Douglas Preston - Impact

Ford closed the computer and leaned back in the chair, thinking. Sisophon was a chaotic, medium-sized city on the main road from Thailand to Siem Reap, Cambodia, a haven for smuggling, forgery, and counterfeiting. He flicked open his cell, dredged up a number from memory, and punched it in. He wasn't sure if the number would still be working--or if the man at the other end would even be alive.

A cheerful voice answered immediately, speaking English in a lilting accent that was a cross between upper-crust British and Chinese. "Hello, Khon speaking!"

Ford felt a flood of relief to hear the man's voice again. He was alive and, by the sound of it, very well indeed. "Khon? It's Wyman Ford."

"Ford? You old dog! Where the hell have you been and what the damn brings you back to the Royaume du Cambodge?" Khon loved to swear in English but never quite managed to pull it off.

"I've got an assignment for you."

A groan came over the crackling lines. "Oh no."

"Oh yes," said Ford, "and it's a good one."

10

The Marea glided into the passage between Marsh Island and Louds Island, the water green and calm, reflecting the dark trees of both shores. Abbey Straw steered into an isolated cove, pulled the throttle back into neutral, and reversed it briefly, bringing the boat to a halt.

"First mate, drop anchor!"

Jackie bounded forward, pulled the pin on the anchor, and played the chain out of the locker. "We're all alone," she called back. "No boats around."

"Perfect." Abbey glanced at her watch. "Six hours of daylight to look for the meteorite."

"I'm famished."

"We'll pack lunch."

They climbed in the dingy and rowed the hundred yards to the pebbly beach. Pulling the rowboat above the high-tide mark, they stood on the deserted beach, looking around. They were at the wild end of the island, the beach strewn with the detritus of winter, broken lobster traps, buoys, driftwood, and rope. The tide was ebbing, exposing seaweed-covered rocks in the cove, which humped out of the water like the hairy heads of sea monsters. A smell of salt mingled with evergreens hung in the damp, cold air. Where the beach ended a dense forest of black spruce rose up. Louds was all but deserted this time of year, the island's few seasonal summer camps shuttered. Nobody would bother them.

"Man, it's thick," said Jackie, contemplating the wall of forest. "How're we gonna find a meteorite in there?"

"By the crater and smashed trees. Believe me, a hundred-pound rock going a hundred thousand miles an hour is going to leave a mess." Abbey got out her chart and spread it on the sand, weighing down the corners with stones. The line she had drawn sliced across the island at an angle, intersecting the beach they'd landed at. She laid her compass on the map and adjusted the bearing, stood up, and took a heading.

"We go this way," she said, pointing.

"You bet."

Abbey led the way into the deep spruce forest. She remembered a poem she'd had to memorize in school and recite one evening in front of the school and her parents. She'd choked up and forgotten it completely--stood there on stage for one long, agonizing minute before rushing off in tears--but now it sprang into her head unbidden.

This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic.

That was sort of the story of her life: bad timing.

She ventured deeper into the woods, following the compass bearing. A dim, greenish light penetrated through the tall trees, and the wind sighed through the distant treetops. It was like walking up the aisle of a vast green cathedral, the trees like massive columns, the ground springy and carpeted in moss. Abbey inhaled the rich piney scent, recalling the many times she had camped on the island as a little girl with her mother and father, in the meadow on the north end. They lay in their sleeping bags under the night sky, counting the shooting stars. Back then the island was completely abandoned, the old farmhouses sagging and falling into ruin. Now retired people had started buying them up for cottages and the island was changing. Soon, she thought, all the wildness, the atmosphere of desertion and desuetude would be gone, replaced by cute summer cottages, lace curtains, and gangster grandmas shooing kids off their property.

The forest grew thicker, and they had to crawl on hands and knees underneath a series of fallen tree trunks.

"I don't see any craters," said Jackie.

"We've hardly begun."

They soon broke into a clearing, a stone wall enclosing a huddle of tombstones. The old island cemetery.

"Lunchtime!" cried Jackie, climbing over the wall, shucking her pack and flopping herself down. With her back against a tombstone, she began rolling a joint.

Abbey walked around the old cemetery, reading the tombstones. The funny old Maine names were like the muster roll to a lost world: Zebediah Loud, Hiram Carter, Ora May Poland, Nehemiah Swett. Her thoughts drifted back to her mother's funeral. Abbey remembered escaping the crowd around the open grave and climbing a hill, reading the tombstones as a way to keep herself together. At the top she looked back down on the huddled mass of people around the black hole, the leafless trees, the icy grass, the bright green Astroturf laid around the grave.

It still didn't seem possible, her mother gone. She could never forget that day in the clinic when she asked the doctor: How did it happen? He looked at her so sorrowfully, a good man defeated by science. "We really don't know," he said, "but for some reason, five or ten years ago, a cell split the wrong way and that started it . . ."

A cell split the wrong way. Strange how such a tiny thing could have such a gigantic effect.

"Yo Mama!" Jackie called, her voice rising from the forest of stones. "Will you quit genuflecting to your ancestors and get back here and share this blunt with me?"

Abbey walked back to where Jackie was sitting against a tombstone. " My ancestors? Speak for yourself, white girl."

"Don't give me that shit, you're as much a Mainer as I am. No offense."

She sat down cross-legged, took the joint, inhaled, handed it back. As the burning sensation spread from her lungs to her head, she unwrapped her sandwich and bit into it. They ate in silence and then Abbey lay back in the grass, tucked her hands behind her head, and looked up into the sky. "Did you notice?" she asked. "At least half the people buried here are younger than we are."

"You always get so morbid."

"I'll be less morbid after I find the meteorite."

They both laughed, lying in the grass, faces to the sky.

11

Randall Worth came around Thrumcap Island in his twenty-four-foot PC-6, the Old Salt , diesel engine hammering away, laying a bourbon-colored cloud of exhaust on the water. The FM radio was tuned to TOS and it blasted static with just enough definition for Worth to guess which tune might be playing.

Worth lobstered alone, without a stern man, because no one would work for him. So much the better, he didn't have to split his profits. A while ago some bastard had cut half his string because he was caught taking shorts. Fuck 'em, fuck 'em all.

He threw over the last trap and brought the boat into a tight idle, wheel hard to starboard. The line zinged out, the float popping into the water, followed by the buoy. For a moment Worth let the boat drift while he pounded down the last half of a Coors Light and threw the can overboard. He wiped his mouth and eyed the engine panel. The engine was running cold, the injectors were shot, there was fuel coming out the wet exhaust and spreading rainbows over the water. Every few minutes the bilge pumps would kick in, vomiting oily water over the side. He spat again, the gobbet lying on the deck like a shucked oyster. He kicked the raw water hose and washed the lougey out the scuppers.