“But the virtual technologies have always been there,” I said.
“I know. I don’t understand what’s happening either. People are changing. It used to be they wanted the real thing. Wanted to know they were actually in orbit, or actually walking through a forest on another world. Now”—he shrugged—“they’d rather be comfortable. And not be inconvenienced in any way. Even the customized flights are way down.”
Alex stopped to ogle another young woman. The behavior was totally out of character for him. But he was using it to frame the conversation. To conceal where his interests actually lay. Still, I’ll admit it made me feel mildly defensive.
“Customized flights?” I said. “What were they, Walter?”
“They do weddings. Take your vows in the ring system at Splendiferous VI.” He grinned. “Do a bar mitzvah by the light of the Triad Moons. I mean, in the old days that stuff couldn’t miss. We did graduations, specialized vacations. You won’t believe this, but one of the most popular things we had was the farewell tour.”
“What was the farewell tour?”
“We’d take somebody who was near the end, usually someone who’d never been off-world, a great-great-grandfather, say, and a passel of friends and relatives, and we’d take them all out to some exotic locale a hundred light-years away. Of course we didn’t call it the farewell tour except behind the scenes. The official term was the Appreciation Trek.
“There was other stuff. Sometimes we had a group of people with a particular interest. They’d tell us what they wanted, hunting oversized lizards, maybe. You know, the kind of thing you needed a projectile to bring down. Those made me a bit nervous, I’ll admit. We stopped it after we almost lost a couple of our customers.” He signaled a server, asked if we wanted another round. Alex said yes because that would keep him talking. Then Korminov turned toward me: “You look like a skier, Chase.”
“I’ve done a little.”
“We had a flight you’d have enjoyed.”
“A skiing tour.”
“We had the longest known slopes in the universe. And you got to take them at low gravity. I’ll tell you, it was a ride. I’m pretty sure they’re still doing it. And there was a tour for explorers, for people who just wanted to be first to look at a place where nobody else had ever gone.”
We broke it off for a few minutes. Alex didn’t want to be seen as pressing. We talked about the Bronson Institute, and how good people weren’t going into medicine anymore because the AIs did so much of the work. Soon, Korminov said, it would be all robots. And when some problem came along that was a bit different and needed some judgment, nobody would be there. “Mark my words,” he said, “make it automatic, and we’ll forget how to be doctors. Then there’ll be a plague of some sort and—” He shook his head. The human race was doomed.
Alex mentioned that I was a pilot.
“Yes,” he said. “I remember reading that somewhere. You’re exactly the kind of person we used to look for to run the tours.”
We’d mapped out the conversation ahead of time. And the prime issue had just opened up. “Walter,” I said, “I’ll tell you the job I’d have loved.”
“What’s that, Chase?”
“To be the person who went out and decided where to send the tours.”
“Ah, yes. The scout.”
“It sounds like the best piloting assignment in existence.”
“It was exciting.” He glanced over at the lectern. “Chase, I was talking up there about my own ambition to be a pilot. And that was the job I wanted. Scout. Going to places where nobody else had been. And charting them. Now, the prospect of running one of those damned missions would scare the devil out of me.” He fell silent.
“You know, Walter,” Alex said. “I met one of your former pilots recently. Rachel Bannister. Do you remember her?”
“Rachel? Of course. Sure. I remember her. Beautiful woman.”
“She’d have enjoyed inspecting systems, I suspect.”
“I’m sure she would.” Suddenly, he discovered he needed to circulate a bit. “Well, I have to be off,” he said. “Been nice talking to you guys.”
There were two other pilots at the event who’d flown for World’s End. One had been there at the turn of the century. We got talking, and I asked casually if he knew who’d been the scout.
“The what?” he asked.
“The person who determined where the tours went.”
“Oh,” he said. “Sure.” He smiled wistfully. “It’s been a long time.” He cleared his throat, thought about it. Mentioned someone named Jesse. Then corrected himself. “Hal Cavallero,” he said. “Yeah. Hal was the guy who set up the tours.”
THIRTEEN
Don’t throw anything away, Clavis. There is nothing that does not gain value with the passage of time.
—Tira Crispin, The Last Antique Dealer
In the morning I had a call from Somanda Schiller, who was the principal at the William Kaperna High School, located on Capua Island, about sixty kilometers offshore. I was scheduled to talk with some of the students there two days later. It would be a group of seminars about what we do, and why artifacts are important, and why it’s essential to learn from history. It was a presentation I’d done several times before in different places. The teachers always seemed to like it, and the kids were usually receptive. I enjoyed doing them because I like having an audience and playing VIP.
Somanda was a large woman with a pale complexion and the look of someone who’d seen too much nonsense ever to take the world seriously. She was standing by a window. “Chase,” she said, “I’m afraid we’re going to have to cancel your presentation. I’m sorry about the short notice. If you’ve incurred any expenses, we will of course meet them.”
“No,” I said, “it’s okay. Anything wrong?”
“Not really. What we’ve run into—Well, I just didn’t see it coming.”
“What happened, Somanda?”
“We have some parents who think that what Alex does is objectionable.”
“You mean recovering artifacts?”
“Well, that’s not the way it’s being phrased. A lot of them see him as someone who, ummm, robs tombs. As a person who sells what he finds instead of donating it to museums. And that he expedites others who trade in what they consider an illicit market.”
“I see.”
“I’m sorry. I really am. Be aware that this is in no way a reflection on you.”
Hal Cavallero had left World’s End in the early spring of 1403. According to his bio, he wanted to take some time off, “just to enjoy life,” but he never went back. He eventually landed with Universal Transport, where, for thirteen years, he’d hauled commercial goods around the Confederacy. Then, in 1418, he went home to Carnaiva, a small town in Attica Province, on the plains. There, he and his second wife Tyra adopted a four-year-old boy. They became members of the Lost Children Council, adopted six more kids, and founded the Space Base. Volunteers pitched in, the Council contributed funds, and eventually the Base became a shelter for more than one hundred orphaned or abandoned children. Cavallero received recognition for his work, including the Pilots’ Association’s Ace Award for his contributions.