“My God,” she said. “You really think that might be true?”
“Alex does. I still can't get my head around it.”
“It is possible,” she said. “There could be an instability of some kind.”
“What's that mean, exactly, Shara?”
“There might be a discontinuity in the space-time continuum.”
“Which means what? That the space-time continuum is broken?”
“You could put it that way. Space is made out of rubber.” She grinned at my reaction. “I don't know how else to put it. Chase, we know space can be bent. We get a demonstration of it every time somebody trips over something. Or falls off a roof.”
“Okay.”
“If it can be bent, it can be twisted out of shape. Distorted. The same thing's true of time, and that might be what we're seeing here.” She went on like that for several minutes, talking about how time in transdimensional space doesn't flow the same way it does in normal space. And that if it gets disrupted, really strange things can happen. I listened, and when she'd finished, I made no effort to hide what I was thinking.
“I don't guess that was very clear,” she said.
It was hard not to laugh. “I love physics, Shara.”
She held up her hands in surrender. “Sorry.”
“So people have been getting killed for thousands of years because there's an instability. And nothing ever changes. Don't we notice when ships go missing?”
“I guess not. It happens so seldom. We lose a ship every thirty years or so, and we get excited for a few weeks, then we forget. When you think of the literally tens of thousands of flights that run safely for every one that we lose, I guess it's easy to overlook.”
“I guess it is.”
“The reality of it is that nobody seriously believes there's a problem. Every now and then, you'll have a breakdown of some kind. Or maybe an inebriated pilot. Or a defective rotor. Whatever. We assume, correctly, that there is no single cause.
“Chase, I know this is personal for you and Alex. And I'm sorry. If Robin actually found something, he never told anybody. At least not that we know of. There was supposed to be a notebook somewhere, but nobody's ever come up with it. Maybe if we could find that, it would help.” Her eyes locked with mine. “It's painful to think about it, but if Robin had been more open, he might have gotten some support. Maybe, if that had happened, we wouldn't have lost the Capella. And the Abonai.” She took a deep breath.
There was a picture of Gabe on the far wall of my office. He was holding a trowel in one hand and a bone in the other. A hip bone. I was looking at it, thinking how everything might have been so different, when Alex walked in. “Shara called,” I said.
Three minutes later, he was on the circuit with her.
“We need his notes,” she told him. “You've provided some evidence that might persuade a few people to look at the problem. But even if we could get working seriously on this, it could take years. What we need is to find out what Robin knew. Do that, and things would go a whole lot quicker. One way or the other.”
When she'd disconnected, Alex sat quietly, looking at nothing in particular.
I let it go for a minute or two. “You okay?” I asked, finally.
“Yes.”
“Alex-”
“You know,” he said, “I could live with the knowledge that the Capella came apart, and they all died. That it was over in a short time. It's what I'd always assumed anyhow. But this sounds as if they may have been diverted somewhere. Down some tunnel that never ends. Like the Sanusar vehicle with the woman screaming at the window. Imagine what that would be like: twenty-six hundred people trapped in one of those tin cans with limited food and water, knowing there's no way out.” His eyes had grown dark.
“I'm sorry, Alex.”
“So am I.” He looked up at the clock. Rubbed his forehead. I thought about the picture we'd seen, of Robin walking through the terminal, carrying two pieces of luggage and the notebook. Find him, find the notebook. “Got to get back to work. I have to meet Colby in an hour.”
I didn't know who Colby was, and at the moment I didn't care much. “Alex,” I said, “you're probably never going to get completely away from this. But it's part of the price of being alive. We all lose people we care about. I know you can't let it go. But once you recognize that, that it's part of who you are, maybe it'll be a little easier to live with. Gabe would have been pleased to know you cared this much.”
He walked to the door, paused as if to respond, but let it go.
“Chase,” said Jacob. “Incoming from Belle.”
“Put it through.”
1806: Chase, we've arrived at the second marker and have begun scanning the area for the Firebird. Will let you know immediately if we detect anything.
TWENTY-SEVEN
There are such things as ghosts, Henry. Your mistake is that you assume they j are inevitably the spirits of people who have died. But many things leave a I presence when they have ceased to exist: a childhood home, a lost jacket, a school that has been torn down to make a parking lot. Go back to the street where the home existed, visit the parking lot on a quiet afternoon, stop by the field where you removed the jacket and laid it on the ground while you played ball, and you will feel their presence as you never did in the mundane world.
We got a call from a tall, well-pressed guy with sandy hair and an expression that suggested he'd just come from a funeral. His name was Riko Calvekio. He identified himself as representing United Transport, and asked for an appointment to see Alex. “He'll be available this afternoon,” I told him. “At three.”
He showed up on the hour, still looking like a man in mourning. I took him back to Alex's office. Alex was studying his display screen. He raised a hand, signaling that he'd be with us momentarily. When, after a few seconds, he turned his attention toward us, I did the introductions. Our visitor smiled politely, looked at me, then at Alex, and the smile grew defensive. “I wonder if we can do this privately?” he said.
“No need, Mr. Calvekio. Ms. Kolpath has always been quite discreet.” Alex has commented that he likes to have me present when he senses someone is going to try to put pressure on him. He thinks they tend to turn things down a notch.
“Very good.” Calvekio used a tone that suggested it was anything but. He sat down. “Mr. Benedict-may I call you Alex?”
“Of course.”
“Alex.” Calvekio was suddenly talking to an old buddy from high-school days. Somebody he knew he could trust. “You were at the meeting of the Chris Robin Society recently.”
“Last month, yes.”
“Some of our employees are members of the same group. We've known for a long time that Robin was interested in the sightings.” He crossed one leg over the other. “It's a pity he died early. Or whatever it was.”
“Yes, it is.”
“The reality, though, is that he was chasing a false premise.”
“And what is that?”
“Well, he seems to have thought there was something defective in the interstellar-drive units. That, if he could uncover it, it would become possible to stop these accidents from happening. But he couldn't find anything. That's because there is no defect.”
I got them some coffee. “Mr. Calvekio,” said Alex, “why are you coming to us with this?”
“Because you're about to blame this problem on the drive. May I point out that this is the same technology
