Word got passed around that someone had fallen from the roof of the Archives.
“A man,” they said.
The emergency vehicles touched down. I threw caution aside and tried to get close. I arrived just in time to see somebody carried into a med unit. Moments later it lifted away.
Police officers fanned out through the crowd looking for witnesses.
Kiernan never showed up.
I wasn’t entirely surprised when Fenn called in the morning to tell us about the man who’d been killed at the Archives. “Identified him from Ida’s pictures,” he said. “It’s Kiernan. The same guy. No question.”
Alex told him I’d been there. Fenn’s expression hardened. “You’re not going to be satisfied until you get yourself killed, are you, Chase?”
“I tried to call.”
“Next time try harder.”
“It won’t happen again,” said Alex.
“You keep telling me that. I can’t protect you if I don’t know what’s going on.”
I told him about Kiernan’s call. He listened. Nodded. Scribbled something down.
“All right,” he said. “Thanks. We’ve got his DNA, and we are working now on establishing who he is.”
“Good. Let us know, okay?”
“If you hear anything more from these people, anything, would you be good enough to contact me? Right away?”
SIXTEEN
We cannot excise death from the process. If we sincerely wish to keep grandparents and elderly friends, and eventually ourselves, in full flower for an indefinite period, we had best be prepared to give up having children. But do that, and the creativity and the genius and the laughter will abandon the species. We will simply become old people in young bodies. And all that makes us human will cease to be.
- Garth Urquhart, Freedom Day Address, 1361
The AI at the Epstein Retreat, Dunninger’s longtime lab, had been named Flash, after a pet retriever. Three days after the departure of the Polaris, campers had gotten careless. The timber was dry, a fire wasn’t properly put out, and the woods caught.
The lab was completely destroyed.
When we’d gotten tired trying to figure out what Kiernan had wanted to tell us, we went back to trying to decipher the nonverbal communication between Dunninger and Mendoza. Eventually we got around to looking at the news coverage of the fire.
The blaze was already out of control when the media arrived. The fire brigade was only a few minutes behind, but by then the area was an inferno.
Epstein was located on a bank of the Big River. The facility consisted of two white one-story mod buildings, the living quarters, and the laboratory. At one time they’d been a boating facility and restaurant. There’d been rumors that Dunninger had been close to a solution to the Crabtree problem, but I had trouble believing he’d have gone off to a distant star system if he’d been on the verge of making the greatest discovery in history.
The fire had completely engulfed the lab. The buildings themselves, of course, resisted the flames, but the forest came all the way out to the water, so everything around them had burned. Lab materials burst into flame, or melted. In the end, the Epstein structures still stood, charred and smoking, but nothing else survived.
There was no serious effort to save the facility. Apparently some private homes along the western rim of the valley had been in danger, and the firefighters went there first. By the time anyone got near the laboratory it was too late. Judging from what we learned of the blaze, it wouldn’t have mattered in any case. There’d been a long drought, and the trees went up like tinder.
Flash was gone, too. The AI, not the dog. The core material for Dunninger’s work on life extension, which he called, simply, the Project, had not yet been submitted for peer review. It was gone as well. Up in smoke, you might say. Had he maintained a duplicate data bank elsewhere? Probably. But no one knew where it might be, or how it might be accessed.
There were no fatalities during the incident, and most of the homes on the western perimeter were saved. The rescue services congratulated themselves, and the media reported how fortunate everyone was, how it could easily have been a disaster.
Alex wanted to hear how Dunninger had responded when he heard the news, but his reaction never made the public nets. We dug around and discovered that his response to the damage was listed in the Environmental Service archives. But to get into those we’d have to make application and provide an explanation for the request.
“We should take a run out there tomorrow,” he said. “Get a look at the records.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Afterward we can go to lunch.” Alex enjoyed his lunches.
The Environmental Services Department is located along the perimeter of a preserve named Cobbler Green, about ten kilometers southwest of Andiquar. It’s a quiet area favored in the daytime by young mothers and in the evening by lovers. Sable trees, flowering bushes, sculpted brooks, curving walkways, traditional and virtual statuary.
The building itself is, in the spirit of the neighborhood, an unadorned two-story structure covered with vines.
We walked into the main lobby, which was manned by an autoprocessor. “Good morning,” it said in a gender-neutral voice. “How may I help you?”
Alex explained that we wanted to see the Polaris record that would detail Thomas Dunninger’s response to the news that his laboratory had been destroyed.
“Thirteen sixty-five,” he added.
“Very good,” it said. “There is a corresponding archive. The application forms are displayed. Please use the designated headbands.”
We sat down at a table, put on the headbands, and the applications appeared. We each completed one, citing antiquity background (whatever that might mean) as the purpose. A few minutes later, we were directed to an inner cubicle. A bored-looking middle-aged man in a Forestry Service uniform appeared and introduced himself as Chagal, or Chackal, or something like that. He directed us to a screen, told us to call him if we needed help, turned, and left. An access board powered up, and the screen turned on.
We got some numbers and a tag identifying the date and time of the desired communication. Fourth day of the flight, 1365, audio only. We listened to a station comm officer inform the Polaris, attention Dr. Dunninger, that a forest fire had destroyed the Epstein laboratory. “At this time,” the officer said, “reports indicate complete destruction of the facility. Nothing of value is believed to have survived other than the buildings, and they are damaged. This includes, unfortunately, the AI.”
A reply came back two days later. It was Madeleine’s voice: “Skydeck, the news of the fire has been passed as you requested. If there’s anything additional, please let us know.” Then she signed off.
“That’s it?” I asked.
Alex exhaled. “Damn.”
“I thought he’d get on the circuit and demand details. How it happened. Whether there was anything at all left. Stuff like that.”
“Apparently not. Of course, complete destruction pretty much says it.” We got up and started for the door.
“So what now?” I asked.
“How far’s Epstein?”
The Epstein Retreat had been located in West Chibong, in the north country. We booked a flight, left that evening, and got into Wahiri Central shortly after midnight.
Not good planning. We checked into a hotel and set out the following morning in a taxi.
West Chibong is exactly what it sounds like: isolated, remote, one of those places where, once you get beyond the town limits, there’s nothing for a hundred kilometers in any direction except mountains and forest. The Big River runs through the area, providing good fishing, according to the locals, and, of course, it features the Wainwright Falls.
Alex told the taxi to pass over the Epstein site. It didn’t have any idea what he was talking about so he sighed and directed it instead to take us to Special Services, which housed Air Rescue, Forest, and Environment.