Ancient Shores

by Jack McDevitt

  “Who’s Charlie Lindquist?”

  “President of the Fort Moxie city council. You know what he said?”

  “No. What did he say?”

  “He said this is better than Nessie. So help me.” Tom’s grin was a foot wide. “And the wild part of it is that it’s true, Max. This is the biggest thing in these parts since Prohibition. Cavalier, Walhalla, all these towns are going to boom.” There were raised voices outside. Max looked out the window and saw April trading one-liners with a contingent of reporters. “I think they like her,” he said.

  “Yeah, I think they do. She gave them one hell of a story.”

  The door opened, and April backed in. “Give me an hour,” she shouted to someone, “and I’ll be glad to sit down with you.”

  “We’re into my childhood now,” she said, safely inside. “Some of them want to turn this into another story about how a downtrodden African-American makes good.” She sighed, fell into a chair, and noticed Lasker. “Hi, Tom. Welcome to the funny farm.”

  “It’s like this at home, too,” he said. “Huge crowds, unlike anything we’ve seen before, and an army of reporters. They were interviewing the kids when I left this morning.”

  April shrugged. “Maybe this is what life will be like from now on.”

  “I can deal with it.” Max was enjoying himself.

  “Hey,” she said, “I’m hungry. Have we got a sandwich here anywhere?”

  Max passed over a roast beef and a Pepsi from the refrigerator. April unwrapped the sandwich and took a substantial bite.

  “You were good out there,” Max said.

  “Thanks.” Her lips curved into a smile. “I was a little nervous.”

  “It didn’t show.” That was a lie, but it needed to be said.

  Someone knocked. Lasker leaned back and looked out. He opened the door, revealing a thin, gray-haired man of extraordinary height.

  The visitor looked directly at April, not without hostility. “Dr. Cannon?”

  “Yes.” She returned his stare. “What can I do for you?”

  The man wore an air of quiet outrage. His hair was thin but cropped aggressively over his scalp. The eyes were watery behind bifocals that, Max suspected, needed to be adjusted. His glance slid past Lasker and Max as if they were furnishings. “My name’s Eichner,” he said. “I’m chairman of the archeology department at Northwestern.” He looked down at April from his considerable height, which his tone suggested was moral as well as physical. “I assume you’re in charge of this—” He paused. “—operation?” He coated the term with condescension.

  April never took her eyes from him. “What’s your business, Dr. Eichner?” she said.

  “My business is preserving the past, Dr. Cannon. You’ll forgive me for saying so, but this artifact, this whatever-it-is that your people are digging at, may be of great value.”

  “We know.”

  He flicked a cool glance at Max, as if challenging him to disagree. “Then you ought to know that the possibility of damage, and consequently of irreparable loss, is substantial. There are no controls. There is no professional on site.”

  “You mean a professional archeologist.”

  “What else might I mean?”

  “I assume,” said Max, “you’re interested in the position.”

  “Frankly,” Eichner said, still talking to April, “I’m far too busy to take over a field effort just now. But you have an obligation to get somebody up here who knows what he, or she, is doing.”

  “I can assure you, Dr. Eichner,” said April, “that we are exercising all due caution.”

  “All due caution by amateurs is hardly reassuring.” He produced a booklet and held it out for her. The legend National Archeological Association was printed on the cover. “I suggest you call any university with a reputable department. Or the Board of Antiquities. Their number is on page two. They’ll be happy to help you find someone.”

  When she did not move, he dropped the booklet on the table. “I can’t prevent what you’re doing,” he said. “I wish I could. If it were possible, I would stop you in your tracks this moment. Since I cannot, I appeal to reason.”

  April picked up the booklet. She slipped it into her purse without glancing at it. “Thank you,” she said.

  He looked at her, looked at the purse. “I’m quite serious,” he said. “You have professional responsibilities here.” He opened the door, wished them all good day, and was gone.

  Nobody spoke for a minute. “He’s probably right,” said Lasker.

  Max shook his head. “No,” he said. “Not a chance. The archeology department at Northwestern doesn’t know any more about digging up this kind of thing than we do.”

  “I agree,” said April. “Anyhow, Schliemann was an amateur.”

  “Didn’t I read somewhere,” said Lasker, “that he made a mess of Troy?”

  Everything April had hoped for was on track. She was living the ultimate scientific experience, and she was going to become immortal. April Cannon would one day be right up there with the giants. And she could see no outcome now that would deny her those results. She was not yet sure precisely what she had discovered, but she knew it was monumental.

  They made all the networks that evening and were played straight, without the crazy-season motifs. The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer produced a panel of chemists who generally agreed that there had to be an error or misunderstanding somewhere. “But,” said Alan Narimoto of the University of Minnesota, “if Dr. Cannon has it right, this is a discovery of unparalleled significance.”

  “How is that?” asked Lehrer.

  “Setting aside for the moment where it came from, if we are able to re-create the manufacturing process and produce this element—” Narimoto shook his head and turned to a colleague, Mary Esposito, from Duke, who picked up the thread.

  “We would be able,” she said, “to make you a suit of clothes, Jim, that would probably not wear out before you did.”

  ABC ran a segment in which April stood beside the roundhouse with a two-inch wide roll of cellophane tape. “Ordinary wrapping tape,” she said. She tore off a one-foot strip, used it to seal a cardboard box, and then removed the tape. Much of the box came with it. “Unlike cardboard, our element interacts very poorly with other elements,” she continued. She tore a second strip and placed it against the side of the building, pressed it down firmly, loosened the top, and stood clear. The tape slowly peeled off and fell to the ground. “It resists snow, water, dirt, whatever. Even sticky tape.” The camera zeroed in on the green surface. “Think of it as having a kind of ultimate car wax protection.”

  The coverage was, if cautious, at least not hostile. And April thought she looked good, a model of reserve and authority. Just the facts, ma’am.

  Atomic number way up there. Over the edge and around the corner and out of sight. This element is very high on the periodic chart. In fact, it would be safe to say it is off the chart. The science writer from Time had positively blanched. What a glorious day it had been. And tonight researchers across the country would be seeing the story for the first time. She hadn’t published yet. But that was all right, because she had proof. And she was, as of now, legend. It was a good feeling.

  There was no bar at the Northstar Motel. April was too excited to sleep, and, unable to read, she was about to call Max and suggest they go out and celebrate some more (although they both had probably already had too much to drink at a rousing dinner in Cavalier with the Laskers) when her phone rang.

  It was Bert Coda, the associate director at Colson. Coda had been around since World War II. He was a tired, angry, frustrated man who had substituted Colson Labs for wife, family, God, and country a long time ago.

  His greeting was abrupt. “April,” he said, “have you lost your mind?”

  That caught her attention. “What do you mean?”

  “You talked to all those cameras today.”

  “And?”

  “You never mentioned the lab. Not once.”
>
  “Bert, this had nothing to do with the lab.”

  “What are you talking about? Last time I noticed, you were working for us. When did you quit? Did you pack it in when I wasn’t looking?”

  “Listen, I was trying to keep the lab out of it.”

  “Why? Why on earth would you want to do that?”

  “Because we’re talking UFOs here, Bert. Maybe little green men. You want to be associated with little green men? I mean, Colson is supposed to be a hardnosed scientific institution.”

  “Please stop changing the subject.”

  “I’m not changing the subject.”

  “Sure you are. This is about publicity. Tons of it. And all free. I didn’t hear much talk out there today about UFOs.”

  “You will.”

  “I don’t care.” It was a dangerous rumble. “April, you are on every channel. I assume that tomorrow you will be in every newspaper. You, April. Not Colson but Cannon.” He took a long breath. “You hear what I’m telling you?”

  “But it’s bad publicity.”

  “There is no such thing as bad publicity. When they line up again in the morning, as they assuredly will, please be good enough to mention your employer, who has been overpaying you for years. Do you think you can bring yourself to do that?”

  She let the seconds run. She would have liked to defy the son of a bitch. But the truth was that he intimidated her. “Okay,” she said. “If that’s what you want.”

  “Oh, yes. That’s what I want.” She could see him leaning back with his eyes closed and that resigned expression that flowed over his features when he confronted the world’s foolishness. “Yes, I would like that very much. By the way, you might mention that we’re especially good in environmental services. And listen, one other thing. I’ll be interested in hearing where you were and whose time you were on when this business first came to your attention.”

  12

  A little gleam of time between two eternities; no second chance to us forever more!

  —Thomas Carlyle, Heroes and Hero Worship, V

  Temperatures fell to minus twenty on the Fahrenheit scale the day after the press conference. The ground froze, people came down with frostbite, and Mac Eberly, a middle-aged farmer who’d brought half his family with him to the ridge, suffered chest pains. During the holidays the weather deteriorated further, and April reluctantly gave up and closed the operation for the season. She paid a generous bonus and announced they would restart the project when they could. In the spring, she added.

  The following day a blizzard struck the area. And the wind-chill factor on New Year’s Eve touched a hundred below. The story quickly dropped out of the newspapers, shouldered aside by the run-up to the Super Bowl, a major banking scandal involving lurid tales of sex and drugs, and a celebrity murder trial.

  April published her findings, and, in accordance with tradition, the new element was named cannonium in her honor. The NAACP awarded her its Spingarm Medal, and the National Academy of Sciences hosted a banquet in her honor. She was, of course, ecstatic. But nevertheless the long delay weighed on her spirits.

  Max returned to Fargo, resumed his life, and proceeded to cash in on his newfound fame. People who were interested in buying, selling, or restoring antique warplanes were making Sundown their preferred dealer. Furthermore, Max found he was now in demand as a speaker. He’d never been comfortable speaking to groups of people, but offers were in the range of a thousand dollars for a half-hour. He took lessons in public speaking and learned that, with experience, he was able to relax and even became good enough to command interest and get a few laughs. He talked at Rotary Club affairs, business luncheons, university award presentations, and Knights of Columbus gatherings. When he found out April was getting an average of six thousand per appearance, he raised his price and was surprised that most groups were willing to meet it.

  He spent a weekend with his father. The colonel was delighted. For the first time in Max’s memory, his father seemed proud of him and was anxious to introduce him to friends.

  April, meantime, became a regular dinner companion. Somewhere during this period Max recognized a growing affection for her and made a conscious decision to maintain a strictly professional relationship. He told himself that the Johnson’s Ridge project was potentially too important to risk the complications that might come out of a romantic entanglement with the woman who had emerged as his partner in the venture. Or it might have been more complicated, a mix of race and Max’s reluctance to get involved and a fear that she might keep him at arm’s length. She had, after all, done nothing to encourage him. But when she introduced him to a police lieutenant she was dating and confided to Max that she really liked the guy, he was crushed.

  Occasionally they took out the Lightning and flew over the escarpment. The blowing snow had filled in most of the excavation; only heaps of earth remained as evidence of the frenetic activity on the ridge. It was almost as if they had never been there. On one occasion, a cold, frozen day in late January, she asked him to land.

  “Can’t,” he said.

  “Why not? Ceil landed here.”

  “I don’t know how deep the snow is. Ceil had an inch. We might have a foot. And there’s probably ice underneath.”

  “Pity,” she said.

  Unseasonably warm weather arrived in February. After several successive days in the fifties, April drove to Fort Moxie, picked up Tom Lasker, and toured the excavation with him. It was too early in the year to start again, and they both knew it. But she could not bear the prospect of waiting several more weeks. “Maybe we’ll get lucky,” she said. “When it gets cold, we can work around it.”

  Lasker said he didn’t think it was a good idea. But April cleared it with Lisa Yarborough, and the spring drive got underway.

  The weather held for eight days. The excavation teams returned and took full advantage of their opportunity. They dug the snow out of the trenches and dumped it into the canyon. They attacked the hard ground with a will and methodically uncovered a wide area of roof. They worked their way down the front of the structure, exposing a curved wall of the same emerald-green color and beveled-glass texture. To everyone’s disappointment, no doorway or entry was visible.

  They had assumed that the front, the portion that looked out over the edge of the precipice, would provide an entrance. But its blank aspect was disappointing. There was considerably more work to be done, and because it was on the lip of the summit, the effort would be both slow and unsafe.

  The roundhouse curved to within three feet of the void, from which it was separated by a shelf of earth and loose rock. This shelf covered the channel they’d seen on the radar printouts. The channel might provide a quick entrance but its proximity to the edge of the cliff rendered it dangerous. Before April would consent to excavating the channel, she wanted to dig out the rest of the structure. Surely somewhere else they would find a door.

  They also erected several modular buildings to serve as storage and communications facilities.

  The workers had got into the habit of bringing flashlights with them, which they periodically used to try to peer into the cannonium shell. Several swore they could see through, and a couple even claimed that something looked back. The result was that the ridge began to acquire a reputation that at first lent itself to jokes and later to an inclination by many to be gone by sunset.

  On Washington’s birthday, the weather went back to normal. The Red River Valley froze over, and Max celebrated his own birthday on the twenty-third with April and the Laskers during a driving snowstorm. But the winds died during the night, and the morning dawned bright, clear, and cold. So cold, in fact, that they were forced by midafternoon to send everyone home.

  By then they had almost freed the roundhouse from its tomb. Earth and rock still clung to it, but the structure was attractive in its simplicity. The wall was perfectly round and, like the bubble roof, it glistened after it had been washed.

  Max was watching the first cars start
down the access road when he heard shouting and laughter out of sight around the curve of the roundhouse.

  A small group was gathered near the rear of the building. Two men were wiping the wall. Others were shielding their eyes against the sun to get a better look. Several saw Max and waved excitedly.

  They had found an image buried within the wall.

  A stag’s head.

  It was clear and simple: a curved line to represent a shoulder, another to suggest an antler. Here was an eye, and there a muzzle.

  The image was white, contrasting sharply with the dark cannonium shell. Like the structure itself, its most compelling characteristic was its clean fluidity. There was no flourish. No pretense.

  April unslung a camera from her shoulder and studied the roundhouse in the failing light. “Perfect,” she said. Snow drifted down through the somber afternoon.

  She snapped the shutter, changed her angle slightly, and took a second picture.

  The snow whispered against the wall. “It’s lovely in the storm,” she said. They walked slowly around the perimeter while she took more pictures. “In our whole history,” she continued, “this is only going to happen once.” She shot the roundhouse, the stag’s head, the surrounding hills, the parking lot. And Max. “Stand over here, Max,” she told him, and when he demurred, she laughed and dragged him where she wanted him, told him to stay put, and took more pictures. “All your life, you’re going to remember this,” she said. “And there’ll be times when you would kill to be able to come back to this moment.”

  Max knew it was true.

  And he took her picture with the great building crouching behind her like a prehistoric creature. “Good,” she said. “That’s good.”

  And when he least expected it, she fell into his arms and kissed him.