Ancient Shores

15

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 ham-burger 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.

Charlotte Anderson, seated in the front of the lead bus, could feel the lines of force. They filled her, washed through the emptiness, and carried her to a level of awareness higher than she had ever known. The grinding of gears in the stop-and-go traffic subsided, and she knew only the triumph of drawing close to a primal destination.

The power source was to the southwest, achingly near. Years ago she had approached such a point in Alaska, near Barrow. It too had put her at one with the cosmos, had established a link between her inner being and the greater universe outside, had tied her to the great web of existence. That too had been a time of exhilaration. But that source, whatever it was, had been buried in a mountain pass beneath glaciers.

Charlotte was trim, honey-blond, clean-cut. There was a kind of forced cheeriness in her manner, an exuberance that seemed reflexive rather than spontaneous. She was from Long Island, had graduated magna cum laude from Princeton, and now possessed a master’s with a specialization in modern European history. She’d been reared Catholic, but during high school Charlotte had become uncomfortable with a faith that seemed to lay everything out so neatly. God the score-keeper. At graduation she’d announced that she had become a Unitarian. Creation is beyond logic or explanation, she’d told her dismayed father; one can only sit back and await the wind that blows between the stars. Her father had assured her mother that everything would be all right, that it was all nonsense and Charlotte would get over it.

Some of the boys with the group, she knew, were more interested in her than in centers of power, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Given time, they would come around, and that was enough.

The buses had come from Minneapolis, where Charlotte was a manager at a McDonald’s, having left home to find her true self. When the boat had turned up on the North Dakota farm, she’d known it was pointing toward something more. And so had Curie Miller in Madison. They’d talked about it online, the Manhattan group, and Curie and her people, and Sammy Rothstein in Boise, and the Bennetts in Jacksonville, and their other friends around the country, in Philly and Seattle and Sacramento. When the situation had ripened, more than sixty members of the network, wanting to be on hand, had flown into Grand Forks, where Charlotte and a few people from the Twin Cities area had met them with the buses. They’d rented the Fort Moxie city hall and had spent two nights there waiting for stragglers. Now they were ready. And their timing had been perfect: The latest news accounts out of Johnson’s Ridge had fired their enthusiasm (if indeed it had needed firing), and she knew, as they all did, that pure magic lay ahead.

April wasn’t sure which member of Max’s restoration crew had first noticed the series of images in the wall at the rear of the dome. Several claimed credit for finding the icons; but she was struck by the fact that battalions of journalists and physicists, mathematicians and congressmen had marched innocently past the figures. She herself had never noticed them.

There were six, embedded within the glassy surface. They were unobtrusive, black rather than white, and consequently easy to miss in the dark green wall.

The workers had retreated from the area, leaving wheelbarrows and shovels. April stood on a couple of inches of dirt, studying the icons. They were arranged in two columns, each about the size of her palm. Several were pictographic: a tree, a curling line that looked like smoke, an egg, and an arrow. There was also a pair of interlocking rings, and a figure that vaguely resembled a G clef.

They appeared to be three-dimensional, and they were all executed in the representational style of the stag. April peered closely at the tree, the top left-hand figure. Like the others, it was located just beneath the surface. She took out a handkerchief and wiped the wall, trying to see more clearly.

And the tree lit up.

She jumped.

Like neon, it burned with a soft amber glow.

She held her hand against the wall but felt no localized heat.

Nothing seemed to be happening anywhere. No doors opened. There were no changes in the texture of the light. She touched the icon again to see if the light would go out.

It continued to burn.

And a bright golden aura ignited a few feet in front of her. It expanded and stars glowed within its radiance. She tried to call out, but her voice stuck in her throat.

Then, as quickly as it had come, it faded. And snapped off.

There had not been a sound.

April stood, not moving, for a full minute. Where the light had been, a clean circle of floor glittered in the filtered sunshine.

Charlotte inspected the cartons at the back of the bus. One had worked loose and was threatening to fall into the aisle. She reached for it, but Jim Fredrik, from Mobile, got there first and secured it. She thanked him and went back to her seat.

They were behind schedule. The buses had been stalled in heavy traffic about nine miles northeast of the excavation for almost two hours. Signs posted along the route warned them that the site would be closed at six. They were not going to make it.

The members of the network tended to be students or young professionals. They were predominantly white, they were joggers and aerobics enthusiasts, and they had money. During the sixties they would have ridden the freedom buses. They were believers, convinced that the world could be made better for everyone and that the means to act lay at hand.

The bus was drafty and the windows were freezing over. Nevertheless, Charlotte’s fellow passengers retained their good spirits. They opened thermos bottles and passed around coffee and hot chocolate. They sang traveling songs from Tolkien and Gaian chants from last year’s general council at Eugene. They wandered up and down the aisle, trying to keep their feet warm. And they watched the Pembina Escarpment grow.

The buses turned onto Route 32 just before sunset. Traffic was moving faster now. But it was after six when they reached Walhalla. Charlotte was tempted to call it off for the night and stop here for coffee and hamburgers. But when a couple of her lieutenants approached her with the same notion, she resisted. “Let’s at least make the effort,” she said. “And if they won’t let us in tonight, there’s something else we can do.”

Back out on the two-lane, they moved at a good clip. Her driver, a rock-band guitarist from New Mexico whose name was Frankie Atami, jabbed his finger ahead. “That’s it,” he said.

There were lanterns off the side of the road, and barricades were up. Cars were being turned away. “Pull over,” she told Frankie.

Two police officers stood beside a barricade at the entrance. They wore heavy jackets. Frankie stopped and opened the door. She leaned out, but the cops just waved them back. “We’ve come a long way, officer,” Charlotte said, shivering.

“Sorry, ma’am,” said the taller of the two. “We’re closed for the night. Come back tomorrow.”

“What time do you open up?”

But the cop was finished talking and jabbed a finger at the road. Frankie checked his mirrors and pulled cautiously out onto the highway.

“Pull off when you can,” Charlotte told him. “Let’s try to get a look at it.”

He glanced doubtfully at the drainage ditches on both sides, which had already claimed several cars. “I don’t think so,” he said.

Frustrated, they continued south while their angle of vision to the ridge narrowed and vanished. Charlotte fished out a map. “Okay,” she said. “Left just ahead.”

She brought them around so that, as it grew dark, they were moving along a county road several miles distant from the escarpment but with an excellent view of it. “Find a place to stop, Frankie,” she said.

They pulled off onto a shoulder. The second bus swung in behind them and parked. People drifted between the vehicles, drinking coffee and hot chocolate. At the back of the bus, Jim Fredrik was opening cartons. May Thompson and Kim Martin dug into them and brought out lanterns. Along the roadside they filled them with kerosene, and everybody took one.

A few started to sing, and the last of the light fled down the horizon. The stars blazed overhead.

And suddenly, as if someone had thrown a switch, the emerald glow appeared atop the escarpment.

They went dead silent.

After a minute someone moved up close to Charlotte. Manny Christopher, a software designer from Providence. “That’s it,” Manny said.

Silently they embraced each other and murmured congratulations. Charlotte lit her lantern. It was a signal for the others, and they lined up in the communal glow, forming a human chain, facing Johnson’s Ridge.

Charlotte felt the pull of the object on the summit. The Roundhouse, the media called it. But in another time it had borne a different name, given by a different entity. The faces of her friends, despite the cold, were warm and alive in the flickering lights. Beacons, she thought. The lanterns and the faces. Beacons for the universal power.

She raised her lamp, and the others followed her lead.

In that moment she loved them all. And she loved the magnificent world into which she’d been born.

For a few brief moments she saw her friends, the whole complexity of life on earth, and the wheeling stars, through the eyes of God.

“Our guest on CNN Matchup,” said the host, “is Alfred MacDonough, from the University of Toronto, winner of the Nobel prize for physics. Dr. MacDonough, what is really happening at Johnson’s Ridge?”

MacDonough, thin, white-haired, fragile, looked over the top of his glasses. “I would have to say, Ted, that we’re seeing the first real evidence that we’ve had visitors from somewhere else.”

The host nodded. “The Roundhouse is reported to have power.”

“Yes. There seems to be no question that this—” He paused, weighing his words. “—place is putting out light and heat.”

“Do we know how that’s being done?”

“To my knowledge, no one has yet looked at the mechanism.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not in an obvious place. It appears that we’ll have to break through some walls in order to determine how things work. Naturally everyone is reluctant to do that.”

“Dr. MacDonough.” The host’s voice changed slightly. “We have been hearing that there’s reason to believe the artifact is more than ten thousand years old. How do you react to that?”

“It’s not impossible.”

“Why not? How could the lights work after all that time?” The host smiled. “We have to buy maintenance contracts to protect us against toasters that fail within a couple of years.”

MacDonough smiled and inadvertently dropped the bomb. “I can assure you, Ted, that if the reality on Johnson’s Ridge turns out to be what it now appears to be, it won’t take us long to adapt that technology to our own needs. I think we could give you a pretty durable toaster.” He sat back in his chair, looking quite pleased. “In fact, I think we could give you the first multigenerational toaster.”