Polaris (29 page)

It occurred to me belatedly that I should have worn a wig, or done something else to change my appearance.

I scanned the crowd, looking for Kiernan. There was no sign of him, but I was still a few minutes early. I stayed close to a group of tourists who were gathered at the edge of the pool. They were mostly standing with their heads back, looking up. I did much the same, while trying to keep an eye on my ground-level surroundings.

I'd assumed coming out that I was reasonably safe. But I began thinking how easy it would be to pick somebody off at that location. There were lots of bushes and trees lining the pool, and still more scattered across the Square. Any of them could hide a sniper. For that matter there was nothing to stop a killer from walking up alongside me and using a knife. It would be over before I knew there was a problem.

So I kept my back to the pool, tried to watch the shrubbery, tried to watch everything.

A family of three paused in front of me and took pictures of the Tower. On the far side of the pool, someone squealed in delight, and I saw running kids.

It was past the designated hour.

If he'd been unable to get here, he would have called. Right? Tried to get a delay.

A security bot wheeled past.

An older man with three or four people in tow explained how young he had been when he'd first gone there, and how the city had changed since then.

A couple of lovers strode by, holding hands, absorbed in each other.

A skimmer drifted down, hovered over the pool, then hurried away. A couple of people tossed coins into the water and smiled at each other.

The crowd opened up a bit, but I still saw no sign of Kiernan.

A group of young boys, all about twelve or thirteen, invaded the area. A kuwallah team, judging by their jackets. Two men were with them. The kids charged to the front of the Tower, and one of the men tried to slow them down.

I imagined Kiernan speeding through the night, trying to get there before I left to tell me—what? That it had all been some sort of terrible mistake? Nothing personal, you understand.

Off to my right, in the direction of the Archives, someone screamed. I heard the sound of running, then spotlights began to come on. It was a frosty sort of illumination.

People were moving toward the Archives.

Whatever was happening, I decided it was prudent to stay clear, to remain where I was. Lights appeared in the sky and began to descend. Security bots hurried past and cleared a perimeter. Within minutes, emergency and police units had arrived.

Word got passed around that someone had fallen from the roof of the Archives. “A man,” they said.

The emergency vehicles touched down. I threw caution aside and tried to get close. I arrived just in time to see somebody carried into a med unit. Moments later it lifted away.

Police officers fanned out through the crowd looking for witnesses.

Kiernan never showed up.

I wasn't entirely surprised when Fenn called in the morning to tell us about the man who'd been killed at the Archives. “Identified him from Ida's pictures,” he said. “It's Kiernan. The same guy. No question.”

Alex told him I'd been there. Fenn's expression hardened.
“You're not going to be satisfied until you get yourself killed, are you, Chase?”

“I tried to call.”

“Next time try harder.”

“It won't happen again,” said Alex.

“You keep telling me that. I can't protect you if I don't know what's going on.”

I told him about Kiernan's call. He listened. Nodded. Scribbled something down.
“All right,”
he said.
“Thanks. We've got his DNA, and we are working now on establishing who he is.”

“Good. Let us know, okay?”

“If you hear anything more from these people,
anything
, would you be good enough to contact me? Right away?”

We cannot excise death from the process. If we sincerely wish to keep grandparents and elderly friends, and eventually ourselves, in full flower for an indefinite period, we had best be prepared to give up having children. But do that, and the creativity and the genius and the laughter will abandon the species. We will simply become old people in young bodies. And all that makes us human will cease to be.

—Garth Urquhart, Freedom Day Address, 1361

The AI at the Epstein Retreat, Dunninger's longtime lab, had been named Flash, after a pet retriever. Three days after the departure of the
Polaris,
campers had gotten careless. The timber was dry, a fire wasn't properly put out, and the woods caught. The lab was completely destroyed.

When we'd gotten tired trying to figure out what Kiernan had wanted to tell us, we went back to trying to decipher the nonverbal communication between Dunninger and Mendoza. Eventually we got around to looking at the news coverage of the fire.

The blaze was already out of control when the media arrived. The fire brigade was only a few minutes behind, but by then the area was an inferno.

Epstein was located on a bank of the Big River. The facility consisted of two white one-story mod buildings, the living quarters, and the laboratory. At one time they'd been a boating facility and restaurant. There'd been rumors that Dunninger had been close to a solution to the Crabtree
problem, but I had trouble believing he'd have gone off to a distant star system if he'd been on the verge of making the greatest discovery in history.

The fire had completely engulfed the lab. The buildings themselves, of course, resisted the flames, but the forest came all the way out to the water, so everything around them had burned. Lab materials burst into flame, or melted. In the end, the Epstein structures still stood, charred and smoking, but nothing else survived.

There was no serious effort to save the facility. Apparently some private homes along the western rim of the valley had been in danger, and the firefighters went there first. By the time anyone got near the laboratory it was too late. Judging from what we learned of the blaze, it wouldn't have mattered in any case. There'd been a long drought, and the trees went up like tinder.

Flash was gone, too. The AI, not the dog. The core material for Dunninger's work on life extension, which he called, simply, the Project, had not yet been submitted for peer review. It was gone as well. Up in smoke, you might say. Had he maintained a duplicate data bank elsewhere? Probably. But no one knew where it might be, or how it might be accessed.

There were no fatalities during the incident, and most of the homes on the western perimeter were saved. The rescue services congratulated themselves, and the media reported how fortunate everyone was, how it could easily have been a disaster.

Alex wanted to hear how Dunninger had responded when he heard the news, but his reaction never made the public nets. We dug around and discovered that his response to the damage was listed in the Environmental Service archives. But to get into those we'd have to make application and provide an explanation for the request. “We should take a run out there tomorrow,” he said. “Get a look at the records.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Afterward we can go to lunch.” Alex enjoyed his lunches.

The Environmental Services Department is located along the perimeter of a preserve named Cobbler Green, about ten kilometers southwest of Andiquar. It's a quiet area favored in the daytime by young mothers and in the evening by lovers. Sable trees, flowering bushes, sculpted brooks,
curving walkways, traditional and virtual statuary. The building itself is, in the spirit of the neighborhood, an unadorned two-story structure covered with vines.

We walked into the main lobby, which was manned by an autoprocessor.
“Good morning,”
it said in a gender-neutral voice.
“How may I help you?”

Alex explained that we wanted to see the
Polaris
record that would detail Thomas Dunninger's response to the news that his laboratory had been destroyed. “Thirteen sixty-five,” he added.

“Very good,”
it said.
“There is a corresponding archive. The application forms are displayed. Please use the designated headbands.”

We sat down at a table, put on the headbands, and the applications appeared. We each completed one, citing antiquity background (whatever that might mean) as the purpose. A few minutes later, we were directed to an inner cubicle. A bored-looking middle-aged man in a Forestry Service uniform appeared and introduced himself as Chagal, or Chackal, or something like that. He directed us to a screen, told us to call him if we needed help, turned, and left. An access board powered up, and the screen turned on.

We got some numbers and a tag identifying the date and time of the desired communication. Fourth day of the flight, 1365, audio only. We listened to a station comm officer inform the
Polaris,
attention Dr. Dunninger, that a forest fire had destroyed the Epstein laboratory.
“At this time,”
the officer said,
“reports indicate complete destruction of the facility. Nothing of value is believed to have survived other than the buildings, and they are damaged. This includes, unfortunately, the AI.”

A reply came back two days later. It was Madeleine's voice:
“Skydeck, the news of the fire has been passed as you requested. If there's anything additional, please let us know.”
Then she signed off.

“That's it?” I asked.

Alex exhaled. “Damn.”

“I thought he'd get on the circuit and demand details. How it happened. Whether there was anything at all left. Stuff like that.”

“Apparently not. Of course,
complete destruction
pretty much says it.” We got up and started for the door.

“So what now?” I asked.

“How far's Epstein?”

The Epstein Retreat had been located in West Chibong, in the north country. We booked a flight, left that evening, and got into Wahiri Central shortly after midnight. Not good planning. We checked into a hotel and set out the following morning in a taxi.

West Chibong is exactly what it sounds like: isolated, remote, one of those places where, once you get beyond the town limits, there's nothing for a hundred kilometers in any direction except mountains and forest. The Big River runs through the area, providing good fishing, according to the locals, and, of course, it features the Wainwright Falls.

Alex told the taxi to pass over the Epstein site. It didn't have any idea what he was talking about so he sighed and directed it instead to take us to Special Services, which housed Air Rescue, Forest, and Environment.

It was headquartered in a big, grungy, domed building downtown. Not exactly ramshackle, but close. The interior was impersonal, drab, damp, not a place where you'd want to work. I'd expected to find pictures of the rescue services in action, skimmers dropping chemicals on blazing trees, emergency technicians tending to victims, patrols chasing a runaway boat through rapids. But the walls were undecorated, save for a few dusty portraits of elderly men and women you probably wouldn't have wanted to have over for dinner. There'd been a time when I'd thought briefly about doing something like this for a living. The rescue services especially had always seemed glamorous. And it would have been nice to dedicate my life to helping people in trouble. But I either grew out of it or found out the pay wasn't very good.

“Yes, folks,”
said an AI.
“What can I do for you?”
Sexy voice. This was going to be a unit made up primarily of young males.

“My name's Benedict,” Alex said. “My associate and I are doing research. I wonder if I could speak with someone for a few minutes? I won't take much time.”

“May I ask the subject of your research, Mr. Benedict?”

“The forest fire in 1365.”

“That's a long time ago, sir. Just a moment, please. I'll see if the duty officer is available.”

The duty officer, despite my expectations, was a woman. She was a tiny creature, early thirties, brown eyes, brown hair. She wore the standard forest green uniform and looked happy to have visitors. “Come on back, people,” she said, leading us down a passageway and into an office. “I understand you want to talk about one of the 1365 fires.”

Uh-oh. “You had more than one?”

She introduced herself as Ranger Jamieson. There was something irrepressible about her. I never saw her again after that interview, but to this day I remember Ranger Jamieson. And I've promised myself I'll find a reason to go back again one day and say hello.

She brought numbers up on her monitor. “Looks like seventeen. Of course, that depends on how you define the term.”

“You had seventeen fires that year?”

She nodded. “It's about average for this region. We only cover a narrow area, but we get droughts on a regular basis. It has to do with the winds. And we have lots of campers, some of them not too bright. We also get a fair number of lightning strikes. In summer or fall, it doesn't take much to start a blaze.”

“The one I'm looking for took out the Epstein Retreat.”

She looked blank. “I beg your pardon?”

Well, there you are. We were assuming everybody on the planet knew about the Epstein lab, but as a matter of fact, a few weeks earlier I hadn't heard of it myself. Alex explained what it did, who'd worked there, what might have been lost. Its connection with the
Polaris
incident.

“How about that?” she said when he'd finished. “I know about the
Polaris.
That's the starship that disappeared back in the last century, right?”

“The passengers disappeared. Not the ship.”

“Oh. Yes, of course. That was odd, wasn't it?”

“Yes, it was.”

“And they never figured out what happened?”

“No.”

Her eyes brushed mine. Okay, so she didn't exactly know about the
Polaris
either. That's not really big news in most people's lives. “And you think there's a connection with the fire?”

“We don't know. Probably not, but the fire happened right after the
Polaris
left.” Alex gave her the specific date.

“Well, let's see what we have, Mr. Benedict.” She sat down in front of a display. “Thermal events, 1365,” she said. Data appeared, and she began running down the list with her index finger. “You know, the problem here is that we've never kept very good records. Especially before 1406.”

“Fourteen oh-six?”

“Don't quote me.”

“Of course not. What happened in 1406?”

“We had a scandal and there was a reorganization.”

“Oh.”

She smiled. “Well, here we are.” She studied the screen, brought up fresh displays, shook her head. “I don't think we have anything that's going to be much help to you, though.” She got out of the way for us, and we looked through the data. It was all technical details, when the fire started, its extent, estimated property loss, analysis of the cause of the blaze, and a few other details.

“What exactly,” asked the ranger, “did you want to know about the fire?”

What did we want? I knew Alex: He was operating on the assumption that he'd recognize it when he saw it. “It says here the cause was careless campers. How much confidence would you have in that conclusion?”

She flicked back and forth in the record, and shrugged. “Actually,” she said, “not much. We always determine the cause of a fire. In the sense that we announce a cause. But—” She paused, cleared her throat, folded her arms. “We're a little more exacting, now. In those years, if they had lightning on a given night, and later there was a fire, lightning was ascribed as the reason unless there was some specific circumstance indicating otherwise. You understand what I'm saying?”

“They made it up as they needed to.”

“I wouldn't want to put it quite that way. It was more like taking a best guess.” She smiled, carefully distancing herself from those long-ago rangers.

“Okay,” Alex said. “Thanks.”

“I wouldn't want you to think that's the way we operate now.”

“Of course not,” said Alex. “You wouldn't have any way of determining where the lab was located, I don't suppose?”

“I can ask around.”

“It was somewhere along the riverbank,” he said.

She brought up the same news report we'd looked at earlier and zeroed in on a river. “That's the Big. It's about forty-five klicks northeast of here. I can give you a marker.”

The marker would allow the skimmer to find it. “Yes, please.”

“Something else. There's a man you might want to talk to. Name's Benny Sanchay. He's been around here a long time. Kind of a regional historian. If anybody can help you, he can.”

Benny was well into his second century. He lived in a small cabin on the edge of town, behind a cluster of low hills. “Sure,” he said, “I remember the fire. There were some complaints later that the rangers let the lab go. Didn't bother with it because they didn't think it was important.”