The Anomaly

Feet on Ground

Luck was with him. The next ship to dock was heading in the direction he wanted to go. A single transfer, three days of travel time in total, and Ernest made planetfall, bracing himself to face his one-time home after many years of absence. 

He emerged from the spaceport to the vastness of a clear spring day, the chill air embracing him like a welcoming hug. After such a long absence, it told him, this was a day for living. A day for noticing every detail, every face. Surely an omen? He breathed the air, he looked up into the vaulted emptiness of the sky, and then he did something he very rarely did. He smiled to himself, and to all the world around him. Then he set off into the city streets. He was off to meet a friend, a colleague from the old times.

Spaceport towns by their nature tend to be old, and any city this old is redolent with stories. Multilingual, speaking to Ernest both in a personal dialect – he had grown up here – and also in the language of history. For Ernest, this place both had a past of its own and was a part of his own personal story. Making his way through its bustle, he reveled in the familiarity of it all, welcoming the city back into him just as much as it was welcoming him. He could hear it talking to him – a constant mumbling in his ear, agreeable, like the purring of a cat, never quite resolving into words but with the implicit knowledge that this mumbling was merely a blockage in transmission, by no means an indication of any underlying incoherence. This was a condition to which Ernest could relate.

And as he listened he found he knew exactly where he was going. Down a narrow alley to a small shop, its business not advertised to the casual pedestrian. He paused outside for a moment, then entered.

"Misery! How you doing, old boy. I'd heard you were dead." Vince came around from behind the counter and gave Ernest a hug. It was received with a tolerant smile.

"Was for a while. All better now."

"Well I'm very glad to hear it. What brings you back to Sibay?"

"I'm looking for The Capt'n."

"Now what could you be wanting with him, I wonder? Wasn't he the one who got you deaded in the first place?"

Ernest shrugged. "It's an occupational hazard."

"Still, why go looking for him now? I never understood why anyone would crew with that old phony in the first place."

"Everything has a rational explanation. This one was that I was out of my mind."

Vince chuckled.

"It was that particular form of insanity known as youth. It makes us do foolish things, Vincent."

"What, even you Misery?"

"Even I was young once. But hold off with the sympathy. I think I'm over it now."

He chuckled again. "Anyways, you've missed The Capt'n. What I heard, he shipped out a week or so back. Spouting his usual bullshit about some great exploring he planned to do. We all just roll our eyes."

"These plans of his – did he mention anything about the Vortex?"

"The Vortex? Well to answer a question like that I would have had to be paying attention to what he was saying." As he'd been speaking he'd taken out a pipe and begun packing it with tobacco, leaning forward as he set a match to it. Now he leaned back again and observed Ernest with a skeptical eye. "Is this idle chatter? Cause if it ain't, then there's inquiries I could make. People I could ask."

"It's very important."

"Well then, just 'cause it's you askin', mind. Hang on a sec'." He took out a phone and tapped its face, his look all concentration as he jabbed with fat fingers. While Vince spoke into the device, Ernest listened with nostalgia to the once-familiar cadences of the Sibay dialect, felt soothed by the richness of its profanity. He was a native of the town, had come of age here. Such things will leave a mark on any man, even a navigator.

Vince put the phone back in his pocket, grinned across at Ernest. "How's your xenophilology?" He pronounced the word slowly and with care.

"Rusty."

"That was Ol' Sid. He hadn't heard of any vortexes, but according to him, The Capt'n's been spending time up at the university. In cahoots with some xenophilologist. A young lady no less, name of Gina. Been very cagey about it too, apparently. Not like The Capt'n at all."

"That's the study of alien languages?"

"Search me. You're the pointy headed one here, Misery. In any case, if you want to find out what The Capt'n's been up to, where he's gone, then the people up at the varsity might well be the ones to ask."

#

Another old haunt, a coffee shop where he could watch the world go by over a cup of the city's best arabica. The next step was easy enough: there weren't all that many xenophilologists on the planet, and only one whose first name was Gina. Unsurprisingly, she didn't answer his call: Ernest had checked the departure data filed for The Capt'n's ship, seen her name on the crew list.

A moment's thought and a sip of coffee later, Ernest made another call, to another old acquaintance. Terry was a data hound, an occupation said to be filled by those who might have been navigators, only weren't quite odd enough to qualify. Ernest had always got on well with Terry – the easy camaraderie of those who occupy adjacent but non-overlapping niches in the ecosystem of life.

By the time Ernest had ordered his second coffee, the data was waiting for him: a degrees of separation analysis showing just where Gina sat in the social milieu of Sibay City. He perused it over the course of his cappuccino. The Capt'n's name was there, but not prominent. Still, it made for interesting reading. One name stood out among all others. A man's name. Not someone he had ever met, but a name that, once upon a time, had featured with uncommon frequency in Ernest's ear, had taken some effort of will to ignore. Some, but not much; this was years ago, back when Ernest had little interest in anything beyond the content of the beer mug in front of him. Now it was time to investigate a little deeper. What had this man done to gain such notoriety? And, more to the point, why the subsequent silence?