The Quiet Pools

virus’s progress by monitoring skylink traffic between Munich and Prainha, Munich and Houston.

“We tried to tag it and it stripped the tags. When we finally got system control back, we tried to freeze it and it self-destructed,” the Munich systems supervisor reported to Dryke. “But there must have been a fragment hiding where we couldn’t get it, because when we came up again, it went right after us again and broke our control just like that.”

Jeremiah nodded to himself. In fact, there were five copies of the virus in the system, each waiting their turn to wreak havoc.

“It’s running through the libraries now,” he heard Feist tell Sasaki. “We’re taking nodes out of the network the hard way, pulling blocks and cutting cables as fast as we can. But Mods Five and Six are completely gone.”

More good news. Mod Five was the navigation archive, Mod Six ship management. The only plum left was Three, the command engine.

But the biggest self-satisfied smile came later, when a weary Dryke told Sasaki, “Jeremiah did what we expected him to do. But he didn’t use the door we had open, and we didn’t get him. His virus was better than our antibodies.”

“We are facing a major reconstruction because of that, Mr. Dryke.” Sasaki’s voice was brittle. “It was your job to prevent such a disaster. It was your job to protect our Malena Grahams. And you failed at both.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Dryke snapped back. “You want to give this assfuck job to someone else, go ahead and do it. He beat me. All right? Jeremiah beat me. You got someone else that wants to take a shot, bring ’em on.”

It was not until the excitement in Munich began to fade that Jeremiah thought to ask who Malena Graham was.

Lila’s answer was straightforward and chilling. “A Memphis staff counselor, killed last night near Houston. You are implicated. Stories are in the queue and marked.”

There were dozens of stories, for the murder had taken place fully six hours earlier. Troubled, Jeremiah viewed the stories one after another from the top of the queue, trying to grasp what had happened. Not one of them left him untouched.

When a State Police medtech described in graphic detail the condition of the corpse, Jeremiah’s mouth went dry, and his hands trembled. When Mother Alicia recalled that her daughter was “naive about people, because she wanted to love them,” Jeremiah wept with her. And when Evan Silverman proclaimed proudly that he was “Jeremiah’s hands,” Jeremiah rose out of his chair and raged at the screen.

“Liar—liar! You’re no part of me. Not one fragment. Bastard animal—” Then a horrible fear overtook him. “Lila! Search the archives. Is there anything about this man? Have we had any contact with him?”

“I’m checking,” it said. “Done. There are no entries except for those connected with Malena Graham. We have had no contact with Evan Silverman.”

That calmed him somewhat. “We’re going to do something about this, Lila,” he said. “I won’t let what he said stand unchallenged. I won’t let them think I wanted this.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m going to go real-time. I’ll need you to map out an interrupt. Pick a local station—everyone else can get it from them. I’ll need at least three minutes.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll let you know when it’s ready.”

While he waited, there were more stories. The State Police had the only crime-scene documentaries, but were refusing to release them—a station in Dallas was suing. (“That one,” he told Lila. “They’ll hear me out. Put it through them.”) The Allied Transcon complex was locked down and in mourning, and Hiroko Sasaki was rumored to be there. (He checked other sources: She was still in Prainha.)

But the stunner was one of the late arrivals: a synth-image recreation of the girl’s last hours by the current affairs show Headliner. Somehow they had obtained a recording of the concert which had drawn Malena out into the city, and found her in an audience shot.

With that and Silverman’s interviews as templates, they were able to animate a mockumentary, showing “Malena” walking with her friends from the tram station to the club, leaving the bar with “Silverman,” sitting in his flyer, and, ultimately, lying dead on the ground.

In keeping with Headliner reputation for heavy-handed journalism, the commentary was moralistic and overblown (“But Malena Graham could not resist the temptations of her youthful freedom…”). The ham-fisted essayism extended to using a song from the concert as ironic counterpoint to the images: “Look at me, I’m flying free—”

“Good God,” said Jeremiah. “Lila—who is that?”

“The performer is Christopher McCutcheon, an archaeolibrarian with the Memphis hyper project in Houston.”

“I want to hear the whole song.”

There was a pause. “I’m sorry, it doesn’t appear to be available.”

“Someone has it. Call Headliner.”

“I could contact Christopher directly.”

“No,” said Jeremiah. “Call Headliner. Buy it if you have to.”

“Yes, sir,” said Lila. “By the way, the interrupt you requested is ready now.”

“Keep it current,” said Jeremiah. “I’m not.”

Jeremiah sat back in his chair, hands folded in his lap, eyes unblinking, and watched the recording through to the end. When it was over, he watched it a second time.

“Kill it, Lila,” he said. “No archive.”

Then he rose and left the warren and its screens and queues, left the house, his heart full of pain. His triumph had been stolen from him, trumped by the mocking images which had flickered across the displays. It did not matter if the damage in Munich would delay Memphis ten days or ten months. No amount of time would be enough to dissuade them. They would never turn from their course.

All the proof he needed was contained in the final four minutes of the concert. The last song Christopher sang was the embodiment of unreason, a precis of cultural insanity. Its words revealed every folly of the Diaspora, every bitter truth that poisoned the sweet romance of adventure.

There were no other Edens, no golden paths. There was no glory in a shabby death a long way from home. The final, brutal indictment was the son’s tragically misguided choice—no, not a choice, a received obligation—to carry on his father’s quest. Delicta maiorum immeritus lues.

Yet the audience applauded the waste of lives, acclaimed the embrace of pointless suffering, absolved the father through his son’s blind emulation of a suicidal self-sacrifice.

And the singer accepted the accolades as though that were what he had meant all along.

The agony of Malena’s parents came through to him with new force. “We tried to talk her out of it,” Mother Caroline had said to the reporters. “We pleaded with her to stay. But she wouldn’t listen. What can you do? What can you do when they’ve made up their mind?”

Her helpless feeling echoed his own. He could not touch them. He could not reach their minds or turn their hearts. You will leave me, and I will lose you. That was what Mother Caroline faced, what every family faced. That was the fear which had eaten away at the dreamy idealism of the Diaspora in the years since Ur.

“As far as I’m concerned, she was a runaway, as much as if she’d gone to the streets,” Father Jack had said. “Someone caught her eye with a shiny trinket and a bit of candy and she was gone. She took everything that we’d given her and threw it away. I’m sorry if it sounds hard, but she was dead to me from that day on.”

How many wounds had been left by eight thousand final partings, how many families shattered? How many mates and lovers and children and parents still nursed anger and hurt that they were abandoned? How many that they touched had learned to view the new ship taking shape in orbit as a threat?

“She was a terrific girl,” Father Brett had said. “She brought so much brightness to my life, and now she’s gone. I know we were going to have to say good-bye soon, but I feel cheated. We were expecting her home for Yule, did I say that? And I still half expect to hear her at the door. I loved her and she’s gone. I really haven’t been able to think about anything but that.”