Jack McDevitt - Ancient Shores

Abruptly, he was back inside and the organ had stopped, and the Volunteers were in the aisles, exhausted, helping one another to their feet, delivering alleluias, collapsing into chairs.

“Praise the Lord,” said Mark Meyer, whose face was ashen. “Did you feel it?” He was looking directly at Bill.

“Yes,” said Bill, shakily. “I felt it.” Tonight, more than at any other time in his career, he knew he walked with the Blessed. “I think we got the sign,” he added. “I think we actually got the sign .”

He remembered the TV cameras. And at that moment, while he wondered if the network had picked up his remark, the lights went out.

“Check the circuit breakers,” someone shouted.

His people didn’t mind a little power failure, and they laughed their way through “Victory in Jesus.”

Bill put on his headset so he could talk to Harry Staples, his maintenance chief. “I’ll have the lights back in a second,” Harry said.

The room was absolutely dark. Bill could not even see any illumination coming in through the windows. That suggested the streetlights had also gone out.

“Everybody stay put until we get the power working again,” Bill said.

His producer reported that they were off the air. “But we went with a bang,” he added. The Whitburg studio had picked up and was covering with gospel music.

The Volunteers finished with “Joshua.” They cheered, conquering failed lights the same way they conquered everything else.

Harry’s voice again: “Power failure’s outside , Reverend. We’ve lost the heater, too.” Flashlights had appeared on the stairs.

“Okay,” said Bill. “Let’s close up and clear out.” They were staying in motels in Morris, Manitoba, about a half-hour north of the border. He turned to his audience. “You folks have done great,” he said. “Let’s go home.”

They were already filing toward the door, struggling into coats and boots. Bill waited, talking with his people. He heard the front door open.

And a rough masculine voice, breaking tone with the evening, said, “Hey, what the hell is this?”

Bill heard a whimper.

The door had opened on a wall of snow.

Frank Moll was at home listening to a Mozart concerto when the lights went out and the music died. Through his picture window, he could see that the streetlight located immediately in front of the house had also gone dark.

Peg came out of the den with a flashlight, headed for the circuit breakers.

“They’re off all over,” Frank said, reaching for the phone book.

“We are sorry,” came the recorded response at the electric company, “but all our service representatives are busy. Please stay on the line.”

He hung up, sat down, and propped his feet on the hassock. “Must be lines down somewhere,” he said. It was cold outside, but the house was well insulated.

They talked in the dark, enjoying the interruption in their routine. Across the street, Hodge Eliot’s front door opened. Hodge carried a lamp out onto his porch and peered down the street.

The phone rang.

“Frank?” He recognized Edie Thoraldson’s voice. “Something’s happened at Kor’s place. We’re sending the unit.”

That was the Quick Response Team, which Frank had once directed. “What?” he asked. “What happened?”

“I’m not exactly sure,” she said. “Apparently somebody got buried . I’ve got the police coming in from Cavalier. I thought maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea if you took a look.”

“Okay,” he said, puzzled.

Peg looked at him, worried. “What is it?” she asked.

“Don’t know. Edie says somebody got buried . What the hell does that mean?” He had his coat on already. “Keep the door locked,” he said.

Kor’s house was only six blocks away. He paused in his driveway for a stream of cars carrying volunteer firemen. Then he backed out into the street and turned left. Two minutes later he parked behind a gathering crowd a half-block away from Kor’s house. He was just behind the Quick Response Team. The neighborhood was thick with box elders, and it was hard to see what was happening. But he could hear a lot of crowd noise.

The fire engine rolled in. The crowd split and flowed away from the emergency vehicles. And Frank finally got clear of the trees.

Where Kor’s house, lately the Backcountry Church, had been, there was now a two-story-high snow cylinder. The snow was swirled at the top like soft ice cream.

Harry Mills liked to say he was pure corn country, bred true. He had spent thirty years in the Congress of the United States, eight as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, before becoming Matt Taylor’s vice president. Harry told people he had no political ambitions other than to serve his nation well. He would be seventy-seven before he could hope for a run at the top job.

He had therefore decided to retire at the end of Taylor’s first term, while he was still young enough to enjoy the leisure. He would write his memoirs; travel the country to spend time with his grandchildren, who were scattered from Spokane to Key West; and get back to playing serious bridge, a pursuit he’d abandoned a quarter-century ago.

The reality was that Harry probably had become too old. He had lost his passion for politics, his taste for power. He no longer enjoyed influencing policy, or rubbing shoulders with the decision makers, or even making the Sunday round of talk shows. Tonight he was at a reception for the Jordanian king, and he devoutly would have preferred to be home with Marian, shoes kicked off, watching a good movie.

As was usually the case at these outings, he was being stalked by half a dozen predators who wanted to use him to push their agendas. One was the NASA director, Rick Keough, who caught up with him near the hors d’oeuvres.

Harry didn’t like Keough very much. The director was a former astronaut, so he was popular with the general public. But he was given to grandstanding, and he was less interested in the organization than he was in his own career.

Keough was nursing a rum and Coke and trying to look like a man bearing up under misfortune and bureaucratic stupidity. They exchanged pleasantries, and he came to the point. “Mr. Vice President, we have a problem. This thing on Johnson’s Ridge. My people are starting to wonder whether they have a future.”

Keough had headed the effort to return to an aggressive manned program when that idea was popular, and during recent years had argued just as effectively for economy, science, and safety. He was short, barely five-six, narrow of both shoulder and intellect. There was an elusiveness in his character, a tendency to become distracted or change the subject without warning. Talking to Keough, one of the capital’s pundits had once remarked in print, was like trying to carry on a conversation with a man hiding behind a tree.

“How do you mean?” asked Harry.

“Are you serious? What’s the point of boosters and shuttles when you can walk? ” He finished off his drink. “What is the President going to do about that thing?”

Harry was tired of hearing about the Roundhouse. He was not a man easily rattled, and he was convinced that, given time, it would all blow over. When it did, life would go on. “Relax, Rick,” he said. “There will always be a mission for NASA.”

“Well, maybe somebody better tell that to my people, because they are looking around. Mr. Vice President, they are going to start bailing out. These are dedicated people. And they can’t be replaced. Once they get the feeling that what they do doesn’t matter anymore, they’re gone. The organization will die .”