Not much. “Somebody else’s outstation?” I suggested.
He considered it. “Maybe. Maybe we’re looking for an artifact. Something left over that’s not in the record.”
“It’s possible,” I said. “But it can’t be too old. If you’re going to use it to shelter people, even for a just a few days, it has to be capable of functioning.”
“By which you mean it has to be able to hold a charge.”
“Yes. That’s part of it.”
“How old?” he asked.
When did I become the professional on outstations? “I’m not an engineer, Alex.
But I’d guess maybe two thousand years at the outside. Maybe not that long. Maybe not nearly that long.”
We were moving back into daylight again, watching the sun climb above the arc of the planet. “Two thousand years,” he said. “That sounds like the Kang.”
“It could be.” They’d been active in this region for a period of about twelve hundred years, beginning during the ninth millennium. After that they’d gone dormant. Only in the last century had the Kang begun showing some of their old vitality. “Belle,” I said, “has anyone other than ourselves and the Kang Republic been prominent in the exploration of the region that includes Delta Karpis? Out, say, to seventy light-years?”
“The Alterians maintained a substantial presence, as did the Ioni.”
“I’m talking about recent times. Within the last three millennia.” I realized what I’d said and must have grinned.
“That’s good,” Alex said. “We’re thinking big.”
“It appears,” Belle said, “that no one else has invested in the subject area. Other than the Commonwealth, of course.” The forerunner of the Confederacy.
Alex poked a finger at the AI. “Belle,” he said, “what kind of character did the Kang use to represent their currency? During their period of ascendancy?”
“There were many. Which currency, and during what era?”
“Show us all of them.”
The screen filled with symbols. Letters from various alphabets, ideographs, geometric figures. He looked at them, shook his head, and asked whether there were more. There were.
It was in the second batch. The fifth symbol from the key. The rectangle. The press pad. “That looks like it,” he said.
It was impossible to be certain, but it did seem to be the same character. And I thought, Finally! “Belle, please provide the position for any remnant outstation from the Kang era located within the subject area.”
“Scanning, Chase.”
Alex closed his eyes.
“We lack data,” said Belle. “The locations of the Kang outstations were lost during the Pandemic revolutions. The stations themselves were long abandoned by the time the polity collapsed, and apparently no one cared enough to save the details.
The locations of six are known, none of which is in the area of interest. But there were substantially more.”
“But we don’t know where they were located.”
“That is correct.”
Serendipity is only twelve light-years from the place where the dwarf plowed into Delta Kay. Had Delta Kay still been a living star, it would have been at almost a right angle to the plane of the local solar system, bright and yellow in Serendipity’s northern skies.
“Might as well go home,” said Alex.
Belle stepped onto the bridge, blond and beautiful and wearing a workout suit.
Her shirt said
. This one, whose programing was virtually identical to the original’s, enjoyed making personal appearances. She shook her head, signaling that she wished she could help.
It was out there somewhere, a forgotten station where the Polaris passengers had found refuge. But where? A sphere with a diameter of 120 light-years makes a pretty big search area. “Not so fast,” I said. “How did Maddy know it was there? If there is such a place, how’d they happen to find out about it?”
“I have no idea,” said Alex.
And I remembered Nancy White at the outstation, the fact of its existence borne away by the ages. “Given enough time,” she’d said, “it’s what happens to us all.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Nancy White. She was especially interested in things that get abandoned.
Worlds, cities, philosophies. Outstations. ”
“She knew of one in this area?”
“I don’t know. She does a show that includes a tour of one of them. Chai Ping, or Pong, or something like that.” I looked at Belle.
“ Checking, ” Belle said. She leaned back against a bulkhead and let her gaze drop to the deck.
Alex wandered over to the viewport and looked down into the darkness. “I can’t imagine,” he said, “that we ever thought they might have come here.”
“Had to look, Alex. It was the only way to be sure.”
Belle lifted her eyes. “I’ve reviewed the show in question. White locates Chai Pong at a point eleven hundred light-years from Delta Karpis.”
Well out of range.
Alex grumbled something I couldn’t make out. The air felt thick and heavy.
“Maybe she found more than one.”
“It’s possible,” I said.
“If so, it might be in her work somewhere. In her commentaries, her essays, her notebooks. Maybe even in another of the shows.”
“Starting a comprehensive review,” said Belle. “This will take a few minutes.”
“Meantime,” said Alex, “there’s no point hanging around here.”
“Let’s sit tight,” I said, “until we know which way we’ll be going.”
Belle brightened and raised a fist in triumph. “It’s in her Daybook,” she said. “In a collection of ideas for essays and programs.”
“What does it say?” asked Alex.
“Are you familiar with Roman Hopkin?”
“No.”
“He’s a longtime friend of White’s. An historian who seems to have spent most of his time doing research for her. Anyhow, he discovered Chai Pong. In 1357.”
The Daybook appeared on-screen:
3/11/1364
Hopkin has found another. How many lost pieces of the Kang are out there? This one, he says, is near Baku Kon, in the dusty embrace, as he put it, of one of the gas giants in the system. (He always tends to overstate things.) He says it’s going down soon. Into the atmosphere. He thinks it’ll happen sometime during the next few centuries. It’s apparently been abandoned for two thousand years. He says it looks as if they cleared out in a hurry, and left everything. Ideal site for reclamation. It’s a microcosm of the Kang culture of the period. He’s going back in a month, and he promised I can go along.
I read it several times.
“Nancy White,” continued Belle, “is the only one of the Polaris passengers to do extensive off-world travel. She has, as you know, a reputation for a cosmic perspective. She is celebrated primarily because - ”
“Skip it, Belle. A Kang platform would have been a major discovery. Why didn’t we hear of it before?”
“Hopkin was dead three months later.”
“Another murder?” I asked.
“It doesn’t seem so. He died trying to rescue a woman who was attempting to commit suicide from a skyway. She climbed over the railing. He tried to stop her, but she apparently put up a fight and took him with her.”
“And Nancy White kept the second Kang discovery quiet,” I said.
“Belle,” said Alex, “where’s Baku Kon?”
A star map flashed onto one of the screens. Here was Delta Karpis. And there, at a range of forty-five light-years, a light blinked on and grew bright. “It would have been easy for them,” Alex said.
Belle caught his eye. “Alex,” she said, “I have a transmission for you. From Jacob.”
“From Jacob? Okay. Let’s see it.”
She put it on-screen:
Alex, I’ve received a message from one Cory Chalaba, who’s with the Evergreen Foundation. I take it you know her. She says the woman in the picture came by to look at the exhibit. She didn’t want to comment further except to ask me to relay the message and to get back to her. I assume you know what it means.”
Teri Barber.
Alex nodded. “She wants to know whether Barber might try to steal the artifact.”