Infinity Beach - Jack McDevitt [108]
After lunch during the early days of the flight they often played chess, but Solly won all the time so they gave that up and substituted poker, with three or four virtual opponents. And they participated in virtual seminars with Julius Caesar, Isaac Newton, Mikel Kashvady, and other classic personalities. One of the highlights of the early weeks came from watching Henry Mencken and Martin Luther talking past one another.
On the sixth day out they tried a Veronica King interactive, “The Laughing Genie.” Kim’s taste ran to the King adventures because they were much more than whodunits. Rather, the emphasis was on solving puzzles in which crimes may or may not have occurred. When a victim died, she was inevitably in a locked room, or asleep under the watchful eye of a security system that detected no perpetrator. In “The Laughing Genie,” an archeologist has spent a lifetime looking for the tomb of Makarios Hunt, the second century Numian dictator and mass murderer; he finds it; but uses explosives to reseal it and refuses to tell anyone its location, or what he has seen.
They enjoyed it so much that the following night they tried “The Molecular God,” the story of a physicist who comes into possession of the lost diaries of Embry Sickel, whose work led to the development of the jump engine. The physicist, now in possession of an exceedingly valuable historical document, proceeds to burn it and apparently leaps from a seventh-floor office.
In each case, witnesses and documents are made available to the detectives, played, of course, by Kim and Solly. They switched the roles back and forth. Kim particularly enjoyed portraying the giant bodyguard Archimedes Smith.
They spent much of their time lounging in virtual environments. Kim preferred artscapes, settings that never existed and never would, where colors and images assumed impressionist designs, where fountains floated in midair and sprayed tactile light into azure skies. Solly was more conservative: he liked seascapes, mountains, and had a special taste for the Egyptians, favoring pyramids and the great temple from the Valley of the Kings. Sometimes the temple was portrayed as a rain; sometimes it was seen as it appeared during its glory days.
Neither was inclined to be alone, but since Solly tended to lose his color among Kim’s abstractions, she gave in and settled for the more mundane surroundings.
She had plenty of time to think, and she spent much of it trying to persuade herself that she’d done the right thing. She fretted over Solly, and came to realize that she desperately wanted him not to come to grief because of her.
She owed him a considerable debt. He’d helped her through some bumpy times, including the loss of the only man she’d ever thought she loved. He’d gone off with an accountant, leaving her a note wishing her a good life. Kim understood now that the relationship would never have worked, but the experience, even after several years, still gnawed at her. Solly and his then-wife Ann had almost adopted her during that period.
Later, when Ann chose not to renew, Kim had been there when he needed to talk, and had even fixed him up with friends.
They had a lot of good memories and prided themselves in thinking they were closer, in many ways, than most lovers. They’d celebrated together, supported each other, and enjoyed one another’s victories. When Kim’s wildeye team had won an amateur championship two years earlier, Solly, who was bored silly by team sports, had been in the stands.