The conversation inevitably wandered back to Rudy, but it didn’t touch on Matt’s role in his death. They were still there at five, when Jon came out to see what the noise was.

“Rehearsing for Guys and Dolls,” Matt said.

THEY STAYED IN orbit two days, making maps and taking pictures of the world. Meanwhile they thawed the book and gave it to Jim. He analyzed it and reported that he was able to translate some of the material. “Matt was right. It was a hotel. The book is a listing of services, of menus, of the contents of the hotel library, which seem to have consisted of both books and VR. And of attractions available in the area. You were right also that the place was a center for skiing.”

“Great,” said Matt. “That’s what he died for? A hotel package?”

“There’s more. More difficult to translate, but seemingly unconnected with the hotel. I’ve been able to do some translation, but the overall meaning tends to be elusive.”

“Explain.”

“Let me give you an example.”

“Okay.”

“‘The sea is loud at night, and there are voices in the tide. At another time, in another place, the moon did not speak. We were amused.’”

He stopped and they looked at one another. “Is that it?” asked Jon.

“That is a single piece of text, separated from the others.”

Jim put the lines on-screen. Matt frowned at it. “‘The moon did not speak’?”

“Are you sure you have it right?” asked Hutch.

“Reasonably certain. The word appears several times in the hotel directory. ‘If you need something, speak to any of the service people.’ ‘Speak the word and we will respond.’ And so on.”

“We might need more time with the translation,” said Jon.

The moon did not speak.

Did not.

It was hard to miss the past tense.

“What are you thinking, Hutch?” asked Matt.

“I don’t think ‘did not speak’ quite captures it.”

Jon looked baffled. “How can you make any kind of sense out of a talking moon?”

She focused on the screen:

At night the sea is very loud,

And voices ride the tide.

At another time, in another place,

Beneath the silent moon,

We laughed together.

“My God,” said Matt.

Jon nodded. “It’s a poem.”

Jim reported other structures under the snow near the landing site. “More towers,” he said. “Upslope.”

They nodded to each other. The rest of the ski lift.

THEY BROKE THE translation effort down to a system. Jim provided the most literal rendition possible, and Hutch interpreted as best she could. Sometimes it became necessary to infer meaning, as in the case of the adjective in

…The relentless river

Carrying us toward the night.

It might have been lovely, or idyllic, or any of countless other possibilities. But the context provided evidence for a good guess.

One line was straight out of The Rubaiyat:

…This vast gameboard of nights and days.

The poems seemed primarily, almost exclusively, concerned with lost love and early death. They were scattered throughout the book, located perhaps between a description of the hotel restaurant and an advertisement that might have had to do with sexual services.

The Preston AI broke in. “Hutch.”

“What do you have, Phyl?”

“There are three omega clouds in the area. Outbound at a distance of 1.8 light-years. Moving toward NGC6760.”

“Moving away from here?”

“Yes. What makes them interesting is that they are traveling abreast, in formation, along a line 6.1 light-years long. Straight as an arrow. The interior omega is two light-years from the end of the line.”

She waited, apparently expecting Hutch to respond. “You’re suggesting,” she said, “there’s one missing.”

“Exactly. We know these things tend to travel in orchestrated groups. Either the interior cloud should be in the middle, or there should be a cloud two light-years from the other end.”

“The missing cloud—” said Jon.

“Would have passed through this area. Three hundred years ago.”

THEY TALKED ABOUT putting everyone into the Preston for the remainder of the voyage. Let the AI do the navigation for the McAdams. There was a risk in doing that: If a glitch showed up somewhere, a cable came loose, a short developed in the wiring, there’d be nobody to fix it, and they’d lose the ship. The chance of such an event was remote, but it could happen. Matt argued against the idea, offered to ride alone if Jon wanted to join Hutch and Antonio. But he explained he felt responsible for the McAdams. She thought maybe he liked being on the bridge, and thought about suggesting they ride on his ship, but her instincts told her not to do it. Maybe she also liked being on the bridge.

ANTONIO’S NOTES

I’ll never understand Hutch. She’s one of the most optimistic people I know, but she’s convinced we’re all going to hell in a handcart. I asked her tonight whether she really thinks civilizations can’t survive long term. She looked straight at me and asked whether I’d give a monkey a loaded gun.

—Wednesday, January 2

chapter 31

THERE WAS A possibility the flight to Tenareif would be nonproductive, for the simple reason they might not be able to find the black hole. It had been detected by its gravitational effects on nearby stars. No companion was known to exist. If that was indeed the case, and there was no matter nearby, no dust or hydrogen or incoming debris to light the thing up, it would be invisible. Nothing more than a deeper darkness in the night. And looking for it would require a risk Hutch wasn’t prepared to take. Furthermore, there’d be no point in it anyhow since, even if they found it, there’d be nothing to see.

If the outside universe was about to acquire a flavor of weirdness, the climate inside the Preston had also changed. Not dramatically. Not in ways that Hutch could have explained. Antonio remained upbeat and encouraging. He could sit for hours trading barbs and gags, describing misadventures while trying to cover political events, natural disasters, and even occasional armed rebellions. “Got shot at once, in the Punjab. You believe that? Somebody actually tried to kill me. I was doing an interview with a local warlord and got in the way of an assassin.”

“You didn’t get hit, I hope?”

“In the hand.” He showed her a burn scar. “She—it was a woman—wanted a clear shot, and I was in the way. It was a bad moment.”

“I guess.”

“I mean, it’s got a special kind of significance, knowing that someone, a perfect stranger, wants to take your life.”

“Well,” Hutch said, “at least it wasn’t personal. She wasn’t after you. She just wanted to clear the area.”

“You can say that. It felt personal to me.”

“Why did she want him dead?”

“You’d think it was political, right?”

“Sure.”

“That she was from an oppressed group of some sort?”

“She wasn’t?”

“She was a government worker who’d been terminated. She got the warlord confused with the local bosses and tried to take him out. She should have been after the chief of the tax bureau.”

“Incredible.”

“No wonder they booted her.”

But if Antonio remained the same, the atmosphere had nevertheless changed. Maybe it was her. There was less reading and game-playing and VR. The climate had become more personal, the sense of isolation more acute. Rudy had been simply one of her two passengers during the first two legs of the flight. Now, with him gone, he’d become something infinitely more, a companion, a reflection of her own soul, an anchor in a turbulent time.