Dawn Flindt - The Man From Forever

Someone had played a joke on her—that’s what it had been. An elaborate and very good hoax.

Try telling your nervous system that.

Hoping to squelch her thoughts, she opened her mouth to call out when she heard voices coming from somewhere behind the information desk. She guessed there was a room back there. Maybe park personnel were having a meeting. If that was the case, she didn’t want to disturb them. Besides, what would she say?

A tiny tentacle of fear inched down her back, causing her to look toward one of the little windows. All she could see were weather-stunted trees and dark lava rocks—nothing to be afraid of.

What was she doing here?

Instead of forcing herself to answer what she hoped to accomplish by taking shelter under a roof when she should be out looking for a piece of her roots, she picked up one of the books about the Modoc War. She’d done no more than read the back blurb when the sound of raised voices caught her attention. Before she could decide what to do, she heard a door being opened. The voices became more distinct.

“People will see right through it. You can’t get away with something that cornball in this day and age. They’ll laugh us right out of the water.”

“No, they won’t. People love the unexplained. Besides, you already admitted you don’t have a better suggestion.”

“Only because I haven’t had time to come up with one.”

“The hell you haven’t. We’ve been staring at a budget shortfall for the better part of a year now. That’s what I’m here for. Why you’re being so…”

Two men came around the divider that separated the public area from the rest of the building. They stared at her, their conversation trailing off to nothing. One of them, a tall, balding man probably in his late fifties, wore the standard green uniform and a name tag that identified him as Robert Casewell, acting director. Tory guessed that his had been the deeper of the two voices, the one who’d told the other that his suggestion wouldn’t hold water. The other man, closer to her age, wore civilian clothing. If he’d been sent here to deal with the budget in some way, he apparently wasn’t a park employee.

“I’m sorry,” she said when the two men continued to stare at her. “I should have let someone know I was here, but I didn’t want to disturb anyone.”

“It’s all right,” Robert Casewell said. “The meeting’s over.” He jerked his head at the other man. “You and I need to get together, Fenton. Come up with something that makes sense.”

“What I proposed makes sense. You just need to open up your thinking.”

The director muttered something under his breath, nodded at Tory, then walked out the door. Not sure what she was supposed to do now, she gave Fenton a tentative smile. “I heard a little,” she admitted. “I know what you mean about budget problems. They never seem to go away, do they?”

“They will if I can get people to listen.” Fenton, who was maybe three inches taller than her, with the slightest bit of thickening around his waist and a thatch of windblown hair, smiled down at her. “I’m not a walking encyclopedia about the lava beds, but if you’ve got a question, maybe I can answer it.”

Can you? Can you tell me whether I really saw a man who must be at least a hundred and fifty years old, who looked at me with the most compelling eyes I’ve ever seen? Stammering a little and hating herself for sounding half-bright, she explained that she’d been out on her own this morning but had decided she needed a map and game plan so she wouldn’t risk getting lost. “I love hiking, but I have the suspicion I could get disoriented in short order around here. It’s amazing. From a distance everything looks so level, but once you really look at it, you see all those hills and valleys.”

“Yeah, there’s enough of them, all right. You’re here alone?”

Wary in the way of a woman who has learned to navigate the world on her own, she simply shrugged. She should grab a map, ask a couple of questions and get out of here, but after what she’d experienced this morning, a roof felt inordinately comforting.

“So am I,” Fenton was saying. He introduced himself as Fenton James and she felt obliged to introduce herself in turn. When he stuck out his hand, she did the same. “I’ve been here about three weeks now,” he said. “I thought everyone came as part of a group, mostly families on vacation, sometimes college students or history buffs. Couldn’t you find anyone who wanted to stare at nothing with you?”

Something about Fenton’s tone didn’t sit right with her, but she didn’t have time to analyze what that was. “I’m on my way to a job,” she said, dismissing the understatement. “I just have time for a day or two of poking around.”

“Two days. Most people are in and out in an afternoon, unless they take in the caves, which I can’t understand why. Where’s this job of yours? I can’t imagine anyone having to go through here to get to a job.”

Why Fenton cared what she was up to remained beyond her. However, talking to the man had already taken her thoughts miles away from what she’d seen, or thought she’d seen, earlier. Even if he was trying to hit on her, setting him straight gave her something to do. Besides, he said he’d been at the lava beds for three weeks. If he’d noticed something unexplainable, maybe they could compare reactions. But she doubted that he’d been left feeling as if a huge chunk of what she thought of as her civilized nature had been sucked from him. Keeping the telling as brief as possible, she let him know she was part of the team selected to study some Native American ruins on the Oregon coast.

“How did you accomplish that?” he exclaimed. “My God, that’s the find of the century! The opportunity for—what are you? An archaeologist?”

“Anthropologist.”

“Whatever.” He shrugged. “I never understood the difference.”

She could have told him that an archaeologist dealt with the physical world while anthropologists concerned themselves with things social and spiritual, but what was the point? “You’ve heard of the Alsea discovery, I take it,” she said instead.

“Who hasn’t? I’d give anything to be part of it. The chance for making one’s mark, well—say, maybe you can explain something for me.” He rested his arm on the counter, the gesture bringing him a little closer to her. Although the air still held a high desert morning chill, she thought she caught a whiff of perspiration. “The site was discovered over a year ago. What’s the holdup? I mean, I’d think everyone would be hot to trot getting their discoveries written up in the press and all. There’s Pulitzer Prize potential there, you know.”

Maybe. Maybe not. At the moment that was a moot point.

“What’s going on?” he persisted. “Why isn’t everyone up to their eye teeth in pottery and weapons?”

“It isn’t that easy.” The sun had reached the window to her left, inviting her to come outside and experience the morning. If she did, would she find only other visitors, or would a look at the horizon reveal someone who couldn’t possibly exist? “There’s an incredible amount of red tape.”

“I suppose so. What is it, the government wanting a piece of the pie?”

There’d been concern about impact on the environment expressed by both state and federal agencies, as well as more than one politician trying to make a name for himself. And the Oregon Indian Council had insisted that they, not university staff, should be responsible for safeguarding artifacts, only they weren’t interested in the artifacts so much as protecting what they insisted was sacred ground. Once, the strip of land between ocean and mountains had been sacred to the Alsea Indians, but the culture that had lived there no longer existed. That was what she’d argued alongside Dr. Grossnickle during three trips to Washington, D.C. Finally, after more legal maneuvering than she wanted to think about, the Indians’ claim had been dismissed.