“The what?”
“There was a sighting at Fishbowl a thousand years ago. Complete with radio reception. But nobody could understand what they were saying. They got a good reading on the vehicle, and if you traced the trajectory back, it leads directly to Cormoral. Maybe it's a coincidence, but a few thousand years earlier, a black hole had passed through the launch area. At Cormoral.”
“Alex, this is crazy. You're saying two ships get lost because a black hole once passed through their launch areas. And there's a connection?”
“You think it's a coincidence.”
“How long had it been since the black hole had passed through the Cormoral area?”
“Half a million years.”
“Okay. Half a million years. So, what are you saying?”
“Chase, you haven't heard everything.”
“There's more?” I tried not to roll my eyes.
“Jacob, show us the XK-12 track.” Another yellow line reached out, crossed the table, and touched the door. “Okay, put Rimway in the position it would have occupied forty-one years ago.”
A yellow marker appeared on the track.
“Alex-”
“Think about it a minute. We have an easy way to determine whether there's anything to this.”
“And what's that?”
“Cermak's brother said they were going out two hundred billion kilometers. Right?”
“Yes.”
“And we assumed they meant two hundred billion klicks in the direction of the target star, Uriel.”
“Yes. What else would we assume?”
“The distance between where Rimway was forty-one years ago, and the nearest approach of the black-hole track, the one made by XK-12, was approximately a hundred eighty billion kilometers. Not two hundred, but close enough. Chase, I think we didn't find the Firebird because we started from the wrong launch point.”
“Alex-”
“All right, look: The track was in front of Rimway. It was closing on it. We'd literally cross it approximately twenty years later.” He stared at me.
My God. That coincided with the loss of the Capella.
“Chase, I've checked out five other sites where interstellars have gone missing. Three of them have black-hole connections. The other two-” He shrugged. “There are probably holes out there that we don't know about. But the evidence looks fairly conclusive. I think what happens is that when a superdense object goes through a region, it damages both space and time. Don't ask me how that happens. I have no idea. But it looks as if these areas constitute dangerous places to initiate a jump.”
“But, Alex, ships would be leaving the area in the middle of the track all the time. How come only one is affected?”
“I can't answer that. Maybe it has to do with the drive, maybe the configuration of the hull, maybe it depends on how much mass you're dealing with. Probably a combination of factors. But I think that's precisely what's happening.”
Charlie was home by then. He told me how much he'd enjoyed the mission with Belle, and said he hoped it wouldn't be their last.
“Actually,” I said, “I don't think it will be. It was, by the way, the first time we sent the Belle-Marie on her own.”
“I know,” he said. “Belle enjoyed the experience. And-”
“Yes?”
“Well, I don't want to make an issue of it, but the ship was in perfectly good hands. You talk as if there might have been a risk involved.”
“I'm sorry,” I said. “I didn't mean to give offense.”
“None taken. I suppose I'm accustomed to having been in a place where the Betas were in charge.”
And we can all see how that turned out. But I resisted the urge. “I know,” I said. “I'm sure it's difficult making the adjustment.”
The so-called black-box issue was still a hot topic. Charlie was watching all the shows. “It doesn't look as if the rescue mission will happen,” he said.
“Give it time, Charlie.”
“I'd hoped,” he told me, “that people might have become more reasonable over all these thousands of years. But I'm sorry to say I can't see that much progress has been made.”
“Some has.”
“Not really. Except for the superficial stuff. The language and the way people dress and the kind of music they listen to. That's improved in some ways. But other than those kinds of cultural things, these could be the same people who brought their children to my school.”
Meanwhile, rescuing the boxes had become something of a media joke. “I should have known better,” Alex said, “than to hope we might get some official help. That won't happen unless people get stirred up over the issue. And it doesn't look as if that's very likely.”
“Not your fault,” I said.
Meantime, we lost a couple more clients over the issue. Jacob sorted through the incoming calls to root out the threats, jeers, and profanity. A few wrote or called to tell us they were disappointed in Alex, that they'd expected more. Some were praying for him.
Charlie put a package online in which he offered to join any rescue mission going to Villanueva. “I will show anyone who cares where other Betas can be found,” he said. But there were no takers. That wasn't a surprise. There had never been a time when anybody paid attention to strange voices on the Web.
On the other hand, we did get some supporters. Unfortunately, they included people who also wanted to argue that AIs should be encouraged to join the ministry; that they should be allowed to marry (and, yes, of course, it would be a purely spiritual relationship); and that AIs, when they reached the end of their ability to function, should be disassembled during an appropriate ceremony and buried with all due respect.
Senator Delmar appeared on The Capitol Hour. It had been a slow news week, so inevitably the host brought up Alex and the boxes. “What is your reaction, Senator,” he asked, “when someone like Benedict, who was a major factor in arranging a cease-fire with the Mutes, now thinks we should go rescue a lot of hardware on Villanueva? You've claimed to be a friend of his. Do you support him in this?”
Delmar was a tall, lean woman, who, in Alex's opinion, could be trusted to say what she thought and to keep her word. I don't mean to suggest that I disagreed, but simply that I didn't know her that well. I will say that she seemed to me to be more dependable than the average politician.
“Well, Ron,” she said, “it's true, Alex has always been a close friend. And I respect him. He's a good, decent man. But he's human. Like any of us, he can make mistakes. And he's made one on this. To the best of our knowledge, AIs are not sentient. It's an illusion. We all realize that, because it's one we've deliberately created. And I've no doubt that Alex, when he thinks about it, realizes it, too. The issue is going away, and I doubt very much that he'll bring it up again.
“I mean, look, Ron, his heart's in the right place. We all know that. In this case, he just made a misjudgment. It can happen to anybody.”
The comment played on most of the news shows that evening, and we started getting calls from the producers. Would Alex like to appear on The Morning Roundtable and reply to the senator? Was he available for an interview with Modern Times? Was he interested in appearing on Erika Gorman's Late Night?
“Ignore it,” I told him. “It's dying. Get past this week, and we'll never hear about it again.”
“And the next time somebody shows up on Villanueva the AIs will complain about us.”
“We tried.”
“No, we didn't. I went on a few talk shows. I appealed to our innate sense of responsibility. Now, somehow, the debate has become about my mental stability.”
“Alex, what more could you do?”
Charlie, of course, also felt the frustration. “Put me on one of these shows,” he said. “I can help.”
Alex didn't like the idea. “We'd get picked up by all the comedy shows. The whole thing would be made into a running punch line.”
“Please, Alex. I have a story to tell.”
He took a deep breath and thought about it. “Okay, Charlie,” he said, finally. “We'll try it. I guess there's nothing to lose. But we stay with the box. No holograms.”