protruded into the picture, its cargo doors open.

“—In orbit around the sun, Mr. Everson?”
Paley was asking.

“That's correct, Paley. It seemed the appropriate way to handle this.”
The crates stood higher than he did. But they were, of course, in low gravity. Somebody picked one up and carried it through the cargo doors.

“But what's the point?”
she asked.

Everson was about twenty-five. If you could overlook his age, he had a scholarly appearance, reinforced by a black beard. He was conservatively dressed. Gray eyes, a deportment that suggested maturity beyond his years, and the long thin hands of a pianist.
“In a sense,”
he said
, “these objects are almost sacred. They should be treated with respect. That's what we're doing.”

“Jacob,” I said, “what's in the boxes? Do you know?”

“One minute, ma'am, and I'll review the program.”

Paley watched another one get hauled away.
“How far out will you be going before you jettison them?”

“One doesn't jettison
this
kind of cargo,”
he said.
“One releases it. We'll lay it to rest.”

“Chase,”
said Jacob,
“the crates contain the debris from the bombing at Survey.”

“You mean the artifacts?”

“Yes. What is left of them.”

“So how far,”
asked Paley,
“will you go before you release them?”

“Just to the moon. We're going to leave Skydeck when it lines up with the sun. When the moon lines up with the sun, that is. That'll happen tonight. About 0300 up here. We'll still be on this side of the moon when we let everything go.”

“Mr. Everson, I understand the containers will be going into a solar orbit.”

“Not the containers. We're keeping the containers. Only the ashes will be released—”

“Ashes?”

“We thought it appropriate to reduce everything to ashes. But yes, they'll be in solar orbit. Their average distance from the sun will be eleven point one million kilometers, which is one percent of the distance they were from Delta Kay when they were last heard from.”

McGuire turned and looked directly at Chase.
“So there you have it, folks. A final farewell to the seven heroes of the
Polaris.
Sixty years later.”

I called Alex in. Jacob patched on the beginning, which consisted of no new information, and ran the program again. “You ever hear of this guy?” I asked, when it was finished.

“Never. Jacob, what do you have on Everson?”

“Not much, Alex. He's independently wealthy. Born on Toxicon. Has been on Rimway six years. Owns an estate in East Komron. He runs a school of some sort up there. Morton College. It's a postgrad school for high-IQ types. Not married. No known children. Plays competitive chess. Apparently quite good. And he's on the board of directors of the
Polaris
Society.”

“The
Polaris
Society? What's that?”

“It's a group of enthusiasts. Branches around the world. They stage a convention in Andiquar every year. It's traditionally on the weekend after the date that the
Polaris
was scheduled to arrive home.”

“Which is—?”

“This weekend, as it happens.”

I asked Alex offhandedly whether he'd be interested in going. It was intended as a joke, but he took me seriously. “They're all crazy people,” he said.

Actually, it sounded interesting, and I said so. “They have panels, entertainment, and it might be a chance to meet some new clients.”

He made a face. “I can't imagine any of
our
clients showing up at something like that. But you go ahead. Have a big time.”

Why not? I went to the Society's data bank and read about them. It didn't take long before I decided Alex was right; they were fanatics. The descriptions of the convention made the point: They read pseudoscholarly articles to each other; they played games based on the
Polaris;
they debated the finer points of the incident, whether the onboard lander had been disabled (some swore this had been the case); whether the AI had been a late substitution for the original system; whether the Nancy White who got on board was not the real Nancy White but an evil twin of some sort, and the real one had been living all these years in New York.

They were meeting for three days at the Golden Ring, a midlevel hotel downtown. I showed up the first evening, just as they were getting started.

The Golden Ring is located in the park district. Beautiful area, a patch of forest filled with streams, cobbled walkways, fountains, granby trees, and statuary. It was cold, and the fountains had been turned off. A brisk wind was blowing out of the north.

I went into the lobby, paid my admission fee, got a badge with my name on it, collected a program schedule, and took the elevator up.

Several meeting rooms had been set aside on the second and third floors, and events seemed to be running simultaneously in all of them. I stopped at the bar, picked up a drink, and looked around to see if I recognized anyone. Or, maybe closer to the truth, if there was anyone who might recognize
me.
Walking into a convention of this sort is a bit like showing up at a meeting of astrology buffs or the Gate Keepers (which, if you haven't been paying attention, claim to have the truth about the next world), or that reincarnation group, Onward. But I was surrounded by strangers, so I figuratively pulled up my collar, and stopped outside an open door that said
ALIEN WIND PANEL
.