Infinity Beach - Jack McDevitt [23]
“Okay,” Solly said. “If you want. Do we know where to find it?”
“As it happens,” she grinned, “I have it marked here.” She tapped her pen on the map.
“Why stop with Tripley? Why not take a look at Kane’s place while we’re at it?”
The Starlight was picking up a heavy headwind. “Kane’s place is underwater.” She showed him.
“I wasn’t serious,” he said.
“When are you? Serious?”
“Never on ghost hunts.” It was cold in the cabin. Solly pulled his jacket tighter, and she raised die temperature.
“If I’d known we were going on an expedition,” he said, “I’d have suggested doing it by daylight.”
Kim was thinking of what she’d say to Sheyel. We went out to the valley. We spent time in the woods. And we even looked in Tripley’s house. There’s nothing.
But she wanted to get it done now. Didn’t want to make a second trip in the morning.
Another aircraft, a patrol flyer, appeared on the edge of the short-range scan, headed in the opposite direction. It passed within two hundred meters, but they never did actually see it.
Eagle Point had receded into the darkness, and there were now no lights visible anywhere. The AI followed the Severin River south, displaying its winding image on the sensor screen. It narrowed and entered the first of a series of gorges which would take it down to the dam.
Her preoccupation with the legends increased as they flew deeper into the night. Even Solly seemed affected. They spoke with lowered voices, the way people do in empty churches, and Kim found herself sinking down inside her jacket even though the temperature in the cabin had now reached a comfortable level. The conversation consisted mostly of bravado. Remarks like how no self-respecting spook would be abroad in weather like this. Or how Solly thought he saw something moving out there. Ha-ha.
Solly’s story of the haunted stateroom came back to trouble her now. At the moment, in the snow, in the glow of the instrument panel, such things seemed possible.
They were only a few hundred meters off the ground when they broke out of the storm. The remains of the Severin Dam loomed just ahead.
The structure had not actually been removed. Weakened sections had been taken down and the rest simply left standing. Now, the river roared around piles of rubble and concrete slabs. The slabs seemed to be moving, an effect created by the flyer’s lights reflected off the water. The aircraft dropped lower and a last few flakes whirled up.
They passed over the ruins. On the south side, the river ran through a narrow corridor and emptied into Lake Remorse. The sky was still heavily overcast and the lake remained shrouded until they were out over it.
Solly directed the AI to turn on the aircraft’s spotlights. It complied, and twin beams swept the darkness, but they could see nothing other than water.
“It’s almost an inland sea,” said Kim, recalling that at its widest it was more than twenty kilometers across.
They rode through the night, beneath heavy skies, not saying much. Eventually a coastline appeared onscreen. Forest, mostly. Some hills, some open spaces. And then she saw a few stone walls and broken houses jutting out of the shallows.
The village had occupied the south shore of the original lake, then also called Severin. But after the dam had been taken down, the lake had expanded, swallowing most of the town.
Kim looked down at a world covered by snow.
“I’m surprised no one’s claimed the area,” said Solly. “It wouldn’t take much to rebuild here now.”
They circled, trying to locate Tripley’s villa. The map placed it atop a low rise just outside the town line, about a hundred meters north of the Scott Randal Stables, which had been a well-known producer of racehorses at the time of the event. They found the stables, now just a few crumbling buildings and a couple of fences. The rest was easy.
“Problem is,” said Solly, “there’s no open ground here anywhere.”
“There.” A strip of beach.
Solly looked at it reluctantly. “It’ll be a long walk,” he said. But it was all they had, and the AI