Jack McDevitt - Ancient Shores

“No, sir. She came out here at about twelve-thirty. Went inside the Roundhouse. But she’s not in there now.”

Max looked at his watch. A quarter after three.

“We’ve checked the other buildings. She’s not anywhere. We can’t figure it out.”

“Is her car still there?”

“Yes, sir. She hasn’t come back through the gate.”

Max was genuinely puzzled. To him the conversation earlier that evening, with its implications and pointed omissions, had been purely hypothetical. “Henry, did you check the rear apartments in the Roundhouse?”

“We looked everywhere.”

“Okay. Call the police. I’m on my way.”

He hung up and rang her motel number. No one answered. He stared at the phone and finally recognized the possibility that she might have used the grid. Thoroughly alarmed, he dressed hastily, climbed into his car and started for Johnson’s Ridge. He should have told Henry to look in the channel. Maybe she’d fallen in there. It would have been easy enough for the security people to miss her.

He picked up his cellular phone, dialed the gate, and got a new voice. George Freewater. “How are we doing?” he asked.

“Still no news. The police are on their way.” Long pause. “Max, if she’s outside, she won’t last very long. It’s cold.”

“I know. Did you look in the channel?”

He heard a brief conversation on the other end, and then George came back. “Yes, we looked in the channel. Listen, Mr. Collingwood, we found something else. There’s a message addressed to you. It was on the front seat of her car.”

“Me?” Max’s stomach lurched. “What’s it say?”

“You want me to read it?”

“Yes, George. Please.”

“Okay. It says—Wait a minute; the light’s not so good here. It says, ‘Dear Max, I’m following the arrow. Since you’re reading this, something may have gone wrong. Sorry. I enjoyed working with you.’ ” George grunted. “What’s she talking about?”

Max’s headlights lost themselves in the dark. “I’m not sure,” he said. But he knew.

The Man in the White Suit is alive and well. Those who remember the classic British film starring Alec Guinness as a man who invented a cloth that resisted wrinkling and dirt may understand what’s happening these days to the clothing industry. Capitalization has been shrinking for clothing manufacturers since the first rumors surfaced of the possibility of developing a cloth very much like the one in the film. Numerous experts are on record that it is only a matter of time before the Roundhouse technology, which created superresistant materials on Johnson’s Ridge, becomes generally available. What will happen when that occurs is uncertain. But for now, tens of thousands of jobs have disappeared, and an entire industry is in chaos. This newspaper is a reluctant advocate of government intervention. But in this case, the time has come.

(Lead editorial, Wall Street Journal )

When Max walked into the Roundhouse, he was angry with April Cannon. She had put him in a terrible position. He berated himself for not guessing what might happen and heading it off.

What the hell was he supposed to do now?

The dome was oppressive.

Henry Short was inside with two police officers. One was looking down into the pit. He was young, barely twenty-one. Sandy-haired, long, angular jaw, prominent nose.

The partner, who was bald and irritable, broke off his conversation with George Freewater as Max entered. “Sir, you’re Mr. Collingwood?”

“Yes,” said Max.

“I’m Deputy Remirov,” he said, producing a notebook that Max recognized as belonging to April. “What does this mean?”

I’m following the arrow .

“What’s the arrow?” the younger one asked.

Max hesitated briefly. “I don’t know,” he said.

Remirov looked unhappy. “You have no idea what she was trying to tell you?”

“No,” said Max. “Not a clue.”

The policeman didn’t believe a word of it. “Why would she write you a note you can’t understand?” he asked angrily.

Max squirmed. He wasn’t good at lying. And he didn’t like being evasive with police officers. He’d had little contact with them during his life, and they made him nervous. “I just don’t know,” he said.

Exasperated, Remirov turned back to George. “You’re sure she didn’t go out through the gate without being seen?”

“We’ve got a camera on the gate,” George said.

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“I guess it is possible. But we always have somebody on the monitors.”

“So you really don’t know,” said Remirov.

“Not without checking the tapes.”

“Why don’t we check the tapes?” he asked with exaggerated politeness.

Max wandered away to look at the grid. He saw no way to confirm whether she had actually used it. There were no footprints, no marks that told him anything.

Redfern, wearing a buckskin jacket and heavy boots, came into the dome. He spoke briefly with George and the two policemen before he saw Max. “They’re going to organize a search party,” he said.

“Good,” said Max.

A long, uncomfortable silence followed. “George told me she left a note for you. Max, where is she?”

“My guess is she’s dead,” said Max. Saying what he had been thinking ever since he’d heard about the note somehow made it less real.

Redfern’s jaw tightened. “How?” he asked.

Max thought about doing a demonstration, but since each of the icons seemed to work only once, he hesitated. Instead he simply pointed out the grid and the set of triggers, and explained what had happened. “This,” he said, directing the lawyer’s attention to the symbol at the top of the second column, “is the arrow.”

“You’re telling me there’s a device here that anni-hilates things, and you think she used it on herself?”

“That’s what I think,” said Max.

“Son of a bitch,” he said. “Don’t you people have any sense at all?”

“Hey, I didn’t know anything like this was going to happen.”

“Yeah. Well, maybe you should’ve been watching a little closer.”

Max started to protest, but Arky waved it aside. “We can figure out who to blame later. She thought she was going somewhere. How did she expect to get back?”

“I don’t know. She didn’t exactly talk this over with me. But I assume she hoped there’d be a similar device at the other end. If there is an other end.”

Arky turned to George, who had joined them. “How long ago, did you say?”

“She came through the gate at twelve-thirty.”

Arky looked at his watch. Ten after four. “I guess we can assume she isn’t coming back on her own.” He folded his arms. “So where,” he asked accusingly, “do we go from here?”

Max felt like an idiot. Damn you, Cannon .

Arky’s face was dark. The shadows of an internal struggle played at the corners of his mouth and in his eyes. “Maybe it would be best,” he said, “if the tribe did sell. People die a little too easily here.” He got up and headed toward the door. “We’ll let the police go ahead with their search. There is a chance she wandered off and got lost on the mountain.” He hesitated. “Max—”

“Yes?”

“I would like your word that you will not try to follow her.”

The demand embarrassed him. Max Collingwood would never try that kind of stunt. It was flat-out stupid. But in some dark corner of his mind it pleased him that Arky believed he might be capable of it. “No,” he said, meaning it. “I won’t.”

Emotion flickered across the lawyer’s features. “Good,” he said. “Let’s let the search run its course. Meantime, you should find out about her next of kin.”