I knocked.
The house was very still. In one of the trees, something flapped and a limb shook.
I peered through the front window into the living room. It was gloomy in half-light: sofa and two armchairs, an antique desk, and a long glass table. A sweater lay on the table, and a crystal figure of a sea creature which I did not recognize. A doorway led out to another room. Against the doorway was a trophy case. It was filled with rocks of various kinds, all of which were labeled. Samples from the outworlds, probably.
The walls were covered with prints, but I was slow to realize what they were: Sanrigal’s Sim at the Hellgate, Marcross’s Corsarius, Isitami’s Maurina, Toldenya’s pensive On the Rock. There were others, with which I was not familiar: a portrait of Tarien Sim, several of Christopher Sim, one of the Dellacondan high country at night, with a lonely figure who must have been Maurina surveying it all from beneath a skeletal tree.
The only portrait that did not seem to be associated with Sim hung near the trophy case. It was of a modern starship, ablaze with light, warm and living against strange constellations. I wondered whether it was the Tenandrome.
I knew what Scott looked like. In fact, I’d brought a couple of photos with me, though both were old. He was tall, dark-skinned, dark-eyed. But there was a diffidence in his appearance, a suggestion of reluctance that implied he embodied more of the shopkeeper than a leader of research teams onto alien worlds.
The cottage felt empty. Not abandoned, exactly. But not lived in, either.
I pushed at the windows, hoping to find one open. They were all secured. I circled the house, looking for an entry, and considered whether I could gain anything by breaking in. Probably not, and if the place took my picture in the act, I could be assured of losing Scott’s cooperation, and possibly end with a hefty fine as well.
I took to the air and circled the area. There were maybe a dozen houses within a kilometer or so of Scott’s property. One by one, I descended on them and asked questions, representing myself as a cousin who had found himself unexpectedly on Fishbowl. It appeared that hardly anyone knew Scott by name, and several said they’d wondered who lived in his house.
No one admitted to being more than a casual acquaintance. Pleasant man, they said of him. Quiet. Minds his business. Not easy to get to know.
A woman whom I found pottering about in the garden of an ultra-modern slab-glass house partially supported by gantner light added an ominous note. "He’s changed," she said, her eyes clouding.
"You know him, then?"
"Oh, yes," she said. "We’ve known him for years." She invited me up into a sitting room, disappeared momentarily into her kitchen, and returned with iced herbal drinks. "All we have," she said. "Sorry."
Her name was Nasha. She was a tiny creature, soft-spoken, with luminous eyes, and a fluttery manner that reminded me vaguely of the sandmongers. It was easy to see she’d been beautiful once. But it fades quickly in some people. I thought she seemed pleased to have someone to talk with. "In what way did he change?"
"How well do you know your cousin?" she asked.
"I haven’t seen him in years. Since we were both quite young."
"I haven’t known him that long." She smiled. "But you’re probably aware that Hugh was never much for socializing."
"That’s true," I said. "But he wasn’t really unfriendly," I hazarded. "Just shy."
"Yes," she said. "Though I’m not sure all of his neighbors would agree, I do. He seemed all right to me, solitary if you know what I mean. Kept to himself. Read a lot. Most of the people he worked with would tell you he always seemed pressed for time, or preoccupied. But once you get to know him, he loosens up. He has a wonderful sense of humor, kind of dry, and not everybody appreciates it. My husband thinks he’s one of the funniest people he’s ever known."
"Your husband—"
"—was with him on the Cordagne." She squinted out into the double sunlight. "I’ve always liked Hugh. God knows he’s been good to me. I met him when Josh—my husband—and he were training for the Cordagne flight. We had our kids with us, and we were new to Fishbowl then. We started having power problems. The house was owned by Survey, but their maintenance people couldn’t seem to get things working, particularly the video, and the kids were upset. Going through withdrawal, you know? I don’t know how Hugh found out, but he insisted on switching quarters." She noted that I’d finished the drink, and hurried to refill my glass. "He was like that."
"In what way did he change?"
"I don’t know how to describe it exactly. All the characteristics that used to be eccentricities became extreme. His sense of humor took on a bitter flavor. He used to be somber; but we watched him slip into depression. And if it used to be that he kept to himself, he eventually became a hermit. I doubt many of the people around here have even seen him to talk to in the last couple of years."
"That seems to be true."
"Only the people who worked with him. But there was more. He developed a mean streak. Like when Harv Killian donated half his money to the hospital to get a room named after him. Scott thought that was pathetic. I still remember his remark: He wants to buy what he could never earn. "
"Immortality," I said.
She nodded. "He told Killian that to his face. Harv never spoke to him again."
"Seems cruel."
"There was a time Scott wouldn’t have done that. Told him, that is. He’d have thought it, because he was always like that. But he wouldn’t have said anything.
"But these last couple of years—" Small fine lines appeared around her lips and eyes.
"Do you see much of him anymore?"
"Not for months. He went someplace. I have no idea where."
"Might Josh know? Your husband?"
She shook her head. "No. Maybe somebody down at Survey could help you."
We sat for a bit. I shooed off a couple of insects. "I don’t suppose," I said, "that your husband was ever on the Tenandrome?"
"He only made the one flight," she said. "That was enough."
"Yes, I suppose it was. Do you know anyone who was on a Tenandrome mission?"
She shook her head. "They’d be able to tell you in Pellinor. Try there." She looked thoughtful. "He’s traveled a lot the last couple of years. This isn’t the first time he’s just taken off."
"Where did he go on those other trips? Did he ever tell you?"
"Yes," she said. "He’s become a history buff. He spent a couple of weeks at Grand Salinas. There’s some sort of museum in orbit out there."
Salinas was the scene of Christopher Sim’s first defeat, the place where the Dellacondan resistance very nearly died.
"Maybe he went to Hrinwhar," she said suddenly.
"Hrinwhar?" The famous raid. But Hrinwhar was no more than an airless moon.
"Yes." She shook her head vehemently up and down. "Now that I think of it: he’s said any number of times that he wanted to visit Hrinwhar."
Scott’s house wasn’t visible from her front porch, but the hill on which it rested was. She shielded her eyes from the sunlight, and looked toward it. "To tell you the truth," she said, "I think Josh is just as glad he’s gone. We’d reached a point where we got pretty uncomfortable when Scott was around."
Her voice had gone brittle. Cold. I could sense a thin red line of anger just below the surface. "Thanks," I said.
"It’s all right."
I asked everyone I spoke with to let me know when Scott returned. Then, disappointed, I returned to Pellinor.
Survey’s Regional Headquarters complex consists of half a dozen buildings of radically different architectural styles, old and modern, imported and native. A crystal tower stands next to a purely functional block of offices; a quadripar geodesic occupies a site adjacent to a gothic temple. The overall effect is, according to the guide books, that of an academic contempt for the order and form of the mundane mind: the casual motifs of the scholar created in glass and permearth. I suppose that, by the time I’d arrived at this point in my journeys, I’d been thinking too much about Christopher Sim’s war; but my impression of the place was that it looked as if it had been assembled under enemy fire.