Infinity Beach - Jack McDevitt [41]
“Kane was a starship captain.” He had settled back into his chair. “No. You can forget all that. Look, I don’t know what happened in Severin any more than anyone else does. But I know damned well it wasn’t my father playing around with a fuel cell. Chances are, it was a meteor. Plain and simple.”
“Ben,” she said, “do you have any idea whether Yoshi Amara might have been at your father’s villa around the time of the explosion?”
His gaze sharpened. “What makes you think that? I’ve never heard that charge made before.”
She’d gone too far. What was she going to tell him? That she’d found a shoe that was her size? “There’s some indication,” she said, plunging ahead.
Tripley looked like a man dealing with gnats. “May I ask what sort of indication?”
“Clothing. It’s probably hers. No way to be sure.”
“I see.” He glanced over at the Hunter. “Sounds weak to me. Kim, I hope you aren’t going to drag it all out again. Whatever might have happened, the principals are dead.”
She nodded. “Not all the principals. Some of them are still wondering what happened to their relatives.”
He clapped his hands together. “Of course,” he said. “That’s why you look so much like Emily.”
“Yes.”
“Her sister? daughter?”
“Sister.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I truly am. Then you must know how I feel. But I think it’s a mutual loss that we simply have to accept.” He’d come around the desk and was escorting her to the door. “Let it go, Kim. I don’t know what happened to them any more than you do, but I’ve long since come to terms with it. I suggest you do the same.”
Worldwide Interior specialized in custom decor for executive and personal yachts and the entire range of corporate vehicles. They were fond of saying that after Interstellar put in the electronics, Worldwide added the ambiance and made every vessel into a home.
Kim was given the tour by Jacob Isaacs, the public information officer. Isaacs was in his fourth quarter, as the saying went, in excess of a hundred fifty years old. He’d begun to gray, and he walked without energy. “They think I provide dignity,” he confided to her with a smile. In fact, in a society in which almost everyone looked young, persons who’d begun to show their age were at a premium and were often given what some thought was an unfair preference in hiring and promotion.
They walked together around a virtual Hunter, while Jacob described the ship’s features. Not her sensing capabilities or her propulsion systems, but the more cosmetic qualities. Hull design and esthetic considerations. Note the balance between architrave and portico. Observe the second-floor terraces. This was a ship that could have been placed on manorial grounds in the most sedate part of Marathon and it would not have been out of place. Except, of course, for the propulsion tubes extending from the rear.
And the lander, which was connected to the ship’s underside.
She’d explained that she was working on a history of the corporate fleet during the past half century, and to this end she’d become interested in Worldwide. How had they gotten started refurbishing spacecraft interiors?
“The founder, Ester DelSol, started in food distribution. DelSol and Winnett.” Isaacs looked at Kim as if she should have recognized the firm. She nodded as though she did. “The story is that she took a flight to Earth to visit her family and noticed how bad the onboard food was. And she saw her chance. She took over the franchise and provided the carriers first-class cuisine at reasonable prices. One thing led to another. There were plenty of corporations around to service engines and handle electronics, but the carriers themselves had to take care of the cosmetic stuff. It was expensive but necessary and it was done on a hit-or-miss basis.”
“And now you’re into all kinds of shipboard furnishings.”
“And exteriors. The cosmetics, that is. We don’t do food anymore, by the way. That was sold off years ago. But we handle pretty much everything else.”
He took her down to operations to see the ship itself. It floated just off the wheel, connected by a support structure.