The Quiet Pools

trouble holding his own.

In one of their few conversations on the subject of William McCutcheon, Deryn had told him, “Your father doesn’t know how to be anything other than what he is. Try to appreciate what’s best in him, and try not to take the rest personally.”

It had seemed an odd thing to say. His father’s flaws were not the problem—it was his own flaws that Christopher felt so acutely. Measured against his father’s accomplishments, Christopher found his own achievements shabby and wanting. It was the same at fifteen, at twenty-five, as it had been in the open-eyed infant years. Mere age and physical stature had changed nothing. He could still only see his father by looking up.

Even more, Christopher knew that he did not yet truly understand his father, that he did not yet see him clearly. There were unresolved paradoxes in William McCutcheon. Quick-witted, but he used his humor as a weapon. An incisive thinker, but close-minded and stubborn. A genteel, well-spoken man who could turn curt and coldly dismissive in an eye-blink. Who drew people to him, and yet had opted to live alone for the last dozen years.

Somehow, he was all of those things. And the pieces would not fit together, frustrating Christopher’s quest to close with this man who still, at more than a decade’s remove, from half a continent away, piped the tune to which Christopher danced.

William McCutcheon.

Father.

The moment it cleared the Portland flight-restriction zone, the Avanti Eagle carrying William and Christopher McCutcheon home soared skyward five hundred meters and surged forward at full thrust through the night. The diffuse glow of Hillsboro and Beaverton, the scattered lights of the wheelies and skimmers bound to Highway 26, fell away below and then behind them.

Still Christopher pressed his face to the window, more hiding than watching.

His father had not met him at the gate, but paged him instead from the pickup curb. That was both annoying and merciful— merciful because it avoided any waiting-lounge hugs or other embarrassing efforts at intimacy. All Christopher had to do was clamber in, flash a quick smile and say “Hello, Father” to the man driving, and settle back in his seat.

The Eagle, a six-figure six-seater appointed with expensive natural fibers and a whisper-quiet extended-range flight package, was new since Christopher had last seen his father. Letting him relate its pleasures and mysteries had avoided the inevitable awkwardness for the first few minutes; sight-seeing and reminiscing had postponed it still further. But his father did not do his part in fueling the idle chatter, and Christopher had run out of landmarks.

“Not much to see out there,” his father said.

Innocent enough words from anyone else’s mouth, the observation struck Christopher as a reproach. “More than I saw the whole way up,” he said truthfully.

“But what’s to see from the tube?” William McCutcheon asked. “Houses stacked one upon the other like cancer cells, and serving as little purpose. Consider yourself lucky, Christopher. The railway designers were kind.”

“I think the engineers had the last word, not the designers.”

“If the engineers had had the last word, there’d be no windows in the cars at all,” McCutcheon said, downshifting into a lecture. “If you want to look out, look up. You’ll never see a night as clear as this one in Salem or Sacramento or San Bernardino, not with the haze hanging and the sick-sodium halo.”

“Maybe so,” Christopher said, heading it off. “But I wish it was daytime. The stars are the same here as in Texas. What I’d like is a look at Mount Hood.”

“I expect it looks more or less like it did the last time you saw it,” McCutcheon said.

“Wyeast,” Christopher said. “That’s what the Indians called it. Did you know that?”

“Wyesr,” his father said, correcting his pronunciation. “Yes, I knew that.” He shook his head. “Why I know it, I couldn’t tell you.”

The correction irritated Christopher. “Maybe Deryn told you,” he said, the mention of her name a bold bit of defiance.

“She used to tell me Nisqually and Okanagon stories—how the Coyote made the Columbia, the story of the Changer.”

“Did she.” His father’s voice was cold.

“I’d forgotten until a few weeks ago, when I indexed a book of Indian legends.” He laughed. “It’s odd. The Indians were here for hundreds of years, but we name the mountain after a British admiral who never even saw it. Doesn’t seem right, somehow.”

“ ‘Das Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht,’ ” his father quoted. “The world’s history is the world’s judgment, now as in Schiller’s time. We’re here—where are the Nisqually? Mount Hood will do for us. Or are you rewriting history down there in Houston as you compile it?”

“No,” Christopher said. “But there’s more than one history of the world, I’m discovering. And the Nisqually’s version has a place in the library along with ours.”

To Christopher’s surprise, his father surrendered the point. “Fairly answered,” McCutcheon said. “How is your work going?”

Another surprise. Christopher felt as though he had wandered into conversational quicksand. “There’s too much of it, and not enough of us,” was his cautious reply. “Or enough time.”

“That’s regrettable,” McCutcheon said. “The work you’re doing is valuable. It is, to my mind, the only worthwhile aspect of the Diaspora Project.”

Allowing his surprise to show, Christopher said, “I didn’t think you approved of my being there.”

“You’re not going to Tau Ceti,” McCutcheon said matter-of-factly. “You’re not even helping those who are going to leave. What you’re doing is helping us find knowledge we’ve lost.”

“On the payroll of Allied Transcon.”

McCutcheon gestured with his right hand as though waving off an irrelevancy. “Do you realize how many people believe that everything we know is in DIANNA? That it’s the first and last source? The Authority. But it only contains the tenth part of everything we are.”

“It’s a digest. An electronic encyclopedia,” Christopher said. “That’s all it was ever meant to be.”

“And the more we come to depend on it, the more its weaknesses show. Washington knows that. And Allied Transcon knows that. It’s inevitable that DIANNA will be upgraded with the Memphis hyperlibrary. The only issue is the price.”

Christopher was slow to answer. “I’m surprised to hear you say that.”

“That I value learning? That I believe in the Twenty-ninth amendment? Access to information doesn’t mean much when all you have access to is rewritten secondhand truth.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Christopher said. “I’m just surprised to hear that you support anything that Allied is doing. In fact, I imagined you celebrating what happened this week.”

“Celebrating? Why?”

“Because of what you’ve said before.”

“What I’ve said is that I object to the obscene expenditure of energy—human and otherwise—on such a dubious enterprise. And you agreed with me, as I recall. Have you changed your mind?”

“No,” Christopher said, wondering if he had agreed or merely acceded. “It’s just that I thought you’d be happy to see the Project stopped.”

” Did you celebrate?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Christopher considered. “I suppose because I don’t think it can be stopped. All Homeworld can accomplish is to make it more expensive. And maybe convince a few pioneers to change their minds and stay here.”

Ahead, a single light atop a dark tree-covered ridge marked their destination. It seemed as though William McCutcheon fixed on it and did not hear. Then he shook his head.

“Earth is better off without them,” he said, his voice cold. “She is full, and she is tired. Why should we try to stop them? They’re the ones who want more from her than she has left to give. I don’t begrudge their leaving. We