Lost to eternity, p.1
Lost to Eternity, page 1
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Dedicated, with love, to Karen
Historian’s Note
This story takes place in 2268 (CE) in the third year of the U.S.S. Enterprise mission, after the starship’s response to a distress call from a colony on Beta XII-A (“Day of the Dove”).
And in 2292 after the collapse of the Klingon Empire and the Romulan Star Empire alliance, and just prior to the explosion of the Klingon moon, Praxis (Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country).
And in 2024.
All because of a missing woman.
Chapter One
2024
“Almost forty years ago, in May of 1986, Doctor Gillian Taylor, a prominent marine biologist specializing in the care and study of whales, stormed away from her dream job at the Maritime Cetacean Institute in Sausalito, California… and was never seen or heard from again. What became of Gillian Taylor? Did she meet with foul play or is she still alive somewhere? Where did she go? Who did she become, after seemingly vanishing off the face of the Earth? And can we all, working together, answer these questions at last?
“Welcome to Cetacean, a new investigative podcast series. I’m your host, Melinda Silver, and for the next several weeks we’ll be digging into a baffling missing-persons case that has been as cold as the ocean depths for decades. We’ll be reviewing the evidence, conducting new interviews, and, with any luck, getting fresh tips from our listeners so that we can crowd-source this investigation… and finally discover whatever happened to Gillian Taylor.”
* * *
Melinda clicked off the audio file on her phone, which she had recorded back at her apartment in the Mission District. Getting there, she thought, although she still wasn’t one hundred percent happy with the intro. Was the “cold as the ocean depths” bit evocative or trying too hard? She had a lot riding on this new series, following the phenomenal success of her previous podcast, so she wanted to get every detail just right; there was a lot of competition out there on the true-crime front. Maybe she should tweak the script some more, tighten it up a bit, perhaps have Dennis blend in some poignant whale song in the background? That could be a nice touch.
The Cetacean Institute was a multilevel complex stretching along the shore of San Francisco Bay. A salt breeze rustled Melinda’s bobbed, bubble-gum-pink hair, and she brushed a few stray bangs away from her eyes. She sat at a patio table near the snack bar, in an outdoor plaza overlooking an enormous saltwater tank used for the rehabilitation of beached and injured whales. Currently unoccupied by any large aquatic mammals, it housed a colorful assortment of sea life for the benefit of visitors. The institute was closed on Mondays, so the snack bar was shuttered; she and Dennis pretty much had the plaza to themselves. Sunlight glinted off the wavelets rippling across the surface of the tank. Gulls squawked overhead. From what Melinda could tell, based on her research, things hadn’t changed much since Gillian had worked at the institute way back in the eighties, decades before Melinda was even born. Had Gillian once sat here as well, enjoying the breeze, listening to the gulls?
She replayed the intro again, trying to hear it with fresh ears.
“What do you think?” she asked Dennis, who was setting up for today’s interview, fiddling with the settings on their pricy portable recorder. “Too long? Too short? Not grabby enough?”
“Works for me,” he said distractedly. Tall and lanky, with messy blond hair and a scruffy almost-beard, Dennis Berry was more intent on making sure they got a high-quality recording despite the outdoor setting. The pockets of his rumpled army-surplus jacket were stuffed with everything they might need, from batteries to cables, and plenty of stuff they wouldn’t. “Anyway, the creative stuff is your department.”
“True,” she conceded. He was the techie and research guy; she was the storyteller who had to craft the messiness of a real-life investigation into a serialized narrative compelling enough to get listeners to hit the Subscribe button. “But I can always use a sounding board.”
Their last podcast, Cascade, had concerned a 1990s newlywed bride who had disappeared mysteriously while honeymooning in Niagara Falls. (How retro was that?) In searching for a suitable topic for their next series, Melinda had been looking for something closer to home, that wouldn’t involve too much traveling but still had a distinctive hook—like maybe an environmental angle concerning whales? She had vague memories of visiting the Cetacean Institute as a kid, on some long-ago summer vacation, so she’d been thrilled to discover that there was a genuine missing-persons mystery in its past. It had felt like fate.
“Don’t mention sounds bouncing off things while I’m setting up. You’ll jinx us.” He looked up from the hardware, gazing past her. “Anyway, looks like our eyewitness is here.”
She turned to see an old white guy in a business suit approaching them. A rush of anticipation quickened her pulse as she cleared her brain to go into interview mode. Smiling, she waved at Doctor Robert Briggs, former director of the institute.
And the last person to lay eyes on Gillian before she vanished.
“Ms. Silver?” Briggs was in his seventies now, with a receding hairline. An ID badge accessorized his neatly pressed suit and tie. “Sorry to keep you waiting. I’m afraid I’m not as spry as I used to be.”
“No problem,” she said, assuming her most ingratiating tone. A long-sleeved concert T-shirt and jeans made her feel underdressed compared to him. Her petite frame conveyed an unintimidating presence, which was often an asset in putting interviewees at ease. “We appreciate you taking the time to meet with us, Doctor Briggs.”
“Please, call me Bob. No need to stand on ceremony. So nice to finally meet you in person; at my age, one doesn’t often receive an invitation from such a lovely young woman.”
Ick, she thought, but kept her eyes unrolled. “Bob it is, then.”
He sat down across from her. “You have any trouble getting in?”
“Not at all. The guy at the gate understood that we were expected. Thanks again for arranging that in advance.”
She could have conducted the interview remotely, of course, but in her experience nothing topped the immediacy of an actual face-to-face interview. And to do so at the very location where Gillian worked and was last seen? The goose bumps that gave Melinda were more than worth the extra effort required to meet him on-site.
“My pleasure. I may have retired several years ago, but I like to think I still have some pull around here.”
“Obviously.”
She’d already gotten a self-important vibe from Briggs in the calls and emails setting up this interview, but she could work with that. Older dudes who liked the sound of their own voice usually required little prompting to get talking. She could always edit out any hot air or excess mansplaining later.
“Oh, this is my coproducer, Dennis Berry,” she said. “He’ll be looking after the technical side of things so I can give your story my undivided attention.”
Dennis, who was not exactly outgoing, mumbled a greeting as he clipped a wireless mic to Briggs’s lapel and ran a few sound checks. Melinda’s own mic, a quality dynamic model on a stand, was already set up on the table. Matching bottles of water were on hand as antidotes to dry mouth. Melinda took a deep gulp in preparation.
“Looks like we’re all set. Shall we get down to it?”
“Might as well.” Briggs braced himself. “You want to know about Gillian.”
“That’s why we’re here.” She eased in gently, conscious that this might be a painful subject. “Tell me about her.”
“She was a remarkable person, extremely committed to our work here. Dedicated, motivated, knowledgeable, with a genuine passion for marine biology in general and whales in particular. She cared deeply about educating the public, as well as for looking after the whales in her care.”
“George and Gracie. A pair of rescued humpback whales.”
Briggs nodded. “You’ve done your homework, young lady.”
Imagine that, she thought. According to her research, Gillian had gone missing the very same day that George and Gracie were released from the institute and returned to the sea. That peculiar coincidence, if it was a coincidence, was one of the things that had leaped out at Melinda when she’d first started looking into Gillian’s disappearance as a possible subject for her next true-crime podcast. The ecological angle would add an extra subtext to the mystery, making it more than just another missing-persons case. Melinda liked the idea of working an environmental message into the series; no reason she couldn’t do a little good while also chasing listeners and ad revenue.
“I gather she was quite attached to those particular whales?”
“Very. Perhaps too much so.”
“How so?”
“As I mentioned, Gillian was nothing if not passionate when it came to her whales. If we’re being honest, this could sometimes compromise her professional detachment. She could be quite opinionated, emotional even.” He smiled ruefully. “Let’s just say she was not afraid to speak her mind.”
Good for her, Melinda thought. But had that come at a cost, maybe even played a factor in her eventual disappearance? Speaking up too loudly and too often could get a person branded as “difficult”—and perhaps even as a problem to be disposed of? Or am I getting ahead of myself?
“About the whales, they were released the same day Gillian vanished, correct?”
“That’s right.” A pained expression came over his face. “We lost them both on the same day.”
“Tell me about it, the last time you saw Gillian.”
He paused to take a sip of water, apparently needing a moment before going there. “You have to understand, this part is difficult to talk about.”
“I can imagine. I just want to understand what happened, in your own words.” She treaded lightly, not wanting him to have second thoughts about doing the interview. “I understand there was some… drama… surrounding the whales’ departure?”
News coverage at the time, along with the initial police reports, which she had carefully reviewed in preparation, had alluded to a heated argument between Briggs and Gillian right before she stormed off, witnessed by a few coworkers and passersby.
“We did not part on the best of terms,” he admitted. “She was already heartbroken about her beloved whales being released, putting them at risk from whalers, so I made the executive decision to quietly have the whales removed the night before they were officially scheduled to be released, after Gillian had already left for the day. I did this partly to avoid a media circus, but also because I honestly thought it would be easier on her if she wasn’t there when they left. Or maybe I just wanted to spare myself an awkward emotional scene.” He sighed, looking downcast. “In hindsight, that might not have been the right call.”
You think? Melinda thought. “And Gillian’s reaction, when she discovered the whales were gone?”
“She was furious at not being allowed to say goodbye to George and Gracie. She railed at me, even slapped me hard across the face.” His hand went to his cheek, as though reliving the sting of that slap. “But I swear, when she stormed off in a huff, it never occurred to me for a moment that I’d never see her again. Even when she didn’t show up for work the next day, I figured she just needed some time to get over it. At worst, I feared that she might tender her resignation.” He shook his head sadly. “But then days went by, my calls went unanswered… and the police found her truck abandoned by the park.”
Melinda nodded. She would be looking into that ominous discovery soon.
“What do you think happened to her?”
“No idea! Even if she was fed up with me, this place… why abandon her entire life and career? It baffled me then. Baffles me now.”
It didn’t make sense to Melinda either, which was what made the mystery so intriguing. “Did she have any enemies?”
“Not that I knew of,” Briggs said. “Police asked me the same thing back in ’86.”
“No jealous ex? Obsessed stalker? Disgruntled coworker?”
“Honestly, I never got the impression she had much of a social life. She was all about her work… and her whales.”
A crazy idea occurred to Melinda. “You don’t think she took off looking for George and Gracie, do you?”
“Unlikely. They were airlifted to Alaska in a 747, then dropped off in the Bering Sea, a long way from here. And even if she somehow made her way there, what could she expect to do if she found them? These weren’t homeless cats or dogs she could adopt. They were massive aquatic mammals weighing more than forty tons. She couldn’t rescue them even if she had been able to track them down via the transmitters.”
“Transmitters?” That hadn’t been mentioned in the reports on Gillian’s disappearance.
“Both whales were tagged with radio transmitters so we could track their movements. Or at least that was the plan. As it happened, we lost their signals within hours of them being returned to the sea.”
“The same day you last saw Gillian?”
Briggs nodded. “An ironic coincidence.”
Was it? Melinda wondered. “How come you lost the signals?”
“Who knows? Possibly the tracking devices failed. Or, sadly, George and Gracie could have quickly fallen victim to whalers. Or possibly killed by a random boat strike. Believe it or not, more whales are actually killed by boat strikes these days than by whaling, although that wasn’t necessarily the case back in the eighties.”
Melinda made a mental note to read up on the subject. That Gillian’s whales had not just been released but had also dropped off the radar the same day she had was a tantalizing new revelation. I can make hay with that, maybe.
The rest of the interview offered little she didn’t already know. Briggs sang Gillian’s praises while expressing total confusion as to what happened to her. She couldn’t help feeling sorry for him; he was obviously still troubled by what went down between him and Gillian decades ago.
“Well, thanks again for speaking with us,” she said, wrapping things up. “Please let me know if you think of anything else that might be relevant to our investigation.”
“Certainly. And I’d appreciate knowing if you come up with anything concerning Gillian’s disappearance. I’ve spent almost four decades now wondering what happened to her, whether there was something I could have said or done differently that might have changed things. I could use some answers after all this time.”
You and me both, Melinda thought.
Chapter Two
2268
“One of the passengers insists on speaking with you, Skipper.”
Captain Jerry Yamada was at the helm of the S.S. Chinook, a commercial transport three solar days out from Planet G, when his chief purser, Violet Achebe, visited the bridge to deliver a request from one of the forty or so travelers who had booked passage on the ship. The compact, utilitarian bridge was manned only by Yamada and his first mate. A viewscreen depicted a clear stretch of interstellar space.
“Their accommodations not to their liking? Or the meal service?” Yamada asked with a sigh, wondering what kind of deluxe treatment this particular passenger was demanding. “Can’t you handle this?”
It wasn’t that he couldn’t spare a moment to step away from the helm. This was a routine five-day run ferrying an assortment of civilians of various species to Cibonor Prime, out near the border of Federation space. Nothing his copilot or even the autonav systems couldn’t manage. Chinook had made this run countless times before, following a well-established route known to be free of any lurking singularities, plasma storms, or Orion pirates. Yamada simply wasn’t in a hurry to be groused at by some dissatisfied customer who didn’t find the modest transport up to their exalted standards. What had they expected, a Constitution-class starship?
“I tried, Skipper, but he insists on speaking with you directly. Claims it’s a matter of vital importance that must be dealt with at once. His words, not mine.”
“Understood.” He knew that Achebe had surely done her best to placate the unhappy passenger; as head of the cabin crew, she had always excelled at customer relations. He rose reluctantly from his seat, girding himself for the onerous chore ahead. He straightened his custom white uniform with braided gold epaulets, slicked back his thinning brown hair, and put on his captain’s hat. “So which of our current guests is giving you trouble?”
“Pierre Fortier, the traveling salesman.”
The captain nodded. He prided himself on familiarizing himself with the passenger list on each run. Fortier was a nondescript humanoid of terrestrial descent traveling alone on business. As Yamada recalled, the man was a merchant or sales rep peddling a variety of exotic tonics and elixirs of questionable provenance; in short, a modern-day snake-oil salesman plying his trade on frontier colonies and settlements on the fringes of the Federation. Harmless enough, by all appearances, but apparently making a pain of himself at the moment.
“Very well. Let’s see what’s bothering him.” He turned to his first mate. “Miguel, you have the helm.”
“Aye, sir.”
Yamada found Fortier waiting in the starview lounge, where the salesman was sharing a table with a few other passengers. Surveying the scene as a matter of course, the captain saw nothing amiss, just a cross section of ordinary people socializing with their fellow travelers: having cocktails, munching on snacks from the food dispensers, playing cards or chess or kal-toh, or maybe even chatting up an attractive stranger. Midvoyage, Chinook was still a few days away from Cibonor Prime, so folks were looking to pass the time as painlessly as possible. Picture viewports offered a panoramic view of distant stars and nebulae streaking past at warp speed. Caitian torch songs purred in the background. Artificial translators facilitated conversation. Everyone appeared in good spirits, except perhaps Fortier.
