Coming Home

Eighteen

In the morning, we caught a maglev to Fargo, in Centralia. We arrived in the early evening, rented a car, and rode north through a flat landscape that consisted mostly of cottages and town houses and rosebushes and parks. The lawns weren’t as lush as we’d seen elsewhere, but Centralia had a reputation for being cold. I’d seen pictures of the area in an earlier age, and it wasn’t hard to believe it had once been home to vast, windswept prairies.

We’d been under way about half an hour when we received a message from Rimway.

Interstellar communications are, of course, not cheap. Consequently, if someone wants to send a transmission across the stars, he will frequently look for others who might also wish to make contact with the party at the other end, thereby dividing the cost by bundling the messages. There’d been no bundling with this one, no apparent concern about cost.

It was from Leonard Culbertson, the lawyer for the Capella Families. Alex looked at it and passed it to me. “Alex,” it said, “I hope you’ve seen the wisdom of stopping the people who want to play lethal games with the drive unit on the Capella. We are still gathering support for our initiative. We have tried to go through the courts, but no action will be forthcoming in time to prevent a disaster. In any case, the scientists are being very reassuring. In fact, they’re making a strong case. They are going to bring in young teens and argue that they have been deprived of a parent for most of their lives, and that, unless the court allows the procedure to take place, some of them won’t see their parents until they’re in their thirties or forties.

“Your voice means a lot in this struggle. A statement from you will not necessarily carry the day, but it would have considerable weight. If you can help, the sooner you are heard, the better.

“However you decide, I appreciate that you’ve at least listened. A reply to this message has already been paid for. Again, thank you for your time.”

We were seated in back while the car navigated through heavy traffic. Alex was staring straight ahead. The roadway was sealed off from pedestrians or animals, raised three or four meters off ground level.

I’d never have described Alex as being indecisive. But at that moment, he looked like a man in pain.

“Maybe we could try contacting John,” I said. “It’s possible they’ve had a breakthrough, and they could guarantee everybody’s safety.”

“No.” He was scowling, as if some dark creature fluttered outside the windshield. “If they’d managed something like that, he’d have let us know.”

The car got us to Union City shortly after sunset. The visitors’ center was closed, but we’d done the research. The Prairie House had been located on what was now the northeastern edge of town, a few blocks from the Red River.

We checked in at a hotel and drove to the site, which was occupied by an abandoned church. It was away from streetlights and flanked by a vacant lot on one side and a grocery store on the other. The front doors were at the top of a half dozen steps. A sign off to one side identified the grounds as the Good Shepherd Baptist Church. Another sign stated that it was closed. A stone angel, with folded wings, waited on one side of a walkway, and a large cross rose from the steeple. The grounds were freshly cut, and there were a few headstones in back. Lights were just coming on in the houses, and people were sitting out on porches while kids chased one another along otherwise-quiet streets.

We got out of the car. The church had been there a long time, almost a century. The data for the site went back almost a thousand years. The location had usually been occupied by a church. But there had been private homes, a couple of retail shops, and even, at one point, a hardware store.

Prior to that, the record was unclear. It wasn’t even certain this had been the location of the storied Prairie House, which, in its time, had served as a community center, a warehouse, and a militia outpost. It had been burned down once, or maybe twice, during the Dark Age. No picture of it existed.

The Baptist church had closed down twenty years earlier, when the city took over the property and tried, with no success, to cash in on the Apollo artifacts legend by establishing an Apollo gift shop. The former gift shop still stood, pale and desolate, beside the church, where it now functioned as a grocery store.

The rock walls of the church were dark and gray. “I don’t think we’re going to learn much here,” I said.

“You never know, Chase.” He took a deep breath. I could see frustration in his eyes.

“What?” I said.

“The scanner would have come in handy. I’d like to see what the lower levels look like.”

“You don’t think there could still be something here, do you?”

“Anything’s possible. But no, it’s not very likely. Still, I’d like to take a look. Maybe we could at least find some evidence that the artifacts had actually been brought here.”

Some of the kids who’d been playing stopped to watch us. As did a few of the adults on their porches. One man stood up, came down the steps onto a sidewalk, and started across the street in our direction. He was small, with a ridge of gray hair around his skull. His ears stuck out, and he probably needed a better diet. He took a long look at our car as he passed it. “Hello,” he said. “What’s going on?”

“We’re tourists,” said Alex. “I see we’re too late to get a look at the church. Do you know if there’s any way we can get inside?”

“Well, you’re right. It is a little bit late. Why would you want to go in there?”

“We’re interested in the Prairie House.”

He laughed. “That’s been gone awhile, Mister.”

“I know. But it was a famous place. I’d love to be able to tell my family I was inside the building that’s on the grounds now.”

“Why don’t you come back in the morning?”

“We could do that if it would work. We just want to look around a bit. We wouldn’t damage anything.”

“I doubt you could damage anything.” He looked at the church and then at me and then back at Alex. “Who are you, Mister?”

“My name’s Alex Benedict. This is Chase Kolpath. Is there anyone here—?”

“I’m the curator. My name’s Edmunds.”

“Oh. Good. We’re doing research work. If you could provide access to the building, I’d be happy to pay you whatever it might entail.”

“Give me a few minutes,” he said. “I’ll be back.”

He returned with a lamp. “There’s not really much to see, Mr. Benedict.” He unlocked the gate, and we walked up to the church door, which he also opened. He held the lamp inside. We were looking at gray stone walls and a pulpit. The pews had been removed. “Careful where you walk,” he said. “The floor’s uneven.”

An electronic wall plate began to glow. And a voice spoke: “Welcome to the Golden Age Sanctuary, where the artifacts from the scientific era were protected during the dark times. These priceless treasures are believed to—”

Edmunds waved a hand, and it stopped. “We’d planned for a while to turn this into a kind of museum. But the board of commissioners decided it would just be a waste of money. That”—he pointed at the plate—“is as far as we got.”

“Mr. Edmunds,” said Alex, “what do you think actually happened to the artifacts? Were they really here at all?”

“Oh, I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. But it’s thousands of years ago, Mr. Benedict.” He raised both hands. “Who knows?”

“Are there any legends about what happened to them? Any theories?”

“Sure. They took them to Winnipeg. There’s another notion that they got taken to the Moon.” I knew Alex didn’t expect Edmunds to be able to give us anything helpful. But at a moment like this, his natural inclination was to keep people talking. You just never knew what you might pick up. “I’ve heard every kind of crazy story you could imagine,” the curator continued. “They’re lost, and nobody has any idea what happened to them.”

“Somebody thought they might have been taken to the Moon?”

“Yeah. That’s been a pretty popular notion here. That the government’s got them hidden up there.”

“Why would the government hide the artifacts?” I asked.

Edmunds shrugged. “Who knows? Some people will tell you that’s just the way governments are.”

“What do you think?”

“About what?”

“About whether they were actually able to get the artifacts safely away.”

He laughed. “I doubt it.”

“Why’s that?”

“It would have been a hellish situation. Those people would have been too busy saving their lives to worry about a lot of museum pieces. It’s a nice legend. But I can’t imagine that it really happened. And I’m sorry. I know that’s not what you want to hear. I think the truth is that people at that time were going crazy everywhere. They didn’t have anything, and they probably stole everything they could carry off and burned the rest. Now, do you still want to look around?”

We followed him up the center aisle, turned left past the pulpit, and exited through a side door into a passageway. “The storage area, what’s left of it, is below.”

“Most of it is filled in?” asked Alex.

“That’s correct. Nobody knows who did it, or when. It might even have caved in at some point. We don’t even know for certain that the basement was part of the original Prairie House. It was probably added later. But that doesn’t fit well with the official story, so I won’t push the point.”

He opened a door, and we looked down a stairway. He put one foot on the top stair and waited. “You want to go down?”

“Yes,” said Alex. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to look around a bit.”

We followed him down into what seemed nothing more than a very large cellar. Boxes and crates lined the walls and were stacked in piles across the area. “Can we look in one?” Alex asked.

“Sure.”

Alex pointed at a crate, and Edmunds lifted the lid. It seemed to be filled with moldering blankets. Another crate had more. And a third was filled with pipe and metal bars. A plastic box revealed two Bibles and several hymnbooks. “Has anyone ever gone through all this stuff?”

“I’m sure Rev. MacCauley had his staff look at everything before they left. In any case, Union City ordered a general inventory when they picked up the property back around oh nine. If they found anything, they kept it to themselves.”

We went back upstairs and talked about how some people had thought the artifacts had been distributed among a few private homes during the Dark Age. That they’d been hidden in attics and basements. “I’ll tell you,” he said, “the town commission would love to come across some of them. But that’s crazy.

“The entire area,” he continued, “gets scanned about every few years by somebody who wants to make sure they didn’t miss anything.”

“How much total space was there?” asked Alex.

“Who knows? The church never had that much.”

Alex used his link to produce an image of Baylee. “Mr. Edmunds, do you by any chance recognize this man?”

He looked and shook his head. “No,” he said. “I don’t think so. Who is he?”

“Garnett Baylee. He’d have been one of your—”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Yes, I did meet him once. Sorry, it’s been a long time, and I don’t remember faces real well. But I did meet him.”

“Do you remember any of the conversation?”

“I think it was pretty much like the one we just had. But it’s been a long time. Probably twenty years.”

“Did you know who he was when you met him?”

“Yes. That’s why I remember him. He was a professor up at Bantwell University. Wrote a couple of books. I heard him speak a few times.”

“Was that at the university?”

“No. The Historical Society gave him some kind of award. And he came down here to receive it. And he made a few other appearances. He was a funny guy. I do remember that about him.”

“Do you remember what he spoke about?”

“No, not really. The award was given at a dinner, and he only talked for a few minutes. Mostly, I guess, he just said thanks. The other occasions, as best I can remember, he talked about artifacts. But I don’t remember any details.”

We came out of the church and walked into the arms of a reporter. She had just come through the gate. “Mr. Benedict?” she said. “My name’s Madeleine O’Rourke. From The Plains Drifter.” She was tall, as tall as Alex, with amber hair swept back, and green eyes. “I wonder,” she said, “if I could ask a few questions?”

Alex was not a guy who normally fumbled his composure in front of beautiful women, but he was taken aback by this one. “Hi, Madeleine,” he said. “I, um, this is Chase Kolpath. And sure. About what?”

“You’re a famous guy. I was wondering what brings you to Union City?” She had a distinct accent. Tended to draw out words, sometimes adding an extra syllable.

“I assume you already know the answer to that, Madeleine.” That was a stall while he thought about how he wanted to reply. “We’re interested in the Prairie House. And the story about the Golden Age artifacts.”

“Well,” she said, “I guess you’ve come to the right place.” She looked around. People were watching from their porches. “Do you mind if I record the conversation?”

“No, that’s okay.”

“Thank you. Can I assume you’re trying to find out what happened to the material that disappeared back in the Dark Age? Is that correct?”

“I’m surprised you know we’re here at all, Madeleine. May I ask how that happened?”

“Oh, Mr. Benedict, I doubt you can travel anywhere without the media becoming aware of your presence.”

“Actually, the media isn’t usually all that interested in antiques. But you’re right, we’d like to find out what happened to the artifacts, sure. But I’m surprised you’d know about that.”

She smiled again. “Why else would a celebrity of your stature be down here?”

“Well,” Alex said, trying to look modest, “we could be here for any number of reasons.”

“Sure you could. Your Aunt Susan lives down the block, for one.” Another quick smile. “So, do you have any idea what might have happened to them? To the artifacts?”

“Not at the moment, no.”

“But you do hope to solve an eight-thousand-year-old mystery?”

Alex laughed. “Madeleine, I’d love to.”

“Do you have a lead?”

“Not really, no.”

“Mr. Benedict, where will you go from here? What can you hope to find that everyone else has missed?”

“Probably nothing. But there’s never any harm in looking.”

“But you must have something to work on?”

“Madeleine, if we find anything, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

The conversation continued like that for another few minutes. Alex avoided mentioning Baylee. I suspected she knew about him, but if she did, she didn’t bring up his name, either. Finally, she thanked him and left.

We walked out of the church grounds and returned to the car. “You okay?” I asked him.

“I’m fine.” He took a deep breath.

“She’s quite a package, isn’t she?” I said.

“Oh.” He smiled. “She’s okay. Not in your league, though.”