Otherworldly Maine (21 page)

“The members of both sexes were all good looking, but the public business needed some rougher outsides and some better heads than those that belonged to the Adonises of the halls.

“They once held a private session on matters which required the most profound secrecy. The doors were closed, windows barred; but the next day, before the morning papers were out, the whole matter was the town talk. Upon investigation, it was found that each of the female members had told it, but in strict confidence, as they all declared, to a female friend.”

I found myself strolling on Broadway, and stood beneath the shade of aged and venerable and wide-spreading elms, “still wearing proudly their panoply of green,” extending as far as the eye could reach on each side of the spacious central walk. I saw the children at their sports beneath the arching canopy, and heard the same animated cries and joyous shouts, and earnest vociferations, which had always been the characteristics of childhood. I saw the marbles and the hoops, and the bat and ball—all familiar and unaltered. A bevy of girls and boys were engaged in reading books. I looked over their shoulders and saw “Mother Goose's Melodies,” with the old pictures, “Robinson Crusoe,” in his hairy skin suit, and one sober miss intent on the “Pilgrim's Progress.” It seemed there were some books that would
never
been consigned to oblivion.

I passed into a bookstore, but I remember only that I saw the old Saxon Bible in King James's translation, Shakespeare, and Milton, and Robert Burns, and Don Quixote. I asked if they had a copy of the Bangor Book?

“O yes,” said the shopman, and handed me a thick octavo. It was the Bangor Directory for 1978.

“I mean,” said I, “the work published in 1847; surely that must have survived, for it was preserved by attic salt in
blue
covers, and contained the best efforts of the Penobscot mind in prose and verse; we all looked to posterity for our reward.”

“Never heard of it,” said the man.

A little dried-up specimen of a man who was poring over a book in a corner, addressing me, said, “I have seen that book, I am quite sure, at least the outside of it, in one of the alcoves of the rooms of the Antiquarian Society, labeled ‘the day of small things,' where are kept the relics and curiosities of the first settlements on the river, and also Indian gouges, axes and hatchets, miniature birch canoes, and the portrait of the Buskahegian Giant, so called.”

“Is there not also one of the striped pig?”

“I never saw any,” quoth he.

“Speaking of the striped pig,” said I, “have you any licensed grog-shops?”

“O no, we have conquered King Alcohol, and are all temperance men now; and the ladies of the present time look with wonder and dismay in their countenances, when they are informed that their sex did once even
here
by their example countenance the use of wine as a beverage in their evening levees!”

Once more in the street I moved toward my home as I remembered it. As I passed onward, I was attracted by a beautiful arch at the entrance of a substantial, elegant, and commodious building, bearing this inscription: “The Bangor Female Orphan Asylum, founded in 1839, and sustained by the benevolence of its citizens.” I looked with interest on the groups of healthy, happy, and well conditioned children, but alas! I was reminded of the dreaded “article,” and the faces before so pleasant seemed to change into looks of reproach and regret. I involuntarily exclaimed—“Where shall I find a subject, and finish the task appointed me?” I looked up and recognized the same orphan face that appeared at my bedside, tranquil and satisfied; and the little urchin with a triumphant smile replied,—“It is completed.”

“H
ow do you keep your little lake so peaceful and quiet, Rachel?” Jennifer asked, as the younger woman opened a bottle of California red wine. The vintage was drinkable, but nothing Jennifer would serve to guests.

“It's taken a lot of work over the last few years,” Rachel replied, setting the bottle on a tray with two wine glasses, brie, and crackers. “Nothing like setting up the company, of course, but it does have a connection. We stock it with our own fish.”

“I hadn't realized that.” Jennifer's investment firm had taken Aquatic Genosynthesis public, and she thought she knew all the company's major projects.

“It's under research and development on the balance sheet,” Rachel said, sliding open a wide glass door and leading the way onto the deck.

“It sounds like a nice little tax dodge,” Jennifer said. She had to keep alert for CEOs siphoning too much cash out of their companies; it might depress the stock value.

“No, it's one of Ron's projects. He thinks recreational fishing could become quite a large market. He's working quite hard on it; he takes his father out on the lake almost every weekend to evaluate the results, like he took your husband.”

That had amused Jennifer. Her husband was an accountant, and after her twenty-five years in investment banking, he normally didn't set foot on anything smaller than a yacht. “Do you think Ron can help him catch something? The poor dear hasn't been fishing since his eighth birthday.” She could see their boat near the shore, moving slowly, although she couldn't hear a sound from its little engine.

Rachel set the tray down on a glass-topped table between two chairs. “I'm sure Ron can help him, but Ron's father was really the one who had the idea. Ron's dad was a biologist at the state fish hatchery for forty years before he retired last year. He knows an amazing amount about the feeding instincts of various fish, and what sort of lures can attract what sort of fish.”

Jennifer settled into a lounge chair. “What does that have to do with genetically modified fish?”

“Ron's dad thought the feeding cues were genetically controlled, so when Ron was at the university he had his grad students look for genes that control what the fish respond to. They found several genes for specific responses, like striking at something that moved in a certain way, or generated specific noises.”

Jennifer got the idea. “Is that how the fish recognizes its dinner?”

“Exactly. For fish farming we engineer in fast growth and limit breeding outside of the environment we control, to protect our investment. For recreational fishing, we modify other genes to modify feeding response.”

“How does that make them more attractive for fishing?”

“Ron designed an artificial lure—a kind of high-tech fly—that creates a pattern the fish are programmed to strike at. We've tested it and the fish go for it every time. At the company we were able to step up their growth rate, and our latest trick is to adjust this behavior so the fish don't start striking at the lures until they are large enough to impress the fishermen. We stocked them in this lake last year, and they're already big enough to start striking. A few of the old-time purists don't like it, but it attracts the casual fisherman.”

“And how big a market is this?” Jennifer asked. A big market could justify a secondary offering, which could earn her a fat commission.

“Billions,” replied Rachel, then paused and looked onto the water, evidently distracted.

Jennifer's eyes followed and saw a wake far down the lake. Her ears picked up the whine of a jet ski motor.

“Damned moron!” Rachel said. “We had the public boat ramp blocked, but they still manage to get in.”

“The noise is annoying,” Jennifer said, glad to see that Rachel's lake wasn't perfect. “Our lake association keeps lobbying our state legislators to ban jet skis, but they want more campaign contributions before they introduce a bill.”

“This isn't just an aesthetic issue, Jennifer. The wakes damage the delicate shore ecology, and the noise chases off birds and frogs, and upsets the fish.”

“Can you use your genetic technology to make the fish less sensitive, so it wouldn't bother them?”

“I suppose that's possible, but we're going in a different direction.” Rachel picked up a pair of Zeiss binoculars from the table to look more closely at the water. “We have a new experiment with pike, and if it works, you might see something in a minute.”

“Why pike?” Jennifer knew only the fish that came on plates.

“They are voracious predators. We've speeded up their growth rate, and now are fine-tuning their instinctive striking response to just the right noise level. Watch over there,” she said, pointing.

The jet ski sped uncomfortably close to a small child on a raft as it changed course, turning back up the lake. Jennifer followed Rachel's gesture and saw a dark shape moving from the middle of the lake. Suddenly it broke the surface and a huge mouth gaped open in front of the jet ski. There was a huge splash, with water spraying in all directions and blocking their view. Then the giant mouth, the jet ski, and the kid riding it were gone. Waves spread silently outward from the spot.

“The response threshold is perfect. That should show the bastards,” Rachel said, putting down her binoculars.

Jennifer picked her glass of wine from the table and sipped. It was a much better vintage than she had realized. She had underestimated Rachel. “I can see a very big market. I'm sure our lake association will be interested.”

From the footpath above Overlook he could imagine them entering the harbor, envision the island and its mountain in their wondering eyes. Even the bow would rise just above the water line, and their low perspective (he had studied pictures of longships for years before he finally got to the museum at Oslo) would disclose Cadillac first, and then, only after they had made for it, the curve of the bay beyond and the astonishing greenery. They would know fjords, so not be surprised at a peak abutting the sea, whose nakedness—he remembered Champlain's observation that the island summits were bare of vegetation when seen from the sea—would likelier shock with familiarity. But the mountain (they would have their own name for it, now lost) would prove unique, and the densely forested interior, with its meadows, berries, and game, would draw them in.

The undisputed Viking site is northeast in Newfoundland; the “Maine Penny” was found farther down, on Penobscot Bay. They could have come here. Exploring south, the longships would have hugged the coast, bringing them into the gulf and sight of the island—perhaps more plainly an island then, for the Medieval Warm Period was in force, and the narrow strait that prevents Mount Desert Island from being a peninsula may have been wider. The Wabanaki Indians would have scattered the remains of any encampment, and the elements had centuries to destroy the rest, wash them into the sea, bury them in the silt that slowly turned lakes to meadows.

Even if L'Anse aux Meadows was the true Vinland, they would have quickly discovered the nearby mainland and ventured farther, beguiled by the inviting coastline that led them westward as well as south. How far, in the absence of seafaring resistance, would they have continued? Enough to assure themselves that no threat existed, no marauding powers beyond the Skræling settlements they raided at will. The coast of Maine is long; they may well have turned back before reaching Portsmouth. But until they had satisfied themselves that Nova Scotia was not another island—until they had touched the continent that Leif, who had traveled to Norway, knew lay beyond every large øf but his own—the Norsemen would have sailed on. They really could have come here.

He had bought a timetable in Bar Harbor and was on the beach by seven, walking the sodden strip just uncovered by low tide and soon to be submerged once more. Best was the lip of clear water as it receded before curling into the next wave: in that final quarter second, Jay could see declivities of sand and rock no beachcomber would glimpse. He had long since relinquished the hope that the tides would cast up anything heavy enough to have survived a millennium in the bay, but their clawing at the sands might conceivably uncover something washed away in storms and shallowly buried.

He tied his shoelaces together and hung them round his neck, then waded up to his shins in the ever-cold water. Parts of the
Denbigh
had been visible for decades at extreme low tide in Galveston Bay, and the
Amsterdam
, buried in English mud for more than a century longer, was discovered during an exceptional tide only in 1969, the year of his birth. Though he knew better, Jay found himself looking not for the gleam of metal at his feet, but—shielding his eyes—farther out, to the edge of refractivity, for the foreshortened outlines of a just-uncovered ship.

Breakfast a few miles outside the park, and when the visitors' center opened he was inside looking at the maps. A thousand years is nothing, and save perhaps for the shoreline, the contours of the topographical models displayed at ping-pong table height showed the island as the Norsemen would have found it. Jay wanted to know where the Indians had settled, so he knew where the Norsemen hadn't. He was browsing the book section for new information on pre-Wabanaki settlements when he noticed a woman holding a copy of
Vikings in America
.

“That isn't very good,” he said, nodding at the familiar cover.

She flipped it over and looked at it, as though he was speaking of someone in the illustration. “What, this?”

“It's not a great book. I mean, I like the theory, but he can't tell good evidence from bad; he just accepts everything.”

The woman frowned, and Jay realized with a stab of dismay that she wasn't sure what he was talking about. “But they came before Columbus, didn't they?”

“Centuries before Columbus, but the only site that has ever been found is up in Canada. If they ventured down this far, nobody knows where.”

“He says they've found things, coins and stone carvings.”

Jay made a face. “It's hard to date runes scratched in a rock, and you can't tell who dropped a coin, or when.” The woman looked surprised, and he added, “No, I think he's right: the Vikings must have come down here. But we won't prove it until a settlement is found.”