Infinity Beach - Jack McDevitt [98]
“I’ll help you pay for it,” he said.
“Won’t work. We need FAULS.” That was the Flexible Array, Unified Long-range Sensing System. If somebody did a radio broadcast a hundred light-years out, FAULS would pick it up.
“Kim,” he said. “Let it go.”
Hyperyacht, Inc., had an assortment of interstellars ranging from sleek executive models to economy-class buses. But the cheapest were not licensed for voyages outside the Nine World bubble, and the better ones were impossibly expensive. Worse, even if she could somehow meet the cost and persuade the Institute to let her have the communication gear, it couldn’t be installed.
She put it aside and went home to stare at the ocean.
And to send out résumés. They went to a dozen research institutions around the globe, but she had little hope any would respond favorably. There wasn’t much to put in the Current Projects and Recent Accomplishments blocks.
I am on the verge of making contact with an intelligent species.
Sure I am.
She could have undoubtedly gotten a job somewhere as a fund-raiser, but she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life pleading for money. Might as well simply retire to a leisurely existence like the majority of the population. Accept her monthly government allotment and sit on the porch.
She took to haunting the shoreline. The beach was especially appealing in winter, and its bleakness fit her mood. There was rarely anyone else out. Dressed in an insulated suit, she circled the island every day, moving at a rapid clip, stopping occasionally to look at the shells.
A seacoast is a special kind of place, she thought. It’s like the edge of a forest, or the foothills of a mountain range, where we stand at the rim of our daily existence, looking out at something quite different. Occasionally Kim would stay out past twilight, watching the tide run, letting the night roll into her soul. The beach was a sacred place to her, one of those areas where the infinite touches down.
She was in the presence of two oceans, one of water and one of space-time, and they somehow tended, after dark, to get mixed together. Pick the right spot, where the only real sound is the murmur of the surf, and it was possible to stroll along the damp sand and feel her blood run in sync with the tides.
An ocean’s edge is by definition a meeting place between the magnificent and the mundane. We listen to seashells and hear our own heartbeat.
When she got home each day, there was a message waiting from Solly: You okay? How’s everything going? I’ve talked to the people at Albestaadt. They’ve got a position for you if you want it. You’ll have to interview for it, of course, but the fix is in. I’ve told them about you and they’re excited at the prospect.
She responded by thanking him politely: Thanks for your efforts but I don’t think so.
The Moritami Orbital Research Center surprised her by inviting her in to interview for an entry-level researcher’s position. It was conducted at their administrative offices in Marathon and she did well. Interviews were one of her specialties. When they informed her she’d have to live off-world, she knew she had the job. They told her they’d call her and she came back out into the hard sunlight with mixed feelings. But the bright side was she’d be doing astrophysics again.
Again.
Truth was, she’d never really functioned within her specialty.
When she got home, Solly was waiting.
“How’d it go?” he asked.
She wasn’t surprised that he knew. The world community of physicists and astronomers was tight-knit. Information usually got around pretty quickly. “Okay,” she said. “I think they’re going to take me on.”
He was dressed in seagoing casuals, and wore his captain’s cap with its anchor emblem. The cap was pushed over to one side, an affectation he indulged only in her presence because he knew it made him look ridiculous and inevitably cheered her. “So you finally got what you want.”
“Yes.”
“No more fund-raising.”
“Nope.”
“Maybe this thing’ll turn out to be a blessing.”
There was something about the