An ocean was visible, but it was far enough away that it might have been nothing more than a distant lake. We set down on a pad, climbed out, and went into the hotel.
Tereza was in the lobby, seated near a window with three men and a woman. She stood and smiled as we came in. “Chase?” she said. “And Alex. How nice to meet you. I've heard so much about you.”
She hadn't aged much in a half century. She had black hair, smooth skin, lemon-colored eyes, and a quiet dignity that imposed itself on her surroundings. She introduced us around the table. They were members of the literary group, and they'd apparently been talking about the weather. And before you leap to judgment, keep in mind that the weather on Sanusar wasn't anything like whatever world the visitors had come from. But that day, with sunlight and relatively warm temperatures, it was all anyone could have asked.
“Yesterday,” said one of the tourists, “it was forty below.”
We joined the conversation, were asked what we did for a living and whether we'd like some drinks. After a few minutes, Tereza excused herself from her guests and took us to a side room, where we sat down around a table. “You're, of course, welcome to stay if you like,” she said. “I hope you will, but I don't want to waste your time. How can I help you?”
Alex leaned forward. “Tereza,” he said, “we're trying to get a handle on the sighting fifty years ago. The ship that-”
“I know,” she said.
“You were on duty when it happened.”
“Yes. That's correct.”
“We've seen the record of the incident. And we were hoping you might be able to add something.”
“I don't know what else-?”
“Your husband once described you as having never been the same after the incident.”
She blinked and smiled. “There's some truth to that, I guess.” Outside, in the lobby, somebody put on some music. It was slow and moody.
Alex waited quietly.
Her eyes focused somewhere behind us. “The record that you saw was edited.”
“Why?”
“We had some decent images of the ports.”
Alex leaned forward. “It's okay,” he said. “What did you see?”
“There was a woman at one of them. She appeared to be banging on it. She looked hysterical.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I'm sure.” Those lemon eyes grew sad. “The investigators confiscated everything. When, later, the record was released, that part of it was missing.”
“Did you talk to them? The investigators?”
“My boss did. He said they told him it was our imagination. That she was never there.” She shook her head. “We all saw it, Alex. God help me, we all saw it.”
Jack McDevitt
Firebird
PART II
Villanueva
Jack McDevitt
Firebird
The future of our species lies hidden in its past.
— Wolfgang Corbin, Let's Hear It for the Infidels, 6615 C.E.
“Why would they edit it out?” I asked, as we lifted away from Ocean-side.
“Public relations again,” said Alex. “We don't know who conducted the investigation, whether it was StarCorps or local. But they had a woman in distress. Worse, pictures of a woman in distress. They don't have a clue who she is, or what the ship is, or where it went. There were no reports of anyone in trouble. All vehicles were accounted for.” He looked down at the landscape. “How would they explain it to an aroused public?”
The ride home was somber. Alex buried himself in a book and barely spoke until we'd made the jump back into our home system. When I asked him whether we were ready to back away from the entire business, he said that he was disappointed in me. “You give up too easily, Chase.”
“So where do we go from here?”
“Winter.”
“What?”
“William Winter. Robin's friend. The one who died on Indikar. I think it's time we tried to find out what actually happened.”
Two days later, we were on a glide train crossing the continent. At Port Leo we got off, and spent the night at the Amerada Hotel. I'm embarrassed to admit that I had a little too much to drink and became part of the floor show. I don't usually do stuff like that, and I probably wouldn't have if Alex had been down in the club with me, but he wasn't, and I began thinking how maybe those people who were saying you should enjoy yourself while you can, have a big time as long as nobody gets hurt because you don't have forever, maybe they're right. So I joined two or three other women at the center of the party.
In the morning, I felt a bit guilty, and Alex was surprised when I told him I was going to have breakfast in my room. I didn't want to take a chance on running into anybody from the previous evening. But I could tell from the way Alex was talking to me that he knew something had happened. He didn't comment, though. And at noon, under a brilliant, cloudless sky, we checked out, rented a skimmer, and rode to Taraska.
Taraska is rugged country, valleys and ridges partially submerged in thick forest, lots of rock, and two very large mountains. It's a place for people who'd probably rather be living on an island or on the back side of the Moon except that they like the services that come with being within reach of civilization. And they had a taste for architecture. There were a couple of stores, two cafes, a nightclub, a church, and a city hall in the center of town, all quite elegant. Private homes were widely separated across the area, and were a trifle ostentatious, equipped with towers, domes, and arches.
The townspeople were convivial, though. They hung out in the cafes, or in the nightclub. Or at one another's houses. They threw a lot of parties, or so we were informed. And I had no trouble believing it.
William Winter's son, also named William, lived in a three-story house with columns and spires and circular windows. The lawn was beautifully manicured, and two lines of Salonika trees shaded the property. “What's he do for a living?” I asked Alex.
“As far as I can tell, he just sits on his front deck and watches the flowers grow.”
“Where'd the family money come from, do you know?”
“It's been there for generations.”
The landscape seemed utterly still as we began our descent. Their AI asked us to identify ourselves. “Alex Benedict,” I said. “We have an appointment with Mr. Winter.”
“Very good. Welcome to Whitcover.” We discovered later that every house in Taraska has a name. There were, for example, Burlingame and Epicenter and Pyrrhus. Burlingame had, we were told, been picked out of a hat. The owner of Epicenter was a geologist, and Pyrrhus was the property of a family that claimed to be descended from Greeks. A gray-white boulder dominated the lawn of Whitcover.
The AI sounded a bit snobbish. And we wondered why Winter didn't soften the greeting. This didn't look like an area that had problems with salesmen or the Lord's Messengers.
We touched down a minute or two later, and the AI instructed us to proceed to the front deck. We got out, dropped onto a stone pathway, walked to the front of the house, and climbed five marble stairs onto the porch. It was beautiful country. A soft breeze rustled the trees, flowers bloomed, and birds twittered. The door opened, and
