Infinity Beach - Jack McDevitt [26]
Solly was standing in the middle of the rotunda, idly shining his lamp around, bored, shivering, ready to go.
Kim walked back to the down-stairway at the rear of the house. “Let’s take a quick look,” she said, testing the handrail.
“Careful,” he cautioned.
The stairs sank under her weight. “Maybe you should stay here,” she said. “I’m not sure it’ll support you.”
He thought about it, looked at the stairway, pushed at the rail and watched the structure sway. Then he pointed his light down into the room below. It looked harmless enough, with a long table, a couple of chairs, and several trash bags stacked against a wall.
“I think we ought to just pass,” he said.
“Only take a minute.” She went down, testing each step, and was glad to get off at the bottom. The basement was less cold and damp than the rest of the house.
There were three rooms and a bath. She found a broken sofa decaying in one, and some carpets stacked up in another.
The table had data feeds, housings, and connections for electronic equipment. A mount hung from the ceiling. Probably for a VR unit.
“See anything?” asked Solly. The beam from his lamp illuminated the stairway.
“It was a workroom or lab at one time. I’ll be up in a minute.”
The walls were cedar-paneled, and they’d held up fairly well. The floor was artificial brick. There were magnets where pictures or plaques had once hung.
“Well,” she said, “that’s interesting.”
“What is?” called Solly.
The stairway started to swing. “Don’t try to come down,” she said. “It’s a trash can.” With the imprint EIV 4471886. She checked her notes: It was Hunter’s designator.
It was half-filled with metal parts and crumpled paper and rags. There were expended cartridges of compressed air and cleaning fluid canisters and an empty wine bottle. She found food wrappers and packing for computer disks and reams of printed pages.
They consisted of lists of names, possibly donors for the Foundation; financial statements; purchase records; test results for various engine configurations; and all kinds of other data whose purpose she couldn’t make out. But all had dates, and the most recent she could find was January 8,573. Before Tripley had left on the last Hunter voyage.
Several of the trash bags had been ripped open, probably by animals. She turned them over one by one and spilled their contents, finding corroded cables and hardened towels and dust cloths and battered monitor housings and interfaces and juice cartons.
Someone more thorough than she was might have been willing to take the time to go methodically through the trash. Who knew what might be there? But it was getting colder. And it seemed pointless.
The wind moved through the house like something alive. There were noises in the walls and tree limbs brushed windows upstairs. She turned the beam around the room, watching the darkness retreat and close in again.
“I don’t think there’s anything here,” she told Solly. “I’ll be up in a minute.” She hoisted herself onto the table, took off her shoes and socks, and rubbed her feet, which had lost all feeling. When she got the circulation going she turned the socks inside out. It didn’t help much because they were stiff and cold, but it was something.
When she was finished she dropped back onto the floor. Amid the debris, she saw a woman’s shoe. It was impossible to know what color it had originally been, but it had a curious kind of fibrous sole, unlike any she’d seen before.
What was it?
She put it into her utility bag.
“Kim.” Solly’s voice betrayed impatience. “Are we ready yet?”
“Coming up,” she said.
He provided light, angling his lamp so it wouldn’t be in her eyes, told her to be careful, and appeared to be holding his breath, waiting for the staircase to collapse. She was about halfway up when a support broke and the whole structure dropped a few centimeters. She grabbed for the rail. He leaned forward as if to come to her aid but instantly thought better of adding his weight to hers. In that moment her own lamp silhouetted him, and she saw something