“So they never came up with anything at all?”
“Not anything definitive. Mostly all they had was speculation.”
“You think it could have also gotten tangled up in a time warp?”
“I’ve no idea, Gabe. According to the experts, you need a star drive unit to make that happen. The station had thrusters but that was all. The search parties found nothing. They put together a commission that decided the only reasonable solution was that one of the four crew sabotaged the place. That caused a lot of anger. Members of the commission took considerable heat. Eventually the media suggested they were trying to conceal a defect in the station. But they went over other stations of the same model and found nothing.”
“Now that I’ve had some experience being stranded myself,” said Gabe, “I can tell you it’s seriously unsettling. We knew for about a week that something had gone wrong and it was scary. We thought we were going to be there forever. I’d hate to think something like that happened to the people on Octavia.” He settled into the sofa. “I knew one of them.”
“Really? Which one?”
“Del Housman. We grew up together. Both members of the Explorers back in grade-school days. We never really lost touch. Until Octavia happened. You met him. We had him over to the house a couple of times when you were there.”
“I have no recollection of him. But you had a lot of visitors.”
“What was he like?” I asked.
“He was a good guy. A lot of the other kids treated him like a nerd. But he shrugged it off. They got especially annoyed with him because he refused to believe that AIs were actually alive. I think he’s the reason I figured out that the house didn’t really care what happened to me. That the voices were all automatic.” He paused for a smile. “He was always popular with the girls though.”
“He looks pretty ordinary,” I said.
“I guess. But that didn’t matter. He was a charmer. They loved him.”
Gabe had provided a home for Alex, who’d lost his parents in a hurricane when he was two years old. He was tall, with black hair parted on the left in a style we didn’t see much anymore. He had intelligent blue eyes that reflected the patience derived from so many years digging into dozens of archeological sites around and beyond the Confederacy. There was an intensity in his manner that tended to draw attention whenever he entered a room. Alex was just coming in off the porch when Gabe came through the door carrying a captain’s cap. “It’s Deirdre Schultz’s,” he said. She had been the ’s commanding officer.
“Beautiful,” said Alex. I understood. It was already valuable and would become, in time, priceless. “How did you persuade her to give it to you?”
“I just offered to replace it. She laughed and turned it over. Wouldn’t accept any money.”
“That was generous of her.”
Gabe couldn’t avoid shrugging, as if she’d have done it for anyone. “She told me I was her public relations guy.” She’d signed an authentication. “I think she suspected that if she let me have it, it would eventually wind up in a museum.”
“She read you pretty well,” said Alex.
The laughter continued, and neither said anything about what must have been on both their minds: that Alex, left to his own inclinations, would have eventually sold it to the highest bidder.
“You know,” Alex said, “leaving Rimway was probably the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.” They shook hands, both looking as if they had finally put the old quarrel behind them. “And thanks for this.” He looked up at the house. “I’m going to call Joyce Bartlett and have her take care of whatever legal formalities are necessary to return everything.”
“Who’s Joyce Bartlett?”
“My lawyer.”
Gabe looked puzzled. “Oh. I get it. You’re talking about my will.”
“Yes.”
“Holy cats, Alex. I hadn’t thought about that. I mean, from my perspective, I’ve only been gone a couple of weeks. And by the way, call me Gabe, okay? We’re both adults now.”
“Gabe.” Alex was testing it. “Sounds strange.”
“This whole business has been pretty strange.”
“I know. You were officially declared dead three years ago.”
“So this place is now yours?”
Alex nodded. “Yes. It is. But you’ll have it back pretty quickly.”
Gabe stared out at the trees, the carefully trimmed bushes and the sculpted lawn. “You took good care of it,” he said.
“Of course, Gabe.”
“I won’t have you leave it. It’s your home. Has been for years.”
A worldwide celebration was staged two nights later. Passengers, families, and crew arrived at thirty-six sites around the planet, and one at the space station, to share drinks and memories and to say thanks to those who’d been part of the rescue effort, as well as to President Davis.
Telemotion technology enabled them to embrace and shake hands. The Andiquar group met at the Miranda Hotel. The event broke every Rimway record for total number of viewers and participants. And for at least those few hours, we became a global family.
An army of Gabe’s old friends and relatives descended on the country house during the next few days. They took him out to luncheons and dinners, and spent time with him just sitting around talking about what, for them, were the good old days. Since for Gabe the good old days had been only three weeks earlier, there was a fair amount of disorientation on both sides. “We held a funeral service for you,” Alex told him.
“Did anybody come?” Gabe asked.
Alex got an uncertain look in his eyes. “I can show you some pictures.”
“Let’s let it go.”
Veronica Walker was standing beside Alex. She was an elementary-school teacher with chestnut hair, brown eyes, and a killer smile. I watched her squeeze his hand as he spoke to his uncle. They’d met at an auction when she’d outbid Alex for a lamp that had belonged to Wally Candles, the poet who’d become famous during the Ashiyyurean War. “Gabe,” she said, “I’m glad to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you. I wonder if I could have you come by the school and talk to my kids?”
“Sure. Would that be about archeology?”
“Whatever you like. But especially about why history matters.”
Alex and I had no problem adjusting to Gabe’s return. We’d both missed him, and getting him back became a gift of immeasurable substance. I was happy to note that whatever resistance Gabe had mounted against his nephew’s habitual salvaging of historical artifacts and putting them up for sale to private collectors did not show itself during the weeks that passed after he came back. If he was still embarrassed by Alex’s profession, he refused to show any indication of it.
But there were some difficult moments.
Alex updated him on a few family deaths, including two great-grandparents on his mother’s side. And there was his cousin Tom Benedict, an MD who’d died on the primitive world Lyseria, where a plague had broken out and killed almost the entire colony. Tom had gone to help in spite of dire warnings by friends and relatives. After a long struggle, he became one of the casualties. Eventually the plague was neutralized, but not in time to save him.
Gabe and Tom had been close, had spent a lot of time together, and had taken the young Alex on camping trips and boat rides back in the early days. They’d also taken him along on a couple of interstellar tours, which Alex told me had changed him forever. “They gave me a passion for history. For artifacts, especially. I loved touching them, touching . I especially liked an artifact when I had a name to go with it.”