Infinity Beach - Jack McDevitt [186]
“At about the same time Kile must have seen he could do nothing for Yoshi. He stormed upstairs, and asked me where the intruders had gone.
“I pointed to the window, and without another word he raced after them. I tried to dissuade him, and hurried outside just in time to see him lifting off the pad. I called after him not to go, but he persisted.
“I raised him on his commlink. He told me he was tracking the celestials, that he had them on his screen, and that he intended to make sure of them this time. Then he told me he would call me when it was over, and he signed off. I made repeated efforts to contact him after that, but he didn’t respond.
“I went back to see if I could do anything for Yoshi. But she was dead. A few minutes later, I heard the blast that blew the side out of Mount Hope. The house shook and the lights dimmed and went out. When I went outside, debris was still raining down on the town.
“Fires burned everywhere. There were screams in the wreckage.
“And God help me I knew it had been the fuel cells, that the celestials had somehow transferred them to the lander, and that Kile and I were responsible.
“I did what I could to help. Emergency teams from Eagle Point and elsewhere came in quickly. I tried again to raise Kile, but I never heard from him again.
“At the time I believed people would know who had done it. How could they not know? We were just back, the explosion had been triggered by antimatter, Kile was almost certainly dead in the blast. We had another crew member missing, and a third dead in the village. Clearly we had been up to something.
“Nevertheless I could not face public humiliation, and I did what I could to keep these events from coming to the attention of the authorities. It seemed to me two things needed to be accomplished.
“The first was to dispose of Yoshi’s body, so that it would not be found at the scene of the disaster and, when she was identified, raise even more questions. I wrapped it in plastic, weighted it, and put her in the river, above the dam, in the deepest part.
“Second, I had to remove the starship. I’d decided to bury it in the mountains, and then try to ride out the storm of suspicion which I knew would rise, and which indeed did rise, after the event. But when I got back to Kile’s villa, to my horror his mother had arrived and taken charge of things. I had no immediate opportunity to retrieve the microship, so I left it, hoping that no one would recognize it for what it was. Several days later, when I visited her, she was talking about sending it to her grandson.
“The thing that attacked Yoshi is still loose in the mountains. People come back with stories, and it has become something of a local celebrity, although fortunately very few take it seriously. And they are written off as lunatics.
“I have felt some sympathy for the creature, lost and alone in a strange world. I do not believe it meant to injure Yoshi, but only wished to clear the way for the escape vehicle. I’ve even gone looking for it on occasion. If it’s there, and if it recognizes me, it stays away.
“The lost crew of the microship, in spite of everything, has my respect. They killed two, and possibly three, of our people. Yet they must have known an explosion was imminent, and they took the fuel with them anyway. Did they do it for some incomprehensible reason? Or did they recognize they were in a populated area and sacrificed themselves in an effort to save creatures for whom they should have had no concern and no sympathy?”
The three great stars in Orion rose out of the sea at about nine o’clock. Kim sat on her deck, watching them. Next door, they were celebrating a birthday with loud music and rockets. When the noise subsided and the lights eventually went out, she was still there.
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One assumes the kindness of