My next stop was Wendikys Academy, where Sim had been an instructor.
The school is a replica. A whiteout destroyed and scattered the original shortly after the war, and no building stood at the site for almost a century.
All but one of the classroom spaces are now devoted to other purposes: souvenir shop, washrooms, projection areas, restaurant. The one that remains is Sim’s: displays are set up for a history lesson on the Persian wars, using materials and a lesson plan from his files. A holo of a fully armed Spartan hoplite, resplendent in polished armor, stood by the door.
The title of the lesson flickered on one of the displays: LEONIDAS IN THE PASS.
A silver plaque is mounted on the wall outside the classroom. It lists those former students who eventually fought by their teacher’s side. The names of twenty-seven are inscribed, only two of whom ever returned.
Like Sim House, Wendikys Academy maintained a visitors' log, and again Scott’s name was there. Same date, and this time he’d added an observation that was pointedly disquieting: "In the end it made no difference…."
Assuming he would only sign in once at each site, I concluded he might be an occasional visitor. I looked around, scanning the crowd: we stood jammed together in roped-off portions of the building. Some were watching the battle of Thermopylae, others tried to see Sim’s control console, still others sat at terminals bringing up data that, according to the Parks Department, had been devised and entered by Sim himself.
Monuments and markers are everywhere. One can see Mora Poole’s cottage, with the black harridan which she defiantly painted on her roof at the height of the Occupation; and the plaque containing Walt Hastings’s response on learning that all five of his sons and daughters had died at Salinas: I count myself the most fortunate of men, to have known such children!; and the memorial to the nameless Ashiyyurean officer who was slain by partisans while participating in a midwinter search for a lost child.
But the most celebrated is the Signal.
At dusk each evening, it shines forth from the front window on the second floor of Sim House: a warm yellow cone glittering across the snow. It’s Maurina’s beacon to her lost husband, an ancient lamp which, according to legend, has burned every night since the news came from Rigel two centuries ago.
And Maurina Sim: there’s a name that goes to the heart of the tragedy of those days. One always thinks of her as she appears in the Constable engraving, staring out at a wild quarter moon, lovely, young, black hair loose, dark eyes stained with agony.
Her wedding took place in the shadow of approaching war. She made no effort to dissuade her husband from joining Tarien and his volunteers, who were resolved to assist Cormoral. That expedition must have seemed suicidal at the time, though many thought the Ashiyyur would back off rather than slaughter a force that was more mob than navy.
But Cormoral burned before the Dellacondans got there. And that melancholy action changed everything. What was to have been little more than a demonstration became unrelenting war.
In time Maurina went to war herself. She was present at the defense of the City on the Crag and at Sanusar. She is known to have manned a weapons console at Grand Salinas. But she functioned also as an ambassador, traveling the neutral worlds with Tarien, pleading the cause of Confederacy. And it happened that she was on Dellaconda when that world was seized by the Ashiyyur.
She was stranded until the invaders withdrew near the end of the long struggle. Curiously, despite their telepathic abilities, they seem never to have realized the prize they had in their hands. Or if they did, they chose to ignore the fact.
She is said to have been in her bath when news came of her husband’s death. A young townsman, whose name was Frank Paxton, was the carrier, pounding tearfully on the door until she understood what had happened.
The Signal was still burning in the upstairs window on the night that she left her home for the last time. The townspeople have never allowed it to die.
I picked up Hugh Scott’s track again at the Hrinwhar Naval Museum, in Rancorva, Dellaconda’s capital. I’d always been puzzled by the remark attributed to him that he was "going to Hrinwhar." He’d come to the museum, while I had gone a couple of hundred light years to look at the asteroid and battle site for which it was named.
He was listed as a supporting member of the Naval Society. No address was given, but there was a code. It was local, and I connected on the first try. "Mr. Scott?"
"Yes?" His voice was not unfriendly. "Who is this?"
I felt a rush of elation. "My name is Benedict. Alex. I’m Gabe’s nephew."
"I see." His tone flattened. "I was sorry to hear about your uncle."
"Thank you." I was standing in the members' room, looking through a glass panel at an exhibit of period naval uniforms. "I wondered if we might have dinner together? I’d enjoy an opportunity to talk with you."
"I appreciate the invitation, Alex. But I’m really quite busy."
"I read your remarks at the Talino Society. Were they all innocent?"
"All of whom?"
"The crewmembers of the Corsarius?"
He laughed, but the sound had a dull ring to it. "I know you don’t take that place seriously," he said.
"How about dinner?"
"I really haven’t the time, Mr. Benedict. Maybe we can get together at some future date. But not just now." He broke off, and I was listening to a carrier wave.
I gave him about ten minutes, and tried again. "You’re being a nuisance, Mr. Benedict," he said.
"Listen, Hugh. I’ve been all over the Confederacy. My house has been robbed and my life threatened, a woman has drowned, the Ashiyyur may be involved, and I get stone walls everywhere. I’m tired. I’m really tired, and I want some answers. I’d like to buy you dinner. If you won’t go for that, I’ll find you some other way. It might take a while, but Rancorva isn’t all that big."
He heaved a deep sigh. "Okay," he said. "If I see you, will you go away afterward and leave me alone?"
"Yes."
"You understand I will have nothing more to say to you than I did to your uncle?"
"I’ll settle for that."
"All right then. Can you find the Mercantile?"
He was an old man. His face was deeply lined, and his movements were strained. His hair had grayed, and his frame sagged with the weight of too much roast beef over too many years.
He made no effort to look pleased at the tactics I’d used to get him to the table. He was already seated in a corner staring gloomily out at the city when I walked in. "No point delaying it," he said, when I commented on his promptness. He ignored my offered hand. "You’ll forgive me if I pass on the food." A drink stood before him. "What exactly do you want of me?"
"Hugh," I said, as casually as I could manage, "what happened on the Tenandrome? What was out there?"
He did not react: he had known the question was coming, but I still caught a tremble of uncertainty in his throat, as though he’d decided to test the chemistry of the evening before deciding how to reply. "You’ve made up your mind there’s a secret, I take it?"
"Yes."
He shrugged as one might when a conversation has taken a tiresome, and inconsequential, turn. "You got this idea from your uncle?"
"And from other sources."
"All right. You’ve come all this way, I assume, to speak to me. And you will not believe me when I tell you that there was nothing unusual about that mission, except the breakdown of the propulsion system?"
"No."
"Of course. Very well, then: will you believe me when I tell you that we had good reason to keep the secret of what we found? That your persistence in asking difficult questions can do no good, and may do a great deal of harm? That the decision to say nothing was unanimously supported by the men and women on the mission?"