“Seeker,” I said.
“That’s correct.”
“Okay.”
“Chase, I don’t think you understand. This might be the Seeker.”
“I’m sorry, Shep. I have no idea what we’re talking about. What’s the Seeker?”
“It’s one of the ships that carried the Margolians off to their colony.”
“The Margolians.”
He smiled at my ignorance. “They left Earth during the Third Millennium. Fled, I guess, is a better term. They told nobody where they were going. Went out on their own with five thousand people. And we never heard from them again. They’re the lost colony.”
Atlantis. Intava. Margolia. Light dawned. “They’re a myth, aren’t they?”
“Not really. It happened.”
“They didn’t care much for the home world.”
“Chase, they lived in a society that was nominally a republic-”
“-But-?”
“-It controlled the churches, and used the schools to indoctrinate rather than teach.
Patriotism was defined as unwavering support for the leader and the flag. Anything short of that was disloyal. The decisions of those in authority were not to be questioned.”
“What happened if you did? You got jailed?”
“Hellfire.”
“What?”
“You had a divinely imposed responsibility to submit to the will of the president.
Render to Caesar.”
“That’s not what ‘Render to Caesar’ means.”
“It got twisted a bit. Failure to support the political establishment, and for that matter the social establishment, in thought as well as in act, constituted a serious offense against the Almighty.”
“Weren’t there any skeptics out there?”
“Sure. But you don’t hear much about them.”
It was hard to believe people could ever have lived like that. “So it’s a famous ship?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Are you telling me the Seeker never came back, either?”
“That’s correct.” He leaned toward me, and the candlelight flashed off a row of white teeth. “Chase. If this cup you told me about is really from the Seeker, you couldn’t have done better.” The wine and breadsticks arrived. “You say a woman walked in off the street and just presented you with it? Without any explanation?”
“Yes. That’s pretty much what happened.” I was thinking how pleased Alex would be.
“I don’t suppose you have it with you?”
I smiled. “If I’d tried to take it off the premises, Alex would have had cardiac arrest.”
“And you’re sure it’s nine thousand years old?”
“That’s the reading we got.”
“Incredible.” He handed me my glass and lifted his own. “To the Margolians,” he said.
Indeed. “So what really happened to them?”
He shrugged. “Nobody knows.”
The wine was good. Candles. Firelight. And good wine. And good news. It was a hard combination to beat. “They vanished completely?”
“Yes.” The waiter was back. I tend to eat light meals, even when someone else is buying. I settled for a fruit salad.
The waiter asked whether I was certain, and assured me that the Cordelia breakers were excellent.
“The Seeker,” Marquard continued, “left Earth December 27, 2688, carrying approximately nine hundred people. Two years later they were back, and took off another nine hundred.”
“There was a third trip as well, wasn’t there?” I was beginning to remember the story.
“Yes. The other ship was the Bremerhaven. They made three flights each. Carried more than five thousand people out to the colony world.”
“And nobody knew where it was? How’s it even possible? You can’t leave the station without filing a movement report.”
“Chase, we’re talking about the beginning of the interstellar age. They didn’t have many rules then.”
“Who owned the ship?”
“The Margolians. According to the record, it was refitted after each flight.”
“That doesn’t sound as if it was in the best of shape.”
“I don’t know what it took to maintain an interstellar in that era.”
“Was a search conducted for them?”
“Hard to say. The records aren’t clear.” He finished off his wine and gazed at the rim of the glass, which sparkled in the candlelight. “Chase, the authorities probably didn’t try very hard. These were people who didn’t want to be found.”
“Why not?”
An easy smile spread over his features. He did look good. He sat a few moments, admiring my charms, or my physical attributes, or the breadsticks. He signaled his approval as the waiter showed up with a dish full of nuts and grapes. “They were perceived as troublemakers. They wanted to stay out of sight, and the government was happy to oblige them.”
“How were they troublemakers?” I asked.
“You ever been to Earth, Chase?”
“No, as a matter of fact. I’ve been wanting to make the trip for years. Just never got around to it.”
“You should do it. That’s where it all began. For an historian, the trip to Earth is de rigueur.
“You go there, and you see the great monuments. Pyramids, statues, dams. The Kinoi Tower. The Mirabulis. Stop by Athens, where Plato and his colleagues launched the civilized world. Visit London, Paris, Berlin. Washington, and Tokyo. St. Petersburg.
Famous places, once. Centers of power in their day. You know what they’re like now?”
“Well, I know they’re not capitals anymore.”
“Except Paris. Paris is forever, they say. Chase, Earth has always had a problem: It’s loaded with more people than its resources can support. It’s always been that way.
Ever since the Industrial Age. The results of too many people are that someone’s always hungry, there’s always a plague running loose somewhere. Ethnic jealousies always get worse when times are hard. Nations become unstable, so governments get nervous and impose strictures. Individual freedoms break down. One thing the place has never been short of is dictators. People there have old habits, old hatreds, old perspectives that they keep passing down from generation to generation, and never get rid of.
“The planet’s population today is about eight billion. When the Margolians left, it was more than twice that. Can you imagine what life must have been like?”
“So,” I said, “the Margolians were, what, downtrodden? Trying to find a place where they could feed their kids?”
“No. They were at the other end of the scale. They were intellectuals, by and large.
And they had their share of the wealth. But they didn’t like the noxious environment.
Noxious meaning both physically and psychologically. They had a dictator. A theocrat by the name of Carvalla, who was relatively harmless as dictators went. But a dictator nevertheless. He controlled the media, controlled the schools, controlled the churches.
You attended church or you paid the consequences. The schools were indoctrination centers.”
“Hard to believe people would consent to live like that.”
“They’d been trained to take authority seriously. In Carvalla’s time, if you didn’t do what you were told, you disappeared.”
“I’m beginning to see why they wanted to clear out.”
“They were led by Harry Williams.”
Another name I was obviously supposed to know. “Sorry,” I said.
“He was a communications magnate, and he was connected for years to various social and political movements, trying to get food for hungry kids, to make medical care available. He didn’t get into trouble until he started trying to do something about education.”
“What happened?”
“The authorities didn’t like his basic notion, which was that kids should be taught to question everything.”
“Oh.”
“They called him unpatriotic.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“An atheist.”
“Was he?”
“He was an agnostic. Just as bad.”
“In that kind of society, I suppose so. You said it was a theocracy?”
“Yes. The head of state was also effectively the head of the Church.”
“What happened to Williams?”
“Fifteen years in jail. Or seventeen. Depends on which sources you trust. He’d have been executed, except that he had powerful friends.”
“So he did get out?”
“Yes, he got out. But it was while he was in jail that he decided something had to be done. Revolution wasn’t possible. So the next best thing was to escape. ‘Joseph Margolis had it right,’ he’s reported to have said at a meeting of his associates. ‘We’ll never be able to change things.’ ”