Jack McDevitt - Ancient Shores

“Do not sell it for a few million dollars. Don’t sell it for a few billion . It’s worth far more.”

She sat down, and near pandemonium erupted. It was almost a full minute before the chairman could restore order. “We will now,” he said sternly, “hear comments from the floor.”

Andrea Hawk stood up to be recognized.

“I would like to remind the council that we are talking here about two hundred million dollars .

“I know April Cannon, and I am happy for her. This port she talks about, if it really exists, is of supreme importance. But that is in the future. The reality is that we have people suffering now . We can do a great deal for ourselves, and for our kids, with this kind of money. I implore the members of the council not to let it slip away.”

A tall man in a worn buckskin jacket told a story about a coyote who, by trying to grab too much, got nothing.

One by one they rose and related stories of children gone bad, of men and women ruined by drugs, of what it meant to be powerless in a rich society. Wells sat looking piously at the ceiling.

“The outside world,” said a man who looked ninety, “only knows we are here when they want something from us. However much they offer, they are trying to cheat us. Be careful.”

It was the most encouraging comment Max heard until Arky got up. “Tonight,” he said, “I am saddened at what I hear, and I worry for my people. Once again, the white man offers money, and we are quick to snatch it from him. We pay no heed to the nature of the bargain.

“The problems that you have described do not happen because we have no money . Rather, they happen because we have lost our heritage . We have forgotten who we are and what we might have been. I tell you, brothers and sisters, if we allow ourselves to be seduced again, it would be better for us if we never saw another sunrise.”

A murmur ran through the crowd. The journalists were holding up cassette recorders, aiming TV cameras, getting it all. Arky turned back to the council.

“We have been shown a new world. Maybe it’s time we stopped trying to live on pieces of land that the whites dole out. Maybe it’s time to do what our fathers would have done. Let us hold on to this forest world that April Cannon has found. Let us see if we cannot make it ours. That is the choice before you tonight: Take this man’s money, or live again as we were meant to live.”

After the council had filed out to deliberate, the media jumped April. While she answered questions, Max took Arky aside. “I don’t think you convinced the crowd,” he said.

The lawyer smiled. “I wasn’t trying to,” he said. “I was pointed in their direction, but I was talking to the old warriors.”

Devil’s Lake, ND, Mar. 15 (AP)—

The tribal council of the Devil’s Lake Sioux today turned down a two-hundred-million-dollar offer from a consortium of business interests to purchase the Johnson’s Ridge property on which a controversial excavation site is located. Their action is related to the alleged discovery of a “star bridge.” (See lead story, above.) Unrest among tribe members has been reported. Several mounted a demonstration here today, and police are bracing for more….

They made a second trip through the port and took some reluctant reporters along. That night the nation developed what Jay Leno dubbed “Roundhouse fever.” Pictures of the beach and the Horsehead Nebula and of people vanishing in a splash of golden light were on the front page of every newspaper and on every channel. As daylight moved around the globe, the Roundhouse and the wilderness world made headlines everywhere.

Security was beefed up. VIPs arrived, mostly by helicopter, from major universities, research facilities, state and federal agencies. Foreign dignitaries dropped in, and at one point a flustered Max was introduced to the French president. April put together a slide presentation, which highlighted Tom Lasker’s boat, results of the various tests of the material used to construct the boat and the Roundhouse, early stages of the excavation, and aerial views of Johnson’s Ridge at night.

By now, April had been granted leave by Colson Labs. She was the only person with the excavation group who was even remotely qualified to address the various researchers. (The waiting list to visit the Roundhouse, and with it the new world, had already grown into the thousands.) On the sixteenth she announced that a committee of prominent scholars would meet in ten days to formulate an investigative and developmental strategy. The immediate questions posed to the committee would be, “What should we do about the world across the bridge?” and “How do we prepare for first contact?”

Columbus, Ohio, Mar. 16

President Matthew R. Taylor

The White House

Washington, DC 20003

Dear President Taylor,

I know that you are very busy, but I hope you can find time to help my dad. He lost his job last week at the paper mill. It happened to some other kids, too. I am in the fifth grade at the Theodore Roosevelt School, and I told some of my friends I was going to write to you. We know you will help. Thank you.

April Cannon had planned to treat everyone, Max and the Laskers and Arky Redfern, to dinner the evening after the tribal council voted down Wells’s offer. But she hadn’t counted on the effects of rising from the status of minor celebrity to international fame.

Once the pictures of the wilderness world, taken by a pool camera crew, flashed around the globe, any chance of anonymity for her and Max was shattered forever. Reporters appeared at the Blue Light in Grafton while patrons crowded around her table and asked for autographs.

There were more reporters at the Prairie Schooner. In the end they went to the Laskers’ home and held a good-natured impromptu press conference from the front porch. When April, hoping for some privacy, suggested they cut the celebration short, Max demurred. “This is part of the story,” he said. “Let them have it. It costs us nothing and gains their good will. We may need it before we’re done.”

In talking to the press, Max had planned to deliver a bromide, a general comment about someone having left behind an inestimable gift for the human race. But when he got up in front of the cameras and the recorders, his emotions took hold. (He had perhaps drunk a little too much by then, not enough to induce a wobble, but enough to loosen his inhibitions.) “You’ve seen pictures of the new world,” he said. “But the pictures don’t really carry the effect. The sea is warm and the beach is wide, and I suspect we’re going to discover the fruit is edible. I was fortunate to find a beautiful woman on the beach, and I was not anxious to come back to North Dakota.” The reporters laughed. April caught his eye and smiled and must have known where he was going because her lips formed a no . But it was too late. Max was rolling. “The place is like nowhere you’ve ever been before. It’s pure magic.” He glanced out through the window at the plain and watched the wind blowing snow around the corner of the barn. “It’s Eden ,” he said.

Within a few minutes, every major television network on the planet was breaking into its regular programming.

The Reverend William (Old-Time Bill) Addison, former beer truck driver, former real-estate salesman, former systems analyst, was the founder and driving force of the television ministry he called Project Forty, a reference to the years in the desert and the flagship TV channel which carried his show. He was also pastor of the Church of the Volunteer, in Whitburg, Alabama. Bill was a believer. He believed the end was near, he believed people were intrinsically no damned good and needed divine help every step of the way, and he believed Bill Addison was an exception to the general rule.