Ancient Shores Page 9

  “Okay. How much do you need?”

  They fell quickly into the habit of creating prosaic explanations for the roundhouse. There were, after all, any number of things it might have been. A sanitarium for people who had needed to get away. A government test facility of one kind or another. A forgotten National Guard training installation. But there was a distinct division between what they said and what they were thinking.

  Max took charge of getting a steam shovel up to the site. The night before the Northern Queen Construction Company was to start, Max, April, and the Laskers gathered under Christmas lights at the Prairie Schooner for a celebration that was ostensibly connected with the season but which somehow touched on Max’s hunt for a harbor and its possibly successful conclusion. To add to the mood, which was simultaneously exuberant and tentative, Redfern delivered congratulations from the tribal chairman.

  They sat at a corner table, watching couples lit by electric candles moving slowly to Buck Clayton’s “Don’t Kick Me When I’m Down, Baby.” The music caught at Max, made him feel sentimental and lonely and happy. Too much wine, he thought.

  A man he had never seen before invited April to dance. She smiled and went off with him. He was blond and good-looking. About thirty. “His name’s Jack,” said Lasker. “He works over at the depot.”

  Max was irritated to observe that she seemed to enjoy herself.

  The important thing, she said a few minutes later, was that whatever happened up on the ridge, they still had the yacht. They had, in her opinion, indisputable evidence of the presence of an advanced technology. “But,” she added, “I can’t wait to get a close look at the roundhouse.” Her eyes glowed.

  When Max asked Lasker almost offhandedly what he intended to do with the boat, the big man looked surprised. “Sell it,” he said. “As soon as I can get a handle on how much it’s worth.”

  “It’s priceless,” said April.

  “Not for long,” he said. “I’m anxious to be rid of the damned thing.”

  This shocked April. “Why?” she asked.

  “Because I’m tired of the circus tent and the T-shirts. I’m tired of being made to feel I’m not doing enough for the town. No, I’m going to cash it in at my first reasonable opportunity.”

  Max relished the prospect that he might really be instrumental in finding a UFO. He pictured himself showing the president onto its flight deck. This would have been the navigational system, Mr. President. And here, on your right, is the warp drive initiator. No, there would not be a warp drive. It would be, what, hyperlight? Quantum? We estimate Alpha Centauri in eleven days at cruising speed. Yes. That was a line he would like very much to deliver.

  He anticipated a TV movie and speculated who would play Max Collingwood. Preferably somebody both vulnerable and tough. He pictured himself among Esquire’s most eligible bachelors. Interviewed by Larry King. (He wondered whether he would get nervous when the TV cameras rolled.) If things went well, he decided, he would keep the Lightning and construct a warbird museum in which it would be the centerpiece.

  The Collingwood Memorial Museum.

  They were trying not to draw attention to themselves, but as the liquor flowed and spirits picked up, it became more difficult. They drank to one another, to Lisa Yarborough, to the ground-radar crew, to Lake Agassiz, and to Fort Moxie (“the center of American culture west of the Mississippi”).

  “I think what we need here,” said Max, “is an archeologist. Seems to me we could hire one to direct the dig. That way we avoid the screwups we’ll make if we try to do it on our own.”

  “I disagree,” said April.

  “Beg pardon?”

  “We don’t want an archeologist.” She studied her glass in the half-light of the electric candles. “We don’t want anybody else involved if we can help it. Bring in an archeologist and he’ll tell us we’re amateurs and try to take over the operation. Eventually he’ll wind up getting the credit.” Her expression suggested she knew about these things and Max should trust her. “You have to understand about academic types. Most of them are predators. They have to be to survive. You let any of them in and they’ll never let go.” She took a deep breath. “Look, let’s be honest. This is not a standard archeological site. Nobody knows any more about this stuff than we do.”

  “You mean,” said Max, “you’re the only scientific type associated with this, and you’d like to keep it that way.”

  She looked exasperated. “Max, this is our baby. You want to bring in some heavy hitters? Do that, and see how long we keep in control of things.”

  The Northern Queen Construction Company supplied a baby steam shovel and a crew. The steam shovel had trouble negotiating the switchback that ran up the escarpment, but once it arrived its operators went to work single-mindedly.

  “You’re sure you guys won’t damage this thing, right?” asked Max.

  “We’ll be careful,” said the crew chief, a gray-haired, thickset man bundled inside a heavy coat. He’d been told the object was an old grain storage facility in which several major works of art were thought to be hidden. (Max was becoming creative.) “Of course,” he continued, “you understand we only get you close to the thing. Afterward there’ll be a lot of digging to do, and that’s going to be up to you.”

  They used stakes and string with pieces of white cloth fluttering in the wind to mark out the target area. Peggy Moore was standing just outside the radar van, her arms folded over a Boston Red Sox jacket (the weather had warmed up), while the Northern Queen crew moved into position. A few yards away, Charlie was posted on the radar tractor.

  In the van, the atmosphere was electric. April had assumed a post near the main screen (the rule that noncompany people had to stay out of the van had been long since forgotten), from which she was directing the excavation. Max was losing confidence now that the moment of truth was near and had become convinced that they were going to unearth a silo or a long-forgotten Native-American habitation. April’s Martians were light-years away.

  The steam shovel lined itself up just outside the markers and stopped. The man in the cab looked at a clipboard, got on his walkie-talkie, and then rolled the engine forward a few yards. The jaws rose, opened, and paused. They plunged into the earth, and the ground shook.

  The operator moved levers and the jaws rose, trailing pebbles and loose dirt, and dumped their load off to the side. Then they swung back. The plan was to dig a broad trench around the target. Tomorrow April’s volunteers, who were mostly farmers without too much to do at this time of year, would begin the actual work of uncovering the roundhouse.

  A few snowflakes drifted down from an overcast sky.

  Peggy Moore had a video camera and was recording the operation. The woman was no dummy. Max realized he should have thought of it himself. The videos might be worth a lot of money before this was over.

  In fact, they were going to have to break down soon and call a press conference. How long would it take before the media figured out something was happening on Johnson’s Ridge? But there was a problem with a press conference: What did you tell them? You couldn’t talk about UFOs and then dig up an old outhouse.

  By sundown a twelve-foot-wide, thirty-foot-deep trench had been driven into the promontory. Like the canyon, it was shaped like a horseshoe, enclosing the target area on three sides, within about fifteen feet of the object. They laid ladders and planking in the ditch and threw wooden bridges across. “You’ll want to be careful,” the crew chief explained. “There’s a potential for cave-ins, and if you dig around the bridges, which you will probably have to, you’ll want to make adjustments so they don’t collapse. I suggest you get a professional in, somebody that knows what they’re doing.”

  “Thanks,” said April. “We’ll be careful.”

  He held out a document for her to sign.

  April looked at it.

  “It explains about hazards, safety precautions, recommends you get somebody.”

  “It’s also a release,” said April
.

  “Yeah. That, too.” He produced a clipboard.

  She glanced across the document and signed it. The crew chief handed her a copy. She folded it several times and slid it into a pocket.

  The steam shovel began to move away, rolling toward the access road through a light wind that blew a steady stream of snow over the summit. The crew chief surveyed his work with satisfaction. “Good night, folks,” he said. “Be careful.”

  When he had left, they walked slowly around the trench, poking flashlight beams down into it. “That’s going to be a lot of digging,” said Max.

  April nodded. “We’ve got a lot of people.”

  10

  Shopkeepers, students, government officials, farmers,

  Ordinary men and women, they came,

  And were forever changed…

  —Walter Asquith, Ancient Shores

  In the morning, a horde of volunteer workers crowded into the auditorium at the Fort Moxie City Hall. The press was represented by Jim Stuyvesant, the town’s gray eminence and the editor and publisher of the weekly Fort Moxie News. Stuyvesant didn’t know much about why there had been a call for workers, other than that there was going to be an excavation on Johnson’s Ridge, but in a town where the news was perpetually slow, this was front-page stuff.

  At eight sharp April tapped her microphone, waited for the crowd to quiet, and thanked everyone for coming. “We don’t know much about this structure,” she said. “We don’t know how durable it is, and we don’t know how valuable it is. Please be careful not to damage anything. We aren’t in a hurry.” Stuyvesant, who was his own photographer, took some pictures. “If you find anything that’s not rock and dirt, please call a supervisor over.”

  “Is it Indian stuff?” asked a man in a red-checked jacket up front.

  “We don’t know what it is.” April smiled. “After you help us find out, we’ll let you know. Please stay with your team. Tomorrow you can report directly to the work site. Or come here if you prefer. We’ll have a bus leaving at eight and every hour after that, on the hour, until two P.M. We’ll quit at four-thirty. You can quit when you want, but please check out with your team leader. Unless you don’t care whether you get paid.”

  The audience laughed. They were in a good mood—unexpected Christmas money was coming, and the weather was holding.

  “Any questions?”

  “Yeah.” One of the students. “Is there going to be something hot to drink out there?”

  “We’ll have a van dispensing coffee, hot chocolate, sandwiches, and hamburgers. Hot chocolate and coffee are on the house. Please be careful about refuse. There’ll be containers; use them. Anyone caught littering will be asked to leave. Anything else?”

  People began buttoning parkas, moving toward the doors.

  They poured out of the old frame building and piled into buses and cars and pickups. Stuyvesant took more pictures and waited for April. “Dr. Cannon,” he said, “what actually is on the ridge?”

  “Jim,” she said, “I honestly don’t know, and I don’t want to speculate. It’s probably just an old storage facility from the early part of the century. Give me a few days and you can come look at it.”

  Stuyvesant nodded. The Fort Moxie News traditionally reported stories that people wanted to see printed: trips to Arizona, family reunions, church card parties. He was therefore not accustomed to people who dodged his questions. He had an additional problem that daily newspapers did not: a three-day lead time before the News hit the street. He was already past the deadline for the next edition. “I can’t believe anybody would put a storage shed on top of a ridge. It’s a little inconvenient, don’t you think?”

  “Jim, I really have to go.”

  “Please bear with me a minute, Dr. Cannon. You’re a chemist, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Why is a chemist interested in an archeological site?”

  April had not expected to be put under the gun. “It’s my hobby,” she said.

  “Is there an archeologist here somewhere? A real one? Directing things?”

  “Well, as a matter of fact, no. Not really.”

  “Dr. Cannon, several weeks ago somebody dug up a yacht in the area. Is this project connected with the yacht?”

  “I just don’t know,” April said, aware that she was approaching incoherence. “Jim, I’m sorry. I have to go.” She saw Max, waved, and started toward him.

  But Stuyvesant kept pace. “There’s a rumor it’s a UFO,” he said.

  She stopped and knew she should think before she said anything. She didn’t. “No comment,” she blurted out.

  It was, of course, among the worst things she could have said.

  They rented three vans: one to use as a kitchen, the second to serve as a control center, and the third to be a general-purpose shelter. They also erected a tent in which to store equipment.

  Max had established himself at the Northstar Motel in Fort Moxie. He called Stell to tell her he’d be staying near the site for several days and asked her to arrange to get his car delivered so he would have local transportation.

  Lasker agreed to take over the administrative aspects of the dig. He wasted no time designing an overall plan, appointing supervisors, devising work teams and assigning them rotating responsibilities, and putting together a schedule that allowed the workers almost as much time in shelter as exposed to the elements.

  He also thought nothing of throwing a few spadefuls of earth himself. His attitude caught on, especially when April and Max joined in. Consequently, things happened quickly. And on the same day that the Fort Moxie News hit the stands with its UFO story, Lem Hardin, who worked part-time at the lumberyard, broke through to a hard green surface.

  UFO ATOP JOHNSON’S RIDGE?

  SCIENTISTS:

  “NO COMMENT”

  by Jim Stuyvesant

  Fort Moxie, Dec. 17—

  Dr. April Cannon, who is directing an excavation effort on Johnson’s Ridge, refused today to deny escalating rumors that she has found a flying saucer.

  Cannon heads a workforce of more than two hundred people who are trying to unearth a mysterious object, which was found recently after an intensive radar search. Archeologists at the University of North Dakota commented that Johnson’s Ridge is an unlikely site for Native-American artifacts, and they are at a loss to explain the reasons behind the Cannon initiative.

  The story was picked up immediately by the major wire services.

  Max’s first intimation of the breakthrough came with a loud round of distant cheers. He got up from his desk and was reaching for his coat when the phone rang. “The roof,” Lasker told him.

  The word passed quickly around the site, and people scrambled up ladders and dropped wheelbarrows to hurry over to see. What they saw, those who could get close enough, was a small emerald-colored patch protruding out of the dirt at the bottom of a ditch.

  April was already there when Max arrived. She was on her knees, gloves off, bent over the find. Max climbed down beside her.

  “Feels like beveled glass,” she said. “I think I can see into it.” She took out a flashlight, switched it on, and held it close to the patch. But the sun was too bright. Dissatisfied, she removed her jacket and used it to create shade.

  “What is it?” asked one of the workers.

  “Can’t tell yet.” April looked at Max. “The light penetrates a little bit.”

  “You’re going to freeze,” he said. But he put his head under the spread jacket. He could see into the object.

  April produced a file, took off a few grains, and put them in an envelope. Then she looked up and spotted Lasker. “Be careful,” she said. “We don’t want any spades near it. I don’t care if it takes all year to get the dirt out. Let’s not damage this thing.” She put her jacket and gloves back on and climbed out of the hole. “Don’t know, but that doesn’t look to me like the roof of a shed. Maybe we’ve really got something.” The envelope was the self-sticking kind. She se
aled it and put it in a pocket. “Max,” she said, “I need a favor.”

  “Name it.”

  “Fly me back to Colson?”

  “The action’s here.”

  She shook her head. “Later it will be. But this afternoon the action will be at the lab.”

  April never understood how the media found out so quickly. The Ben at Ten TV news team arrived before she and Max could get off the escarpment, and they were quickly joined by some print reporters.

  “No,” she told them, “I don’t know anything about a UFO.”

  She told them she had no idea how the story had got started, that they weren’t looking for anything specific, that there’d been reports of a buried object atop the ridge, and that they had found some thick glass in the ground. “That’s it,” she said. “It’s all I can tell you for now.”

  Carole Jensen from Ben at Ten pressed for a statement.

  “How about tomorrow morning?” said April. “Okay? Nine o’clock. That’ll give us a chance to try to figure out what we’ve got. But please don’t expect any big news.”

  Max flew them back to Chellis Field. April wasted no time jumping into her car, declining his invitation for lunch. “I’ll call you when I have something,” she promised.

  Max checked in at the office, ordered pizza, and turned on his TV just as the noon news reports were coming on. And it was not good. There he was, standing beside April and looking foolish, while she transparently dodged questions. Worse, the reporter identified him as the owner of Sundown Aviation.

  The anchor on The News at Noon referred to the delusions often associated with UFO buffs, and cited a gathering two weeks earlier on an Idaho mountaintop to await the arrival of otherworldly visitors. “Is the Fort Moxie dig another example?” he asked. “Stay tuned.”