"Yes," I said carefully, "I can believe that."
"Then I hope you will have the good sense to break off your present course and go home and stay there. If I know anything at all about Gabriel Benedict, I suspect he left you a considerable sum of money. Yes? Go back to Rimway and enjoy it. Leave the Tenandrome alone." He’d stiffened while he was speaking, and the air had grown tense.
"Is this what you told my uncle?"
"Yes."
"You didn’t tell him you’d found a Dellacondan warship?"
That hit home. He caught his breath and looked round to see if anyone might have been close enough to overhear. "Alex," he protested, "you’re talking nonsense. Let it drop. Please."
"Let me try it another way, Hugh. Why are you here? What are you looking for?"
He stared into his drink, his irises round and hard and very black. "I’m not sure anymore," he said. "A ghost, maybe."
I thought of my long-ago conversation on Fishbowl with Ivana. He’s a strange one. "Her name wouldn’t be Tanner, would it?"
His eyes rose slowly and caught mine. There was pain in them, and something else. His big hands twisted into fists, and he pushed himself out of the seat. "For God’s sake, Alex," he hissed. "Stay out of it!"
XX.
Poetry is vocal painting.
ALWAYS IT CAME back to Leisha Tanner.
"She’s the key," Chase observed. "Where was she during the missing years? Why is she at the center of whatever it is that’s driving Scott? And she was significant enough that Gabe named the file for her." She was stretched out on the sofa with an electronic brace strapped to her leg. It hummed softly, stimulating the healing process. "The missing years," she said. "Why did she keep dropping out of sight for years at a crack? What was she doing?"
"She was," I said slowly, "looking for whatever it was the Tenandrome found."
Yes, that might fit: if the sun weapon had been hidden, lost, it might have been a nervous prospect. Both Sims dead, and no one knew where it was. So Tanner had led the hunt. "It’s possible," she said. "Where do we go from there?"
"We have Tanner looking for a frigate, and two hundred years later, Gabe is looking for the same frigate. And he is extremely interested in Tanner. What does that suggest?"
"That she found it, and recorded its location somewhere?"
"But she couldn’t have found it. Or it wouldn’t still be out there for the Tenandrome to run across. I mean, what was the point of the hunt if she was just going to go away again and leave it?"
"Truth is," said Chase irritably, "after all we’ve been through, things still don’t make sense."
I was up out of my seat and prowling the room. "Let’s try it from a different angle. There must have been a piece of information of some kind to guide her. Otherwise, she’s got an impossible job. Right?"
"Okay."
"What form would that piece of information have taken? Maybe she went along when they went out to the Veiled Lady. In that case, she would have known the length of the voyage. Or maybe she didn’t go, but had a half-remembered heading from a crewman."
"Good," she said. "But where would Gabe have got hold of that kind of information? We’ve read through all the stuff we could find on her, and there’s nothing. And anyhow, if we’re right in assuming she was out there for years and never found whatever it was, then what good could her information be? I mean, if she couldn’t find it, what could she tell us?"
What could she tell us? There was an echo in that remark, and I played it through again. Who had she told?
"Candles," I said.
"Pardon?"
"Candles. She’d have told Candles!" And, son of a bitch, I knew right where it was. I took down the copy of Rumors of Earth, with which I’d replaced the stolen volume, and opened it to "Leisha." "It’s even named for her," I said. "Listen:
Lost pilot,
She rides her solitary orbit
Far from Rigel
Seeking by night
The starry wheel.
Adrift in ancient seas,
It marks the long year round,
Nine on the rim,
Two at the hub.
And she,
Wandering,
Knows neither port,
Nor rest,
Nor me!
"I’ve never been strong on poetry," Chase said, "but that sounds pretty bad."
I had Jacob display the critical work that had been done on the poem: discussions of the ancient mystical significance of the number nine (nine months in the birth process, nine knots in the Arab love whip, and so on) with the yin/yang implications of the dual stars at the axis. Leisha emerges as a symbolic representation of the all-mother, making (apparently) some sort of cosmic adjustment after the death of her equally symbolic son at Rigel. The hero becomes Man, enmeshed in the wheel of mortality.
Or something.
"Hell," said Chase, "it’s a constellation. It’s obvious."
"Yes. And I think we’ve got the answer to something else. Rashim Machesney had come through. Gabe meant the databanks at the Machesney Institute! They must have run a search for him!"
A half-smile touched the corners of Chase’s mouth.
"What’s so funny?"
"Quinda."
"What do you mean?"
"When she stole your copy of Rumors of War: she had the answer in her hands."
Jacob set up an appointment with one of the administrators and we linked in within the hour.
He was a thin freckled youth with a long nose and a quiver in his voice. His shoulders were hunched in a defensive fashion, and he seemed unable to respond to any question without first consulting his monitor. He made no effort to rise from behind his desk to greet us; and he kept it between us like a fortification. "No," he said, after I explained the purpose of our visit. "I’m not aware that we’ve done any special projects for someone named, uh, Benedict. Which of our channels would it have come through?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Research requests are received from a variety of government, university, corporate, and foundation sources. Which would your uncle have used?"
"I don’t know. Possibly none."
"We don’t accept requests from individuals." He seemed to read that directly off his monitor.
"Listen," I said. "I’ve no way of knowing how he might have arranged it. But it’s important, and I have no doubt he’d have been seen around here himself at one point or another. Somebody was working with him."
The administrator tapped his fingertips against the polished desktop. "That would be entirely against the rules, Mr. Benedict," he said. "I wish I could help." That was intended as a signal that the interview was ended.
"My uncle died recently," I said. "The reason I’m here is that he was quite pleased with the job that your people did for him, and he wished to express his appreciation in some substantive way." I flashed a congratulatory smile.
The administrator’s expression softened. "I see," he said. There was much about the man that was birdlike: his slightness; the quick, perfunctory moves; the sense that his attention flitted about the office, never resting more than a few seconds in one place.
"Unfortunately, my uncle neglected to identify the person who helped him, and I have no direct way of doing so. I need your help." I produced a photo. "This is my uncle."