Ancient Shores

20

The world filled with light. The arching walls grew transparent and leaked blue-white sunlight. Violet hills swam in and out of focus. The floor fell away, and he was afloat, not falling, but drifting. A sudden vertigo washed through him. Then he sprawled forward on solid ground.

He was looking at the Minnesota Twins logo. The jacket was draped over a broken tree branch, which was propped against a glass wall.

He was inside a cupola, near the top of a low hill. Around him lay the forest he had glimpsed when the transition started. Except that it was solid now. And it did not look like any forest he had ever seen.

There were no greens. The vegetation favored a deep violet hue. Enormous white and yellow blossoms hung from trees that looked half human, like people who had defied the gods and taken root. Plump red and yellow fruit hung from thick, gnarled branches. The ground was thick with leaves.

The sun hovered on the horizon, but whether it was early evening or morning was impossible to say.

The cupola appeared to be made of clear glass. It had a door, which was ajar. The ground beyond was higher than the floor of the cupola by more than a foot. Which meant what? That the cupola, like the Roundhouse, was long abandoned?

The forest was silent, save for the hum of insects and the occasional flutter of wings. Where was April?

Surely she would not have left the area voluntarily. Unless she was taken. It was a thought he tried to put aside as he smelled the warm, sweet air.

He pushed on the door. It crashed into the grass. Max jumped, and then smiled at his own nervousness.

When April had arrived, the door (which apparently hadn’t been used in a long time) was jammed shut by the higher ground outside. So she had removed the bolts from the hinges.

Max stepped through the opening. A large bird flapped across the sky and disappeared into the trees. In the distance, he could hear the roar of surf.

He called April’s name. Something screeched back.

Where the hell was she?

He looked at the tangled grass and brush and surveyed the sweep of woodland. There was a glade at the bottom of the hill, and the shrubbery was not so dense as to preclude walking. She could have gone in any direction.

He turned back to the cupola and went inside. The structure was shaped like a bell jar, approximately twelve feet in diameter, its top almost at tree level. He had arrived on a circular dish, the same size as the grid in the Roundhouse. A post, in which was mounted another array of icons, rose behind the dish. The icons were three-dimensional and took the form of glyphs. They were earth-colored, and the symbols were different from the other group (save one), although the styling was the same.

The exception was the stag’s head. His ticket home. He touched it, very gently, and then pressed it.

Nothing happened.

He visualized April standing here, with a jammed door at her back, trying to get it to work.

He looked doubtfully at the icons. It was possible she had gone on to another terminal in another reality. Possibly in the hope she would find a link home.

That was a dark possibility.

But going through another port would have been an act of desperation. No: She’d left her jacket. It said, in effect, I am here. Come find me.

There were eight icons this time. Five were geometrical figures, a sixth might have been a flower, another had wings.

Seven new destinations, presumably. What in God’s name had they stumbled into?

He took another look at the forest, to be sure nothing was sneaking up on him. His first priority was to make a way out.

He opened his tool kit.

The disk seemed to be hard rubber. Its center was rounded and raised.

He used his drill to cut into the post. Again, it was tough going, and he worked for almost forty minutes before he broke through. By then it had become clear that the sun was setting.

Inside the post, he found a mounted crystal similar to the one he’d seen at the Roundhouse. Good so far. The power cable looked okay. He checked the wiring behind the icons. The pattern was the same: trands from each of the icons formed a color-coded cluster, as before, which disappeared up into the post. Three, however, were missing, not connected at all. Unfortunately, the stag’s head was not among them.

He looked at the crystal and started to worry. If the problem was buried in the technology, he was dead.

The post was about ten feet high. It tapered as it rose and curved out over the disk, widening finally into an amber lens. A ladder was connected to the rear. He picked up his drill, climbed the ladder, and cut into the post just below the lens. The cable cluster had broken apart and the individual lines were tied into connectors. The line from the stag’s head, which was white, had pulled loose.

He tried to tighten it, then went back down and returned with a piece of electrical tape. It seemed to work.

He took his pad of paper and a marker and wrote:

He removed the broken flashlight and took the jacket off the tree branch that supported it. He tore off the sheet of paper and stuffed it in a pocket, leaving a corner jutting out, and laid the jacket on the grid. When he’d finished, he took a deep breath and pressed the stag’s head. The icon lit up and, twenty-three seconds later, he was gratified to watch the light burst appear. When it had faded, the jacket was gone.

Bingo.

On a second sheet, he wrote another message and taped it to the door:

The hill on which the cupola stood might not have been entirely natural. Worn stone steps, all but buried, descended to the forest floor. He went down cautiously, regretting that he had not thought to bring a weapon. The colonel would have been dismayed.

He called her again. The cry echoed back.

He was both fearful and annoyed. She’d have wanted to explore, and he could understand she would not have waited by the cupola for a rescue party that might never come. (How much confidence did she have in him, anyway?) But it would have been nice to find her there.

Which way?

He listened to the distant rumble of the sea.

That was the direction she would have gone. Anybody would.

Now that he was down among the trees, the sky was concealed by the overhang. But the light was failing rapidly.

He wanted to find her and get back before it got dark. The hill on which the cupola stood was higher than any other ground he could see. But things could get dicey at night.

He set off. It was easy walking; the vegetation was luxuriant but not thick or high enough to impede him. The soil was rocky, and he periodically piled several stones together to mark a trail. He saw no animals, although he heard them, and occasionally saw shrubbery move.

He noticed also that he felt more energetic, and maybe even stronger, than normal. Probably it had to do with the weather. He was outside, and the air was fresh and clean.

He traveled at his best speed for about a half-hour. Dusk came on, and the vegetation grew sparser. Finally he left the trees behind altogether and walked out onto a wide beach. Gray-red cliffs rose on his left, backlit by the last light from a sun that was below the horizon. Blue water opened before him, and a cool salt wind stung his nostrils. Wherever he was, he had come a long way from North Dakota.

He saw her almost immediately. She was out near the tide line, seated beside a flickering fire. The surf boomed and roared, so she did not hear him when he called her name. She was gazing at the sea, and he was almost beside her before she realized he was there.

She jumped to her feet. “Max,” she cried. “Welcome to the other side.” A long wave broke and rolled up the strand. She extended a hand, then shrugged and fell into his arms. “I’m glad to see you,” she said.

“Me, too. I was worried about you.”

She hung onto him. Squeezed him. “I’ve got bad news,” she said. “We can’t get home.”

He pushed her away so he could see her face. “Yes, we can,” he said. “It works.”

Tears welled up in her eyes, and she pulled him close again and kissed him. Her cheeks were wet.

It was cool, and after a minute they sat down by the fire. A few birds flapped across the incoming tide. They had long beaks and webbed feet. As he watched, one landed behind a retreating wave and poked at the sand. “I thought I was stuck here, Max.”

“I know.”

“This place is nice, but I wouldn’t want to stay forever.” And, after a second thought: “You’re sure? You tried it?”

“Yeah. I’m sure.”

That seemed to satisfy her.

“We wouldn’t have left you,” Max said.

She held a bag out to him. “Peanut butter,” she said, offering him a sandwich.

He was hungry.

“This is all I had left.”

Max took a bite. “It’s good,” he said. And, after a moment: “Do you know where we are?”

“Not on Earth.”

He moved in closer to the flames. “I should have brought your jacket,” he said.

“I’ll be fine.”

The sea had grown dark. Stars were starting to appear. “I wonder who lives here,” Max said.

“I haven’t seen anyone. And I don’t think anybody’s used the transportation system for a long time.”

Max watched a breaker unroll. “Are you sure? That this isn’t Earth? I mean, that’s a lot to swallow.”

“Take a look around you, Max.”

The Alice-in-Wonderland forest had grown dark.

“And the gravity’s not right. It seems to be less here.” She studied him. “How do you feel?”

“Good,” he said. “Lighter.”

“Did you see the sun?”

“Yes.”

“It’s not ours.”

She didn’t elaborate, and Max let it go. “We should be getting back,” he said. He looked at his watch. “Arky will be worried.”

She nodded. “In a way, I hate to leave. Why don’t we stay out here tonight? We can go back tomorrow.”

It wouldn’t occur to Max until several hours later that there might have been a proposition in the offer. He was too unsettled by events and not thinking clearly. “We need to let them know we’re okay.”

“Okay,” she said.

The sky was becoming a vast panorama. It was almost as if the stars switched on with a roar, a million blazing campfires, enough to illuminate the sea and prevent the onset of any real night. Great black storm clouds had appeared, and Max blinked at them because they too seemed swollen with stars. “Odd,” he said. “The sky was clear a few minutes ago.”

“I don’t think,” she whispered, “the clouds are in the atmosphere.”

Max frowned. The breakers gleamed.

“Look.” She pointed out over the sea. A thunderhead floated above the horizon, flecked with liquid lightning and countless blue-and-white lights. “I’ve seen that before,” she said.

So had Max. It looked like an oncoming storm, but it had the distinct shape of a chess piece. A knight.

“I think it’s the Horsehead Nebula,” he said.

She stood up and walked down to the shoreline. “I think you’re right, Max.” Her voice shook.

Max watched her; he listened to the fire crackle and to the melodic roar of the surf. Perhaps for the first time since the child had died in the burning plane, he felt at peace with himself.