Jack McDevitt - Ancient Shores

She wondered whether she’d be able to keep her teeth from rattling when she went on at nine o’clock via her remote hookup. As was her habit, she had begun making notes on subjects she wanted to talk about during the broadcast, and she was reviewing these when April stumbled in.

Little Ghost caught her and lowered her into a chair. “Hello,” she said with an embarrassed smile. And then she recognized her old friend. “Andrea,” she said, “is that really you ?”

“Hi,” said the Snowhawk.

When April woke, the windows were dark, and the air was filled with the sweet aroma of potatoes and roast beef. A bank of monitors flickered in a corner of the room. “How are you feeling?” asked Andrea.

“Okay.” April pushed the toes of one foot against the other ankle. Someone had put heavy socks on her feet. “What are you doing here?” She vaguely remembered having asked the question before but couldn’t recall the answer.

Andrea pulled her chair forward so April could see her without having to sit up. “Security,” she said. “It pays well.”

“Why didn’t you come see me?”

“I would have, eventually. I wasn’t sure it was appropriate.” She felt April’s forehead. “I think you’re okay,” she said. “What were you doing out there?”

“Waited too long to leave.”

Andrea nodded. “How about something to eat? We only have TV dinners, but they’re decent.”

April decided on meatloaf, and Andrea put one in the microwave. “Max called,” she said. “We told him you were here.”

There was a coziness in the hut that warmed April. Little Ghost didn’t talk much, but he was a good listener, which is a faculty guaranteed to make people popular. He stayed close to the monitors, although they showed little more than dancing blobs of light and curving shadows. They talked, and April saw that Andrea was fascinated by the Roundhouse.

“I’m going to do the show on it,” she explained.

April smiled. “The Snowhawk at the cutting edge.”

“That’s right, babe. I was wondering whether you’d be interested in going on tonight. Want to be a guest?”

April considered it. She owed the woman, but she didn’t want to face phone calls. “I think I’d better pass,” she said.

But she was interested enough to stay and watch.

The Snowhawk’s show ran from nine until midnight. If the subject for the evening was the excavation, it didn’t stop people from calling in to comment on the new property tax initiative, the schools, the tendency of the county to run up postage costs unnecessarily, or other nongermane topics. The Snowhawk (funny how Andrea seemed to change personalities and become more dominant, even confrontational, in front of her microphone) dealt with these callers summarily, slicing them in midsentence. “Eddie,” she might say, “I’m on Johnson’s Ridge, freezing my little butt off, and you are out of here. Please try to stay on the rails, folks. We’re talking about the Roundhouse tonight.”

On the whole, however, April was impressed by the level of dialogue. She wasn’t sure what she had expected. The Snowhawk’s callers were reasonably rational. They were excited by the mystery surrounding the find, but by a ratio of about four to one resisted far-out resolutions in favor of the more mundane. It’ll turn out to be a mistake, they said, one after another. April was reminded of Max.

Toward the end of the show the storm began to weaken. April could make out the dome of the Roundhouse rising over the blowing snow.

It seemed to be glowing .

She turned away and looked back.

It was a trick of the security lights. Had to be. But they were dull and indistinct in the general turmoil of the storm.

Furthermore, the snow looked green .

It was hard to see clearly from the illuminated interior of the security station. She pulled on her boots and took down her jacket. Little Ghost glanced at her. “I’ll be back,” she whispered, and walked out the front door.

April caught her breath. A soft emerald halo had settled over the Roundhouse.

The Snowhawk saw that something was happening, but she was talking with Joe Greenberg in Fort Moxie and did not have a portable mike. She frowned at John Little Ghost and nodded at the door by which April had just left.

“It’s lit up,” Little Ghost said.

“What is?”

“The Roundhouse.” This exchange, of course, went out live. No damage yet. That came a moment later: “Son of a bitch, I hope it’s not radioactive.”

Walhalla, Cavalier, and Fort Moxie, like prairie towns across the Dakotas, are social units of a type probably limited to climatically harsh regions. They are composed of people who have united in the face of extreme isolation, who understand that going abroad in winter without checking the weather report can be fatal, who have acquired a common pride in their ability to hold crime and drugs at arm’s length. From Fort Moxie, the nearest mall is eighty miles away, and the nearest pharmacy is in Canada. The closest movie theater is within a half-hour, but it’s open only on weekends, and not even then during the hunting season. Consequently these communities have developed many of the characteristics of extended families.

Mel Hotchkiss was sitting in the kitchen of his home on the outskirts of Walhalla half-listening to the Snowhawk and enjoying his customary bedtime snack, which on this occasion was cherry pie. He was just pouring a second cup of coffee when she conducted her exchange with the unfamiliar voice. Something untoward was obviously happening. He put the pot down, intending to walk over to the window and look out toward Johnson’s Ridge, when Little Ghost delivered the remark that galvanized the area: Son of a bitch, I hope it’s not radioactive .

An eerie green glow did hang over the top of the promontory.

Ten minutes later, having paused only to call his brother and a friend, Mel, his wife, his three daughters, and their dog were in their pickup with a couple of suitcases, headed west out of town.

Within an hour the population was in full flight. Beneath the baleful light atop the escarpment, they loaded kids, pets, jewelry, and computers and took off. Those few who, out of principle, refused to believe in anything having to do with astrology, numerology, crop circles, or UFOs were nevertheless bullied into leaving their warm homes by frightened spouses and well-meaning teenagers. They headed southwest toward Langdon, east to Fort Moxie, and north to the border, where the closed port was defended only by warning signs and highway cones. But nobody planned on stopping for international niceties, and the flood rolled into Canada.

State police flew in a Geiger counter and by about one-thirty in the morning pronounced the area safe. Radio and TV stations broadcast the news, but by then it was too late. The town lay effectively deserted, and its roads were littered with wrecked and abandoned vehicles.

April, John Little Ghost, and the Snowhawk listened to the reports and watched the long lines of headlights moving away on the two-lane roads with a growing sense of horror.

Fortunately, nobody died.

There had been three fires and a half-dozen heart attacks. Several men had intercepted Jimmy Pachman as he was trying to get out of his driveway and forced him to open his gas station. The men paid for the gas, but Pachman claimed he’d been kidnapped. Police, fire, and medical facilities had been strained to the limit and would announce before the end of the week sweeping reviews of their procedures. The City of Walhalla spent nine thousand dollars to rent equipment and pay for overtime out of its perennially hard-pressed treasury. And there was talk of lynching some of the people on Johnson’s Ridge.