Emily Brandywine went on an expedition to attempt to find proof of extraterrestrial intelligence, accompanied by Tripley, Kane, and Yoshi. The mission failed – or so they claimed. Emily was never seen again after the mission, leaving a younger clone-sister to grieve. A disastrous 'accident' involving the remaining three crew members made a small town unlivable and added Yoshi to the list of missing persons. Tripley and Kane kept their silence, taking their secrets to the grave. The next generation, comprised of Tripley's son, Kane's daughter, and Emily's clone-sister, deal with the fallout when Yoshi's last living relative starts asking questions and sharing his concerns with Kim Brandywine. What the expedition really found and what they did in response could potentially cause an interspecies war if the status quo is maintained. Yet, the only character who seems to consistently want to resolve the problem is Kim.
"Let it go."
These words are spoken by nearly every character with lines of dialogue in Infinity Beach. Every forward motion in pursuit of a goal is preceded by someone's request to drop the line of inquiry. The main protagonist, Dr. Kim Brandywine, wants to know what happened to her clone sister Emily after the woman disappeared. She also wants to fulfill their mutual dream of achieving first contact with an alien race. These are ambitious goals for a single person and they seemed to have consumed Emily's life, possibly even causing her death.
Kim, however, takes a more passive stance at the start of the story. She has the background and credentials of a physicist, but chooses to use her talent for persuasion as a fundraiser for the institute responsible for underwriting SETI expeditions and outreach projects. In this way, McDevitt shows her intense passion for the dream of confirming the human race is not alone in the universe (most of the rest of humanity is giving up on the idea), while providing an rationale as to why she has not started an investigation prior to the beginning of the narrative. When her old professor, Yoshi's relative, calls her and asks her to visit the deserted township where Yoshi went missing during the 'accident', she is reluctant to get involved. As far as she knew, Emily disappeared after taking a taxi from the spaceport and was the victim of street crime.
Once Kim and her pilot friend Solly visit the scene, she is no longer sure the old man is mistaken. She decides to investigate. After that decision, a minor one at this point, Kim encounters resistance. She gathers evidence (the record of the last voyage, a mural depicting an alien spaceship, and a sighting) and conducts interviews with Tripley's son and Kane's daughter. Kim meets resistance at every juncture. Kane's daughter wants to bury the past, Tripley's son wants to protect his father's reputation, and Kim's bosses at the Institute are feeling pressure to end this inquiry from powerful authorities, so they pile censure upon censure until she is fired and facing criminal charges.
Everyone has reasons for wanting to bury the investigation into what really happened on Emily's last voyage, even after finding definitive proof of Yoshi's death, alien artifacts, alien AI, and the original records showing a violent encounter with an alien microship. Only Kim, reluctant at first, but rediscovering her reasons for wanting to make contact in the first place, regains her clarity.
It is unusual to see the down-to-Earth lives of individuals in hard science fiction. Kim wants to keep her job, have a boyfriend, see her name in the history books, stay out of jail without going on the run, and find closure for her sister's death. She's even attracted to one man while in love with another – very human. Her opponents don't want their lives to change, so they see her investigation as a threat to the status quo. They ignore the flaws in their logic. Kane and Tripley suffered more for their silence than they would have had they reported the incident upon their return to Greenway; by covering up their unfortunate accident, they only highlighted the cover-up itself, creating an atmosphere of suspicion that followed them the rest of their lives. The authorities who learned of the alien encounter rationalized that no one was likely to travel through that specific sector of space again, so why should they warn anyone? They refused to consider that they did not know where the aliens came from, nor could they truly guarantee no future encounters with aliens who were going to regard humans as hostile.
Let it go. Ignore it and it will go away.
The only thing Kim let go throughout her journey was the alien artifact. She and her crew return the microship to the aliens with an apology and an offer to have a nonviolent first contact. It wasn't perfect, but it did work. Kim used the skill she knew best, persuasion, to reach her goal and take her place in history. The world moved on, resuming a variant of the status quo, with Kim regaining her job and freedom, getting a new boyfriend, and learning about the aliens. McDevitt ends the story with this restoration of order in everyday life and I think it works better than a grand sweeping statement of how the world changed.
