“Please settle yourself one of the staterooms, Professor. Make yourself comfortable.”
Those words, heterized into androgyny by remote projection, were the only welcome from the pilot.
“Can you tell me where we’re going?”
“To your assignment, Professor. Once there, I’m sure you’ll learn all you need to know. Please stow your gear and settle yourself in one of the staterooms. We’re ready to delock.”
I took the first stateroom, where I slipped my valise and gear into the single locker that barely held both. Then I dropped into the massive-looking armchair anchored to the floor, a more refined version of an acceleration confinement and security couch.
The door didn’t lock, but that mattered little because the ship consisted, so far as I could tell, of two small staterooms, each with two bunks and—sealed off somewhere—whatever quarters and control spaces existed for the pilot or pilots.
During the trip, I did sleep more than I would have normally, probably because I’d slept poorly on the elevator lift to Leinster Orbit Station Beta. I ate less, because, while the stateroom had a formulator, it was basic. I didn’t go hungry, but was not in the slightest tempted to overindulge.
Except for the time devoted to exercises, what I spent my time on was the small console, in order to make a dent in my professional reading, beginning with the Review of Socio-Historical Trends. Most of the articles were more abstruse than I preferred, but I did get immersed in a monograph by Fleming Sohcora postulating that the demise of a culture can be predicted by the degree to which the media and opinion leaders endorse and support the monistic doctrine of single supremacy—the triumph of “winner take all,” if you will. He tied the rise of single supremacy monism to the fall of Western Hemispheric dominance on ancient Old Earth, the collapse of the Cephean Commercial League, and the relative decline of both the Worlds of the Covenant and the Sunnite Alliance. I had my doubts about applying the monistic model to theocracies, but he noted that, in such societies, “the deity is the supreme winner who takes all.”
There was a provocative, but far less well documented and supported, article on secularism as religion, which suggested that secularism as such did not exist, and that secularists were merely believers in other deities—such as “wealth” or “power” or “egalitarianism”—and that such nontheistic beliefs were far more dangerous to a technological society than traditional religions and deities. In that respect, my forced isolation promised wonders for reducing the backlog of my continued delayed professional reading. On the other hand, after reading so much negativity, for the majority of scholarly articles in my field have always struck me as negative, when the ship locked in at the still-unnamed destination two days later, I was feeling more than a shade cynical.
Once the courier locked, I was ushered out into another unadorned bay, where the walls looked to be solid steel, coated with bluish plastrene.
Awaiting me was a D.S.S. lieutenant in blue skintights with the gray D.S.S. ship vest and shorts. His rank-strip gave his name as Ruano. “Professor Fitzhugh. Welcome to Project Deep Find. If you’d accompany me… Could I take one of your cases?”
I surrendered the valise, but kept my hands on the bag that held my datablocs and reference materials. “Where are we, if I might ask?”
“Deep Find Station, of course, sir.”
“And where might that be?”
“We’re in the Hamilton system, sir, but exactly where I can’t tell you. Only one of the pilots could.”
“I thought…”
“This is just a staging point, sir, until we board the Magellan. You’ll have a stateroom here until that happens, and you’ll have a chance to meet some of your colleagues.”
No one had mentioned colleagues, and I had foolishly assumed that my “fellowship” was to be one of the bureaucratic advising types, buried studying secret files and providing analyses. What else could anyone wish from a professor of historical trends?
“This way, sir,” prompted the lieutenant, after taking the valise.
I followed, trudging through the blue-walled and blue-lighted tunnel-like corridor. At the first intersection, we turned left, then traveled at least another hundred meters, to yet another corridor, where we turned right Fifty meters later we stopped before a hatch with a DNA code device mounted on the wall.
“This is your section, sir. You’ll find several of your colleagues in the lounge. Beyond the lounge are the staterooms. There is one with your name. There is a folder on the station in your quarters. It tells you where the mess is and where the briefing rooms are. Just remember to keep to the blue passageways.”
The hatch opened, and I followed the lieutenant He set down the valise, smiled, and stepped back. The hatch closed before I could say a word. Unless previously prepared, as in academic settings, quick repartee has never been one of my strengths.
Two women and a man sat around a table, in replica old-style captain’s chairs. They had turned when I entered, but none of the three looked immediately familiar. The taller woman rose, peered in my direction, then smiled broadly and moved toward me. She had a round cheerful face. I could tell she was one of those people who love to hug everyone, and I braced myself.
“Professor Fitzhugh! I’m so glad that you decided to join our little expedition.” She stopped short of a full-body crush, just flapping her arms around me before stepping back.
“So far as I could ascertain, the element of choice wasn’t presented.”
“An honored fellowship with grant funds and prestige to your institution—how could you possibly term that a draft?” countered the other and more angular woman.
“In my myopic and academic fashion, I must be misoriented, perhaps even believing in counterfactuals.”
“You haven’t changed a bit since New Dublin, Liana,” noted the woman who had greeted me first.
Finally, the face and name came together—Alyendra Khorana. She’d been—she doubtless still was—an economic sociologist at St Patrick’s College. How a Hindji-Anglan had ended up in that bastion of propriety she had never made clear. “Are you still at St. Pat’s?”
“Where else?”
I turned to the angular, if shorter, woman and to the long-faced man with eyes so light a brown that they were almost tan. “I’ve met Alyendra before, but I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure. If I have… please excuse me.”
The gray-haired man laughed. “Tomas deSilva. Political science at San Juan University on Melloan.”
“I’m Melani Kalahouri. Theoretical psychology, DeForrest Seminary.” She appeared almost elfin in build and only stood to my shoulder.
“I’m told we’re all colleagues,” I said, “but no one bothered to tell me what exactly we are colleagues in.” I had a growing suspicion after Melani had introduced herself, because theoretical psychology was the latest term for alien psychology, but it was now termed “theoretical” because no one had ever found any alien artifacts, let alone any aliens whose behavior and psychology might be studied.
“We’re all in the social and behavioral science section of Project Deep Find,” replied Alyendra.
“You’ve just told me more than I could get out of all the people who drafted me. What is Project Deep Find?”
“We don’t know,” replied Tomas. As he moved toward me, I could see that he was older than I’d thought, possibly even elderly, although that was hard to tell until a time within a few years of physical nonexistence. “That is, mere have been intimations that there is possibly a renegade colony or even an abandoned alien planet. The locale is quite distant, and it is likely that only a single expedition can be mounted.”