Ancient Shores

by Jack McDevitt

  In midafternoon the clips showed up on CNN, which lumped Johnson’s Ridge in with a report on the crazy season. They interviewed a visibly deranged young man who maintained there was a power source within the Pembina Escarpment that allowed people to get in touch with their true selves. In Minnesota a group of farmers claimed to have seen something with lights land in the woods near Sauk Centre. There were stories of alien abductions in Pennsylvania and Mississippi. And a man in Lovelock, Nevada, who’d crashed into a roadside boulder and tested positive for alcohol, swore he was being chased by a UFO.

  “Max, you’re a celebrity,” Ceil told him. He hadn’t seen her standing in the doorway. She was wearing an immaculately pressed Thor Air Cargo blazer, dark blue with gold trim. Her hair was shoulder-length, and it swirled as she pulled the door shut.

  Max sighed. “On my way to fame and fortune,” he said.

  She sat down opposite him. “I hope you make it.” Her expression was set in its whimsical mode. “I was down looking at the Zero today.”

  “And?”

  “If you really have a UFO up there, the rest of this stuff is going to look like pretty small potatoes.”

  He grinned. “Don’t bet the mortgage on it.”

  “I won’t, Max.” She smiled. Max felt warmth flood through him. “Listen, I’m going up to Winnipeg. You busy?”

  He shook his head. “Just waiting for a phone call. How long are you going to be there?”

  “Up and back. I’m delivering a shipment of telecommunications parts.” Her eyes went serious. “Max, is it really there?”

  “I doubt it,” he said.

  She looked disappointed. “Pity. Anyhow, why don’t you come along? You can show me where you’re digging.”

  Max saw himself coming out of a Washington studio after an interview with Larry King. Ceil would be waiting, but as she approached he would wave her away. “Talk to you later,” he’d say. “I’m on my way over to do the Tonight show.”

  “Max?” she said.

  “Yeah. Sure, I’ll go.” He did want to hear April’s results as soon as they became available. “Which plane?”

  “Betsy.”

  “Okay. Let me finish up here and I’ll meet you outside.”

  He called April, got her answering machine, and told her how to raise the C—47. Then he left a note for Stell (who was at lunch), pulled on his jacket, and wandered out onto the runway.

  Ceil was already on board. He could see her up in the cockpit, going through her checklist. The C—47 still carried its original insignia. The only external concession to its real mission was the corporate mallet and the legend Thor Air Cargo tucked away on the tail.

  Max climbed in through the cargo door and closed it. The interior was filled with packing cases. He threaded his way through to the cockpit. Ceil, talking to the tower, raised a hand to acknowledge his presence. Max took the copilot’s seat.

  The engines were turning slowly.

  “What’s the big rush on the telephones?” he asked. Usually he would have expected a shipment like this to go by land.

  “Somebody screwed up. Production is waiting. So I get the assignment. Most of my business comes from picking up the pieces when people get things wrong.” She grinned. “I’ll never lack for work.”

  She taxied out onto the north runway. A few clouds floated in a gray sky. Snow tonight, Max thought. He liked the feel of the C—47. It was a durable and exceptionally stable aircraft. If you were going to haul cargo through hostile skies, this would be the plane you’d want to have.

  “On our way,” she said. She gunned the engines, and the C—47 rolled down the tarmac and lifted into the early afternoon.

  Max had discovered more than a year earlier that romance with Ceil wasn’t going to happen. Once that had been got out of the way, he found her easy to talk to. She was a good listener, and he trusted her discretion absolutely. “What scares me,” he said, “is that all this is becoming so public. The whole country now thinks that we think there might be a UFO up there. It makes us look like kooks.”

  “What do you think?”

  “That it’ll turn out to be something else.”

  “Then why are you going to all this expense?”

  Max thought about it. “On the off chance—”

  Her laughter stopped him. “See? You are kooks. Anyhow, I wouldn’t worry about it. You’ll be fine if you really do have a UFO.” It was cold in the cabin, and she turned up the heat. “If it’s there, Max, I want to ride in it.” She looked at him, and he laughed and gave her a thumbs-up.

  She climbed to fourteen thousand feet and turned north. Life was good in the cockpit of the C—47, where the sun was shining and everything was peaceful. “Who would own it?” she asked.

  “I guess it would belong to the Sioux.”

  “The Sioux?”

  “It’s on their land.” The thought of the Sioux winding up with the world’s most advanced spacecraft amused him. “I wonder what the Bureau of Indian Affairs would say to that.”

  “You can bet your foot,” she said, “that the Sioux wouldn’t be allowed to keep it.”

  They picked up the Maple River near Hope and followed it north. When they were over Pleasant Valley, the phone rang. Ceil picked it up, listened, and handed it to Max.

  It was April. She sounded out of breath. “It’s one-sixty-one, Max,” she said.

  “Just like the boat?” He squeezed the phone and caught Ceil’s eye. “You’re sure?”

  “Yes, Max. I’m sure.” She made no effort to suppress her delight.

  “Congratulations,” said Max. Ceil was watching him curiously.

  “You, too. Listen, we should go back up.”

  “Actually, I’m more or less there now. I’m on my way to Winnipeg. I’ll be back this evening, and we can fly up tonight. Okay?”

  “Sure. That’s fine. Call me when you get here.”

  Max said he would. “Have you thought about the press conference tomorrow?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’ve thought about it.”

  “Seems to me we have no reason to keep it quiet anymore.”

  “What?” asked Ceil, forming the word with her lips.

  Max could almost hear the wheels go round in April’s head. “I’d feel better,” she said, “if we waited until we have the thing dug up.”

  “You probably won’t have that luxury.”

  “I take it,” Ceil said moments later, “you have a UFO.”

  “No, the news is not that good. But it is good.” He explained.

  She looked at him, and her eyes grew round and warm. “I’m happy for you, Max,” she said.

  Johnson’s Ridge was coming up. Max looked down on the flanking hills, smooth and white in the afternoon sun, and the saddle, low and flat and emptying off abruptly into space.

  “You’ve got a lot of people down there,” said Ceil.

  Too many, as a matter of fact. There were people everywhere, and the parking lot overflowed with vehicles. “I guess we’ve got some sightseers,” he said.

  Ceil banked and started a long, slow turn. “It’s probably just the beginning,” she said. “You might want to start thinking about crowd control and security.” She extracted a pair of field glasses from a utility compartment and raised them to look at the ridge. “I don’t think your people are getting much work done.”

  Max reached for the phone, but she touched his wrist. “Why don’t we do it in person?” she said. “I’d like to see it for myself, anyhow.”

  She put the glasses down and pushed the wheel forward. The plane began to descend. “You aren’t going to land down there, are you?” Max asked. “There’s an airport a few miles east.”

  She pointed down. “Is that the road?”

  The two-lane from Fort Moxie looked like stop-and-go traffic. “That’s it.”

  “We don’t have time to negotiate that. Look, Max, I’d love to see a UFO up close. You’ve seen the ground. Any reservations?”

  The top of t
he escarpment was about two thousand yards long. It was flat, treeless as long as she stayed away from the perimeters, marked with occasional patches of snow. “You’ve got a pretty good crosswind,” he said.

  She looked down, and her expression indicated no sweat. “It’s less than twenty knots. No problem for Betsy.”

  “Whatever,” he said.

  She laughed. “Don’t worry, Max. If anyone complains, I’ll tell them you protested all the way down.”

  Ten minutes later she set the big plane on the ground without jostling the coffee. Everyone turned to watch as they taxied close in to the site. Lasker was waiting when Max opened the door.

  “I should have known it was you,” he said. Before he could say anything else he saw Ceil, and he got that same goofy expression that seemed to afflict every man she got close to.

  “Ceil,” Max said, “this is Tom Lasker. Our straw boss.”

  They shook hands.

  Tourists and sightseers were everywhere. They engaged workers in conversation, blocked bridges, and generally got in the way. Many were standing on the edge of the excavation, others were dangerously close to the precipice. “We need to do something,” Max said.

  Lasker sighed. “I had some people trying to keep them away. But they’re aggressive, and there are just too many to control. Anyway, nobody up here has any real authority.”

  Max watched an unending stream of cars approaching across the top of the plateau. “Okay,” he said, “we’ll ask the police to establish some controls on the access road. Maybe limit the number of tourists they allow up here at any one time.”

  “They don’t want to do that.”

  “They’re going to have to. Before somebody gets killed. We’ll need to make up ID cards for our people.”

  “What do we do in the meantime? We’re almost at dead stop here.”

  Max took a deep breath. “Send everyone home early.” He looked at the swarms of people. “Who’s the chief of police?”

  “Emil Doutable.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “Yeah. We don’t run in the same social circles, but I know him.”

  “Call him. Explain what’s happening and ask for help. Tell them we’ve been forced out of the excavation, and ask him to send some people to clear the area.”

  He nodded. “Okay.”

  “Meantime,” Max said to Ceil, “I guess you’d like to see the whatsis?”

  “Yes,” she said. “If you don’t mind.”

  They crossed a wooden bridge over the main trench. In the inner area, heaps of dirt were thrown up everywhere, and several other ditches had been dug. Max peered into each as they advanced. Finally he stopped. “Here,” he said.

  The excavation was wider than it had been in the morning. And the green patch had also grown. “It looks like glass,” Ceil said.

  Several minutes later, Lasker rejoined them. “Cops are coming,” he said.

  “Good. By the way, Tom, April says this is more of the same stuff. Maybe we’ve really got ourselves a UFO.”

  Lasker shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  Max had been careful not to allow himself to get carried away by his hopes. But Lasker’s comment, and something in his tone, disappointed Max. “Why not?” he asked.

  Lasker looked pained. “Follow me,” he said.

  He led the way back to the main ditch and descended one of the ladders. Max and Ceil followed. It was cold and gloomy in the trench. Boards had been laid along the ground. People were digging everywhere. Others hauled dirt away and loaded it into barrels. The barrels were lifted by pulley to the surface, where they would be dumped.

  “Here,” said Lasker. He pointed at a curved strut that emerged from the earthen wall about five feet over his head and plunged into the ground. “There are several of these,” he said. “The upper end is connected to the outside of the object. This end,” he added, pointing to the lower section, “is anchored in rock. Whatever else this thing might be, it sure as hell wasn’t meant to go anywhere.”

  11

  The entire macroindustrial system is predicated on a persistent and statistically predictable level of both dissolution and waste. That is, on major components of what is normally defined as use. A significant reduction in either of these two components could be relied on to produce immediate and quite volatile economic disruptions.

  —Edouard Deneuve, Industrial Base and Global Village, third edition

  “I’d like to start by putting an end to the flying-saucer rumor.” April spoke directly into the cameras. She was flanked by Max, who would just as soon have been somewhere else but was trying not to look that way. A state flag had been draped across the wall behind them. “I don’t know where that story came from, but it didn’t originate with us. The first I heard about it was in the Fort Moxie News.” She smiled at Jim Stuyvesant, who stood a few feet away, looking smug.

  They were in the Fort Moxie city hall. Max had been shocked at both the number and the identities of the journalists who had turned up. There were representatives from CNN and ABC, from the wire services, from several major midwestern dailies, and even one from the Japan Times. Mike Tower, the Chicago Tribune’s celebrated gadfly, was in the front row. For at least a few hours, the little prairie town had acquired national prominence.

  April and Max had made a decision the previous evening to hold nothing back but speculation. If they were going to show up on CNN, they might as well do it with a splash. April had rehearsed her statement, and Max had asked every question they could think of. But doing it with the live audience was different. April was not an accomplished speaker, and there were few things in this life that scared Max more than addressing any kind of crowd.

  April pulled a sheaf of papers out of her briefcase. “But we do have some news. These are lab reports on a sample of sail found with the Lasker boat and on a sample of the exterior of the object on the ridge. The element from which these objects are made has an atomic number of one hundred sixty-one.”

  Photojournalists moved in close and got their pictures.

  “This element is very high on the periodic chart. In fact, it would be safe to say it is off the chart.”

  Several hands went up. “What exactly does that mean?” asked a tall young woman in the middle of the room.

  “It means it is not an element we have seen before. In fact, not too long ago I would have told you this kind of element would be inherently unstable and could not exist.”

  More hands. “Who’s capable of manufacturing this stuff?”

  “Nobody I know of.”

  Cellular phones were appearing. Her audience pressed forward, holding up microphones, shouting questions, some just listening. April asked them to hold their questions until she completed her statement. She then outlined the sequence of events, beginning with the discovery of the yacht. She named Max and Tom Lasker, giving them full credit (or responsibility) for the find on the ridge. She described in detail the test results on the materials from the boat and from the excavation site. “They will be made available as you leave,” she said. She confessed an inability to arrive at a satisfactory explanation. “But,” she added, “we know that the object on the ridge is a structure and not a vehicle of any kind. So we can put everyone’s imagination to rest on that score.” She delivered an engaging smile. “It looks like an old railroad roundhouse.”

  Hands went up again.

  The Winnipeg Free Press: “Dr. Cannon, are you saying this thing could not have been built by human technology?”

  CNN: “Have you been able to establish the age of the object?”

  The Grand Forks Herald: “There’s a rumor that more excavations are planned. Are you going to be digging somewhere else?”

  She held up her hands. “One at a time, please.” She looked at the reporter from the Free Press. “Nobody I know can do it.”

  “How about the government?”

  “I wouldn’t have thought so. But you’ll have to ask them.” She turned toward C
NN. “The element doesn’t decay. I don’t think we’ll be able to date it directly. But it appears that the builders did some rock cutting to make room for the roundhouse. We might be able to come up with a date when the rock cutting took place. But we haven’t done that yet.”

  A woman to her left was waving a clipboard. “Do you have some pictures?”

  April signaled to Ginny Lasker, who was standing beside a flip chart. She lifted the front page and threw it over the top, revealing a sketch of the roundhouse. “As far as we can tell,” April said, “the entire outer surface is made of the same material. It feels like beveled glass, by the way.”

  “Glass?” said ABC.

  “Well, it looks like glass.”

  More hands:

  “What’s inside?”

  “Are you sure you haven’t made a mistake here somewhere?”

  “Now that we have this material, will we be able to reproduce it?”

  And so on. April responded as best she could. She had no idea what lay within. She had arranged to have the samples tested by a second lab, and the results were identical. And she had no idea whether anyone could learn to manufacture the material. “If we could,” she added, “we could make sails that will last a long time.”

  “How long?” asked the Fargo Forum.

  “Well.” She grinned. “Long.”

  They had the security problem under control. ID badges were passed out to workers, and police kept tourists from wandering onto the excavation site.

  The press conference, if nothing else, had alerted Max to the nature of the beast he was riding. He gave several interviews but was careful not to go beyond the limits they’d set. What is really happening here? Who built the roundhouse? Max refused to be drawn in. We don’t know any more than you do. He was, he said, content to leave the speculation to the media.

  Journalists at the excavation outnumbered the workforce. They took pictures and asked questions and stood in several lines to look at the translucent green surface, which had now been reached in several locations.

  Just before noon Tom Lasker caught up with Max in the control van. The phones were ringing off the hook, but they’d brought a few people in from the dig to help out. “They’ve broken in on the networks with this story, Max,” he said. “Bulletins on all the stations. By the way, Charlie Lindquist called. He loves us.”