Ancient Shores

by Jack McDevitt

  Hollis: (Nervously) There was something calling my name. The wind, it sounded like. (Tries to imitate sound)

  Jensen: Did anyone else hear it?

  Hollis: Yes. The inspector heard it. Ask her. It was here.

  Jensen: Did it say anything else?

  Hollis: Not words.

  Jensen: Not words. What, then?

  Hollis: I don’t know exactly. It made me feel funny.

  Jensen: In what way, Mr. Hollis?

  Hollis: Like I was flying. Listen, you want the truth, it scared the—(Hesitates) It scared me pretty bad.

  Jensen: And what happened next?

  Hollis: I passed out.

  Jensen: So there you have it, Claude.

  (Camera withdraws to long overhead shot of freight yard)

  At least one other person heard a voice out here. Was this depot the scene earlier this week for an unearthly encounter? Or is it just one man’s imagination running wild in a place where a lot of people are reporting eerie events?

  Anchor: Thanks, Carole. Now to Fort Moxie itself, for another report from Michael Wideman at the Backcountry Church, where the Project Forty religious television show was interrupted last night.

  Participant

  Holyoke Industries Pension Plan

  Dear Retiree,

  As you are aware, the economy has been going through an extremely difficult period. Pension funds are connected to the economic welfare of the nation, and ours is no exception. We have, over the years, made every effort to safeguard our resources by investing conservatively and prudently. But no amount of foresight could have predicted the downturn of the last several weeks, nor would any measures have guarded against it.

  Your company’s pension plan, like that of many other corporations, has seen the value of its securities drop substantially over a matter of days. Fortunately we have a reserve fund set aside specifically to carry us through this kind of emergency. But the sheer scale of the problems now besetting the nation requires us to manage our reserves carefully. In order to ensure that you may continue to rely on your pension, your May payment will be reduced by $421.00 to $1,166.35. We hope that this reduction will be a one-time event only. Be assured that the trustees of the pension plan are doing everything in their power to safeguard our collective future.

  We appreciate your support and understanding during this difficult period.

  J. B. Haldway, Acting Director

  On the same day that Holyoke Industries mailed the bad news to its pensioners, a statement by Heinz Erhardt of the University of Berlin, last year’s Nobel Prize winner for economics, appeared in Der Tagesspiegel. Erhardt acknowledged that the world economy had been rocked by the news from North Dakota. “A short-term downturn,” he said, “is inevitable. But if technological applications in manufacturing and transportation become possible, as there is no reason to doubt they will, the world is headed into a period of prosperity unlike anything that has gone before.”

  Nobody seemed to be listening. By day’s end, the Dow Jones was down another 240 points and still looking for a floor.

  Larry King Live. Guest: Dr. Edward Bannerman of the Institute for Advanced Study.

  King: Dr. Bannerman, you’ve been quoted as saying that the big news is the so-called galaxy world. Why is that?

  Bannerman: (Laughs) Larry, this is all pretty big news. But the possibility that the chamber in which Arky Redfern died is actually located off-world is a monumental development in a series of incredible events.

  King: Why?

  Bannerman: I’m talking in practical terms now.

  King: Okay.

  Bannerman: The people fell down in that room. The reports indicate that the galaxy has not changed its position in the window. Therefore the facility, whatever it is, is not rotating. Or if it is, it is doing so very slowly. Now, that’s important because it implies that if the site is not located on a planetary surface, it incorporates artificial gravity.

  King: I can see why that might have some importance. But—

  Bannerman: Larry, if we can create artificial gravity, we can probably reduce, or even eliminate, gravity’s effects. I’m talking about antigravity. Think what it would mean to the average householder, for example. Want to move that sofa? Slap an antigravity disk on it and float it into the next room.

  Horace Gibson had started life as an insurance salesman. Bored, he’d joined the Marines, risen to command a battalion, and won a Silver Star in the Gulf and the Medal of Honor in Johannesburg. His units had collected enough citations to paper his den. In 1996 he’d retired, tried another civilian occupation, real estate this time, and lasted almost a year. On the anniversary of his retirement from the Corps, he joined the U.S. Marshals Service.

  Within two years he had become commander of the Special Operations Group (SOG). SOG was the marshals’ SWAT team, based in Pineville, Louisiana.

  Horace was liked by his people. He was willing to take on upper management when occasion required, and he did not spare himself in ensuring that operations were carried out for maximum success with least risk.

  He was twice divorced. His life had been too mobile and too erratic for either of his ex-wives. He had two sons, both of whom (with some justification) blamed Horace for the domestic failures, and whose relationships with their father were cool. Horace had found nothing to replace the wreckage of his personal life, and consequently he worked too many hours. His boss, Carl Rossini, liked to joke that Horace needed a woman in his life. He did, and he knew it.

  Meantime, Horace took his entertainments where he could find them. These were growing fewer with the passing years, a result of his own aging and the narrowing of his taste. But there were occasional delights, one of which took the form of Emily Passenger, a gorgeous young woman he’d met at a fund-raiser for the Pineville library. They’d gone to dinner several times, seen a couple of shows, and had taken to jogging together. He had noted some reluctance on her part, however, toward pursuing a relationship, and he ascribed it to his track record. She did not want to become a third casualty.

  Consequently Horace had embarked on a campaign to demonstrate that he was now both mature and thoroughly domesticated. The first step was to invite her for dinner at his place, and when she agreed, he had enthusiastically set about preparing the evening. He got in a couple of T-bones and an expensive bottle of champagne, invested in a kerosene lamp, which would help provide an offbeat atmosphere, and spent the day cleaning up. That evening, twenty minutes after he’d opened the champagne, his phone rang.

  28

  Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness…

  —William Cowper, “The Task”

  A thin, bearded man gazed out over the Pacific from his home at Laguna Beach. A freighter moved beneath a cloud-streaked sky. The sea was flat and calm.

  There was an air of uncertainty in his bearing, and an observer would have had a difficult time deciding where his attention was directed. He held a glass of Mondavi chardonnay in his right hand.

  The town, like the harbor, lay spread out before him. Traffic moved steadily along the coastal highway. He glanced at his watch, as he had been doing every few minutes for the past hour.

  The phone rang.

  He turned away from the window and sat down at his desk. “Hello?”

  “Greg. It’s all set.”

  It was almost two in Fargo. “Okay. Do they know we’re coming?”

  “Not yet. Listen. How much influence do you have with the feds?”

  “Not much.”

  “Ditto.”

  The man in Laguna Beach was looking at his plane tickets. “Have faith, Walter. See you in a few hours.”

  SIX DEAD, HUNDREDS INJURED, IN AEROSPACE LOCKOUT

  Seattle, Apr. 4 (AP)—

  Labor tensions erupted into full-scale rioting today at three major aerospace firms when management locked out workers seeking to return to their jobs after a wildcat strike. The violence was a continuation of unrest since simultaneous announcements of “corp
orate reengineering” last week led to widespread fear of massive job eliminations.

  DOES FORT MOXIE HAVE A VISITOR?

  There have been reports from several sources that something from another world came through the port atop Johnson’s Ridge and is now loose in the Fort Moxie area. There are stories of voices in the wind, of child abductions, of storms that seem to target individuals. And there has been a death under mysterious, and one might even say ominous, circumstances.

  Last week Jack McGuigan abandoned his snowmobile in the woods off Route 32, in Cavalier County, and ran out onto the highway, where he was struck by a moving van. The driver of the van said that McGuigan appeared to be fleeing from someone. Or something.

  Cavalier County police have been inundated with sightings, and recent visitors to the area report that for the first time in memory, people are locking their doors.

  Meantime, still wilder stories are getting started. Old-Time Bill Addison, who has ridden a number of celestial horses during his career, is warning that we have broken into the Garden of Eden and released an avenging angel. Or maybe a devil. The Reverend Addison is unclear on the details.

  It seems that, with the unearthing of the Roundhouse, we are doomed to relive another of those popular delusions that revisit us periodically. We don’t yet know the facts in the death of Mr. McGuigan. But a probable scenario is not hard to reconstruct: He was hunting out of season; he thought he might be discovered; he became disoriented; and he stumbled onto a highway. Incidents like that happen every day. The voices around Fort Moxie can undoubtedly be ascribed to the active imaginations of the tourists, encouraged, perhaps, by some of the locals, who know a good thing when they see it. It all makes interesting reading, but we recommend keeping our feet on the ground. In the end, the facts will turn out to be suitably prosaic. (Editorial, Fargo Forum, April 4)

  Pete Pappadopolou had worked in the shipping room of ABC Pistons, Inc., for four years, and had recently risen to his first supervisory position. His marriage had collapsed six months earlier, when his wife ran off with the operator of a beer distributorship, leaving him to care for their asthmatic son.

  Pete had worked a second job, delivering Chinese food, to pay for the nurse and associated medical care. He hadn’t been sleeping well. He was depressed, and his life seemed to be going nowhere. He missed his wife, and his doctor put him on tranquilizers. But the promotion came, bringing a sizable salary increase and the promise of more as ABC expanded into allied fields. Moreover, the child’s attacks had begun to lessen in both frequency and intensity. They had turned a corner.

  Unfortunately, ABC was going through changes as well. Their expansion was to have been financed by a secondary stock offering. But the value of the company’s stock had plummeted in recent weeks, and the banks, after a long period of watchful waiting, backed off.

  ABC found itself with an unexpected surplus of people. The executive suite responded by eliminating eighteen hundred middle-management and first-line supervisory jobs. Pete, who had recently separated from the union in order to move up, discovered to his horror that he had no protection whatever.

  On the day before the official notification would have been delivered (the rumor mill at ABC was quite efficient), Pete bought a .38 and used it on his plant manager and a colleague who had been making it clear that he should have got the promotion that went to Pete.

  The plant manager, despite being hit six times, survived. The colleague took a bullet in the heart. The company responded by hiring additional security personnel.

  James Walker loved solitude. He remembered staring out the windows of the schoolhouse years ago, gazing across snow-blown prairies, imagining himself alone in the world beyond the horizon. He had pictured a place of sun-dappled forest and green rivers and gentle winds heavy with the fragrance of flowers. Where the paths were grass rather than blacktop, and the land was free of county lines and posted limits and tumbledown barns.

  Walker listened to his wife, Maria, working in the kitchen, her radio playing softly. A book lay open on his lap, but he couldn’t have told anyone what the title was. Events on the ridge had filled his waking hours since Arky had first called him to report the discovery. Now Arky was dead, and people on the reservation and throughout the area were afraid of the night. George Freewater had told him flat out that something had got loose. “There’s no doubt in my mind,” he’d said.

  A jigsaw puzzle lay half done on a table near the window. It was titled “Mountain Glory,” and it portrayed a gray snow-capped peak rising out of lush woodland. A rock-filled stream rushed through the foreground. He had done a thousand such puzzles during his lifetime.

  It saddened him there was no wilderness for the Mini Wakan Oyaté like the landscapes on the boxes. He had dreamed all his life that the Sioux would recover their lost world. How this might occur he’d had no idea. But it seemed right that it should happen, and he therefore fervently believed that in time it would.

  But the shadows were advancing now. One day soon, he knew, the long night would begin for him. The Sioux had outlived their way of life, had turned it over to the white technicians, who would map everything. That was what he most disliked about them: that they sought to know all things, and did not realize that a forest without dark places has value only to the woodcutter.

  Now a road to the stars had opened. From Sioux land. Arky had understood all along, had cautioned him that the Roundhouse might prove far more valuable than any commodity that could be offered in exchange for it. Possibly, the new wilderness was at hand.

  The government car drew up outside. He sighed and watched Jason Fleury get out. There were two others with him, but they did not move. Fleury seemed ill at ease.

  Walker met him at the door and escorted him back to his office. “I assume,” he said, “you are not bringing good news.”

  “No.” Fleury shook his head. “There’s no good news for anyone these days.”

  The tribal chairman produced two cups of coffee. “What do they propose to do?” he asked.

  “I must ask you first, Mr. Chairman, whether you are taping this meeting.”

  “Would it make a difference?”

  “Only in what I would feel free to tell you.”

  Walker sat down on the couch beside his visitor. “There is no device,” he said.

  “Good. I didn’t think there would be.” Fleury took a deep breath. “I hardly know how to begin.”

  “Let me help,” said Walker. “You are about to seize our land. Again.”

  For a long time Fleury didn’t speak. Finally he cleared his throat. “They don’t feel they have a choice in the matter, sir.”

  “No,” said Walker. “I’m sure they don’t.”

  “Officially our position is that we are reacting in order to allay panic in the local towns and in southern Canada from the rumors that something has got loose from the Roundhouse.”

  “What panic?” asked Walker.

  Fleury smiled, an attempt to break the tension. It didn’t work. “It is true that people are frightened, Chairman. Surely you know that?”

  “Give it a few days and it will go away of its own accord.”

  “No doubt. Nevertheless, there’s been a death, and there’s political pressure. The government has no choice but to act. It will take over Johnson’s Ridge and temporarily administer the property until we can be assured the situation is stabilized.”

  “And when will the situation be considered ‘stabilized’?”

  Their eyes locked. Walker could see that Fleury was making a decision. “What I have to say may not be repeated outside this room.”

  “It will not be, if you wish.”

  “That moment will come when the port and the Roundhouse have been destroyed.”

  “I see.”

  “There will be an accident. I don’t know how they’ll arrange it, but it’s the only way out.”

  Walker nodded slowly. “Thank you for your honesty,” he said. “I must repeat, Johnson’s Ridge b
elongs to the Mini Wakan Oyaté. We will resist any effort to take it.”

  “Try to understand,” said Fleury. “There are forces at work now over which no one has any real control.”

  The chairman felt as if he were caught in the gears of a giant clock. “Jason,” he said, “I understand quite well. But I am being asked to choose a reservation for my grandsons when they might have a wilderness. Rather, your people need to put aside their fear. There is nothing destructive in the Roundhouse. The difficulties now besetting the larger world stem from ignorance. And fear.”

  Fleury’s eyes were bleak. “Many of us sympathize with your position. You have more friends than you know.”

  “But none who are prepared to come forward.”

  Fleury struggled with his words. “Chairman, the President counts himself among your friends. But he feels compelled, by his duty to the nation, to take action.”

  “I am sorry,” said Walker, standing up to signal an end to the conversation. “I truly am.”

  “Chairman, listen.” A note of desperation crept into Fleury’s voice. “It’s out of your hands. The court order has already been issued. It will be served on your people within the hour.”

  “On the tribal council?”

  “On your representatives at Johnson’s Ridge.”

  “Adam will not accept it.”

  “That’s why I’m here. To explain what’s happening. And to ask for your assistance. We will pay ample compensation.”

  “And what would you offer me in exchange for the future of my people? Keep off the ridge, Mr. Fleury. It belongs to the Sioux. We will not surrender it.”

  Max picked up his phone. It was Lasker. “Listen, Max,” he said, “there’s something you ought to know.”

  “You sold the boat,” Max said.

  “Yeah. Listen, they offered a lot of money, Max. More than I’ll ever need.”

  “It’s okay, Tom.”