Ancient Shores (23 page)

Now the crisis was here. In spades. And he had only to choose the right course.

What in hell
was
the right course?

“Tony,” he said, “I think we’ve had enough. The Sioux won’t cooperate, so we’re going to have to find another way to close the operation down. I don’t care what it takes, but I am not going to let this country come apart on my watch.”

“Dr. Deekin, are you absolutely certain about what you saw?”

Cass looked into the TV cameras. “Yes,” he said. “Absolutely.”

“Why haven’t the people at Johnson’s Ridge said anything about this? Is there a cover-up?”

Deekin thought it over. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I mean, this thing, whatever it was, was
invisible
. They may not know it exists.”

“So what you’re saying is that something that cannot be seen came through the port.”

“I believe so.”

“And is now loose in North Dakota.”

“Yes. I would think that is true.”

The interviewer turned toward the camera. “So we may have an invisible visitor. We’ll be back in a minute to try to determine whether there’s a connection between Dr. Deekin’s experience, the reports today of a disembodied voice at a remote railroad terminal, and the mysterious death of a hunter near Johnson’s Ridge.”

Excerpt from
The Newshour with Jim Lehrer,
March 28
. Conversation with Doctor Edward Bannerman, of the Institute for Advanced Study, on the subject of the “Dakota port,” with Jim Lehrer. Dr. Bannerman is a two-time Nobel prize-winning physicist.

Jeri Tully was eight years old. Mentally, she was about three, and the experts cautioned her parents against hoping for much improvement. No one knew what had gone wrong with Jeri. There was no history of mental defects on either side of her family and no apparent cause. She had two younger brothers, both of whom were quite normal.

Her father was a border patrolman, her mother a former legal secretary who had given up all hope of a career when she followed her husband to Fort Moxie.

Jeri went to school in Walhalla, which had the only local special-education class. She enjoyed school, where she made numerous friends, and where everyone seemed to make a fuss over her. Mornings in the Tully household were underscored by Jeri’s enthusiasm to get moving.

Walhalla was thirty-five miles away. The family had an arrangement with the school district, which was spread out over too vast an area to operate buses for the special-ed kids: The Tullys provided their own transportation, and the district absorbed the expenses.

Jeri’s mother, June, had actually grown to enjoy the twice-daily round trip. The child loved to ride, and she was never happier than when in the car. The other half of the drive, when June was alone, served as quiet time, when she could just watch the long fields roll by or plug an audio book into the sound system.

Curt Hollis’s adventure had taken place on a Thursday. Jeri’s father worked the midnight shift the following night, and his wife was waiting for him with French toast, bacon, and coffee when he got home in the morning. While they were eating breakfast, an odd thing happened. For the only time in her life, Jeri wandered away from home. It seemed, later, that she had decided to go to school and, having no concept of distance, or of the day (it was Saturday), had decided to walk.

Unseen by anyone except her two-year-old brother, she put on her overshoes and her coat, let herself out through the porch door, walked up to Route 11, and turned right. Her house was on the extreme western edge of town, so she was past the demolished Tastee-Freez and across the interstate overpass within minutes. The temperature was still in the teens.

Three-quarters of a mile outside Fort Moxie, Route 11 curves sharply south and then almost immediately veers west again. Had the road been free of snow, Jeri would probably have stayed with it and been picked up within a few minutes. But a light snowfall had dusted the two-lane. Jeri wasn’t used to paying attention to details, and at the first bend she walked straight off the highway. When, a few minutes later, the snow got deeper, she angled right and got still farther from the road.

Jeri’s parents had by then discovered she was missing. A frightened search was just getting under way, but it was limited to within a block or so of her home.

Jim Stuyvesant, the editor and publisher of the
Fort Moxie News
, was on his way to the Roundhouse. The story that an apparition had come through from the other side was going to be denied that morning in a press conference, and Jim planned to be there. He was just west of town when he saw movement out on Josh McKenzie’s land to his right. A snow devil was gliding back and forth in a curiously regular fashion. The snow devil was a perfect whirlpool, narrow at the base, wide at the top. Usually these things were blurred around the edges; they possessed an indefiniteness, and they floated erratically across the plain. But
this
one looked almost solid, and it moved patiently back and forth along the same course.

Stuyvesant stopped to watch.

It was almost hypnotic. A stiff wind rocked the car, enough to blow the snow devil to pieces. But it remained intact.

Stuyvesant never traveled without his video camera, which he had used on several occasions to get footage he’d subsequently sold to
Ben at Ten
or to one of the other local TV news shows. (He had, for example, got superb footage of the Thanksgiving Day pileup on I—29 and the blockade of imported beef at the border by angry ranchers last summer.) The snow devil continued to glide back and forth in its slow, unwavering pattern. He turned on the camera, walked a few steps into the field, and started to tape.

He used the zoom lens and got a couple of minutes’ worth of pictures before the whirlwind seemed to pause.

It started toward him.

He kept filming.

It approached at a constant pace. There was something odd in its manner, something almost deliberate.

The crosswind ripped at his jacket but didn’t seem to have any effect on the snow devil. Stuyvesant’s instincts began to sound warnings, and he took a step back toward the car.

It stopped.

Amazing. As if it had responded to him.

He stood, uncertain how to proceed. The whirlwind began to move again, laterally, then retreated a short distance and came forward to its previous position.

He was watching it through the camera lens. The red indicator lamp glowed at the bottom of the picture.

You’re waiting for me
.

It approached again, and the wind tugged at his collar and his hair.

He took a step forward. And it retreated.

Like everyone else in the Fort Moxie area, Stuyvesant had been deluged with fantastic tales and theories since the Roundhouse had been uncovered. Now, without prompting, he wondered whether a completely unknown type of life form existed on the
prairie and was revealing itself to him. The notion forced him to laugh. It also forced him to decide what he really believed.

He started forward.

It withdrew again.

He kept going. The snow got deeper, filled his shoes and froze his ankles.

The snow devil continued to back away. He hoped he was getting the effect on camera.

It whirled and glittered in the sun, maintaining the distance between them. He slowed, and it slowed.

Another car was pulling off the highway. He wondered how he would explain this, and immediately visualized next week’s headline in the
News:
“Mad Editor Put Under Guard.”

But it was a hunt without a point. The fields went on, all the way to Winnipeg. Far enough, he decided. “Sorry,” he said aloud. “This is as far as I go.”

And the thing withdrew another sixty or so yards. And collapsed.

When it did, it left something dark lying in the snow.

Jeri Tully.

That was the day Stuyvesant got religion. The story that actually appeared in the
Fort Moxie News
would be a truncated version of the truth.

Unfortunately, there was no ready-made church at hand in Fort Moxie. But the Lord provides, and in this case He provided Kor Yensen. Kor was going to Arizona to move in with his son and daughter-in-law on a trial basis. But he was reluctant to dispose of his oversized house until he saw how things went. The opportunity to rent it to the TV preacher on a short-term basis arrived at precisely the right moment. It never occurred to him that the action would cause a permanent rift with his neighbors, who were mostly Methodists and
Lutherans, and who preferred a more sedate form of worship than the hosannahs and oratorical thunder provided by Old-Time Bill.

In order to fulfill its function, Kor’s house needed some renovation. The Volunteers tore out three walls to get adequate meeting space. (They posted bond with Kor, promising to restore everything.) They installed a backdrop of dark-stained paneled walls and crowded bookshelves to maintain Bill’s signature atmosphere. They put in an organ and a sound stage and installed state-of-the-art communication equipment. Two days after their arrival, and just in time for the regular Saturday night service, the Backcountry Church was ready to go.

At precisely 7:00
P.M.
local time, Bill’s exuberant theme music, “’Tis the Old-Time Religion,” rocked the house, and Bill himself, about thirty bars in, walked out in front of the cameras and welcomed the vast television audience to Fort Moxie. He explained that the Volunteers had come to do battle with the devil, and he led a packed house of eighteen (which, through the wonders of electronic enhancement, sounded like several hundred) in a thundering rendition of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” The choir, whose location in an upstairs bedroom was disguised by drapes and handrails, joined in, and everybody got into the mood very quickly.

“Brothers and sisters,” Bill said, raising his hands, “you may wonder why the Volunteers have come to the Dakota border. Why many of us felt the Lord wanted us here.

“Tonight we are in the shadow of Johnson’s Ridge.” He looked beyond the camera lenses, out into living rooms around the country, where the believers were gathered. People at home always said that they thought he was talking directly
to
them. “Only a few miles from here, scientists have opened their port to another—” He paused, drawing out the moment. “—place.

“
Another place
.

“And what kind of place have they found? They speak of trees and pools, of white blossoms and harmless creatures, of beautiful skies and warm sunlight. They speak in terms that are very familiar to anyone who has looked at Genesis.” He smiled. “The scientists, of course, don’t realize this. They don’t recognize the place because they are too much of
this
world.

“But
we
know where they are, brothers and sisters.”

“Amen,” chanted his audience.

A reporter from the
Winnipeg Free Press
, Alma Kinyata, cornered him after the service. “Reverend Addison,” she asked, “do you really believe that we’ve discovered Paradise?”

They were in his office, upstairs at the back of the converted church. It was spartan by any measure and particularly humble when contrasted against the power and influence of its occupant. He’d brought in a desk and a couple of chairs. Copies of the Bible, Metcalf’s
The Divine Will
, and the
Oxford Theological Studies
stood between marble bookends. A picture of Addison’s mother hung on the wall.

“Yes,” he said, “I honestly believe we have. There is no way to know for certain, although I think that if I were to go there, I could give you a definitive answer.”

Alma felt good about this one. He was responsive, and it was going to be a solid story. “Are you planning to go up there? To Eden?”

“No,” he said. “I will not set foot in the Garden. It is forbidden to mortal man.”

“You say you would know Paradise if you saw it?”

“Oh, yes. Anyone would.”

“But the people who have been there haven’t drawn that conclusion.”

“I mean, any
Christian
. I’m sorry, I tend to think in terms of believers.”

“
How
would you know?”

Addison’s eyelids fluttered. “Paradise partakes of
the divine essence. Adam and Eve were sent packing early. That was a smart move, if I may say.” He grinned, rather like a large, friendly dog. “It kept the Garden unsullied. Pure. Oh, yes, that place is sacred, and I think anyone who pays attention to the welfare of his soul would recognize that fact immediately. You will recall the angel.”

“The angel?”

“Yes. ‘And he set an angel with a flaming sword.’ I can tell you
I
wouldn’t want to be among those who have trespassed into the things of God.”

Alma left convinced that Addison beleived none of it. But she got her story and scared the devil out of a substantial portion of the countryside.

And she was, by the way, wrong about Bill. He believed every word.

Andrea Hawk gave Max a hand with the travel kit and then stood aside.

The video record of the rings icon had revealed a wall with a long window. The window was dark. The wall was plain. They knew nothing else about the last of the possible destinations tied into the Roundhouse.

Somehow the place had looked chilly, so they were all warmly dressed. “You know,” said Arky, “it’s just a matter of time before we get stuck out there somewhere.”

“That’s right,” said Andrea. “We should devise a test. A way to make sure we can get home.”

“If you can think of a way to do it,” said April, “set something up.” Max knew she had no intention of waiting around. She wanted to look at the last of the places that could be reached from the Roundhouse; and he knew she would go on from there to Eden and begin exploring
its
connections. Eventually, he believed, they would lose her.

Andrea stood by the icons while April, Max, and
Arky took their places on the grid. “Ready to move out,” said April.

She pressed the rings. “Usual routine,” said Max, waving a spade. “We’ll check the return capability before we do anything.” And to Andrea: “We’ll send the spade back. If it doesn’t work, we’ll post a message.”

Andrea nodded.

Max tried to relax. He closed his eyes against the coming light and took a deep breath. That was probably what saved his life.

He’d discovered there was less vertigo if he closed his eyes. He watched the familiar glow against the inside of his lids, felt the unsettling lack of physical reality, as if he himself no longer quite existed. Then the light died, weight came back, his body came back.

And he couldn’t breathe.