Infinity Beach - Jack McDevitt [89]
Or herself.
Kim’s scalp prickled.
She drew the imager out of her utility pouch and began taking pictures. She tried to record everything.
She had come hoping to find the original Hunter logs. The possibility suddenly seemed remote, but the table had a drawer, so she opened it. It contained only a couple of rags.
There was a door at the far end of the room, leading to an enclosed porch, beyond which lay a washroom. She went through the door, and saw plastic containers and flowerpots on the porch floor. She found a medicine cabinet in the washroom and opened it. One of the containers still had air trapped inside. The container floated out and rose to the ceiling.
She went back the way she’d come, through the formal living room and on into the far wing.
She opened drawers, broke into cabinets when hinges wouldn’t work. She searched everywhere, and then went upstairs and prowled through bedrooms and washrooms. A broken pot or two remained in the kitchen cabinets. She was shocked to find several of Kane’s trophies in the mud, including the Conciliar Medal of Valor, the highest award the Republic had to give. It seemed odd that no one had been here before her and claimed the treasure.
Tora should have it. She wiped it off and put it in her pouch.
She felt movement in the water.
And sensed that she was not alone.
She listened, heard nothing, and surveyed the room for another way out. She’d have no choice but to go through the window if she had to, risking the glass shards still jutting out from the frame. She turned abruptly, as if to catch someone watching her. But the room was empty save for shadows drifting around the walls.
Dumb.
It was not at all hard to imagine that the spirit of Markis Kane lingered about the place. Had she been in sunlight, she’d have smiled at the notion and dismissed it with con-tempt. But down here—There must be a part of us, she thought, that’s wired to accept the paranormal. Science and the experience of a lifetime don’t count for much when the lights go out.
She returned to the hallway, swept it with her lamp, and started toward the rear of the house, stopping to examine a cabinet and a small desk. She’d acquired an escort of fish, long, rainbow-colored creatures that moved with her but darted back whenever she turned toward them. She was pleased to have their company.
Another bedroom opened off left. Here the furniture was still more or less in place. Clothing, or possibly bedding—it was impossible to know—lay in gray piles on the floor.
She continued down the corridor to the last doorway, which was on the right hand side of the corridor.
The sanctum sanctorum.
Its door was closed.
She pushed on it, gently at first, and then with as much force as she could muster. It did not budge. She took out the laser and cut a hole big enough to pass through.
Within, she saw a desk, a credenza, some cabinets and tables. And a chair.
She passed inside.
There was a closet across the room. Drapes covered the wall on her right. Two of the other walls had large windows. This window, she thought, looked north toward Eagle Point. The one on her left opened onto Mount Hope. She visualized Kane seated in here, watching the sun drop behind that scarred peak. What had he been thinking?
She rifled everything, breaking into cabinets, opening drawers, trying not to spill their contents, as if that mattered, searching the closet, which contained more clothes and several unopened packages of sketch paper. When she’d finished she drifted back into the center of the room, allowing her lamp to point where it would.
The beam touched the drapes. Still in place after all these years.
They covered an interior wall.
She thought of the sketches of Emily in the west wing, and the murals Kane had done for local libraries. Her converter came on, startling her. It murmured gently as it went about its business of renewing her air supply.
What was behind the drapes?
She raised her lamp. There must have been something jerky in the movement because the fish accompanying her vanished. Kim floated in