Chindi Read online

  She’d starred in Heat, Lost in Paradise, and a dozen other sims, but was best known for her Cassel-winning performance as the murderous Stephanie in Affair of the Heart. It was during the publicity run-up to Affair that she’d arranged to meet her husband-du-jour, Edward Prescott, at the Wheel.

  Sandy (as he was known to his inner circle) was then at the height of his career. He’d become famous portraying the archeologist-adventurer, Jack Hancock. And he had succumbed to the tiresome notion that he was Jack Hancock. So he’d gone out to Pinnacle and gotten his picture taken standing around with the real archeologists. And when he’d come home, the studio had thought it would be a good idea if Alyx, with her newest epic about to open around the world, showed up to greet him.

  She’d done all that could reasonably be expected, looking tearfully ecstatic as the Linda Callista slipped into dock, throwing her arms around him when he emerged from the exit tube, and standing admiringly by his side as he blathered on about the Temple of Kalu or whatever it had been. Her passion for Sandy had gone a long way toward collapse by then, but on that occasion she replaced it with another love affair, one that had never cooled.

  The Callista.

  The superluminal.

  It lay there, tethered fore and aft, drawn against the dock, straining to get free and head back out among the stars. It was as if the silly season had arrived, as if she was six years old again. But she’d never really gotten beyond the Earth before. Always she’d been half-absorbed in the glare of her own celebrity. She’d stood there that day, her stomach queasy because she only weighed about thirty pounds and had not yet gotten used to it. The imagers had been taking their pictures, and Sandy wrapped one arm protectively around her and squared his shoulders and flashed that boyish smile, and she’d obligingly kissed his cheek, keeping her eye the whole time on the Callista, which lay beckoning just beyond the observation port that stretched the entire length of the wall until it curved out of sight in both directions.

  It was an awkward, drab gray vessel, with all kinds of antennas and dishes sticking out of it. It was divided into segments so that it looked like a pregnant beetle. Linda Callista was drawn in dark blue script on the bow, and a row of soft lights spilled out of the bridge.

  Later, she’d cornered the captain. “Where does it go?”

  He’d been a short, slightly overweight man. Not particularly good-looking. Not at all the romantic type she’d visualized piloting a starship. She’d seen enough sims to know what they were supposed to look like. Hell, she’d made one, several years earlier, in which Carmichael Conn had played the captain. Well, Conn hadn’t been much of a romantic, either, now that she thought about it. But he looked the part. This one—his name was Captain Crook, so even that didn’t work—struck her as having all the drive of an insurance statistician.

  “It goes out to Pinnacle, mostly,” Captain Crook had explained. “And to the stations. And sometimes to Quraqua and Beta Pac.”

  “Does it ever go anywhere nobody’s been before?” She’d felt like a child, especially when he smiled paternally at her.

  “No,” he said. “The Callista has a routine schedule, Ms. Ballinger. It doesn’t go anywhere that doesn’t already have a hotel and restaurant on hand.”

  He’d thought that was just impossibly funny, and his face broke up into a grin that made her think of a bulldog with a feather up its rear.

  SHE’D GONE DOWN in the shuttle with a horde of other people, but there was no help for it because the damned thing only ran once an hour or something like that. But it had a bar and the studio people had managed to clear an area for her and Sandy.

  Sandy gabbled all the way to the bottom. If she’d ever retained any of what he’d said, it was long gone. She knew only that she wanted to go back up and get on board the Callisto and ride it out to the stars. But not to Harvey’s Steak house and the Lynn-Wyatt. No, ma’am. Give me the wide open, get me out of the trolley lanes, and let’s go where it’s dark and strange and anything can happen.

  She mentioned it to Sandy, with whom she seldom talked about anything that was important. He’d patted her on the head in that infuriating you’re-my-little-puppy way of his and told her sure, we can do that, we’ll get to it as soon as our schedule permits. Which meant, of course, that they would never do it.

  But it didn’t matter because Sandy came up for renewal less than a year later, and she jettisoned him.

  NEVERTHELESS, SHE DIDN’T go. Life has a way of getting busy and keeping people on the run. Her career branched out. She starting directing, and when that went well she formed a production company. The production company made some highly successful musical sims. She negotiated an invitation to take a unit on tour for live shows. They’d gone to London and New York, Berlin and Toronto. And in a sense they never went home.

  But Alyx never quite got the Callisto out of her head. Sometimes it showed up at night as her last conscious thought, and sometimes it arrived with the morning alarm, when she began to reassemble what needed to be done that day. It became a kind of lost lover.

  But there was a problem with the Callisto. It was chained, locked into a schedule much like the airbus that flew between Churchill and the London theater district. Back and forth. When she conjured up the great ship she understood that it wasn’t intended to run back and forth between familiar places. It was designed to go out into the night. To see what was there. And to bring stuff back.

  What kind of stuff?

  Something.

  News of cloud cities. Of electrical intelligences. Of incorporeal beings.

  Some of these ideas even found their way into her shows. She did two interstellar fantasies, Here for the Weekend and Starstruck, and both had been successful. She’d even done a cameo in the latter, as a ship’s doctor trying to deal with a plague that kills inhibitions.

  She met George during the cast party to celebrate the opening of Here for the Weekend. They were in New York, and her lighting director, Freddy Chubb, knew George, had been aware he’d be in the audience, and had invited him up to the bash. The party was being held in a suite rented for the purpose in the Solomon Loft, just a couple of blocks from the Empress, where the show was running.

  George was a bit rough around the edges, but she’d liked him, and it didn’t take much time for them to uncover mutual interests. Starships. Mysterious places beyond the circle of exploration. Voices that called from the vast dark wilderness. The trouble with Callisto.

  “What they need,” Alyx told him, “is a playwright or a choreographer, or somebody like her, to go out with the survey teams. Somebody who’d take time, when the ships drifted through the ring systems of worlds never seen before, to consider what was being accomplished. To measure the significance of it all. And to find a way to get it onstage.”

  George had nodded knowingly, in complete agreement. “Something else we need,” he said, “is to build a fleet of Callistos. Did you know we’re doing very little survey work?” George was big, in the sense that he had presence. He simply walked into a room, and people came to attention. He was already drawing interested glances. “The Academy’s resources,” he said, “are concentrated now on terraforming, and on examining the ruins at a handful of worlds. And on doing some astrophysical research. But the survey vessels are down to fewer than a dozen.”

  They were standing near a window, looking out at an overcast sky. Alyx was, of course, aware of the effect she had on men, of the effect she had on everybody. Since reaching adulthood, she could not recall ever failing to get her way. She knew that, and she liked to believe it hadn’t spoiled her. That under the glamour and the power she was just the girl next door. Except maybe a bit prettier and a lot smarter. “I wish there were something I could do,” she said.

  It was how Alyx became the public face of the Contact Society. And why, five years later, George invited her along on the Memphis mission.

  HERMAN CULP, WHO had defended the young George Hockelmann at the Richard Dover Elementary School and late
r at Southwest High, graduated into a decent government job, not much challenge, and not much money, but the pay came regularly, and it was enough to afford a comfortable existence. He had a problem picking wives though, and went through three of them by the time he reached thirty. Each filed for divorce within a year of the wedding.

  Emma was different. She loved him, and she didn’t expect him to be anything other than what he was. And Herman knew he wasn’t the quickest horse in the barn. But she worked hard and added her income to his, so they got by. She tolerated his Saturdays with his old gang, even when he limped home after a day of tag football. She didn’t even mind his heading off with George on their annual hunting trips to Canada. “Have a good time,” she’d tell them as they pulled away in the hauler. “Don’t shoot one another.”

  He knew that she genuinely worried about the guns, that she didn’t entirely trust them, and he wished there were a way to reassure her, to convince her that they knew what they were doing, that they were safer in the woods in each other’s company than she was at home.

  When George founded the Contact Society, it was more or less natural that Herman would become a charter member. Actually, Herman lacked the imagination, or the naiveté, to take aliens seriously, and he would never have gotten involved on his own. He saw it, in fact, as not much different from one of those ghost-hunter groups that ran around using sensors in haunted houses. But they needed someone to do the administrative work, and George depended on him.

  When the invitation had come to go out to 1107, Herman had thought of it as a kind of extended hunting trip. “Sure,” he said, confident that Emma wouldn’t object.

  And she didn’t. But after he began to understand where they were going, and what they were looking for, he almost wished she had.

  chapter 5

  Cruise by Orion, swing north at Sagittarius, lay over a bit at Rigel. Starflight has always sounded impossibly romantic. The reality is somewhat different. One sits sealed in a narrow container for weeks at a time amid strangers who prattle on, and at the end of the voyage arrives at a place where the air’s not so good and the crocodiles are fierce.

  —MELINDA TAM,

  LIFE AMONG THE SAVAGES, 2221

  HUTCH CAUGHT THE after-dinner commuter flight out of Atlanta and arrived on the Wheel a bit after 1:00 A.M., GMT, the standard used on all off-Earth ships and stations. For her, it was still early evening.

  She checked into her room, showered, and changed. She eased into one of the outfits she’d picked up in D.C., gold slacks, white blouse, gold lapels, clasp, and neckerchief. Open collar, revealing a hint of curved flesh. She had to be a bit careful there, because she didn’t really have a lot more than a hint, but she’d been around long enough to know that it was mystery rather than flesh that really counted.

  This was the ensemble she’d planned for Preach. Well, another day. She checked herself out in the mirror. Smiled. Preened.

  Pretty good, actually. She was, at the very least, competitive. Ten minutes later she entered the dining room at Margo’s, on the A Level.

  Because the Wheel served flights arriving from and departing to points all over the globe, it never really slept. Its service facilities never closed, and a substantial portion of its staff stood always ready to assist. Or to sell souvenirs or overpriced jewelry.

  Margo’s was never quiet. It was divided into a breakfast kitchen, a dining room, and a “penthouse” bar that featured live and virtual entertainment. The theory was that people who were having breakfast didn’t want to have it next to a group beginning an all-night binge.

  She was trailing behind the host when she heard her name. “Captain Hutchins?”

  A casually dressed man with a crooked smile rose from a nearby table, where he’d been eating alone. “Hello,” he said. “I’m Herman Culp. One of your passengers.”

  Hutch offered her hand. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Culp. How’d you recognize me?”

  “You’re pretty well known,” he said. “That business on Deepsix last year. You must get asked for autographs everywhere you go.”

  He was unfailingly polite, and yet there was something rough-hewn in his manner. He was aware of the impression he made, she thought, and he worked a bit too hard at maintaining his dignity. Consequently he came off as stilted and flat. Everything sounded rehearsed, but not clearly remembered. “I’m a friend of George’s,” he said.

  Hutch hadn’t yet looked at her passenger manifest. “A member of the Contact Society, Mr. Culp?” She tried to say it without implying the goofiness she assigned to the group.

  But he caught her. The man was more perceptive than he looked. “I’m the general secretary,” he said. “And please call me Herman.”

  “Ah,” she said. “That must keep you busy, Herman.”

  He nodded and looked at one of the empty seats. “Can I persuade you to join me, Captain?”

  Hutch smiled. “Thanks,” she said. She disliked eating alone, but Herman looked like fairly dull company. Nevertheless, she settled into a chair. It was already beginning to look like a long mission.

  “I’ve been trying to find George,” Herman said.

  “I haven’t met him,” said Hutch.

  That seemed to throw him off pace somewhat. “So.” He floundered a bit, looking for a subject of mutual interest, “Will we be leaving on schedule?”

  “Far as I know, Herman.” The waiter came and took her order. A blue giraffe and a melted cheese.

  “I saw the Memphis today,” he said. “It’s a beautiful ship.”

  She caught a touch of reluctance in his eyes. This wasn’t a guy, she decided, who really wanted to go along. “Yes, it is. Top of the line, they tell me.”

  He looked at her suddenly. “Do we really expect to find something out there?”

  “I suspect you’d know more about that than I do, Herman. What do you think?”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  Ah. Strong feelings here.

  He pressed his palms together. Another rehearsed move. “May I ask a question? How safe is this kind of ship?”

  “Perfectly,” she said.

  “I understand people get ill sometimes when they do the jump.”

  “Sometimes. Not usually.” She smiled reassuringly. “I doubt you’ll have any problems.”

  “I’m relieved to hear it,” he said.

  Her order came.

  “I don’t like heights,” he added.

  SHE ENCOUNTERED A second passenger at poolside an hour later.

  “Peter Damon,” he said, bowing slightly. “I was on the Benny.”

  She knew him immediately, of course. The onetime host of Universe. “Stand on a hilltop and look at the night sky and you’re really looking back at the distant past, at the world the way it was when Athens ruled the inland sea.” Oh yes, she’d recognize those dark, amused eyes and that mellifluous voice anywhere. He wore a blue hotel robe and was sipping a lime drink. “You’re our pilot, I understand.”

  “You’re going out with us?” She knew he’d been on the original mission, but had not for a moment expected him to show up for this one.

  “Yes,” he said. “Is that okay with you?” He said it lightly, gently. The man oozed charm.

  “Sure. I just thought—” Damn. She should take a look at the passenger manifest before she did anything else.

  “—that I’d have more important things to do than chase shadows?” Before she could answer, he continued. “This is what I’ve been after my whole life. If anything’s waiting out there, Priscilla, I want to be there when we find it.”

  Priscilla. Well, he’d done his homework more thoroughly than she had. “My friends call me Hutch.”

  “I know. Hutch.”

  She felt as if this guy was swallowing her alive. My God, she needed desperately to get out and around a bit more.

  “Glad to meet you, Peter.” She extended a hand and eased into a chair beside him.

  “The Academy treats these people too lightly,” he said. “T
hey’re hung up on the Fourth Floor.” Where the administrative offices were. “I really hope something comes of this mission.”

  “You actually think there’s something to all this?”

  “Probably not,” he said. “But I’d love to see somebody like George get credit for the biggest discovery in the history of the species, while the horses’ asses get left behind.” His eyes radiated pleasure. “If there’s a God,” he said, “this is His chance to show He has a sense of humor.”

  The pool was empty save for a muscular young man tirelessly doing laps. Hutch watched him for several seconds. “I hope you get your wish,” she said.

  He finished off his drink and put the glass down on a side table. “You’re skeptical.”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. One should always be skeptical. That’s always been our problem. We have too many believers.”

  “Believers in what?”

  “In everything.”

  The swimmer hit the end of the pool, turned under, and started back. He was smooth. An attendant came by and took a drink order. A young couple wandered in, glanced around, and apparently recognized Pete. They came over, looked hard, and came still closer. “Aren’t you Peter Damon?” the woman asked. The man stood back a bit, looking embarrassed.

  “Yes,” said Pete.

  She smiled, bit her lip, told him she wished she had something for him to sign. When they were gone, Hutch asked whether that sort of thing happened regularly.

  “Fairly often,” he said. “Balm for the ego.”

  “I guess.” And then: “There’s something to be said for faith.”

  “In yourself, Hutch. But you already know that.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “I know about you. I’m the one who asked for you.”

  SHE WAS UP late next morning, had a quick breakfast, and reported to the operations officer. She knew by then that she’d be picking up two passengers, an artist and a funeral director (of all things), en route. And she’d have another celebrity on board, Alyx Ballinger, who’d begun as a star of musicals and later went downhill (Hutch thought) to playing beautiful women in danger. Nobody, it had been said, could scream like Alyx. It was said to be a riveting sound that froze the blood and moved every male to want to leap to her defense.