Infinity Beach Read online

  The walls were mottled and crumbling. A sagging staircase arced up to the second floor where it became a circular balcony. There were several doorways on both levels, and a fireplace on the lower.

  One door hung out of its frame. Others were missing altogether. A central corridor opened off the rear of the rotunda directly in front of her and ran to the back of the house. Solly pointed his lamp into it, and they saw at the far end a flight of stairs leading down.

  The floor creaked. “Careful where you put your weight,” he said.

  Everything was covered with leaves and dirt. The ground-level rooms looked empty. Kim swung her lamp beam up, trying to see through the second-floor doorways. Shadows moved around the walls.

  “I don’t think we’ll find much here,” Solly said.

  Claws scrabbled across a hard surface. An animal retreated from the light, but she couldn’t see what it was.

  “Probably a squirrel,” said Solly.

  “Or a rat.”

  The wind howled around the house. Branches creaked.

  Had she been alone, she would have called it off at that point and gone back to the flyer. She had met, and exceeded, her obligation to Sheyel. To Emily.

  But they’d come all this way and Solly would expect her at least to look in the rooms.

  Stairs first. Go up and confront the rat. Solly took the lead, testing each step as they went. The entire structure swayed and sank under their weight. Near the top a board gave way underfoot. He lost his balance and grabbed the banister, which sagged outward. Solly would have gone down the quick way had Kim not grabbed him and hauled him back. She took a moment to compare herself favorably with the young woman at the Germane Society.

  “This might not be a really good idea,” he said, shaken. They went cautiously the rest of the way to the top and peeked quickly through each doorway. In some, ceilings had given way. The rooms were filled with dirt and dry leaves. Carpets had turned to mold.

  They found a broken bed frame and a bureau with no drawers, a smashed table, a couple of chairs. The smell of the place was strong.

  Pipes stuck out from broken walls. Basins, tubs, and showers were filled with the detritus of decades.

  They went back downstairs.

  The rooms at ground level were not quite so ill-used because they were slightly less open to the elements. But here again no usable furniture was left. Cables hung out of ceilings, the floors were in a state of decay, and they found a dead, half-eaten squirrel in a corner behind a collapsed table whose top, when she cleared it off, had a chessboard design. Kim had read somewhere that Kane enjoyed the game and wondered whether he and Tripley had ever played here. And if so, who had won.

  She crossed to the kitchen and dining areas, found a broken chair and shattered pottery. Weeds pushed up through the floor.

  Solly was standing in the middle of the rotunda, idly shining his lamp around, bored, shivering, ready to go.

  Kim walked back to the down-stairway at the rear of the house. “Let’s take a quick look,” she said, testing the handrail.

  “Careful,” he cautioned.

  The stairs sank under her weight. “Maybe you should stay here,” she said. “I’m not sure it’ll support you.”

  He thought about it, looked at the stairway, pushed at the rail and watched the structure sway. Then he pointed his light down into the room below. It looked harmless enough, with a long table, a couple of chairs, and several trash bags stacked against a wall.

  “I think we ought to just pass,” he said.

  “Only take a minute.” She went down, testing each step, and was glad to get off at the bottom. The basement was less cold and damp than the rest of the house.

  There were three rooms and a bath. She found a broken sofa decaying in one, and some carpets stacked up in another.

  The table had data feeds, housings, and connections for electronic equipment. A mount hung from the ceiling. Probably for a VR unit.

  “See anything?” asked Solly. The beam from his lamp illuminated the stairway.

  “It was a workroom or lab at one time. I’ll be up in a minute.”

  The walls were cedar-paneled, and they’d held up fairly well. The floor was artificial brick. There were magnets where pictures or plaques had once hung.

  “Well,” she said, “that’s interesting.”

  “What is?” called Solly.

  The stairway started to swing. “Don’t try to come down,” she said. “It’s a trash can.” With the imprint EIV 4471886. She checked her notes: It was Hunter’s designator.

  It was half-filled with metal parts and crumpled paper and rags. There were expended cartridges of compressed air and cleaning fluid canisters and an empty wine bottle. She found food wrappers and packing for computer disks and reams of printed pages.

  They consisted of lists of names, possibly donors for the Foundation; financial statements; purchase records; test results for various engine configurations; and all kinds of other data whose purpose she couldn’t make out. But all had dates, and the most recent she could find was January 8, 573. Before Tripley had left on the last Hunter voyage.

  Several of the trash bags had been ripped open, probably by animals. She turned them over one by one and spilled their contents, finding corroded cables and hardened towels and dust cloths and battered monitor housings and interfaces and juice cartons.

  Someone more thorough than she was might have been willing to take the time to go methodically through the trash. Who knew what might be there? But it was getting colder. And it seemed pointless.

  The wind moved through the house like something alive. There were noises in the walls and tree limbs brushed windows upstairs. She turned the beam around the room, watching the darkness retreat and close in again.

  “I don’t think there’s anything here,” she told Solly. “I’ll be up in a minute.” She hoisted herself onto the table, took off her shoes and socks, and rubbed her feet, which had lost all feeling. When she got the circulation going she turned the socks inside out. It didn’t help much because they were stiff and cold, but it was something.

  When she was finished she dropped back onto the floor. Amid the debris, she saw a woman’s shoe. It was impossible to know what color it had originally been, but it had a curious kind of fibrous sole, unlike any she’d seen before.

  What was it?

  She put it into her utility bag.

  “Kim.” Solly’s voice betrayed impatience. “Are we ready yet?”

  “Coming up,” she said.

  He provided light, angling his lamp so it wouldn’t be in her eyes, told her to be careful, and appeared to be holding his breath, waiting for the staircase to collapse. She was about halfway up when a support broke and the whole structure dropped a few centimeters. She grabbed for the rail. He leaned forward as if to come to her aid but instantly thought better of adding his weight to hers. In that moment her own lamp silhouetted him, and she saw something draw back into the darkness.

  She froze, the swaying staircase forgotten.

  “Take your time,” said Solly.

  She was sure she had seen it.

  A piece of the darkness that infested the house. A piece that had broken off and withdrawn.

  When she got to the top she swung her beam around the kitchen, looked into the doorways, and stepped out into the middle of the rotunda to survey the upper level.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Solly.

  There were shadows everywhere. “Nothing,” she said.

  He knew better, but he didn’t pursue the issue, other than to follow her eyes. “I don’t guess you found anything?”

  She held out the shoe. “Ever see one like this?”

  He played his light over it. “Sure,” he said. “It’s a grip shoe.”

  “A what?”

  “A grip shoe.” He took it from her and pushed it against a wall. It stuck momentarily, and then fell. “Well,” he said, “it’s kind of beat up, but they’re used on starships in zero-gravity si
tuations.”

  “—Used on starships.” She held it against her own foot. Too small. It couldn’t have been Emily’s.

  “What are you thinking, Kim?”

  “Just wondering who it belonged to.”

  The wind had died down and some of the clouds had blown off. Out over the lake, one of the moons had broken through.

  They retraced their steps back down the hill and into the trees. They found the place where they’d doubled back and turned away from the river. Their prints were still deep and clean and they followed them back toward the flyer, moving deliberately, driven by the knowledge that it would be warm and dry in the aircraft.

  But suddenly the prints stopped. In the middle of the trail, they were there, and beyond a certain point, between one step and another, they were not.

  “The wind must have covered them over,” said Solly.

  They were quite clear here, his large prints, her small; and they were simply missing there. They turned on their lamps. Incredibly, it was as if the two of them, earlier in the evening, had simply materialized out of the air. Materialized with his left footprint, her right, behind which there was only virgin snow.

  She looked behind them, playing her light against the trees and along the trail. Nothing moved. “Yes,” she said. “Must have been the wind.”

  They hurried forward, expecting the tracks to show up again momentarily. The lamp beams bobbed in front of them. Neither spoke now, and Solly picked up Kim’s habit of looking behind at regular intervals.

  “I remember this oak,” she said. “We came right past here. I know we did.” But the snow was deep and apparently undisturbed.

  Eventually the path divided and they hesitated.

  “Which way?” she asked.

  “The lake’s on the left,” whispered Solly. “Stay close to the lake.” Solly seemed unsettled and that positively terrified her.

  They got lost, as was inevitable under the circumstances. At one point Kim caught her jacket on a dog-rose bush and tore it.

  They broke finally into the glade with the tumbled shed and the footprints began again. She should have been glad to see them, but they were simply there, appearing in the middle of the glade, nothing on this side of them except unbroken snow, as if their earlier selves had stepped off the world. The sight chilled her.

  “Keep going,” said Solly.

  That part of the mind which withdraws from fear and watches emotional eruptions with dispatch now suggested she was in a VR scenario, that what she was experiencing could not happen in the real world.

  Or that Sheyel had been right.

  They came out of the tree line and saw the lake and the flyer. Kim fought down an urge to run for it. They walked deliberately across the beach, moving with comic swiftness.

  Behind them, the forest remained dark and quiet. Far off to the east, a string of lights moved against the sky. The train from Terminal Island bound for Eagle Point. Solly keyed the remote and the flyer’s lights came on. The hatch opened and the ladder dropped.

  Out on the water something glimmered. A reflection. A lamp. Something.

  Kim paused long enough to make sure the backseat was empty, and climbed in. Solly followed her and shut the hatch. Ordinarily her first thought would have been to get out of her wet shoes and socks. Instead she sat still while Solly inserted the key card into the dex and punched the GO button.

  “Solomon,” the AI said. “What is our destination?”

  “Up,” Solly said. “Up.”

  5

  Those who rise to the top of organizations, who live to direct others, to wield power, are inevitably afflicted by weak egos, by a need to prove themselves. This explains why they are so easily frightened and so easily manipulated. And why they are so dangerous.

  —SHEYEL TOLLIVER, Notebooks, 482

  “You really weren’t rattled?”

  Solly’s eyes closed and he shook his head sadly, as in the presence of unlimited ignorance. “No, I really wasn’t rattled. I was cold.”

  They were seated over coffee, salad, and fresh fruit in the hotel restaurant, Dean’s Top of the World. The mountains were crisp and clear in the morning sun, and the skyways were already crowded with vacationers. A train had just rounded Mount White and was gliding in over the treetops.

  “Okay,” she said. “Me too.”

  In the daylight, it was hard to believe she’d been so fearful. She’d learned something about herself that she didn’t know, didn’t want to know: She was a coward.

  “It was odd about the tracks, though,” he said.

  “Yes, it was.”

  He frowned and waved it away. “Where are you going to hang the Kane print?”

  “I don’t know. It’s a little somber for my tastes.”

  “Then why didn’t you get something else?”

  “I should have,” she agreed.

  They took almost an hour to finish eating. Kim’s thoughts wandered while they admired the mountains and gorges visible through the window. She felt relieved to be rid of her obligation to Sheyel. We went out and inspected the woods, she would tell him with a clear conscience, and nothing untoward happened. Absolutely nothing. He’d be disappointed, of course. But maybe a dose of reality was what he needed.

  Solly was saying how he’d never learned to ski and was asking whether she knew her way around a pair of poles. She didn’t, and was surprised when he suggested they should come back when their schedules permitted and learn. “There’s a school out on the slopes where they give lessons,” he added.

  She thought she was too old to pick up skiing. But—“I’d be willing to try if you are.”

  He rewarded her with a smile.

  Back at the hotel room, Solly packed while Kim decided to get the call over with. She punched in Sheyel’s code and sat down on the sofa. The AI answered, asked who she was, and put her through immediately.

  “Kim.” He sounded pleased to hear her voice. “It’s good to hear from you so quickly.” He left it on audio only.

  “I’m at Eagle Point,” she said.

  “You’re going into the valley?” he asked.

  “I was there last night.”

  “Wonderful. Oh, by the way, please forgive me. No picture; I’m not dressed.”

  “It’s okay, Sheyel.”

  “Did you see anything?”

  “Like what?”

  “Anything. Anything unusual.”

  Suddenly she couldn’t bring herself to lie to him. “I’m not sure,” she said, throwing her planned response overboard. She described the missing footprints. And she almost told him about the moving shadows she’d seen behind Solly, but that sounded downright paranoid so she let it go.

  “Yes,” he said. “That is precisely the sort of thing that seems to happen regularly out there. Or used to, when there were people in the area.” He recommended a couple of books on the subject and finished by asking if she was still convinced there was nothing strange going on.

  “I think the wind did it, Sheyel.”

  “You really think that’s possible? Well, never mind. What are you going to do next?”

  “What’s to do?” She listened for his answer, but only heard the silence draw out. “Maybe you can do something for me.”

  “If I can.”

  “Do you think you could find out Yoshi’s shoe size?”

  She listened to him thinking about it. “Not easily,” he said at last. “She’s been gone a long time. I doubt any of her shoes were kept.”

  “Was she a clone?”

  “Yes. Oh yes, I see what you mean. Of course.”

  “When you find out, leave the information with Shep.”

  “Very good. I’ll do it today.” Solly came back into the room, ready to go. “May I ask why?”

  “I’ll tell you if it amounts to anything.”

  Kim couldn’t resist suggesting they fly back over the Severin valley. Solly complied and they followed the river south again, this time in broad daylight. It was a bright, c
loudless morning, already unseasonably warm. They watched a train come out of the Culbertson Tunnel, southwest of the city. At twenty-six kilometers, the Culbertson was the longest maglev tunnel in the world.

  They stayed low so they could observe the countryside, gliding over canyons and through rifts. The previous night’s snow had coated everything. Just before passing the dam, they saw a pair of deer strolling casually through a glade. At Kim’s insistence, Solly took the Starlight around, but they were gone.

  They came down low over the lake. Just offshore from Cabry’s Beach, they saw a raft, left from the days when Severin was alive with swimmers. It was bobbing gently, as if waiting for someone to return.

  They zeroed in on Tripley’s villa and spent several minutes inspecting it from the air. It looked even more bleak by day.

  The surrounding area was lonely and beautiful, adorned with its fresh coat of snow, its spruce and oak trees, its towering peaks. The surface of Lake Remorse gleamed in the sun. The skeletal houses provided a grotesque mixture of transience and majesty. Kim wondered what it was about desolation that inevitably seemed so compelling.

  “Seen enough?” asked Solly, for whom flying in circles held no charms.

  She nodded and he directed the AI to take them back to Seabright.

  They rode in silence for the first several minutes. Then Solly reached behind him for the coffee, poured two cups, and handed her one. “How did we get the spot with the Star Queen?” he asked.

  Her mind was picking again at the missing footprints, trying to construct an explanation, anything that was possible. Channeled wind. Local hoaxers. Solly’s question consequently didn’t immediately register and she had to replay it. “Matt has friends everywhere,” she said. “There’ll be a lot of VIPs on hand, and he thought it would be a good PR spot for us.” The old liner was being converted into a hotel. The grand opening was Saturday.

  “Have you reconsidered my suggestion?”

  Lake Remorse drifted off the scopes. “What suggestion is that?”