Echo

Informationen zum Autor Jack McDevitt is a former naval officer, taxi driver, customs officer and motivational trainer. He is a multiple Nebula Award finalist who lives in Georgia with his wife Maureen. Klappentext Sunset Tuttle spent a lifetime looking for alien species. Twenty-five years after Tuttle's death, Alex Benedict discovers a stone tablet inscribed with cryptic symbols, now in the possession of Tuttle's one- time lover Rachel Bannister. Benedict is determined to decipher its secret-one Bannister doesn't want revealed. Could it be that Tuttle's obsessive quest was successful? ONE Antiquities are… remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time. – Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning 1431, TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS LATER "Chase, I may have found something of interest." Alex's voice, over the internal comm system, sounded dubious. Maybe he had something, maybe not. I was just getting ready to tackle the morning's work, which consisted primarily of calculating charges for our clients and getting out the monthly billing notices. It had been a good year, and if current trends continued, Rainbow Enterprises would experience breakout earnings. Interest in antiquities tends to move in cycles, and we were currently riding a wave. People wanted not only ordinary stuff, lamps and furniture from the last few centuries, but they were getting in line for rare, and sometimes unique, items. We'd just moved a chair that had belonged to E. Wyatt Cooper for a quarter million. Cooper had departed the scene more than a century ago, after a writing career that had appeared undistinguished. But his reputation had grown since his death, and today his vitriolic essays had become a staple of the literature. One who took mockery to the highest levels could expect to be defined as "cooperesque." Jacob, who'd started life as the house AI for Alex's uncle, Gabe, had noticed the chair when it was put up for sale by a young woman who had no idea of its value. We'd intervened, getting to her before anyone else did, informed her of its value, and managed the subsequent auction. And, if you're wondering, yes, we could have bought it ourselves at a price that would have constituted virtual robbery, but Alex never took advantage of anyone, except those blowhards and would-be cheats who deserved it. But that's another story. Suffice to say that Rainbow Enterprises did not want to be perceived as disreputable. Our income resulted from putting clients in touch with one another. And our clients tended to be generous when they made twenty or fifty times what they'd expected for a hand mirror or a bracelet. It was essential to the business that they trust us. Jacob had a long history of locating valuable antiquities amid the junk offered daily at the Rees Market, BlowAway, Ferguson's, and other online sites. "Take a look, Chase," Alex said. "You'll probably want to follow up on it." "Okay." "Let me know what you decide." I asked Jacob to show me what he had. He produced two pictures of a pale white stone tablet, taken from different angles. The tablet was rounded at the top, not unlike some of the markers in the cemetery adjoining Alex's property. Three lines of symbols had been engraved across the front of the object. "Actual size," Jacob added. It was a bit less than half as tall as I was, an arm's length in width, and a few millimeters thick. "What's the language?" I asked. "I have no idea, Chase. It looks a little like the Late Korbanic period, but the characters don't really match." "Angle it a bit." The bottom wasn't smooth. Someone had used a laser to cut it loose from its base. "It appears to be a clumsy effort," Jacob said, "to reduce the size in order to make it fit somewhere." "Or to remove it from the original site. Who's the owner?" "Madeleine Greengrass. She's a tour guide at Sil...

Product details

• Authors: Jack McDevitt
• Publisher: Ace Books
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 25.10.2011
• EAN: 9781937007003
• ISBN: 978-1-937007-00-3
• No. of pages: 384
• Dimensions: 106 mm x 170 mm x 25 mm
• Series: Alex Benedict; An Alex Benedict Novel; An Alex Benedict Novel; Alex Benedict Novel
• Subject: Fiction > Science fiction, fantasy