Ancient Shores

27

Harry Mills liked to say he was pure corn country, bred true. He had spent thirty years in the Congress of the United States, eight as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, before becoming Matt Taylor’s vice president. Harry told people he had no political ambitions other than to serve his nation well. He would be seventy-seven before he could hope for a run at the top job.

He had therefore decided to retire at the end of Taylor’s first term, while he was still young enough to enjoy the leisure. He would write his memoirs; travel the country to spend time with his grandchildren, who were scattered from Spokane to Key West; and get back to playing serious bridge, a pursuit he’d abandoned a quarter-century ago.

The reality was that Harry probably had become too old. He had lost his passion for politics, his taste for power. He no longer enjoyed influencing policy, or rubbing shoulders with the decision makers, or even making the Sunday round of talk shows. Tonight he was at a reception for the Jordanian king, and he devoutly would have preferred to be home with Marian, shoes kicked off, watching a good movie.

As was usually the case at these outings, he was being stalked by half a dozen predators who wanted to use him to push their agendas. One was the NASA director, Rick Keough, who caught up with him near the hors d’oeuvres.

Harry didn’t like Keough very much. The director was a former astronaut, so he was popular with the general public. But he was given to grandstanding, and he was less interested in the organization than he was in his own career.

Keough was nursing a rum and Coke and trying to look like a man bearing up under misfortune and bureaucratic stupidity. They exchanged pleasantries, and he came to the point. “Mr. Vice President, we have a problem. This thing on Johnson’s Ridge. My people are starting to wonder whether they have a future.”

Keough had headed the effort to return to an aggressive manned program when that idea was popular, and during recent years had argued just as effectively for economy, science, and safety. He was short, barely five-six, narrow of both shoulder and intellect. There was an elusiveness in his character, a tendency to become distracted or change the subject without warning. Talking to Keough, one of the capital’s pundits had once remarked in print, was like trying to carry on a conversation with a man hiding behind a tree.

“How do you mean?” asked Harry.

“Are you serious? What’s the point of boosters and shuttles when you can walk?” He finished off his drink. “What is the President going to do about that thing?”

Harry was tired of hearing about the Roundhouse. He was not a man easily rattled, and he was convinced that, given time, it would all blow over. When it did, life would go on. “Relax, Rick,” he said. “There will always be a mission for NASA.”

“Well, maybe somebody better tell that to my people, because they are looking around. Mr. Vice President, they are going to start bailing out. These are dedicated people. And they can’t be replaced. Once they get the feeling that what they do doesn’t matter anymore, they’re gone. The organization will die.”

And your job with it. “I’ll talk to the President,” Harry said. “I’m sure he’ll be willing to issue a statement of purpose.”

“I think he’ll have to do better than that. You want my suggestion?”

Harry fingered his glass, waiting.

“Condemn the area. Send in a flight of F—111’s and take the top off the escarpment. You can apologize later, and nobody will complain. Nobody.”

The press conferences on Johnson’s Ridge were held daily at one o’clock. Pool reporters, wearing pressure suits, had visited the galaxy terminus, which seemed to be located on an off-world platform. No one knew for certain, because no exit from the chamber could be found. But if it was indeed off-world, then it followed that artificial gravity was now within reach. An expedition was being planned.

Today, however, no one was interested in anything other than the Visitor.

Flanked by Adam Sky, April began by issuing a short statement that admitted a remote possibility that something might have come through the port. “We don’t think so,” she said. “We are reasonably sure that the only thing that happened was a brief malfunction. The malfunction opened a channel between Johnson’s Ridge and one of the terminus worlds.”

“The Maze?” asked Peter Arnett of CNN.

“Yes,” she said.

“April,” he pursued, “when are you going to open it up for us? The Maze?”

“As soon as we can be sure it’s not inhabited, Peter.” (Wrong word: She should have said “not occupied.” Sounded less ominous.) “But I’d like to reiterate that we spent more than two hours over there. We saw no sign of life. And we were in no way molested, attacked, or threatened by anyone. After we returned, the system reactivated on its own. No one appeared, and there was no evidence to suggest it was anything but a malfunction. And I hope this puts the rumors to rest.”

“You saw nothing at all?” asked Le Parisien.

“That’s correct.”

“But that’s what you’d expect to see, isn’t it,” asked the London Times, “if the creature was invisible?”

“How can I respond to that?” asked April. “We didn’t see anything. More than that I can’t say. If the Times wants to speculate, go ahead.”

“How do you account for Deekin’s statements?” asked a reporter from Pravda. “Deekin swears something came across.”

April allowed herself to look distressed. “You’ll have to ask Dr. Deekin about that.”

Reporters, like everyone else, love a good story. And April knew they were torn between their natural skepticism and an unexpressed hope that there was something to the rumor. Everyone understood that this was the sort of thing that sold newspapers. A lot of newspapers.

She had, of course, been less than candid. The guard who had seen the wrong icon light up had been George Freewater. George also believed something had come across. But they had learned the danger of going public with everything they knew.

“Tell a press conference what we really think,” Max had said, “and we’ll have a panic.”

Adam had disagreed. “Nobody’s going to panic. That’s government-speak. I think we’d do best to tell the truth.”

“Truth is overrated,” Max had said, looking wearily at him. “Have you been out to any of these towns lately? They’re barring the doors at night. And you won’t find many kids outside.”

The News at Noon, KLMR-TV, Fargo

Anchor: More strange goings-on in and around Fort Moxie today, Julie. First we have an exclusive interview with the man who claims to have spoken to the invisible creature that is haunting the border area.

(Cut to aerial shot of the railhead, where we see the depot and a line of tankers and empty flatcars; back off gradually for perspective)

There’s another report on the town’s so-called Visitor. Carole Jensen is in Noyes, Minnesota.

(We see Jensen standing by a railroad track; a white tank car is behind her)

Jensen: This is where it happened, Claude. We are at the tiny depot in Noyes, Minnesota, about a mile south of the Canadian border. A railroad employee may have had an encounter here a couple of days ago with the unearthly thing that is reported to have escaped from the Roundhouse on Johnson’s Ridge. The employee, Curt Hollis, was taken to a local hospital after the incident, although he’s with us today and seems to be okay.

(Camera moves away; Hollis is standing beside the reporter)

How do you feel, Mr. Hollis?

Hollis: I’m okay, thank you.

Jensen: What actually happened here?

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.

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.