Old Earth (19 page)

“How much are these?”

The teenager on the register scanned one. $17.50.

He saw another two on the shelf. “Any more?”

“That’s it. Nobody uses them these days.”

“We sure will. I’ll take them all.”

“Hey, buddy, what’s that?”

The park director was shopping and overheard the exchange at the counter.

“Oh hi, Kappy. More supplies.”

Kaplan saw all of the equipment piled into five shopping carts. “Planning on working all night?”

“Making the best of our time,” McCauley said keeping his response brief.

“Well, keep me posted. Any new discovery helps the tourist traffic.”

“You bet.”

“See you at the links again.”

“Sure thing. I’ll give you a shout.”

With that, McCauley joined the others pushing their shopping carts, which now included the last of the store’s disposable film cameras.

• • •

THE NEXT MORNING

The additional lamps didn’t shed any more light on the questions that needed to be answered. Once again they were stopped and stumped at the wall.

At least the mechanical wind-up cameras allowed them to take pictures since their cell phones and SLRs weren’t reliable.

What they couldn’t see because of the super black, they could feel. McCauley ran his hand across the surface. It was broken up by some rock and then exposed again a few feet further down a cavern corridor.

“I’m not so sure,” he began.

“About?” Alpert asked.

“Timing. This doesn’t feel like it was embedded into the rock. It seems like the rocks formed or fell around it.”

“Earthquakes? Natural shifting,” she explained. “After it was installed.”

“Yes, but recently? Here, give me your hand.”

McCauley guided Alpert’s hand along the smooth, metallic super black wall. When she came to rock, she felt changes in vertical layers and stopped.

“Bring your light closer,” she said.

McCauley tipped the lamp toward her.

Alpert nodded.

“What?” Tom Trent asked.

McCauley knew. He looked at Alpert just as surprised.

“Am I missing something?” Trent said more emphatically.

“Strata,” Alpert stated. “Eons of fused strata. Typical of earth changing over time. A long time. Say millions of years.”

• • •

McCauley clicked another picture and then asked for a pick. He wedged it between the wall and a section of the rock and pushed hard. It loosened an area, but not enough to dislodge any rock. He struck the pick in hard above the first spot and put his shoulder against the handle. It loosened more dirt, allowing him to wedge the end in further. With the next effort, a three-foot portion of stone fell to the ground.

“More light!”

Alpert brought hers closer, as did Jaffe. More
nothing.
More of the super black wall which absorbed all their light.

“It’s buried behind this,” McCauley exclaimed.

He reached further. It was smooth for inches, and then he felt an indentation in the surface. First one, then another, and even more angling downward. They all felt the same, about an inch wide and a quarter-of-an inch deep.

“Help me clear more rock. Now!”

Twenty-eight

THAT EVENING

Rich pulled the flap back on McCauley’s tent.

“Gotta a minute, doc?”

“Sure. Hey, how’s Anna doing?”

“Okay. She’s not a happy camper, but she wants her computer. That’s a good sign. I keep her in the loop, which she loves.”

“Nice going. I’ll try to stop over tomorrow,” McCauley said.

“She’d like that.”

“So, what’s up Rich?”

“You’ll probably want to toss me out of the tent, but I really think you should call Robert Greene.”

“Him again. The conspiracy nut.”

“Yeah. We may have stepped into a secret government project or some hidden black ops facility. You said as much yourself. Or it belongs to a private corp that was testing something. Even scarier, a CDC research lab, which I hope to God it isn’t.”

Some of the newer possibilities Tamburro raised had also occurred to McCauley. Clearly he needed help, especially if the CDC was involved. He could go to Kappy, but that didn’t seem prudent.

“What if we do more research first?” McCauley asked.

“To tell you the truth, I have. Not much comes up except coal mine accidents. Just call.”

Tamburro handed McCauley a sheet with the phone number. “Mind if I stick around?”

“I have to call now?”

“Right now. In front of me.”

“Okay, okay.”

At that moment, Alpert walked into McCauley’s tent.

“Room for another?”

“Sure. You can witness the beginning of the end of my career.”

“Oh?” she asked.

Tamburro explained.

“Just call,” Alpert implored.

McCauley punched in the number on his cell.

“Speaker,” Tamburro insisted.

The professor activated the speaker function. On the fifth ring the call went to voice mail.

“Apparently I don’t know you well enough to give you my cell, so leave your name at the beep and if, after investigating
you
a bit, and I’m so inclined, I’ll call you back. If you don’t hear from me, don’t bother calling again. We’ll never be talking.”

McCauley shrugged his shoulders and thought,
What an asshole
!

“So here comes the beep. Make it quick. I’m busy.”

Not knowing how much time he had, McCauley jumped right in. “Hello, Mr. Greene. My name is Quinn McCauley. I’m a paleontologist working at a site in Montana. We, ah… .”

Alpert gave him a speed up sign.

“We found something…” he took a beat, “…interesting.”

Interesting
took Katrina back to her discussion with McCauley. It was a safety word.

“And I’d like to talk to you about it confidentially.” He gave his number, said thank you and ended the message.

“What’s the chance he’ll call back?” Alpert asked.

“Oh, he’ll call,” Tamburro said. “The operative words were ‘interesting’ and ‘confidentially.’ Too good to ignore. He’ll call back all right.”

• • •

McCauley’s phone rang at an ungodly hour. He was in such a deep sleep he almost missed the call.

“Hello,” McCauley said finally answering.

“Is this Dr. McCauley?” the male voice replied.

“Yes.” Quinn struggled to find his watch to check the time. 3
A.M.
Jesus.
“Who’s this?”

“Robert Greene. You called me earlier.”

“A lot earlier, Mr. Greene.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. I wasn’t looking at the time.” He laughed. “Guess I’m too much of a night owl. If this isn’t good, we can talk tomorrow. But it’ll probably be way late again.”

“No, no,” McCauley said as he gathered his thoughts. “Now’s okay.”

“I’ve looked you up on LinkedIn, on the Yale website, and a few other places I have access to, Dr. McCauley. Read your bios and a paper you wrote on dinosaur communal behavior in the Jurassic period.”

“Thanks. You’re probably the fifth person to get through it.”

“Actually, I didn’t finish it. Made some of the government reports look dry. But I have to ask, anything more than theory?”

“Just theory.”

“Pictures would have helped.”

“Academia. They weigh the ink.”

“Really? Pictures tell so much more.”

“Look, next time I’m in my time machine I’ll be sure to bring my camera.”

“Now you’re speaking my language.”

“I’m not really the science fiction type,” McCauley said.

“Not even
Jurassic Park
?”

“Well, of course. Got my undergraduate degree from Harvard. That’s where Crichton went.”

“There’s hope for you yet. So what did you find that was
interesting
and we needed to have a
confidential
talk?”

McCauley smiled. Tamburro had been absolutely correct.

“I’m not really sure,” McCauley admitted. “Some of my colleagues recommended I get in touch with you, but quite honestly…”

“Here I go again,” Greene interrupted. “You don’t believe I’m for real.”

“I was trying to put it more delicately.”

“You don’t have to. The only thing I’ll say in my own defense is I’m a researcher not a rumor monger. Like you, I look for things no one else has found. Most days there’s nothing. And then there are the times when it’s all worthwhile. I think it’s safe to say you recently had a good day, but you don’t know how to explain it.”

Greene waited for an answer.

“Dr. McCauley?”

“I’m here.”

“Am I correct?”

There was another long pause.

“Okay. I take it I am. That means you might want my help,” Greene said breaking the silence again.

Quinn McCauley thought hard.

“When?”

Twenty-nine

THE CAVE

They returned again with better tools. The more rock they cut away, the greater the mystery.

Soon they had a fifteen foot wide portion of the smooth, sleek wall. Yet, no matter how much light they aimed, they still couldn’t see it. The smooth surface simply absorbed all the light, reflecting none back.

“Blacker than black,” Jaffe said.

McCauley was more interested in what he was feeling than what they couldn’t see: the indentations. The wall was riddled with them.

He felt with his fingertips, then with the palm of his hands. “I can’t quite get it, but it feels like there’s a design to them.”

“A design?” Alpert responded.

“Here. Feel.” He took Dr. Alpert’s hand and blindly moved it across the wall.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s just random depressions.”

“Slide your hand down. There’s more.”

She closed her eyes to focus her concentration.

“Wait, Yes. They begin to spread out,” she noted.

“Okay, let’s switch.” McCauley now reached in and tried to get a picture in his mind’s eye. It was hard. “Damn,” he complained. “Wish I could do a rubbing. No chalk or pencil.”

“We have dirt,” Alpert said. She scooped some and let it flow through her fingers. “And I have a few sheets paper.”

“You’re better than a Boy Scout,” he joked.

“I should hope so.”

McCauley pressed the paper against the surface and rubbed dirt in, making a virtual negative of a portion of the pattern. He felt one small dimple at the top of the design. Below it, more, in a still indeterminate pattern. Soon he began counting the indentations aloud as he felt groups of the dents and visualized where they were.

One by one, he handed the 8.5 x 11 inch papers back to Alpert. It took five pages in all.

It didn’t look like much. Putting the rubbings in her backpack she said, “We’ll have to see this in better light.” McCauley stepped away. He was onto something.

“Okay. Your turn again. Come back in here and close your eyes. Get a sense of the larger picture as you feel the wall. Tell me what you
see
,” he said to Alpert.

Katrina started again. It took her a few tries to come to a blind observation. “A pattern, but I don’t get exactly what it is.” She began to count just as McCauley had.

“Aloud.”

As she counted out, McCauley wrote the numbers down.

“I still don’t see anything,” she said.

“Come on, Dr. Alpert. Think.”

She started all over again. The other students watched in wonder. McCauley was seeing it come together on paper as she called out the seemingly random numbers.

Suddenly she stopped. “A…a…pyramid.”

• • •

Later that afternoon, Quinn was on Expedia looking into airfares. At first, he thought he’d go it alone, but he realized he needed a counter balance.
Tamburro? No. He should stay with Chohany. Jaffe? Maybe.
Then he considered another possibility. He’d put Jaffe in charge of the site and ask Katrina Alpert to join him. If nothing else, in the short time that he’d known her, McCauley was impressed that she didn’t hold anything back.
Worth a try.

McCauley found her in the mess tent pouring a cup of coffee.

“I’ve decided to take Tamburro’s recommendation.”

She wasn’t sure what that was.

“To go meet the conspiracy nut we heard on the radio. What do you think?”

“Conspiracy nut?”

“Well, it’s a label. I suppose he does some credible research. I just thought that under the circumstances…”

“Unusual circumstances,” she replied.

“Completely unusual.”

“Given that, what the hell. I say go.”

McCauley was actually surprised.

“You do?”

“Sure. Go. I can help here.”

“Thank you, but I thought,” he began to fumble, “I thought that maybe I needed someone to tag along to keep me sane. You’ve been doing a good job of that since you joined up. So, I figured you should be the voice of reason. What do you say?”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Now she was surprised.

“Where?” Alpert asked.

“Bakersfield, California.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Well, apparently it just hasn’t made your bucket list yet. It’s north of Los Angeles by an hour or so. Pack for a few nights.”

“Promise me no underwear on doorknobs?”

“I’ll do better than that. Separate rooms.”

“Oh, you got that right, mister.”

“Then you’re up for it?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“Great, because we’ve got a plane out of Glendive at four fifty-two. First, I’m going to run into town to see if I can get the pictures printed up. We might need them.”

Thirty

GLENDIVE, MT

The teenage boy working the cash register at the CVS put the film through the processor and the finished prints into the sleeves without comment. McCauley thanked him. He didn’t look at the pictures until he returned to his SUV. There, he open up the sleeves. The electronic part of the camera, the flash, hadn’t worked. But his decision to buy the disposable cameras was still rewarded.

• • •

During the first leg, McCauley removed a sheet of paper from his Johnson & Murphy shoulder bag.

“What’s this?” Dr. Alpert asked, scanning the sheet.