Infinity Beach - Jack McDevitt [88]
She pulled the boat out of the back seat, hit the inflater, mounted the motor, and dragged it into the water. It had a transparent bottom. She tossed in a paddle, her flippers, and the converter. And her packet of pictures of Severin Village circa 573. She added forty meters of line, marked at two-meter intervals, and used a rock to make an anchor.
She strapped a lamp and an imager to her wrist, and looped a belt around her waist. She attached a utility pouch to it, and put in a compass and a laser cutter. Satisfied that she had everything, she launched the boat and started its waterjet engine.
The surface was choppy. Although she had a remote, she sat in the rear, steering by hand, headed out into the lake.
She moved onto the bearing with the dam and followed it until the city hall and the flyer repair facility lined up. Then she killed the engine and looked down through the bottom of the boat. The water was clear and she could see a bench. Nearby lay an abandoned flyer. Beyond the flyer she could make out a group of poles. A children’s swing set. The swings swayed gently as she passed overhead.
The boat rose and fell.
She saw a house, but it was not Kane’s, not the right shape. Her pictures indicated it was probably his neighbor on the south, a physician who’d performed well during the disaster.
She continued straight on until she saw what she was looking for: an arched pavilion, a stone wall, a Thunderbird house.
That was it. It had angled wings and courtyards and a long central spine. The roof, with its crests and ridgelines, was unmistakable.
Kim dropped her makeshift anchor over the side and watched the line play out to fourteen meters. Deep. She secured it to the gunwale, pulled on her gear, and slipped into the water. She immediately felt safer, as though she were no longer exposed.
She turned toward the bottom and rode down on her jets.
Gray light filtered through the surface. The water grew cool and then warm again as she passed through alternating currents. An eel glided past. She switched on her lamp and a few fish quickly retreated. The boat was a dark shape above.
She leveled off in front of the second floor, eye-to-eye with an oculus window. The interior was thick with silt. But she could see a bed, a dresser, a couple of chairs. A fish glided out of a venting pipe, turned toward the lamp, and then disappeared out of the room.
She descended to the front door. It had no power, no knob, no easy way to open it. She passed by, moved along the front of the building, found a gaping window, and swam in.
Her lamp picked out a couch, a fireplace, and a flatscreen in the down position on one wall. This, she thought, had been the formal living room Gould had described.
Amazing. Kane had apparently not bothered to move his furniture when he left, had simply given in to the rising water.
She passed into the central hallway. A staircase rose on one side, assorted chairs and tables were tumbled about, and a couple of beams lay in the debris.
Kim pushed across to the opposite wing. She had to struggle to get the door open. Inside, she looked into what seemed to be Kane’s work area. A wooden table was turned over, its legs sticking up like those of a dead animal. Several rolls of what might once have been canvasses were scattered in the silt. Artists’ brushes lay everywhere, and pieces of an easel.
She could make out sketches, or parts of sketches, on the walls. Women’s faces, mostly. Framed by trees, lanterns, a vestibule. But always the woman was prominent.
They were incomplete, as though he were trying out ideas. The expressions were inevitably wistful, melancholy, mournful. No life of the party here. The hairstyles were different, the hair itself sometimes cut short, sometimes shoulder length, inevitably in the fashions of the 570s. But it struck her, as she passed along the wall, examining the figures in the glow of the lamp, that each was an