Georgia On My Mind and Other Places

by Charles Sheffield

  “You mean that’s it? The whole thing? All you’re going to do is stand there?” Owen is many good things, but he is not diplomatic.

  “That’s it—for the moment.” Martindale led the way back to the aircraft.

  I could not follow. Not at once. I had lifted my goggles and was peering with wind-teared eyes to the west. The land there fell upward to the dark-blue twilight sky. It was the surge of the Andes, less than twenty miles away, rolling up in long, snowcapped breakers. I walked across the tufts of bunchgrass and reached out a hand to steady myself on an isolated ten-foot beech tree. Wind-shaped and stunted it stood, trunk and branches curved to the east, hiding its head from the deadly western wind. It was the only one within sight.

  This was my Patagonia, the true, the terrible.

  I felt a gentle touch on my arm. Helga stood there, waiting. I patted her hand in reply, and she instinctively recoiled. Together we followed Martindale and Davies back to the aircraft.

  “I found what I was looking for,” Martindale said, when we were all safely inside. The gale buffeted and rocked the craft, resenting our presence. “It’s no secret now. When the winds approach the Andes from the Chilean side, they shed all the moisture they have picked up over the Pacific; and they accelerate. The energy balance equation is the same everywhere in the world. It depends on terrain, moisture, heating, and atmospheric layers. The same equation everywhere—except that here, in the Kingdom of the Winds, something goes wrong. The winds pick up so much speed that they are thermodynamically impossible. There is a mechanism at work, pumping energy into the moving air. I knew it before I left New York City; and I knew what it must be. There had to be a long, horizontal line-vortex, running north to south and transmitting energy to the western wind. But that too was impossible. First, then, I had to confirm that the vortex existed.” He nodded vigorously. “It does. With my vision sensors I can see the patterns of compression and rarefaction. In other words, I can see direct evidence of the vortex. With half a dozen more readings, I will pinpoint the exact origin of its energy source.”

  “But what’s all that got to do with finding…” Owen trailed off and looked at me guiltily. I had told him what Martindale was after, but I had also cautioned him never to mention it.

  “With finding Trapalanda?” finished Martindale. “Why, it has everything to do with it. There must be one site, a specific place where the generator exists to power the vortex line. Find that, and we will have found Trapalanda.”

  Like God, Duty, or Paradise, Trapalanda means different things to different people. I could see from the expression on Owen’s face that a line-vortex power generator was not his Trapalanda, no matter what it meant to Martindale.

  I had allowed six days; it took three. On the evening of June 17th, we sat around the tiny table in the aircraft’s rear cabin. There would be no flying tomorrow, and Owen had produced a bottle of usquebaugh australis; “southern whiskey,” the worst drink in the world.

  “On foot,” John Martindale was saying. “Now it has to be on foot—and just in case, one of us will stay at the camp in radio contact.”

  “Helga,” I said. She and Martindale shook heads in unison. “Suppose you have to carry somebody out?” she said. “I can’t do that. It must be you or Owen.”

  At least she was taking this seriously, which Owen Davies was not. He had watched with increasing disgust while Martindale made atmospheric observations at seven sites. Afterward he came to me secretly. “We’re working for a madman,” he said. “We’ll find no treasure. I’d almost rather work for Diego.”

  Diego Luria—“Mad Diego”—believed that the location of Trapalanda could be found by a correct interpretation of the Gospel According to Saint John. He had made five expeditions to the altiplano, four of them with Owen as pilot. It was harder on Owen than you might think, since Diego sometimes said that human sacrifice would be needed before Trapalanda could be discovered. They had found nothing; but they had come back, and that in itself was no mean feat.

  Martindale had done his own exact triangulation, and pinpointed a place on the map. He had calculated UTM coordinates accurate to within twenty meters. They were not promising. When we flew as close as possible to his chosen location we found that we were looking at a point halfway up a steep rock face, where a set of broken waterfalls cascaded down a near-vertical cliff.

  “I am sure,” he said, in reply to my implied question. “The data-fit residuals are too small to leave any doubt.” He tapped the map, and looked out of the aircraft window at the distant rock face. “Tomorrow. You, and Helga, and I will go. You, Owen, you stay here and monitor our transmission frequency. If we are off the air for more than twelve hours, come and get us.”

  He was taking this too seriously. Before the light faded I went outside again and trained my binoculars on the rock face. According to Martindale, at that location was a power generator that could modify the flow of winds along two hundred and fifty miles of mountain range. I saw nothing but the blown white spray of falls and cataracts, and a gray highland fox picking its way easily up the vertical rock face.

  “Trust me.” Martindale had appeared suddenly at my side. “I can see those wind patterns when I set my sensors to function at the right wavelengths. What’s your problem?”

  “Size.” I turned to him. “Can you make your sensors provide telescopic images?”

  “Up to three inch effective aperture.”

  “Then take a look up there. You’re predicting that we’ll find a machine which produces tremendous power—”

  “Many gigawatts.”

  “—more power than a whole power station. And there is nothing there, nothing to see. That’s impossible.”

  “Not at all.” The sun was crawling along the northern horizon. The thin daylight lasted for only eight hours, and already it was fading. John Kenyon Martindale peered off westward and shook his head. He tapped his black visor. “You’ve had a good look at this,” he said. “Suppose I had wanted to buy something that could do what this does, say, five years ago. Do you know what it would have weighed?”

  “Weighed?” I shook my head.

  “At least a ton. And ten years ago, it would have been impossible to build, no matter how big you allowed it to be. In another ten years, this assembly will fit easily inside a prosthetic eye. The way is toward miniaturization, higher energy densities, more compact design. I expect the generator to be small.” He suddenly turned again to look right into my face. “I have a question for you, and it is an unforgivably personal one. Have you ever consummated your marriage with Helga?”

  He had anticipated my lunge at him, and he backed away rapidly. “Do not misunderstand me,” he said. “Helga’s extreme aversion to physical contact is obvious. If it is total, there are New York specialists who can probably help her. I have influence there.”

  I looked down at my hands as they held the binoculars. They were trembling. “It is—total,” I said.

  “You knew that—and yet you married her. Why?”

  “Why did you marry your wife, knowing you would be cuckolded?” I was lashing out, not expecting an answer.

  “Did she tell you it was for her skin?” His voice was weary, and he was turning away as he spoke. “I’m sure she did. Well, I will tell you. I married Shirley—because she wanted me to.”

  Then I was standing alone in the deepening darkness. Shirley Martindale had warned me, back in New York. He was like a child, curious about everything. Including me, including Helga, including me and Helga.

  Damn you, John Martindale. I looked at the bare hillside, and prayed that Trapalanda would somehow swallow him whole. Then I would never again have to endure that insidious, probing voice, asking the unanswerable.

  The plane had landed on the only level piece of ground in miles. Our destination was a mile and a half away, but it was across some formidable territory. We would have to descend a steep scree, cross a quarter mile of boulders until we came to a fast-moving stream, and follow that watercou
rse upward, until we were in the middle of the waterfalls themselves.

  The plain of boulders showed the translucent sheen of a thin ice coating. The journey could not be done in poor light. We would wait until morning, and leave promptly at ten.

  Helga and I went to bed early, leaving Martindale with his calculations and Owen Davies with his usquebaugh australis. At a pinch the aircraft would sleep four, but Helga and I slept outside in a small reinforced tent brought along for the purpose. The floor area was five feet by seven. We had pitched the tent in the lee of the aircraft, where the howl of the wind was muted. I listened to Helga’s breathing, and knew after half an hour that she was still awake.

  “Think we’ll find anything?” I said softly.

  “I don’t know.” And then, after maybe one minute. “It’s not that. It’s you, Klaus.”

  “I’ve never been better.”

  “That’s the problem. I’ve seen you, these last few days. You love it here. I should never have taken you away.”

  “I’m not complaining.”

  “That’s part of the problem, too. You never complain. I wish you would.” I heard her turn to face me in the dark, and for one second I imagined a hand was reaching out toward me. It was an illusion. She went on, “When I said I wanted to leave Patagonia and live in Europe, you agreed without an argument. But your heart has always been here.”

  “Oh, well, I don’t know…” The lie stuck in my throat.

  “And there’s something else. I wasn’t going to tell you, because I was afraid that you would misunderstand. But I will tell you. John Martindale tried to touch me.”

  I stirred, began to sit up, and felt the rough canvas against my forehead. Outside, the wind gave a sudden scream around the tent. “You mean he tried to—to—”

  “No. He reached out, and tried to touch the back of my hand. That was all. I don’t know why he did it, but I think it was just curiosity. He watches everything, and he has been watching us. I pulled my hand away before he got near. But it made me think of you. I have not been a wife to you, Klaus. You’ve done your best, and I’ve tried my hardest but it hasn’t improved at all. Be honest with yourself, you know it hasn’t. So if you want to stay here when this work is finished…”

  I hated to hear her sound so confused and lost. “Let’s not discuss it now,” I said.

  In other words, I can’t bear to talk about it.

  We had tried so hard at first, with Helga gritting her teeth at every gentle touch. When I finally realized that the sweat on her forehead and the quiver in her thin limbs was a hundred percent fear and zero percent arousal, I stopped trying. After that we had been happy—or at least, I had. I had not been faithful physically, but I could explain that well enough. And then, with this trip and the arrival on the scene of John Kenyon Martindale, the whole relationship between Helga and me felt threatened. And I did not know why.

  “We ought to get as much sleep as we can tonight,” I said, after another twenty seconds or so. “Tomorrow will be a tough day.”

  She said nothing, but she remained awake for a long, long time.

  And so, of course, did I.

  The first quarter mile was easy, a walk down a gently sloping incline of weathered basalt. Owen Davies had watched us leave with an odd mixture of disdain and greed on his face. We were not going to find anything, he was quite sure of that—but on the other hand, if by some miracle we did, and he was not there to see it…

  We carried minimal packs. I thought it would be no more than a two-hour trek to our target point, and we had no intention of being away overnight.

  When we came to the field of boulders I revised my estimate. Every square millimeter of surface was coated with the thinnest and most treacherous layer of clear ice. In principle its presence was impossible. With an atmosphere of this temperature and dryness, that ice should have sublimed away.

  We picked our way carefully across, concentrating on balance far more than progress. The wind buffeted us, always at the worst moments. It took another hour and a half before we were at the bottom of the waterfalls and could see how to tackle the rock face. It didn’t look too bad. There were enough cracks and ledges to make the climb fairly easy.

  “That’s the spot,” said Martindale. “Right in there.”

  We followed his pointing finger. About seventy feet above our heads one of the bigger waterfalls came cascading its way out from the cliff for a thirty-foot vertical drop.

  “The waterfall?” said Helga. Her tone of voice said more than her words. That’s supposed to be a generator of two hundred and fifty miles of gale-force winds? she was saying. Tell me another one.

  “Behind it.” Martindale was walking along the base of the cliff, looking for a likely point where he could begin the climb. “The coordinates are actually inside the cliff. Which means we have to look behind the waterfall. And that means we have to come at it from the side.”

  We had brought rock-climbing gear with us. We did not need it. Martindale found a diagonal groove that ran at an angle of thirty degrees up the side of the cliff, and after following it to a vertical chimney, we found another slanting ledge running the other way. Two more changes of route, neither difficult, and we were on a ledge about two feet wide that ran up to and right behind our waterfall.

  Two feet is a lot less when you are seventy feet up and walking a rock ledge slippery with water. Even here, the winds plucked restlessly at our clothes. We roped ourselves together, Martindale leading, and inched our way forward. When we were a few feet from the waterfall Martindale lengthened the rope between him and me, and went on alone behind the cascading water.

  “It’s all right.” He had to shout to be heard above the crash of water. “It gets easier. The ledge gets wider. It runs into a cave in the face of the cliff. Come on.”

  We were carrying powerful electric flashlights, and we needed them. Once we were in behind the screen of water, the light paled and dwindled. We shone the lights toward the back of the cave. We were standing on a flat area, maybe ten feet wide and twelve feet deep. So much for Owen’s dream of endless caverns of treasure; so much for my dreams, too, though they had been a lot less grandiose than his.

  Standing about nine feet in from the edge of the ledge stood a dark blue cylinder, maybe four feet long and as thick as a man’s thigh. It was smooth-surfaced and uniform, with no sign of controls or markings on its surface. I heard Martindale grunt in satisfaction.

  “Bingo,” he said. “That’s it.”

  “The whole thing?”

  “Certainly. Remember what I said last night, about advanced technology making this smaller? There’s the source of the line-vortex—the power unit for the whole Kingdom of the Winds.” He took two steps toward it, and as he did so Helga cried out, “Look out!”

  The blank wall at the back of the cave had suddenly changed. Instead of damp gray stone, a rectangle of striated darkness had formed, maybe seven feet high and five feet wide.

  Martindale laughed in triumph, and turned back to us. “Don’t move for the moment. But don’t worry, this is exactly what I hoped we might find. I suspected something like this when I first saw that anomaly. The winds are just an accidental by-product—like an eddy. The equipment here must be a little bit off in its tuning. But it’s still working, no doubt about that. Feel the inertial dragging?”

  I could feel something, a weak but persistent force drawing me toward the dark rectangle. I leaned backward to counteract it and looked more closely at the opening. As my eyes adjusted I realized that it was not true darkness there. Faint blue lines of luminescence started in from the edges of the aperture and flew rapidly toward a vanishing point at the center. There they disappeared, while new blue threads came into being at the outside.

  “Where did the opening come from?” said Helga. “It wasn’t there when we came in.”

  “No. It’s a portal. I’m sure it only switches on when it senses the right object within range.” Martindale took another couple of steps forward.
Now he was standing at the very edge of the aperture, staring through at something invisible to me.

  “What is it?” I said. In spite of Martindale’s words I too had taken a couple of steps closer, and so had Helga.

  “A portal—a gate to some other part of the universe, built around a gravitational line singularity.” He laughed, and his voice sounded half an octave lower in pitch. “Somebody left it here for us humans, and it leads to the stars. You wanted Trapalanda? This is it—the most priceless discovery in the history of the human race.”

  He took one more step forward. His moving leg stretched out forever in front of him, lengthening and lengthening. When his foot came down, the leg looked fifty yards long and it dwindled away to the tiny, distant speck of his foot. He lifted his back foot from the ground, and as he leaned forward his whole body rippled and distorted, stretching away from me. Now he looked his usual self—but he was a hundred yards away, carried with one stride along a tunnel that ran as far as the eye could follow.

  Martindale turned, and reached out his hand. A long arm zoomed back toward us, still attached to that distant body, and a normal-sized right hand appeared out of the aperture.

  “Come on.” The voice was lower again in tone, and strangely slowed. “Both of you. Don’t you want to see the rest of the universe? Here’s the best chance that you will ever have.”

  Helga and I took another step forward, staring in to the very edge of the opening. Martindale reached out his left hand too, and it hurtled toward us, growing rapidly, until it was there to be taken and held. I took another step, and I was within the portal itself. I felt normal, but I was aware of that force again, tugging us harder toward the tunnel. Suddenly I was gripped by an irrational and irresistible fear. I had to get away. I turned to move back from the aperture, and found myself looking at Helga. She was thirty yards away, drastically diminished, standing in front of a tiny wall of falling water.