“People I’d shown it to laughed at the idea it might be alien. And once I found out it wasn’t really silver and seemed to have no value of its own, I just put it in the trash.”
I closed my eyes for a moment. “When was that?”
“Were you sure it wasn’t silver?”
“She didn’t know what it was?”
That sounded like a good reason to have hung on to it. But I let it go. “We were in Newbury the other day, hoping to find you, and we discovered the memorial they’ve erected for your brother.”
“Well, it’s early yet, Angela. Things like that take time.”
“It’s possible.” I glanced out at the moon. “If Rick had found another civilization somewhere, did he seem to you like a person who’d have kept that quiet?”
“What can you tell me about him? What kind of guy was he?”
“How did he get assigned to Octavia?”
“Angela, why did you leave Newbury?”
“What does he do for a living?”
“May I ask where you live now?”
“It must have been hard, leaving Newbury.”
“Harkin’s your husband?”
“You met him in Newbury?”
She closed her eyes. She was talking about the silver trophy again.
“No,” I said. “Probably not.”
“One more question, Angela. Rick owned an interstellar yacht.”
“He eventually sold it, right?”
“Do you know who the buyer was?”
“Okay. Something else: Rick’s avatar said he had a certificate from the Oceanside Hotel on Elysium. It explained what the trophy was about. That the hotel had issued it. Did you ever see it?”
She needed a minute. she said finally.
VI.
,
,
,
.
,
.
I went back to the cottage, where I lay most of the night staring at the ceiling. Eventually I gave up trying to sleep, got up, and watched the sun rise through my kitchen windows while I ate a breakfast of grapes and raisin bread. Then I put on the news and collapsed into a recliner. The president was unhappy about charges of corruption he was receiving. That was apparently the only thing that was happening, but it was enough finally to put me under.
I spent the next two days organizing accounts at Rainbow. When I arrived on the third day, Jacob informed me that Alex had gotten home during the night and was asleep in his quarters. I wandered into my office and went to work. Alex walked in a half hour later with a cup of coffee.
I was recording auction results. We’d finally gotten a decent offer on Wayfield’s lamp. “Anything of significance?” he asked.
“Not much. Belklavik claims he found a two-thousand-year-old bracelet in a collapsed house on Traygor that they’d like us to move. They also have a monitor dug out of what they think was a courthouse that’s about a thousand years older. They’re asking a lot, but I’ll leave that to you.”
“Okay. The bracelet might work. Does he have confirmation?”
“From the archeological team? Yes.”
“Good.
“How’d the conference go?”
“Okay.” He sat down.
“That exciting, huh?”
“I can’t get Octavia out of my mind.”
“You have any ideas?”
“Not really. I tried reading the paper that Housman produced. ‘Quantum Passage.’ ” He took another sip of the coffee.
“That was submitted from the space station, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Did you understand it?”
“Not much of it. It won the Exeter Award.”
“Posthumously.”
“Yeah, I know. At least he lived long enough to see it published.”
“You think they sent him a copy?”
“Oh, sure. There’s no way they wouldn’t have done that. He probably even knew he was a candidate for the award.”
“I guess.”
“They published his paper a couple months before the station disappeared.”
“So what did you get from it, Alex?”
“Just that wormholes are crazy.”