Celebrate whenever and whatever you can. Wed, bring forth a child, repair a broken door, cut the grass, and do not waste the opportunity to beat the drum with friends and throw a party. It is the essence of life and joy.
—CHEN LO COBB, “CAREFUL WHERE YOU WALK,” FROM COLLECTIBLES, 614
A few nights later, we threw another party. We cleared several rooms, brought in a band, served drinks and side dishes, and danced well into the night. I’d hoped that Gabe might have invited April and her husband. But he said nothing either to Alex or to me. I’d thought about making the suggestion but realized it would be a terrible idea. So I kept my distance.
Guests included a couple of archeologists from Andiquar University; people from several museums, including Argus Konn, who’d traveled halfway around the globe to attend; and historians, one of whom was writing an archeological book that featured Gabe in a prime role. There were also a few family members and old friends. And there was someone else from his earlier days: his pilot, Tori Kolpath. My mom. I watched them fall into each other’s arms. For me it was the highlight of the evening. She’d come from the other side of the continent to be here. And when she began talking about her reaction to his reported death, tears rolled down her cheeks. Gabe told me later it was the only time he’d ever seen that kind of emotional outburst from her.
• • •
Fenn Redfield, a police commissioner who’d been only an inspector when the Capella vanished, was also present. He’d helped Alex on several occasions and also, to Gabe’s surprise, became his longtime tennis partner. Gabe had never known Redfield to play tennis.
We all sat down to prep for the banquet. Alex kicked things off by introducing Gabe to a round of enthusiastic applause. “He was the man,” he said, “who made it possible to uncover the truth about Christopher Sim.” Sim, of course, was remembered as the George Washington of the Confederacy, the legendary hero who’d held the Mutes at bay during the war years. Gabe spoke for a few minutes about how happy he was to be back with old friends on solid ground.
Amanda Ornstein, one of the University Museum directors, commented how quiet everything had been while he was gone. “All the excitement of the old days,” she said, “kind of subsided. I don’t know if Gabe ever thought of himself as a driving force, but I think we came to realize how much we needed him.”
Gabe looked up from his drink and smiled. “You want some old-time excitement, Amanda?”
“Of course,” she said. Amanda was tall, serene, a onetime actor who still attracted the attention of males despite her advanced age.
“Good enough.” Gabe grinned. “I was going to let this go for a while, but this is probably as good a time as any. Give me a second. I’ll be right back.” He finished his drink, got up from the table, and left.
Amanda looked toward Alex. “I didn’t mean to start anything.”
“It’s okay. He’s still making some adjustments.”
Quinda Arin, another of Gabe’s longtime friends, just stared at the door he’d passed through. “It’s really nice having him back. I don’t think I ever appreciated him until we’d lost him. Alex, do you have any idea what he’s talking about?”
“None whatever. But apparently he’s got something hidden in his room.”
Amanda asked her audience if anyone knew whether Gabe planned to resume his archeological career. Several hands went up, and the answer was a resounding yes. Several of our visitors had posed the question to him, and in each case Gabe had responded with enthusiasm. Of course he was. There was some inconsistency about the nature of his next project, but details didn’t matter.
Eventually Quinda approached me. “You think he’s okay?”
“Sure.” I thought about saying I’d go check, but that was silly. He was gone longer than we expected. We all assumed he’d gone to get something, but when finally he came back, his hands were empty and he looked frustrated. His eyes settled on Alex and me. “I had an artifact back there. A silver trophy. I think it was on the shelf in the closet. You guys by any chance know what happened to it?”
We’d kept his quarters pristine for a year or so. But gradually we’d begun using it for storage of artifacts owned by our clients. They were usually for sale, and they sent them to us to ascertain their value and arrange delivery when they were moved.
“A silver trophy?” asked Alex.
“Yes. The owner was, I think, Angela Harding. She wanted me to figure out whether it was an artifact. Possibly from a high-tech civilization. There was an imprint using characters I’d never seen before and wasn’t able to track.”
Alex thought about it. “I don’t recall seeing anything like that in there.”
Gabe turned toward me. “It was shaped like a flower vase, widening toward the top. It had a cone image in front and three lines of characters that didn’t match any known language. How about you, Chase? You ever see it?”
Yeah, I’d seen it. Four or five years ago. “I remember it.”
Gabe’s eyes grew intense. “What happened to it?”
“I returned it.”
“To whom?”
“Its owner. I think she had a receipt.”
“You think?”
“Gabe, it’s been a long time. But yes, I wouldn’t have given it to anyone who couldn’t prove she was the owner.”
“Did you run it by Alex?”
“I think at the time he was out on a project.”
Alex broke in: “Gabe, who did it belong to?”
“Angela Harding.”
“Give me a minute,” I said. “I’ll check it.”
“Please do. We need a contact.”
• • •
I left the room and walked down the hallway to my office. The door opened for me and I went inside. “Jacob, check out Angela Harding for me, please.”
I sat down and started some soft music.
“I have her, Chase.”
“Did she pick up a silver trophy several years ago?”
“That is correct.”
“Was she the owner?”
“Yes.”
“What was the source of the trophy?”
“That is unknown, Chase.”
“Do we have a receipt?”
“Yes, we do.”
“Print a copy, please.”
• • •
Amanda was still overseeing a conversation between Gabe and the audience when I got back. “We have it,” I said, and handed him the receipt.
“Good.” He looked over at Alex, who nodded, suggesting he’d told his uncle I wouldn’t give anything away without getting the appropriate paperwork. “Alex, you know who Angela Harding is, don’t you?”
“I have no idea, Gabe.”
“She is Rick Harding’s sister.”
Alex’s brow creased. “The name rings a bell.”
“He was one of the people lost on Octavia.”
“Oh. Right.”
Amanda had finished her remarks and was part of a small crowd that had gathered around us. “I knew Archie,” she said.
“Archie Womack?” The question came from several people.
“Yes.”
Everyone turned and looked at her. They said they were sorry to hear it and asked whether they’d been close. Alex was visibly surprised. “I don’t recall your mentioning it at the time.”
“He was a good man,” she added. “He had a special interest in orphans. I don’t know how many of them got through Andiquar University thanks to his support.”
“You came to know him through the museum?” somebody asked.
“Actually, no. We belonged to the same bridge club. Over the years we got closer. He was at the house a few times. We had lunch together occasionally. I’m pretty sure you met him once.” That was directed at Alex.
“Really?” He was trying to reach back, but he produced nothing. “I remember getting introduced to a lot of your friends over the years.” He shrugged. “I just don’t remember.”
Her eyes closed and she shook her head. “I’m sorry he’s gone. I wish they could pin down what happened.”
“So do I,” said Gabe.
“The best they could come up with,” said Amanda, “is that they got attacked by pirates. Or kidnapped by aliens.”
“You don’t buy into either, I assume?”
“We don’t have any pirates. And in either case, if someone they didn’t know showed up, they’d certainly have sent a message. No, wait, I take that back. There was a period of about thirty hours every few months that they were blocked off. That the black hole got between them and anybody they could have contacted. And that was when it happened.”
“Interesting,” said Alex. “Any reason someone would have wanted to attack them?”
“None I’ve ever heard of.”
“That would be worth looking into, Alex,” said Fenn Redfield. “I take it you’ve never gotten involved.”
“No, not really. No way I could.”
Fenn asked Gabe what he knew about it.
“Not much. If my memory serves me right, the Octavia tech, Rick Harding, was the owner of the trophy. Angela said she found it in a closet after the station disappeared. She brought it in here and asked me if I’d ever seen anything like it before.”
“Had you?”
“Not at first glance. Unfortunately I never had time to work on it. I can tell you there’s no record anywhere, in any known age, of a set of characters that looked like the ones on the artifact.”
“So it might have been legitimate? A product of an alien civilization?”
“Possibly.”
Alex looked puzzled. “If it was, why did he have it in a closet?”
“I think you just asked the right question.” Gabe looked seriously unhappy. “Unfortunately I don’t even have a picture of it.”
• • •
We drifted back into the party. But Gabe and Alex spent much of the rest of the evening in what was obviously a serious conversation. The truth was there was no way those two were going to walk away from a lost artifact. But Gabe had committed to join an archeological team that was preparing to leave for the Korkona, a star system that had housed a failed colony during the sixth millennium. And Alex was facing a trip around the world in two days to attend an antiquities conference. So I got the assignment of taking the first step. “Chase,” said Gabe, “do we have a contact for her?”
“For Angela Harding?”
“Yes.”
“She lives in Newbury. Or at least she did when she retrieved the artifact.” I passed the question to Jacob.
“Negative,” he said. “There is no listing for anyone by that name currently living in Newbury. Nor is there a forwarding address for the Angela Harding who formerly lived there. She seems to have dropped off the listings in 1431.” Four years earlier. Newbury was about sixty kilometers west, a quiet little leisurely town.
“Okay.” Gabe shook his head. Nothing’s ever easy. “Chase, see if you can track her down. That okay with you, Alex? I don’t want to be taking over your assistant.”
Alex grinned. “I don’t exactly think of Chase as an assistant. But sure. Do whatever you need.”
“Right. Okay. If you can locate her, we’d like to recover the trophy, if possible. And if you can, let’s get more information on Harding. It would be especially helpful if we could find out where he got the thing.”
“Gabe,” said Alex, “you probably remember this better than we all do, but when nobody could explain how a space station could disappear, even one circling a black hole, rumors started showing up. Harding was the tech. The station had thrusters. Could he or someone else have used them to send the station into the black hole?”
“I’ve no idea,” said Gabe. He passed the question to me.
“I doubt he could have used the system to steer the thing into the hole. It was a station, not a ship. He’d have had to destabilize it, get it out of orbit. It would have taken a while, and it’s hard to believe the others would have just stood around and watched.”
“There were also rumors,” said Amanda, “that DPSAR figured out what happened but kept it quiet.”
“Somebody wrote a book,” I said. “The title was Lost on Octavia. It claimed that a bomb had been planted on the station.”
“How could that have happened?” asked Gabe. “They were out there for what, a year and a half? And they weren’t changing the personnel.”
“There were periodic visits by supply vehicles. Mostly bringing food and water. The problem is they couldn’t find a motive for anyone, so the author invented one. Blamed it on religious extremists who thought we were breaking into divine territory. But she could never point the finger at anyone specific.”
Gabe sent me a tolerant smile. “When did Angela come back for it?”
I checked the receipt. “Midsummer, 1429.” Six years ago.
“I guess she got tired of waiting for me.” A bird—I think it was a turik—landed on a windowsill, flapped and squawked in the moonlight, and fell off. We all glanced at it and watched it fly away. Then Gabe continued: “Chase, if you can catch up with her, see if you can find out whether she ever learned whether it was actually an alien artifact. Was it real?”
“Okay.”
“And by the way, apologize for my not getting back to her.”
“I already did that. At the time, she didn’t realize you’d been on the Capella.”
“I hope she didn’t get rid of it,” said Gabe.
Alex was not happy. “You said you didn’t get any pictures of the thing.”
“That’s correct, Alex. I was on the run at the time.”
“That’s the first thing we do, Gabe, when something like that comes in.”
Gabe’s expression hardened, and I thought the old animosity between the two might break out again, but he didn’t say anything. In case he was thinking about it, I jumped in: “If she does have it, and she’s found out it’s a legitimate alien artifact, do you guys want to make an offer?”
They looked at each other. “If she tells you it’s legitimate,” said Gabe, “and she still has possession of it, tell her we’ll be in touch. If she’s sold it, see if you can find out to whom.”
• • •
It was getting late. Alex got everyone together in the conference room. “Something else we need to take care of,” he said. He looked over at Gabe, who was talking with Amanda and Fenn. “Uncle Gabe, would you come forward, please?”
Gabe looked around him as if Alex was actually speaking to someone else. That was Amanda’s cue to take his arm and escort him to his nephew’s side.
“Gabe,” he said, “I’d like to remind you that you’re surrounded by friends and family who’ve come together not only to show you how pleased they are to have you back but also because we have something for you.”
He stepped aside and was replaced by Hiram Olson, head of the archeology department at Andiquar University and a longtime friend of Gabe’s. Hiram was a tall, wide-shouldered man with the electric features of a comedian. He could in fact play almost any role needed. On that evening, he was dead serious. He reached down and took a package from beneath the table. He removed the wrapping, revealing a gold-framed plaque. “Gabriel,” he said, “eleven years ago, you inspired a search that made it possible for Alex to unearth a previously unsuspected piece of history. One of the keys that led to that happy result was the classic poem ‘Leisha’ by Walford Candles, written during the Mute War.”
He held the frame where everyone could see it. The poem was inscribed on the plaque, beneath Gabe’s name and above a visual of Christopher Sim’s Corsarius.
Amanda took him aside a few minutes later. “Gabe,” she said, “I’m not supposed to tell you this, but you’re on the inside track for the Fleminger Award this year.” For anyone who doesn’t know, the Fleminger is granted for special achievement in support of historical research. The recipients have been frequently associated with archeology.
A few minutes later Gabe approached his nephew and said thanks. “It wouldn’t be happening without you.”