Jack McDevitt - Ancient Shores

This was to be the last week for all except a few designated workers. The rest would be paid and thanked and released. Charlie Lindquist was planning an appreciation dinner at the Fort Moxie city hall, and he’d arranged certificates for the workers which read I Helped Excavate the Roundhouse . (At about this time, the structure acquired a capital R .) Media coverage was picking up, as was the number of visitors. Cars filled Route 32 in both directions for miles.

Periodically April went out, climbed down into the excavation, and strolled along the wall. She liked being near it, liked its feel against her palms, liked knowing that something perhaps quite different from her had stood where she now stood and had looked out across the blue waters of the long-vanished glacial lake.

But today there was a change in the wall. She stood at the rear, near the stag’s head, looking past the long, slow curve at the wooded slope that mounted to the northern ridge, trying to pin down what her instincts were telling her. Everything appeared the same.

She touched the beveled surface. Pressed her fingers to it.

It was warm .

Well, not warm, exactly. But it wasn’t as cold as it should have been. She let her palm linger against it.

The west grew dark, and the wind picked up. Max watched the storm teams assemble and begin distributing tarpaulins. The digging stopped, and workers rigged the tarps around the excavation to prevent it from being filled with snow. When that was completed, they sent everyone home.

No one wanted to be caught on the road when the storm hit. Including Max. “You ready?” he asked April.

“Yes,” she said. “Go ahead. I’m right behind you.”

Max put on his coat. The wind was beginning to fill with snow. Visibility would soon go to near zero.

“Hey,” he said, “how about if I stop and get a pizza?”

“Sure. I’ll see you back at the motel.”

Max nodded and hurried out the door. The wind almost took it out of his hands.

He walked to the gate and was greeted by Andrea Hawk, one of the security guards. She was also a radio entertainer of some sort in Devil’s Lake, Max recalled, and she was extremely attractive. “Good night, Mr. Collingwood,” Andrea said. “Be careful. The road is treacherous.”

“How about you?” he asked. “When are you leaving?”

“We’ll stay here tonight, or until our relief comes. Whichever.”

Max frowned. “You sure?”

“Sure,” she said. “We’re safer than you.”

Whiteouts are windstorms, gales roaring across the plains at fifty miles an hour, loaded with dry snow. The snow may accompany the storm, or it might just be lying around on the ground. It doesn’t much matter. Anyone trying to drive will see little more than windshield wipers.

April resented the delay caused by the storm. She seldom thought about anything now other than the Roundhouse. She was desperate to know what was inside and who the builders were, and she spent much of her time watching the laborious effort to clear the channel.

The day she’d seen Tom Lasker’s boat, she had begun a journal. Chiding herself for an attack of arrogance, she had nevertheless concluded that she was embarked on events of historic significance and that a detailed record would be of interest. During the first few days she’d satisfied herself with accounts of procedures and results. After Max had found Johnson’s Ridge, she’d begun to speculate. And after she had closed the operation down for the winter, she had realized that she would eventually write a memoir. Consequently, she’d begun describing her emotional reactions.

The stag’s head intrigued her. It seemed so much a human creation that it caused her to doubt her results. Somehow, everything she had come to believe seemed mad in the face of that single, simple design. She had spent much of the afternoon trying to formulate precisely how she felt and then trying to get the journal entry right. Important not to sound like a nut.

She put it in a desk drawer and listened to the wind. Time to go. She signed off the computer, and headed out into the storm. She was about ten minutes behind Max.

At the entrance, John Little Ghost forced the gate open against the wind and suggested that maybe she should stay the night. “Going to be dangerous on the road!” he said, throwing each word toward her to get over the storm.

“I’ll be careful,” April said.

She was grateful to get to her car, where she caught her breath and turned the ignition. The engine started. There was an accumulation of snow on the rear window. She got her brush out of the trunk and cleared that off, and then waited until she had enough heat to keep the snow off the glass. Then she inched out of the lot and turned toward the opening in the trees that concealed the access road. She drove through a landscape in motion. The storm roared around her.

Maybe Little Ghost had been right.

She turned left, toward the western exit. It was a long run across the top of the escarpment, several hundred yards during which she was exposed to the full bite of the storm. But she kept the wheel straight and opened the driver’s door so she could see the ruts other cars had made. The wind died when she arrived finally among a screen of elms and box elders.

She passed an abandoned Toyota and started down.

Snow piles up quickly in a sheltered section, and one has to maintain speed to avoid getting stuck. It obliterates markers and roadsides and hides ditches. To make matters worse, this was the second road, just opened by police, and April wasn’t used to it.

She struggled to keep moving. She slid down sharp descents and fought her way around curves. She gunned the engine through deep snow, but finally lost control and slid sidewise into a snowbank. She tried to back out, but the car only rocked and sank deeper.

Damn.

She buttoned her coat, opened the door cautiously against the wind, and put one foot out. She sank to her knee. Some of the snow slid down inside her boot.

An hour and a quarter later, scared and half frozen, she showed up at the security station. “Thank God for the fence,” she told her startled hosts, “or I’d never have found you.”

Andrea Hawk was a talk show host on KPLI-FM in Devil’s Lake. She’d worked her way through a series of reservation jobs, usually exploiting her considerable Indian-maiden charm to sell baskets, moccasins, and canoe paddles to well-heeled tourists. She’d done a year with the reservation police before discovering her onair talents, which had begun with a series of public-service pleas to kids about drugs and crime. She was still selling automobiles, deodorants, CDs, and a host of other products to her dewy-eyed audience. Along the shores of Devil’s Lake, everybody loved the Snowhawk.

She was twenty-six years old and hoping for a chance to move up. Two years ago a Minneapolis producer had been in the area, heard her show, and made overtures. She’d gone to the Twin Cities thinking she had a job, but the producer drove his car into a tractor-trailer, and his replacement, a vindictive middle-aged woman with the eyes of a cobra, did not honor the agreement.

Andrea was planning to do several of her shows on the scene from Johnson’s Ridge. It was clear to her that she was sitting on a big story, and she planned to make the most of it. She’d got Adam’s permission, worked out her schedule so that it would not conflict with her air time, and stocked the security module with equipment.

It was cold inside, despite the electric heater. The modular buildings were well insulated, but they weren’t designed to withstand winter conditions atop a North Dakota escarpment. The wind blew right through the building. Andrea sank down inside her heavy woolen sweater, wishing for a fireplace.