Jack McDevitt - Ancient Shores

“Apparently,” said Max.

“But why should that be?” She produced a scarf and held it up with a flourish for Max’s inspection. “Bought it at Kmart,” she said. “Six bucks, on sale.” She draped it across her fingers and again touched the image.

The door opened.

“ Voilà !” She wedged the spade back into the doorway.

“Why does it respond to the scarf?”

“Not sure. What does the scarf have in common with George’s glove that it does not have in common with my mitten or my bare hand?”

“Damned if I know,” said Max.

“George’s glove—” She removed it from her pocket. “—is made from polypropylene. The scarf is polyester. They’re both products of a reasonably technological society.”

Max frowned. “Explain, please.”

“It’s only a guess. But when the Roundhouse was in use, there may have been natives in the area. Who knows what else might have been here? Bears, maybe. Anyway, how would you set up the door to make sure your people could use it, but not the natives, or anything else?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’d use a sensor that reacts to, say, plastics. Anything else, bare skin, fur, whatever, the door stays shut.”

The hordes descended. They poured through U.S. border stations and overwhelmed I—29 and the two-lane highways north from Fargo and Dickinson. They arrived in charter flights at Fort Moxie International Airport, where they discovered that the car rental service had only one car and there was only one taxi. A five-car pileup near the Drayton exit of I—29 stopped northbound traffic for two hours. On State Highway 18, near Park River, frustrated motorists found themselves in stop-and-go traffic for miles. By sundown on the first day after blanket coverage began, two were dead, more than twenty injured, and almost a hundred were being treated for frostbite. Property damage was estimated at a quarter of a million dollars. It was believed to be the single worst day of traffic carnage in North Dakota history.

Police broadcast appeals throughout the afternoon. At 2:00 P.M. the governor went on radio and TV to appeal for calm. (It was an odd approach, since unbridled emotions were by no means the reason for the problem.) “The traffic in and around Walhalla,” he said, “is extremely heavy. If you want to see what is happening on Johnson’s Ridge, the best view, and the safest view, is from your living room.”

We are fond of charging that most people have no sense of history. That claim is usually based on a lack of knowledge of who did what or when such-and-such an event occurred. Yet who among us, given the chance to visit Gettysburg on the great day or to share a ham-burger with Caesar, would not leap at the opportunity? We all want to touch history, to be part of its irresistible tide. Here was an opportunity, an event of supreme significance, and no one who could reach Johnson’s Ridge was going to stay home and watch it on TV.

The chief of police was a thick-waisted, gravel-voiced man whose dull features and expressionless eyes belied a quick intelligence. His name was Emil Doutable, which his force had changed to Doubtful .

He arrived on the escarpment during the late morning. By then Max and his team of assistants had spent hours on the phone with metallurgists and archeologists and industrialists and politicians and curiosity-seekers from around the world.

Doutable was not happy. The presence of this abomination was complicating his work. He understood that events of major significance were unfolding in his jurisdiction, but he wished they would unfold somewhere else. “We might need a Guard detachment,” he told Max. “We’re hearing that most of North America is headed this way.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Max said. “Maybe we ought to close off the access road. Keep people off the ridge altogether.”

Doutable glanced around as if someone might overhear. “Are you serious? Business is booming in the county. If I shut it down, my job goes south.” He looked out the window. The parking area was filled with hundreds of cars. “Listen, this is an ideal situation for the towns. It’s still pretty cold. Nobody can stay up here very long. They come up, take a look, and go down. Then a lot of them go into one of the towns for a hot meal and wind up doing some shopping. Everything keeps moving. Or at least it used to. Now, though, we’ve got just too much traffic.”

Max nodded, happy that it wasn’t his problem.

Doutable was quiet for a minute. “Max,” he said, “you’re not planning on letting them walk around inside that place, are you?”

“Inside the Roundhouse? No. We’re restricting it to the press and to researchers.”

“Good. Because that would slow things down even more. We need to keep them out in the cold. As long as we can do that, we should be okay.” He nodded vigorously. “Don’t change your mind.” He got up and started for the door. “If we get lucky, maybe it’ll go below zero. That’s what we really need.”

Helicopters were arriving every few minutes, bringing in fresh loads of journalists and VIPs. Lasker needed help keeping things organized, and Max found himself appointed head greeter. They deluged April with questions and requests for photos, and she tried to respond. But it was an exhausting day, and they were all glad to see the sun go down.

“It’s ridiculous,” April complained. “I’ve got the world’s most interesting artifact waiting, and I can’t get away from the reporters. I want to get a good look at the inside .” The reality was that the journalists were getting more time than she to look around the interior of the Roundhouse.

There were other distractions. Although she didn’t realize it yet, April had become overnight the best-known scientific name in the country. She had already, during the first twenty-four hours of what they had begun to think of as their appearance on the world stage, received offers from three major cosmetics companies who wanted her to endorse their products, from Taco Bell (“Our burritos are out of this world”), from a car rental agency, and from MCI.

She conducted crowds of visitors through the Roundhouse. She granted interviews and conducted press briefings. The photographers had by now discovered they had a photogenic subject, and flashbulbs went off continuously. She was obviously enjoying herself, and Max was happy for her. She was brighter, quicker on her feet than he was. In addition, her smile won everybody’s heart, and she had a penchant for delivering sound bites.

On the third day after penetrating the Roundhouse, they started the slow process of screening and removing the accumulated dirt. Selected sections of the walls were cleaned, admitting diffused sunlight into the dome.

The light was of the texture that might fall through a forest canopy in late afternoon. But there were no trees here, of course. Green walls, presumably more cannonium, and apparently identical in design to the exterior, rose around them. A wraparound window, chest high, curved for two hundred seventy degrees, centered on the front.

Lasker asked Max to oversee the restoration. April described the precautions they needed to take and then turned him loose. Also during this period, they hired ex-mayor Frank Moll to act as their public-relations director.

Max thought the real information would come out of the walls. He wanted to know how systems could be built that would still work after ten thousand years. Still, he regretted that first contact might bring little more than a better heating system.

He left a note for April and started back to the motel. But he got caught up in traffic and arrived two hours later, exhausted and annoyed, in Fort Moxie. The town was under siege. Cars were parked everywhere, and the streets were filled. Max negotiated his way through and pulled into the motel lot, where there was no room. He eventually had to park over on Leghorn Street, six blocks away.