“What's the Filandia?” I asked.
Alex usually knows the answers to such abstruse questions, but he waited for Miriam to explain. She seemed mildly amused that we didn't know. “It's the hotel. Where Racine Vales wrote Over the Side.”
I'd heard the title but had no idea what it was about.
“It's the big revolutionary novel of the Bacchanal movement,” Alex said.
I still didn't know-
“It's a long time ago, dear,” said Miriam. “Six hundred years. But it did change the way an entire civilization behaved. It brought about a new moral code and a complete freedom of the spirit.”
“Do as you like,” said Alex, “as long as no one gets hurt.”
“Exactly,” she said. “People always talked about freedom, but then they set a lot of rules. Think how much better everyone's life would be if we just exercised some common sense instead of living by tribal taboos.” She laughed. “Well, enough of that. Does Tereza know you're coming?”
In fact she did. We landed on the edge of the complex, which consisted of the Filandia, an entertainment complex, and a half dozen cabins, arranged in a large circle. They all had a kind of rough-hewn look, which added to the sense of being well away from civilization. (As if you needed anything to underscore the reality.) They weren't really on top of a mountain. It was more like an oversized hill with a flattened summit. If you fell off the summit, you weren't likely to get hurt, but you'd do a lot of rolling. We saw a few kids playing tag, and a young woman was coming out of one of the cabins.
An ocean was visible, but it was far enough away that it might have been nothing more than a distant lake. We set down on a pad, climbed out, and went into the hotel.
Tereza was in the lobby, seated near a window with three men and a woman. She stood and smiled as we came in. “Chase?” she said. “And Alex. How nice to meet you. I've heard so much about you.”
She hadn't aged much in a half century. She had black hair, smooth skin, lemon-colored eyes, and a quiet dignity that imposed itself on her surroundings. She introduced us around the table. They were members of the literary group, and they'd apparently been talking about the weather. And before you leap to judgment, keep in mind that the weather on Sanusar wasn't anything like whatever world the visitors had come from. But that day, with sunlight and relatively warm temperatures, it was all anyone could have asked.
“Yesterday,” said one of the tourists, “it was forty below.”
We joined the conversation, were asked what we did for a living and whether we'd like some drinks. After a few minutes, Tereza excused herself from her guests and took us to a side room, where we sat down around a table. “You're, of course, welcome to stay if you like,” she said. “I hope you will, but I don't want to waste your time. How can I help you?”
Alex leaned forward. “Tereza,” he said, “we're trying to get a handle on the sighting fifty years ago. The ship that-”
“I know,” she said.
“You were on duty when it happened.”
“Yes. That's correct.”
“We've seen the record of the incident. And we were hoping you might be able to add something.”
“I don't know what else-?”
“Your husband once described you as having never been the same after the incident.”
She blinked and smiled. “There's some truth to that, I guess.” Outside, in the lobby, somebody put on some music. It was slow and moody.
Alex waited quietly.
Her eyes focused somewhere behind us. “The record that you saw was edited.”
“Why?”
“We had some decent images of the ports.”
Alex leaned forward. “It's okay,” he said. “What did you see?”
“There was a woman at one of them. She appeared to be banging on it. She looked hysterical.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I'm sure.” Those lemon eyes grew sad. “The investigators confiscated everything. When, later, the record was released, that part of it was missing.”
“Did you talk to them? The investigators?”
“My boss did. He said they told him it was our imagination. That she was never there.” She shook her head. “We all saw it, Alex. God help me, we all saw it.”
Jack McDevitt
Firebird
PART II
Villanueva
Jack McDevitt
Firebird
The future of our species lies hidden in its past.
— Wolfgang Corbin, Let's Hear It for the Infidels, 6615 C.E.
“Why would they edit it out?” I asked, as we lifted away from Ocean-side.
“Public relations again,” said Alex. “We don't know who conducted the investigation, whether it was StarCorps or local. But they had a woman in distress. Worse, pictures of a woman in distress. They don't have a clue who she is, or what the ship is, or where it went. There were no reports of anyone in trouble. All vehicles were accounted for.” He looked down at the landscape. “How would they explain it to an aroused public?”
The ride home was somber. Alex buried himself in a book and barely spoke until we'd made the jump back into our home system. When I asked him whether we were ready to back away from the entire business, he said that he was disappointed in me. “You give up too easily, Chase.”
“So where do we go from here?”
“Winter.”
“What?”
“William Winter. Robin's friend. The one who died on Indikar. I think it's time we tried to find out what actually happened.”
Two days later, we were on a glide train crossing the continent. At Port Leo we got off, and spent the night at the Amerada Hotel. I'm embarrassed to admit that I had a little too much to drink and became part of the floor show. I don't usually do stuff like that, and I probably wouldn't have if Alex had been down in the club with me, but he wasn't, and I began thinking how maybe those people who were saying you should enjoy yourself while you can, have a big time as long as nobody gets hurt because you don't have forever, maybe they're right. So I joined two or three other women at the center of the party.
In the morning, I felt a bit guilty, and Alex was surprised when I told him I was going to have breakfast in my room. I didn't want to take a chance on running into anybody from the previous evening. But I could tell from the way Alex was talking to me that he knew something had happened. He didn't comment, though. And at noon, under a brilliant, cloudless sky, we checked out, rented a skimmer, and rode to Taraska.
Taraska is rugged country, valleys and ridges partially submerged in thick forest, lots of rock, and two very large mountains. It's a place for people who'd probably rather be living on an island or on the back side of the Moon except that they like the services that come with being within reach of civilization. And they had a taste for architecture. There were a couple of stores, two cafes, a nightclub, a church, and a city hall in the center of town, all quite elegant. Private homes were widely separated across the area, and were a trifle ostentatious, equipped with towers, domes, and arches.
The townspeople were convivial, though. They hung out in the cafes, or in the nightclub. Or at one another's houses. They threw a lot of parties, or so we were informed. And I had no trouble believing it.
William Winter's son, also named William, lived in a three-story house with columns and spires and circular windows. The lawn was beautifully manicured, and two lines of Salonika trees shaded the property. “What's he do for a living?” I asked Alex.
“As far as I can tell, he just sits on his front deck and watches the flowers grow.”
“Where'd the family money come from, do you know?”
“It's been there for generations.”
The landscape seemed utterly still as we began our descent. Their AI asked us to identify ourselves. “Alex Benedict,” I said. “We have an appointment with Mr. Winter.”