“I take it Joseph Margolis is the guy they’re named for?”
“Right.”
“Who was he?”
“A British prime minister. A hero, and apparently something of a philosopher.”
“What was he right about?”
“That communication technologies lead easily to enslavement. That it is very difficult to maintain individual freedoms. He was fond of citing Benjamin Franklin’s comment to the American people: ‘We have given you a republic. Now see if you can keep it.’ ”
He saw I didn’t recognize Franklin’s name either. He grinned and offered to explain, but I got the drift. “There were no colonies at the time, were there?”
“Two small ones. But both were under control of the home world. There were no independents.”
“And the government acquiesced?”
“They encouraged him to go and offered assistance.” He stared through the window at the ocean. “Good riddance to troublemakers. But that meant they’d know the location of the colony. Williams wanted out from under their thumb. So he and whoever was with him had to go it alone.”
“Not possible,” I said.
“Some of the Margolians thought the same way. But he persuaded them to make the attempt. They believed they could create an Eden. A home for humanity that would embody freedom and security. An ideal place to live.”
“That’s been tried any number of times,” I said.
He nodded. “Sometimes it’s happened. Anyhow, they were desperate. They sent people out to look for the right world. When they found it, they kept its location secret, bought the two ships, and headed out. Five thousand of them.”
“That’s an incredible story,” I said.
“Harry went with the last group, more than four years after the first Margolians left.
He’s reported to have told the media that, where they were going, even God wouldn’t be able to find them.”
The server refilled our glasses. “And nobody ever did,” I said.
“No. Not as far as I can tell.”
Alex was not very demonstrative. If the building were burning, he’d suggest it might be prudent to make for the door. So the news that the cup was associated with both a famous ship and a celebrated mystery did not send him reeling with joy around the office. But I saw a glint of satisfaction in those brown eyes. “Jacob,” he said.
Jacob responded with a few bars of Perrigrin’s Eighth. The kind of majestic chords with which heroic figures in the sims customarily make their entrances. Alex told him to knock it off.
“How may I be of assistance?” Jacob asked, in the deepest baritone he could muster.
Alex rolled his eyes. “Jacob,” he said, “we’d like to know whether any artifacts from the two ships associated with the Margolians, the Seeker and the Bremerhaven, are currently available, or have been on the market at any time.”
“They’d be quite old,” said Jacob. “I’ll need a few moments.”
We made small talk for about a minute, then he was back. “I see nothing of that nature. Nothing associated with either vessel. There are six verified items connected with the Margolians themselves. And numerous suspect objects.”
“Name them, please. The ones that are verified.”
“A communications link of some sort. A pen with Jase Tao-Ki’s name engraved on it.
Tao-Ki was a prominent member of the group, and a substantial contributor. There is also a wall plaque on which is inscribed a commendation to the Margolians from a social welfare group. A lapel pin bearing their symbol and name. The symbol is a torch. A portrait of Harry Williams himself. And a copy of Glory Run, signed by its author, Kay Wallis. It’s an account of how they put the mission together. The signature is faded but can be seen in ultraviolet light. All six were left behind. There is nothing from them after their departure.”
“Who was Kay Wallis?” asked Alex.
“One of the founders of the organization. One of its prime defenders when people began to laugh at them. The record’s unclear, but it looks as if she died just before the final round of flights. She never left Earth.” He paused, perhaps expecting a comment.
But none came. “Wallis laid out their objections to various governmental policies in Glory Run. Basically they were concerned that each generation was subjected to a series of ideologies which, once imposed, were hard to get rid of, hampered independent thought, and led to various hostilities. She spells everything out. Get the religious groups under control. Reign in the corporate types. Recognize that dissent is healthy. Provide a level playing field so no one is disadvantaged.”
“If American society-that was America, right?-Yes, if American society was so oppressive, how’d she get it published?”
“It was published in China,” said Jacob, “one of the last strongholds of democracy on the planet.”
“The Margolians,” I said, “weren’t really disadvantaged.”
Alex’s eyes narrowed. “They had resources. But if you don’t have freedom of action, disadvantaged is the right word.” He scribbled something on a pad. “Let’s talk about the artifacts.” He requested a list of the amounts paid the last time the six Margolian objects had changed hands. Jacob reported two had been secret transactions. The other four printed out. Alex sighed. “Not bad,” he said.
Indeed. Tao-Ki’s pen went for several years’ worth of my income. And I was well paid. The others were higher.
Alex rubbed his hands together. “Okay. She’ll have to produce ownership documentation before any of this goes public.” He was, of course, speaking of Amy.
“You’ll take care of that?” I said. There would also be some negotiation involved, and that line of work was his specialty.
“Get through to her when you can. Find out if she’d be willing to meet us at the Hillside for a drink.”
I called Amy. She decided good things had happened and pressed me for information.
I explained that we were still gathering data, but that Alex wished to ask a few more questions. She wasn’t having it, of course. But that was okay. When we got to the Hillside, Alex would caution her not to pass the good news to anyone until we were sure nobody would dispute her ownership claim. We had to do that to protect ourselves since we would be facilitating the sale.
“I’ll be there,” she said.
Alex had placed the cup in our vault. I brought its image up and wondered about its history.
Probably, someone had collected it as a souvenir during the Seeker ’s early years, before it became associated with the Margolian migration. Or, it might have made one or two of the early flights to the colony world and come off the ship when it returned for the third mission. It was unlikely, but it could have happened that way. Were that the case, and we could show that it was, the cup would then become enormously valuable. But it was hard to see how we could take it that far.
When I mentioned it to Alex, he told me not to get excited. “FTL travel was a big deal in the twenty-seventh century,” he said. “What probably happened is that somebody got the trademark rights and produced cups and uniforms and all sorts of Seeker souvenirs for sale to the general public.”
The English characters looked especially exotic. Marquard had pronounced the ship’s name for me, in both Standard and in English. He’d admitted at the same time that there was some uncertainty about pronunciation. No original audio recordings remained from the period, so even though we could read the language, nobody knew for certain what it had actually sounded like.
See-ker. Accent on the first syllable.
Outward Bound.
Where had they gone? “So far away even God won’t be able to find us.”
Several accounts existed of various aspects of the story, the background of Harry Williams, the roots of the Margolian movement, contemporary attacks accusing the Margolians of being elitist, their probable destination, and, eventually, theories about their disappearance. They had done precisely what they said they would do, suggested some. They had gone so far out, that even now, thousands of years later, the world they’d selected remained undetected.