I wondered, as we settled onto the roof of our hotel, how much of this reflected the state of mind of a people who had barely escaped the fire.
An hour later, from Chase’s room, we linked with the Bureau of Records and Vital Statistics. The clerk was an AI, cast in the appearance of an elderly male, with a full gray-black beard and sympathetic blue eyes.
"It would be easier if we had her ID number," he said.
"Sorry," I grumbled. "How many people named Kindrel Lee could have been living in a place with a population of, what, twenty thousand?"
"Mr. Benedict," he said, poking thoughtfully at his keyboard, "you understand, of course, that the records burned with the city in 677. We have very little preceding that date."
"Yes. But she—assuming Kindrel is a she—was still around after the attack. Must have been, if Tanner talked to her. So she might have married after that date. Or applied for some sort of exemption. Or got a job with the government. There should be something on her."
"Yes," he said agreeably. "I’m sure there must be." He bent to his task. "Are you sure of the spelling?"
"No. Actually it’s guesswork."
"Is it possible she might have been born with a different name?"
"It’s possible."
"You set a very difficult task, Mr. Benedict."
"Please do the best you can," I said. I tried to offer him money, but he refused it. Government rules. I was still feeling clumsy.
Chase took to prowling round the limited area allowed by the projector, while I watched the day’s news reports follow each other across a monitor.
A recession had begun on Earth.
Along the frontier, shots had been exchanged between Ashiyyurean and Confederate warships again. No damage to our side, probably none to theirs.
"And forty years ago today—" A picture of a sailing yacht appeared on the terminal, "—the Andover, attempting to complete a round-the-world voyage, disappeared in southern seas."
"No," said the clerk suddenly. "There simply isn’t any record."
"There has to be," I objected. "At the very least, she would have died."
"If she did, Mr. Benedict," he said, with a broad display of even white teeth, "she didn’t do it on Ilyanda."
"I have another idea," I said, back in the apartment. "The Andover."
"I think we have enough mysteries, Alex. And I doubt that the Andover is involved in any of this."
"Of course not. But that was a forty-year-old clip we saw in there. How far back do the local newsgathering organizations go?"
Two syndicates were listed on the local net: Oceanic and Mega. Neither had been around much over a half century. That was Ilyanda time, where the years are about forty percent longer than at home, but it still wasn’t enough. "It doesn’t matter," a commtech at Mega told us. "Everybody uses centralized data storage anyhow. We have access to records that go back damned near three hundred years."
We tied in with Datalink, a central processing facility. It gave us what we wanted: access to Ilyanda’s history, seen from a contemporary perspective.
Chase activated a terminal and poked in LEE, KINDREL.
The answer came back: NO ENTRIES.
She reversed the names: KINDREL, LEE
NO ENTRIES.
We tried every other way we could think of to spell the names, with no luck.
"What now?" Chase said.
"Olander." She punched in his name.
DO YOU WISH TO SEE AN INDEX? OR SHOULD I RUN ENTRIES?
"Entries," I said.
IN ANY PARTICULAR SEQUENCE?
"Chronological. From most recent."
WESCLARK MAN PLAYS OLANDER IN SPRING PAGEANT
"I don’t think that’s it," suggested Chase, touching the keyboard.
MATT OLANDER REMAINS POPULAR NAME FOR BOYS
OLANDER WAS PROBABLY BORN IN NEW YORK
MEDICAL ANALYSIS: OLANDER MAY HAVE BEEN DYING WHEN HE CHALLENGED ASHIYYUR
Stories piled up. There were literally dozens of them:
OLANDER ACADEMY SUED OVER CHILD’S DEATH
STANTON’S ANNOUNCES OLANDER LINE OF FASHIONS
MATT OLANDER AS SYSTEMS ANALYST A MAN AHEAD OF HIS TIME, EXPERTS SAY
I started working my way through the material, while Chase searched for references to Leisha Tanner. She eventually found a brief mention in a sixty-year-old book review.
"Sim’s Lieutenants," she said. "Ever hear of it?"
"No. But it sounds like something we should get. Have them forward it to Jacob."
She shook her head. "It’s off-line. Nearest copies available, it says here, are believed to be on Penthume."
"Where?"
"It’s a long way. It was the author’s home world. Maybe it doesn’t matter. The reviewer says he got everything wrong, and the book’s worthless. How are you making out?"
She was looking over my shoulder, so I keyed in another item-
MATT OLANDER TESTIFIES BEFORE DEFENSE COMMITTEE
I don’t suppose she was in a mood for jokes: this Matt Olander was an expert in hyperspace stresses.
The second morning we expanded our search.
Late in the day we came across a curious entry, dated almost twenty years earlier:
DID SIM PROVOKE ATTACK ON ILYANDA?
The narrative argued that the Dellacondans had planned a trap at Ilyanda, but that a half-dozen battle cruisers, promised by Earth, had been withdrawn at the last minute.
There were other wild stories, especially from the less reputable services that specialized in the sensationaclass="underline"
OLANDER MAY HAVE BEEN A WOMAN, and
OLANDER SEEN ALIVE ON TOXICON TWENTY YEARS AFTER WAR
At the end of it, we still had nothing.
The plasma weapon that fell on Point Edward during an early autumn evening (the exact date is uncertain) in 677 seared the rocky basin in which the city rests, destroyed forest halfway out to Richardson, and removed the city itself as surely as though it had never existed.
The fact that Point Edward was deserted at the time of the attack, and that there was no way the aliens could not have known it was deserted, rendered the act the single most chilling event of the war. It demonstrated a fury with, and contempt for, all things human that must have terrorized the frontier worlds.
We were strolling listlessly along the waterfront area when I broke a long silence. "They were damned lucky there were so few people here. And Ilyanda’s still relatively small. What’s the population? Five, six million, tops. How many Lees can there be?"
"Not many," Chase agreed.
"We’ve been going about this backwards. Let’s find a terminal."
There were fifty-six listings on the Ilyanda net for people named Lee, Leigh, Lea, and Li. We split them up.
We found Endmar Lee almost immediately.
One of his relatives described him as the family historian, and directed us to him. It was true: once he realized we shared his interest, his enthusiasm burgeoned. He brought out holos of individuals dressed in the somewhat stylized fashions of Resistance times on Ilyanda: Henry Cortison Lee, who had owned a souvenir shop at the Richardson terminal, and who had actually seen Christopher Sim; Polmar Lee, who would have stayed and faced the Ashiyyur in defense of his home, but who was drugged and taken off against his will. "And here’s Jina," he said. "She was Kindrel’s niece." Chase showed signs of impatience, but I frowned at her, and she sighed.