A Deepness in the Sky

Sammy took a loose chair and sat down facing the figure in the light. A hundred seconds passed. Two hundred. The last rays of sunset were fading. The Man's stare was blank, but he reacted to the coolness on his face. His head moved, vaguely searching, and he seemed to notice his visitor. Sammy turned so his face was lit by the sunset sky. Something came into the other's eyes, puzzlement, memories swimming up from the depths. Abruptly, The Man's hands came out of his blankets and jerked clawlike at Sammy's face.

"You!"

"Yes, sir. Me." The search of eight centuries was over.

The Man shifted uncomfortably in his wheeled chair, rearranging his blankets. He was silent for some seconds, and when he finally spoke, his words were halting. "I knew your...kind would still be looking for me. I financed this damn Xupere cult, but I always knew...it might not be enough." He shifted again on the chair. There was a glitter in his eyes that Sammy had never seen in the old days. "Don't tell me. Each Family pitched in a little. Maybe every Qeng Ho ship has one crewmember who keeps a lookout for me."

He had no concept of the search that had finally found him. "We mean you no harm, sir."

The Man gave a rasp of a laugh, not arguing, but certainly disbelieving. "It's my bad luck that you would be the agent they assigned to Triland. You're smart enough to find me. They should have done better by you, Sammy. You should be a Fleet Captain and more, not some assassin errand boy." He shifted again, reached down as if to scratch his butt. What was it? Hemorrhoids? Cancer?Lordy, I bet he's sitting on a handgun. He's beenready all these years, and now it's tangled up in the blankets.

Sammy leaned forward earnestly. The Man was stringing him along. Fine. It might be the only way he would talk at all. "So we were finally lucky, sir. Myself, I guessed you might come here, because of the OnOff star."

The surreptitious probing of blankets paused for a moment. A sneer flickered across the old man's face. "It's only fifty light-years away, Sammy. The nearest astrophysical enigma to Human Space. And you ball-less Qeng Ho wonders have never visited it. Holy profit is all your kind ever cared about." He waved his right hand forgivingly, while his left dug deeper into the blankets. "But then, the whole human race is just as bad. Eight thousand years of telescope observations and two botched fly-throughs, that's all the wonder rated....I thought maybe this close, I could put together a manned mission. Maybe I would find something there, an edge.Then, whenI came back— " The strange glitter was back in his eyes. He had dreamed his impossible dream so long, it had consumed him. And Sammy realized that The Man was not a fragment of himself. He was simply mad.

But debts owed to a madman are still real debts.

Sammy leaned a little closer. "You could have done it. I understand that a starship passed through here when ‘Bidwel Ducanh' was at the height of his influence."

"That was Qeng Ho. Fuck the Qeng Ho! I have washed my hands of you." His left arm was no longer probing. Apparently, he had found his handgun.

Sammy reached out and lightly touched the blankets that hid The Man's left arm. It wasn't a forcible restraint, but an acknowledgment...and a request for a moment's more time. "Pham. There's reason to go to OnOff now. Even by Qeng Ho standards."

"Huh?" Sammy couldn't tell if it was the touch, or his words, or the name that had been unspoken for so long—but something briefly held the old man still and listening.

"Three years ago, while we were still backing into here, the Trilanders picked up emissions from near the OnOff star. It was spark-gap radio, like a fallen civilization might invent if it had totally lost its technological history. We've run out our own antenna arrays, and done our own analysis. The emissions are like manual Morse code, except human hands and human reflexes would never have quite this rhythm."

The old man's mouth opened and shut but for a moment no words came. "Impossible," he finally said, very faintly.

Sammy felt himself smile. "It's strange to hear that word from you, sir."

More silence. The Man's head bowed. Then: "The jackpot. I missed it by just sixty years. And you, by hunting me down here...now you'll get it all." His arm was still hidden, but he had slumped forward in his chair, defeated by his inner vision of defeat.

"Sir, a few of us"—more than a few—"have searched for you. You made yourself very hard to find, and there are all the old reasons for keeping the search secret. But we never wished you harm. We wanted to find you to—"To make amends? To beg forgiveness? Sammy couldn't say the words, and they weren't quite true. After all, The Man had beenwrong . So speak to the present: "We would be honored if you would come with us, to the OnOff star."

"Never. I am not Qeng Ho."

Sammy always kept close track of his ships' status. And just now... Well, it was worth a try: "I didn't come to Triland aboard a singleton, sir. I have a fleet."