"Where’s the statement?"
"Forwarded separately," she said. "It doesn’t seem to be included with this material."
XIV.
The destruction of Point Edward (after it had been evacuated) was an act of puzzling barbarity. Nothing could have more readily demonstrated the gap between human reason and alien spasm. In the wake of that destruction, men were sufficiently horrified that, for a moment, they drew together and came very close to recognizing their own common humanity and the peril it faced. Unfortunately, the moment passed quickly.
THE CURIOUS THING about Matt Olander’s grave is that it was waiting for the refugees when they returned to Ilyanda after the war. They found it in a weed-choked field that had once been a lawn, not twenty meters from the main terminal at the William E. Richardson Spaceport. It was marked by a single oblate white slab which had been cut out of the front of the building with a laser. The slab was engraved, presumably with the same tooclass="underline"
Matt Olander
died Avrigil 3, 677
No Stranger to Valor
The characters were crudely cut, the name and the last word written large. They tended a trifle toward the ornate, in the style of two centuries ago. The date, in Ilyanda’s calendar, corresponded with the Evacuation.
The site lies within a grove. There are low hedges and flowering trees and seashell walkways. Overhead, a Dellacondan pennant, with its harridan sigil encased within the silver ring of the Confederacy, snaps fiercely in a cold stiff wind off the ocean. At the foot of the flagpole, the Point Edward Historical Society has erected a stone marker: a bronze plate, dated 716, carries Olander’s name, and a remark attributed to him, reportedly spoken to a comrade during the final moments of the evacuation: It is not proper that Point Edward should face the mutes without a defender.
The base of the monument is engraved with a resolution of the Joint Chambers, that Matthew Olander never be forgotten by the City he would not desert.
The site is the sort of place people go to on holidays, to sit on benches and watch seabirds and floaters. On the midwinter day we were there (I’d brought Chase along), a troop of kids were flying brightly colored gliders, and a large tourist group had debarked from an airbus and were milling about. Ilyanda’s white sun Kaspadei was breaking through a gray sky; and most of the older visitors were hurrying about, glancing at the inscriptions, and climbing back into the airbus, where it was warm.
It’s a lonely place, despite its proximity to the Richardson terminal. Maybe the sense of isolation is spiritual rather than geographical. Standing beneath the canopy of shrub trees within an enclosure dedicated solely to one individual’s courage. I kept thinking about the slippery quality of truth. How would Olander’s comrades—the ones who had sneered at his memory and suggested to Leisha Tanner that he was a traitor—How would they have responded to all this? No Stranger to Valor.
Where was the truth? What had happened on Point Edward?
"Who put it here?" asked Chase. She looked solemn, thoughtful, almost oppressed. The wind pulled at her hair, and she brushed it back, out of her eyes.
"The park commission."
"No. I mean, who buried Matt Olander? Who cut the inscription on the tombstone? It says in the Tourist Guide that the grave was here when the refugees returned from Millenium after the war."
"I know."
"Who cut the inscription?" She thumbed through the publication. "According to this, the legend is that the Ashiyyur did it."
"I don’t really know much about the Ashiyyur. But why not?
Stranger things have happened in wars than people paying tribute to enemies."
A crowd gathered around the stone. Their breath was visible in the cold air. Some took pictures, others spoke hurriedly and moved on. "It is cold," said Chase, sealing her jacket and adjusting the thermals. "Why wouldn’t the inscription be in their own written language?"
Hell, I didn’t know. "What’s the guide book say?"
"It says the experts disagree."
"Great. That’s helpful. But I can think of another possibility. One that accounts for the burial, at least."
"Go ahead," she said.
"They tried to evacuate, what, twenty thousand people in a week? It couldn’t be done without overlooking a few. There’s always somebody who doesn’t get the word. Anyway, Olander stayed behind, found them, and probably was with them when he died during the bombing. Maybe he did something to earn their admiration, shot down a mute ship with a hand weapon, rescued a child from a burning building. Who knows? Whatever it was, they admired him for it, and they gave him a proper send-off. In the proper language."
I stared at the slab. "Leisha Tanner knew the truth," I said.
"Yes, I suppose so. Do you believe your own theory?"
"No. I don’t know why, but it doesn’t feel right. Neither does the notion that he didn’t want to desert the city. That’s pleasantly poetic. But it’s more likely he got left behind. The Dellacondans got out of here a bare few hours before the enemy fleet arrived. They would have been in a hell of a hurry, cutting it that close."
"But that doesn’t explain why his comrades reacted the way they did to Tanner."
We stood over the grave and tried to imagine what might have happened. "I wonder," I said, "if anyone’s really buried here? Maybe the grave’s empty."
"No. I was reading about it on the way out, Alex. They’ve taken pictures. There is a body down there, and dental records show that it is Olander’s."
"Does it say how he died?"
"Not in the plasma drop, apparently. I guess there’s evidence he got hit by a laser. They think a small, hand-carried weapon. Which supports one part of the legend."
"Which is—?"
"That the mutes sent in a landing party to try to take him alive."
"Maybe he was caught and executed."
"That," said Chase, "is a distinct possibility. But no one around here will accept it."
"Why not?"
"Because it’s not very heroic. The image everyone prefers is Olander standing on the roof of the terminal with a pulser, surrounded by dead aliens, firing away until the bastards take him down. Anyway, how do you explain the inscription if he surrendered?"
"I guess that eliminates suicide too. Okay. Another question: if he stayed behind voluntarily, did his C.O. know about it? Or did he jump ship? If it was the latter, it might explain some of the irritation that Tanner ran into."
"I don’t think Christopher Sim would have allowed anyone to stay behind to die. That wouldn’t sound like him at all."
"How do you know?"
She looked momentarily confused. "We’re talking about Christopher Sim, Alex." Our eyes locked, and she started to grin, but shook her head. "No," she said. "I don’t believe it."
"Nor do I. I think if we could find out why Olander didn’t leave with his ship, we’d be an appreciable distance toward understanding —" I hesitated.
"What?" prompted Chase.
"Damned if I know. Maybe Kindrel Lee can tell us."
We leased a skimmer at Richardson, keyed in the downtown hotel that had our reservations, and flew into Point Edward, which was a moderate-sized city of permearth, stone, and glass constructed over a dead seaside volcano.
The first view of it was a shock. There were no sweeping walkways or malls; no webbed parks connecting the upper levels. Point Edward was a city of clearly defined individual structures, heavy on the facing, with square-cut arches and ramparts, and plenty of statuary. The central area was rebuilt after the destruction of 677, employing the same architectural style throughout. The Guide described this as Uniform Toxicate. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time, but the result was to create a downtown of numbing stability and sobriety, of sharp corners and immovable purpose. It was life at ground level, in a city that felt like a fortress.