“Well,” he said, “I wouldn’t make too big a deal out of that. There’ve been a lot of alphabets over sixteen millennia. Especially after we left Earth.”
We got to our feet. “Thank you,” said Alex.
“The cinnamon buns were good,” I added.
Conover got up. “Listen,” he said, “anytime you folks are in the neighborhood, pop by and say hello.”
“We’ll need a code word.”
“Just use your name. I’ll tell the ship. Oh, and one other thing: If you actually find any little green men—”
“Yes?”
“Let us know. Okay?”
EIGHTEEN
They were four light-years away, but we could hear the noise as if they were in the next room.
—Susan D’Agostino, commenting on the celebration at the International Space Agency when the first humans arrived in the vicinity of Alpha Centauri
For 113 years, beginning in 1288, when Tuttle was twenty-one years old, he pursued his ambitions with a vengeance. During the first decade, he had been an archeological intern aboard the Caribbean, owned by the Jupiter Foundation. When Jupiter had gone out of business, in 1298, he’d gone to flight school and spent the next thirty-five years with Survey, functioning as both a pilot and a researcher. But he became impatient with what he called their pedestrian objectives, measuring starlight characteristics and analyzing gravitational pulses in singularities. He sought financial help from people who wanted somebody to go looking for aliens. And he found a lot of enthusiastic supporters. At first he had to settle for a battered, ageing vessel, the Andromeda. After nearly killing himself when the meteor screen failed during a public-relations flight to Dellaconda, he was able to pick up more contributions and bought a second, far more efficient, vehicle. Originally the Julian Baccardi, he’d renamed it the Callisto. “In the fond hope,” he’d told an interviewer, “that, like its namesake, she’ll contribute to discoveries that will rock the sleeping culture in which we live.”
His missions took him primarily into the Veiled Lady, but he didn’t limit himself. He inspected systems on the fringes of the Confederacy, he traveled into the Colver Cloud, he went all the way out to the Hokkaido Group. And he did it with the old star drive. The technology that had been largely replaced in recent years. The result was that for the next half century, Tuttle virtually lived inside the Callisto. Despite this handicap, he married three times. And apparently won the heart of Rachel Bannister, who was a century younger than he was. When I looked at his picture, I couldn’t imagine how he’d managed it.
He was usually alone in the ship. Occasionally, one of his wives went along. And Hugh Conover joined him for a few flights. During his early years in the Callisto, according to press reports, repeated failure did nothing to abate his enthusiasm. It was simply, he told one interviewer, a matter of time. He looked out across the sea of stars and could not believe they were not home to other civilizations. Could not believe other species had not risen from the dust and weren’t asking the same questions we were. Was there a purpose to it all? Was there to be in time a coming together of intelligences from across the galaxy, to bring forward a new level of existence? New technologies to make life better? And shared arts to make it richer?
His critics, of course, pointed out that there’d been voyages to thousands of terrestrial worlds over thousands of years. They were, usually, sterile, completely devoid of life. And only once, in the long history of the species, had we arrived at a place where the lights were on.
Only once.
It was, Tuttle maintained, a failure of imagination. Later, he would argue that it was the enormity of the task that made the challenge worthwhile. “We wouldn’t recognize the significance of the gift if our neighbors were living on our doorstep.”
Gradually, though, as the years passed, the certainty gave way to hope, and finally to a kind of desperation.
“They are there,” he’d tell the audience at a graduation ceremony near the end of his career. “It is our part to find them.”
After the turn of the century, he no longer talked about the urgency of the search, the need for it. There were few interviews, and Tuttle knew the interviewers were laughing at him. So he didn’t say much. Just that, no, he wasn’t ready to give up, but maybe the task would have to be passed on to the next generation.
Occasionally, he responded to his critics: “If everyone had thought the way they did, we would never have left Spain.” I wasn’t sure what the reference was. Alex said, quietly, “Columbus.”
Finally, his funding began to run out. His supporters had stayed with him for the better part of a century. They’d had enough. In 1403, he announced his retirement.
“Same year that Rachel and Cavallero left World’s End,” I said.
Alex nodded. “Something happened.”
“What?”
“Answer that, and you win an engraved piece of rock.”
Audree was waiting at Skydeck when we docked. And a service clerk from the station’s florist arrived immediately behind her, with some roses for me. Robin had classes and couldn’t get away, but he would call later.
We rode down in the shuttle. It was good to be home, but there was no getting past Alex’s disappointment that Tuttle’s logs had disappeared. “Well,” Audree said, “you can’t do much about a theft that happened a quarter century ago. Sounds to me as if it’s time to pull the plug on this whole thing.”
The comment made me realize how little she understood Alex. “Audree,” he said, “it’s just one more indication that something is going on here.”
I’d hoped the logs would be available, and that we would discover nothing, so we could get away from this entire business. Despite the way she’d dealt with us, I liked Rachel. And I would have preferred to let things be. But asking Alex to walk away from the tablet when we still had no answers—It just wasn’t going to happen.
When we got down to the terminal, Alex spotted Peggy Hamilton waiting at the gate. Peggy was the producer of The Peter McCovey Show, and she was looking for us. McCovey was a talk-show host, and attacking Alex had become one of his favorite pastimes. Alex was, in fact, the perfect target. Robs tombs. Steals vases that should be available to the general public. Creates havoc in archeological sites. The sort of thing about which the average citizen couldn’t care less. Until McCovey made it sound as if Alex was stealing valuable items that belonged to his viewers.
Alex did an uncomplimentary grunt. “Chase,” he said, “take care of her, will you? And tell her no.”
“Who is she?” asked Audree.
Alex didn’t have time to answer before Peggy stood before us, beaming pleasantly, saying how good it was to see us and asking whether Alex had found what he was looking for. “And by the way, what were you looking for?”
Peggy had long legs and a kind of confident gallop. I don’t know how else to describe the way she walked in, circled round, and suddenly was striding along beside us. She tried hard to be friendly, casual, and sincerely interested in our welfare. She looked good, and reportedly had entertained early hopes for an acting career. She had the blond, innocent looks, but her problem was that she couldn’t act.
“I’m pressed for time,” Alex said, glancing up at the giant clock on the wall above the gift shop. “Why don’t you talk to Chase?”