Ancient Shores (20 page)

“These scientists are, by and large, godless men and women. But one of them seems to have had an inkling of what I believe is the truth about the land across the Dakota bridge. He was attracted by it, and said he would have liked to stay among its quiet forests. And he called it Eden.

“Brothers and sisters, I propose to you that that is exactly what it is. That some part of this man, atheist as he may be, as he probably is, some living part deep in his soul recognized its long-lost home and yearned, no,
cried out
, to return.

“We know that God did not destroy Eden. Perhaps He wanted it to remain to remind us of what we had lost. What our arrogance had cost. I do not know. No one knows.”

The faithful caught their cue. “Amen,” they cried.

“You may say, ‘But Reverend Bill, the Bible makes no mention of purple forests. Nor of strange cloud
formations.’ But neither does it exclude them. It says that the Lord God made two great lights, one to rule the day and the other to rule the night. Do we really know that the second light was our present-day moon, and not the great cloud that we saw on our televisions earlier today?

“Brothers and sisters, I tell you, we take a terrible risk if we go back through that door. If it is indeed Eden, we are defying the will of the Almighty.”

Jeremy Carlucci was so excited he was having trouble breathing. He had been an astronomer, he liked to tell people, since he was four years old, when he sat out back on the open porch of his grandfather’s farm north of Kenosha to look for Venus and Mars. Carlucci was near the end of a long and distinguished career.

Now he stood on a beach five thousand light-years from Kenosha, in a night filled with diamonds and stellar whirlpools. The great roiling clouds beneath the
Horsehead were lit by inner fires, summer lightning frozen in place by distance.

“Magnificent,” someone said behind him.

A cloud-wrapped globe was rising in the east.

The young Class A blue giants were particularly striking. The nebula was a cradle for new stars. Jeremy’s joy was so great that he wanted to cry out. “We need to put an observatory here,” he whispered to Max.

“A Hubble,” said Edward Bannerman, who was from the Institute for Advanced Study. “It should be our first priority. We have to figure out how to enlarge the port so we can get equipment over here.”

The wind worked in the trees, and the sea broke and rolled up the beach.

Bannerman, who was a diminutive, sharp-featured man with thinning white hair, watched it come, and then glanced out at the Horsehead. “We are less than two miles from Johnson’s Ridge,” he said.

The wave played itself out and sank into the sand.

“It’s absurd,” he continued. “What happened to the laws of physics?”

Tony Peters left his office in the Executive Office Building just after the markets closed. His face was ashen, and he felt very old. His cellular telephone sounded as he strode out onto West Executive Avenue. “The Man wants you,” his secretary said. The president was at Camp David for the weekend. “Chopper will be on the lawn in ten minutes.”

Peters had known the call would come. He dragged his briefcase wearily through the crowds and the protesters along Pennsylvania Avenue (“Bomb the Roundhouse”) and entered through the main gate just as a Marine helicopter started its descent toward the pad. The wildest of wild cards had been introduced into the global economy. And he could think of only one recommendation to make to the president.

“The world needs to be reassured,” Peters was telling him a half-hour later in the presence of a dozen advisors. “The wheels came off the markets last fall because people thought that automobiles might not wear out every five years. Now they think automobiles might become obsolete altogether. And aircraft and elevators along with them. And tires and radars and carburetors and God knows what else. You name it, and we can tie it to transportation.”

The people seated around the conference table stirred uneasily. The vice president, tall, gray, somber, stared at his notebook. The secretary of state, an attack-dog trial lawyer who was rumored to be on the verge of quitting because Matt Taylor liked to be his own secretary of state, sat with his head braced on his fists, eyes closed.

The president looked toward James Samson, his treasury secretary. “I agree,” Samson said.

When the secretary showed no inclination to continue, the president noted something in the leather folio that was always at his side and tapped the pen on the table. “If we assume this device really works, and it can
be adapted to ordinary travel, what are the implications for the economy?”

“Theoretically,” said Peters, “technological advance is always advantageous. In the long run we will profit enormously from developing a capability for cheap and virtually instantaneous travel. The equipment requires, as I understand it, no more power than would be needed to turn on your TV. The benefits are obvious.”

“But over the short term?”

“There will be some dislocation,” he said.

“
Some
dislocation?” Samson smiled cynically. He was small, washed-out, possibly dying. He’d been wrong during the winter in the reassurances given the president concerning the Roundhouse, but he was nevertheless generally credited with having the best brain in the administration. “Chaos might be a little closer to the truth.” His voice shook. “Collapse. Disintegration. Take your pick.” He coughed into a handkerchief. “Keep in mind, Mr. President, we are not concerned here with the next decade. Allow this to continue, and there may be no United States to benefit in the long term. And there certainly will be no President Taylor.” He subsided into a spasm of coughs.

Taylor nodded. “Who else has a comment? Admiral?”

Admiral Charles (Bomber) Bonner was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He was right out of central casting for senior military officers: tall, well-pressed, no-nonsense. He appeared to be still in good shape, although he was in his sixties. He walked with a limp, compliments of a plane crash in Vietnam. “Mr. President,” he said, “this device, if it exists, has defense implications of the most serious nature. Should this kind of equipment become generally available, it would become possible to introduce strike forces, maybe whole armies, into the heart of any nation on earth. With no warning. And probably no conceivable defense. All that would be necessary, apparently, would be to assemble a receiver station.” He looked around to
gauge whether his words were having the desired effect. “No place on earth that could be reached by a pickup truck would be safe from assault forces.”

Taylor took a long, deep breath. “You are suggesting we appropriate the device, Admiral? And do what?”

“I am suggesting we
destroy it
. Mr. President, there is no such thing as a long-term military secret. When this device becomes part of anyone else’s arsenal, as it will, it negates the carriers, the missile force, SAC and TAC, and everything else we have. It is the ultimate equalizer. Go in there, buy the damned place from the Indians if you can, seize it if you must, but go in there, get the thing, and turn it to slag.”

Harry Eaton shook his head. Harry was the White House chief of staff. “The Sioux just turned down two hundred million for the property. I don’t think they’re interested in selling.”

“Offer them a billion,” said Rollie Graves, the CIA director.

“I don’t believe they’ll sell,” Eaton said again. “Even if they did, this is high-profile. Give them a billion, and the media will be asking questions right up to election day about what the taxpayers got for their money. What do we tell them? That we did it to protect General Motors and Boeing?”

“I don’t much care what you tell them,” said Bonner. “That kind of capability converts the carrier force into so much scrap metal. Think about it, Mr. President.”

Mark Anniok, secretary of the interior, leaned forward. Anniok was of Inuit heritage. “You can’t just take it away from them,” he said. “It would be political suicide. My God, we’d be pictured as stealing from the Native-Americans
again
. I can see the editorials now.”

“We damned well
can
take it away from them,” said Eaton. “And we should immediately thereafter arrange an accident that blows the whole goddamn thing off the top of the ridge.”

“I agree,” said Bonner. “Put a lid on it now while we can.”

Elizabeth Schumacher, the science advisor, sat at the far end of the table. She was a gray-eyed, introspective woman who was rarely invited to strategy meetings. The Taylor administration, committed as it was to reducing the deficit, was not generally perceived as a friend of the scientific community. The president knew this, and he was sorry for it, but he was willing to take the heat to achieve his goal. “Mr. President,” she said, “finding the Roundhouse is an event of incalculable importance. If you destroy it, or allow it to be destroyed, be assured that future generations will never forgive you.”

That was all she said, and Peters saw that it had an effect.

They talked inconclusively for two more hours. Eaton was on the fence. Only Anniok and Schumacher argued to save the Roundhouse. Tony Peters was torn, and he gradually came around to the view that they should try to exploit the ridge and take their chances with the economy and whatever other effects the artifact might have. But he was cautious by nature, and far too loyal to the welfare of his chief executive to recommend that course of action. Everyone else in the room argued strenuously to find a way to get rid of the artifact.

When the meeting ended, the president took Peters aside. “Tony,” he said, “I wanted to thank you for your contribution tonight.”

He nodded. “What are we going to do?”

Taylor had never been indecisive. But tonight, for the first time that Peters could recall, the president hesitated. “You want the truth? I don’t know how to proceed. I think this thing will disrupt the economy, and nobody knows how it will look when we come out the other side. But I also think Elizabeth is right. If I allow the Roundhouse to be destroyed, history is going to eviscerate me.”

His eyes were deeply troubled.

“So what do we do?”

“I don’t know, Tony,” he said. “I really do not know.”

“Go ahead, Charlie from the reservation.”

“Hi, Snowhawk. I wanted to comment on the meeting.”

“Go ahead.”

“When I went down there last night, I thought the way you do. I thought we should take the money.”

“What do you think now, Charlie?”

“Have you seen the pictures?”

“From the other side? Yes.”

“I think Arky was right. I think we should pack up and move over there and then pull the plug on the system.”

“I don’t think that’s what Arky said.”

“Sure he did. And I’m with him. Listen, Snowhawk, all the money in the world isn’t going to get us off the reservation. They can keep their two hundred million. Give
me
the beach and the woods.”

“Okay, Charlie. Thank you for your opinion. You’re on, Madge from Devil’s Lake.”

“Hello, Snowhawk. Listen, I think that last caller is absolutely right. I’m ready to go.”

“To the wilderness?”

“You got it. Let’s move out.”

“Okay. Jack, from the reservation. You’re on.”

“Hey, Snowhawk. I was there, too.”

“At the meeting?”

“Yeah. And you’re dead wrong. This is a chance for a fresh start. We’d be damned fools not to take it. I say we pack up and go. And this time we keep out the Europeans. After we’re over there, do what what’s-his-name said. Bar the door.”

Arky was adamant: “Nobody else goes across into this wilder
ness world until we’re sure it’s safe.”

April was ready to explode. “Damn it, Arky. We’ll never be sure it’s
safe
. Not absolutely.”

“Then maybe we ought to write everything off. Take the best price we can get for the Roundhouse and let somebody else worry about the lawsuits.”

“
What
lawsuits?”

“The lawsuits that will be filed as soon as one of your pie-in-the-sky academics gets eaten.”

“Nobody’s going to get eaten.”

“How do you know that? Can you guarantee it?”

“Of course I can’t.”

“Then maybe we better think about it.” He took a deep breath. “We need to ask ourselves whether we really want all these people blundering around over there.”

“They aren’t blundering.” April took a moment to steady her voice. “These are trained people. Anyhow,
we can’t keep all this to ourselves. We have to let as many people get a look at it as we can.”

“Then let me ask you again: What happens if one of them gets killed?”

“There are no large predators,” she said.

“You haven’t seen any large predators, April. There’s a world of difference. How about diseases? Any exotic bugs?”

“If there are, it’s too late. Max and I have been there and back.”

“I know.” Arky looked sternly at her. “I didn’t care much for that, either. Look, until now this has been a shoot-from-the-hip operation. It’s time we got a handle on things. Before we get burned. First off, I want you and Max to get full physicals. Complete workups. Meantime, we’re going to stop the tours until Adam certifies it’s safe. Okay? I don’t want
anyone
going over there until that happens. Not even
you
.”

“Arky,” she protested, “we can’t just lock the door and tell people it’s unsafe.”

“We just did,” he said.

Adam put together his team. They included Jack Swiftfoot, Andrea Hawk, John Little Ghost, and two more April did not know. He parceled out M—15’s, grenades, and pistols. “You look as if you expect to run into dinosaurs,” she said.

He shrugged. “Better safe than sorry.” He signaled his people onto the grid, pressed the arrow icon, and joined them. “See you tonight,” he told April. He was slipping an ammunition clip onto his belt when they began to fade.

Max walked in carrying a couple of yellow balloons and his minicam. “I wouldn’t mind,” April told him, “but this sets a bad precedent. What do we have to do now? Send a SWAT team in before we can look at any of these other places?”

“Assuming there
are
other places,” said Max. “I don’t know. But I’m not sure it’s a bad idea.”

She grumbled but said nothing.

“Do you think,” Max asked, “whoever built the system is still out there somewhere?”

Her eyes lost their focus. “It’s been ten thousand years,” she said. “That’s a long time.”

“Maybe not for these people.”

“Maybe not. But the Roundhouse was abandoned a long time ago. And there’s no evidence of recent usage in Eden, either. What does that tell you?”

Through the wraparound window, Max could see tourists taking pictures. “I wonder where the network ends,” he said.

Her eyes brightened. “I’m looking forward to finding out.”

The outside door opened. They heard footsteps in the passageway, and Arky Redfern appeared. He waved, peeled off his jacket, and laid it on the back of a chair. “There’s some talk,” he said, “of making you two honorary tribal members.”

“I’d like that,” said April.

The only other person Max could think of who had been so honored by a tribe was Sam Houston. Not bad company. “Me too,” he said.

“So what’s next?” asked Arky, gazing pointedly at the balloons.

“We want to see what else we have.”

The balloons sported the legend
Fort Moxie
and a picture of the Roundhouse. Two long strings dangled from each. Max, enjoying center stage, pulled over two chairs and set them on either side of the grid, outside the perimeter. He tied one of the balloons to the chairs so that the balloon itself floated directly over the grid.

“What are you trying to do?” Arky asked.

“We don’t want to clog the system,” said April. “If we send a chair and nobody moves it off the receiving grid, that’s the ball game. We lose that channel. We
need to send something that won’t stay put.”

Arky nodded. “Good,” he said.

“Ready?” asked April, who was now standing beside the icons.

Max focused on the balloon and started the videotape. “Running,” he said.

April pressed the rings icon.

Max counted twenty-three seconds and watched the balloon disappear. Two severed pieces of string, one on either side of the grid, dropped to the floor.

“I’ve got a question,” said Arky. “What happens if somebody isn’t all the way on when the thing activates? Does half of you get left here?”

April looked like a kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar. “That’s a good question, counselor,” she said.

They repeated the process with the final icon, the G clef, and returned to the control module to see the results.

The rings had implied, to Max, an artificial environment. Here, at last, they might come face to face with someone.

And perhaps they would. There
was
a secondary exposure, a ghost in the photo. The ghost was a wall with a window. The wall was plain, and suggested perhaps a vessel or military installation. The window was long, longer than the image. And it seemed to be night on the other side.

“Indoors, I think,” said April.

Arky was sitting on the work table. He leaned forward, trying to see more clearly. “How do we respond if someone’s there?” he asked.

“Say hello and smile,” said Max.

The lawyer frowned. “I think we need to be serious about this. Listen, this station, terminal, whatever, has been out of business for a long time. But it doesn’t
mean the entire system is down. We need to decide how we’re going to respond if someone shows up.” He looked reluctant to continue. “For example, should we be armed?”

April shook her head slowly. “Seems to me,” she said, “the last thing we’d want to do is start a fight with whoever put this thing together.”

“He’s right, though,” said Max. “We should be careful.”

Arky slipped into a chair. “Why don’t we take a look at the other one?”

The G clef. Max let the videotape run ahead to the second sequence.

Again they watched the balloon fade. This time the background image appeared to be a carpeted room. The walls might have been paneled, but they were bare. No furniture was visible. “Light coming from somewhere,” said April.

“What do you think?” asked Max.

“It might be just another Roundhouse.”

April was ready to go. “Only one way to find out.”

Max hesitated. “I think we should leave it alone,” he said. “If someone really is over there, we are going to screw it up. Let’s use that committee of yours to figure out how to do this stuff.”

“That’s six days away,” said April. “The more information we can get for them, the better able they’ll be to do their work. Anyway, what kind of experts would you want for a project like this? I mean, it’s not as if anyone has any experience.”

“I can see where this is leading,” said Max.

“Nevertheless, I agree,” said Arky. “No one is equipped for this kind of meeting. If anyone goes, it might as well be us.” Max noticed the pronoun.

April did, too. “Arky,” she said, “no offense, but we don’t need a lawyer along. Let us try it first.”

He got visibly taller. “I don’t think so,” he said. “The tribe should have representation.”

“You’re kidding,” said Max.

Arky smiled. “I never kid.”

Max assembled a travel kit, which included a generator, a tool box, two flashlights, two quarts of water, and the now-standard writing pad with black markers.

Dale Tree (who was acting security chief while Adam was leading the survey of Eden) handed a .38 to Arky.

“How about me?” said Max.

“You qualified?” asked Dale.

“Not really.” Max had never fired a weapon in his life.

“Then forget it,” said Arky. “You’ll be more dangerous than anything we might meet.” He glanced at April.

“Me, neither,” she said.

Dale looked concerned. “I think you should let me go along,” he said.

“We’ll be fine,” said Arky.

April looked disgusted. “This is probably somebody’s living room. I don’t think we’re likely to need a lot of firepower.”

Max set his travel kit in the middle of the grid and laid a spade beside it. “When we get there,” he told Dale, “I’ll try to send the spade back. Give me a half-hour or so, in case we have to repair something. If nothing happens by then, send sandwiches.”

“We’ll put up a message if we get stuck,” said April. “Nobody comes after us unless we ask them to.” She glanced at her companions. “Right?”

Arky nodded. Max did, too, but less decisively.

They walked onto the grid. Dale stood by the icons. “Are we ready?” he asked.

April said yes.

The room smelled of musk. The walls were covered with a light green fabric, decorated with representa
tions of flowers and vines. A pallid illumination radiated from no particular place, much in the style of the Roundhouse.

They did not move for a few moments, other than to glance around the large, bare chamber in which they found themselves. Max could hear no sound anywhere. The grid on which they stood was of different design but of the same dimensions as the other two. He stepped down onto a red carpet and pulled his foot back in surprise when it sank beneath him.

“What the hell kind of floor is this?” said April.

He tried again. It supported him, but the walking was going to be difficult. Who, he wondered, would be comfortable here?

In front of him, the light brightened.

The room was L-shaped, half as long on one side as on the other. There were two exits, located at either end of the stem, both opening into shadowy passageways. On the wall behind the grid, Max saw the by now familiar set of icons. They were located in an angled panel. There were nine this time, motifs set inside disks that were inserted smoothly in the wood. One of them was the stag’s head. None of the others duplicated anything Max had seen before, either in the Roundhouse or on Eden.

April stood a long time, examining them. “World without end,” she said.

Max nodded. He put the spade on the grid and tried the stag’s head. The icon glowed warmly.

The spade vanished in a swirl of light that was green rather than gold. “Matches the decor,” April said, impressed.

“Well,” said Arky, “it’s good to know we can get out of here in a hurry if we have to.”

The ceiling was high, and sections of it were lost in shadow behind a network of beams. “The balloon’s not here,” Arky said. But a look of surprise had appeared on his features, and Max followed his gaze. There was a
rectangular hole in the ceiling, through which they could see into another room.

Lights were on, but they were no brighter than in this chamber.

“I don’t think anyone’s up there,” said April.

The opening in the ceiling was rectangular, maybe six by eight feet. There was no staircase. “The balloon,” Max said, “probably floated into the upper room.”

It was a few degrees cooler here than in the Roundhouse. Max zipped his jacket and turned back to remove his equipment from the grid. “I feel light,” he said.

“I think you’re right,” said April. “Gravity again.”

“Not on Earth?” asked Arky.

She shook her head.

The lawyer kept switching his gaze from one doorway to the other. He was not showing a weapon, but his right hand was inside the pocket of his jacket.

No window opened into the room. April unslung her camera and took some pictures. Max and Arky looked into the passageways. The light brightened before them as they moved, and darkened again behind. The carpet remained spongy.

One corridor dead-ended in a large chamber shaped like a rhombus. The other passed additional empty rooms before it turned a corner. There were still no windows. And no furniture.

They went into a huddle. “I don’t like a place where we can’t see very far,” said Arky. “I suggest we go back.”

“Without knowing where we are?” April sighed loudly and looked at Max. “What do
you
say, Max?”

Max agreed with Arky. But he wasn’t going to say so in April’s presence. “Why don’t we go a little farther?” he said.

April smiled. “Two out of three.”

“I wasn’t aware,” said the lawyer, “we were running a democracy here.” Ahead, the passageway made
a ninety-degree right turn. “Okay,” he said reluctantly. “Let’s try it.”

They turned the corner. More rooms. And another opening in the ceiling.

Still no windows. And no indication of recent occupancy.

“This place doesn’t look abandoned,” said April. “There’s no dust. It just looks
empty
.”

They made a left turn, and Max started a map.

“Where,” asked Arky, “are the windows?”

Max’s ankles were starting to hurt. Walking on a floor that sank with every step was not easy.

They passed into a long, narrow room. Max, who was busy with his map, put a foot down. The floor wasn’t there, and he fell forward; suddenly he was looking down two stories! April grabbed his jacket and held on for the instant required for Arky to get an arm around Max’s shoulder. They dragged him back, and Max knelt on the soft floor waiting for his stomach to settle.

The hole was several feet wide and extended the length of the room. On the other side, the floor continued and a doorway opened onto another passageway.

After satisfying herself that Max was not hurt, April knelt down by the edge. “This isn’t damage,” she said. “This is designed this way. It’s a
shaft
.”

“In the middle of the floor?” said Arky. “Who the hell is the architect?”

There was no way around it, so they reversed course and took another turn. They found other areas where their passage was blocked by missing floor, and to a degree their route was determined by these curious phenomena.