Ancient Shores (32 page)

April Cannon watched her duffel bag disappear in a blaze of
light. Her seven companions (one of whom was her retired boss, Harvey Keck) were making last-minute checks of equipment.

She turned to Max. “You’re sure you don’t want to come?” She was lovely in the green-tinged light.

“No,” he said. “I don’t like surprises, and I think you’re going to find a lot of them out there.”

She touched his arm. “We’ll be careful.”

They were planning on exploring the links to the Eden terminus. The expedition had an ample supply of food and water. They carried pressure suits and oxygen masks and contamination test kits and spare parts and a wide array of sensing equipment. If everything went well, they would be back in two weeks with a wealth of detail about the worlds beyond Eden. (For the time being, at least, the Maze was being left alone.)

“Max,” she asked, “what are
you
going to do? Buy an island in the Bahamas and retire?”

He grinned. “I’m going to try to track down our visitor.”

She shivered. “It seems to be gone now,” she said. “I’d let it be.”

“I think we have an obligation to try to find it.”

“An obligation to whom?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe to the creature. I have a certain fondness for it.”

“It might be dangerous.”

“Maybe. But we know it has a sense of humor. And it rescues kids. I’d like very much to talk with it.”

Harvey signaled her. Ready to go.

“Be careful, Max,” she said.

“Sure.” He was having a little trouble with his voice. “You too. Come back, okay?”

“Count on it.” She moved suddenly, unexpectedly, into his arms, warm and yielding, and turned her face up. He kissed her, long and deep and wet.

Lake Agassiz existed. I’ve taken a liberty or two with the
shoreline, but other than that I’ve tried not to assault the facts unduly. Anyone who cares to may fly over the western limits of the valley of the Red River of the North, up near the Canadian border, and the ancient coast will be quite visible.

“Lightnings in the Sky,” in Chapter 2, is quoted from
P—38 Lightning in Action
, by Larry Davis. Reprinted courtesy of Squadron/Signal Publications.

Native-American poetry epigraphs are from
American Poetry Volume Two: Melville to Stickney, American Indian Poetry, Folk Songs and Spirituals
(New York: Library of America, 1993); George Copway,
Life, History, and Travels of Kah-Ge-Ga-Gah-Bowh
(1847) (Chapter 25); John Mason Browne, “Indian Medicine,”
Atlantic Monthly
(1866) (Chapter 26); Fannie Reed Giffen,
Oo-Mah-Ha-Ta-Wa-Tha
(1898) (Chapter 29); Don D. Fowler and Catherine S. Fowler, eds.,
Anthropology of the Numa: John Wesley Powell’s Manuscripts on the Numic Peoples of Western North America, 1868—1880
(Smithsonian Institution Press, 1971) (Chapter 33).

Excerpt from “Sonnet III,” George Santayana,
The Complete Poems of George Santayana
(Bucknell University Press, 1979) (Chapter 22). Reprinted by permission.

I would like to express special appreciation to those who graciously allowed their fictional alter egos to be flown into a desperate situation during the closing chapters. Also, I am indebted to Galen Hall and Brian Cole for their comments on an early version of the manuscript; to Major Jim Clark, U.S. Air Force (retired), and John Goff, for technical advice; to Lorna Sharp, at the Devil’s Lake Sioux reservation in North Dakota; to Christopher Schelling at HarperCollins, and Sue Warga for editorial assistance; to my wife and in-house editor, Maureen, who maintains a sense of humor about it all. And to Jim Karas, who first called Lake Agassiz to my attention.