Infinity Beach Page 5

  “Really? What did he want?”

  “He wants me to look into her disappearance.”

  “Oh.”

  “What happened to you, Emily? Where on earth did you go that night?”

  “I wish I knew. I really do.” She used her heel to draw a line through the sand. “What does he think you can do that hasn’t already been done?”

  “You know the stories about Mount Hope.”

  “I know that Markis would never try to steal a fuel cell. Or at least I know that if he did, he’d succeed and wouldn’t blow everybody up.”

  Kim leaned forward in her chair. She would have liked to embrace Emily, to hold onto her, to prevent her inevitable retreat into the shades. “Sheyel says there’s something strange about the valley. He’s implying you brought something back with you. And it got loose.”

  She sighed. “What can I say to that? Your former teacher shouldn’t be allowed out by himself.”

  Kim looked past her, out onto the lake. “Emily, did you ever have any reason to distrust either of them? Kane or Tripley?”

  “No,” she said. “Kile was a little erratic. But I’d have trusted him with my life. In a heartbeat.”

  “And Kane?”

  “Markis was a man you meet once in a lifetime. I hope one day you’re as fortunate, Kim.”

  “How about Yoshi?”

  “Yoshi. I can’t really answer that because I barely knew her prior to the last mission. She seemed okay. A little shallow. But she was very young.”

  They had talked about the disappearance before, years ago. And it was unlikely that Shep could have fed her fresh information. Yet framing questions for Emily helped her think.

  “I’ve agreed to go up to the Severin Valley with Solly.”

  “Why?”

  “To look for whatever you brought back from wherever you were.”

  “Well, I hope Solly’s good company. Because other than that, you’ll be in for a long trip.” She tilted her head. “It’s cool out here.”

  Kim felt only the warmth of the living room. “I miss you, Emily. I wish you’d come back.”

  “I know—I’m sorry. I wish there were a way to do it all again. And have it come out differently.”

  3

  When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with such applause in the lecture room,

  How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick; Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

  —WALT WHITMAN, Leaves of Grass, 1865, C.E.

  The Germane Society held its monthly luncheon on the first Saturday of the month, at the Pioneer Hotel in downtown Seabright. They sponsored exceptional students for extended education grants, provided emotional support for those who had begun their final decline, and underwrote the Midwinter Carnival. They also tried, each month, to reward someone for outstanding service.

  On the day that Kim attended, the award was presented to a nineteen-year-old woman who’d rescued her mountain climber buddy from falling to his death. Watching the presentation, Kim was impressed by the woman’s exploit, which had required her to hold on to him for almost ten minutes while he dangled from the lip of a deep gorge.

  The thought of cliff-hanging heroics chilled Kim, who doubted she could imitate the feat. Still, the young woman was nervous in front of the audience. She hung her head and mumbled her acceptance, and Kim took a degree of perverse satisfaction in that. We all have our demons.

  They read the minutes from the last meeting, took some motions, heard the results of the annual midwinter tree sale. And then it was her turn.

  The emcee read her bio from the printed card she’d given him. It identified her as an astrophysicist with a specialty in galactic evolution. During the business portion of the luncheon someone had argued that they needed to think big about a proposal to expand membership, and the emcee couldn’t resist inserting a lame joke that someone who thought about galaxy construction was just the person they needed. She rose to polite applause.

  They were a good audience. She had an advantage at these affairs because everybody expected to be bored silly by an astrophysicist. She’d learned long ago that the correct way to begin with a group was to violate the old adage about starting with a gag. Her aim was to win them over and she always did that by recognizing the work performed by her listeners and glamorizing it where she could. When she spoke to librarians she described them as the guardians of civilization. Teachers were the first line of defense. For service groups, like the Germane Society, she offered a similar tack.

  She started by congratulating the young mountain climber on her courage. “People these days are inclined to tell us we’re all going downhill,” she said. “But I have to tell you, as long as we have people like Amy here, we’ll be all right.” The woman blushed prettily. “If I could be certain that, in a hundred years, the Germane Society will still be here, still recognizing the heroes among us, and still providing help where needed, then I’d have no qualms about the future of the Republic.”

  Now of course she had them.

  She compared their goals with those of the Institute, stretching the facts a little, because the Institute didn’t go out of its way to help anybody, not directly at least. But that was okay. People did profit in the long run from scientific advance. And if the forward movement was slower than it used to be, that was all right too. Her listeners were concerned about where the nation was going. They were interested in the Beacon Project, and anxious to show they weren’t among those who thought stars were sacred.

  “If eventually,” she concluded, “the program gets a response, and someone shows up to see what we’re really like, I believe I’d try to bring them over here to sit down with you folks and have lunch. I know that would get everything off to a good start. Thank you very much.” She stepped away from the lectern as her audience broke into enthusiastic applause, and sat down. Overall time consumed was roughly thirteen minutes.

  Solly, waiting just outside the entrance to the dining room, had caught most of it. “You have no shame at all,” he said, when they were alone.

  She grinned. “To be honest, if I could arrange to have our first visitors eat with the Germane Society, instead of with the Council, I’d do it in a minute.”

  Solly had rented a lime-colored, twin-mag Starlight for the flight to the Severin Valley. They went up to the roof and climbed in.

  “I expected to go by train,” she said.

  “We always take trains,” he replied. “I thought it would be nice to fly for a change.”

  “Okay. How about we make for Eagle Point? Get settled in there first.”

  He turned on the magnetics and they lifted off the pad and headed west.

  Kim had spent much of the previous evening researching Severin legends and folklore. There were indeed tales of apparitions, of strange lights, of voices in the forest. There had been for years, long before the Mount Hope incident. But there did seem to have been an acceleration, although much of that might be attributed to efforts by residents of nearby Eagle Point to drum up the tourist trade.

  Severin’s prime claim to fame, at the time of the incident, was that it had been the home of Markis Kane. Artist. War hero. Starship captain. The lone survivor of the Hunter.

  And fan of Eve Colon’s classic detective, Veronica King. Kane had served a term as president of the Scarlet Sleeve Society, a group dedicated to the sleuth and named for one of her more celebrated exploits.

  During Greenway’s war with Pacifica, the sole interworld conflict in history, he’d been captain of the famed 376, and was probably best known for the attack on the Hammurabi, the only capital ship ever put out of action by a single escort vessel.

  When peace came, Kane left the fleet and spent half a century piloting vessels around the Nine Worlds and their outposts. He compiled an exemplary record, engendered no complaint by any employer, no problem of any kind. His cre
ws were unfailingly loyal, and no one seemed to have a bad word to say about him.

  Kim used the Starlight’s AI to bring up photos: Kane at flight school on Earth’s moon, Kane as a young lieutenant in Greenway’s self-defense force, Kane running a tug, Kane in full-dress uniform. She found six wedding pictures, and six brides; a certificate of appreciation from the Severin Valley Art Society; a graduation picture, Kane at eighteen, wearing a smirk that bordered on the mischievous. She found several commendations, Kane retaining control of a cargo ship after its main engines had started an explosive decompression, Kane rescuing a lost child during a Severin flood, Kane talking a suicide down from a window.

  He favored decorated shirts and loose trousers tucked into ankle boots. And flashy tunics and wide sashes. In later pictures, after his time with the Tripley Foundation, he’d grown a black beard and let his hair grow to shoulder length. Something about the man in those later years had darkened, intensified. The older Markis Kane gazed out of his photos with equal parts disdain and resignation.

  And there was Kane the artist. His posted work consisted primarily of portraits, landscapes, and a few experimental paintings. Most of the portraits were of women. One, dated 575, two years after the Hunter, shocked her.

  “That’s you,” said Solly.

  “My God.” It was Emily.

  “He was using your sister for a model?”

  She looked at the date again. “More or less. He must have used a virtual. This was done two years after she disappeared.”

  Emily was posed near a window through which one could see a late summer forest, heaped leaves, and, rising over the trees, a ringed world. Her jacket was draped carelessly over her shoulders, leaving one breast exposed, yet there was no hint of erotic intent. Indeed Emily was simultaneously lovely and forlorn. The work was titled Autumn.

  “You’re a little out in the open there,” Solly said.

  Autumn, as well as several other pieces, was housed in a gallery at Eagle Point. It might be worth taking a look at them. “Why was he still using Emily?” she wondered.

  Solly’s face was green in the glow of the instrument panel. “I wouldn’t expect him to do that unless—”

  “What?”

  “I’d guess he was in love with her.”

  “Or she was still alive.”

  “Or both,” he said. “It’s a possibility.”

  A story dated 576, three years after the disaster, described how Kane had paid his debts, closed out his accounts, said goodbye to his few friends, and watched the waters of the Severin close over his villa. That was when they took down the dam. He moved to Terminal City.

  The flyer crossed the Takonda River, which more or less marked the middle of Equatoria. They ran into a rain storm at about the same time, and the afternoon turned cold. Solly was in a talkative mood, going on about Mount Hope, and how he hoped there would really turn out to be something there. She had mixed feelings, would have liked to solve the old mystery, would have done anything to find out what had happened to Emily. But on the other hand she knew she didn’t want to run into whatever had unnerved Sheyel.

  They flew into the twilight. The countryside became progressively rougher. Mountains rose around them. The storm got worse and high winds began to buffet the aircraft. Solly went higher until they could look down on the turbulence.

  Eventually the landscape opened out into cultivated areas and farm buildings, silos and lakes. They watched a train moving smoothly across the treetops through the approaching twilight. Then woodland again, broken by a lone house or, enigmatically, a tennis court or swimming pool. There were no roads, of course.

  Over 75 percent of Greenway’s population was concentrated in its towns, which were scattered across her thousands of islands, or buried in Equatorian forests. The half-dozen or so major cities of the Republic were now the province of those who pursued active careers, or those who were looking for mates. The rest of the world was satisfied to live near trees and cardinals, watch the train come in once a day, and spend their afternoons fishing.

  Eagle Point was by local standards a small metropolis. It straddled both banks of the Severin, thirty-three kilometers north of Mount Hope. Its two sections were connected by a pair of exquisitely designed bridges, which, according to the townspeople, visitors came to see from all over Greenway. Eagle Point also featured skiing on several world-class slopes, natural hot springs, a magnificent walkway seven hundred meters over Dead Man’s Gorge, seven major casinos, and the Cartoonists’ Hall of Fame.

  They arrived in the gathering twilight, landed atop the Gateway Inn, checked in, and got directions to the Gould Art Gallery, which was located at ground level a block from the hotel. A man in a heavy black sweater was just finishing with a customer when they arrived. Although he bore no physical indication of advancing age, he moved with a deliberation that suggested he was well along in his second century. “Are you Mr. Gould?” Kim asked.

  The man brightened and bowed slightly. “Yes,” he said. “Please call me Jorge. Would you like something hot to drink?”

  They accepted some cider and Kim introduced herself and Solly. Gould had a print of Lisa Barton’s Evening on Lyra on display. It was an example of the empyrean school, those works which embodied off-world themes to achieve their effects. The Barton was a self-portrait, depicting the artist in an armchair on a clearly hostile moonscape, contemplating a globular cluster floating over a nearby ridge. Kim had read that the globular cluster in the painting was the one in Serpens, twenty-seven thousand light-years away, vastly outside the human bubble. The painting radiated nobility, solitude, and grandeur, of both the nebula and the woman.

  The proprietor noted her interest. “There are only one hundred prints,” he said. “Signed by the artist herself. I can let you have this one at a very reasonable price.”

  “Thank you, no,” she said. “But I am interested in Markis Kane. You have his Autumn, I understand?”

  “Oh yes. One of his best.” He gazed at Kim, frowned, and sucked in his breath. “That’s remarkable,” he whispered. “Is it really you?” His voice trembled.

  Kim had never seen the man before and she was momentarily at a loss to understand his reaction. “Emily,” he said. Solly moved closer to her.

  The model for Autumn.

  Kim smiled. “No,” she said. “It’s not me.”

  Gould stood back to get a better view. He pressed his lips together and nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I’d thought the model had died. Before he did the painting.” He shook his head. “Nevertheless, you are a close match. Are you connected in some way?”

  “I’m her sister.”

  He pulled his sweater tightly around him, as if to protect from a sudden chill. “I’m sorry. It was thoughtless of me.”

  “It’s quite all right, Mr. Gould. It’s been a long time.”

  “Yes. Of course.” He studied her. “You’re as lovely as she.”

  “Thank you. You’re very kind.”

  He paused and collected himself. “As I say, I do have the Autumn. But it’s not for sale.”

  Solly glanced at her. He expects to hit us pretty hard.

  “It’s for display only,” the proprietor continued. “It’s really quite valuable.”

  “May we see it?” asked Kim.

  “Of course.” He still did not move, still gazed at Kim’s features.

  She wanted to break the paralysis. “Tell me about Markis Kane,” she said.

  “We have five originals by him. Other than the Autumn. One of them, Glory, also uses Emily as the model.” He led the way through a door at the rear of the building and turned on the lights. Autumn was set in an exquisite, hand-carved wooden frame, mounted on an easel. More lights blinked on, designed to show the work to maximum effect.

  Kim studied it. The woman in the window. The line of frost. The leaf-covered lawn. The ringed world just touching the tops of the trees. The planet was setting. There was no conscious way to make that determination, but she knew it to
be true. A couple of crescent moons that she didn’t recall from the online image drifted through the gathering night.

  Autumn radiated loss. The trees writhed in a dark wind, the giant planet was painted in October colors, and even its rings suggested dissolution.

  Emily looked both beautiful and melancholy.

  “He’s pretty good,” Solly commented, “for a pilot.”

  “He’s one of the best we’ve had,” said Gould. “The world is just beginning to recognize it.”

  Glory was named for the largest of Greenway’s satellites. Emily was posed dreamily against a track of moonlit water. Shoulders bare, one hand laid along her cheek, eyes luminous and thoughtful. It was dated three years before the flight.

  Tora was a portrait of Kane’s daughter at about ten. In River Voyage, a handful of rafters try to hang on in rock-strewn white water. Night Passage depicted an interstellar liner passing a cobalt-blue gas giant.

  Kim asked for the dates. All four preceded the Hunter incident. “Is it my imagination,” she asked Gould, “or is there a change in tone between his earlier and later work?”

  “Oh,” he said, “there very certainly is.” He touched a keyboard. A screen lit up and they were looking at Bringing the Mail, a painting of a freighter crossing a nebula. The freighter was squat and gray, bleak, its running lights casting eerie shadows across the superstructure. The nebula silhouetted the starship, emitting a twilight glow. “This is his last known work.”

  “Everything after Mount Hope seems kind of downbeat,” said Solly.

  “Oh yes. Beginning with this one.” He brought up a landscape. “His work entered a dark period from which it never really emerged. This is Storm Warning, from 574.” They were looking at distorted trees, ruins in the distance silhouetted against summer lightning, churning clouds. “When he becomes recognized as a major figure, people will recognize this as the first major work of his gothic phase.”

  “Did you know him?” asked Kim. “Personally?”

  “I knew him quite well. When he lived in the area.”