Ancient Shores

by Jack McDevitt

  “Do it.”

  She inhaled. “It’s one small step for a woman….” She touched the plate. Pushed it.

  Something clicked in the wall. A door opened up directly in front of her. They were looking into a rotunda. “Yes,” breathed April. She stepped inside.

  The light was gray and bleak. Just enough to see by.

  “This is it,” she said. “Main stage.”

  It was empty. A few columns reached up to connect with a network of overhead beams. And that was all. A trench ran from the middle of the floor toward the other side of the dome, which would have been the front.

  The door slid down.

  He felt a momentary twinge until he saw a plate identical to the ones outside.

  “That’s our channel,” said April, indicating the trench. “Boat came in through the front, tied up right here.” There were even a few posts that would have served the purpose.

  It was getting hard to breathe. “Heads up,” Max said. “The air’s bad.” How could it have been otherwise?

  They propped the doors open and used a couple of blowers to circulate fresh air inside. When they felt it was safe, they opened it up for their people and for the journalists.

  The trench was about fifteen feet deep. The dimensions were sufficient to accommodate the boat. They’d have had to fold the mainmast over to get it inside. But it would have worked.

  Four rooms opened off the passageway. Two might once have been apartments or storage areas but were now simply bare spaces. The others contained cabinets and plumbing. The cabinets were empty. A sunken tub and a drainage unit not unlike the device on the ketch suggested one had been a washroom. The other appeared to be a kitchen.

  Max noticed almost immediately a sense of anticlimax and disappointment. April especially seemed down. “What did we expect?” he asked.

  It was just empty.

  No interstellar cruiser. No ancient records. No prehistoric computers. No gadgets.

  Nothing.

  15

  The true power centers are not in the earth. But in ourselves.

  —Walter Asquith, Ancient Shores

  Tom Brokaw displays just the right amount of skepticism. “There is,” he says, “more evidence tonight that extraterrestrials may have visited North America near the end of the last ice age. Scientists today entered a mysterious structure that may have been buried for thousands of years on a ridge near the Canadian border.” A computer graphic of the Walhalla—Fort Moxie area appears beside him, and the camera cuts quickly to overhead shots and silhouettes of the Roundhouse. “This building is constructed of materials that, we are being told, cannot be reproduced by human technology. Robert Bazell is on the scene.”

  Bazell is standing in front of the Roundhouse, and he looks cold. The wind tries to take the microphone out of his hand. “Hello, Tom,” he says, half turning so the camera can get a better look at the structure. “This is the artifact that scientists think may have been left by someone ten thousand years ago. No one knows where it came from or who put it here. It is constructed of a material that experts say we’ve never seen before. A team led by Dr. April Cannon got inside today for the first time, and this is what they saw.”

  The interior of the dome rises above the viewer. Accompanied by strains from Bach’s Third Concerto for Organ, the camera glides along the green curves and over the gaping trench.

  To Max, watching with April and the Laskers at the Prairie Schooner, it only stirred his sense of disappointment and bad luck. Even the cabinets had been empty! At the very least, Max thought, it would have been nice to find, say, a discarded shoe.

  Something.

  “If the Roundhouse is really as old as some of the experts are saying, Tom,” Bazell continues, “we are looking at a technological marvel. The temperature inside is almost sixty degrees. As you can see, it’s cold up here. So we have to conclude that there’s a heating system and that it still works.” They cut back to the top of the ridge, where snow is blowing and people are standing around with their collars tugged up. “I should add that the structure glows in the dark. Or at least it did last night. So much so that it frightened people in nearby Walhalla and emptied the town.”

  Split screen. Brokaw looks intrigued. “Are we sure it’s not a hoax?”

  “It depends on what you’re asking about, Tom. The experts don’t all agree on the age of the Roundhouse. But they seem to be unanimous that the material it’s made from could not be produced by any human agency.”

  They cut to a bearded, older man seated at a desk before a book-lined wall. The screen identifies him as Eliot Rearden, chairman of the Department of Chemistry, University of Minnesota.

  “Professor Rearden,” says Brokaw, “can you hear me?”

  “Yes, Tom.”

  “Professor, what do you make of all this?”

  “The claim appears to be valid.” Rearden’s gray eyes blaze with excitement.

  “Why do you say ‘appears,’ Professor?”

  He thinks it over. “I wouldn’t want to imply there’s any problem with the evidence itself,” he says. “But the implications are of a nature that causes one to hesitate.”

  Brokaw asks quietly, “What are the implications?”

  Rearden gazes directly into the camera. “I think if we accept the results of the analyses, we are forced to one of two conclusions. Either there were people living here at the end of the last ice age who were technologically more advanced than we are and who somehow managed to get lost, or—” He looks directly out of the screen. “Or we have had visitors.”

  “You mean UFOs, Professor. Aliens.”

  Rearden shifts uncomfortably. “If there is a third possibility, I don’t know what it might be.” He purses his lips. “We are faced here with an imponderable. I think it would be a good idea to keep our minds open and not jump to any conclusions.”

  The illuminated image of the Roundhouse under a bright moon appears onscreen. It is a live aerial shot. “Now that scientists are inside,” says Brokaw, “hard answers should come quickly. NBC will be doing a special on the Johnson’s Ridge enigma tonight on Special Edition at nine.”

  Tom Lasker speared a piece of steak and pointed it at the screen. “I’m glad to hear we’re on the verge of hard answers,” he said.

  In the morning, April and Max arrived on Johnson’s Ridge at dawn, just in time to watch the green aura fade. A helicopter circled overhead. Press vehicles pulled onto the access road behind them.

  Their fax machine had run out of paper during the night, and several thousand e-mail messages had piled up. Everyone on the planet was asking to tour the Roundhouse. “We’ll have to work something out,” April said. “But I don’t know how we’re going to do this. We aren’t going to be able to accommodate all these people.”

  Journalists and VIPs were already arriving in substantial numbers. April talked to the media for a while. She described her fears that the results of her investigations would cause her to be written off by her scientific colleagues. “That hasn’t happened,” she added. “Everyone’s being very open-minded about this.” She explained the need to protect the premises from hordes of visitors until they could glean whatever information the Roundhouse might contain. “Therefore,” she said, “we’ll allow six pool reporters inside. Three TV, three print. You folks decide. Give me thirty minutes to set it up. Those who do go in will be asked to stay with the guide. Anybody who wanders off gets the boot. Agreed?”

  Some grumbled, most laughed. While they tried to sort out their representatives, she and Max walked around to the stag door. It had been braced open all night with a spade while exchangers ventilated the interior. April took the spade away, and the door closed. She removed her own glove and pressed her fingers against the stag’s head. As Max expected, nothing happened.

  “So we have established,” she said, “that it is George’s glove, yes?”

  “Apparently,” said Max.

  “But why should that be?” She produced a scarf and
held it up with a flourish for Max’s inspection. “Bought it at Kmart,” she said. “Six bucks, on sale.” She draped it across her fingers and again touched the image.

  The door opened.

  “Voilà!” She wedged the spade back into the doorway.

  “Why does it respond to the scarf?”

  “Not sure. What does the scarf have in common with George’s glove that it does not have in common with my mitten or my bare hand?”

  “Damned if I know,” said Max.

  “George’s glove—” She removed it from her pocket. “—is made from polypropylene. The scarf is polyester. They’re both products of a reasonably technological society.”

  Max frowned. “Explain, please.”

  “It’s only a guess. But when the Roundhouse was in use, there may have been natives in the area. Who knows what else might have been here? Bears, maybe. Anyway, how would you set up the door to make sure your people could use it, but not the natives, or anything else?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’d use a sensor that reacts to, say, plastics. Anything else, bare skin, fur, whatever, the door stays shut.”

  The hordes descended. They poured through U.S. border stations and overwhelmed I—29 and the two-lane highways north from Fargo and Dickinson. They arrived in charter flights at Fort Moxie International Airport, where they discovered that the car rental service had only one car and there was only one taxi. A five-car pileup near the Drayton exit of I—29 stopped northbound traffic for two hours. On State Highway 18, near Park River, frustrated motorists found themselves in stop-and-go traffic for miles. By sundown on the first day after blanket coverage began, two were dead, more than twenty injured, and almost a hundred were being treated for frostbite. Property damage was estimated at a quarter of a million dollars. It was believed to be the single worst day of traffic carnage in North Dakota history.

  Police broadcast appeals throughout the afternoon. At 2:00 P.M. the governor went on radio and TV to appeal for calm. (It was an odd approach, since unbridled emotions were by no means the reason for the problem.) “The traffic in and around Walhalla,” he said, “is extremely heavy. If you want to see what is happening on Johnson’s Ridge, the best view, and the safest view, is from your living room.”

  We are fond of charging that most people have no sense of history. That claim is usually based on a lack of knowledge of who did what or when such-and-such an event occurred. Yet who among us, given the chance to visit Gettysburg on the great day or to share a hamburger with Caesar, would not leap at the opportunity? We all want to touch history, to be part of its irresistible tide. Here was an opportunity, an event of supreme significance, and no one who could reach Johnson’s Ridge was going to stay home and watch it on TV.

  The chief of police was a thick-waisted, gravel-voiced man whose dull features and expressionless eyes belied a quick intelligence. His name was Emil Doutable, which his force had changed to Doubtful.

  He arrived on the escarpment during the late morning. By then Max and his team of assistants had spent hours on the phone with metallurgists and archeologists and industrialists and politicians and curiosity-seekers from around the world.

  Doutable was not happy. The presence of this abomination was complicating his work. He understood that events of major significance were unfolding in his jurisdiction, but he wished they would unfold somewhere else. “We might need a Guard detachment,” he told Max. “We’re hearing that most of North America is headed this way.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” Max said. “Maybe we ought to close off the access road. Keep people off the ridge altogether.”

  Doutable glanced around as if someone might overhear. “Are you serious? Business is booming in the county. If I shut it down, my job goes south.” He looked out the window. The parking area was filled with hundreds of cars. “Listen, this is an ideal situation for the towns. It’s still pretty cold. Nobody can stay up here very long. They come up, take a look, and go down. Then a lot of them go into one of the towns for a hot meal and wind up doing some shopping. Everything keeps moving. Or at least it used to. Now, though, we’ve got just too much traffic.”

  Max nodded, happy that it wasn’t his problem.

  Doutable was quiet for a minute. “Max,” he said, “you’re not planning on letting them walk around inside that place, are you?”

  “Inside the Roundhouse? No. We’re restricting it to the press and to researchers.”

  “Good. Because that would slow things down even more. We need to keep them out in the cold. As long as we can do that, we should be okay.” He nodded vigorously. “Don’t change your mind.” He got up and started for the door. “If we get lucky, maybe it’ll go below zero. That’s what we really need.”

  Helicopters were arriving every few minutes, bringing in fresh loads of journalists and VIPs. Lasker needed help keeping things organized, and Max found himself appointed head greeter. They deluged April with questions and requests for photos, and she tried to respond. But it was an exhausting day, and they were all glad to see the sun go down.

  “It’s ridiculous,” April complained. “I’ve got the world’s most interesting artifact waiting, and I can’t get away from the reporters. I want to get a good look at the inside.” The reality was that the journalists were getting more time than she to look around the interior of the Roundhouse.

  There were other distractions. Although she didn’t realize it yet, April had become overnight the best-known scientific name in the country. She had already, during the first twenty-four hours of what they had begun to think of as their appearance on the world stage, received offers from three major cosmetics companies who wanted her to endorse their products, from Taco Bell (“Our burritos are out of this world”), from a car rental agency, and from MCI.

  She conducted crowds of visitors through the Roundhouse. She granted interviews and conducted press briefings. The photographers had by now discovered they had a photogenic subject, and flashbulbs went off continuously. She was obviously enjoying herself, and Max was happy for her. She was brighter, quicker on her feet than he was. In addition, her smile won everybody’s heart, and she had a penchant for delivering sound bites.

  On the third day after penetrating the Roundhouse, they started the slow process of screening and removing the accumulated dirt. Selected sections of the walls were cleaned, admitting diffused sunlight into the dome.

  The light was of the texture that might fall through a forest canopy in late afternoon. But there were no trees here, of course. Green walls, presumably more cannonium, and apparently identical in design to the exterior, rose around them. A wraparound window, chest high, curved for two hundred seventy degrees, centered on the front.

  Lasker asked Max to oversee the restoration. April described the precautions they needed to take and then turned him loose. Also during this period, they hired ex-mayor Frank Moll to act as their public-relations director.

  Max thought the real information would come out of the walls. He wanted to know how systems could be built that would still work after ten thousand years. Still, he regretted that first contact might bring little more than a better heating system.

  He left a note for April and started back to the motel. But he got caught up in traffic and arrived two hours later, exhausted and annoyed, in Fort Moxie. The town was under siege. Cars were parked everywhere, and the streets were filled. Max negotiated his way through and pulled into the motel lot, where there was no room. He eventually had to park over on Leghorn Street, six blocks away.

  Walking back, he saw a teenager wearing a shirt depicting the Roundhouse. The legend read FORT MOXIE, ND—OUT OF THIS WORLD. The Lock ‘n’ Bolt had put together a display of Roundhouse glasses, dishes, models, towels, notebook binders, and salt and pepper shakers. Across Bannister Street, Mike’s Supermarket featured more of the same.

  Two school buses were moving leisurely toward him. Bright banners fluttered from both, displaying a picture of the Roundhouse
. Across the nose of the leading vehicle, someone had stenciled Misty Spirit. They were filled with young people, mostly college age or a little older, and they waved at him as they went by.

  Max waved back, hurried along the street (for he was by now cold), and let himself into his motel room. The sudden rush of warm air drained his energy, and he dropped his coat over a chair and sank onto the bed.

  The buses stopped at Clint’s. The restaurant was already too full to accommodate an additional sixty hungry people, but Clint was not one to miss an opportunity. He offered to make up sandwiches and coffee to go, and he accepted reservations for the evening meal. When they had left, Clint noted that his stores of lunch meats, pickles, and potato salad were moving more quickly than he’d anticipated. He dispatched his son to Grand Forks with an order for replenishments.

  At the Lock ‘n’ Bolt, Arnold Whitaker was watching automotive supplies jump off his shelves. Also moving very quickly were games for kids to play while traveling and, ominously, firearms. And binoculars. Sales of Roundhouse merchandise were going through the roof. He’d picked the stuff up on consignment, what he thought was a generous supply, but it would be gone by tomorrow afternoon.

  When he called for more, his Winnipeg supplier put him on back order.

  The Northstar Motel was completely full for the second consecutive week. During its entire history, that had never happened before. At about the same time that Max was falling asleep in his room, management was contemplating doubling the rates.

  The price of a drink at the Prairie Schooner had, for some, already risen measurably. The proprietor, Mark Hanford, was careful to install separate rates for regulars and visitors. Ordinarily Mark would have considered such a practice unethical. But these were extraordinary times. A businessman had to adjust to changing conditions. He didn’t expect that anyone would notice, and nobody did.

  Mark had also decided to propose that the town council award Tom Lasker a certificate of appreciation. He knew that the motion would ride right through.