Jack McDevitt - Ancient Shores

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 Sundays. 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.

“They are odd,” Lisa agreed. “And there’s no language match?”

“None that we can find,” said April.

Lisa continued to study the pictures, but her mind shifted to April. The information was so outrageous that she drew back to reassess her old friend. She knew what was coming, and she had to ask herself whether this was an effort to con her. April wouldn’t do it, she was sure. But what about this Collingwood?

“So what are your conclusions?” she asked. “Where did the element, the boat, come from?”

April smiled wearily. “Everything’s guesswork beyond what we’ve told you. We have no conventional explanation.”

“Do you have an un conventional one?”

“Yours is as good as anybody’s,” said April.

Lisa nodded, walked over to her desk, and took out a checkbook. “Where do you go from here?”

“We want to take a close look at the area. See if there’s anything else buried up there.”

“What do you need to do that?”

“A ground-search radar. We can rent one at a reasonable price.”

“But what could you possibly find? Another boat?”

“Maybe,” said Max.

“But you’ve already got one . I can understand that two is better than one, but in what way would a second boat advance your knowledge?”

“There might be remains,” said April.

“Ah. After ten thousand years? And some of it in the water? I hardly think so. You’d do better to think about where they might have stopped for hot dogs.”

The chemist leaned forward, and their eyes locked. “Lisa, they had to have a way to get here. There’s a possibility they never went home.”

Lisa listened to everybody breathe. “How much do you need?”

When GeoTech’s ground-search radar unit showed up to begin its probe, Max was there. He and the Laskers assumed that if anything was actually still in the ground, they would find it right away. If they found nothing, that would be the end of it.

Max did not like being associated with UFOs. Didn’t look good for him or for Sundown Aviation, and he resolved to keep a low profile. But on the other hand, if there was anything to it, intense media coverage and maybe a lot of money was not out of the question.

The GeoTech team consisted of three people working out of a large sand-colored van. The crew chief was an energetic, rather precise young woman who made the company jumpsuit look pretty good. Her name was Peggy Moore, and she opened the conversation by asking Max what they were looking for. “The work order’s a little vague on that point,” she added.

“Anything unusual,” said Max.

That was not a satisfactory reply. Moore had intense eyes, a quick frown, and a schedule that kept her far too busy to cope with someone who wanted to mess around. “Try me again,” she said in a tone that bordered on hostility.

“We’re not sure what we’re looking for,” Max explained. “We think there may be some artifacts buried in the area. We’d like you to tell us what’s in the ground. If anything.”

“What, generally, are we talking about here, Mr. Collingwood? Arrowheads? Indian burial ground? Old oil cans? It makes a difference in the way we proceed.”