Echo Read online

  “That’s strange,” said Alex.

  “What is?”

  “He talks as if he left a complete record.”

  “You know,” Alex said, “the tablet is going to turn out to be a joke. Something somebody gave him for his birthday. But I guess it doesn’t cost us anything to look.”

  “How long did Tuttle live in the Rindenwood house?” I asked.

  “He was born and died there, Chase.”

  I was watching the time. I’d be leaving in a few minutes for the place. “It seems odd,” I said. “A guy who spent his life exploring the stars but never really left home.”

  Alex was wearing a frumpy University of Andiquar sweater. He noticed it was hanging crooked, unbuttoned it, and fixed it. “Take a contract with you,” he said. “If Ms. Greengrass isn’t at home when you get there, park on her doorstep until she shows up and get her signature. Give her a nominal payment.”

  “How much is nominal?”

  “Twenty-five. No. Make it thirty-five. Just make sure we have everything in writing.” He got up and started for the door. “Chase, I don’t have to tell you—”

  “I know,” I said.

  I prepped a contract and got moving. A light rain had begun to fall as I came out the side door and hurried down the walkway to the pad. Alex keeps saying he’s going to put a roof over the walkway—Andiquar gets a lot of rain—but it never happens. The skimmer lit up as I entered, and said hello.

  It would be a sixteen-minute run to Greengrass’s place.

  Rindenwood was a moneyed area. Some houses looked like Greek temples, others incorporated Aurelian domes and Sanjo towers. No false modesty here anywhere. And not a place where I’d expect to find a government worker. Number 12 in the Gold Range was conservative by local standards, but it was a luxurious place by mine. It was a plastene two-story structure with decks on both levels and a cluster of evergreens out front. Broad lawns opened onto the Melony, where Madeleine Greengrass had a pier and a boathouse.

  I descended onto the pad, sending a passel of spindels fluttering out of the trees. Alex always claimed it was a sign of bad driving when you couldn’t land without scaring the birds. It was pouring by then. I got out, made a dash along a brick walkway, and climbed three or four steps onto the front deck.

  There was no tablet. I stood in front of the door, and the house asked if I needed help.

  “My name’s Kolpath,” I said. “I’m here to pick up the tablet. Ms. Greengrass is expecting me.”

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Kolpath. But the tablet is gone.”

  “Gone? Gone where?”

  “Someone came for it.”

  “She was supposed to hold it for me.”

  “I am sorry. I guess there was a misunderstanding somewhere. But someone else called, and they came right over.”

  “Can you reach her for me? Ms. Greengrass?”

  “Is this an emergency?”

  “It qualifies.”

  “What does?”

  “Let it go. Do you know who it was? Who took the tablet?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you tell me, please?”

  “I’m sorry, but I’m not really permitted to give out that kind of information.”

  “Is Ms. Greengrass home?”

  “No, she isn’t.”

  “When do you expect her?”

  “She will probably be in at the end of the day. After six o’clock.”

  Tim’s people were descending onto the pad as I started back out to the skimmer. They set down beside it and climbed out. There were two of them. One was Clyde Halley, with whom I’d worked before. I didn’t know the other. Clyde was a big beefy guy, and so was his partner. “Problem, Chase?” said Clyde.

  “It’s gone,” I said. “I guess we brought you guys out here for nothing. Sorry.”

  “It happens,” he said. “You’re sure you don’t need us?”

  “Not at the moment, Clyde.” I tipped them both. Then I turned back to the house: “Would you get a message to Ms. Greengrass?”

  “I can put it on her board.”

  “Ask her to call me as soon as she can.”

  “Very good, madame. Is there anything else?”

  “Can you tell me anything at all about the persons who took the tablet?”

  “I’m sorry, but that would not be ethical.”

  Alex was not happy. I can tell because he always starts telling me not to be upset. “This Greengrass should be able to let us know who took it, and we’ll just make an offer.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “We should be able to track it down easily enough.”

  “Maybe whoever took it is thinking the same thing we are.”

  “You mean that it’s an artifact? Not likely.”

  “Why not?”

  “How many academics do you think scan the Rees Market every morning? No, I think somebody just likes white stone and decided it would make a nice garden decoration.”

  Jacob broke in. “Pardon me, Alex,” he said, “but Ms. Wellington would like to speak with you about the Ivar vase.”

  The Ivar vase had stood in a prominent place onstage during the turn-of-the-century hit Showstopper. The problem was that Ms. Wellington, its new owner, had encountered an “expert” who was telling her that her vase was only a duplicate. That the original had been broken during the next-to-last performance. All the paperwork was in place, but Ms. Wellington needed to be reassured she had the original.

  Alex signaled I should go back to work while he got on the circuit with his client. I went down to my office, finished the billing, did some inventory work, recommended to a couple of clients that they not participate in planned trades, and eventually it was time to go home.

  I called Madeleine Greengrass again.

  “Ms. Greengrass is not available. If you wish, leave a message.”

  Well, I wasn’t about to leave the building until I’d found out what the situation was, so I settled in to wait. Alex came down after a while, told me to go home, and promised he’d call as soon as he heard something.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “If you don’t mind, I’ll hang on for a bit.”

  He suggested it was pointless. “It’s much ado about nothing, Chase. Don’t waste your time. Go home and entertain Mack.”

  Mack was my boyfriend of the hour. Alex didn’t especially like him. He was an archeologist, he disapproved of what we did for a living, and he made no effort to hide it. “Years from now, Chase,” he had told me, “you’re going to look back on all this vandalism and grave robbing and selling off antiquities that should be in museums, and you’re going to regret it.”

  Mack was a charmer, and that was the reason he was in a temporary status and not gone altogether. I hoped he might eventually arrive at a more reasonable point of view. At least that was what I kept telling myself.

  I stayed on at the country house. We sent out for sandwiches. Then Alex got caught up in a conference with two people who’d just come back from an excavation at a thousand-year-old military base in a star system I’d never heard of. Of course, there was nothing unusual about that. If you haven’t traveled much off Rimway, you probably have no idea how big it is out there.

  I was sitting in my office, finishing what was left of a pot-roast sub, when Jacob indicated we had a caller. “It’s Professor Wilson. He wants to talk to Alex, but Alex is busy. Did you want to take the call?”

  Wilson appeared to be at home, relaxing in a large fabric armchair. I couldn’t see much of the room, but it had dark-stained panels, and the lighting was subdued. A trophy case guarded a doorway behind him, placed so that it was visible to callers. Concert music rumbled through the background. Heavy stuff. Barankov or somebody, I thought. But the volume was turned down. “Ah, Chase,” he said. “I was calling for Mr. Benedict.”

  “He’s busy at the moment, Professor. I can have him get back to you, if you like.”

  “No, no. I’ve looked again into the tablet engraving. It’s definitely not Late Korb
anic. Which is not a major issue. But there’s nothing like it anywhere in the record. I have found a few similarities to other systems, but nothing close enough that would give us an identification.”

  “What about the Ashiyyur? Could it be a Mute artifact?”

  “Possibly. We don’t have complete information on ourselves, let alone on them.”

  “So we’ve no idea where this thing might have come from.”

  “None. I’d say it’s either a hoax, or you have something quite valuable on your hands. What does Alex think?”

  “I don’t know. I’d guess he’s on the fence.”

  “Well, let me know if I can do anything else.”

  That evening, I finally got through to Greengrass. “Madeleine,” I said, “the tablet was gone when I got there.”

  “I know. Stafford told me.”

  Stafford? That would be the AI. “We think it may have some intrinsic value.”

  “Too late now. It’s gone, Chase.” She had a laid-back manner, probably a result of doing presentations for the visitors at Silesia Park.

  “Can you tell me who took it?”

  “No idea.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I think that’s what I said.”

  “They didn’t give you their names?”

  “I didn’t give my approval for anyone to take it. A couple more people called after you did. I thought I told them it was no longer available, but there might have been a communication breakdown. I don’t know. I just wanted to get rid of it, okay? I’ve no idea where it is now, and I don’t particularly care. I apologize, though, that you made the trip for nothing.”

  “I was hoping you could help us retrieve it.”

  “How valuable do you think it is?”

  “We don’t know yet. Maybe a lot.”

  “Well,” she said, “it’s only money.”

  “Ms. Greengrass, I’m not promising anything, but it might have bought you another house.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “As I say, we don’t know yet. Is there anything you can think of that might help us locate it?”

  “Well, I wish I could. But I just don’t see anything. I don’t even know who those people were.”

  “How about if we take a look at what your AI has. We might be able to identify whoever took it.”

  “Hold on a second,” she said.

  I waited. After a minute or so she relayed some images to me, and we watched two men and a woman walk up onto her porch. The tablet was sitting there, between two chairs. “Madeleine,” I said, “don’t you log skimmers?”

  “Yes, we do. Stafford?”

  “They came in a Sentinel, Madeleine.” Late model. White, split-wing. The woman had dark hair. She was wearing athletic gear, but she looked like money. She knelt to examine the tablet. After a minute or two, she looked up at the others and nodded. The two men, dressed in the same sporting style, moved the chairs out of the way.

  One was big. Broad shoulders, lots of muscle, built close to the ground. He had a black beard and a bald skull. The other male looked a bit thin to be moving rocks. But they took their positions on either side of the tablet and, on a count of three, lifted. The big guy gave directions; they got the tablet off the porch, carried it down to the skimmer, and loaded it into the backseat. The woman joined them, and all three climbed in. We watched the vehicle lift off. They’d been careful about the landing, turning the vehicle so that its designator was never visible.

  “I’ve no idea who they are,” said Greengrass.

  Alex handed me a note. “Try this.”

  A stone tablet was removed yesterday from a front deck in Rindenwood. The tablet, pictured herein, has great sentimental value. Reward. Call Sabol 2113-477.

  We ran it that evening. When I came back into the office next morning, there’d been two responses. “Neither was actually involved with the tablet,” Alex said. “But they did have engravings they wanted to sell us.”

  Alex asked me to call Greengrass again. This time I got her on the first try. “Yes, Ms. Kolpath?” Her eyes slid momentarily shut. “What can I do for you this time?”

  “I’m sorry to bother you—”

  “It’s all right.”

  “We think the tablet was originally left in the house by Sunset Tuttle.”

  “Who?”

  “He was an anthropologist.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you know if there’s anything else you have that might have belonged originally to him?”

  “I don’t know. There are some tennis rackets out back that came with the house. And a swing on a tree. I never met the guy.”

  She was too young to have made the purchase. “If I may ask, how long have you been in the house?”

  “About six years.”

  “Okay. Is there anything around that might have archeological significance? Anything else like the tablet?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “All right. If you find anything, it might be worth money. Please let us know.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. And I hope you find the tablet.”

  THREE

  If we know anything for certain, it is that the universe is virtually empty. Nine thousand years of exploration have revealed the presence of only one technological race, other than ourselves. And while we have always been inclined to mourn something we’ve never had—communion with other entities—you must forgive me if I point out that the cosmos is consequently a far safer place than it might have been. We have seen intelligence in action. The first thing it does is learn how to make axes. And spears. Say what you like about missing the opportunity to enjoy the company of somebody else, I prefer the echoes. And I hope very much that it stays that way.

  —Maria Webber, The Long Voyage

  Alex asked me to set up a conference with Jerry Hagel. The name was vaguely familiar because he was a client, but otherwise I knew nothing about him. So I looked up his profile. Unlike most of the people we served, he wasn’t wealthy. And he had only one very narrow interest: Sunset Tuttle.

  Through Rainbow, Hagel had acquired the Callisto’s AI, and a shirt worn by Tuttle. He also owned a telescope that had been mounted on the ship’s hull, and, incredibly, the interdimensional drive unit. He had a transfer bill signed by him, a reading lamp from the Rindenwood house, and images of the Callisto leaving Skydeck, returning to Skydeck, passing across the face of the moon, and looking down from orbit on Parallax III and several worlds bearing only numerical designations.

  Hagel was an architect. He’d been married three times. The third marriage had recently dissolved. He had a reputation for being a difficult man to work for. And, I guessed, to live with. There were no kids.

  He was an enthusiast for the outer fringes of science. There were no ghosts, he is quoted as saying, but there might be interdimensional echoes that “occasionally leak through the time-space fabric.” And he thought there might be an inflexibility in the quantum mechanical world that eliminated multiple possibilities. That the uncertainty principle was an illusion. “There is no such thing as free will,” he’d once told a gathering of the Lincoln Architects Association. I’m sure they invited him back.

  When I reached him, he was having dinner with guests. There was a lot of noise and laughter in the background while I identified myself. I told him Alex wanted to talk with him when he had a few minutes.

  “Can’t at the moment,” he said. “I’m entertaining friends, but I’ll get back to you as quickly as I can.”

  He was in his skimmer an hour or so later when he called. Alex was out of the building. “What did he want, Chase? Do you know?”

  “He had some questions. About Sunset Tuttle.”

  “What did he want to know?”

  “You’ve always been interested in Tuttle.”

  “Yes. I think I qualify as something of an expert.” He tried to sound modest, as though being an expert on Tuttle was a major achievement.

  “Jerry, do yo
u know of any indication, any rumor, that Tuttle might have found what he was looking for?”

  “You mean aliens?”

  “Yes.”

  He exploded with laughter. “Listen, Chase, if he’d found anything out there, it wouldn’t be necessary to ask about it. He’d have organized a parade. Ridden down Market Street with an alien mayor.”

  “Can you imagine any set of circumstances that might have led him to keep quiet about it?”

  “No. None.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “Well, there was a story that got around at one point, but conspiracy theorists are always with us.”

  “What’s the story?”

  “That he found something so terrible he didn’t dare reveal it. Except to a few people high in the government. So now, the theory goes, there’s an area out there that they keep absolutely secret. Where nobody’s allowed. It’s never been made official, and, naturally, the government denies everything. If you submit a flight plan that takes you anywhere close, they’ll find a reason to deny permission. Impending supernova or something.”

  “Where is this area?”

  “Oh, nobody knows, of course. If people knew, you wouldn’t be able to keep them out.”

  “You don’t think there’s any truth to it? None at all?”

  He broke into a wide grin. “Chase, I know you’re not serious.”

  “No. Of course not. Just kidding.”

  “Unless you guys know something I don’t.” I heard the lander set down. “Have you—?”

  “No.” I tried to sound amused. “I’m just thinking what a great story it would make.”

  The skimmer door opened. “Yes, it certainly would.”

  “Jerry, thanks. We’re just doing some historical research and trying to get a handle on the folklore that surrounds this guy.”