Ancient Shores Read online

“I’ll add this for everyone in the room who wants to be a manager: Look for someone like Harvey on your staff, to tell you what you need to hear. Treat him well. Make him your conscience.”

  They cheered, Harvey stood, and April actually saw tears around her. He beamed in the rush of affection. When things subsided, he symbolically dragged the lectern to one side. (His refusal to use a lectern was part of the body of corporate myth.) He thanked his coworkers for their kindness and, as he always did, spoke to them about themselves. “In some ways,” he said, “this is the finest moment of my life. I’d like to think that Colson Laboratories has a more solid foundation than it had before I came, and that its employees and customers are better off. If that’s true, and if I can claim some credit for that, I’d feel that my years here have been successful.”

  April suspected she had never seen him this happy. Not during her twelve years with Colson Labs. And she thought how very sad that was.

  The associate director had devoted his life to the success of the company and its employees. He had refused to settle for anything less than excellence. And now, addressing his colleagues on this final night, he was saying it again. “Never confuse perfection with production. People who don’t make mistakes aren’t doing anything.”

  His subordinates loved him.

  She watched him now as he thanked the rank and file. He was walking into the dark. At the end of this celebration he would go back to his office for the rest of the week, and then it would be over.

  In some ways, this is the finest moment of my life.

  My God, was that all it had come to? A few dozen people at a dinner party, teary-eyed for the moment, but who would disperse soon enough to their own lives and leave Harvey Keck to find his way as best he could?

  Surreptitiously she wiped her eyes.

  Nothing like this was going to happen to her. She would make sure her life counted for something more than being a nice person down at the office. And Tom Lasker’s enigmatic yacht was going to be her passport.

  7

  The distant roar of receding time…

  —Walter Asquith, Ancient Shores

  Lasker had been out working on his tractor all morning, replacing a leaky cylinder and a drive belt. He’d just come back into the house and was headed for the shower when the doorbell rang. It was Charlie Lindquist and Floyd Rickett.

  Charlie was a three-hundred-pounder, about six-three, amiable, a man who thought the world could be had by figuring out what people wanted to hear and telling it to them. Actually, Charlie had done fairly well with that philosophy. He’d built half a dozen businesses in Fort Moxie, and now owned Intown Video, the Tastee-Freez (which was, of course, closed for the winter), and four duplexes over near the library. Charlie was director of the Fort Moxie Booster Association and president of the city council.

  Floyd also sat on those esteemed bodies. He was tall, gray, sharp-nosed, pinched-looking. A postal clerk, he had strong opinions and a strong sense of the importance of his time. Get to the bottom line, he was fond of saying, jabbing the air with three fingers. Floyd did a great deal of jabbing: He jabbed his way into conversations, jabbed through political opposition on the council, jabbed through conflicting opinions of all kinds. Life is short. No time to waste. Cut to the chase. At the post office he specialized in sorting out problems caused by the general public. Floyd disapproved of sloppy wrapping, of clumsy handwriting, of people who failed to use zip codes properly.

  Not surprisingly, Charlie and Floyd did not get along.

  They shook hands with Lasker, heartily in Charlie’s case, prudently in Floyd’s. “Still got people coming by to see the yacht, I see,” said Charlie, trying to be casual. He thought of himself as a man of considerable subtlety.

  “A few. Depends a lot on the weather.” He led them into the living room, where they gathered around the coffee table. “It’s getting old, I think.”

  “Getting cold, too,” said Floyd. His hand chopped through a brief arc to emphasize the point.

  “We’ve been noticing it in town,” said Charlie. “We aren’t seeing as many people as we did.” He shook his head. “Pity it didn’t happen in the spring.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Lasker. “We’ve about had it with this donkey drill, anyway. I’m tired of hauling it in and out of the barn every day. I’m going to lock it away and that’ll be the end of it.”

  “Wish you wouldn’t, Tom,” said Charlie in an easy tone that suggested the action was selfish and ill-conceived.

  Floyd nodded. “Bad for business,” he said. “The folks that come out here, a lot of them, eat in town. They do some shopping. Some even stay overnight.” He sat back and crossed one leg over the other. “Fact is, we could use more stuff like this.”

  “You have to understand,” Charlie said, “that a lot of the people downtown are depending on you.”

  “Charlie,” said Lasker, “it’s only a boat.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” said Floyd. “It’s a national news story. And it’s sitting right here in Fort Moxie.”

  “It is not a national news story,” said Lasker. “We’ve been on one TV show. And anyhow, most of the people who come out here think I buried the boat myself. They think the whole thing’s a scam.”

  Floyd looked shocked. “There’s no truth to that, is there, Tom?”

  Lasker glared at him, and Floyd subsided.

  “Listen.” Charlie was a picture of magnanimity. “All of this is beside the point. There’s a lot of money to be made, and it occurred to us you haven’t been getting your share, Tom. Now, what we propose to do is to organize this in a more businesslike way.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “First thing,” said Floyd, “is to get the attraction off the trailer. I mean, no offense, but what we have here feels like a garage sale. I can understand why people don’t take it very seriously.”

  “The attraction?” said Lasker. “It’s an attraction now?”

  “No offense, Tom.” Charlie shifted his weight and his chair sagged. “We just thought it would be a good idea to put it on a platform.”

  “Ed’s volunteered to make the platform,” said Floyd. That would be Ed Grange, who usually took charge of parades and other ceremonials. “He’ll do a good job, don’t worry.”

  “We’ll put a tent over it,” continued Charlie, “and install some heaters.”

  Lasker made a face. “I don’t want a tent on my front lawn,” he said.

  “We know that.” Charlie’s benign expression signified that everything was under control. “We wouldn’t do that to you, Tom. We thought it would look better over where you dug it up, anyhow.” His eyes suddenly clouded. “You haven’t filled in the hole, have you?”

  “Sure I have. We filled it in the day we got the damned thing out of the ground.”

  “That’s too bad,” said Floyd. “Shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Why not? The hole was thirty feet deep. If somebody’d fallen in there, they would have got a terrible bruise.”

  “Well, it’s too late now,” said Charlie. “Wish we’d thought of that right away.” He rapped his fingers against the table. “Anyway, we’ll put up the shelter. We know where we can get an old circus tent. Old, but in good shape. But don’t you worry, that’s only temporary.”

  “What do you mean, temporary?”

  “The bottom line on this,” said Floyd, “is that we might have a permanent draw here if we play our cards right. We need to think about a museum.”

  Lasker’s head was beginning to hurt.

  “Well, not right away,” said Charlie. “Look, we’re going to do a publicity push. We’ll start charging an admission fee. You’ll get a cut, of course. And we’ll see how it goes.”

  “Wait a minute. You can’t charge for this.”

  “Why not?” Charlie was into his take-charge mode. “You want people to react seriously, you have to make them pay something. Not a lot. But something. I bet we’ll double the crowds the first week. W
e were thinking thirty percent for you; the rest goes to the town. Okay? It’ll all be pure profit for you. Cost you nothing.” He nodded at Floyd, and Floyd nodded back. “The city will pay for everything. Now, we’ve got a T-shirt design. Let me show you—”

  His eyes found Floyd, and Floyd produced a folder. He opened it and pulled out several drawings. All featured the boat, in various aspects. But there were several legends. The Devil’s Boat, read one. And My Folks Visited Fort Moxie, ND, and All I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt. Another featured a map of the upper Red River, with the location of the “devil’s boat” site marked with an inset.

  “What’s this ‘devil’s boat’ routine?” asked Lasker.

  “It was Marge’s idea,” said Charlie. Marge Peterson was the town clerk. “Part of the public-relations initiative.”

  “I think it’s a little overboard.”

  “Listen,” said Charlie, “people love that kind of stuff. And this whole business does have a kind of Twilight Zone flavor. Right?”

  “And it lights up, doesn’t it?” said Floyd. “You find the power source yet?”

  Lasker shook his head.

  “Good. No known power source. We need to push that, Charlie. And the markings. The markings are good.”

  “Yeah.” Charlie reached for his coat. “Listen, enjoyed talking with you, Tom. We’ve already started the ball rolling on this thing. Couple of the boys’ll be out tomorrow to get it going. You just relax. You won’t have to do anything except sit back and watch the money roll in.”

  They were up and headed for the door. “Oh, one more thing.” Charlie stopped, and Floyd almost collided with him. “A rest room. We’ll need a rest room.”

  “No,” said Lasker.

  “It’s okay. We’ll set something up outside. Put it back in the trees. Out of sight.”

  They shook his hand, opened the door, and looked out. There were maybe twenty visitors, and two more cars were pulling up. “See what I mean?” Charlie said.

  April held the packet where the light from the window could shine through it. “What we have here,” she said, “are a few fibers taken from the mooring lanyards. The fibers are wood. They’re from spruce trees.” She passed it over.

  Max squinted at the samples. “What does that tell us? There aren’t any spruce trees around here.”

  “Not anymore. But there used to be. At one time they were quite common, as a matter of fact.”

  “When?”

  “When the lake was here.”

  They were in a steakhouse. Max listened to the murmur of conversation, the clink of silverware. “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Max’s insides churned. A waitress arrived, and he settled for a Caesar salad rather than the club sandwich he’d been planning. “So what we’re saying is that we’ve got a ten-thousand-year-old boat up there?”

  April squirmed. “I’d rather not jump to conclusions, Max. Let’s just stick with the facts for now. One, the boat will not rot, rust, or decay over extremely long periods of time. Two, the lanyards that are in the Lasker barn were once tied up to a piece of wood that was cut from a spruce tree. The tree that the wood fibers came from was alive ten thousand years ago.”

  “But the boat,” said Max, “is new.”

  “The boat will always look new, Max. You could put it back in the ground and dig it up to celebrate your sixtieth birthday, and it would look exactly as it does today.”

  “That doesn’t sound possible.”

  April nodded. “I know. Look, it’s outside our experience. But that doesn’t make it irrational.” Her voice dropped. “I’m not sure what kind of alternative explanation might fit the facts. The age of the wood fibers is not in dispute. Neither is the composition of the original samples. I think somebody was here. A long time ago somebody with advanced technology went sailing on Lake Agassiz. They tied up at least once to a tree or a pier.”

  “So who was it?” asked Max. “Are we talking UFOs? Or what?”

  “I don’t know. But it’s a question worth asking.”

  Diet Cokes came. Max took a pull at his while he tried to get his thoughts in order. “It doesn’t make much sense,” he said. “Assume for a minute you’re right. Where does that leave us? With the notion that people came here from another world to go sailing? I mean, are we seriously suggesting that?”

  “It’s not out of the realm of possibility. Try looking at the big picture, Max. And I mean big. How many water lakes are there, I wonder, within a radius of, say, twenty light-years? Agassiz might have looked pretty good to a load of tourists.” She smiled. “Look, let’s stay away from the speculation and concentrate on what we know. What we know is that we have an artificial element that’s unique in the world.”

  “How do we know that?” asked Max.

  “I guarantee it.”

  “You guarantee it. April, I hate to say this, but a couple of days ago I wouldn’t have known who you were. No offense, but maybe you’re wrong.”

  “Maybe I am. In the meantime, Max, consider this: If I do know what I’m talking about, the boat is literally beyond value.” She realized she was getting too loud; she leaned closer and lowered her voice. “Look. You’d like a second opinion. I know we don’t need one. Get a second opinion, and we get a second chemist. I’d just as soon keep this as exclusive as we can. We are sitting on a monumental discovery, and we are all going to be on the cover of Time. You. Me. The Laskers.” Her dark eyes filled with excitement. “There’s another reason to keep this close for the time being.”

  “What’s that?” asked Max.

  “There might be something else out there.”

  Lisa Yarborough had launched her professional career as a physics teacher in a private school near Alexandria, Virginia. But she had been (and still was) an inordinately striking woman who just flat-out enjoyed sex. While she discussed energy and resistance by daylight, she demonstrated after dark a great deal of the former and hardly any of the latter.

  Lisa discovered early that there was profit to be made from her hobby. Not that she ever stooped to imposing tariffs, but men insisted on showing her a substantial degree of generosity. Furthermore, indirect advantages could accrue to a bright, well-endowed young woman who had never been shackled by either inhibition or an undue sense of fair play. She left the Alexandria school in the middle of her second year amid a swirl of rumors to take a lucrative position with a firm doing business with the Pentagon; her new company thought she could influence the military’s purchasing officers. She proved successful in these endeavors, using one means or another, and moved rapidly up the corporate ladder. If it was true that, in her own style, she slept her way to the top, she nevertheless refrained from conducting liaisons with men in her own chain of command, and in that way maintained her self-respect.

  Eventually she developed an interest in government and took a position as executive assistant to a midwestern senator who twice sought, without success, his party’s presidential nomination. She moved over to lobbying and did quite well for the tobacco industry and the National Education Association. At the law firm of Barlow and Biggs, she functioned as a conduit to several dozen congressmen. She received a political appointment and served a brief tour as an assistant commissioner in the Department of Agriculture. And eventually she became a director in a conservative think tank.

  It was in the latter role that Lisa discovered a facility for writing. She had kept scrupulous diaries since she was twelve, a habit that began around the time she’d first retired into the backseat of her father’s Buick with Jimmy Proctor. Jimmy had been her first real connection, so to speak, and she’d found the experience so exhilarating that she’d wanted to tell someone. But her girlfriends at the Chester Arthur Middle School weren’t up to it. And her parents were Baptists.

  Lisa should have been a Baptist, too. She had been exposed to the full range of ecclesiastical activities. She’d gone to youth group meetings on Tuesdays and Thursdays, services on Wednesdays and Sunday
s. But by senior year she’d slept with half the choir.

  While she was at the think tank helping demolish Dukakis’s bid for the White House, she’d decided to use her diaries to write an autobiography. Her promise to go into delicious detail about an array of prominent persons throughout government and the media produced a seven-figure advance. The think tank had promptly fired her because she did not confine herself to prominent Democrats.

  Old paramours and one-night stands had come to see her, pleading for selective amnesia. When persuasion and bribes didn’t work, they resorted to tears and threats, but she went ahead with the project. “If I don’t tell the truth,” she told a TV talk show host, “what will people think of me?”

  The book was Capitol Love. It became a best-seller and then a TV movie, and Lisa bought a chain of autoparts stores with the proceeds. The rest, as they say, is history.

  Lisa had first met April Cannon while Lisa was working at the Department of Agriculture. She’d gone to a dinner hosted by an environmental-awareness group. Her date had been one of the speakers, a tall, enthusiastic stag burdened with the conviction that the loss of forests had already exceeded the limits from which recovery might be possible. He also believed that women in general and Lisa in particular could not resist his charms. Lisa, who had planned to cap the evening in her usual style, changed her mind. April had been unimpressed with her date as well, and the two had fled together into the Washington night.

  They had been close friends since.

  Lisa was therefore not surprised when April called and asked to see her. Her interest grew when her friend refused to state the reason for the meeting.

  The day after the phone call, April arrived with a nondescript individual in tow. “Lisa,” she said, “this is Max Collingwood.”

  The women knew each other too well to indulge in small talk. April quietly explained what had been happening at Tom Lasker’s farm. When she had finished, Lisa was slow to respond. “You’re certain?” she asked. “How about fraud?”

  “There’s no mistake. And fraud is not possible.” April slid a manila envelope onto the table, opened it, and took out a handful of photos. They were pictures of the yacht. Interior. Exterior. Sails. Close-ups of rails and stanchions. And the markings.