Infinity Beach

No one seemed to be watching her. She checked the timetables, noted that she had fifty-five minutes before the next departure for Eagle Point.

The train she’d just left was filling up. A bell sounded, doors closed, and it rose on its magnetics and pulled slowly out of the station. It would be heading back east.

She went to the terminal roof, hailed a cab, and told it to take her to the Beachfront Hotel. It rose into clear air, swung onto a southeastern tangent, and moved swiftly across the city.

At the Beachfront, she took an elevator down to the lobby. A cluster of shops ringed the area. She wandered into one, bought a comb, went out to the registration desk and reserved a room. Then she got back on the elevator, rode up past her floor, and went instead to the roof. Two cabs were just landing. She took one and instructed it to proceed to the train terminal.

There was still no indication of surveillance. Good. They had what they wanted, she hoped, and would not further concern themselves with her. She arrived at her destination, strolled over to an ADP, inserted her ID, and got a ticket to Eagle Point. Then she found a bench and watched a holocast talk show.

Ten minutes later her train arrived. She boarded, sat down, and lazily started browsing through the library. The doors closed and they left the station on schedule. The train cruised above the parks and residences on Terminal City’s north side. It crossed the VanderMeer Bridge to the mainland, and began to accelerate. The trees thi

The quiet motion rocked her to sleep. She dreamed of the shroud but somehow knew it was a dream and forced herself awake. The car was full of sunlight and skis and the laughter of children. Everybody seemed to be on vacation.

A drink table approached, and Kim helped herself to a frozen pineapple.

It was late afternoon when they glided into Eagle Point. She got off, walked over to the tourist information booth, and consulted the commercial registry. Finding what she wanted, she went up onto the skywalk and minutes later entered The Home Shop. She bought some white ribbon, and had it cut into six strips, each about twenty centimeters long.

Next she proceeded to the Rent-All Emporium sporting goods outlet, down at the next arch. There she picked out a collapsible boat, a converter and a jetpack, and several tethers designed for mountain climbing. They delivered everything to Wing Transport, where she rented a flyer. An hour and a quarter after she’d arrived, she was flying south over countryside that had grown painfully familiar. She picked up the Severin River, and followed it through the canyons and over the dam to Lake Remorse.

The lake was bright and still in the afternoon sun. No boat moved across its surface. It was almost, she thought, as if this area were disco

She took the metal sensor out of her carrying case and tied it into the flyer’s search system. That done, she skimmed the shoreline once, perhaps to ensure that she was alone, perhaps to be in a position to flee if anything rose out of the trees to come after her. She shuddered at the memory and made an effort to put it out of her mind.

At Cabry’s Beach, someone had put up a memorial for Sheyel, Ben Tripley, and the three guards.

She hovered over the place, tempted to go down and pay her respects. But time was short. She promised herself she would come back.

Kim turned north onto the same course she’d followed when fleeing the shroud, and retraced her flight across the lake. She homed in on the clutch of dead trees, measured angles between them and the town and the face of the mountain. She had been about sixty meters offshore when she pitched the Valiant into the lake.

Right there!

She descended to within a few meters of the surface and moved slowly across the face of the water, watching the sensor. It lit up a couple of times, but the position wasn’t quite right. Too far east. Too far out.

Eventually she got the hit she was looking for. She marked the spot with a float, found a landing place, and took the flyer down. When she’d come back to Remorse with Matt, she’d not felt much, just a kind of numbness. But today she was alone again, and the area oppressed her, weighed on her spirits.

She tried to concentrate on Solly, to imagine him alongside her, telling her not to worry. Nothing here to be afraid of.

She hauled the boat out of the aircraft, pulled the tag, and watched it inflate. A hawk appeared high overhead and began circling. She was glad for its company.

She tied her tethers together, making two lines, one approximately twenty and the other forty meters long, and laid them in the boat. She added her strips of ribbon, and picked up two rocks, one white and one gray. These she also put in the boat.

When everything seemed ready she got back into the flyer and changed into her wet suit. She strapped on the jets and the converter, then disco

She launched the boat with a sense of bravura and rode out to the marker. Depth registered at twelve meters. Deeper than she’d hoped. But by no means out of reach. She initiated the sensor search. That way, closer to shore.

Kim moved to the indicated spot, tied the shorter line around the gray rock and dropped it over the side to serve as her anchor.

It would have been easier to work with a partner in the boat, as she had with Solly above the dam. Now she had to forego the advantage of an observer with a tracking screen.

She attached the sensor to her lamp, strapped the lamp to her wrist, and slipped over the side.

The lake was cool and clear, but dark in its depths. She arrowed down until she touched bottom. Then she turned slowly 360 degrees, watching the sensor, waiting for the blinker to brighten. When it didn’t, she tried moving out, swimming in a circle, and immediately got her directions confused. The easy way was not going to work.

She went back up to the boat and thought about it. A flyer passed, moving south. She watched it until it was gone.

It was getting late. The afternoon was begi

She paid out her second line and tied the ribbon to it in five-meter increments. When she was finished she looped it over one shoulder, put the white rock in her utility bag, went back over the side, and descended to the anchor.

She co

Something hard-shelled, a turtle probably, bumped into her and scurried away. A good sign.

Holding on to the first ribbon to prevent moving beyond the perimeter, she searched the area immediately around the anchor, out to five meters. When she got back to the white rock, she switched her attention to the area outside the perimeter, and completed a second circle. Then she moved the rock to ten meters and repeated the process.

She found the Valiant on the next circuit, lying upside down in a tangle of vegetation. She removed it gently, clasped it to her breast, congratulated herself, and rose slowly to the surface.