“By 'we,' you mean-?”
“StarCorps.”
“It won't happen.” Harley patted his mouth with his napkin. Tried the wine again. “I'm not sure what to say.”
“Harley, the question we have for you-”
“Yes?”
“-I think you've answered. What would be the chances of putting together a political movement? People who'd demand something be done about Villanueva?”
“I'd say nil, Alex.” He looked unhappy. “It's a sad commentary on human nature. Most people get connected to their own AIs. They literally become part of the family. But everybody else's is just a data system with a voice.” He stared down at his plate. “I wish I could be more encouraging. But I'd recommend you stay away from it.”
Senator Caipha Delmar told us much the same thing the following morning. “Nobody would touch it,” she said, speaking from her office. “It would be a political disaster, Alex. A rescue effort for obsolete computer systems? That's bad enough. But we'd be putting people's lives at risk. And where's the upside? When we arrived at Skydeck with a cruiser full of electronics, who'd be there to wave the flag?”
That evening, as I was getting ready to close up shop, I noticed Alex wandering around outside, hands in pockets, looking lost.
I joined him. It had rained earlier in the day, and the grass was still wet. But the weather had cleared, and a full moon floated in the eastern sky. I don't think he even noticed I'd come up behind him until I asked if he was okay.
“I'm fine,” he said, with a quiet smile.
“You still thinking about Charlie?”
“Him, too.”
“What else?”
“The Firebird,” he said.
“What about it?”
“Think Uriel.”
“Angels again?”
“No. A point of reference.”
“Explain.”
“Remember what Robin said to Todd Cunningham?”
“Well, I remember that's where Uriel came up.”
“'Maybe after Uriel,' Robin might offer some explanations.”
“I don't-”
“If they were going to try to lose the Firebird, submerge it into this phantom zone or whatever, they'd want to find it when it reappeared, wouldn't they? Otherwise, they'd have no way of knowing the experiment succeeded.”
“Sure.”
“So they have to put it on a given course. How would you do that?”
“Oh.”
“Right. Pick a star and aim the thing at it.”
TWENTY-FIVE
We are much given to debating our place in the grand scheme of things. Some | years ago, I was aboard the Constellation, headed for somewhere, I don't; recall where, when they had a problem with the drive and had to retreat back out into what they call “normal space,” which is that part of the universe where I've lived contentedly for the last eighty years or so. Suddenly, the stars, which had been missing for several hours, were all around us. But there was no visible sun, by which I mean no large fiery body. There was no world, no moon, no comet, just the sense that everything was very far away. So what is our place? I would say, to stand in jaw-dropping wonder at the grand design. And laugh at the notion that we ever could have thought we were at the center of things. And maybe also to enjoy the music.
We wandered back toward the deck and eased into the lounge chairs. “Chase,” he said, “if Robin had figured out a way to send the Firebird forward, however we want to phrase that, he'd want to go back to it at the conclusion of the experiment, if for no other reason than to check the onboard clocks. So they could see how much time had passed on the yacht.”
“I'd think so, yes.”
“Okay so far. Let's assume for a minute that Robin could set the Firebird to submerge the way these other ships did. Accept that he'd figured out how to plot a course. And could control where it would show up again. If you could do that, and you wanted to test the system, how long a jump would you want?”
“Maybe two meters.”
“Of course. When would you want it to reappear?”
“Five minutes later?”
“Good. So we keep everything as short as possible. Maybe two meters and five minutes is a bit too short. They couldn't manage that or they wouldn't have had to go back two weeks later. So that gives us the time span. Roughly.”
“Okay, Alex. But where were they when they began the initial launch?”
“They'd want to get far enough out that Skydeck wouldn't be able to track them.”
“Cermak mentioned, what, two hundred billion kilometers to his brother.” Alex nodded. “Well, that's certainly well out of sight. A lot farther than they'd need to go. But okay. Let's say two hundred billion klicks. Which way?”
“I'd say in the direction of the target.”
“Uriel.”
“Yes.”
I had to stop and think. “All right, Alex. And that would be from where we were forty-one years ago. The sun's moved a considerable distance since then.”
“We are now almost,” said Jacob, sounding amused, “three hundred billion kilometers from that location.”
“Thanks, Jacob.”
“You are most certainly welcome, Chase.”
“Alex, is the Firebird going to continue to emerge, go back under, and emerge again every two weeks, indefinitely?”
“If not,” he said, “we've no chance to find it.”
“Okay. But I still don't see how we can manage this. Every two weeks for forty-one years. How can we begin to figure out where it would be now? We don't even know how far it will go in a jump.”
“We can make a decent guess.”
“Based on what?”
“If you were selecting a length for each jump, would you pick 946 kilometers? Or a thousand?”
“A thousand, of course.”
“Okay.”
“So we're going to assume a thousand kilometers.”
“Yes.”
“Alex, that's pure guesswork.”
“It's a beautiful night.”
I knew that smug tone. “What aren't you telling me?”
“Remember the Carmichael Club? How far do you walk to prove your point?”
Ah, yes. “A thousand kilometers.”
“Bingo.”
“Okay, it sounds reasonable.”
“We'll go out to the launch site, or to what we hope is the launch site, just to make sure it isn't traveling a couple of meters with each jump. Then we'll assume a thousand kilometers. We'll send Belle out to look. Give it two weeks. Then we'll move on.”
“I'm trying to do the math.”
“Forty-one years times twenty-six times whatever we settle on for a routine jump.”
“Twenty-nine times,” said Jacob. “It hasn't been forty-one years to the day.”
“Using a thousand klicks to start, Jacob, how much would that be?”
“Approximately 1,066,000 kilometers.”
“Okay. That's where we look for the Firebird. If that doesn't work, we try two thousand kilometers-”
“Which would put us at about two million one-”
“Yes.”
“Sounds ridiculous.”
“Let's not lose sight of the fact that the Breakwater had to find them, too. That should mean we may hear a radio signal when the ship surfaces.”
I looked out across the grounds. A kara was standing at the edge of the trees, munching something, watching us. “Something bothers me, though, Alex,” I said.
“The two hundred billion kilometers?”
“Yes.”
“I know.”
“If they only want to get beyond Skydeck's ability to observe what they're doing, that's way over the mark.”
“Well,” Alex said, “maybe they were just playing it safe.”
“You don't believe that.”
“I think we're still missing something. But maybe we'll get lucky.”
Alex had questions for Shara, but when we called, her AI answered. “Dr. Michaels is on a field trip,” it said. “May I be of assistance?”
Alex grumbled something. “Can you contact her?”
“She is off-world at the moment, but should be home within two weeks, Mr. Benedict. Do you wish to leave a message?”